Mark Interviews 1970+

Luke Skywalker Comes Of Age

Mark Hamill has found out that being a superstar isn't all that easy. A 24-year-old unknown during the filming of STAR WARS, he now begins the sequel with the press touting him as a living legend... at the tender age of 26.

At the ripe old age of 26, Mark Hamill is regarded as a motion picture superstar on the basis of just one film... his first, STAR WARS. In addition, because writer-director George Lucas was generous enough to give him a small percentage of the movie's profits, he is financially independent as well, and need never accept another acting assignment. For most performers, that combination would represent the culmination of a career, but in Hamill's case it's only the beginning. This is a totally disorienting position for a down-to-earth lad. As a result, Hamill finds himself very much a stranger in the strange land of Hollywood.

Surrounded by a movie business not exactly known for its sincerity, Hamill finds it difficult to tone down, to express himself in anything less than a truthful manner. In short, he's having a hard time learning to bite his tongue.

An indication of this trait showed recently when, stopping in New York to promote a film, Hamill was asked to comment on John Dykstra's pointed non-involvement with the upcoming STAR WARS sequel, The Empire Strikes Back. Roaming around a posh Manhattan hotel room, the young actor doesn't think twice before replying. "Dykstra is a traitor!"

Referring to Dykstra's involvement with Battlestar Galactica, he continues, "If you remember, the show was originally called Star Worlds - at least until the lawyers stepped in. They even had the characters with names like Jack Starwalker. It was really pathetic." Calming down a bit, he adds, "Even so, I hope it proves a big hit, because, after all, when American Graffitti came out, so did TV's Happy Days. When the James Bond movies came out, so did The Man From U.N.C.L.E. It's a process that's inevitable.

Fair is fair. John is a tremendously gifted man, so why should I say that he should stay on our ballteam? He was the star pitcher and he goes for the best offer. John has become a star. As far as I'm concerned, he's a much bigger star than I am. Why shouldn't he be? He had much more to do with the successs of STAR WARS than I did.

But still, when I found out he wouldn't be working on the sequel I was very upset. I thought, 'Hey guys, we all made this movie together.' I became very depressed, because I figured he didn't like us anymore. I knew that John and George (Lucas) had problems. George had such a clear vision of what he was trying to pull off, and John is a technical, photographic kind of guy.

At first I wanted to tell him how much we wanted him, but I never got to speak with him. He was off doing one thing, and I was off doing another. The next time I met him was when he won his Oscar, and all I could say was, 'Congratulations. Boy did you deserve it!' I sincerely meant that, but if we could just sit down over a beer I'd say, 'John, please will you come back?'

The problem with me is that I don't think I understand things right. I'm having a hard time relating to movies as just a cold-cut business. Because of the success of STAR WARS we're now confronted with even technicians as stars. If I offer you x-amount of dollars a week and you say, 'Gee, that's nice. You want me and you're willing to pay me that much,' and then somebody else comes in and says, 'I'll offer you that much plus $55,000,' it becomes bread-and-butter time, especially if you've got three kids and a wife to support. The reality is that there's no loyalty involved. I know your readers would much rather hear about the wonderfulness of John Dykstra's input, and I don't want to put him down or make him feel bad, because he's a terrific artist, but what's really neat is that ultimately we don't need him. Just as George went out and found him, he can now go out and find other special-effects people."

Besides having to get used to the politics of show business and the petty jealousies which plague many films, Hamill is still finding it difficult to think of himself as a genuine Movie Star. "Since STAR WARS, I've been offered some really amazing deals. I'm not used to playing with Monopoly money yet, so when I hear the offers it's like, 'Excuse me, I have to sit down now and splash cold water on my face. Can you hold the line?' Then I come back and say, 'Now, can you repeat that number?' The only trouble is that most of the scripts I've been sent are terrible. I remember one in particular was about a pioneer boy who was instrumental in saving a covered wagon. He had a pet mountain lion with whom he tracked down Indians, and to whom he would say things like, 'Golly Bucky, they followed us!' It was like Luke Skywalker Meets the Indians."

Consequently, Hamill has been very selective in what projects he will accept, even though he says, "You begin to think: 'Well, I'm not working, and I should work.' That's what everybody else says, so it becomes hard to turn down offers."

For his follow-up to STAR WARS he chose a completely different kind of picture, Corvette Summer, a romantic comedy-adventure in which he plays a lonely young man obsessed with a prized automobile. His choice of a third feature, a World War II action epic called The Big Red One, in which he co-stars with Lee Marvin, enabled him to stretch his talents in yet another direction.

Hamill seems to have made a conscious effort not to allow his ego to become inflated by his success, because, in his opinion, he was simply in the right place at the right time. "I lucked into STAR WARS," he says. "I know there were hundreds of other actors being considered for Luke Skywalker in New York, San Francisco and London.

Does that make me think I'm the best actor who auditioned for the role? Of course not - I'm just the best version. George didn't know who I was, and he couldn't have cared less. He never even asked me how old I was. I was 24 when I made STAR WARS, and Luke was supposed to be 20. Maybe if he knew I was that old he wouldn't have chosen me."

As to how well he did in the part, "I think I really fit in," Hamill says. "During the shooting I was becoming upset that I might be overshadowed by all the special effects, and I know that Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher were concerned about the same thing. Fortunately, Alec Guinness said to me, 'Look, you're the juvenile lead. In every kind of fantasy picture there has to be an anchor in reality, to contrast with all the bizarre elements. If you didn't fit in, the audience would say the special effects were terrific, but it was too bad the story and the characters didn't work out.'"

Hamill may well be the biggest STAR WARS fan of all, so no one is more surprised than he is at how popular it became. "I've always thought that STAR WARS was a picture that was discovered by the public," he says. "It wasn't a pre-sold property. As a matter of fact, right up until the time it opened nobody was sure how to sell it. There were something like 13 different proposed ad campaigns. If you'd visited the 20th Century Fox Art Department back then, you'd have seen guys working on all sorts of different posters. One made it look like The Little Rascals in Outer Space, and another was a 2001 clone with an important statement to make. There was one that proclaimed it, 'the story of a Boy, a Girl and the Universe,' and another that said, 'Coming to your galaxy this summer - the man who brought you American Graffitti now brings you...'

The one I liked best was, 'Never before in cinema history has so much time, money and technology been spent... just for fun.' That showed that the movie wasn't pretentious. It meant, 'Hey, just relax - it's not a big deal.' But for some reason they didn't think that would work either."

Because of his genuine enthusiasm for the project, Hamill was surprised and disappointed to discover that some people actually disliked STAR WARS. "I was in Paris for a few days," he recalls, "and I met this one critic who was unbelievable. He showed me his review and asked me to comment on it. I memorized what he wrote, so this is word-for-word. 'Not only did I find STAR WARS vapid and unimaginative, but I found it downright frightening in its mystical-religious, crypto-fascist, bargain-basement dogma.'

Unfortunately, my first response was that he couldn't say that three times fast in a row. So he said, 'Well, Mr. Hamill, you might be very glib now that you're a millionaire from this picture, but I feel that the political climate here in Paris right now is tantamount - which is the first time I had ever heard that word; I love it and I use it now all the time - to the political situation in pre-Nazi Berlin, where everyone was having a great time right before disaster struck.' To him the 70s were like the 30s and he thought I didn't care because I was a spoiled, capitalist pig. He was being unfair, of course, and there was nothing I could do about it, but I still felt real bad."

Perhaps Hamill's most embarrassing anti-STAR WARS incident occurred in Chicago, where he appeared on a live talk show with his co-stars Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher. "The host started out by acting real nice," he remembers. "Then we went on the air, and his whole attitude changed. He said, 'We're sitting here with Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher, the stars of STAR WARS - if you haven't heard of it, where have you been? Let me begin by saying that it's certainly not a great picture. In fact, there's nothing great about it. The script isn't great, and these actors are certainly not great.' We're listening to this, and the three of us are just dying.

The problem was that we had been booked on a Sunday morning financial show. This guy was only interested in how the picture affected 20th Century Fox's stock, and to him we were just three dumb-bell actors who got a lucky break. He finished up by saying, 'I don't want to put you on edge or anything, but let me sum up by saying that it's certainly not Ingmar Bergman.' I looked over at Harrison, and I could see the veins on his neck popping out. Then the host brought his daughter over, and he said, 'Lydia just loves you. Could you sign your autographs With love to Lydia from a galaxy far, far away and Galactically yours. I can laugh about it now, but at the time I really had to give a performance just to remain calm."

Of all the STAR WARS critics, the one who seems to have provoked the most emotional response from Hamill is writer Harlan Ellison, who contends that the picture represents the triumph of technology over content, of special effects over a 'people story', to the ultimate detriment of both science-fiction and literature.

"I don't want to get on a panel with Ellison," Hamill says. "I understand he's a tremendously talented science-fiction writer, although I've never read any of his fiction. I saw him on a talk show in Canada, and I thought he was like a game-show host. He makes me laugh so much that every time people take STAR WARS so seriously, I go back to Ellison's articles about it and say, 'Why can't these people understand?' He's like the Don Rickles of science fiction.

He wrote one article in which he said something like, 'Not only is Luke Skywalker a nerd, but Darth Vader sucks runny eggs.' That's a wonderful effect, and he really should be a lounge act in Las Vegas. I don't think it's worthy of him, with the reputation he has as a wonderfully imaginative science-fition writer, to lower himself in that way. Why should I think his opinion is important, when I know my opinion isn't important?

People tell me not to take him seriously. They say that deep down he really liked STAR WARS, and it's just his personality that makes him think he's Lenny Bruce. Instead of him saying that the movie hurts his market for serious science fiction, he might think that he can now get a project of his own off the ground more easily because of it. When he does - and I'm sure he will - then I hope he'll calm down, although I'm also sure he'll never thank George Lucas. I really wish he'd go back to writing his stories, instead of just writing about other people's successes."

Hamill's fan fervor is authentic, because like millions of others he grew up loving science fiction and horror films and Marvel and DC comics, as well as being a faithful reader of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine (which also counts among its subscribers George Lucas and Steven Spielberg). Unlike most other fans, however, Hamill has recently had the opportunity to meet some of his idols, chief among them special-effects wizard Ray Harryhausen.

"My best friend Jonathan works at the Los Angeles Art Museum in the film department," he explains. "One day I called him up to ask him something, and he says, 'Guess who just walked in the door?' - because he knows I'm such a fan. I asked, 'Who?' He made me try to guess, and it became like, 'What's My Line?' 'Does he have a hit series, or would he like one?' 'No, that's eight down and we move to Arlene Francis.' Finally, when I couldn't figure it out, he said, 'It's Ray Harryhausen. Do you want to speak to him?'

I said, 'I don't know what to say to him. Do I say, 'Hi, I really like you?' Anything I said would have sounded stupid. Then I realized it was probably a chance in a lifetime, so I said, 'Put him on.' Then there was a little mumbling, and the next thing I heard was, 'Hello, this is Ray Harryhausen.' All I remember saying was, 'Thank you. For good or for bad, your films really captured my imagination and just intrigued me so much.'

I can remember seeing his Jason and the Argonauts on a double bill with Tarzan, then I watched Jason again, then I ran around the theater lobby digging up jujubees from the rug with a screwdriver, and then I watched Jason again for the third time. I went to the theater in the early afternoon, and I came home late at night. It was the first time I got in really bad trouble with my parents, and I was on restriction for three weeks. I couldn't figure out how he did it, whether it was a guy in a suit or what. I was eleven when I saw it, which was the perfect age for that kind of picture. In fact, if Harlan Ellison was eleven, he'd probably love STAR WARS."

Currently awaiting the start of production of the STAR WARS sequel, which has a projected release date of the summer of 1980, Mark Hamill is in the unique position of being able to act out his adolescent fantasies on the silver screen, thereby providing millions of kindred spirits with a fantasy life of their own. Beyond that, he can look forward to being similarly thanked by future film fans for the contributions he has made to their childhood. And that's a force which is bound to be with them as long as their imaginations live.

Unknown, 1977