Behind the Scenes Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back Kershner 1980 with Mark Hamill

This was a perfect opportunity to become independent of the Hollywood system. I didn't mind releasing it through them, but it was really going to them for the money and them saying, well, I like the script, but I want to change, or the film is good, but we want to make these changes. That's the part I wanted to avoid. I decided I was going to finance the film myself. I was going to make it completely independently. The rule in Hollywood is never put your own money in any film, even your own film. But George was self-financing Vampire Strikes Back, but he was doing it through the bank, and we were talking about close to a $30 million film at the time. But because of the huge success of the first picture and of the revenues that were still rolling in, and merchandising was very strong, it was a gamble, but a gamble that he knew would pay off. We would meet at Medway, which was George's San Francisco office, and look at the illustrations while George was writing the script. And Gary Kurs would fly in occasionally from London, and Ralph McQuarrie would send down drawings, conceptual designs, as well as Joe Johnson. George had been given enormous license by the success of Star Wars, and so when he started talking to me about the Empire script that didn't exist, he knew what had happened in the story, and it was very dark stuff. I was delighted that it was not going to be a rehash of Star Wars. But in fact, after having set the whole thing up and gotten a rousing start, you launch into the second act in which everything goes to hell. And that's usually the best act in a play. It was just too hard to set up a company, get the money, get the film made, and also be down there on the set every day trying to direct it. So I decided I'd hire a director. I was asked by George to come to lunch at Universal, and he said, how would you like to do the second Star Wars? We had no title for it at that point. And I said, gee, George, I don't think so. It's a phenomenal hit as a picture. A second one can only be a second one. It can't be as good because the first one is the breakthrough. And I told my agent about the meeting, and he said, are you crazy? Do it. There were approximately 64 sets on this picture, which is much bigger than Star Wars. George said, the film has to be much better and much bigger and much more complex than Star Wars because if the second one doesn't work, it's the end of Star Wars. If it does work, then I can continue making more of them. I said, it doesn't put me in a very comfortable position. It's a hell of a responsibility. The story line was much more difficult. I felt I needed humor in the picture, and yet I couldn't have gags. I felt I needed a love story, and yet I couldn't have a lot of smooching and kissing and all that stuff. And it had to all be more implied. I knew I needed something powerful going on inside Luke's soul, and he really carries the picture, of course. So I didn't know quite how I was going to do this. At the end of Star Wars, George invited the core group to Northern California to start this whole new facility. There were 10 of us, and I was the only one that immediately came up. I said, you know, stay here in Van Nuys, in this crummy part of town, in this dumpy building that was inadequate from the very beginning, or move to Marin County and have a new building and have a new film to work on in this great environment. It was like a no-brainer. Well, I remember George saying, well, this time we got some money. And so that was kind of nice. We talked about, should we top ourselves, or are we going to top ourselves? And I think it was more that, you know, let's just make it look cool and have some fun with it. And George came up with some great story stuff. We started on the walker, but we also had to build the probot, which is the probe that is sent down by Darth Vader that lands on the snow planet surface that then goes and looks for human life forms. Joe had already drawn the drawings. George liked that. But they were going to go to Norway to shoot all those scenes, and they needed a prop. They needed one that was like nine feet tall or something like that in scale to have out in the distance. The making of Empire was a whole set of problems that we didn't anticipate. The picture was much bigger undertaking than originally conceived. The budget was quite a bit more. Everybody who's dealt with visual effects said, never do snow because you can't maintain the color. We ignored all those warnings and decided to shoot in the snow anyway. But it was a very time consuming process. And again, just like in Tunisia, we were in Norway shooting on this glacier, and we had the worst winter in Scandinavia that they had had in 50 years. 20 below zero, 18 feet of snow. It was a miserable location because we will cross this frozen thing up on this glacier with these tracked vehicles to get there. We had sort of like stakes, like big twigs almost in the ground about every six feet. Because if it started snowing, you get a whiteout. You can't tell where you're going. And it did one night. I drove one of the tracked vehicles. Without these, I never would have found my way back. We get to Norway and I couldn't get out of the hotel to shoot because there was a wall of snow that was blown in that night. So we put the camera in the doorway of the hotel, going out the back door. The crew was all inside, toasty warm. And Mark had to go out into the snow and go running away from the ice creature. And we never left the doorway. And he froze to death, and we were fine. We finally shot all the scenes, knowing where the special effects, where this thing would come down, the foot would come down, and all this stuff. It was really tricky stuff, you know, animating these things on this snowy set. So initially, I think that the intent was to try and set up scenes that would be blue screen comped into background plates that were shot on location. But this kid showed up at Island who is this amazing painter. And so most of the work of the snow walkers and the tauntauns were done against these painted backdrops that Mike made. I like the snow walkers. I think that's just a great idea. And I think that the compositing got a lot better, but it was better than it was in Star Wars. And so it's a little bit more believable. It's always interesting to create a character that has, you know, it's a sort of dual character. You know, you're not quite sure about him, especially if he's cute. I was really kind of cute. We looked at the scene where Han Solo goes into the freezing chamber. George had scripted an exchange between Princess Leia and Han Solo, which went like this. She said, I love you. And Han Solo said, I love you too. And it kind of seemed to me that we weren't taking advantage of the character that we'd established for Han Solo. We tried take after take after take. Nothing satisfied me. And finally, I said, Harrison, don't think about it. Don't think about it. Let's do it. OK, action. And he dropped in and I say, cut. I said, yeah, that's a great line. That's Han Solo. George showed me a few original sketches and I thought, well, that's interesting. But I want something in more depth, you see. And so I looked in the mirror and I thought, well, something perhaps a little bit amusing about my face. So I modeled something of myself. Now I've got to make him look intelligent. I got this photograph of Einstein and put the Einstein wrinkles in all around. I did a lot of thinking about it because he's got to be full of subtle action and movements, especially in the face and the body. And I put it all in what was necessary. And finally it all worked. I remember Stuart was under the gun and it was very tense, very tense. Had to get this thing done. We've got to start shooting with Yoda. And so while we're talking to him, I just had Yoda's head and I was just playing with it and I dropped and it cracked. So here we are. And then Stuart said, I need a drink. So it was terrible because here we're pressing so much and I'm the one who screwed it up. In order to shoot the puppet moving, the set had to be built about five feet above the floor of the stage. And we would put holes or bridges where it would stand on top of it and he could move it along in a certain direction. So it had to be predetermined. On top of the stage were trees, rocks, caves, everything. Now they couldn't hear above and Mark couldn't hear Frank Oz. How do you do a scene? You can't hear each other. I give Mark a lot of credit for this. I can remember he actually, this little voice called over to me, Norman, Norman, he said, and I actually, I actually blushed because it seems so real, this weird, weird little thing. It was tremendously difficult physical work. The whole floor was about three and a half, four feet high. So I could be underneath the floor. And then I would hold my hand up and through hole or whatever. And I remember Kirsch was talking to me, but he wasn't talking to me. He sometimes talked to Yoda. I'm saying, Kirsch, I can't hear you. I'm down here under the floor. But the pressure was extreme because I was taking too much time. And the reason I was taking too much time was the first time it's ever been done. You know, I had somebody doing the cables for the ears and somebody else was doing the cables for the eyes and somebody was doing the left hand. So I had, you know, me and three other people trying to bring one character to life. Yeah, just one second. That's good, Graham. Okay, we'll go back into that. Ready? I followed my feelings. You are reckless. You will be. You will be. Sorry. That was like a real leap because if that puppet had not worked, the whole film would have been down the tubes. It just, you know, it would have been a disaster. It would have been a silly little Muppet. If it had been Kermit riding around in that movie, the whole movie would have collapsed under the weight of it. 340E, take two. A and B cameras. I was the only human being on the call sheet for months. It would say, actor Mark Hamill, part Luke. Props, snakes, lizards, robots, smoke machines, Gila monsters. If you choose the quick and easy path as Vader did, you will become an agent of evil and the galaxy will be plunged deeper into the abyss of hate and despair. Are you standing right in front of the light? Yeah. Didn't he bite me? He just took it. It was a little love nip. Frank Oz and his crew were there, but they get buried down underneath the ground. I had an earpiece where I could hear, Oh, many years have you ever. And then if you turned your head the wrong way, you'd pick up radio one. And it was the Rolling Stones singing fool to cry. I remember I reacted to that. I went, Hey, I got the stones and cursed. And he's way across the bog saying, you know, if that happens again, just pretend like you don't hear it. Because with all the elements of that set, the smoke, is the smoke good? You know, is the snake poke the snake, get the snake to move? You know, he's just lying there. So you felt let's get our priority straight because I'm concerned about how did I come off in the scene? They were looking at everything but me. I have to say was, uh, you wouldn't want to fall in that pool. By the time we finished shooting, it's full of all sorts of wildlife and bugs. It was absolutely foul after all those weeks of being in this stagnant water. If you look at Star Wars, you either kind of in space, and they're all and maybe the Death Stars back there, maybe it isn't. And you have a number of shots on on different planets. If you look at Empire, and it's broad, you've got a speeder sequence and two or three big dogfights. You've got the whole cloud city and all the interiors of different landscapes that are way beyond what we've done before. So it was, I think, was the breadth of the work that I think differentiates that from the first show. And each one of those sequences require different problem solving skills. We did this incredible chase through the asteroid field. Designing asteroids is not as easy as you think. And I remember many of us in the model shop tried and tried to come up with something that would look good. And I think for some of the very far ones, we had used potatoes. The biggest problem I had is just wasn't going fast enough. And I was running out of money. Irving Kershaw was extremely good director. But the film went over budget, went over schedule, and all the money I had in Star Wars was committed to this film plus more. We shot several scenes in Empire over again. There's a scene in Cloud City where Han Solo character is kind of pacing up and down and Princess Leia comes in and he reacts to the way she looks because she's dressed differently than she has in the entire rest of the film. You look beautiful. You should wear girls clothes all the time. We looked at the dailies and we weren't happy with anything really. The attitude of the actors was too obvious. Sit down. Come on, talk to me. And we could have let that go, but it just didn't feel right. I hope Luke made it to the fleet all right. I'm sure he's fine. He's probably sitting around wondering what we're up to right now. You know, your friend Lando's very charming, but I don't trust him. Trust him? He's an old friend of mine. Ben Slate, the top executive of Bank America Entertainment, walked into my office saying, we have to pull you alone. And I said, how can the largest bank in the entertainment business with the sequel to the most successful movie ever out be wanting to pull my loan? And he said, well, we have a new credit manager and he just has a rule. Budget doubles, he pulls them out. One of the bankers quit over it. They knew it was a big mistake, but, you know, I was stuck trying to make a million dollar payroll that Friday. That was the big difference between the studio system and the independent view of filmmaking. Studio have a large resource to draw on for what they do and and independents don't. So it's a much tighter situation. I was just hoping the bank to allow me to finish without going back to 20th Century Fox and giving away all my rights, because that's ultimately what my other choice was, was to just simply let them own it and lose my independence. But I wanted my independence so badly. We managed to do it in a way that I paid them just a little bit more money, but they didn't get any of the licensing and didn't get any of the sequels. And that's what I was trying to hold on to. If I had to pay a few extra points in order to get them to guarantee a loan with the bank, I could do that. And I think Fox was just as concerned that the movie get finished as we were. At the time, I knew that Mark had a father and that it was Darth Vader, but this was not in the script. There was a false page inserted and I had the knowledge. The actors didn't even have it. No one had it. It was a total secret. Script was under lock and key. The models were under lock and key. ILM was under lock and key and shrouded from the rest of the world. The storyline of the movie was under lock and key. I met with Mark and said, you know that Darth Vader is your father. Huh? They had taken me aside and said, this is what he's really going to say. And we're going to do the scene. And Darth Vader will be saying stuff that doesn't count. Forget it. Use your own rhythm compared to what he's doing. We did a few takes and he finally got into it. And here's Darth Vader who had his dialogue, by the way. And he's speaking the dialogue. He thinks it's being recorded, you see. It's not being recorded. What's being recorded is this, this, this. He said, you don't know the truth. Obi-Wan killed your father. And then, of course, we re-recorded everything. When I first saw the dialogue that said, Luke, I am your father. I said to myself, he's lying. I wonder how they're going to play that lie out. I think that it went beyond Star Wars. You got to know the characters a little better. You had some humor. I thought of the film as a second movement of a symphony. That's why I wanted some of the things slower. And it ends in a way that you can't wait to see, to hear, the Vivace, the next movie, the Allegretto. I didn't have a climax at the end. I had an emotional climax. There was something about Empire that just immediately just clicked when I saw it. I didn't know how all the romance was going to work, and the adventure, and is it too serious, and all this sort of stuff. But it really came together. We did have some money, but it was still a startup company. We could have messed it up as much as we did it right. But his ability to make successful movies is what drove the financial success of the company. But how we used those funds to grow the company, and why he has a net worth the way he does. He was smart enough to understand all the rights, all the ancillaries. George was debating on two different parcels of land. One was on Lucas Valley Road. I said, well, that's the one you have to pick. The company structure supported multi-movies in all areas, merchandising, special effects, ancillaries. And so all the little companies had to be started, and operated, and have all these systems put in place. It was an idea of one person, and successfully implemented. George is one of the more successful companies in the world. And you can't measure it just by size, because he doesn't need the size of a fox or a wanus to accomplish the same thing he's accomplishing in putting out his films. George's greatest strength as a filmmaker is that he's a great storyteller. George has a vision. There are filmmakers down through history like Capra and John Ford, and they made John Ford pictures, and Frank Capra pictures, and Hitchcock made Hitchcock films. And George Lucas makes George Lucas pictures.