Snow battle dailies had first been cut together by Hirsch and Kershner, then brought back by Lucas to ILM; after using the animatics to make a rough cut, Lucas would order a new generation of storyboards, which he and Johnston would then review on the KEM editing table, shot by shot.
“If you were to take a comic strip and photograph it, then put in all the in-betweens, you’d have an animated film,” says Lucas. “If you take the animated drawings and replace them with live-action footage, you’d have a movie. It’s a logical extension of storytelling, combining the graphic with the literary. When I got to Empire, I had a ground battle and I couldn’t use World War II tanks to substitute for walkers because the whole idea was different. So I thought, I’ve got to come up with something else. So that’s when we actually came up with the Leica reel idea; we’d do real cheap stick animation. On the first film, I couldn’t even afford to do that.”
As details of the snow battle firmed up, Muren figured out how to do the walker and tauntaun shots within his department’s financial and logistical limits, which often meant the availability of only a single backdrop for several setups. “Dennis completely rearranged the walker sequence to get the result he wanted,” says Tippett.
In mid-July, the model shop finished Vader’s Star Destroyer and the “new tauntaun legs turned out great …” Production reports also noted several in-house logistical concerns: “The upstairs needs more phones; hour lunches do not count as work; and all complaints should go through department heads.”
Yoda’s seeker ball, for training Luke on Dagobah, concept by Rodis-Jamero, July 1979.
Revised storyboard by Johnston, July 20, 1979.
Transparencies made for animatics of the battle on Hoth, divided into sky ….
… walker ….
… and snowspeeder, for shot M-110—and a single sheet for the moment before Luke’s snowspeeder is crushed by a walker. A written description of animatics from the ILM Archives reads, “Early ones quickly sketched out in pencil. Drawn out on paper first, xeroxed onto cell. Cells were painted with various shades of gray. Photographed and squeezed onto B&W negative. Printed and cut into.”
“Background animatics” of Cloud City (for a shot that would not make the final cut).
Animatic sketch for scene 217 in which a Star Destroyer and TIE fighters pursue the Falcon (the latter elements would be added later).
Revised storyboard by Rodis-Jamero, July 3, 1979.
A typed page describes shots for the animatics sequence that would stand in for the final snow battle effects shots in early cuts of the film.
Lucas at the second July 4 company picnic, where Dunham entered via balloon—and crashed, nearly setting the forest on fire (below).
Paul Huston at work on the Executor model, Darth Vader’s flagship.
* * *
THE GODFATHER
On Sunday, July 15, George Lucas returned to London. “Suddenly, showing up every few weeks or so didn’t work anymore,” he says. “I had to be there every day and I had to be helping Kershner, which developed into a lot of work.”
Additional concerns had also brought Lucas back—the budget, the schedule, and so on—but the most urgent matter was the film’s financing, which was falling apart.
“There were some business mistakes that were made,” Kazanjian says. “Empire got out of hand budget-wise and the picture ran into big problems. Part of it was Charlie Weber’s fault, part of it was John Moohr’s fault, and a lot of it was Gary Kurtz’s.”
“The three major entertainment loan officers from Bank of America, which was financing Empire, came into my little office,” Weber says. “They looked almost shell-shocked and said, ‘We have to pull your loan on Friday; we’re at a million-dollar payroll.’ I said, ‘Why? You have $50 million [sic] in advances in the Fox coffers.’ And they said, ‘We have a new credit manager who just came in and your budget’s doubled, so it’s an automatic. There’s nothing we can do about it’—so I was stuck with trying to make a million dollar payroll by Friday.”
“It became apparent that Empire was going to go even further over budget, further over schedule,” Lucas says. “It wasn’t going to be $25 million, it was going to be closer to $30 million. I said, ‘Gary, now we have to go back to the bank again and God knows what’s going to happen—they may not extend the loan.’ But we went to the bank and the bank said, ‘No, we’re not giving you another dime.’ So I couldn’t finish the movie. We were like 20 percent away from finishing the movie and I was afraid I was going to have to go back to Fox and beg forgiveness. I would have to give them the movie, and then I wouldn’t have my freedom.”
“The picture was way over schedule and $5 million over budget,” Kazanjian says. “Suddenly the accountant called and said, ‘We need five more million dollars.’ Well, five more million dollars is a lot of money and Charlie’s big error was he didn’t see that coming.”
“The despair was we had to find the money as quickly as possible—we had to make the payroll,” says Lucas. “So we said we’d pay everybody every other week instead of every week. That was a delaying tactic until we could actually find a way out. The big question was, Could we get it done in time? I was trying to keep the picture going and we couldn’t let the cast and crew realize that we were in financial trouble—we had to go on as if everything was fine.”
“I had no awareness of what was going on behind the scenes financially,” Kershner says. “No one clued me in, no one asked me, no one told me. I just did my work.”
Black Falcon supplied a Band-Aid by loaning another $525,000 to Chapter II that month, but the situation was alarming and beyond licensing’s resources. According to one source, Twentieth Century–Fox, aware of the situation, was threatening to call in the completion bond and take over the film.
“There was tension between Lucasfilm and Fox,” says Ganis. “The fact that Lucasfilm was the owner made it a little more intense, made it the Supreme Being at Twentieth Century–Fox, so anything that Lucasfilm said went, which inhibited the creative people and the businesspeople at Fox. Generally, what George demanded stayed in the realm of lawyer-to-lawyer. But every once in a while, it kinda burst out into the world of the top executives of the company.”
“We didn’t see that coming,” says Kurtz. “It was a terrible moment and then having to go back to Fox for more help—nobody liked that idea, least of all George.”
“We couldn’t meet our debt,” Lucas says. “All the money I had made from Star Wars was committed to this film, plus more, but I didn’t want to go to Fox and give them the movie because I’d have to give all the rights back—I was very close to losing all the rights after I’d worked so hard to get them. It was an extremely high-pressurized situation—I had to keep the picture going, somehow get people to work without pay, hope to hell that we could make a deal with another bank, hope to hell that whatever they asked for didn’t involve me having to go back and renegotiate big-time with Fox. It was a very intense situation. It was my learning that when you play with the big boys, it’s no holds barred. And things kept slipping …”
“It’s really two years of inflation between the two pictures,” Kurtz says. “For labor the cost has been normal, I assume, about 15 percent a year average. For the cast, it was like a 500 percent inflation rate, because the deals we have with them on this picture are substantially higher than before. Simple things like plastic pipe, all petroleum-based products, went up 300 to 400 percent.”
“Gary is one of the most technically qualified producers that I’ve ever worked with,” says Watts. “His background in filmmaking has been so wide and diverse, and his own interest in the mechanical aspects of filmmaking is so great. He’s kind of like a film school bible, but there’s a big difference between theory and practice.”
“Part of the problem was that even after shooting began, we kept modifying the script,” Kurtz says. “And we did add 8 or 10 sets. So, really, what we were talking about was being over about seven or eight weeks, half
of which I would attribute to technical problems, such as special effects not functioning or sets being very difficult to work in, like the Carbon Freezing Chamber. And the other four weeks are really due to the way Kersh worked, just his pace and his method of operation, his not being able to do the throwaway scenes very quickly and concentrate on the other ones. He put the same degree of attention into everything.”
“I was never sure if anything was right, I was guessing,” Kershner says. “And then I realized that Lucas had financed this picture himself and there I was shooting a guessing game with millions and millions of his money at stake. This put a terrific burden on me, because I knew whenever I screwed up, it was costing him money. But that’s the way film is—you chase shadows.”
“The director worries about making the movie and doesn’t have to care about any of the other things,” says Lucas. “Unless you’ve got somebody at the helm on a day-to-day level trying to cut everything down, it just doesn’t happen. Gary is trying but, ultimately, Kersh is the one in the driver’s seat, and he just isn’t of the same school as I am. It’s understandable. Most directors aren’t. They’re concerned about making movies, not about saving money. They just want to make the film as good as possible—which is what they’re paid to do. Kersh was working very hard trying to get the movie done, but it was very slow and tedious work, so I had to really come in and kind of get very involved to try to see if we could salvage it before I ran out of money. What it really came down to is a very loud ticking clock …”
Lucas talks with Kershner.
Lucas talks with Kurtz.
Hamill and second assistant cameraman Peter Robinson, who is taking measurements for the camera crew.
A production concept drawing of the reactor control room, by Reynolds, February 1979.
Set construction on Stage 1 of the Reactor Control Room, which combines elements of Reynolds’s and McQuarrie’s concepts. Reynolds was very much an “English gentleman,” but very firm, according to McQuarrie. “He said, in effect, you can design things over there in the corner; we’re gonna do our thing. But a couple of times, Kershner came by and said he was worried about the sets on Cloud City and could I do some paintings that enlarged them? Afterward, George said to Norman, ‘This is the way I want to see it.’ ”
HUMAN MISSILE
REPORT NOS. 93–98: MONDAY, JULY 16–MONDAY, JULY 23: STAGE 1—INT. REACTOR CONTROL ROOM, S391, U391 [LUKE KNOCKED THROUGH WINDOW]
From July 16 to 23, Hamill dueled and dueled with Anderson on the Reactor Control Room set on Stage 1, with Lucas checking in. “George said, ‘Hiya, kid. Are you having fun?’ ” relates Hamill. “I said, ‘Yeah, I’m having fun.’ And he said, ‘Congratulations.’
“I’m pleased that he’s interested enough to really oversee the whole thing,” Hamill adds. “It gives you confidence, really, and it’s certainly not a hindrance. He gets along well with Kersh and today he was very interested in making sure that when we lock blades with the lightsabers, we had a proper amount of tension there—you know, he has ideas about the swordfight. I think he must be pleased. He only tells you when you do things wrong.”
“When we were in the reactor room, with pieces of machinery being thrown at the artists, particularly Luke Skywalker,” Diamond says, “he stood a great chance of being seriously injured.”
“You had a very dangerous missile fired very close to you,” Arnold reminded Hamill. “The missile was lethal. I probably shouldn’t say this, but Peter Diamond described it to me.”
“Oh yeah, I was literally shaking with fear that day,” Hamill says.
“The missile itself was made of metal and wood, and was quite heavy,” Diamond says. “Obviously, if it had hit anyone at all, they stood a chance of being killed, because of the weight of it and the force that was being projected from the air machine.”
“The missile was fired by an air cannon, which was behind him,” Kurtz explains. “It wasn’t on the camera side shooting past him, although it looks that way on film. Both the special effects and stunt people felt that all of the glass would go outward, that there was no chance of danger. We went over that very carefully because I had felt originally that we should just shoot that as an insert and not have him in the wide shot. But Mark was fully 15 feet away from the closest piece of glass.”
“It’s unusual because we can’t put in a mini trampoline because it would be seen,” says Colin Skeaping, Hamill’s stunt double. “So I am doing a gymnastic-type movement, which requires running in from the back of the set, then turning to face the way I’ve come, to give me enough height and distance to get back out through the window. There won’t be any wires; it will be done straight backward through it.”
“Colin Skeaping was a stunt double and a competent gymnast, so to get the effect of the wind blowing, the gymnast did this marvelous round-out, followed by a back somersault,” says Diamond. “It gives us the impression he’s being sucked out of the window.”
Meanwhile, Lucas was reviewing all of Empire‘s diverse elements, spending a good deal of time with Kershner and Hirsch, but also taking time to watch others’ movies. “We just saw an interesting film last night,” he says, “which was made I think on a fellowship or on a grant from the American Film Institute. It’s called Eraserhead [1977], which is a most bizarre movie, but quite interesting. Stanley Kubrick had it and wanted to see it, so we watched it in the studio.”
“Some of the problems I’ve faced have been functions of the way in which the picture was shot, which go back to certain production difficulties,” Hirsch says. “In several instances, we’ve shot sequences over a period of weeks, so I find myself having to edit sequences without all the material, which becomes tricky. Also, because we are over schedule, George felt that it would be dangerous to wait until we got the whole film put together before we started our second pass. So what he did was to take the first three or four reels, which we’d felt in our last screening was where our greatest difficulties lay, and he started to do a second cut on them while I continued assembling other scenes for the first time.”
“My primary task is in the cutting room,” Lucas says. “The first thing I do when I arrive here is catch up on the cut film. Because of the time pressure, my main concern at this point is to work on a second cut while the editor works on the first cut. I’m going through the first three reels and revising the structure, trying to make the scenes work a little bit better. That way, when we wrap, we can be six weeks ahead of ourselves.”
“The problem is simply that in the first part of the film we have some exposition,” Kershner says. “Every film has this problem, [laughs] almost every film, and I’d like to bury the exposition as much as possible. So George is working on that.”
“Our problem in the first part of the film was to make the information clear,” Hirsch says. “When I had finished with the first three reels, they were assembled in script order. I hadn’t gotten to the next step, really. So George took the next step to analyze the problems and rearrange a few things, move a scene here, eliminate some things, and he added some miniature shots that we hadn’t had. Then we looked at what he’d done. Some problems became evident at that point.”
“There has been some disagreement about the reassembly of the first part of the picture,” Kurtz says. “But that’s natural. We always knew that there was a problem in the first half hour because a tremendous amount of expository material tended to slow the picture down.”
“Always in the beginning of the movie you have to explain what’s going on, what’s happening, and where we are,” Lucas says. “It’s counter to being entertaining. There are scenes that are developing ideas that will be paid off later in the movie, so what I’m trying to do now is to get through that as gracefully as possible.”
“George is not real generous with praise, you know,” Hamill confided to Arnold.
“Neither of them are—Gary, anyone,” Arnold replied.
“No.”
“You don’t really know how y
ou’re doing, do you?”
“Well, I’ve just adjusted to the fact that if I’m not doing it right, then they’ll tell me,” Hamill says. “But the one thing that I’m excited about is George has seen the swordfight dailies. That was the thing that was worrying me the most. So he’s seen the swordfight and he said that it’s terrific. He said it’s going to be the ‘Battle of the Century.’ ”
Audio element not supported.
Editor Paul Hirsch talks about the evolution of the storytelling as the first reel of Empire was cut, discussed, recut, and so on, while at Elstree Studios. (Interview by Arnold, 1979)
(2:27)
Luke is stalked by Darth Vader in the Reactor Control Room set.
Kershner directs Hamill.
Hamill then duels with Prowse.
Vader holds on to avoid being sucked out of the room.
Stuntman-gymnast Colin Skeaping performs the jump forward, then backward, through the circular window.
ELEVENTH HOUR
Between July 13 and July 20, Billy Dee Williams (39 days worked), Carrie Fisher (68 days), and Anthony Daniels (50 days) had completed their roles. The ailing young actress was probably relieved to return home, as her mother had telephoned a few days before with news that somebody was out to kidnap Fisher. For her last days in England, she was assigned bodyguards.
The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (Enhanced Edition) Page 38
