The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (Enhanced Edition)

by Rinzler, J. W.

  Drivers ferried the principals into this simmering chaos for the first day of what was to become a grueling studio shoot. Staying at a nearby hotel, Ford had the shortest ride—30 minutes—but Peter Mayhew had to be picked up at 6:45 AM every day for more than an hour’s commute before arriving at 8 AM. Carrie Fisher’s initial base was a rented house in St. John’s Wood, while the Hamills stayed at “a neat place right in Chelsea,” according to the actor. “It’s where Margot Kidder [Lois Lane] stayed during Superman.”

  “When production began, I found a beautiful lake by the studio,” Kershner says. “I would do my running there, right across the street from Stanley Kubrick’s house. I got myself in good physical condition and adjusted my sleep patterns to five hours a day. I’m almost a vegetarian now and I found, as I stopped eating meat, I needed less sleep. And by sleeping less, I discovered I had more energy.”

  A METAL MENACE

  NOS. 8–9, TUESDAY–WEDNESDAY, MARCH 13–14; STAGE 8—INT. MILLENNIUM FALCON, MAIN HOLD; SCS: 205 [ESCAPE FROM HOTH], 236 PT. [ASTEROID FIELD]; 289 PT. [LOVE SCENE] NOTE: “PT.” SIGNIFIES THAT ONLY PART OF THE SCENE WAS COMPLETED.

  “Kersh arrived at the studios at 7:30 AM, relieved to be out of Norway,” Arnold writes. “Like all of us, he has the shadowy marks of frostbite below his eyes.”

  “A normal-looking day started on Tuesday,” says Alsup. “Peter Beale, a Fox executive, dropped in. Then Gary had a meeting about eleven in the morning with George Lucas, who had arrived over the weekend and was staying at the St. James Club, and with Paul Hirsch, the editor.”

  “I like to cut on a horizontal table,” Hirsch says. “Many feature editors prefer to cut on upright Moviolas. There was a lot of equipment in the room that I don’t use, so I had it all taken out.”

  Scenes in the Falcon hold were filmed that day; Tuesday evening, Lucas, Kurtz, Kershner, and “key technicians” viewed all the Norwegian rushes to date in the Administration Theatre. After two hours, they came out looking “pleased” and with a list of additional shots that were duly telexed to the second unit still at Finse. “The reaction was pretty good, I think, considering the appallingly bad weather we had to shoot in,” says Watts.

  “I arrived late in the afternoon and started shooting the next day,” Kershner says. “The first set was a very difficult one, working with all the technical material. I started off the next day with a love scene between Princess Leia and Han Solo in the Falcon. It was nice doing a truly dramatic scene that was sweet and had a strong element of conflict along with an interesting texture, because this scene was taking place within a piece of machinery: steam, welding, gears, the shine of the metal. Here are two very vulnerable human beings, each trying to communicate with each other—and they’re thwarted at the last second by another piece of machinery that gets in the way.”

  “We went into the hold of the Falcon on Stage 8,” says Watts, “and we shot there for the remainder of that week.”

  “A little thing like steam coming out of a pipe at the right moment or a robot making a turn at the right moment becomes a very, very difficult thing,” Kershner adds. “If it happens right, it becomes movie magic; if it happens wrong, the audience says, ‘Ah! I see how that’s done!’ You must never have that; it must be effortless. It must look like, ‘Well, doesn’t everybody have a tin can for a helper?’ ”

  The tin can was of course C-3PO, whose interruption of the lovers’ kiss was ad-libbed on set; in the script, Leia simply moves away from Han. Also improvised was Han’s attitude toward the droid’s advice about the Falcon: feigned non-interest followed by implementation. For Anthony Daniels and Carrie Fisher, it was their first scenes on camera. In the interim between films, Daniels had done “a bit of comedy,” as well as a guest appearance on the variety show Donny and Marie (1976–1978).

  “If it hurts banging your head the first time, you’d have to be insane to bang it a second time,” says Daniels, who had delayed signing his contract until the last moment. “I’d felt not particularly a part of the film after it’d opened, as, you know, they preferred to pretend that the robot was not a human. So when Empire came up, I didn’t rush at it; I really didn’t. And then I suppose we talked and they asked me again, and then two things came into my mind: One was that, this time, I would be paid reasonably, and the second thing was that I really like Threepio.” (The details of Daniels’s contract wouldn’t be worked out until July 30.)

  Fortunately for Daniels, his return was made in refashioned armor, care of assistant art director Fred Hole and his team, supervised by Johnson: “They did change certain parts to make it more flexible so that Tony Daniels would have more freedom of movement.”

  “My costume in Empire is lighter, with no cutting edges,” says Daniels. “The first one had 20 parts and this one only has 11. But it’s still most inelegant, I assure you. By the end of the day, I feel quite disgusting. But I get to take it off if there’s to be a waiting period of over 20 minutes, which I would never have been permitted to do during the filming of Star Wars. If I walk to the set, I’m so tired by the time I get there that I haven’t much energy left for the scene—so they put me on a luggage trolley, tilt me back, and push me around.”

  “I wanted to make Threepio a real pain in the rear,” says Kershner. “Threepio, when you get right down to it, is a real pill. He’s a combination of Mary Poppins and Felix in The Odd Couple [1968] who’s always cleaning up everywhere. Sure, he’s a cute robot, but I wanted to get across the idea that if you knew a person like See-Threepio in real life, you’d turn and run in the opposite direction.”

  “The first film centered on the droids,” Lucas says. “So it would’ve been easy to have the droids disappear in the second. One of the challenges was going to be keeping them front and center.”

  “I think he’s rather disconcerted throughout the film that he’s not human,” Daniels says. “He doesn’t quite understand what kissing is because if there’s one thing a robot isn’t into it’s kissing. So there are times when he is suddenly pulled up short and I think that slightly upsets him. I think, looking at the script, that Threepio’s role has become slightly more like talking scenery and he’s not been given particularly dynamic things to do. He’s not a hero, but he does have functions that are spoken of and which the movie should use.”

  Also on Wednesday, Kenny Baker participated in R2-D2 tests, while Hamill, returned from Norway, had his hair highlighted at Vidal Sassoon’s and practiced fencing with stunt coordinator Peter Diamond. The specially equipped helicopter, the Progress Report notes, made the trip from Coventry, England, to Holland, its first stopover.

  Of the final eight R2 units created for Empire, Baker occupied two, which were both lighter and more comfortable than before. A couple of others were remote-controlled. A fifth was used for experimentation, and the remaining three were lightweight for lifting, carrying, and being “ejected from the Water Thing’s gullet,” according to Johnson.

  “The Artoo unit is more comfortable and it’s more sophisticated,” Baker says. “I’ve got a two-way radio, so I can hear what’s going on; I can be directed. Before, I couldn’t hear what was going on. I didn’t know whether they said, ‘Cut!’ until somebody hit me on the head with a hammer.”

  “Actually, Artoo is mostly a robot—more than in the first film,” says Hamill. “Only when he waddles is Kenny inside. In fact, Kenny got nervous about them perfecting it so completely that he would be out of a job. But I told him not to worry; he just doesn’t understand that it is wonderful for people to read the credits and have that continuity of ‘Kenny Baker as Artoo-Detoo.’ ”

  “Revisions are being made to the script, dialogue adjustments and a scene cut here and there,” Arnold writes. “A new schedule is needed and there have been meetings between Kurtz and Robert Watts and Norman Reynolds to rework the shooting plan. The live-action filming was originally scheduled for 16 weeks, but nobody I talk to is confident that this is realistic. The actual filming will take considerably longer.”


  “We added four or five weeks right at the beginning of shooting,” says Kurtz. “What I usually do is I break down a picture, go through it scene by scene. One page of dialogue, an entrance and an exit, some special effects, we probably could do in two days. ‘Well, that’s too much time. I don’t want to spend that much time.’ So you go back through it and say, ‘We could probably do it in four angles, in one day.’ Then you go through it with the director, with Kersh. Some of the scenes he agreed with and on other scenes he said, ‘No, it would take a little longer.’ And I felt, because of the effects, it was best to allow for that.”

  While Watts made the schedule revisions, he also took care of another item. “I had decided that I was so irritated about the incident in Norway that I was going to write to the Ministry of Defense,” he says. “But the day we got back, the article appeared in The Sun with two photographs that had been taken by this photographer, but neither of them had been taken from the helicopter. They’d both been taken from the ground. So we let the matter rest.”

  The exterior of Elstree (EMI) Studios, England.

  The Star Wars Stage construction, early 1979.

  At Elstree, Lucas, editor Paul Hirsch (in cap), Ford, and Kurtz.

  Kershner directs Fisher and Ford, circa March 13, 1978 (with glasses, assistant cameraman Maurice Arnold).

  Fisher.

  Anthony Daniels (C-3PO) in his new, less painful costume prop.

  Contact sheet of the first kiss between Princess Leia and Han Solo (by unit photographer George Whitear).

  The kiss in color.

  C-3PO interrupts Leia and Solo, in a moment ad libbed by Kershner on the set.

  GEAR FOR CHAOS

  NO. 10, THURSDAY, MARCH 15; MAIN HOLD; SCS. 289, 297 PT. [LEIA REPORTS MYNOCK], 299 PT. [ESCAPE THROUGH MONSTER’S TEETH]

  On Thursday, Hamill was fitted at Berman’s, along with “4 pigmen and 2 small men,” and did more fencing rehearsals with Diamond and Bob Anderson, who would double as Vader in the duel. Hamill was feeling back at home. “The company has tried to rehire most of the original team that worked on Star Wars, and it is great to see their familiar faces,” he says. “It takes all these people to put a film together; they are pieces in an intricate, collaborative art. I’ve learned that it’s the technical people who make an actor look good; you have to keep them on your side. So I suppose there’s a practical side to my friendly nature, but it’s sincere.”

  “The advantage this film has over the first relates to the fact that the crew knows what kind of film we are making, as well as the fact that a lot of them worked on the first film,” says Lucas. “They know more what to expect, how to do things, whereas on the first film we were experimenting all the time.”

  “We have close to 700 people working on Empire, counting all the construction and everything,” says Kurtz.

  “We’re averaging about 300 staff, whereas on the last Star Wars we had about 220,” Welch says of the construction department. “Riggers are a big number in this picture because very few things are being built on the ground. They are built up on rostrums up to 40 feet high and they’re tubed up so you can get lighting rigs underneath. It’s one of the biggest rigging pictures that’s been done for a long time.”

  “From a prop point of view, Empire is very, very much larger,” says property manager Frank Bruton. “Almost 100 percent more than the first film in quantity; also we’ve been much more involved, with 28 people. We fabricate the props from weird and wonderful things, pieces of aircraft, Tupperware, plastic throw-outs, if you like, from different manufacturers, old machinery. We’ve been around junkyards, aircraft breakers [dismantlers]. I made contact at the beginning of the film with about 10 people who deal in plastics; we went ‘round and cleared their bins out of stuff.”

  “In Reynolds’ art department,” Arnold writes, “there are three art directors, a set dresser and his assistants, five draftsmen, two illustrators, several scenic artists, four production buyers, modelers in clay, and people making fiberglass molds.”

  “Perhaps some of the people working on the film understood it better having seen the first one,” Alsup says. “But in the production world, you still have a budget and you’re still living the same old philosophy of being as economical as possible. The environment was pretty much the same, people were pretty much the same.”

  “There’s a lot of office work that has to be done,” says Watts. “Gary makes the major decisions, but leaves the normal day-to-day running entirely to myself and, of course, Bruce Sharman, who takes care of all the timesheets, all the petty cash, all those aspects of it, and does a wonderful job. I look after all the scheduling of the thing, the actors.”

  At noon on Thursday, Lucas had lunch with Kurtz and Hamill at Signor Baffi’s, the Italian restaurant across the street from Elstree.

  Ford and Kershner.

  A script meeting with Kurtz, Fisher, Hamill, Ford, and Kershner.

  Watts in his office, with associate producer Jim Bloom.

  Lucas and Kershner on the Falcon hold set.

  First assistant director David Tomblin and Kershner on the same intricately built set.

  “You’ve probably heard the word greeblie, which was a word coined on Star Wars, which meant all kinds of funny objects added on to a thing,” says property manager Frank Bruton. “I think in fact George Lucas coined it.”

  Kershner in conversation with Marcia Lucas.

  LAST-MINUTE WORDS

  NO. 11: FRIDAY, MARCH 16; MAIN HOLD, SCS: 297, 299, 430 [ESCAPE FROM CLOUD CITY]; S409; T.431 PT [R2 WORKING ON CIRCUIT BOARD]

  On another freezing morning in England, Lawrence Kasdan arrived for a visit. During the day, Kurtz met with Stanley Bielecki, Norman Reynolds, and artist Michael Boone regarding the walker cockpit scenes and tying them in with the special effects in California.

  “Later, Gary would talk on the phone with Jim Bloom and second-unit director Peter MacDonald,” Alsup says, “but most of that came by telex and then he’d follow up in the evening.”

  After Kershner completed scenes in the Falcon’s hold, a “wampa explosion test” was conducted at 5:30 PM. That evening, the helicopter equipped for recording aerial footage flew from Copenhagen to Finse, where it finally linked up with the second unit.

  On Saturday, Kershner and Kurtz worked in the studio on next week’s planning. The latter also met with Lucas at Spaghetti Ltd. in London, where they were making new costumes under John Mollo’s supervision. In particular, they wanted to check out Carrie Fisher’s new outfits. On Sunday morning, Lucas and Kershner met with the actors to go over script changes. “Then in the afternoon they had a very lengthy meeting, which I think lasted well into the late night, going over the entire script, making mostly dialogue changes, quite extensive,” Alsup says. “They brought them to me on Monday to start typing the corrections.”

  Mayhew as Chewbacca poses with Kershner.

  Ford and Kershner in the Falcon hold.

  Ford in between takes of a scene where Solo tries to repair his ship.

  Solo realizes his ship is not parked in a cave.

  Kenny Baker and Anthony Daniels in the Falcon hold, where R2 fixes the hyperdrive.

  Harrison Ford (Han Solo) climbing over pipes in the Falcon.

  “Right up to the day of shooting, in fact, slightly after shooting, we kept modifying the script,” Kurtz says. “And we did add 8 or 10 sets after that time.”

  Among the changes were several tweaks to the end scenes. Luke, while hanging below Cloud City, first calls for Ben, but Vader, standing on a landing platform says, “Ben cannot help you now, my young Jedi!” So Luke calls for Leia. Aboard his ship, now called the Executor, Vader asks Admiral Piett, “And their hyperdrive is deactivated?” When Lando tries to make the jump to hyperspace, the ship doesn’t respond. Sitting in the cockpit, Luke despairs:

  LUKE

  Ben, why didn’t you tell me?

  Luke is almost unconscious with pain and depression. He is defeated.
<
br />   LUKE

  (to himself)

  I won’t be able to resist him.

  After R2 enables the ship to make the jump to hyperspace (which had been filmed the previous Friday), Vader leaves the bridge of his ship, “his hands behind his back in a contemplative gesture.”

  “It was essential to have Artoo be the one who fixes the hyperdrive,” Kershner says. “If it had been Lando, for instance, it would have been flat. But the fact that they’re all desperate and little Artoo goes over calmly to rig the thing and changes the code makes the scene work.”

  On the star cruiser, as Lando prepares to leave, Luke’s new words make it clear to the audience that, as soon as he recovers, he’ll help search for Han: “I’ll see you on Tatooine … Take care, my friends. May the Force Be With You.”

  NDE NO. 1