So, Luke, tell me about your sister
Mark Hamill answers questions about 'Star Wars' DVD
By Douglas Hyde
Special to CNN.com
Monday, September 20, 2004 Posted: 1:09 PM EDT (1709 GMT)

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- Mark Hamill became a star with the original "Star Wars" trilogy -- and he's been inextricably tied to the blockbuster series ever since. He talked with CNN about the new DVD edition and the making of the films.

CNN: Some fans are nostalgic for the films in their original form, others' tastes run toward the modern, fixed-up versions. What's your own personal preference?

MARK HAMILL: Well, it's hard for me because I am a purist. I say I want to see not the colorized version of "King Kong," I want to see the black-and-white one as it was released in the theaters.

But knowing George, though, in "American Graffiti" his character was played by Charlie Martin Smith, who was a mechanic, who loved machines, who loved taking apart engines and cleaning them and putting them back together and souping 'em up and adding exhaust pipes or whatever. That's in his DNA. So it reminds me of someone who owns an elaborate train set and you only see them every six months but everytime you do his train set's slightly changed, there's a new bridge, new tunnels, new billboards and trees. That's just George. ... He will always, I think, want to play with it and make it better.

CNN: I read an interview with ["Star Wars" producer] Gary Kurtz where he revealed "Return of the Jedi" was originally supposed to be darker than it turned out to be. Would you have liked it better if it had been?

HAMILL: I haven't been shy about saying that. When I read the third one I mostly was upset with the cavalier attitude towards Boba Fett -- he had been built up as this monumental bounty hunter and he ... just flies away. I thought that was going to be a major revelation, off comes the helmet, oh my God it's my mother, she's a double agent working for the good guys, who knows.

I mean we had all these nutty sort of [ideas]. We were just like you -- hey George, wouldn't it be great if. ... And I complained.

But I answered my own question because he reminded me the original intent was to do fairy tales for very young children. And he was ignoring the pressure of what happened to the movies by going back. ...

[When Lucas first made "Star Wars," which later became "Episode IV: A New Hope"] he didn't know if he was going to be able to go past Episode Four, so he made the climax the [destruction of the] Death Star. If he had known he was going to be able to make three, he probably would have saved that for the final of the third.

CNN: But of course the big revelation in that movie was that Luke and Leia were brother and sister. Was that something you guys knew from the start of the trilogy [or did Lucas invent it between "Empire" and "Jedi"]?

HAMILL: No, we didn't know. In fact, I tried to get George to admit, I said, come on you made that up on the plane ride over here. He said, no, I had the whole thing written.

CNN: I ask because there's that scene in "The Empire Strikes Back" where Leia gives Luke that lingering kiss on the mouth and when I see it now, I think, "Eeeww!"

HAMILL: Does she really? Oh, that's right, like in the hospital scene.

Well, you see, we are of like mind. Because we felt sort of maybe the same thing, that he had like 90 percent of it and as he tweaked it towards the start date, he came up with embelishments. But he's an enigmatic guy.

CNN: If Lucas ever made a sequel trilogy, would you be interested in being a part of it?

HAMILL: One side of me says, look there was a beginning and an end, I loved every minute of it but it's over. Then you have these fans that say, Luke just becomes a Jedi and that's the climax of the third one. It's like 007 getting his license to kill and then not telling any stories. I said, wow, you have a point. But that's from a fan point of view. From my point of view, it's over.

CNN: Before you go, one last question: what was the funniest thing Harrison Ford did on the set?

HAMILL: Harrison's one of the funniest people. He can make me laugh just like that.

We're standing out there on the barge of Jabba's, ah, you know whatever that floating ship out in the desert in the third one, but he just immediately looks over at me and he throws me this Bing Crosby kind of line, "That was a nice little mess you got me into, Buddy Boy." And I, immediately I'm Bob Hope. We were just, such a thin layer away from being in tears.

We laughed so hard making those movies, it's hard not to. Obviously, I don't want anyone to think we didn't take it seriously and we didn't understand the intent of what you're doing. But at the same time, when you realize that you're a grown-up working with a big giant worm, some monkey people, a couple of, you know, people with bat wings, it's pretty hard to take yourself seriously. And I thought, if the audience has even a miniscule amount of the fun that we've had making these things, it's all good, it's all good.

fun story - thanks!

My favorite Mark Hamill quote was when someone asked him if he had any involvement with The Phantom Menace, and Hamill said "well, apparently for $8.50, I get to watch it."

Anxiety said:

I dig Mark Hamill. He's pretty down to earth. He's also done some cool voice-overs in some of the video games I have.

OdysseyMiles said:

he was also the voice of Joker in the batman cartoons.

he's so dreamy!

ok, just kidding. that was my inner fanatic coming out for a breather.

OdysseyMiles said:

he was also the voice of Joker in the batman cartoons.

he's so dreamy!

ok, just kidding. that was my inner fanatic coming out for a breather.

MrJoker said:

Now that's a smile.

Naked Wookiees and broken R2-D2s
Tales from making the 'Star Wars' trilogy



LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- When it comes to "Star Wars," maybe there's too much gravity in space.

Fans invariably take "Star Wars" too seriously, but the people behind the sci-fi series recall the experience as a surreal comic opera.

Training a monkey to play Yoda? Studio complaints that Chewbacca was pantsless? The only thing that worked on R2-D2 was the dwarf inside?

As the original trilogy heads to DVD for the first time Tuesday, the madcap tales told by those who lovingly toiled on "Star Wars," "The Empire Strikes Back" and "Return of the Jedi" demystify three of the most revered sci-fi films of all time.

'It ain't that kind of movie'
Some films can be endlessly dissected and debated. But Luke Skywalker himself says "Star Wars" was just meant to be fun.

Twenty-seven years after the first movie debuted, actor Mark Hamill said he is amused by all the fact-checking fans do. One recent Web site shocked him.

"I think it was speculating on the administrative cost of the janitorial staff of the Death Star, taking this hard-edged reality to something that's fantasy," Hamill joked. "But I was that way myself. I remember saying things like, 'Well, wait a minute. I just got out of the trash compactor. How come my hair's all perfect?' And Harrison (Ford) would go, 'Hey kid ... it ain't that kind of movie.' "

The unforgettable hologram speech
Some memories of "Star Wars" stick more than others -- especially for the actors who had to do multiple shots of famous lines.

"I do remember permanently the hologram speech, because we had to reshoot it," Carrie Fisher, who played Princess Leia, wearily told fans at the recent Comic-Con festival in San Diego.

"Whenever I get lost on the way to someone's house, or I just forget your name, it's because I remember the speech. ... 'General Kenobi, years ago you served my father in the Clone Wars ..."' she said. "I'm a thousand years old and I still remember that thing. It's very disturbing. I have to take medication, and yet it still won't go away."

'Nothing is going to work'
"Every day there were terrible problems that had to be solved," said 81-year-old Irvin Kershner, who is a real-life version of Obi-Wan Kenobi -- the wise Jedi sage played by the late Alec Guinness.

Kershner, a film professor at the University of Southern California who was a mentor to "Star Wars" creator George Lucas, is the man Lucas asked to direct the sequel "The Empire Strikes Back," which is widely regarded as the best of the series.

"Before I went off to do the film, I had a talk with George," Kershner recalled. "He said, 'I want you to know something. They're going to prepare all these special devices for you but nothing is going to work ...' I thought he was kidding. From the third shot on, it was true. We had to improvise constantly."

For instance, Kershner said he had eight R2-D2 robots, each of which could do a different task.

"But you know, they never did what you needed them to do. So we ended up pulling them with nylon cords instead of using the electronics because it would get stuck and go in little circles instead of going straight.

"The only thing that worked was when we would put a little dwarf inside one and he'd shake him to show that R2-D2 was nervous. That worked, the human factor!"

Chewbacca, naked
The Chewbacca character was a goodhearted but fearsome Wookiee, a species that was a combination of human, ape and canine. Peter Mayhew, a 7-foot-3 British actor, played the roaring "Chewy" in a thick furry suit that covered every inch from head to toe.

But studio executives in the 1970s worried that the character itself was indecent because all he wore was a strap of ammunition across his chest.

"I remember the memos from 20th Century Fox," Hamill said. " 'Can you put a pair of lederhosen on the Wookie?' All they could think of was, 'This character has no pants on!' This went back and forth. They did sketches of him in culottes and baggy shorts."

In the midst of budget wrangling and the studios' efforts to get him to drop the word "Wars" from the title, Lucas also successfully fought to keep the Wookiee au naturel.

Monkeying with Yoda
"In the beginning, we didn't know what Yoda should look like," Kershner said. "One of the thoughts was that he'd be 9-feet tall with a huge mosaic beard and would look like Michelangelo's Moses, imposing. After all, he's 800-years-old and he knows everything and he has great powers. ... It seemed like a cliche."

Instead they decided to make Yoda very tiny and modest in nature. But how to do it?

"I asked that it could look like it ate, that it could climb," he said.

A puppet seemed ridiculous. No one had ever tried to pass one off as an actual living creature before, so Kershner looked for other solutions first.

"We thought, 'Maybe if we trained a monkey, in an outfit, and then animated the lips ...?' " Kershner said, his voice rising decades later over the old frustration. "You go crazy, and you try anything!"

Ultimately, the puppet proved to be the wiser choice.

"But there's never an expression change on Yoda," Kershner said. "You know that, right? You think there is, but it's body language. It's the eyes drooping, it's the ears going down. But it's the same face. Did you ever see Yoda smile? No."

Merchandising
"Star Wars" famously launched one of the most popular toy lines of all time.

However, the lumpy aliens in the "Star Wars" tavern and the many shuffling background robots were only background dressing before the action figures.

"Nine months after we filmed George looked at all the props being turned into toys and gave them names," Hamill said. "A lot of these things we'd call just, like, The Trash Can Robot. Now it's: 'No, no, no -- that's IG-88.' "

Fisher said she liked being a doll, but found some of the Princess Leia merchandise slightly unnerving. "I always liked the shampoo bottle where you twist my head off and pour liquid out of my neck. That's very Freudian," she said. "If I dreamed that, what would you think it meant?"

Props for Hamill
Kershner, who studies Buddhism as a hobby, said the "Star Wars" movies have a homespun wisdom, but that people shouldn't look too seriously to the Force to solve their problems.

"Yoda's philosophy was quite simplistic. 'If you get angry, you're gonna lose.' 'Don't try, do.' He has a basic philosophy that is very charming. Not very profound, although young people consider it profound. I wish they would read more."

Kershner credited Hamill with making Yoda seem more alive and smarter than he was, even though the actor couldn't hear Yoda's lines. "He's the one who made Yoda work," Kershner said. "He was acting to a mute puppet -- pretty hard to do!"

Between Alec Guinness and an eight-foot monkey
So it's OK to love "Star Wars," but the people who created the films have this advice for the die-hard galactic geeks: lighten up, have some fun.

Maybe Yoda isn't really a genius, maybe R2-D2 was kind of clunky ...

Hamill says maybe there shouldn't be too much nitpicking or overblown reverence.

As the Skywalker actor put it: "How can you be so serious on a film where you are dodging explosions and running away with Sir Alec Guinness on this side and an eight-foot monkey on this side, and the eight-foot monkey is the one flying the spaceship?"



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Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.







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You know what - I rushed out and bought the box set and Ive had to take it back 3 times (my fourth will be tomorrow) because inside every one Return of the Jedi packaging has been totally mangled - the first was obviously creased when they printed it so I only had half the picture and this latest one looks like somebody has scraped most of the picture away with a sticky object.....I wonder why?

You know what - I rushed out and bought the box set and Ive had to take it back 3 times (my fourth will be tomorrow) because inside every one Return of the Jedi packaging has been totally mangled - the first was obviously creased when they printed it so I only had half the picture and this latest one looks like somebody has scraped most of the picture away with a sticky object.....I wonder why?

OdysseyMiles said:

Is anyone gonna take that for an avatar?

It's a shame Lucas won't do Episodes VII-IX.
I'd love to see Mark Hamill reprise his role as Luke Skywalker again.

BorisFishpaw said:

i know...wouldn't that be awesome?

but I heard that he hadn't said yes OR no to it...or has he definitely said no?

mrdespues said:

Well he's been saying it's a definite 'No' for the last 6 months or so, but I'm still hoping
that once Episode III's all done and dusted and it's all over, he'll reconsider. Though he
now seems set on making a Star Wars TV series post-Episode III.

BorisFishpaw said:

Okay, I read how Lucas recently made all the employees at Lucasfilm sign a non-disclosure agreement regarding Episodes VII, VIII and IX. Now that really has me wondering! Is the TV show actually just a smokescreen to cover the filming of the third trilogy (possibly to be filmed continuosly like LOTR)?? Or is the NDA just to keep the employees quiet about the rumoured book deal???

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[Edited 9/22/04 8:49am]

Could go either way.
Based on what I've (over)heard over the last few years, I'm convinced that Lucas WAS seriously
considering going ahead with Episodes VII, VIII & IX after he'd helped Peter Jackson out in the
early stages of LOTR. He realised that it was possible to make them if he filmed them all
simultaneously like LOTR. There was also definite plans to go a lot further with the 'special
edition' versions of the original trilogy too around this time. Whether these 2 things are still
going ahead or whether they've been shelved now is anybody's guess, all I can say is that
these things WERE much more than mere speculation and wishful thinking.