Inside the Star Wars Empire

by Bill Kimberlin

  The next to go was Norby. This was a lot messier and was preceded by a public humiliation where he was ordered to go before an audience of employees and be lambasted with questions about where Scott was, since there had been no announcement yet. Scott couldn’t talk and wasn’t coming into the office anymore, so his allies engineered the ruckus.

  Making a movie is a lot like fighting a battle, so if your generals are fighting each other instead of the enemy, it is usually best to fire them both, and that is what George did.

  Spaz and Mark Dippé survived, but they could never go back to the Ranch or work on any Star Wars films, ever.

  Off the Ground

  Paul McCartney came to ILM to do a music video with his wife Linda and his band members in black Mercedes sedans. He had been impressed with the visual effects we did for a British Petroleum commercial and wanted an effects-driven video for his new single, “Off the Ground” (1993). The video would be shot at the Ranch on the scoring stage, and ILM would do the shots of Paul flying, using our big blue-screen stage.

  Wherever Paul goes, security is a major factor. His fame and continued success had kept him in the spotlight and had allowed him to buy valuable music libraries of 1960s rock ’n’ roll classics as well as maintain a fortune in the hundreds of millions of dollars. But John Lennon’s death by assassination and the vagaries of a wild and unpredictable public had made him and his group understandably fearful of traveling without protection. The Ranch, being a private fiefdom of sorts, was the perfect location for Paul to work without fear of interruption.

  The Ranch complex is entirely fenced and surrounded by tall Marin County hills in a naturally secluded area, with its own security, fire, and maintenance staff. A large wooden gate keeps out anyone not employed or having business there. When you drive up to the gate it opens automatically, which for some reason seems to amaze people when you take them there. However, just a short distance up the road is a guard house where each visitor is closely but politely questioned.

  Paul and Linda seemed jolly and in a kind of “away from home” mood when I passed them on the Ranch one day on a walk from the technical building to the main house. Employees had been given instructions not to approach them and certainly not to ask for autographs.

  The autograph thing I had always thought to be very unprofessional. George would sign things for children, but when his executives brought a bunch of mementos into to a meeting one time, he set them straight: “This is a business, not a fan club.” On the other hand, I saw him sit down after we finished The Phantom Menace and sign things for his employees for hours to thank them for all their hard work. I thought it odd to be asking colleagues, even if they were famous directors or stars, for autographs.

  In any case, this rule was mentioned several times during the McCartneys’ stay, especially when they came down to our company for the flying shots. Paul had to be hoisted way up into the air by a system of rigging operated by specialists who normally work in the San Francisco theaters and Opera House. This can be dangerous, so the real pros don’t use any mechanical motors; they work the rigs all by hand so they can instantly tell if something goes wrong.

  During this time, my friend and fellow visual effects editor, Mike Gleason, was working on a script that involved American Indians called Wisdom of the Elders, and he had a friend named Dickie Dova who was one of the guys on the set. Dickie had been an Ice Follies comedian/skater, and his father had been a famous comedian in vaudeville. Both were showmen and acrobats, but the father was also noted for having survived the crash of the Hindenburg, the German airship that had exploded on landing at Lakehurst, New Jersey, in 1937. The elder Dova had used his acrobatic skills to jump from the huge burning dirigible and roll on impact, breaking his fall. Every major anniversary of the famous disaster found the father on the news recalling his feat.

  The fact that so many people like Dickie worked for ILM was one of the fascinating things about the place. There was an ex–special forces guy who served in Vietnam who was now a brilliant model maker, a guy from Montana who had been with the Swiss Ski Patrol and did the opening ski stunts for a James Bond film, a guy whose grandfather invented the Yellow Pages, the kid who created Photoshop, the founders of the Pixar movie studio—the list was endless.

  Some were showmen, some entertainers, but all were enthusiastic creative people of one kind or another, so the “talent”—the actors, directors, and musicians who came to us for our expertise, no matter how famous—seemed to mesh easily with them.

  After days on the big stage, Dickie, a good storyteller, had struck up quite a small-talk relationship with both Paul and Linda. At some point Mike’s American Indian script came up, and Linda was immediately intrigued and wanted to see it, so Mike came over to the stage. At the door he ran into the producer in charge of the music video, who reminded him that it was a closed set. With a quick “Linda invited me,” he was soon standing talking to Linda, as Paul swung on wires high above.

  Mike had made a video to introduce his Indian project, and Linda agreed to a screening on the weekend. She then said, “I’d like you to meet Paul.” Here I must interject that Mike was, and is, a record collector, and he had brought his Abbey Road album down to his editing room that day, just in case. “Do you think Paul would mind signing my album?” he asked. And Linda said, “I’m sure he would love to.” Mike ran to get his album. So much for closed sets.

  When Mike returned, Linda introduced him, and Mike showed Paul his copy of Abbey Road. On the cover of this album, released in 1969, all of the Beatles are crossing the street, Abbey Road, in a single file but with Paul inexplicably in bare feet while the rest of the group is wearing shoes. This unusual cover photo had caused intense Beatle fan speculation at the time, which then exploded into rumors that Paul had died.

  Paul looked at the album and said, “Ah, Abbey Road, lot of controversy about that picture. I’ll tell you how it happened that I had no shoes in that shot. The photographer wanted us to just walk across the street in a single file. Well, when we got all ready, he said we had lost the sun and we would have to wait. So we all sat in chairs at the side of the road for quite some time. We thought it was never going to happen. Well, sitting there my feet got hot, so I took off my shoes. Then, all of a sudden the photographer starts yelling that the sun has come out and we have to get the shot right away. So that’s why I’m in bare feet. That’s all it was.”

  For the weekend screening Linda and Paul were both present and Mike had arranged to gather together some of the people helping him with the potential film. He brought his producer and some others involved in the project, the most impressive of which was an elderly Indian chief or shaman who everyone called “Grandfather.” This man was one of those rare people who alter the atmosphere just by entering a room. Gray-haired and dressed in traditional Indian garb, he had a real presence without saying a word.

  Linda McCartney was a vegetarian, but beyond that she was also a vocal activist for the vegetarian cause. Her feelings on the matter were so strong that she questioned nearly everyone she met and proselytized her views. Naturally, my friend Mike was nervous enough about this screening because if it went well, the support of the McCartneys could be invaluable to him. In fact, without them, or someone like them, it was unlikely that the film could be made. Linda had already mentioned the idea of Paul doing a benefit concert at an Indian reservation, so things were looking good.

  Then—to Mike’s horror—before the screening could begin, Linda insisted on interrogating everyone in the theater on the subject of meat, mostly the eating of. Well, Mike’s producer claimed that her doctor had ordered her to eat some meat, but other than that, she was against it. The others made similar excuses or denied eating meat at all. However, as Mike started to sink lower into his seat at the thought of what the elderly chief might say, Linda worked her way down the aisle of seats toward the eighty-year-old American Indian.

  No one s
aid anything, but they were all thinking the same thing: What possible answer could he give? His tribe had sustained themselves on buffalo and deer meat for at least 10,000 years.

  As Mike held his breath, Linda finally reached Grandfather and asked what his views were on this subject. I must say that the chief was no phony. Without rising from his seat or raising his voice, he took charge of the moment like a great actor, and when he spoke, it was impossible to not strain to hear.

  “All the animals are gone,” he said.

  We all turned our heads back toward Linda. There was a great pause while she pondered what he said. It had been the perfect response. She had nothing to say, so she sat down while our confederates in the projection booth immediately dimmed the lights and started the video.

  For the record, no film was ever made. The McCartneys finished up their work and left in a few days. It happens a lot in the movie business: You get very close, and then it all goes away in a puff. This is why I have always felt such a strong bond with anyone who is trying to make a movie. It is an incredibly difficult thing to pull off, and I know that because I’ve done it myself.

  Defining Myself

  I once read a great description by a senior executive outlining the Hollywood hierarchy. It went something like this: “There is the major motion picture from a big studio, then there’s the independent successful film, then big television, then the good art film, then the bad one, then bad television, then schlock movies, and finally, celebrity boxing, the bottom rung.” I overheard it put another way in an L.A. restaurant one time: “Spielberg and those guys are on top. I’m on the sleazebag level. Below me are the nobodies. At least I’m a sleazebag and not a nobody.”

  I fell somewhere between the art film and the schlock moviemaker. George used to say, “There are a lot of pencils and typewriters in the world but not a lot of novels. Why? Because it takes guts to write a book.” My goal was to keep on working and make whatever creative projects I could. For me, it has always been, how can I support myself and still live a creative life? It is not, how far can I climb up some employment ladder?

  The inevitable question at parties was, “What do you do?” I sometimes had trouble answering that one. If I said that I worked for Lucasfilm, that would end the chance that anything else would be discussed during the evening because everyone wanted to hear about what they thought of as a glamorous job. The next line would be, “Oh, you have a creative job?” These were people that worked for insurance companies or banks, and they had a different perspective than I did. I was certainly no big success, but it seemed like it to people who were outside our little world.

  The movie jobs that I had had were certainly unusual by most standards. I had worked as a documentary filmmaker, making my own films, and as an editor on both my own projects and those of others. Now I was a visual effects editor on the largest films of my generation. I once calculated that when I started, there were probably only about ten visual effects editors in the world. Not that that meant anything. The biggest guy in visual effects at that time was probably Dennis Muren, a multiple Oscar winner, and even he was destined to be a mere footnote in movie history, if that.

  So who was I really? Where did I come from? My father was a mystery to me because I was too young to remember him. I knew how to do research from my documentary training, so I started looking into my family. I needed to answer some questions that went all the way back to the movie director internship that I had sabotaged because I was alone in the world. If I could just place myself in the context of my family, whether they were alive or not, it might help.

  I would get a letter once in a while from my Aunt Neva, who was in her nineties and my father’s sister, so I went to see her in a nursing home and tape-recorded her memories almost like in an interview. This became immensely valuable to me as time went on. It was a reference that I would return to whenever I could find the time to look into things.

  One thing Aunt Neva said when asked about my father’s family history was, “It’s all in the Bancroft.” I had visited this library at the University of California, Berkeley, many times. It was originally the personal library of Hubert Howe Bancroft, who had an early bookstore in San Francisco and became obsessed with collecting and recording early California history. Among its special collections are the Mark Twain Papers and the Oral History Center, which contains interviews of California historical figures who Bancroft had sought out.

  Prior to the Internet, I would find a weekday here or there to do research. Originally it was at the Mark Twain Papers because I was planning a documentary on Twain and Ulysses S. Grant. Twain’s daughter had donated everything to the Bancroft, which was right in my backyard of Berkeley. If I could find extra time, I would try exploring family history at the library.

  It was supposed to be “all in the Bancroft” but where? I couldn’t find a lot, just bits and pieces, until the Internet became available. Sometime in 1989 I signed up for an Internet connection with CompuServe, the first commercial online service to offer Internet connectivity. Now I could do research from my home. I typed in my great-grandfather’s name, James M. Kimberlin, and did a search. I had done this in person at the library, but every collection was in a separate catalog, so it took forever. The online version searched them all at once and, bingo! It said there was a twelve-page oral history made of J. M. Kimberlin in the 1880s.

  This is what I learned from those twelve pages and where they led me. My great-grandfather had also been orphaned early in life. His parents had both succumbed to yellow fever on an extended visit to Alabama from their farm in Fincastle, Virginia. James and his siblings were supported by leasing out the family slaves. Somehow, and this was fairly rare, James got a classical scholar’s education, graduating from Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in 1851 with a degree in the ancient languages, Latin and Greek. When he returned to Fincastle, the family not only freed its slaves, but also bought them passage to Africa at a cost of $1,000. This act did not sit well in the South and they almost lost their lives because of it, so they moved to California.

  In 1847 the wages in San Francisco were about six dollars a month. Then something happened. On January 24, 1848, James Marshall discovered gold at John Sutter’s millworks on the South Fork of the American River. The place was called Coloma. Shortly thereafter it was almost impossible to hire anyone to work for wages. In fact, one Colonel Richard Mason (no relation to my mother’s family of Masons) found his soldiers deserting at every turn. “The struggle between right, at six dollars a month,” he said, “and wrong, at seventy-five dollars a day, is a rather severe one.”

  The Times of London disapproved, writing: “The effect produced in California by this new source of wealth has been anything but beneficial to the colony or advantageous to the public service . . . From the fact that no capital is necessary, a fair competition in labour without the influence of capital, men who are only able to procure a month’s provisions have now thousands of dollars of the precious metal. The labouring class have now become the capitalists of the country.”

  While I was only looking into my own family history, I could see in this newspaper’s scolding attitude that upstart miners were upsetting the natural order of things at the beginning of a new era. Over the next 170 years or so, individuals would come here where my family had lived, and where I now lived, to defy conventional thinking. This unusual gold-rush event had kick-started something that even today is far from over. The future seems to happen where there is so little past.

  Great-grandfather Kimberlin, the scholar, came in 1852 but not for the gold. He came on a mission to help found the College of the Pacific. However, when his scholarly training in the ancient world couldn’t feed his family, he quit and went into farming. In 1875 he founded the J. M. Kimberlin Seed Company, which became the largest seed grower on the West Coast, owning at least 300 acres of land and leasing more. He finally found the capital in farming that those few l
ucky gold miners had obtained. He became wealthy and built a Victorian mansion in Santa Clara. They called him “The Seed King” and he refused to educate his children, since he felt strongly that his fancy education had done him no good. This land is now known as Silicon Valley.

  By the time my father came along, the “no education rule” must have been dropped, because he graduated from Stanford Medical School as a physician and surgeon in 1911.

  When I was born, my family lived in a large three-story house on a double, almost triple, lot in the Forest Hills section of San Francisco. This is where the professional class lived—lots of doctors, lawyers, and business executives. Willie Mays lived near here but in a newer section. Ours was the old section. In 1940 “The Doctor,” as the rest of the family referred to him, married my mother, who was from the Mason Brewing family of San Francisco and Marin County.

  In the early 1950s my father started having a series of strokes. I didn’t know this until I was in my early twenties, but being a physician he knew the prognosis, and rather than being an invalid to a young mother, he went down to his large gun locker in the basement and ended it with a shotgun. My brother says that the strokes had changed his personality and they must have, because one would think that a doctor would have other less-spectacular ways of checking out. I hate to think of my mother having had to go through that.

  My mother’s side didn’t come for gold either, but this great-grandfather, John Mason, also became a prominent man in San Francisco at this time. He was not only a successful brewer, having established Mason’s Brewery, one of the first in the city, but he also built the first synagogue in San Francisco and the first U.S. Mint. They really needed a mint because of all the gold pouring in from the mines. Between the years 1851 and 1853, today’s equivalent of $9 billion had been exported out of the country as gold dust and was lost to the nation. Coinage reduced the drainage, and went a long way toward winning the Civil War for the North.