![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
From the Bookshelf: The Making of The Empire Strikes Back
When "The Making of The Empire Strikes Back" was only published in hardcover, I supposed the paperback of "The Making of Star Wars" had interfered with the sales of the pricier hardcover even even with its additional pages and decided I'd wait for the paperback of the follow-up volume. After close to three years of waiting, though, hearing a third volume in the series was being solicited instead made me ask at last for the book in hardcover for my birthday. On opening it up, I did notice the line of numbers on the copyright page I've heard show how many printings a book has been through ended at "5," so it does seem it's been selling anyway.
As I started reading through this new book, I did have the impression it was a bit freer with full-page reproductions of production paintings and the photocomposites representing special effects sequences familiar to me from the old storybooks than "The Making of Star Wars," and once I was done I made a direct comparison between the two books and noticed the later one had somewhat larger type. Even so, its detail remained impressive.
The story picks up in the first giddy days of Star Wars's release, but I did notice with a little surprise that, instead of just a disgruntled John Dykstra quitting Industrial Light and Magic to work on the special effects of "Battlestar Galactica," everyone had been taken off the payroll on the completion of work and things had to be restarted there from scratch. A little bit later, it was amusing to see a completely undetailed outline pushing Star Wars back to the "Episode Six" slot, with a "prelude" and an "epilogue/prologue" on either side of a "Clone Wars trilogy." (I suppose it just might be argued The Phantom Menace, Clone Wars, and perhaps even "Rebels" could claimed to fill in places there, though.) While I'd heard on the initial release of the book that Leigh Brackett's draft screenplay was less suitable than casual assumptions might make it, actual quotes from it did sort of prove that sense of something being off, and I finally girded myself to find the full transcript that leaked a while ago, seeing those odd-sounding lines really were there. I suppose I am remembering managing in the early 1990s to read through some issues of "The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction" from the late 1970s, which had a movies and TV column then not obsessed with looking down on visual science fiction from the written perspective, and which first took great interest in Brackett, a science fiction writer among other things, being associated with the Star Wars sequel and then hoped her contributions would keep carrying through. The reality of the book seemed more nuanced in an ambiguous sort of way.
To me, the whole book seemed a subtle argument against the suppositions of others that George Lucas gave the real filmmakers some general ideas and got out of the way to let the professionals work. I'd already known it suggested Gary Kurtz was replaced as producer for Return of the Jedi not out of some principled opposition to Lucas dropping the idea of an overtly downbeat ending, but because the production of The Empire Strikes Back ran long and overbudget. On reading it, though, I did wonder if it was also suggesting Irvin Kershner's filming style slowed down production too. So far as other revelations go, I was amused to see that David Prowse was given dummy lines to deliver not to keep minor technicians on set from leaking secrets to the fan press, but to keep him from doing that.
Having found a used copy of the period "making of" book just a few years back, I did find it interesting to see unit publicist Alan Arnold's interviews acknowledged right off at the beginning of the new book. If anything, it seemed to quote still more of the day Irvin Kershner had a microphone on him than "Once Upon A Galaxy" did. One particularly interesting moment was George Lucas using the word "attachment" to criticise Luke trying to rescue his friends, a term that had great weight placed on it in the new movies; however, that did leave me wondering again about the use of present tense to introduce the quotes said to be from period interviews, and sort of wishing once more for footnotes or endnotes to give precise dates. Right around there, there was also a comment that the snake Luke pulls out of his X-wing's engine (and that nipped Mark Hamill in one take) is meant to lend ominous weight to the possibility of him becoming like Darth Vader, which was something I'd never thought of before; it just goes to show how a great many people nowadays seem more than ready to see a work of fiction as a sort of documentary from a real place but can't quite manage to think of things as having symbolic significance.
Anthony Daniels was quoted at one point as commenting that Threepio had a reduced role in The Empire Strikes Back, which does sort of coincide with thoughts of my own. (The idea of him and Chewbacca sort of commiserating as Han and Leia carry on in the background did sound like it could have been interesting.) So far as other insights by the performers on their characters go, I was struck by Frank Oz writing a little biography of Yoda where he thought the Jedi Master "came from a more formal time when I'm sure he had many friends", winding up "on this planet all by himself, because of all the troubles around the universe." This contrasted with the vague thoughts I seem to recall that Yoda would always have been where he was. As with Anthony Daniels and Ahmed Best, I was also struck by Frank Oz managing to get picked to record the final dialogue after the performance was complete.
"Sidebar" pages on what ILM was doing during the months and months of filming in England seemed a little shorter than I'd have liked at first, but once into postproduction things picked up over there. I was interested to see one picture of an Apple II (and not, say, a dedicated CP/M computer) with a single disk drive perched on top of its small monitor and a big Centronics printer helping keep records; it reminded me of hearing how the first issue of an early, well-regarded Apple computer magazine had a cover story on The Empire Strikes Back. It was also surprising to learn Ralph McQuarrie had a cameo appearance in the Rebel base; I had to go back to my Blu-Ray of the movie to really see that for myself.
While the book did lead off making a point of how much the reputation of The Empire Strikes Back has waxed among the fans everyone assumes to be typical, it does also point out how some of the period critics seemed more polite towards it than anything and doesn't close with some elaborate attempt to say everything that followed didn't measure up. I've always had the impression it was during the production of this movie that there were the strongest statements about there being nine Star Wars movies, but the implied third trilogy doesn't seem to be mentioned in much detail at any point, beyond perhaps some comments from Mark Hamill on the very last page about "these esoteric, philosophical, inner-directed films." Whether "The Making of Return of the Jedi" will say anything more about the nebulous future plans of the early 1980s, I don't know, but I am considering getting it without waiting years for it. (Of course, I'm also contemplating ordering the hardcover of "The Making of Star Wars" for no better reason than to have those extra pages and a consistent set...)
As I started reading through this new book, I did have the impression it was a bit freer with full-page reproductions of production paintings and the photocomposites representing special effects sequences familiar to me from the old storybooks than "The Making of Star Wars," and once I was done I made a direct comparison between the two books and noticed the later one had somewhat larger type. Even so, its detail remained impressive.
The story picks up in the first giddy days of Star Wars's release, but I did notice with a little surprise that, instead of just a disgruntled John Dykstra quitting Industrial Light and Magic to work on the special effects of "Battlestar Galactica," everyone had been taken off the payroll on the completion of work and things had to be restarted there from scratch. A little bit later, it was amusing to see a completely undetailed outline pushing Star Wars back to the "Episode Six" slot, with a "prelude" and an "epilogue/prologue" on either side of a "Clone Wars trilogy." (I suppose it just might be argued The Phantom Menace, Clone Wars, and perhaps even "Rebels" could claimed to fill in places there, though.) While I'd heard on the initial release of the book that Leigh Brackett's draft screenplay was less suitable than casual assumptions might make it, actual quotes from it did sort of prove that sense of something being off, and I finally girded myself to find the full transcript that leaked a while ago, seeing those odd-sounding lines really were there. I suppose I am remembering managing in the early 1990s to read through some issues of "The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction" from the late 1970s, which had a movies and TV column then not obsessed with looking down on visual science fiction from the written perspective, and which first took great interest in Brackett, a science fiction writer among other things, being associated with the Star Wars sequel and then hoped her contributions would keep carrying through. The reality of the book seemed more nuanced in an ambiguous sort of way.
To me, the whole book seemed a subtle argument against the suppositions of others that George Lucas gave the real filmmakers some general ideas and got out of the way to let the professionals work. I'd already known it suggested Gary Kurtz was replaced as producer for Return of the Jedi not out of some principled opposition to Lucas dropping the idea of an overtly downbeat ending, but because the production of The Empire Strikes Back ran long and overbudget. On reading it, though, I did wonder if it was also suggesting Irvin Kershner's filming style slowed down production too. So far as other revelations go, I was amused to see that David Prowse was given dummy lines to deliver not to keep minor technicians on set from leaking secrets to the fan press, but to keep him from doing that.
Having found a used copy of the period "making of" book just a few years back, I did find it interesting to see unit publicist Alan Arnold's interviews acknowledged right off at the beginning of the new book. If anything, it seemed to quote still more of the day Irvin Kershner had a microphone on him than "Once Upon A Galaxy" did. One particularly interesting moment was George Lucas using the word "attachment" to criticise Luke trying to rescue his friends, a term that had great weight placed on it in the new movies; however, that did leave me wondering again about the use of present tense to introduce the quotes said to be from period interviews, and sort of wishing once more for footnotes or endnotes to give precise dates. Right around there, there was also a comment that the snake Luke pulls out of his X-wing's engine (and that nipped Mark Hamill in one take) is meant to lend ominous weight to the possibility of him becoming like Darth Vader, which was something I'd never thought of before; it just goes to show how a great many people nowadays seem more than ready to see a work of fiction as a sort of documentary from a real place but can't quite manage to think of things as having symbolic significance.
Anthony Daniels was quoted at one point as commenting that Threepio had a reduced role in The Empire Strikes Back, which does sort of coincide with thoughts of my own. (The idea of him and Chewbacca sort of commiserating as Han and Leia carry on in the background did sound like it could have been interesting.) So far as other insights by the performers on their characters go, I was struck by Frank Oz writing a little biography of Yoda where he thought the Jedi Master "came from a more formal time when I'm sure he had many friends", winding up "on this planet all by himself, because of all the troubles around the universe." This contrasted with the vague thoughts I seem to recall that Yoda would always have been where he was. As with Anthony Daniels and Ahmed Best, I was also struck by Frank Oz managing to get picked to record the final dialogue after the performance was complete.
"Sidebar" pages on what ILM was doing during the months and months of filming in England seemed a little shorter than I'd have liked at first, but once into postproduction things picked up over there. I was interested to see one picture of an Apple II (and not, say, a dedicated CP/M computer) with a single disk drive perched on top of its small monitor and a big Centronics printer helping keep records; it reminded me of hearing how the first issue of an early, well-regarded Apple computer magazine had a cover story on The Empire Strikes Back. It was also surprising to learn Ralph McQuarrie had a cameo appearance in the Rebel base; I had to go back to my Blu-Ray of the movie to really see that for myself.
While the book did lead off making a point of how much the reputation of The Empire Strikes Back has waxed among the fans everyone assumes to be typical, it does also point out how some of the period critics seemed more polite towards it than anything and doesn't close with some elaborate attempt to say everything that followed didn't measure up. I've always had the impression it was during the production of this movie that there were the strongest statements about there being nine Star Wars movies, but the implied third trilogy doesn't seem to be mentioned in much detail at any point, beyond perhaps some comments from Mark Hamill on the very last page about "these esoteric, philosophical, inner-directed films." Whether "The Making of Return of the Jedi" will say anything more about the nebulous future plans of the early 1980s, I don't know, but I am considering getting it without waiting years for it. (Of course, I'm also contemplating ordering the hardcover of "The Making of Star Wars" for no better reason than to have those extra pages and a consistent set...)