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krpalmerI recently received in the mail a used copy of "The Making of Return of the Jedi" that I had ordered online. As I opened the package and started reading, I was thinking back to a journal post I had seen just a little while before, where someone else had also ordered a used copy of the book with a definite and wistful eye for how its very first page had unwittingly evoked a time before "Luke/Leia shippers" were dealt with in what could seem a rather extreme fashion... although, of course, I was hoping to get more from the book than just that. I was, perhaps, wondering how it would compare to "Once Upon A Galaxy," the comparable "making of" book for The Empire Strikes Back, and it didn't take long before I had detected one difference: in a space of three years' time, the paperback typeface seemed that much crisper and more modern...
More seriously, beyond that I began contemplating anew the authorial voice of "Once Upon A Galaxy." That book was by the credited Unit Publicist for TESB, Alan Arnold, and despite (or perhaps because of) his declaration in the foreword that he had "a detached and ambivalent attitude," I found myself amused by his constantly describing everyone in the most complimentary way possible and basically reacting in an overwhelmed fashion. The authorial voice in "The Making of Return of the Jedi" is much more distant, and the name on the cover, John Phillip Peecher, is just the book's "editor..." (RotJ's credited Unit Publicist was Gordon Arnell.)
Even so, though, there were plenty of interesting moments in the book. I suppose I did notice early on a fair emphasis on all the "creatures" being created for the movie (including, it turns out, a new puppet for Yoda)... but that did leave me wondering if the fixation of some people on complaining how the movie "was just a bunch of Muppets" comes from having let the pre-release publicity shape their opinions for a quarter of a century. I can understand the people making Star Wars movies taking a general interest in talking about their expensive and/or innovative special effects, but if it helps certain people conclude a particular movie is nothing but special effects... Still, I can also see how the "character-based" plot of RotJ hinged on secrets that might have seemed better protected until people actually saw them. (However, when compared to the "Official Collectors Edition" that I've had since the time of release, I noticed that the book is very calm and open about Darth Vader being Luke Skywalker's father... Of course, while the book leaves off about where "Once Upon A Galaxy" did, in the last few months of the year before release with John Williams just getting to work on the score which seems to miss the chance to address the famous "title change," the copyright page mentions "First Edition: September 1983.") The book does dwell to some extent on the efforts made to keep tight control of the full script, but also, when mentioning fans showing up in the Yuma desert (one girl wearing a T-shirt that says "R2-D2 is a Four Letter Word"), tosses out the suggestion that "the Star Wars grapevine" knew the truth about the Skywalker family well before TESB came out. Earlier on, there's a comment that Mark Hamill gets "fan mail from fourteen-year-olds" and Harrison Ford "gets much older ladies writing to him with other suggestions, and then there are the weird ones--people in love with R2-D2 or Darth Vader."
I suppose I may have paid particular attention to what's said about Richard Marquand and what he gets to say, this sort of thing being as close as we'll ever get to his actual feelings on having been the third person to direct a Star Wars movie. Too, I can suppose that I want to interpret those comments as him "saying the right thing," but there are some particularly interesting moments for me. Out in the desert, Marquand stepped aside to let some distant fans get a better view of Boba Fett, only to hear that they were interested in seeing the director. He also mentions wondering how to top the duel in TESB, to be told by George Lucas that the final confrontation between Luke and Vader "is bigger because of what is going on in their heads," and says that he tried on all the costumes and masks that he could (including an Ewok head) to get a sense of what the actors have to go through, mentioning how Dave Prowse kept complaining how he couldn't see and couldn't hear.
David Prowse doesn't have an interview in this book, but what seems like all the other actors do. In some ways, I kept contemplating how those interviews deal with the question "So now what?" in at most a very glancing fashion, but Mark Hamill does make an interesting comment on a different subject. He says that he's now wearing "the black uniform of a trained Jedi Knight," then asks, "What kind of Jedi? A wizard, a religious figure, or just a glutton for punishment?"
One moment that interested me involved Gary Kurtz dropping by the stages early on to see the full-size spaceships being (re?)assembled; in a way, it might not mean very much, but it still somehow helped to address a whole host of hypothetical cases about "the people who weren't involved this time..." I was also interested in what George Lucas would have to say throughout the book, and took note of how he still seemed dissatisfied with what he'd been able to accomplish at the time with Star Wars. One comment "looking ahead" surprised me, though. I suppose I decided to buy "Once Upon A Galaxy" when, flipping through it in the used book store, I saw the special visual effects supervisor Brian Johnson talking to a typically overwhelmed Alan Arnold about digital compositing and computer-generated spaceship imagery. After that prediction of what might be called "Special Edition effects," Lucas forecast in this book what might be called "new movies effects" by saying "If you start developing computerized backgrounds, hopefully that will be a way of bringing down the cost." He then said, after talking about how "there will be a lot of filmmakers moving in," "You'll have tiny figures walking around in giant and beautiful sets, which will be boring; the films will be a failure, and everybody will say: 'Computer movies are not commercial.'" Unfortunately, at that point I started wondering about somebody totalling up all of the long shots in the new movies to smugly turn Lucas's point back on him, just as I can imagine them turning back Lucas's reiteration of how special effects are at most a quarter of the impact of a movie... although I suppose that's a change from complaining about how the computer compositing close up is an affront to sensitive eyes.
As it turns out, things didn't end just with the book. Not that long after I got my copy of it, I was looking at the used videotapes set out in front of a big used book store, and spotted a cassette labelled "From Star Wars to Jedi: The Making of a Saga." It looked to have been made right after RotJ, and it was only two dollars, so I wound up buying it. The videotape seemed in good shape for having been set out on the sidewalk, although I suppose the movie excerpts in it did provoke thoughts of the recent TV broadcasts and "pan and scan." Narrated by Mark Hamill (who doesn't make a big deal of also appearing in the movie, except perhaps for when he mentions George Lucas being around for his costume fitting), the program at first left me with the familiar thought that it was focusing on the creatures, and how that could have tripped people up... I did wonder a little about a comment about how the creatures were going to be better realised than the ones in Star Wars, whereupon the program cuts to the puppet version of Sy Snootles, who was of course replaced in the Special Edition, song and all, for not being that well realised. Then, when the program had some small scenes with Salacious Crumb speaking English as he shuts himself up in his shipping crate, I was suddenly reminded of a "making of" special I can remember watching on TV back in 1983. It might have excited me just a little to think that I was "seeing it again..." and then, as the program got deeper into the movie, I began to realise it was addressing all of the plot, and as such pretty much had to be an "after the fact" production. The period comments by George Lucas began to really catch my attention, and while he still manages to seem dissatisfied with what he'd been able to accomplish in Star Wars, he also mentions how Vader discovering that Leia is Luke's sister was thought of when Richard Marquand was trying to figure out how to make the lightsabre duel progress. Lucas then makes a sort of somehow familiar, faintly resigned "I don't know if some people will really get this, but I wanted it to be this way anyway" comment about the redemption of Darth Vader. It was worth contemplating even as the program included a fair amount of the "original ending," which at once (of course) reminded me that I can hardly see why someone would desperately want to cling to it but did make me think that it's kind of nice to have the end credits music begin to emerge through "Yub Yub."
More seriously, beyond that I began contemplating anew the authorial voice of "Once Upon A Galaxy." That book was by the credited Unit Publicist for TESB, Alan Arnold, and despite (or perhaps because of) his declaration in the foreword that he had "a detached and ambivalent attitude," I found myself amused by his constantly describing everyone in the most complimentary way possible and basically reacting in an overwhelmed fashion. The authorial voice in "The Making of Return of the Jedi" is much more distant, and the name on the cover, John Phillip Peecher, is just the book's "editor..." (RotJ's credited Unit Publicist was Gordon Arnell.)
Even so, though, there were plenty of interesting moments in the book. I suppose I did notice early on a fair emphasis on all the "creatures" being created for the movie (including, it turns out, a new puppet for Yoda)... but that did leave me wondering if the fixation of some people on complaining how the movie "was just a bunch of Muppets" comes from having let the pre-release publicity shape their opinions for a quarter of a century. I can understand the people making Star Wars movies taking a general interest in talking about their expensive and/or innovative special effects, but if it helps certain people conclude a particular movie is nothing but special effects... Still, I can also see how the "character-based" plot of RotJ hinged on secrets that might have seemed better protected until people actually saw them. (However, when compared to the "Official Collectors Edition" that I've had since the time of release, I noticed that the book is very calm and open about Darth Vader being Luke Skywalker's father... Of course, while the book leaves off about where "Once Upon A Galaxy" did, in the last few months of the year before release with John Williams just getting to work on the score which seems to miss the chance to address the famous "title change," the copyright page mentions "First Edition: September 1983.") The book does dwell to some extent on the efforts made to keep tight control of the full script, but also, when mentioning fans showing up in the Yuma desert (one girl wearing a T-shirt that says "R2-D2 is a Four Letter Word"), tosses out the suggestion that "the Star Wars grapevine" knew the truth about the Skywalker family well before TESB came out. Earlier on, there's a comment that Mark Hamill gets "fan mail from fourteen-year-olds" and Harrison Ford "gets much older ladies writing to him with other suggestions, and then there are the weird ones--people in love with R2-D2 or Darth Vader."
I suppose I may have paid particular attention to what's said about Richard Marquand and what he gets to say, this sort of thing being as close as we'll ever get to his actual feelings on having been the third person to direct a Star Wars movie. Too, I can suppose that I want to interpret those comments as him "saying the right thing," but there are some particularly interesting moments for me. Out in the desert, Marquand stepped aside to let some distant fans get a better view of Boba Fett, only to hear that they were interested in seeing the director. He also mentions wondering how to top the duel in TESB, to be told by George Lucas that the final confrontation between Luke and Vader "is bigger because of what is going on in their heads," and says that he tried on all the costumes and masks that he could (including an Ewok head) to get a sense of what the actors have to go through, mentioning how Dave Prowse kept complaining how he couldn't see and couldn't hear.
David Prowse doesn't have an interview in this book, but what seems like all the other actors do. In some ways, I kept contemplating how those interviews deal with the question "So now what?" in at most a very glancing fashion, but Mark Hamill does make an interesting comment on a different subject. He says that he's now wearing "the black uniform of a trained Jedi Knight," then asks, "What kind of Jedi? A wizard, a religious figure, or just a glutton for punishment?"
One moment that interested me involved Gary Kurtz dropping by the stages early on to see the full-size spaceships being (re?)assembled; in a way, it might not mean very much, but it still somehow helped to address a whole host of hypothetical cases about "the people who weren't involved this time..." I was also interested in what George Lucas would have to say throughout the book, and took note of how he still seemed dissatisfied with what he'd been able to accomplish at the time with Star Wars. One comment "looking ahead" surprised me, though. I suppose I decided to buy "Once Upon A Galaxy" when, flipping through it in the used book store, I saw the special visual effects supervisor Brian Johnson talking to a typically overwhelmed Alan Arnold about digital compositing and computer-generated spaceship imagery. After that prediction of what might be called "Special Edition effects," Lucas forecast in this book what might be called "new movies effects" by saying "If you start developing computerized backgrounds, hopefully that will be a way of bringing down the cost." He then said, after talking about how "there will be a lot of filmmakers moving in," "You'll have tiny figures walking around in giant and beautiful sets, which will be boring; the films will be a failure, and everybody will say: 'Computer movies are not commercial.'" Unfortunately, at that point I started wondering about somebody totalling up all of the long shots in the new movies to smugly turn Lucas's point back on him, just as I can imagine them turning back Lucas's reiteration of how special effects are at most a quarter of the impact of a movie... although I suppose that's a change from complaining about how the computer compositing close up is an affront to sensitive eyes.
As it turns out, things didn't end just with the book. Not that long after I got my copy of it, I was looking at the used videotapes set out in front of a big used book store, and spotted a cassette labelled "From Star Wars to Jedi: The Making of a Saga." It looked to have been made right after RotJ, and it was only two dollars, so I wound up buying it. The videotape seemed in good shape for having been set out on the sidewalk, although I suppose the movie excerpts in it did provoke thoughts of the recent TV broadcasts and "pan and scan." Narrated by Mark Hamill (who doesn't make a big deal of also appearing in the movie, except perhaps for when he mentions George Lucas being around for his costume fitting), the program at first left me with the familiar thought that it was focusing on the creatures, and how that could have tripped people up... I did wonder a little about a comment about how the creatures were going to be better realised than the ones in Star Wars, whereupon the program cuts to the puppet version of Sy Snootles, who was of course replaced in the Special Edition, song and all, for not being that well realised. Then, when the program had some small scenes with Salacious Crumb speaking English as he shuts himself up in his shipping crate, I was suddenly reminded of a "making of" special I can remember watching on TV back in 1983. It might have excited me just a little to think that I was "seeing it again..." and then, as the program got deeper into the movie, I began to realise it was addressing all of the plot, and as such pretty much had to be an "after the fact" production. The period comments by George Lucas began to really catch my attention, and while he still manages to seem dissatisfied with what he'd been able to accomplish in Star Wars, he also mentions how Vader discovering that Leia is Luke's sister was thought of when Richard Marquand was trying to figure out how to make the lightsabre duel progress. Lucas then makes a sort of somehow familiar, faintly resigned "I don't know if some people will really get this, but I wanted it to be this way anyway" comment about the redemption of Darth Vader. It was worth contemplating even as the program included a fair amount of the "original ending," which at once (of course) reminded me that I can hardly see why someone would desperately want to cling to it but did make me think that it's kind of nice to have the end credits music begin to emerge through "Yub Yub."