The Making of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (Enhanced Edition)

by Rinzler, J. W.

  In scene 2, it was not clear how many people would be in Vader’s shuttle, but a decision was required at once as to which stuntman would double for Vader, Bob Anderson or Alf Joint. Scenes 4, 69, and 95, all of which featured Vader’s shuttle in the docking bay, would be shot consecutively; a “dog” outside Jabba’s gate was nixed; in scene 8, R2 was to be knocked down stairs, using an empty droid shell; for scene 11, the bounty hunter’s “silver ball,” designed by Reynolds, was being built in the art department; a throne room musician, Droopy, would play a wind instrument; music guide tracks would be delivered by Lucas to the sound department.

  Several script changes were made at this time by Marquand, who gave Leia’s speech in the rebel briefing room to Mon Mothma. An explosion on Vader’s bridge “should take out two windows and send a fireball down the length of the bridge, setting two technicians on fire,” meeting notes read. “We should have some blood in this film. Not in Peckinpah proportions, but just to show when our two heroes—Chewie and Leia—are wounded.”

  “The Ewok set was very carefully planned by Norm and me, starting back in September,” Marquand says. “That was very complicated, because I’ve got to be able to shoot everywhere. The positioning of the huts and the main hut and what you see when you are in the main hut, this was all very important. And yet we had to have a quiet little place where Luke and Leia can meet.”

  Alan Rickman auditioned for Jerjerrod, with a “big, slow, low voice.” Sebastian Shaw had recovered and auditioned for “dad” at 11:30 AM; Michael Pennington arrived at noonish for the role of Jerjerrod.

  “Sebastian came in three times to audition for us,” says Marquand, “which is a tremendous tribute to him that he was prepared to give that time. He is a very, very well known English actor. Never stops working. Funny enough, he used to be a very popular juvenile lead in the theater as well. He was this beautiful young man.”

  On December 15, the actors who would be cast as the Emperor and Mon Mothma came in to audition: Alan Webb and Caroline Blakiston, respectively. The latter, it was noted, “can cry” if needed. Alan Webb, who was 75, walked in that afternoon: “old … [has] good eyelids … lots of energy for 90” [sic]. A prolific, long-storied, and respected thespian, Webb could trace his career back to at least 1938; he had more recently appeared in Michael Crichton’s The Great Train Robbery (1979). “In fact, someone who looked exactly like the ‘Emperor of the Universe’ walked into the office after I did,” says McDiarmid. “He was the right age and everything, although I’m not sure if he had the yellow eyes, or indeed, teeth.”

  “The Emperor was very important casting,” says Marquand. “We spent a long, long time casting the Emperor. Even well-known English actors came in and auditioned. Howard played a very important part in that whole thing because he was an excuse to say, ‘Well, Kazanjian doesn’t know your work, even though I do.’

  “But we were torn on whether the Emperor should be played by an old man or not, a very difficult decision to make. I finally persuaded myself that it would be better to go with an old man because he’d have qualities and characteristics that a young man couldn’t possibly have. So I chose a nice, crusty old actor.” Alan Webb was cast (though director, and infrequent actor, Lindsay Anderson may also have been offered the role, or at least was seriously considered: “Unfortunately I couldn’t take it because we’ll still be working on Britannia Hospital,” he wrote in a letter to a friend).

  Vader unmasked concept by Reynolds.

  Concept drawing of Darth Vader without his helmet, by Reynolds, fall 1981. His notes indicated that the collar would be the same prop as used in Empire and that makeup would create scar tissue where his ear would be.

  Conceptual progress of Oola, introduced in the revised second draft; she starts as an “exotic dancer” in a concept by Rodis-Jamero (left), October 1981, but becomes “Green lady dancer” in a later concept by Rodis-Jamero (right) dated November 1981. (Lucas had specified that the dancer be painted green.)

  GENESIS AND THE FLOOD

  Back in the States, Ben Burtt became a documentary filmmaker. The occasion was an incredible 10-day storm that swept through the San Francisco Bay Area, hitting its crescendo on January 3, 1982. Located at 321 San Anselmo Avenue, Lucasfilm’s editorial quarters were upstairs and its sound editing rooms on the ground floor—and anything on street level in downtown San Anselmo was suddenly in danger.

  “I arrived at the facility early in the morning and the water had already broken over the curb,” assistant editor Steve Starkey would say. “Howie Hammerman and Ben were there and we started moving everything off the floor or carting it upstairs, because this was very expensive equipment; in addition Ben had his sound effects library there. So it was sandbagging and carrying stuff—it was insane!”

  “The ground was saturated and the creeks filled up,” Burtt would say. “Water started coming under the front door, so we started to plug it. I had a choice at this point: Do I try to rescue the equipment or do I make a documentary film? I chose the latter. I had my Super-8 camera with me and rolls of film, oddly enough. I had a kind of newsreel cameraman’s desire, a secret wish inside of me, so I just abandoned the facility and let Howie and Gary Summers get the equipment up. I went outside and started filming the flood. The water got deeper and deeper, a foot deep, then two-feet deep and pretty soon it’s three feet deep. It’s startin’ to roar through downtown—and this is serious.”

  “It was astounding how fast the water moved,” Jim Kessler would say. “All we could do, fast as possible, was rip everything off the floor and stack it on film cores—little plastic, round, three-inch discs—going, ‘Oh, that’ll be okay.’ But the water would rise and we’d add another five film cores and the water would rise—and you just didn’t know when it was gonna stop!”

  “I kept running around filming things,” says Burtt. “I got a lot of great footage of cars being filled with water and water pouring through the bank. I got up on the roofs of the buildings and filmed people going by in canoes. All the windows broke out of a health food store, so bottles of medicine were floating down the street.”

  Around the corner, another film project wasn’t faring so well. Also owned by Lucasfilm, 165 Tunstead Avenue was occupied by director Carroll Ballard, a friend of Lucas’s, who was editing both picture and sound on Never Cry Wolf (1983). “The flood water came in and really took them by surprise, because there was nobody in the building when the water rose,” says Kessler. “When we got there later that morning, there was film floating in the water—the original sound elements. It was absolutely terrible. The sound editors were in tears.”

  “It was at a time when we were planning to move to the Kerner facility, Sprockets, over in San Rafael,” says Burtt. “The flooding necessitated making the move earlier.”

  “Within about three days we had completely moved out of the building into Kerner Boulevard,” Kessler confirms. “So rather than this very orderly, engineered move in three weeks, it took us about three days to get out of there. Just, ‘Boom, done.’ That’s how we ended up at Sprockets.”

  The Computer Division also moved from its Bel Marin Keys location into Sprocket Systems, which became Lucasfilm’s first full-scale postproduction facility—with dubbing stage, sound design studio, and editing suites—as what had been several small enclaves converged on Kerner.

  “It was ridiculous the diversity of things that were going on in there,” Kessler continues. “It made sense because the Computer Division was supposed to be developing tools for postproduction, but almost no one understood what they were all about. They understood it, but the business side certainly didn’t. It was oil and water. The computer guys never worked during the summer, because that was when they wrote their grants, so it was always funny when the business world was trying to keep their projects on schedule: These guys would all kinda lay back and go, ‘Well, you know, not much gets done during the summer.’ Very funny.”

  “None of them made any money—the Computer Divisi
on, Sprockets—they were all drains because they were just starting,” Greber would say. “There was a pretty good spirit there, but the computer people were in a world of their own and they felt that they were very different. So how do you deal with people with extraordinary skills in a business environment? Not easy.”

  “Based on some tests that Triple-I—Information International Inc.—did for us on Empire, George realized that computer graphics was just around the corner from being able to put thousands of X-wings into the sky from a single program,” Richard Edlund would say. “And the thing is, if you don’t jump on the bandwagon and start researching these areas, somebody else is going to do it and five years from now you’re going to be way behind. But if you channel some funds into it and start developing it, you’re always going to be two steps ahead of everyone else.”

  During this time, in fact, the Computer Division was creating its first standout visual effect, for Star Trek II: a technological device is revealed, on a vidscreen within the film, that can transform a lifeless planet into an Eden within days instead of millennia. “It was a very influential piece,” Ed Catmull would say. “The studio wanted to demonstrate the ‘Genesis’ effect. So they came to us and said, ‘Can you do this?’ The concept they’d come up with was to take a moon-like planet and then shoot this thing at it; then a fire goes over the planet, then water and plant life—a flyby, which Alvy Ray Smith directed. He was proud of the fact that George came in afterward and said, ‘Nice camera move.’ ”

  Matte painter Chris Evans worked on the Genesis effect with the first digital painting system. “They let us pick up this pen and said we could only do straight lines and primitive stuff. We asked about clouds and were told, ‘No way.’ We said, ‘Okay we’re going to do clouds.’ ” In the end, they were able to do feathered edges on a little weather effects cloud system mapped on a terrestrial globe.

  When Hamill heard ILM was working on Star Trek II, he protested to Lucas, “You traitors! George, how could you do that?” To which Lucas replied, “It’s a business, kid.”

  It was a business and a platform for technological creativity. “On some level this was all inspiration from George,” Kessler explains. “George has the ability to inspire people to do things they would’ve never done before. I saw that all the time. George wanted to change the way the business operated both technically and maybe even culturally. And so he charged those people that he’d hired to come up with ways of changing the art form or whatever; he was constantly pushing in that direction.”

  Two of Lucas’s handwritten revisions to Kasdan’s third draft, dated January 4, 1982. On the back side of a script page, Lucas writes that, when Jabba tries to kiss Leia, Lando attempts to lead her away, but she says, “I’ll be all right.” Lando replies, “I’m not so sure.”

  Lucas’s new dialogue for Yoda just before his death warns Luke of the dark side’s temptations, anger and aggression—“Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.” A note atop the page, “Blue,” indicates that this script page was to be kept top secret.

  EMI Elstree Studios, circa 1982, located in Borehamwood, England, about 20 minutes north of London.

  A CONSTELLATION OF STARS

  The film’s principals arrived in England a few days after New Year’s, with Fisher first. Between sequels, she had appeared on Broadway in Censored Scenes from King Kong (1980); starred with Chevy Chase in Under the Rainbow (1981), coincidentally with a large cast of little people; and made a guest appearance on the TV show Laverne and Shirley alongside Penny Marshall, as a bunny in the episode “The Playboy Show” (1982).

  Mark Hamill settled in, accompanied by his wife, Marilou, and son, Nathan (born during principal photography on Empire), as did Billy Dee Williams. Ford was supposed to fly in at the same time but arrived last, to the surprise of some, in a wheelchair due to lingering back pain. He checked in to his hotel with Melissa Mathison, who had written the script for E.T. Ford, Mathison, and Fisher had recently vacationed together in Hawaii.

  “We are a club,” the actors had told Marquand. “And you’re now an honorary member.” “They all said this with a certain note of warning,” he says. “They said, ‘We hope that you fit in. Good luck.’ ”

  “The club was really most of us,” Fisher would say. “It wasn’t just me and Mark and Harrison. It was a whole crew of people, because we had all done all the movies together. So there weren’t three of us; there was 100 of us: the props guy, the three assistant directors were awesome, and the effects guys, and, you know, it was just a blast.”

  The production brain-trust walking outside Elstree Studios (photo by Gary Kurtz): Marquand, Lucas, Kazanjian, and Watts, aka “The Notorious San Rafael Gang of Four” in a humorous profile write-up by an unknown person (below).

  Wednesday, January 6, was a big makeup and costume fitting day. “In a way, the first two films were an elaborate setup for Jedi,” says Hamill. “I think people really sense that this is the final chapter in the story—so far—and not a cliffhanger. It’s the big finish—all stops out, all systems go. My costume reflects that. During Star Wars, I was in a white, floppy rag-doll-type outfit. For Empire, I was in a militaristic-looking khaki costume. Now I wear the black uniform of a trained Jedi Knight. But the question is: What kind of Jedi? A wizard, a religious figure, or just a glutton for punishment?”

  “Luke’s outfit went through incredible changes,” says Marquand. “We just worked and worked and worked. George really wanted Luke to wear black.”

  “That was completely George,” says Rodgers. “He told me, ‘That’s what it is—just copy the white one from Star Wars in black.’ ”

  “George was a little worried about my costume, that I would come off like a Hitler youth or something a little too stark,” Hamill adds.

  “I hated the costumes of Empire,” Marquand continues. “I couldn’t believe the way Princess Leia was dressed in Cloud City. It was a disgrace. This beautiful girl in this terrible brown and white outfit. It was just a joke. The interesting thing about George is that he thinks the costumes should be neutral, so that you don’t really look at them. But you need to look at them if they’re going to say something special. Like Princess Leia’s outfit on Jabba’s barge. It’s a great costume; it’s outrageous to dress like that. I always thought that Carrie was a very sexy girl, so we came up with this thing. Well, she was very embarrassed to try it on the first time, which is not surprising.”

  “George had brought me up to San Francisco and showed me a picture of this bathing suit—to frighten me into exercise, I think,” Fisher would recall. “He succeeded. The other thing was that they didn’t want me to have any lines on my body: ‘There can be no wrinkles.’ In those days, there was no working out, but I bought those weights that you put around your ankles to do leg lifts, but, thank God, I was only like 23.”

  Although he probably skipped that particular outfit, Marquand tried on most of the costumes himself to see how they worked and what the limitations of the actors would be.

  “I just knew the sandstorm was going to be a disaster,” Marquand says, “and when we shot some tests, it was. So I telexed Aggie to make some terrific, spacey goggle-type things and cloaks, which they could have picked up from the skiffs.”

  Before shooting could at last begin, the actors and Marquand had to attend medical insurance exams with a Dr. Gayner in Belgravia. Kazanjian had a meeting with Malcolm McDonald, Arthur Carroll, and Watts, negotiating the insurance policy’s final figures. “The insurance costs $4 million,” says Kazanjian. “We had to make certain decisions: If the film stock was bad, if there was a fire, what do they pay for? What if the entire studio burns? We decided that the worst thing that could happen would be a block of stages burning down …”

  Audio element not supported.

  Producer Howard Kazanjian, in the thick of production, goes over some of what a producer’s role is. (Interview by Garrett, February 1982) (0:56)

  FOUR DAYS TO DAY ONE
<
br />   George and Marcia Lucas arrived in London on Thursday, January 7, with their baby, Amanda. Lucas had brought the shooting script; the temporary music soundtrack for Jabba’s throne room sequence, which John Williams had recorded only three days before; and a Betamax copy of the two-and-a-half-minute bike chase videomatics. Although that sequence would be shot much later, many of the cast and crew needed to have an idea of what the action would be like.

  “I was already in London when we got the final final draft,” says Kazanjian. “The day he arrived, George came to the studio and we walked the sets.”

  The only change that had been made to the third draft, so far, was that the rebel briefing room scene had been revised, with Ackbar no longer speaking an alien language. Lucas had hand-carried it over because the script was late and for security’s sake. Only key department heads or executives were allowed to read it—and only three people had scripts with the secret blue plot-reveal pages: Lucas, Kazanjian, and Marquand. Actors would receive those pages as needed and only just before filming; in the interim they were given the scripts that had key scenes rewritten to disguise the twists.

  “As soon as I was given the script I was told which scenes were false,” says Hamill. “They were only willing to tell me that in person, rather than over the phone or in a letter. I felt like Boris Badenov in Rocky and Bullwinlkle, but it was all part of the fun. It set me thinking about what the real scenes could be.”