Mark Interviews 1970+

Interview: Mark Hamill

Mark Hamilll, a most engaging and talented young actor, has brought the character of Luke Skywalker to full realization. Over lunch, in this, his first American magazine interview, Mark's conversation is underscored as well as punctuated by his energy, enthusiasm and sense of humor as he discusses the making of The Empire Strikes Back.

"I'm really excited about it because I think Empire is better than STAR WARS. People assume I'm paid to say that. But what I mean is not so much better, but the story is so justifiable. This is going to be the movie that sets up the run of the series. I always thought STAR WARS was going to be a successful film. Successful enough to make the second one."

Empire, with a budget of $18 million, is the continuation of a trilogy which follows the adventures of Luke Skywalker with the same characters, in addition to new characters. Again, it is the struggle between the Rebel Alliance and the Empire, the forces of good versus evil.

"STAR WARS tumbled out in the summer of 1977 and just went cuckoo," observes Mark with an air of amazement. "It was like the Hula Hoop or Beatles rages. Now everyone is asking if Empire can duplicate or top the success of STAR WARS. I don't think they've made a conscious effort to change what George had in the original plotline.

I love the title of The Empire Strikes Back because it sounds like another chapter of the serial. It's got that gawdy, Saturday afternoon quality that's important for us. I don't think it's a good idea to take yourself so seriously. It's entertainment. Empire has a much different mood and tone. The structure of it and the way it moves along up to the climax relies on completely different things than the first movie.

The main new character is played by Billy Dee Williams. He is Baron Lando Calrissian andlives in Cloud City. I love the sounds of the names in the film. He is sort of an old acquaintance of Han Solo's. You discover that Han won the Millenium Falcon from Lando in a game of chance. Another new character is the Jedi who trained Obi-Wan Kenobi - a grand exalted high ruler of the Jedi. I'm also with Artoo a lot of the time, and with this new character, which is not a human being. It's a cleverly manipulated little thing. We see the character but it's done in a variety of ways. It'll be fun to see how Questar's readers dissect how it is done , as played by Frank Oz.

STAR WARS was a set piece at the end with a gigantic mechanical battle. George Lucas wanted to make The French Connection chase in space. I heard that analogy made when they were doing the first one. But in this film, the large battle comes at the very beginning. So we rely on something else for the climax. There is a big battle on the ice planet, Hoth. We've gone to re-group and join forces with the Rebels and prepare for further battles because the Death Star was just one part of the network of the Empire. They don't mess around. The action happens right at the beginning and we get our little butts kicked. We lose.

Then we go into the second act and we flee. It just so happens that Harrison and Carrie go off together and wind up meeting with Baron Lando Calrissian. I go off with Artoo looking for this Jedi Knight that trained Ben Kenobi. It seems that I was all on my own. I get separated from Carrie and Harrison. It was almost like two separate films were being made. We all join up at the end, but I felt left out. I got nostalgic for the grand old days on the Death Star when Harrison, Carrie, Chewie and I were all together in the trash compactor. That's togetherness.

Luke is older, hopefully wiser," offers Mark. "An unspecified amount of time has gone on between the two films. Luke has grown up and matured. He is a Commander now in the Rebel forces, with everything that implies. There is a much more militaristic approach to things in terms of self-discipline. Han is much more able to woo and actively pursue the Princess. That comes secondarily to me. I'm much more of a straightforward and serious character. In this film there is more of an opportunity to get to know the characters.

It was really up to us to bring as much of the character analysis to the set as necessary because it's very formularized storytelling. You have the callow youth, the space pirates and all the different elements, but the storyline is the real star of the movie.

To a certain extent, it's still action-adventure and I don't think the makers of the film want to stop the action and have us internalize about the characters. That's not what is important to the filmmakers.

Irvin Kershner has made it his own film. As a director he's quite a bit different from George outwardly, and a different personality. I think George chose him because he likes his movies.

Luke is a difficult character for me because he is such a specific tool in the plot, and I'd like to take the square edges off him," the young man candidly discloses. "He never seems to enjoy himself. He is so serious all the time but again, it's not that kind of film. To me it's a fairy tale. I think the science fiction label is a misnomer. It's more fantasy. And in this film, the story becomes much more mythic.

There is a fine line between mythology, fairy tales and fantasy. I was having a discussion with Meredith Kurtz and she feels that the difference is that in myth there is retribution and people suffer, whereas in fairy tales it is all neatly tied up at the end.

It just so happens our story takes place in another galaxy and the transportation we use is spaceships. You see outerspace and rocketships and you say science fiction. But I'm very confident without being boastful that we've got the heart, the panache and the humor. We've got just that certain combination of elements that make it work. Now, I might be eating crow in six months when I'm reading Questar and it's a big flop, but I personally don't think so," ponders Mark light-heartedly.

"I don't think Empire can become a phenomenon. You can't take people by surprise like we did the first time. There's been so much down the pike since we've come out. I really think it's going to be a smashing success. And I'm excited about that. Then we can get onto the third film and forget about the pressures of living up to the first."

Mark enumerates further. "John Williams (who composed the sound track for STAR WARS and won an Academy Award for it) has written 108 minutes of original music for this film. The main titles will be the same. The main titles are my theme. The only reason I say that is because Carrie pointed to the album and said, 'Look, Mark. Here's Princess Leia's theme,' and stuck out her tongue at me. Not that we're not mature adults, but I pouted for three days and said, 'Where's my theme?'

The movie is two hours and two minutes. It's one minute longer than the first. We're going to add a minute per film.

Williams has written a terrific Darth Vader theme and it's so villainous," indicates Mark with apparent relish. "I can hear the audience booing and hissing. James Earl Jones is terrific. He had a lot to do with how well the film did. He dubbed Vader's voice in the morning. Can you imagine? He came in and got right through it. Now here's something we worked on for eight months. It was Jones' decision not to be credited. George would have put, 'Vocal Characterization By' but Jones thought it would be neater to keep the voice a mystery."

Mark visits a swamp planet on his journey, and for a month he was the only human being on the call sheet. His unusual co-stars turned out to be gila monsters, anacondas, boa constrictors and a variety of other interesting jungle inhabitants.

"I have a feeling that a lot of the serpents and reptiles that I worked with are now cut out of the movie, which drives me crazy," says Mark, recalling the long hours he spent rehearsing with the creatures. "In one scene they were going to put an alligator in the water when I crash land because I have to swim across a lagoon. I told the snake trainers that I'm not bad with reptiles as long as I can get to know them a little bit and hold them so they get to know me and my scent. They would always let me touch the reptiles and hold them, but I told them, 'I'm not going to get in the water with an alligator. I don't care if his jaws are wired or if he's drugged up. Go get Johnny Weissmuller. Not me.' We never shot that scene.

I was sitting with Kenny Baker in a restaurant, and in walks a man with a six-foot-two-inch alligator in his arms. You've never seen such double takes in your life. People looked around and wondered if they were on Candid Camera. The alligator was neat. They put him across my lap. You could feel the stomach muscles relax on your legs. I never thought I'd let them do that in a million years.

It looks like so much fun up on the screen, but it can be a real pain in the neck," acknowledges Mark with a tinge of exasperation, "when you've got so many things that you have to get right technically. They don't care if you have spinach between your teeth. If the robot happens to do the right thing, it's a print. Or if the snakes or the smoke are right, it's a print. The smoke drove me crazy. They yell, 'More smoke. Get it in the background.'

They built this huge sound stage. I don't know what the specifics are, whether it's bigger than the James Bond sets or what. It looks like an airplane hangar. The completed set looked like Skull Island in the original King Kong, with roots and gnarly trees. Actually, the set was used twice. They first used it for the big ice planet scene where all the Rebel forces are running around. They then struck that set and we went onto the middle part of the movie and all during those months they built the swamp planet. That set had a lot of depth to it; they used dry ice and vaporizing machines to create this real moody kind of atmosphere. There was a lagoon built on it. It was unbelievable. But then Carrie and Harrison were finished and went home, and it was just me left.

It gets very lonely when you're acting with only a piece of machinery," confides Mark. "Kenny Baker does play Artoo, but it's sort of a misnomer because there were so many Artoo units and they all looked the same. Kenny was only in it when it would waddle or when they needed it to do specific things. A lot of the Artoos were radio-controlled, hydraulically-compressed type units that could do a specific trick of some sort. It's very confusing, when you're doing a scene, to know if Kenny is inside or not. I remember several times saying hello to the radio-controlled robot and then noticing Kenny over in the corner sitting there with a newspaper and drinking tea," adds Mark with a bemused look.

"I always wonder when I walk onto these sets what new playground they have for me," reflects Mark. "Because even though it is difficult for me, and aggravating at times, when the moment actually comes when they're filming and there's that moment when you're really there in your mind believing it, that's when it's the most fun. Because you can sit around and say, 'This is stupid. There's this big, furry guy who can fly a spaceship. He wears no pants and yet he can make mathematical calculations and jump into hyperspace.' It's silly at that one moment, but then it all becomes real to you. I can't get over that. They give you the outfit, guns and hardware. It's like being a kid again."

In special effects films like Empire, the actors are called upon to either act with or react to people and objects that are nowhere in sight. Matte paintings, miniature models and landscapes or holographic images are blended in during the film's post-production phase. "They were very good, as they were on the first film, to show us all the story boards," mentions Mark. "We never really had to react to something that hadn't been fully explained by way of drawings, photographs or models.

There are these big, lumbering, War of the Worlds, 50-foot-tall snow-walking machines where the bad guys sit up in the cockpits. It's exciting to see them for the first time. I remember doing a shot against blue screens where they used salt on the ground for snow. I'm supposed to be getting equipment out of the speeder and I look up and a giant foot comes up and smashes the speeder. They don't even have the speeder in the scene. I'm trying to get the speeder loose and it's getting closer and closer. I struggle with it and then I see the machine coming and run out of the way. It comes down, and smash. And that's where I turn away and jump right towards the camera on my stomach as far away as I can before it comes down. I finally saw the completed shot... Talk about working with your basics. There wasn't even the mock-up of the smashed speeder, because that would be a model, too. I'm leaning against mid-air, blocking what I'm doing with hands and my back.

As an actor, I'm used to reacting to things that are really there. One of the hardest things to do is to react to something that is not there because you don't know exactly how it's going to come across without the music, special effects and yet I enjoy that. It's such a challenge. It's a different type of acting from anything I've ever done."

Mark was required to enter a special training program for this film. He became adept at Karate and Kendo, which is Japanese swordsmanship. Any day Mark was not needed by the main shooting unit, he was off perfecting his skills for the enthralling laser-sword battle with Darth Vader. This specific scene was choreographed by the English stunt people and Mark remembers with some anxiety, "It nearly killed me.

It was unlike anything I'd ever done. Physically, Empire was an ordeal I'd never experienced before. It was like when I was on the wrestling team in high school. After the end of the training you felt you were going to die and waited in the corner for death to come take you by the hand. That's what it was like.

You see me rolling, falling, hanging upside down, flying out of the porthole, battered and beaten. It's unbelievable. I didn't really have any free time to myself. The sword fight took about six to seven weeks to film."

Mark emphasizes that Empire reflects one-on-one or personalized conflicts, as opposed to the impersonal outerspace aerial battle of STAR WARS. "I don't know if it will work," wonders Mark. "I think they're taking a big gamble on this one and that's exciting to me. It's not as though they're doing STAR WARS' greatest hits, with the Cantina scene or the jump into hyperspace although that is a running gag in the film. Harrison is constantly trying to kick that old ship into hyperspace, and it won't go. George wanted the Millenium Falcon to be like the old family station wagon - beat-up, battered, complete with oil drips, dents and tootsie roll wrappers scattered on the floor.

I did all my own stunt work in STAR WARS. In Empire, there were a couple of things the insurance people wouldn't let me do. The ones they let me do were bad enough," he remarks.

One scene required Mark to go flying out of a glass window and fall thirty feet onto some mattresses below. Mark calmly informed the stunt people, "You can take it!" Stunt men and women are invaluable to any movie. If a star injures himself attempting a dangerous stunt, the entire production suffers a setback. When Mark sprained his thumb, they shut down the film for a week. Mark could not even grasp his lightsaber. The saber's handle was originally fabricated out of hard plastic. But as Mark manipulated the saber, the hard plastic ripped into his hands. The handle was later covered with a flexible sponge rubber.

"The sword fight was choreographed like a dance," says Mark with admiration. "Peter Diamond was the stunt coordinator and I'm really thankful they made me an honorary member of the English Stunt Union which is something I value, because they don't do it all the time. They really made a concerted effort to teach me. But there were things I did in the film that I'd never do again."

Mark recounts one perilous episode wherein a nine-inch-wide beam was suspended about fifty feet in the air. In the scene, Mark is injured and one arm is rendered useless. Darth Vader is closing in on him. Mark is directed to not only inch himself backwards on his knees across the narrow beam but to maintain his balance as the wind machines, powered by huge air-plane-like propellers blow powerful gusts at him.

"You're out there with boxes and mattresses below and people look like popsickle sticks hanging around to catch you on the first bounce." admits Mark, a bit chagrined. "There are shots in the film that are not me. It's very funny because the general public is always disappointed to find out it wasn't Roger Moore who fell out of an airplane onto a parachute. It would mean putting stunt people out of work."

Mark's agility was tested once more in the difficult task of balancing himself on a gyrating treadmill. "There you are, running on a treadmill against a blue screen. They don't call me Mark Hamster for nothing. I'm running in full snow gear; goggles, helmet, and gun. Running on a treadmill is very hard. Usually, you have a guard rail that you can grasp as they slowly increase the speed. Mind you, this shot is now out of the picture, because when you're running on a treadmill you stay in one spot. It didn't look right. But I spent the better part of a day running on this bloody treadmill. And, it's so spooky because they say, 'We're going to take it up to speed two, up to three, up to four and that's as fast as we're going.' But you can't look down. You're running and running and you're supposed to look up to see the giant walking machines.

I took one misstep. I was running, and my foot came down on a stationary side of the treadmill; I went flying off. They had Beakins-size boxes with polystyrene or styrofoam around the area. I went flying through three layers of polystyrene and landed with my feet, head and arms face up in a box. I wish someone was there to take pictures of me hanging on wires in mid-air totally helpless like a limp Howdy Doody puppet. That's when you put your importance to the project in perspective. It's about that time you think to yourself, 'for this I went to acting school? Did Molière?'"

The pressures actors work under in major motion pictures are all-encompassing. Ultimately, the success or failure of a multi-million-dollar movie may unwillingly rest resoundly on their shoulders. This tremendous responsibility sometimes reaches a crucial point, as Mark relates two particular incidents.

"You don't know what it's like being in there," the young actor says with a tone of bewilderment. "They get you up in the cockpit and you can't get out. You're surrounded by blue screens, lights, Vista Vision cameras, lots of trucks and the whole bit. It starts getting on people's nerves. Chewbacca and C-3PO are two guys working in costumes that are really hot and uncomfortable.

I was on the swamp planet set and decided to walk over to their sound stage. You could feel the tension as you walked on the set. You could cut it with a knife. Tony's all upset because he's not going to put his headpiece on until Carrie gets her last little hair in place because he knows when they say, 'We're ready, Carrie,' It's going to take her ten minutes to get up into the spot and get everything going. So, you're in one spot, you're not moving around, and you don't have a place to go sit down.

Darn it," declares Mark, "I missed it. But another time Harrison went berserk and took a saw and started sawing the Millenium Falcon! Harrison just went, 'That's it.' He took a saw and started sawing. The Millenium Falcon is made of wood. It looks like metal the way they paint it up. It looks real nice. Everyone was saying, 'You tell him to stop. No, you tell him. I'm not going to tell him. Excuse me, Mr. Ford, will you stop destroying our set?' I missed that day. I heard it was great.

The Empire Strikes Back is a continuation of George Lucas' master plan to produce either three or four film trilogies recounting the ongoing adventures of Luke Skywalker. The fourth trilogy has been described as a series of very bizarre and esoteric movies which resemble the quixotic ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

"I admire the fact that George planned far enough in advance," comments Mark unreservedly. "There's a beginning, middle, and sort of an ending. George will have nearly twenty hours of film. And God knows at some convention there will be those who will run the films back to back and watch it from beginning to end. STAR WARS is part three, and Empire is part four. Chapters one and two haven't been made yet. That's when Obi-Wan is a young man. You see my father. You see how Darth Vader came to power, and the Clone Wars. There was a lot of background information in the screenplay that no one actually spoke out loud. George said that coming up in one of the future adventures I'll be working with a character that's not even there at all. I'm thinking he must mean stop-motion animation.

I'm still worried in a way that people will be burnt out on this space thing. Now they have dog food commercials with special effects and 'a galaxy of prizes' in the McDonald's commercials, with offscreen sound effects. A lot of the movies that have come out are so different from us. My favorite movies since STAR WARS have been Close Encounters Of The Third Kind and Alien. I loved Alien.

But I think the story is the most important thing. You can't hype a movie and shock the public. That's been proven. It's either there or not. And time will tell on Empire.

I tink it's a shame we didn't have the sequel ready for last summer. But it's in reaction to the fact that the first one blew all out of proportion. The studio had nothing set up to come up with a sequel right away. They got totally crazed on merchandizing because everybody turned STAR WARS down. Mattel, who is doing the Battlestar Galactica toys, turned down STAR WARS. It was such a nothing when it first came out. Then the great, great demand for products, fan clubs and everything else began. People got side-tracked. Hopefully, the third film will be out in two years.

The Revenge of the Jedi is the working title of the third film; most of the major characters are penciled into the screenplay. "George is fair about not putting a gun to our heads to continue," Mark quickly points out. "Harrison wasn't sure if he wanted to do the third one. It was sort of handled in the storyline. I know Carrie's going to do it, and I'm going to do it. Threepio and Artoo will be back. If it was causing me a lot of unhappiness and I thought I just didn't want to go on anymore, they'd probably find some long lost brother or sister that I didn't know I had since the Force is supposedly hereditary.

I love the book The Art of STAR WARS. I think it's one of the best pieces of merchandizing to come out of the film because the most fascinating thing for me is to look at the genesis of the project, especially the early screenplays. It contains a lot of preproduction art, original drawings of how certain characters were supposed to look and how they evolved. My character was originally a girl, and the Princess was the brother that she was searching for. There is the first script, and I think it is important for people to take a look at it. When people ask me how I knew STAR WARS was going to be a great success, I always wish they could have read the original screen script. Now you can, in that book.

All of the elements that made it popular are there. The humor is there. And, until we hired people like John Barry, the late production designer, and John Williams to do the music, was it then fully realized. But when I read the screenplay, I said this is going to be just a whole bunch of fun. People say there are so many blatant imitations and so forth. I can't get cynical about it. Who cares? Life is too short. First of all, it's a free enterprise system. No one will be exactly like us. For good, or for bad. I think there's going to be a lot of excitement over Empire."

Mark's genuine affection of and respect for the science fiction and fantasy fields initiated itself at a young age when he faithfully attended those Saturday matinees complete with cartoons and serials. "I was like any other kid," he warmly recalls. "I still have the Famous Monsters magazine that told you what stop-motion animation was. That was issue #19 with Tales of Terror on the cover. I've always been very interested in it. Then I gave up on it when the Beatles came out, then gravitated back.

Ray Harryhausen had so much to do with my being fascinated with fantasy films. Those Saturday matinees just knocked me out. I was seven years old when I saw The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad and that was perfect. I've never met Harryhausen, but I've talked to him over the phone.

I started doing plays in the seventh grade. But once I got into that I participated in anything. If I didn't get a part, I'd work in props or lighting. I like that whole part of my school days. When I went to L.A. City College, I was in the Theatre Arts Department for two years. I got my first professional role when I was seventeen on The Bill Cosby Show. I have been acting a long time.

I'm right at a funny period in my career now because I just turned twenty-eight and I don't even know what age I play anymore. I'm in that awkward period between younger roles and more grownup roles. I was twenty-seven when I did Empire. I have a waiting period before I start to look my age.

I'd like to get back to the stage. I haven't done stage work in a long time, and that's where it all started for me and was the most fun. It really is much more of an actor's medium. You are your own editor. You're more in control. But it's fun for me. I'd like to do a part where people say, 'Gee, he can do other things.' STAR WARS is so strong; I've seen the original five times. People send me STAR WARS trivia questions that even I can't answer. Kids come up to me and ask me questions, and I can usually improvise - but a lot of them know more about it than I do. People forget I made the first one in 1976, and that's a long time ago."

In a new film, The Big Red One, Mark steps out of his characterization of Luke Skywalker to portray a combat-weary soldier in a World War II drama directed by Sam Fuller.

"There I get to play a person within our realm of experience," Mark adds with a note of relief. "I look a lot older in it and I look grubby and realistic without makeup. Who knows what the characters in STAR WARS live like?

One half of me wants to say, 'I don't want to do things like Hamlet, but I do want to do things that say he can walk and talk and do something else. But it doesn't bother me all that much. I'm having fun. The reaction has been tremendous. When you weigh the good with the bad it's mostly good."

Mark is an avid reader of science fiction, fantasy and horror magazines, among them Questar. "I like Questar because it addresses itself to a literate and adult audience," affirms Mark. "Famous Monsters is a good starting point for fans, but suffers because of the horrendous puns and the simplistic information you get. But magazines like Questar can get more into the technical side of it because the audience understands now.

You really have to be careful, because now people watch for the special effects. Before they just happened and you said, 'Wow.' But even outside of fandom, people going to the movies know what is real and what is not. For the most part, I think it's a good idea to keep the special effects secret. But if you want to know, there are not that many technical magazines to turn to that will tell you. Questar is one of them; that's why I subscribe to it.

I want to thank, without getting maudlin or sloppy, the incredible support of the fans, because it was them alone that made STAR WARS such a hit. People forget that it wasn't pre-sold, that it wasn't based on a hit novel and when the book came out it did fairly well, but nothing gigantic.

We opened without a poster because they couldn't decide whether it was a Planet of the Apes, 2001, or The Little Rascals in Outer Space. They just didn't know. No one could come to an agreement. We opened with just photographs outside the theatre. Without a doubt it was the fans that supported it in its first few weeks and started the word of mouth that made the second movie possible.

A lot of cynics told us it was the special effects that made the movie a success. Yet in the period of time since STAR WARS came out, I've seen films with great special effects and the movies didn't work. And that bolstered our confidence. Me, Harrison, allof us. It's proven that without the human element, although I always include Chewie and the robots, without that sort of human quality all the characters have the movie's not going to work. I don't want to get specific and turn it into a grudge match and name names. We were really worried some of it was going to be better than us. To a lot of people they have been. STAR WARS is not everyone's cup of tea. But it did prove one thing - that we are valuable to the projects if not as actors then as characters.

I can't wait for the audience to be the jury on Empire because, as before, it doesn't matter what the critics say," Mark states with conviction. "It's the people who go and see it. It's a perfect summer movie. I'm really excited about it. I can't wait to get onto the next one. It's a lot of fun."

Questar Magazine, 1979