Mark Interviews 2000+

Return of the Jedi

Mark Hamill comes back to Broadway, the Big Screen, and Prime Time

It was a long time ago that Mark Hamill last spoke to Insider, but STAR WARS fans have been following his multifarious career ever since the fall of the Empire.

Onstage Hamill has played the Elephant Man, Mozart, and vaudevillain Tony Hart - a role that earned him a Drama Desk nomination for Best Actor in a Musical. Videogame players know him as Colonel Christopher Blair from the Wing Commander series and as the voice of everyone's favorite mutant in X2: Wolverine's Revenge - to say nothing of his return as the voice of Luke Skywalker in LucasArts' STAR WARS Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy. A veteran voice actor whose earliest credits include the animated Jeannie, The New Scooby-Doo Movies, and the cult-classic Wizards, Hamill has cornered the market on supervillains, giving voices to such evildoers as the Gargoyle, Hobgoblin, and most famously Batman's archnemesis, the Joker.

Moving from film to stage to TV to sound studio is one of the ways Hamill keeps his performances fresh, because each medium provides its own challenge. "They are all different in the way you would imagine them to be," he says. "Television is just like movies, but it's 10 times faster. You're learning tomorrow's scenes while you're doing the scenes today. It's just like soaps. I love doing soaps! You've got your heart pumping a mile a minute because things could go wrong. You've got all these really good stage actors doing this arch material and trying to make it real. I just love to be working in whatever medium I'm in, to really enjoy the advantages of that."

These days, Hamill is enjoying the advantages of three different media. On Broadway he recently starred opposite Polly Bergen (Cape Fear , Cry-Baby) in Six Dance Lessons In Six Weeks. In late February, Creative Light Entertainment releases the DVD of Hamill's directorial debut, Comic Book: The Movie, in which he also stars. And the versatile performer also cowrote, produced, and performed in The Wrong Coast, an animated satire series set to air on AMC later in 2004.
After three grueling weeks of previews for Six Dance Lessons and a recent recording session for Cartoon Network, it's not surprising that the Mark Hamill who answers the phone sounds less like Luke Skywalker and more like Elan Sleazebaggano. Despite the hoarseness, Hamill seems full of energy, and his enthusiasm only grows as he talks about his many projects. He says, "This period for me is one of the most fruitful, enjoyable creative highs I've had."

On Old Broadway
In October, Hamill assumed the role of dance instructor Michael Minetti in Six Dance Lessons In Six Weeks in Broadway's Belasco Theatre following a successful run in Coconut Grove, Fla., where he starred with Rue McClanahan (The Golden Girls). The role is Hamill's first Broadway appearance since 1988's The Nerd. "It was completely unexpected," he says. "I didn't plan it. I read the script, and it's rare that the characters jump off the page the way they did. It brought to mind The Gin Game or Sleuth or any of the theatrical pieces that they call 'two-handers'. It's wonderfully rich in its appeal, and very funny. I mean instantly funny. By page six, I said, 'Oh my gosh, I have to do this.'"

Part of the appeal was that Minetti's character is not typical leading man material. "The guy's showing up to give dance lessons," says Hamill, "and he's got anger-management issues. He's an opinionated sort of wiseacre New Yorker: cynical, bitter and angry. He's also a liar. I read the first 10 pages and said, 'This guy is such a creep!' The audience is not only going to not like him, but will probably want to reach out and strangle him. In the theater, they can do that!"

Another aspect of the Minetti character has unique appeal for an actor, like Hamill, who values variety. "He's a frustrated Broadway actor who never really made the big time, and you can bet that in every dance he teaches, he's a different character. He's not just doing the foxtrot; he's Frank Sinatra in one of those Robin and the Seven Hoods movies. When he's doing the tango, he's surging with Latin sexuality. And he's Mickey Rooney in the swing. I love being sort of a chameleon."

Opposite Hamill's dance instructor is Polly Bergen's Lily Harrison. On the surface, she appears to be the complete opposite of Minetti. "She's a Baptist minister's wife and very set in her ways, well-to-do," explains Hamill. "He's very resentful of what she has. He says about her apartment, 'These ugly high-rises may ruin the view for the rest of us, but they're sure great from the inside!' She's in St. Petersburg; he's in Clearwater. He's at the beach but not on the beach. It's like being close to paradise, but no cigar if you're on the wrong side."

Hamill recalls a conversation with native Floridian Richard Alfieri, the playwright, about how the setting inspired the story: "He was with his mother once at a big hotel and saw all these middle-aged dance instructors and a sea of senior citizens, and he was intrigued. 'What goes on here?' Well, a lot of people want to fill up their spare time and just get out and interact with other people. It's a social thing. It's a health thing. It's an exercise thing."

Apparently, it's a contagious thing, too, according to Hamill. "Dancing is fun - really, a lot of fun," he says. "I can't believe I'm saying that, given that I went through hell trying to learn how to do it all."

Broadway veteran Kay Cole is the choreographer for Dance Lessons. While Hamill is no stranger to action-oriented roles, he learned that choreographers can be even more daunting than stunt coordinators - or directors. "You can argue with a director over interpretation," says Hamill. "With dance it's precise. It is just unbelievably difficult and frustrating until you finally get it right, and then it's exhilarating, like jumping out of an airplane or surfing, or just riding your bike when your dad let's go and you're doing it on your own with no training wheels. It's wonderful."

Dancing was hard enough, but the real difficulty came when it was time for Hamill to teach his partner to dance while keeping his own steps straight. "Keep in mind that I'm teaching everything upside down and backward," he says. "When I'm saying, 'Right foot back slow,' I'm really doing left foot forward slow. It's very difficult."

"Backstage one time in Florida, I just momentarily panicked. I was ready to make an entrance and said, 'Oh my god, I can't remember how to foxtrot.' So I turned around in a panic and said, 'I just forgot how to foxtrot. I forgot how to foxtrot!'"

Hamill's dresser came to the rescue with soothing reassurances, and the show went on... with just a small hitch. "I stepped on Rue's toes twice, and I couldn't switch over, so I just started doing it wrong but with shallow steps so I didn't hurt her. But I learned fast; I never did that again."

Just to be sure, McClanahan took steps of her own. "Rue used to be a dance instructor," says Hamill, "so in a way it was good for me and bad for me, because she was really leading, and I didn't mind, and no one could tell."

With McClanahan's departure, however, Hamill could no longer depend on her training. "They told me, 'We're going to kick it up a notch for Broadway. We're going to make the dances more complex. You have to now take that mantle of responsibility.'"

When Polly Bergen took over for McClanahan for the Broadway run, Hamill had adjustments to make. "They are really different," says Hamill. "I think Rue had more of a pronounced Southern aristocracy about her. Polly doesn't emphasize that as much, and yet there's a more fragile kind of vulnerability to Polly's portrayal. Rue is a much more formidable lady."

Each actress had something different to offer her costar. "Rue is very traditional in the sense that when she finds something that works, that's the way she likes to freeze it," says Hamill. "Not that she's intractable -- I don't want to give you the wrong idea. Polly is willing to scat and jazz. If you lock eyes with her and she feels like you want to play, she'll play instead of saying, 'What were you doing that for? I thought we were going to do this.' She's got a little-girl quality that I find just absolutely appealing. It's effortless. You see the spirit of this 16-year-old this elegant, elderly, but still beautiful woman. It plays well because I'm so crass. I'm playing Groucho to her Margaret Dumont."

Hamill hints that STAR WARS fans who came to see Dance Lessons may also have witnessed a few ghosts - especially if they sat in the second balcony of the Belasco Theatre, which is said to be haunted. The theater itself has a long history of inexplicable events, according to Hamill, who says he's had some rather strange experiences while performing there.

"I've never had so many unexplained bad-luck things happen," says Hamill. "That includes the music box that I play for each of the dances turning on when it's not supposed to, or not going on when it is supposed to."

Hamill recalls that on another occasion, deafening feedback from the stage microphones stopped the play almost before it had begun. The technicians could not identify the problem. "All these experts said, 'I don't know what that is, and I've never experienced that in my 37 years in the business."

He says the most alarming mishap occured on opening night. "In the last five minutes of the play, when there are unexpected turns, there was a great disturbance in the audience. I managed to talk louder and faster because we were only a page and a half from finishing, but it was crucial exposition that clearly nobody was hearing or paying attention to." Eventually, the performers learned that a man in the audience had collapsed. Luckily, there was literally a doctor in the house, and the show resumed twenty minutes later. Unfortunately, the distraction had come at the worst possible time. Hamill sighs. "We finished the play without the momentum."

With critics from the New York Times and other influential media in the audience that night, Hamill says, "The producers were just ashen-faced, of course."

"Later we found out he didn't have a heart attack," says Hamill. "Ironically -- to quote a line from the play -- he was laughing so hard that he choked on a lozenge or a candy that he had, and it blocked his windpipe."

Despite some bad luck, Hamill says, "Opening night was like a theatrical dream come true. It was at Sardi's. I started inviting people I didn't even know. I wanted Kofi Annan and the pope to come. Actually, the pope was a joke, but Kofi Annan has an assistant who is one of our prop people part-time. I said, 'Oh, ask him to come opening-night!' That would be so awesome if we could get Kofi Annan. I also hoped for Keith Richards."

While no pontiff, secretary general, or guitar legend appeared in the audience that night, at least one long-time friend made the evening special. "People always ask me, 'Do you have any friends from STAR WARS?'" says Hamill. "Well, yeah, they're all my friends -- they're all friends I haven't seen in 15 years because everybody has a life." The exception, he says, is Peter Kohn, who met Hamill on the set of STAR WARS. "He was 18 and a production assistant who was not scheduled to go to Tunisia, but at the last minute he was asked to because he spoke French. He was the closest to my age on the crew, so we bonded and became buddies. I was friends with him before any of the cast arrived."

These days, Kohn works as an assistan director on films like Air Force One and Pirates of the Carribean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. "He's worked on some of Harrison Ford's movies. He'll relay messages to me from him," Hamill laughs. Recently, Kohn included Hamill's wife, Marilou, and their daughter, Chelsea, along with their two dogs in a walk-by role in The Manchurian Candidate. Hamill says, "Look, here I'm trying to make this play run, and these guys are getting A-list movies without even trying."

Hamill finds live performances far more invigorating than screen roles. "The audience really is such an integral part of the experience. It's not like the assembly-line candy bars. I love Hershey bars, but if you come to the Belasco Theatre, we're going to handcraft a confection of your choice right before your eyes every night."

Unfortunately, just before press time, Insider learned from Playbill.Com that Dance Lessons closed on Broadway on November 23. The fourth casualty of a difficult theatrical season, the show ended when Polly Bergen could not return on a regular basis after missing several previous performances due to a leg injury.

However, despite the mixed reviews, the future looks bright for Six Dance Lessons In Six Weeks. Universal Studios has purchased the movie rights, and a German production has already started. "I thought I was originating a brand-new play," says Hamill. "This sounds like a Howard Johnson's franchise going up!"

Comic Book Guy
This February, Hamill makes his directorial debut with the release of the DVD of Comic Book: The Movie. The movie, a mockumentary about fanatic comic collectors, came into being in the time-honored Hollywood way: accidentally. Initially, Hamill had approached the producers at Creative Light Entertainment to pitch a different movie altogether: The Black Pearl, a 1997 Dark Horse Comics miniseries that Hamill cowrote and later adapted for the screen.

"The Black Pearl was out of their price range," Hamill recalls, "even for a low-budget movie. But then they told me about the documentary they did for Star Trek, where William Shatner and Leonard Nemoy talk about Star Trek - Mind Meld.

Right away Hamill could see where they were going with the idea, and he admits that a similar movie based on STAR WARS would be fun. "There are so many anecdotes about making those movies that no one's ever talked about, those only the cast and crew remember. I mean, no one was up on the glacier with me in The Empire Strikes Back, not even Harrison or Carrie."

Still, Hamill was itching to work on a project that was more than just a stroll down Memory Lane. "People have to understand, I shy away from STAR WARS because they don't need me anymore," Hamill explains. "It's fantastic what it's done and where it's gone. I totally understand the impulse. There's a universal quality that unites people who love something so much that they can't explain it rationally."

Hamill admits that although he "follows" STAR WARS and sees all the movies, he isn't exactly a STAR WARS fanatic. In fact, his son now owns Hamill's STAR WARS collection. "I didn't have to pass it on -- he just appropriated it." says Hamill. "My obsessions are more like the Rolling Stones and the Marx Brothers and Golden Age comic books."

So Hamill made the CLE producers a counteroffer: "Let's do something new and fun, [something that will] riff on all my projects, not just [the STAR WARS] movies." His idea: a mock documentary that he says is "along the lines of what Christopher Guest (Best In Show) and Rob Reiner (This Is Spinal Tap) and Woody Allen (Take the Money and Run) have done."

"I've always loved the documentary form," says Hamill. "I love to watch documentaries, but [they can be] too much like school," he jokes. "You have to do all this research, and I want the fun but not any of the responsibility! If I can do a documentary where I can make up all the facts, I'll feel much better about it."
The first order of business was to find suitable subject matter. Hamill recalls thinking, "What could I use as a background that would stand up to this very minimal budget?" He finally chose the world of comic-book fandom as his setting and secured permission from Comic-Con International to shoot the movie there.

In addition to directing Comic Book: the Movie, Hamill stars in it, playing a high-shool teacher who is also a comic-book historian. "What happens in the movie," he says, "is that a studio is going to revamp and make relevant this old, nostalgic character. He becomes Codename Courage instead of Commander Courage. And they get rid of the boy sidekick, Liberty Lad, and give Courage a sexy girl in a jumpsuit, and that's Liberty Lass (Donna D'Errico)."

Besides Hamill and D'Errico, the movie features "this wonderfully eclectic, oddball cast," says Hamill, including Roger Rose, Tom Kenny, Daran Norris, Laura Nativo, and James Arnold Taylor, and includes interviews with Kevin Smith, Bruce Campbell, Jonathan Winters, Sid Caesar, and Hugh Hefner. It also boasts what Hamill calls, "some of the best voiceover actors in the business. This is a bumper crop." He adds, "It's the Mad Mad Mad Mad World of voiceover actors. We have everybody from SpongeBob SquarePants and the Animaniacs to Pinky and the Brain to Jimmy Neutron to Winnie the Pooh and the Tasmanian Devil - you name it. Between Billy West and Maurice Lamarche alone, we have practically everybody from Futurama."

Hamill says Comic Book: The Movie had an advantage over other recent ensemble mockumentaries. "It wasn't as scripted as a Christopher Guest movie. When Eugene Levy and Guest sit down, they write out the script, but don't put the dialogue in. They tailor it to the rep company they have with Fred Willard and Catherine O'Hara and all those other brilliant people."

Working without a script, as Hamill's cast did, gave the process "a certain dangerous quality," he says. "We were filming alternates where we said, 'Well, if this happens, then let's do this scene, but if that happens, let's go again and do it where you say this instead of that.' So there's a raggedyness. We did it on the fly."

Despite the inevitable humor created by this spontaneity, Hamill describes the movie as a very personal one. "All the references, the biographical material -- it's all skewed, based on my real life. It's sort of like Earth Mark. Remember Earth 1/Earth 2?" Hamill himself is something of a comics fanatic, a self-described "giant geek" who "knows how to finesse his obsessions a little and pass in the normal world."

"I started reading all the underground comics when I was in high school," he says, "R. Crumb, Gilbert Shelton, and so on. I could tell they were influenced by the Mad comics, and so I wanted to get all the Mad comics in their original form. That's when I first hooked into the history, finding out about EC [Entertaining Comics], and when I first became entranced with the Kefauver [Senate] committee, which tried to pin comics to juvenile delinquency."

Someday, admits Hamill, he'd like to do a rock-and-roll comic-book movie à la John Waters' Cry-Baby. Meanwhile, he's proud of what he was able to accomplish with the slender buget for Comic Book: the Movie. "It's really sort of the model of economy that George used on the original STAR WARS," he muses, "where you didn't have the money to do X, Y, and Z, so you looked at the big picture and said, 'What do we need to sell this and make people fill in the rest with their imagination?' It's wonderful, and I'm lucky to have worked with so many wonderful people who have taught me so much."

A Million Voices

Hamill's fans also know him as the voice of the Joker on the WB's Batman: The Animated Series, a role he has played for 12 years. The star says there are definite advantages to voice work. "With voiceover, they don't care what you look like," he explains. "You don't have to shave. You don't have to memorize lines -- you read your lines. You can sit down if you want, though with Joker I always stand up because I find there is an energy I had in physically trying to become him."

Even though audiences never see voice actors on screen, Hamill often finds himself adopting the physical mannerisms of his characters during recording sessions. "When I did Scrooge [1988's Mark & Brian Christmas Special]," he says, "I didn't even do it intentionally, but they said, 'Your hand became palsied, and you had sort of an old tremor.'"

"I love not being seen," Hamill continues, "because then you can just use your voice like a magician. If someone says to me, 'No, he's about a hundred pounds heavier,'" Hamill says, continuing in a very deep voice: "Well, I'm going to figure out a way to make my voice sound heavier."

The Batman series will soon be ending to make way for a new series that will focus on younger incarnations of the characters, with a new voice cast. But Hamill has no regrets. In fact, he admits, "It's kind of a relief. It was one of the longest runs I've ever had - 12 years. The hardest thing was keeping up the quality. You overstay your welcome and it becomes harder and harder to be original. I applaud WB for trying to find a way to reinvigorate the fanchise."

Besides, Hamill has already begun voiceover work on a new animated show. The Wrong Coast, a half-hour series permiering on AMC in 2004. The Wrong Coast combines stop-motion animation with computer effects, and Hamill describes it as, "a satire of those magazine entertainment shows such as Access Hollywood and Entertainment Tonight. You have to see it to believe it."

Hamill says he's not interested in competing with the shock tactics of more outrageous television fare and seems especially proud that The Wrong Coast is suitable viewing for all ages. "It's a family-friendly satire," he says. "I wanted to do a show where younger viewers can stay in the room instead of their parents saying, 'Oh, boy, The Wrong Coast is on, kids. Get out of the room!'"

While celebrity impressions will play a part in The Wrong Coast, Hamill points out that he leaves the impersonations to the experts. "I do a halfway decent Woody Allen, but we have Maurice Lamarche, who is indistinguishable from the real guy." Ever the chameleon, Hamill still performs more than his share of roles, not just the lead. "I did a lot of the character voices and incidental people in various accents and sped up and slowed down so you wouldn't know it's me," he says.

As is often the case in voice performance, Hamill records his performances without the benefit of having the other actors in the room. "I've not met the cast yet," he says, "and I've done nine shows. It is strange, but it's not strange because you do animation in all different ways. Disney, for instance, never has you do group records. For TV maybe, but mostly they like solo recordning sessions. I asked Jonathan Taylor Thomas [Young Simba in The Lion King], 'How did you like working with James Earl Jones?' And he says, 'Oh, I never met him.' The Lion King! I mean that's very disillusioning!"

Hamill says that as a director, he likes to do things differently. "To me, as a voiceover director and director of video games and a direct-to-video movie and [TV] episodes, I find that I love the actors being together because they have a chemistry together and spur each other on. My view is that if you ad-lib something funnier than what is scripted, I will be more than happy to take credit for your witty substitute. That's the Jay Ward way. That's why Rocky and Bullwinkle was so brilliant. Aside from having brilliant writers, they had brilliant actors who sometimes put a twist or a turn on what was already there, and the egos were such that they said, 'Oh, that's better. Say that.'"

This collaborative impulse informs Hamill's stage acting as well: "I'm able to ad-lib with my author. I honor the text, but in certain instances, I'v said, 'How about this or that?' Now, 90 percent of the time he says no, but that means that the two or three things you do change, you feel like, 'See? Now that's going to be in the Samuel French edition forever and ever.' And that's the difference between replacing and originating a role."

The Circle Is Now Complete

Looking back on his many roles, Hamill has a hard time picking one favorite. "There's something in all of them," he says. "I loved Luke. I loved the fact that he was so callow and came full circle to become someone who was a full grownup person. He's fated, of course, I think, to be lonely."

He recalls thinking he would one day play an older Luke Skywalker when discussing the once-planned Episodes VII - IX with George Lucas. "I knew they were going to be about other characters with a possibility of my doing a cameo in the ninth one. I would imagine that Luke would model his life after Obi-Wan. I mean, the shock of finding out his best girl is his sister would be enough alone to send him to the monastery," Hamill laughs. "You could see him whittling lightsaber holders out in the desert of Tatooine somewhere. I think he's reached a place where that aspect of physical love is in perspective for him. I say this, but people tell me I'm married to that hottie [Mara Jade]."

"The model who plays her is just adorable," he says of Mara-model Shannon Baksa McRandle. "I think it's funny. Leave it to Lucasfilm to get you a love interest 10 years after your job's over."

When the Special Editions were released in 1997, Mark Hamill had not seen the STAR WARS films in a theater since they first generated around-the-block lines in the late 1970s and early 1980s. His children had seen their father's fight against the Empire only on video. "To tell you the truth," he says, "I didn't think it was necessary to see the re-release at the time. But then my kids of course said, 'Are you insane?' I said, 'We've seen it a million times.' They said, 'Yeah, but not big and loud and in the dark without stopping or scanning back and pausing.' Plus the fact that Lucas had tweaked them all, special-effects-wise."

Beyond the ability to add digital effects to movies made two decades earlier, Hamill admires another benefit Lucas gained from the phenomenal success of STAR WARS. "It's so much fun for George," says Hamill. "I think that's the thing I'm most entranced with, the unprecedented autonomy of one man to be the writer and the director and - are you sitting down? - the studio! Holy moley! So these aren't sort of the movies he wants or compromises; these are exactly what he wants. Even Stanley Kubrick, as much as he was known for wanting to shoot and shoot and shoot so he had so many choices - his dream was to edit a movie for 10 years - I don't think even he could claim to have the kind of autonomy that George has. Maybe Spielberg does, too, but at least at Dreamworks he's got partners; he's got Mr. Geffen and Mr.Katzenberg. Who's George's boss? Nobody! It's got to be fun!"

While that sort of autonomy is appealing, it is "an awesome responsibility," in Hamill's view - and he should know, having gone the hyphenate route as producer-director-actor on several projects. The experience has given him even more sympathy for the pressure Lucas must feel. "He's got no one to shift the blame to if things go wrong, but so far so good for him. Hopefully, when Comic Book: The Movie comes out, people will give me a chance to take more steps in that direction. I'd love to do small, comic movies about real people."

If money were no object, Hamill would like to tackle a couple of period projects, including a movie version of The Black Pearl, currently retitled Dark Diamond. The other is a similarly personal piece, one he began writing in the late 1980s while researching his role in Harrigan 'n Hart. "There's a story I have about the ghost of a little turn-of-the-century boy who was in the theater. He doesn't know that he's a ghost and mistakes a divorcing modern-day Manhattan couple for the ghosts of his parents and doesn't realize that in doing what he's doing, something astonishing happens. It's a fantasy in the mode of Miracle on 34th Street. It's a heart-warming ghost story that's scary in parts for all the right reasons and sort of Dickensian."

If Hamill seems less than eager to embrace the celebrity of his most famous role, he says it's because he wants to ensure he can continue to do what he likes best: change character. "I've never understood why people are so anxious to do things like I'm doing right now, a phone interview. Do people believe that the more they find out about me personally - what my politics are or what my private life is - the less of a cipher I will become?"

He adds, "Acting is just a job. Real life isn't show business. It can be, if you want, but I don't."

STAR WARS Insider #73, January 2004