Lorne Peterson.
* * *
TIE Fighter
“In World War II the super dive-bombers had an artificially created siren wail created by air ducts,” Johnston says. “They didn’t serve any purpose except to create this noise, which would terrify people. It was intended that the TIE should achieve the same effect with just a menacing appearance. It was supposed to look terrifying even though it wasn’t necessary that all that stuff have a specific function.”
The acronym TIE was created by Lucas but not defined. “I came up with ‘twin ion engine fighter,’ ” Johnston adds. “There were other ideas, like ‘Third Intergalactic Empire,’ but I thought ‘twin-I engine’ made more sense.” Later the wail would be added by Ben Burtt.
Of the TIE fighters, Lucas says, “they were influenced by some paintings by John Berkey.”
A Johnston sketch.
The same sketch pinned up in the model shop.
* * *
PRODUCTION NEEDS POWER!
In September 1975 Lucas and Kurtz headed back to London for one week. At this time production supervisor Robert Watts officially started, as did set decorator Roger Christian and art director Les Dilley. Watts immediately launched into the hiring of the English crew, preparing in conjunction with Peter Beale short lists from which Lucas made final choices.
The Anderson optical printer (with Don Trumbull) was one part of a complex special effects system that also required particular celluloid considerations. “We had steadiness problems based on the perforations, so Kodak would send people out from Rochester [New York] to help us work this out,” Richard Edlund says. “They took pictures of my setup; they took us very seriously and were very helpful. I would order special films [laughs] that hadn’t been made since the Second World War because they had certain qualities that we needed for testing or whatever. So they would make up special batches of film for us and put it on ESTAR Base [ESTAR Base is coated on thin 0.0048-inch (120-micrometer) ESTAR (polyethylene tere-phthalate) base], which is like polyester but much harder and thinner.”
Operator James Van Trees, Jr., works with the Praxis VistaVision printer.
An aerial view of EMI (Elstree) Studios in England, which became one of two studios for the Star Wars production.
“I’d rather have a nasty person who’s good at his job than a nice person who’s lousy,” notes Watts.
Of course that crew would have to have a studio to work in. While Pinewood had been the front-runner, Barry had told Kurtz back in August that, given the size of the production, just one studio would not be enough. “When I got to the very first meeting, we sat down and I asked, ‘Where should we go: to EMI and Pinewood, or Pinewood and Bray Studios, or Bray and Shepperton, or Shepperton and EMI? It won’t fit into one studio, will it?’ ” Barry says. “Because, as I’d read through the script, I’d done a sketch plan of each set, and the size of that set. I then explained that if you are lucky enough to get up a big set, you shoot it in two days—and it takes another month to get up another set on that stage—which means you can only use a big stage twice in your schedule. So there was a shuffling of feet and looking around …”
Subsequent to Barry’s revealing ratio of sets needed versus stages available, Kurtz did more research. By fall the combination of EMI and Shepperton Studios had won out. Just a few miles north of London, EMI (also known as Elstree) was selected as the main studio because they had no scheduling conflicts; could offer Stages 1 through 9, except Stage 5, which they’d leased to Paul McCartney; and had the best facilities. The two largest sets would be built on Shepperton’s enormous H Stage. EMI would also allow them to maintain their own departments. “You can come in here and work completely independently of them,” Watts says. “You just rent the studio—four walls, if you like, which is a good system.”
“We took over completely: lock, stock, and barrel,” Barry adds. “We have a freelance crew here, and freelance people tend to be more on their toes.”
Because Lucas had elected to film in England, it was only natural that local actors be cast in many of the supporting roles. “My agent rang up and she said there was this man called George Lucas making a ‘space film,’ do you want to go and see him?” says Anthony Daniels. “She said they were very interested because I’m good at mime. She talked a lot about the film and said the only trouble is, the part is a robot. So I said, ‘Oh come on, I’m a serious actor. We’ve got to get on with my career, don’t we?’ But I went to Fox and met George, and I must say that I did immediately like him. We greeted each other and then there was silence. Fortunately for both of us, the production paintings were on the wall facing George. So I turned to the pictures and asked him about them, and he opened up and became quite dynamic. His excitement spilled over, and it was about an hour later when my meeting ended. A couple of days later, I picked up a script and read it for the first time—and it took me a long time to read, so I thought I’d better read it again. After reading it three times, I wrote out the story in sections and when I got to understand vaguely what it was about, I became very excited about the character See-Threepio. I realized he was not an ordinary robot and began to forget all of my original ideas about playing a robot.”
That robot’s costume dollars, however, were part of an overall special effects budget that John Stears had long since completed—but which was not forthcoming from Twentieth Century-Fox. “We had John Stears and about two or three special effects guys, but we needed to actually start construction on the robots,” Lucas says, “which meant a commitment of money. It meant hiring many more people and actually starting to build those robots. But Fox wouldn’t commit—and we needed them to commit in September.”
Elliot Scott had long since completed a set cost budget (moving on afterward to a prior commitment)—but as there was no green light from the studio, there was no money for that department, either. “I had meetings with Fox,” Kurtz says, “and they came up with certain budget estimates on set construction, wardrobe, and special effects—that’s one of the things that made the studio nervous: the special effects area. Between the first and second and third drafts, the story changed considerably. We redid the budget over and over again. One of the budgets I did was $13.5 million direct, without overhead.”
Lucas and Kurtz returned to the States for more budget talks, while Robert Watts and John Barry departed to location-scout in North Africa. Back at the source of Fox’s worries, ILM was indeed running up quite a bill—$241,026 by August 8—with operating costs of about $25,000 per week. “They had built a lot of equipment and were spending money right and left,” Kurtz says, “and we hadn’t seen anything yet. But we weren’t supposed to see anything until Christmastime at the earliest.”
“Fox didn’t know whether we were on schedule or ahead of schedule or behind schedule—or even if there was a schedule,” Shepherd says. “It was a new type of picture.”
Production designer John Barry (holding rolled-up blueprints), art director Norman Reynolds, Kurtz, and Lucas inspect the second studio, Shepperton Studios, standing in its enormous H Stage.
PURGATORY
SEPTEMBER 1975 TO DECEMBER 1975
CHAPTER FIVE
On October 1, 1975, Bunny Alsup traveled to England to set up house for Kurtz and his family, who followed on October 6, 1975. Lucas settled overseas shortly thereafter, as preproduction hit full speed in preparation for a March start to principal photography—at least, that’s what was supposed to have happened. Everything changed when, in mid-October, Fox’s worries mushroomed into full-blown panic.
Like nearly all the major studios during the 1970s, Twentieth Century-Fox was having good days and bad days, and many of its corporate decisions were based on transitory moods generated from the latest box-office or production reports. The fate of The Star Wars wasn’t being helped by Fox’s most recent big-budget experience: Lucky Lady, which was about to be released with much justifiable hand-wringing. “Lucky Lady was a fiasco,” Kurtz says. “And it had bee
n in the same position that we were: Lucky Lady had started as an independent picture. Stanley Donen was controlling everything himself. They were leaving him alone—but halfway through production he got into serious trouble. The studio had to keep flying down there and they eventually took over the entire production. That experience was very fresh in their minds when we were making our picture.”
In other words, Fox thought they could see the handwriting on the wall—and pulled the plug.
As of the middle of October, the studio imposed a “moratorium” on The Star Wars production. People were paid their salaries, but Fox refused to finance any further development until the board of directors meeting scheduled for December 13. At that time, the fate of the film would be decided.
“There was a bit of hysteria around here at that point,” Alan Ladd says, “because we’d just come off Lucky Lady, and the company was getting very bad press about it being the most expensive picture Fox had made since 1969. And Lucky Lady’s cost had at least been covered in guarantees, while the budget for Star Wars kept escalating and escalating [with no such assurances]. We kept setting certain budgets and it kept increasing and increasing and increasing. There was concern because the research and development kept going on and on, and nothing was being seen. A couple of people came in and said, ‘Look, it’s never going to stop unless you just say, That’s it.’ ”
Even with the paintings and concept models as visual aids, Fox was not clear about the goals of the film and the corresponding crucial role special effects would play. ILM’s investments in developmental technology “confused” them, according to Ladd, while John Stears’s feasibility study on the other side of the Atlantic didn’t please them.
“I just don’t think they were as aware as they should have been about how a film like this gets made and the fact that things have to be done way ahead of time,” Lucas says. “It takes six months to design a robot and build it. They just figured you could do it in six weeks, because they’re used to making television movies where you come in and three weeks later, everything is ready to go. This isn’t that kind of a movie, and the more time and money that’s spent up front, the less time and money you have to spend actually making the movie. You save money.”
“Fox’s position was no contracts, no approved budgets, no money,” Pollock says. “And they were all over in England preparing to shoot. The special effects unit had started. George was already $400,000 of his own money into the movie. Not yet reimbursed. He had advanced that much money, the bulk of which went to get ILM started, because Fox just wouldn’t pay for it until they had a budget approved by their board.”
Lucas’s accounting records reveal that he began making personal loans to the Star Wars Corporation in October 1973, for salaries and other expenses—and given Fox’s reticence he would have to continue subsidizing the film through the fiscal year 1975–76 for a grand total of $473,368. Though the trajectory of the film’s budget estimates is difficult to plot precisely, the basic upswing was from $3 million at the time of the treatment to about $6 million to $8.2 million; yet, strangely and somewhat irrationally—given that at one point the budget had ballooned to $15 million—Fox’s panic ensued after the budget had been brought back down. “My final realistic budget was $8.2 million direct [without overhead],” Kurtz says. “But they insisted we cut back. They stopped work on everything, and insisted that we cut the budget back to $7.5 million. So we went through the exercise of doing it. Laddie kept asking me if this was going to be realistic, and I said, ‘I doubt it. If you want to present it to the board that way, it’s up to you.’ ”
“George made the comment that it’s really a $15 million movie being made for half its budget,” recalls Lippincott.
“Ladd just couldn’t go to the board and say it was going to cost more than a certain amount,” Lucas says. But at the time, the director was unaware of Ladd’s relationship with the board and the intrigues at Fox, and could only stand by looking on in anger at what was happening to a film he’d worked on intensely for more than two years. Not surprisingly, on October 22, 1975, Variety noted the presence of Lucas and Kurtz “in town working on budgeting of their multi-million dollar sci-fi epic, ‘Adventure of Star Killer’ [sic].”
Lucas’s notes indicate his earlier thinking on the development of the Han Solo character, as well as his thoughts on the developing fourth draft—in particular the attack on the Death Star (first image).
As October crept into November, stress levels rose and the clock kept ticking. A March 28, 1976, start date had been agreed upon, which was key because of the location shooting in the desert. There was a certainty that if they went beyond that date, the actors in the robot suits would not be able to survive in the heat. So after feverishly reworking the numbers and making changes that would have a long-lasting impact on the film, Lucas and company turned in a revised budget for the amount specified, thinking it was done and approved—when Fox insisted that the $7.5 million include overhead, which meant that another $600,000 had to be shed to lower the budget to $6.9 million direct.
At this nadir, Lucas—because he still had no contract, was earning a pre-Graffiti salary as writer-director, and had invested a large percentage of his savings—saw little hope for success. “I thought Star Wars was going to make anywhere from $16 to $25 million,” he says, “which would have been successful. But when the price got way up there, I became very pessimistic. I could rely on a low-end box office of $16 million, but if it cost $8.2 million, after you put the advertising and all the costs on it, we’d barely break even. And when Fox took away six weeks of our preproduction time, I knew it was going to cost us three or four weeks of shooting time; as a result, those three or four weeks were probably going to cost ten times as much as the six weeks in preproduction, because there are so many more people involved.”
“George always described it to me as a kids’ picture, a little Disney film, that he didn’t think anyone would want to see, but he wanted to see it,” Steven Spielberg says. “He would get excited about it, telling me the story and showing me Ralph McQuarrie’s concept paintings, which were phenomenal, but in the next breath he would be putting down its commercial chances.”
“In the end,” Lucas sums up, “I really didn’t think we were going to make any money at all on Star Wars.”
Besides creating a dim view of the long term, the studio-sanctioned delay was wreaking havoc from Los Angeles to London.
ONCE MORE INTO THE BREACH
“We cut back 10 percent of John Barry’s art department budget, across the board, without even consulting him,” Kurtz says.
In a series of what must have been painful conversations back in London, Lucas and Barry went through the script, which Lucas was busy transforming into a fourth draft, and tried to find areas where they could decrease costs. “If we had a scene that involved a lot of extras that was tied in to another scene,” Lucas says, “we would either eliminate the scene with all the extras or plan on shooting them at one time. Part of it had to do with camera angles: If I wanted to shoot certain angles, we’d have to build more sets, so I would eliminate those angles. I cut out scenes. The compromises had started, and it was difficult—because we had already cut it down to the bone and then we were faced with the fact that we had to cut it even further.”
Lucas and John Barry look over set design maquettes, with Lucas checking out the available camera angles.
Redesigned Y-wing.
Budget cuts led to McQuarrie’s circa January 1976 painting (with redesigned Y-wing), as the rebel starfighters were moved inside on Yavin to save money. “I saw a navy pilot that was running across a flight deck with a clipboard in a World War II photograph,” McQuarrie says. “I took him, and repeated the same gesture, but changed the uniform and put a helmet on him. The ships of course were Joe Johnston’s design. The fighters were lined up in these long rows and were towed down to the launching platform, which had doors that opened, so the fighters would come shooting out. George liked
that basic idea; at least he thought it was fine to have the fighters inside, because it solved some problems of shooting them, too, because the overhead would just be black [instead of jungle].”
A maquette built by John Barry’s UK art department of the rebel hangar.
Cost-cutting measures went from the small—the Mos Eisley hangar was originally supposed to have a sliding concrete slab overhead—to the big: Alderaan was cut out of the picture, and all of its scenes were transferred to the Death Star. The rebel base, originally located outside in the jungle, was moved to a less technically challenging and cheaper set inside a temple; Ben Kenobi’s house was also scaled down from a multilevel structure to a one-story home with windows to make it easier to light. “Ben’s house was originally a very bizarre three-story cave, all carved out of rock, much bigger than it is now. Budget cuts forced us to change that,” Lucas says.
The delays affected personnel as well. Director of photography Geoffrey Unsworth had to back out, so Lucas replaced him with Gilbert Taylor. “A Hard Day’s Night [1964] and Dr. Strangelove [1964] were two of my favorite movies. I loved their style, and then I had seen Macbeth [1971] and had seen Gil worked well with color, too. But I was really more intrigued with the documentary style of A Hard Day’s Night and Strangelove. I wanted the film to look like those; that was really why I hired him,” says Lucas.
The Making of Star Wars (Enhanced Edition) Page 17
