Asregadoo.com 2004

Welcome to KKIQ's weekly public affairs program, In Focus. I'm Ted Asregadoo, and this morning, actor Mark Hamill joins me by telephone to discuss his acting career, his film Comic Book: The Movie, and the California independent film festival, November 4th through 7th in Livermore. Mark, thanks for being on In Focus this morning.

My pleasure.

I was reading over your biography, and was surprised to learn that you're no stranger to the Bay area, you were born in Oakland and because your father was in the military you moved from place to place throughout your childhood. Do you think that your formative years traveling from base to base influenced your desire to become an actor in any way?

I don't really know for sure, but I think that sort of chameleon like existence of trying to fit in, in wildly diverse surroundings had something to do with it. I mean, the fact that he was in the Navy meant we went from Pennsylvania to San Jose to Brooklyn to San Diego, and eventually I went to High School in Yokohama, Japan.

Well, there you go, you do, that is a chameleon like existence. Because you're thrown into these new situations, and you have to adapt. At what point did you want to become an actor?

It was probably a cumulative decision. I mean, as a kid I loved animation and puppets and cartoons and comic books, and I think I, over a period of time gravitated towards theater only because it was a way to express yourself, whether you were on stage or not. I enjoy working props, and being in lighting department, and painting sets and all of it. I knew I wanted to be in show business, I wasn't exactly sure how that would manifest itself. But I began performing in Junior High School and I guess I felt the uh, you know the uh,

Acting bug?

There you go. Thank you!

That's ok. You come from a fairly big family too, I read.

I'm the middle of seven children yeah, I have two brothers and four sisters.

Yeah, that's a lot, and did any of them go into the business as it were?

Um, no. As a matter of fact they didn't. But um, in fact my older brother Dr. Hamill, of course, is still the, is still considered the success of the family because science does trump the arts.

*laughs* Right, it's like, well, I do it for real Mark, and you're doing it for make believe.

Yeah, I believe, and I believe that myself in, especially in, you know, in the this very troubled times we live in, it sometimes makes you wonder if what you're doing has any kind of value at all.

Well, I think it does. I think there's pop cultural value, as you kind of chronicle in your film Comic Book: The Movie. You certainly get into some really amazing characters, kind of wild characters, that really are just fascinating people to watch and see how they dedicate their lives to a certain hobby that is become almost an obsession, actually it is an obsession.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

It's always fascinated me. I mean why is it that we are so enamored of something we were meant to give up when we were twelve or thirteen years old. It's something that I think has not really been addressed. I mean, I know that when I went down to pitch the idea to the San Diego Comic Book Convention officials they were a little wary in that they did not want me to make, I remember the word they used "it isn't going to be snarky is it"?

Yeah, that's a word that's used a lot these days, isn't it?

Yeah it is. And I think they were a little worried that I would somehow make fun of people or be sort of pejorative in my outlook. And I said, "Look, I'm one of you, I'm a fan myself". It was a grand experiment because with the very little money that was offered by the production company, I thought "what event could we chronicle that has a colorful background that hasn't been seen a lot"? I was thinking a political convention, any kind of collection of enthusiasts of any kind, whether they're gun owners or civil war reenactment people, what background could I use that hasn't been used before? And then the comic book convention was something that I'd been to myself just as a fan and later as a professional; and I thought that that would be the best route to go. I mean, the trouble is when you try and capture real life behavior with people being so savvy in this age of reality television and the fact that every household has a home video camera. We sort of hedged our bets and you know, I came up with a story line almost as a safety net in case we weren't able to get the comic book convention warts and all.

You know, one of the things, one of the films your film reminded me of, and I haven't seen the actual, the whole film, I've seen the clips that you have on your website, but it's a smockumentary in the vein of This is Spinal Tap or Best in Show or Waiting for Guffman. Do you think that your experience doing say movies like, STAR WARS, or even the voice you did for the Batman animated series, did this draw you into that world, did that sort of point to you to what you wanted to do, or was this just something like you said earlier that you were trying to think about what it is about people's obsessions, whether its civil war reenactments or collecting guns or what not, did any of this background work have anything to do with pointing you toward this film you've done, Comic Book: The Movie?

Well, it's probably a little of both, I mean, obviously I have sort of relationship with what I call sort of genre oriented fans, that's sort of the base if you will. And uh, I think they know I'm one of them, I've written for comics; I've created my own character called The Black Pearl. They know my work from Batman and then you know as often happens, you do one villain in a comic book oriented project and I wound up doing oh gosh, dozens and dozens of villains in other animated series. But the fans know that I'm one of them and I think they were open to me in a way that they would not have been if it had been a stranger.

One of my favorite scenes from, from your movie, Comic Book: The Movie is a sequence between Tom Kenny and Jill Tally who are married apparently in real life and they play a married couple. Now Tally is pregnant and the two are discussing a possible name for their child if it's a boy. Now, could you sort of recount the scene for our listeners?

Jill Tally, people will know her from Mr. Show on HBO and Tom Kenny is a wonderfully talented voice over actor who is the voice of SpongeBob Squarepants, and I realized that when I was putting together the characters I was the only true fan. There was no other character in the movie that was a comic book fan per say, I needed someone to be able to do the authentic collector dialog that would resonate with fans as being real rather than some false attempt to portray them. I mean, look when you talk to another comic book fan if you are a comic book fan yourself, even though a layperson might not recognize it, real fans know whether it's authentic or not and Tom Kenny happens to be someone who is a great comic book fan. I can't tell you how many sessions I'd would go to record a cartoon and then two hours later I'd been in the local comic book store and bump into Tom. But they have a repoir that is absolutely authentic, they are both well versed, he in stand up comedy and she in improve, and with their son Mack. My favorite scene is when my character gives their son in the movie, a little four-year-old boy, a Captain Marvel action figure and we're about to open it and he protests, "nononononono, don't open it". And we say, "Why not?". And he says, "It's a collectible!"

**Chuckles**

You know, that is a recreation of a real event that Tom had told me about. I said, "I wonder if we can get Mack to, you know, recreate that for us". You know, he's not really an actor per say but that's probably one of my favorite moments in the movie because it comes from real life and is so authentic.

I can speak from experience that it does. One of my friends, his girlfriend is a huge STAR WARS fan and she just has closets full of these collectible things and I ask him, "Hey Paul, you ever take this stuff out and play with it?" He goes, "Are you kidding me? You can't touch this stuff!"

You know, in a way that's unfortunate because you know we're raising a generation of anal retentives who look at the collector's market rather than enjoying them for what they were meant to be.

Exactly, exactly. I blame it all on Cabbage Patch dolls.

Well, there you go!

*laughing* It seems to have happened that, then.

Well, people go to these flea markets or, you know there's my wife who for a long time was collecting Barbie and she sort of decided that she's gotta shake that, but it seems like anything from pop culture eventually becomes valuable to people.

Mm, hmm.

They look at the I dream of Jeannie board game and say, "Oh gee, why did I throw that away, there it is up for sale for 50, 60, 100 dollars", depending on condition.

You're listening to KKIQ's weekly public affairs program In Focus, I'm Ted Asregadoo, and my guest is actor, film director, and author Mark Hamill, whose film Comic Book: The Movie will be screened on November 4th at the California Independent Film Festival in Livermore. Ok, Mark, on to the inevitable STAR WARS questions.

Right.

The DVD was recently released, and when I found out I was interviewing you I contacted all my fan boy and fan girl friends who love STAR WARS to see if they had any questions for you regarding the STAR WARS trilogy in which you played Luke Skywalker. Now, some of the questions were embarrassingly bad in their overall geekiness, and I'll spare you those, *Mark laughs* but there were some that passed my editorial judgment so let's see how many we can get to before we have to wrap up.

Ok.

Ok, the first one was: what was it like finishing Return of the Jedi and realizing wow, it's all over now?

It was sort of like the last couple weeks of school where you're clearing out your lockers and knowing it's all coming to an end. There were mixed emotions, I mean we were relieved that we were finally able to put our final touches on the final chapter, but you realized that it was a family that you'd never see again. And that's one of the ironies of my going into this profession, we talked earlier about my childhood as the son of a career military man, and that was something that was the most difficult about that experience was moving every two years.

Mm, hmm.

Very, very difficult. It was emotional, I mean, we loved each other and it was wonderful experience, but you know all good things must come to an end.

Was the STAR WARS gig the first one that you did? Was it just another gig or were you truly interested in the world George Lucas was creating?

Oh, absolutely! You know, as a kid I was someone who read Famous Monsters Magazine and knew who Ray Harryhausen was and Willis O'Brian. And you know, I was of the generation that saw all the Universal black and white horror films on television when they were released in the 60's, and knew who Jack Pierce was, the man who created the Frankenstein make-up, so I was a true fan. And to be a part of something that such an ambitious scope was really a thrill.

And what about George Lucas's style of directing, did it enhance or conflict with your instincts as an actor?

I got my start like so many other people that don't have family that are already in show business, that is, in theater, both academic theater and local theater and then going to college and being a drama major, so it was hard with George because he really is the epitomy of a film school director, in that, technically he is, you know, he's spot on. He knows how to disassemble a camera, put it back together, he knows ratios and how many frames go through the sprockets, it's just a different approach. I don't think he's as comfortable when it comes to delving into motivation and character and all of that. I mean, I think one of his strengths is being able to cast people that are so close to what he wants that he doesn't have to do a lot of deep soul searching and analyzing, like I say, the character's motives and so forth, but it's hard on the actor because he's not, he doesn't come out of the theater world and he's not someone that would strike you someone who is particularly theatrical. I mean, a lot of times his direction would be, "Well, let's do it again, but do it better".

*Ted Laughs*

Or "faster, with more intensity."

And then you have to process that and think, "Ok, how am I going to do it better, I thought I was giving you what, you know, what you wanted".

Well exactly! And you know also, having worked with a lot of directors, especially on Broadway and off Broadway that either have acting experience themselves or have directed operas or, you know, they're much different. I mean, a lot of them, I think they swing, the pendulum swings much too far to the other side where they over analyze and it, it took a little getting used too. But I've been very lucky enough to work with people that have very diverse styles. I mean, right now I've been doing a lot of interviews about Samuel Fuller because I did The Big Red One with Lee Marvin and it was restored to the director's cut by Richard Shickle and he has quite an impressive body of work. And here was a guy who directed with pistols in each hand.

*Both Laugh*

Firing them into the air. "C'mon, c'mon, if you stood like that in real war you'd be dead!"

Now I know why you get all the voice acting work; that was a great, that was good. *laughing*

That was Sam; he was one of a kind, an incredibly dynamic individual, and someone who's background, you know, as a newspaper reporter, a pulp novel writer, and later, the incredible thing about The Big Red One was that were extraordinary events in the script, and instead of it being second or third hand, or based on a novel, or someone else's experience, both Lee Marvin and Sam Fuller were veterans of combat. And Sam was right there to tell you, "Well actually that wasn't you, that was another guy named Callowitz but I'm giving it to you because I like you, you're a handsome young man and I want you to do this". He was someone that comes under the category "most unforgettable character you've ever met".

Well, I guess that's the thing about working in film and television and just in the arts, that you get so many different styles, you contrast that with George Lucas, who you said was a much more technical type of director, not that much interested in the actors.

Right.

And this gets me to another one of the questions: was it difficult to act with inanimate objects like puppets and the characters of Yoda and R2-D2 in the movie?

Well, of course. There were so many instances where there would be a piece of tape that you looked at and they were going to put it in later, but it sort of goes to the very essence of pretending. You know, as a child in your backyard, you're playing Robin Hood, and you be the sheriff and I'll be Robin. It gets you back to your roots in terms of just imagining. I mean, lot of the times we'd do process shots where you're meant to be in the cab of a truck and you're on a soundstage and they're just rocking you, that's no different then pretending you're in a rocket ship rocketing through space. So,

Or that you can understand,

There were certain difficulties, but I don't think they were something that I hadn't encountered before, at least to some degree. This was rather intense, in terms of how much of it we had to do.

And what do you think of the Prequels? The Episode 1 and Episode 2 of STAR WARS?

Well, it's an interesting situation, I don't think we've ever seen films on this scale that are done with the kind of autonomy that George has, because he's not only the writer and director, but he's in this case now the studio. And when we were doing ours, we had to compromise with the people that were running Twentieth Century Fox. There were wonderful memos, I mean, I've mentioned before one of my favorites was "The Wookiee has no pants".

*Ted Laughs*

This is the kind of thing they were concerned with at their board meetings. Now you're able to see George unplugged as it were, and of course the technology now has progressed to the point where you can literally paint on screen with a computer. I find it fascinating to see how, even though the characters and the storylines are cut from the same cloth, the presentation of it all is so different.

What current projects are you working on now, Mark?

I'm actually, I've created a children's program that I'm working on with my boss. I had done an animated series that I co-created for AMC, and she had since left that position. And I was doing a play on Broadway earlier this year and she said, "What else have you got", and I hauled out notes for what I envisioned as a series of children's books. It's called Fort Franny; it's about a very old building in New York, seen through the eyes of just pets. And the stumbling block right now is I always imagined it with live action puppets to give it sort of spontaneity and a live TV quality. We're encountering some resistance to puppetry in the sense that a lot of the potential buyers feel that puppetry is for preschool only, ages 2 to 5. So the big problem right now is whether we alter the material to cater to a younger demographic or go with your gut instinct and do what you originally intended to do, but doing it with just animation. It's great fun, I mean again, it's on a very small scale, but all roads lead back to STAR WARS, because not only am I working with puppeteers, but I am also creating a complete universe of my own, populated by characters that are meant to be sort of dopple gangers or for, for children, but just in animal form. I love it, I mean, it seems to me that so much of the work that I've done in my career is aimed at that younger audience. And especially in these really turbulent times its fun to go back to that kind of innocence.

Well Mark, thank you so much for being on the program.

Well thank you, Ted! All the pleasure.

All the pleasure.

I can't wait to see you at the festival.

All the best with your film Comic Book: The Movie, and we look forward to seeing you on November 4th in Livermore.

Well thank you very much, and you know, if your listeners go to http://www.comicbookthemovie.com the prices have now been lowered to $14.95, which I think is a fair price for two DVDs with over four hours of material.

Sounds like two for the price of one type thing.

Absolutely.

Well great, we look forward to seeing you again on November 4th.

Well, thank you so much.

You're very welcome.

All right.

Mark Hamill is an actor, film director and author. He'll be at the California Independent Film Festival screening his film Comic Book: The Movie at the Byne Theater in Livermore on November 4th. And that's the show for another week, In Focus is KKIQ's weekly public affairs program that is locally hosted, written and produced. I'm Ted Asregadoo.

Much credits and thanks to Chelsea