Mark Interviews 1970+

Mark Hamill

Long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away, a young Mark Hamill began his quest for fame, fortune and Hollywood stardom.

Once upon a time the world of science fiction existed without the huge shadow cast by STAR WARS. And this wasn't so very long ago. In 1976, Mark Hamill had just completed principal photography on STAR WARS and was wondering what the future held for his first major feature. A long-time science fiction fan, Mark was familiar with fan magazines and had even interviewed Kerwin Mathews (of Seventh Voyage of Sinbad fames) for one in 1974.

As an actor, Mark's career began in 1969 when he signed with an agent after appearing in the play Anthems in E Flat Calliope in Hollywood.

"I got an agent but it took me about a year from the summer I arrived before I started working in television," Mark recalls. "The first thing I did was The Bill Cosby Show. Since then I've done fifty-one episodes of a soap opera, General Hospital. It's not the kind of material you're really proud of but it's a geat acting exercise. I also did a series called The Texas Wheelers which was highly critically acclaimed. I was so damn proud! It was a comedy without a laugh track, about a real family who fought with each other, skipped school, hated work and their father was a drunk. We made thirteen but went off in four. But that's just television biz for ya'."

While Mark rarely grants interviews today, at the time STAR WARS was in the works, media overhype was not even imagined as a possibility. Little publicity appeared before the film's release. When it captured the imagination of the movie going public, the media were largely caught napping. As if to catch up, almost everyone went overboard in their coverage of the box office sensation of 1977.

In September of 1976, before STAR WARS filled the theatres, at the World Science Fiction Convention in Kansas City, Mark Hamill was just one of several representatives of Lucasfilm in attendance to get the word out. Film promotion at conventions is now commonplace, but this was pretty new in '76 and largely the brainstorm of publicist Charles Lippincott. His strategy was that if word circulated among large numbers of science fiction fans nationwide, then there would be lines to see the film as soon as it opened. These people would spread the word outside the hard core of science fiction fans and create a ripple effect. This is what happened in the case of STAR WARS. Word of mouth from those who saw the film early helped launch the broad base appeal of the film.

But in September of '76 STAR WARS was still unseen and Hamill was anxious and unknown, awaiting reaction to his first feature role.

"I've done four television movies and three of them were really good. One was Sara T.: Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic in which I played Linda Blair's boyfriend. I was also in Mallory: Circumstantial Evidence with Raymond Burr where an innocent kid went into prison and was in with all the strange elements there. I played a sick kid who wound up on top of towers sniping at people in Delancey Street. The last I did was Eric, a Hallmark Hall of Fame about a kid dying of leukemia. I played Eric's younger brother.

Landing the role of Luke

I first went out for STAR WARS in November 1975 when I met George Lucas and Brian DePalma. They were having joint interviews. Brian was doing Carrie. I don't think that George said a word through the whole interview. He's real shy and he let Brian do the talking. He didn't tell me anything about STAR WARS. Everybody from about 15 to 30 was out. They were looking for Luke but I didn't know that. They didn't tell me anything about it. We knew that it was called STAR WARS so it had to be something to do with outer space. Nobody saw a script until later when I did a screen test. Then they sent me four or five pages of scenes and no character description really, so I had to pretty much play it neutral, play it the way I would react in that situation. This worked out fine because Luke is a simple farmboy, which is not to say that I am. Far from it!"

When Mark Hamill finally tested for the role, the test was done with Harrison Ford who had already been chosen as Han Solo.

"Harrison had tested with a few other people and maybe George was leaning towards them, I didn't know. Harrison had worked with George before in American Graffitti and so he knew him. I was really nervous. This was a screen test with George Lucas and I was all, 'Yes, Sir' and Harrison was all, 'Aw shit, George, let's get this thing over with and get the hell outa' here!"' I was really shocked that he was talking to George that way! I understand it now because George is one of the nicest men I've ever met. I can't describe him - he's so unique. He's so shy that he doesn't like being talked about. He'd never come to a convention. He loves this one restaurant in San Francisco and he won't go there because people know him now. He will never go to the Academy Awards again. He only went once because of American Graffitti. Universal made him go. He's the antithesis of what you think a Hollywood director would be like. I really think the man is brilliant. I trusted him totally. Choices I never would have made as an actor I did for him because I know he must be right. Usually if I can't do something the way that a director tells me, something has got to be worked out or I can't do it. We somehow have to reach a compromise before I'll be able to do what he wants me to do. It would have to be at least shaded my way. I was doing things that I felt were dead wrong in this movie and I just trusted George that it'll come out all right."

The principal scene which Mark refers to when he says that he trusted his director over his own judgment as an actor is when Luke Skywalker finds his home burned out and the bodies of his aunt and uncle.

"I wanted to really show what my character must be feeling by kneeling down in the sand and screaming and crying, but George wanted it played in a way so that the audience could project their own feelings into my character." Only the viewer can decide if that is indeed how it played and if that effect was achieved.

Ever present during the production of STAR WARS was George's then-wife, Marcia, a talented film editor whom many regard as having made a crucial contribution to the effectiveness of STAR WARS.

"She told me I was right to trust George because he is an instinctive director and really into things like this. In something like STAR WARS you have no choice but to trust him because you're looking where they're going to put something later. You have to trust that whilre you're reacting to something that isn't there, when they put it in it will match up with the way you're reacting!".

Aliens and Action

The problems of filming were exemplified by some of the things that happened during the desert shooting in Tunisia.

"In one part we had nine robots all at the same time, plus the Jawas. A lot of them were little Tunisian children, a couple of Tunisian dwarfs, a couple of our dwarfs... you couldn't see their faces. You'd have eleven of those guys. Nine robots and dwarfs were bumping into radio controlled robots, tipping over so that you could see their legs inside. It was amazing! Total chaos!"

There were behind-the-scenes problems even after they moved indoors. For instance, the stormtrooper uniforms were not designed for comfort. In scenes when they were disguised in them, the results were often unpleasant for the actors to endure.

"When we were wearing the stormtrooper uniforms, you couldn't sit down," Mark recalls. "They put us in piece-by-piece. They built saw horses to sit on. That's the most we could rest all day. It was terrible. Plus you get panicky inside those helmets because it's not like a mask which is fitted against your face. You can see inside the helmet and it's all sickly green. Plus you've got wax in your ears because of the explosions. You feel eerie because with the helmet on you feel that you're in your own little world because nobody's talking to you. I freaked out only once and said, 'Get me outa here!' It was really uncomfortable."

Not all of the work was grim. Sometimes small tricks were played which actually had a point beyond the jest.

"They had a row of lightweight dummie blasters but with one real one which had realistic weight to it. They switched them once and when I reached down to grab it I almost pulled my arm out of joint. George then said, 'I don't want you just whipping it up. It's a heavy gun.' So it wasn't just a joke. He wanted me to grab the heavy one each time because he wanted them to look real. George wanted them to look like heavy artillery which is why the prop people built them out of British sub-machine guns."

There is a scene in STAR WARS when Luke has his blast shield down to practice with a drone. The drone was inserted later by the special effects team. But that's not how it was originally shot.

"You always think of the most complicated ways they could have done it," Mark notes. "You know what they were doing? John Stears, the special effects man, was up on a ladder with a fishing pole with this plastic sputnik on the end. But he couldn't get it to dart so they had me do it and imagine it was there. It was much like Kerwin Mathews seeing the skeleton that wasn't there in The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad. I was real limited. They would say, 'Don't do too much over here or there. Don't look low. Yeah, that looks good through the lens.' You have to believe it yourself or you're going to blow it. Everybody looks at you like, 'Let's see how this guy looks at something that's not there.' It really cracked me up a couple of times while I was shooting. When I gave him a piece that he could use I thought to myself, 'That looked good,' and then immediately you're out of it and have to get back. It was interesting, to say the least."

The STAR WARS Experience

Before the character became the Luke Skywalker played by young Mark Hamill, Lucas had a few other ideas which Mark subsequently became aware of.

"George wanted to make STAR WARS before American Graffitti. STAR WARS, he told me, generated from the sequel to THX-1138. The part I play is Robert Duvall. But it evolved in a different way. At one time Luke Skywalker was a girl and the princess was her brother that she was rescuing. Gary Kurtz told me that for a couple of days George wanted Luke to be played by a midget and my aunt and uncle would be midgets so that when he goes to another world they're all giants. At one time he wanted to use all Japanese actors. It goes through a lot of changes."

Even before STAR WARS became a box office smash, Mark Hamill was already excited by what he had done and what he had seen being done.

"The art director is fantastic - the look of the costumes, everything. You have my world, Tatooine, which is arid and rocky and you can cut from that white, dry world to the cold, metallic world of the Death Star. I have that tunic, that Samurai-type tunic. Throw my poncho over it and immediately it switches from oriental to a western or Spanish look. For a while they were trying to get me a huge brimmed hat. I mean, it was gigantic, turned up like maybe I'd wear it in the sun. Fortunately they decided against it because it looked so damned silly.

All of cinema, all of television, is a composite art. Nobody knows how important those people you don't see are more than me, speaking as one of the people in front of the camera. But this is especially true on STAR WARS. It was the greatest experience of my life!".

And in the summer of 1977, STAR WARS became the greatest moviegoing event in many lives. To some it remains so, a pure experience in imaginative moviemaking undiminished by all that has followed in its wake.

SF Movieland, 1978