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

by Rinzler, J. W.

  For her own part, Fisher thought it was odd that when sentenced to death, neither Han nor Luke say anything to Leia, who was left trapped as Jabba’s slave. “ ‘Don’t worry about me …’ ” Fisher would joke. “ ‘I’ll be fine!’ ” Fisher would note that it was while shooting these scenes that she decided to become a writer.

  As several weeks of filming were printed, viewing dailies became part of the day’s routine. “I go to rushes and if it’s something that concerns me and if it’s not quite right, then we’ll do it again,” says Kit West. “But I think it’s looking great.”

  “We’d be looking at the throne room stuff and I would have my hands over my eyes,” Tippett would say. “I couldn’t look, it was so horrible. You’d see that even the technically best work that we could do was still gonna look like what it was: rubber and paint and wires. Yet it’s a matter of choosing just the right moment and making sure you get the fifteen or twenty frames out of the shot that you need. All the character would come through the filmmaking—it’s George and Ben Burtt, those guys who will actually imbue the stuff with character.”

  “We had trouble with Snooty’s wires,” says Marquand of the singer puppet. “When she’s full length, she has wires to her hands and her back and her head. It was agonizing, because you think you can’t see them and then you see the dailies—and you can see them.”

  “I received my first lesson in what you don’t do in dailies,” Roffman would say. “There was some shot with Ewok babies, a second unit shot, and they were waving their arms over and over again, and I said something like, ‘Is he dribbling a basketball?’ You didn’t do that in dailies. Nobody said anything to me, but I just knew.”

  “We’d talk sometimes in the morning before dailies, sometimes after dailies,” says Kazanjian. “We ate lunch together just about every day. The editor Sean Barton would join us. Norman Reynolds would join us much of the time. Robert Watts would join us nearly all the time. So it was like a family. And George was very, very good. Not only is this his picture, he is a good filmmaker, a fast filmmaker, and he is also like an assistant director, where he can suggest ways of doing things quicker, like ‘Run this shot and start moving the dolly track over to the next shot’ or ‘Start pulling that wall out because in two more shots we’re going to be there and we don’t see it now.’ It’s not that he says it first … actually, yeah, he says it first.”

  On Friday, with production two days over, Davenport completed her role as Gargan the heavy dancer, after 10 days worked. And Dr. Collins was called in to see Fisher, who had been suffering from a heavy cold, had felt faint during the previous evening, and “had difficulty breathing, partly due to being in Boushh costume for a long period of time.” Mild bronchitis was diagnosed. “We were shooting the interiors in England in February during the coldest winter they’ve had,” Fisher says. “I was walking around in sandals and the fewest clothes I’ve ever worn in movies.”

  “Carrier Fisher was looking terrible and she wasn’t really performing well at first,” Kazanjian would say. “Carrie would be in the makeup department at 6:00 or 6:30 in the morning drinking a Coca-Cola. So I got the word to go talk to her.”

  “Everybody knows they were all off the wall at that point, a lot of drink and drugs and partying,” Barton would say. “She was at a very low ebb.”

  “I was bad,” Fisher would say of her early scene on the Ewok bridge. “It took me, I don’t know, at least a week to find who I was playing. I don’t know what happened. All of a sudden it was like, ‘I know somehow, dah dah dah. I’ve always known.’ I think it would require acting and I’m not much of an actress. I can play something close to myself, and I’m not putting myself down so you can reassure me that I’m really great. I’m, you know, serviceable. But it was hard to say, the dialogue was hard to—it was sort of sentimental and stilted, but somebody who is a good actress could probably do that.”

  Meanwhile second unit filmed five shots of Han in VistaVision, as he’s freed. “I had got to know Harrison a bit and he was always very nice,” Christian would say. “So they trusted me with that and I did him coming out of the carbon freeze. I remember distinctly, with the crew, we were always thinking, This is major stuff we’re doing, this will be memorable forever. George thanked me at the end of it, because I think it took the pressure off him.”

  SETUPS: 321, SCS. COMP: 14/132, SCREEN TIME: 31M 17S/120M

  Editor Sean Barton at his editiorial table, a KEM.

  Hamill (in street clothes), Marquand, and Ford between scenes.

  REPORT NO. 21: MONDAY, FEBRUARY 8; STAGE 1—INT. BRIDGE VADER’S STAR DESTROYER, SCS. 59 & 61 [SHUTTLE TYDIRIUM REQUESTS CLEARANCE], 106 [ADMIRAL PIETT WATCHES AERIAL FIGHT]; SECOND UNIT: STAGE 8—INT. JABBA’S THRONE ROOM, PICKUPS, SC. 16

  Roffman returned home on Sunday. Before leaving he’d sent a wire communication to Richards, Butler, and Co., concerning the contracts of Prowse, Mayhew, and Baker, noting that letters of engagement had been signed. David Prowse was therefore on set as Darth Vader on Monday.

  “I would like to think that I was a little bit more than a necessary appendage as far as Darth Vader was concerned,” he says. “Not only did I have to learn all the dialogue, I had to deliver all the dialogue, and everybody had to act around me all the way through. Obviously, what I did in the first film was okay or else they wouldn’t have engaged me for the second and third films. But it was an awkward situation.”

  In Prowse’s very first appearance on stage, at the Mermaid Theater in Don’t Let Summer Come, he had performed as “Death,” face unseen, dressed all in black, strangely anticipating his most famous role. Between Star Wars films, more recently, Prowse had worked on the BBC TV series The Rose Medallion (1981), playing a sympathetic simpleton; appeared on TV shows, such as Benny Hill; been cast as the Mascot of Road Safety in the UK; and continued running his gymnasium.

  For his first scene he would appear on the ship’s bridge. “I thought going in that I could manage with a very, very reduced set because I wanted as much as possible to keep a tight control on the budget,” says Marquand. “But as the day grew nearer and nearer to shoot the sequence, I began to realize that actually we’d have to build some more. Ironically, Norman Reynolds had already thought to himself, I don’t think he’s going to get away with this. So when it came down to my actually saying to Howard and Norman, ‘Look, I think we’re going to have to have a little bit more,’ Norman said, ‘Oh, I’ve got some extra pieces. I had them made anyway. We’ll paint them overnight and you can shoot tomorrow!’ ”

  Robert Watts in his office, managing the UK production.

  Dozens of stormtrooper outfits being prepared for the Death Star hangar scenes, in the costume department.

  Ewok costume rack.

  Admiral Piett (Ken Colley), Darth Vader (David Prowse), and a controller (Adam Bareham) on the bridge, circa February 8.

  In Arizona, work continued on the platform/Sarlacc pit at a cost of $317,189 so far, out of a budget of $400,000.

  “I walked onto the Star Destroyer set and there were red lights flashing and hitting the walls and stuff like that, so I said, ‘What’s this?’ ” Kazanjian would say. “Richard and his cameraman said, ‘It’s atmosphere.’ George came in just a few seconds later and said, ‘Get it out of there. Stop it.’ They didn’t understand that you have to follow what had already been established in the two other pictures.”

  Quickly shooting several scenes on Stage 1, Ken Colley as Admiral Piett completed his role after one day of shooting. Earlier, Sebastian Shaw, “cast as The Man” (code for “Vader unmasked”), had had a fitting and face mold from 9 AM to noon.

  “The final casting decision, the big one, was Vader,” says Marquand. “I’d had in my mind to choose one of the great English actors. I don’t know why. I got some photographs, prepared a short list, and sent them off to George. He came back and said, ‘I think you’re making a mistake. I think when that helmet comes off and you see the face of Laurence Olivier or John Gielgud,
people are not going to be able to take it seriously. I don’t think you should know that man.’

  “I thought about it for a while and I realized he was absolutely right. Because actually, the important thing is to find somebody who is just a person, a very ordinary face. In a sequence that is intrinsically moving, you just need a guy who can act that part.”

  “They decided that they needed a very experienced actor to play that very difficult scene,” Shaw would say. “And so they decided not to use David Prowse for it; they couldn’t use James Earl Jones, that magnificent American actor, because, quite frankly, Luke couldn’t have a black daddy. I don’t know why they chose me. I presume that the casting director had suggested various people, as they always do, and when I went up and talked to them, they liked what they saw. But they didn’t tell me what I was going to have to do, because they were being so careful.”

  Continuity Polaroid of Ford as Solo, filmed by second unit coming out of his carbon freeze, circa February 5, 1982.

  Fisher and Jabba between takes in the latter’s barge—a physically unpleasant set, circa February 22.

  Warwick Davis (Ewok) and Carrie Fisher on the Jabba’s barge set.

  Leia strangles Jabba on the barge.

  C-3PO between two arguing monsters, Ree Yees and Yak Face (who, presumably, replaced Ephant Man at the eleventh hour), in a scene that would be cut.

  Marquand speaking with Anthony Daniels (C-3PO) about a shot in which Salacious chews on his eyeball.

  Continuity reference Polaroids of scenes 31 (a bit of rancor dressing in the background in the form of a bronze sculpture) and 34 (Salacious and C-3PO), which also included a moment when “Leia struggles to reach a discarded laser pistol which is just out of reach,” just before R2 frees her from her chains.

  REPORT NOS. 22–24: TUESDAY–THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 9–11; STAGE 9—INT. JABBA’S BARGE, SCS. 23 [REE YEES SLUGS EPHANT], 27 [JABBA GIVES THUMBS DOWN], 31 [LEIA STRANGLES JABBA]; 25 [C-3PO TRANSLATES], 34 [SALACIOUS CHEWS ON C-3PO’S EYE]; SECOND UNIT: STAGE 1—INT. BRIDGE, VADER’S STAR DESTROYER AND PIT, SCS. 106, 111 [WATCHING SPACE BATTLE]; STAGE 8—JABBA’S THRONE ROOM, SC. 13

  With Lucas again sick at home, Marquand carried on. The director may have considered the throne room his worst experience, yet now on the barge set, he revised his opinion.

  “Undoubtedly the worst place of all and the hottest set was the interior of Jabba’s sail barge,” he says. “I had no idea one could suffer like that. It was even more packed with people. Alan Hume had to reproduce the incredibly harsh light of a desert exterior, even though we weren’t in the desert. Through these shutter things, we had to have a hellish bright light out there to make the interior nice and dark and smoky and mysterious.”

  “The most difficult in the lighting is the pressure one is put under, insofar as pace and speed of work is concerned, coupled with trying to produce very interesting lighting effects and visual imagery,” says Hume. “Sometimes I find this to be a very lonely and hard battle. After all, I am the only one who can see the finished image before it gets onto the film and I have to see this in my ‘mind’s eye’ before the lamps—be they brutes, 10 Ks, 2 Ks, minibrutes, and so on—make their contribution. I have to mold it into a visually, even possibly ‘artistically’ and dramatically interesting picture, at the same time interpreting the scripted sequence, to, I hope, the satisfaction of my director, producer, and production designer—trying also, not to be unkind to the leading lady; frequently being required to achieve this with a two and three camera set-up.”

  “I like to use two cameras,” says Marquand. “Sometimes, George, out of sheer enthusiasm, would stick in a third camera and I’d say, ‘Well, George, that’s your camera. I don’t know about that third camera.’ But in a big crowd scene, it can be quite useful.”

  “Alan did have taste, but he didn’t have opinions about lighting,” Barton would add. “You showed him what you wanted and he knew exactly how to do it. But he was very slammed by all these multi-camera setups, which suddenly appeared and which meant his lighting, everything, had to change. It was quite a major thing about it. He was also very protective of Richard and felt that the producers and George were putting too much pressure on him.”

  “Hume was perhaps not ultimately the most talented guy, but really a very competent professional,” Reynolds would say. “He came up with the goods and didn’t take all day; a very worthwhile sort of cameraman who was vastly experienced, of course.”

  “I thought a lot and talked a lot to friends about the lighting before starting,” says Marquand. “I knew that it could be better lit than Star Wars because I think that’s not at all a well-lit movie. But I also knew that the style in which George did Star Wars was absolutely perfect for the content, just spot on. And, for my taste, Empire Strikes Back was a far more stylish film, but it was almost overly beautifully lit. Kersh is a very, very stylish director. He can’t work any other way.”

  “A lot of work goes into the design of these films, which has to do with the actual design of the frame,” Lucas would say. “Color plays an extremely important part. The bad guys exist mostly in a black and white world; the good guys live in an organic world of browns and greens. Philosophically the bad guys live in an absolute world of black and white, where the good guys live in a more naturally nuanced world.”

  The barge scene was also a continuation of the creature theme, with myriad masked and outfitted extras. “We had all of these maniacs running around,” Marquand explains. “They really had the bit between their teeth. By then they were really going, because they had done all of Jabba’s palace and they were really gung-ho, these creatures. But I was on my last legs. God, it was hot.” It was so hot, in fact, that Marquand reversed his earlier decision and decided that pig guard extras could make the trip to Yuma—as temperatures on set rivaled those of the desert.

  “There are a few moments where you just want to give up,” says Daniels. “On one of those occasions, I physically gave up, which is very odd for me. The studio was so hot that as soon as I put my facemask on, sweat literally poured down my face. Then someone handed me a prop that I hadn’t been told about. I didn’t know what to do with it. It was too big and too awkward for me to hold. They yelled action and I grappled with it. I could feel it slipping—finally it came crashing down—and I just came apart. I thought to myself, I don’t have to do this. I don’t have to punish myself. Finally, they altered the prop so I could hold it and we finished the scene.”

  Jabba’s barge was comfortable, however, for at least one artist, whose bikini matched the climate. She also got to strangle her nemesis. “I was so very happy to kill this person—it meant I could talk again,” Fisher would say. “They asked me if I wanted a stunt double to kill Jabba and I said, ‘Really really not. I really, really want to kill him myself.’ ”

  “There is video content at this location that is not currently supported for your eReading device. The caption for this content is displayed below.”

  Printed dailies of Leia (Carrie Fisher) strangling Jabba aboard the latter’s barge, as directed by Marquand (off camera), January 1982. (0:53)

  MORE CLOSE CALLS

  Back on the set of Vader’s Star Destroyer, Christian was directing a complex second-unit shot in which an A-wing crashes into the bridge, with many cameras set up for coverage. The starfighter itself would not be seen, but special effects would simulate its disintegration and the destruction of the bridge with heavy physical debris.

  “That was the whole thing with the flying engine and a four or five camera setup with huge numbers of stunt people and everything,” Christian would say. “Kit West explained to me exactly what was going to happen, but that’s when I got a bit worried and thought, If this thing does overstep its mark, then these camera boxes are all going to go. And it did. The engine would have gone right into where they had all the expensive lenses and the spare parts for the cameras. Afterward, Robert Watts came over and said, ‘You earned your entire salary today. Thank
you.’ ”

  That Thursday, shooting second unit, Mike Carter completed his role as Bib Fortuna after 14 days worked and Jeremy Bulloch completed his role as Boba Fett after 12 days worked, with filming on Jabba’s throne room set complete. The Progress Report read, “There will be further shooting on Boba in the USA with a double.”

  A memo to the crew, signed by Lucas and Kazanjian, was circulated that day, noting that the academy had nominated Raiders for eight awards, including Best Picture, Director, Cinematography, Sound, Editing, Visual Effects, and Art Direction, and had awarded a Special Achievement Oscar for Best Sound Effects Editing to Ben Burtt and Richard Anderson. “The nominations would have not been possible if it were not for the six hundred of you here at Elstree Studios who gave your love, skill, and expertise to Raiders and we thank you for it.”

  ILM received a second nomination for Dragonslayer. (Though it wouldn’t win, future director Guillermo del Toro would say, “One of the best and one of the strongest landmarks that almost nobody can overcome is Dragonslayer. The design of the Vermithrax Pejorative is perhaps one of the most perfect creature designs ever made.”)