by Edward Gross
GEORGE LUCAS
I’ve been very conscious about not making the movies religion-specific. When I brought Star Wars out, it seemed most religions used it to demonstrate their own beliefs—not only Judeo-Christian, but also Eastern. And in many cases, people have said they’re much more Eastern than Western in nature. The ideas of a virgin birth, the freeing of slaves—the issue of immaculate conception is a motif that runs through all religions, all stories about the local deity or the local hero. It’s the same thing with Hercules. Most heroes are conceived in an unusual way. And in this particular case, it’s actually not immaculate conception, it’s conception by metaphor.
PERNILLA AUGUST
George actually didn’t give me any more backstory than we know from the movie. Shmi and Anakin have been slaves for a while, probably about three years. George gave us a lot of space and I felt we were building the character together. It was a give and take. He didn’t talk too much, but I never hesitated to ask him if I was wondering about something. I liked working with him. I think Shmi is “the” mother. She’s very brave and supportive of her son. She’s not selfish. She lets Anakin go and she’s thinking of the best way for him. She also taught him to go with his feelings.
RICK MCCALLUM
We’d known Pernilla August for a long time. She had worked with Ingmar Bergman a lot. She’s a great Swedish actress. We first worked with her on Young Indy where she played Princess Sophie’s nanny, Emillie, in the “Vienna 1908” episode. She’s a lovely and wonderful actress. She has all the dignity and power that you could ever want for the role of Anakin’s mother.
PERNILLA AUGUST
I was nervous at the beginning. I’m not used to speaking in English. I didn’t know if it would work, if I could speak another language and do the acting at the same time.
* * *
Longtime Star Wars fan Samuel L. Jackson made no secret of the fact that he would love to be a part of the franchise, and, of course, he got his wish when Lucas cast him as Jedi Master Mace Windu. Prior to The Phantom Menace, he starred in Jurassic Park (1993), True Romance (1993), Pulp Fiction (1994), Hail Caesar (1994), Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995), The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996), and Jackie Brown (1997).
SAMUEL L. JACKSON
(actor, “Mace Windu”)
I didn’t call George Lucas and make it known that I wanted to do Star Wars, but I might as well have. I was doing a talk show to promote something and one of the questions I got asked was, “If you could work with any director you haven’t worked with, who would it be?” Usually I say, “The directors tend to come with the film and I usually choose my jobs based on the film.” But suddenly I realized that George was about to do a new Star Wars trilogy. I love the genre. I wanted to be in a Star Wars movie. So the next time I was asked, I said, “Well, I would love to work with George Lucas. I would love to be in the next Star Wars movie.”
GEORGE LUCAS
When I talked to Sam, he said, “Oh, I want to be in Episode I.” I said, “Well, I’ve got this role in Episode I, but it’s not much now. In the next one, he actually gets to swordfight.” Sam said, “Ooooh, okay. I’m in.” He wanted to be in it anyway.
SAMUEL L. JACKSON
I said it often and apparently I said it on some British talk show while George was in preproduction on the first film. Somebody in his office heard and told him what I said. They called me and asked me if it was true, and I said it was. While I was shooting Sphere George was back at his ranch. They invited me to the ranch and I went out to talk with him. He said, “Sam, I don’t know what to do. I haven’t written the script yet. I’m not quite sure what the story is. I’ve seen some of your work and you’re a very good actor, but you could wind up yelling, ‘Look out! Go this way! Run that way!’” I said, “I don’t care. I just want to be in a Star Wars movie.” Sure enough, he found something for me.
RICK MCCALLUM
In terms of the other cast members, Sam is just a consummate professional. He’s one of the actors for whom making a film is like digging a ditch and he loves being in the ditch. He doesn’t make the ditch more comfortable. He doesn’t want to turn it into something it isn’t. He just loves coming to work. Sam’s extraordinary. He never had any adjustments to make, even on Episode I. He also understands blue screen incredibly well. In that regard he’s more like a theatrical actor. We showed him the artwork. He saw the animatics. And he just gets it. He only worked on Episode I for a few days. In Episode II, all together, we had him for about ten days. He also got to pick up a lightsaber and use it. For someone like Sam, who’s a big Star Wars fan, that was a huge deal.
SAMUEL L. JACKSON
I’m there and some guy comes over to me and opens up a case. Inside there were nine lightsabers and he would say, “Choose yours.” I would be there, hyperventilating. I would say, “I’ll take that one.” That was very cool.
RICK MCCALLUM
Sam sets the standard for everybody in terms of work ethic, focus, dedication, and what he brings. Stardom didn’t happen for him early. It happened for him later on, and so he worships and loves every single day he’s on a set, every day he’s working.
SAMUEL L. JACKSON
I had five pages of scenes and that was it. Nobody gave me a whole script. It was a very cool experience. Frank Oz was cool. George was so low-key it was incredible. To understand the kind of pressure that surrounds that film, to know it was George’s baby, that he hadn’t directed in twenty years, and to see him so calm was amazing. It was great.
* * *
Returnees to the franchise include Ian McDiarmid as Senator Palpatine/Sith Lord Darth Sidious, Frank Oz as the voice of Yoda, and Anthony Daniels as C-3PO. On top of that, of course, there are many supporting performers as well.
IAN MCDIARMID
I was happy that he wanted me. George is a wonderful storyteller. Look what he did with Star Wars. It’s the supreme evidence of his brilliance. He started right in the middle of the saga. Star Wars was Episode IV. That was always the way he imagined it. Richard Wagner spent a large part of his life when he set out to write The Ring. Star Wars is, in some ways, comparable to The Ring.
George actually mentioned Shakespeare quite a lot during my conversations with him. The whole panoply of the Star Wars films is very Shakespearean. It’s also very much Mark Twain, Buck Rogers, and Wagner. But it’s somehow not a ragbag. There are allusions to classics past, but the vision is a governing one and it is George’s. At the end of the day, Star Wars is not Shakespeare, Wagner, or Buck Rogers, but George’s own precise and clear story, even if you can trace back his influences. I’m sure there’s some Akira Kurosawa and D. W. Griffith in there, too.
RAY PARK
On my first day of shooting, I worked with Ian and he was very nice to me. I asked him for a few tips, because I was very nervous. I asked, “Do you think I’m doing this right?” It was my first time acting and I didn’t want to look stupid. Once I started speaking, acting out the part and doing the moves, I felt really comfortable. It was just that I had put a lot of pressure on myself because I wanted to do well.
NATALIE PORTMAN
Ian was awesome. He’s such a great actor. I loved what he did in the movie. We really didn’t talk a lot about Return of the Jedi. We talked more about theater and his acting company in England. He was very supportive.
IAN MCDIARMID
Also, the thing about George is that he makes strong, instinctive decisions. You feel that you’re cast because he thinks you are the person who can play the role. You already have that confidence. And if anything didn’t feel right or appropriate, we would discuss it as any actor and director would. George and I hardly discussed anything at all, actually. We didn’t need to discuss much. That kind of straightforwardness makes for a very relaxing relationship between a director and an actor. I was very pleased to see him take full charge on The Phantom Menace.
FRANK OZ
Rick McCallum came to me and we talked about how they wanted to do Yoda. It sur
prised me that they decided to do Yoda as a puppet. I thought that they would go with CGI. But I love the character and I like working with George. So I was happy to do it. George intimated to me that there’s something about Yoda as he is now that’s more organic, that worked somehow. I’m comfortable with CGI, if it’s used properly. I think Yoda—and this is my own opinion—should not be too high-tech, because you’ll lose the warmth.
RICK MCCALLUM
Frank Oz has reached a whole other level of performance as Yoda that I absolutely admire and love deeply. Frank is involved in much more than just doing Yoda’s voice. He worked with Rob Coleman, our director of animation, who actually does Yoda’s CGI performance. They collaborated very closely together.
FRANK OZ
In the beginning, operating Yoda was through cables and later it was remote control. You still have the same basic situation, though—four people trying to make one character work subtly. There are always good parts and bad aspects to technology, but you’re doing essentially the same thing and still trying to achieve a common goal. And the other thing is that at least half the success of Yoda comes from the people who are working with him. Sam, Ewan, and Liam were very good with Yoda, and the scenes with Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back would not have been nearly as good if Mark Hamill didn’t do as fine a job as he did. And at the time I wrote Mark and Irvin Kershner notes telling them that.
ANTHONY DANIELS
(actor, “C-3PO”)
I was genuinely surprised when the Star Wars Special Edition came out, because I wasn’t involved in any of the upgrading. It was all done digitally. I didn’t have to do any new acting. But I thought it was pretty neat and very good, obviously. Then they told me that they were going to make Episode I. I was glad, because there were always meant to be three more movies. The fans had been waiting for them. But there was a time when I didn’t know whether or not Threepio existed in the world of Episode I. I had very mixed feelings about the prospect of being left out—partly because I wasn’t sure if I had a job, but really because I was hoping to be in all of the movies. It’s like collecting beer caps. So I asked some questions and they said, “We don’t know yet.” Then, finally, George asked me to go to Leavesden Studios in England.
George and I sat down and he told me the story. The real joke was when he told me, “You’re made by Anakin Skywalker.” I thought that was really neat, and I was very happy. Then, two days later, I realized that Anakin is the baddie. So I was genuinely surprised—partly by my own stupidity, but also at the twist in the story. I thought to myself, “If Threepio ever finds out who his father is, he’s going to be traumatized.” Maybe that’s why this guy is so weird—maybe he found out the truth. I never even thought of that. So although I was only briefly involved in Episode I, it was just terrific to be a part of it, and to keep my connection with the movies.
George told me that Threepio would be made of wires, and he explained to me how it would be done. I thought it was a tremendously inventive and clever bit of scriptwriting. We all know C-3PO as the golden robot, and I had always assumed that he was a million years old, so it really tweaked my interest to discover that he started out as a box of junk. That was very clever, and the puppet was a tremendous piece of engineering. It managed, visually, to have a personality as well. I learned that it was very, very difficult to operate, though, because I actually took over the operation of it for Episode II.
One thing about doing the films this time around is that we all suffer from thinking of Threepio as a main character in the other trilogy. George made it very clear to me that Episodes IV to VI were really Threepio’s main movies. In Episode I, it was a meet-and-greet. It wasn’t a big deal. Here are two robots meeting and—with some dramatic irony—you know what’s going to happen to them.
* * *
Filming on The Phantom Menace began on June 26, 1997—nearly three years after Lucas started writing the script—and continued until September 30 of the same year. The big news, and it wasn’t always clear that it would be the case, was that Lucas stepped behind the camera as director. Although he had done uncredited work as a director on every Lucasfilm project from More American Graffiti all the way through Young Indiana Jones (and directing the one Harrison Ford appearance in the series), he had avoided fully stepping behind the camera as sole director since he directed A New Hope in the 1970s. That was all about to change.
GEORGE LUCAS
Making movies is very much like being in a war; you’re responsible for everything. I mean, you hire a great crew, but a crew is 250 people, and there’s probably fifty of those people that are really connected to the important part of designing things and doing things. So you have to work with fifty people and you have to make sure they’re always on the same page every single day, all day long. And then what you do is you direct the actors and you direct the crew and before that you’ve directed the sets and the costumes and all these other things. And when you’re shooting, that’s when all that comes together. I say it’s sort of like surgery, because if you make a mistake you have to live with it forever.
RICK MCCALLUM
I think he thought, “If I’m going to do these movies, why not do it right?” He needs to be able to set up the tone, style, and look, and the way it’s going to be done. I’m thrilled that he finally agreed to direct.
GEORGE LUCAS
The divorce from Marcia kind of destroyed me. She had another man who was ten years younger than me … the classic situation. But my former wife and I adopted a daughter and, as I held her for the first time, it was like having lightning hit me, a transforming joy I’ll never forget. Until then, I had loved movies most. After that, movies became second. Fortunately, I was forty and already successful and that put me in a place where I could enjoy the pleasures of children. I have three kids now. I adopted the other two as a single father. There’s Amanda, Katie, and Jet. So I was raising kids, running companies, and making movies at the same time. I drove my kids to school every day. I had them on the set with me when I was working. I was Mr. Mom and Mr. Dad combined. I even made them waffles. I make great waffles. I really wanted my children and I love being with them.
BRIAN JAY JONES
There were probably a couple of reasons he chose to direct again. For one thing, he can have his family on set with him. That makes it worth it right there, when you can have the kids with him by his side. He’s actually lightened up.
GEORGE LUCAS
I found getting back to directing was like I hadn’t stopped and in some ways I hadn’t stopped, because I’d been directing second unit, I’d been very involved in the creative process in everything I’d done since I stopped directing. When I stopped directing, part of it was the explosion of Star Wars. It meant I had to put some focus into my company on how I’d maintain this franchise that sort of grew up in my backyard. And directing it, I wasn’t going to be able to oversee everything. The films are very big and hard to do, and I felt that I could serve them better as executive producer overseeing an entire production than I could trying to run right back in and be a director. As it happened, I just ended up going off on a different path and being executive producer. I had some other projects that I had sitting on the shelf; told one to Steve Spielberg [Raiders of the Lost Ark]. He said, “I wanna do that, I wanna do that.” So I thought, “Well, okay, I’ll produce this one.” Jim Henson came. I just ended up with a lot of projects and went down this path of making all these other movies. Nobody says you have to be a director.
DAVID TATTERSALL
With George directing, two cameras were generally used to cover every setup—one wide and the other tighter, but at the same angle. The first camera would cover for the storyboard, while the second would get something else. It was fairly conventional. The first unit would start with George and then the second unit, with cameraman Giles Nuttgens, would follow up behind to pick up their material. Giles shot several episodes of Young Indy, so, again, he was somebody familiar with our proceedings. George was
very hands-on during shooting, and every sequence was planned and detailed with the storyboards or animatics that we’d refer to over the day. Also, because we had so many standing sets, we were able to spend a good amount of time walking through them and working out how we’d be shooting things.
BRIAN JAY JONES
The other factor in his directing is he’s got digital technology at his fingertips and he’s much more relaxed, because he feels like he can make the movie he wants to make. Doesn’t matter if there’s an effects shop that can or can’t build his effects or turn them in on time. He can do everything in the computer now. There’s a great George Harrison story where he talked about the time after the Beatles broke up and he releases the triple-album All Things Must Pass. He described it as being like diarrhea where you’ve had to hold it for so long and then you finally get down on the bowl. That’s the way Lucas is with Episode I. It’s like he can finally get down on the bowl and let loose with everything he has. This movie, again, is almost overwhelming visually at times, but he’s just having so much fun with it.
