Mark Interviews 2000+

Mark Hamill: Full of Surprises

"You'll find I'm full of surprises," Luke Skywalker said as he stared down Darth Vader in the carbon-freezing chamber of Cloud City in The Empire Strikes Back. It's a philosophy that Mark Hamill has taken to heart as a performer. "My goal is to never stop trying to entertain and surprise people, and tenacity is my middle name," he says. "I'm really determined to continue directing, and writing, and hopefully surprising people for years to come."

STAR WARS fans may know him best as a motion picture actor, but Hamill can be found in a wide spectrum of media forms, jumping from one to another with deft skill. He has performed on stage, on radio, in video games, and on television, each new experience challenging preconceptions some may have about him and his characters. "I remember when it first started hitting the airwaves that I was the voice of the Joker [on the Batman animated series], the most common expression at that time was, 'You mean that Mark Hamill?'" he laughs.

The latest addition to Hamill's library of works is his directorial debut, Comic Book: The Movie. The direct-to-DVD release stems from Hamill's outspoken love of the comics medium, another rich field to which he has contributed. "I've always loved comic books," he says proudly. "I've always been fascinated by why they seem to have a hold on me years after I, through peer pressure alone, should have given them up."

Comic Book: The Movie is a Valentine's to comic book aficionados, and a vivid encapsulation of that yearly pilgrimage to San Diego that so many comics fans hold dear -- Comic-Con International. The mockumentary chronicles the transformation of a classic (though fictional) Golden Age comic book hero into a gritty, modern franchise film, and the journey of one intrepid fan who is determined to make sure the studios get it right.

But the movie didn't start off that way. Comic Book: The Movie, fittingly enough, finds its secret origins in a comic book. Hamill had been shopping around The Black Pearl, the title that he wrote for Dark Horse Comics, for development into a feature. Though he started a dialogue with Creative Light Entertainment, a live action Black Pearl just wasn't feasible.

"That seemed to be too ambitious a project for them. They weren't really in the business of making even low budget feature films so we decided to just move on," Hamill explains. "Creative Light didn't want to give up the idea of working with me, and having done DVDs of two Star Trek actors interviewing each other and Kevin Smith interviewing Stan Lee, they wanted to know whether I could do a project that was in that range in terms of budget."

A tight budget doesn't really allow for an epic scope, a cast of thousands, and exotic locales, but putting his head to the puzzle, Hamill found inspiration. "I didn't think I would be able to do something, unless it was just a talking-heads interview situation. Then, I thought if it were possible to get permission from the San Diego Comic-Con to film down there, I could do something that would appeal to genre fans, and that was about something that I cared about."

Comic Book: The Movie centers on the fictional Commander Courage, a patriotic Golden Age superhero who would smash through Nazi forces alongside his good-natured teenage sidekick, Liberty Lad. The hero has since been re-imagined as the modern Code Name: C.O.U.R.A.G.E., a gun-toting revenge-seeking maverick out to kill terrorists, accompanied by his curvy sidekick, Liberty Lass.

It's the edgy, cynical latter incarnation of the hero that has been greenlit to become a major motion picture, and the studios bring aboard the biggest Commander Courage fan they can find. Donald Swan, played by Hamill, will act as a "consultant," to placate the fan community with assurance that their voice is being heard.

While it would have been easy to focus on the Hollywood types, played with relentless insincerity by Roger Rose (Rugrats in Paris: The Movie) and Lori Alan (The Freshman), the movie instead follows those with their hearts in the right place, even if they may be a bit naïve.

"What struck me was how quickly we forget, living in New York and Los Angeles, what genuine people there are in that great expansive land between coasts," Hamill says. "If I were playing a documentary filmmaker, then I'm really satirizing show business, and then there's no point-of-view in the film that's strictly comic book. Instead, I crafted a character that was a high school teacher who was also a Golden Age comic book aficionado."

This of course begs the obvious question: how much of the heartland-bred Don Swan is Mark Hamill? Mark describes Swan as an exaggeration of some of his passions. "I have, to a certain degree for different topics, that kind of obsessive-compulsive nature to voraciously devour everything related to something that interests me," he explains. "When the Beatles first appeared, I wanted to read about who they were and where there were from. I felt the same way when I saw Bonnie & Clyde. In putting together the movie, I realized that I had to be the comic book fan, not only because I know the minutiae of the Overstreet Price Guide and all the details that go along with the hobby, but because there was no one else in the movie yet to represent that."

Treading into the fandom-filled waters of comic books and conventions, Hamill took care not to target a group of often-targeted people for derision. Historically, genre audiences have had to put up with such labels as freaks, geeks and nerds, but Comic Book: The Movie doesn't seek to mock its subject matter.

"I resisted the term mockumentary, because I don't really mock anything," says Hamill. "It is a mock documentary if you use the term as 'not real.' I think that was a concern of the Comic-Con people when it came time to make this. I think they got a little nervous, and they're protective of the people that participate. They wanted to know if I was going to be ... well, 'snarky,' was their word."

The organizers of Comic-Con International -- the largest annual popular media convention in the world -- needed Hamill's assurance that his film would not end up being a carnival sideshow full of snide humor, but would instead celebrate the genre culture from within. Hamill was able to persuade them that he wasn't the shallow, judgmental detached Hollywood producer that would appear in his film, but was really a fan at heart. He gained permission to shoot the bulk of his movie on the fan-packed floor during Comic-Con 2002.

"Comic book fans are really great people," says Hamill. "I think they really get a bum rap because they're marginalized by the mainstream media as goofballs and weirdoes. But Hollywood is more than willing to take their wallets. I think we're gaining on them, though. Sure, we all love the Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons, but that's just one tiny faction of fandom -- the guy that can't do anything himself and just criticizes everything else. He's meant to be the outsider. I wanted to make this where the fans were the ones who were the normal, genuine ones."

SW.com, February 24, 2004