Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:04):
It's the Dearly Departed Podcast, featuringyour host, historians Scott Michaels and filmmaker
Mike Dorsey. All Right, everybody, welcome, It's Dearly Departed Podcast.
I believe this is episode twenty seven, so we made it to the twenty
(00:27):
seven club. Scott, hooray,we're one of the few that are get
out of it right hopefully fingers probablyyes, that would yeah, we don't.
We don't want to be someone else'spodcast, do we. Right?
The tragedy the tragic end of theDearly Departed Podcast. Next, that's gonna
haunt me one day. That's gonnahappen and people are gonna laugh, so,
(00:51):
you know, hopefully not for awhile, but they're gonna go hmm.
It's about the time I caught upto him. I'll make sure that
whatever tour is in your area,put your house on the route in your
honor. Okay, So we taught. We just recorded our Patreon show where
we went over all the folks thathave passed away and the couple months since
(01:12):
we did our last episode back inearly March, and so that's on our
Patreon So if you head over thereand support us, you can listen for
as little as two dollars a month, and that's like a it's like a
almost an hour long show today thatwe did. It is patreon page.
So yeah, yeah, all theobituary, not all of them, but
(01:34):
most of them, and lots ofweird off the cuff stories, which is
why you guys seem to like Soso, yeah, what what's happening in
the world today? You just wetalked about this a little on our on
our Patreon, But you went ona road trip, a big cross country
one. Yeah. Yeah, Iwent to I went to Florida two times,
and one time I went over.We we flew over to uh spend
(01:59):
a list of bit of time withmy family. And then the second time
I drove over with my friend Jordan, who his YouTube channel joined the Lion.
He ended up relocating, and wedrove with his dog across the country,
doing lots of odd little stops onthe way and making videos. So
it's a lot of fun. Westopped in a lot of different places,
(02:22):
so many places that it's like Ican't remember because it's so overwhelming, but
it was a lot of fun.As the first time I went, I
just uploaded a video onto YouTube onthe Wolendos, the Flying Wolendos, who
are like a weird obsession of buyinga family of acrobats, and I was
able to find their their home,where they where they lived, in their
(02:43):
grave, where they're where they're allburied. And since their big accident happened
in Detroit, where I'm from,where two of the members were killed when
I fell off the high wire,my video is devoted to those two.
But the Wolendos are incredible, incredibleperformers, artist. I mean, it's
it's watching them, it's just oh, it's it's just it's nerves shattering to
(03:07):
watch these Now now they make themmore safety because because so many of them
have died. You know, atleast four of them have died from falls,
including the patriarch, Carl Wooland,who famously you could see it on
YouTube. Was was, you knowin San Juan, this little old man,
he's like seventy five or something anddoing the teeter teeter and boom and
(03:27):
it's all it was all recorded andit's all on YouTube. It's a sad
but but that's that's the life ofan acrobat. They and when they were
an artist like that, when theydid the thing in Detroit. Two of
the members died, one of themwas paralyzed, and the other girl had
severe head injuries, and they wenton the next day. The rest of
the family did. It's just theshow must go on. I guess,
(03:52):
yeah, so as as I lovethe Woodland is. And then there's the
we you know, we did it. I did a thing on Grady Styles,
who was the obscure boy who uhyou know, he was born with
that condition where ethan ethan what's hisface in an American horse tray when they
did Freak Show, did that thingwhere he had the hands they were like
pinchers. I could think there's aword for that. I forget where it
(04:12):
is. But anyway, he wasa miserable human being, Grady Styles,
And well we're going to talk aboutthat. We talked about doing the Freak
Show stuff in a future episode.So, but he was involved in a
murder, correct, right, Well, yeah, he was involved in a
murder, and then they couldn't Theyconvicted him, but they couldn't put him
anywhere because they couldn't they know whatto do with them. You know,
(04:33):
he's a man with two arms andtwo legs, but pinchers on both so
they they send the house arrested andhe ended up being murdered. Uh,
he was a hateful, hateful man. And and yeah, we should do
a Freak's episode for sure. Yeah. Yeah, I learned a lot of
stuff when I was in Gibsonton wherethat was their sort of summer or offseason
(04:56):
home. And uh and we mentioned, you know a little while back on
the the other podcast, but westopped at the Jane Mansfield crash location,
and we stopped at the Alamo,and we did the Big Bopper's Grave,
and we did we did some reallyinteresting things because Jordan did a couple of
things he wanted to do. Idid the things I wanted to do the
most, mostly the James Dean stuffin Marfa, Texas where the film a
(05:16):
giant. So it's just a reallyfun trip. And you know, you're
always taking a risk when you're travelingwith somebody because you know it's like,
how is this gonna go? Itcould go after an hour, you know,
if it's gonna go, you know, belly up or anything. We
end up. It was great.It was great fun. So we're fun.
And you went to the Mansfield JaneMansfield Crash site outside New Orleans.
(05:41):
Did right, you had been hadyou been there before? Though? Right?
Yeah, I've been there. Yeah, we we were. We spent
New Year's Eve, we rang inthe New Year, like three years ago
at the car hit the crash site. Wow, and uh yeah, it's
uh, it's really it's really quiteemotional for me to be there, and
it sounds so dramatic, but youknow, so much of our life,
(06:03):
since we have the car that shewas killed in, evolves her. You
know. Now we're sort of areference point and people are always sending me
Jane Mansfield stuff and I read moreabout her, and so when you're there,
all of a sudden, you're inthe dark, you know, it's
about midnight, around the time theaccident happened, and we're standing there and
(06:24):
it's really it's overwhelming, you know, because it's such a, like I
said, a huge part of ourlives, Troy and I and dearly departed.
So it was something and I justinterviewed. You know why I interviewed
was the woman who was the fianceof the driver, Ronnie Harrison. Oh,
he was a young man. Yeah, yeah, they were engaged and
(06:47):
actually she was pregnant when the accidenthappened, and none of her family knew
that, and she had a reallyinteresting story. And you know, it's
a bit of trivia. Her sonis the kid. You probably know,
there's a lot of other people probablywouldn't who redid Rags of the Lost Dark
shot by shot by shot? Doyou remember that story? Yeah, I
(07:11):
didn't realize that there was a relation. No, I had no idea.
But I've seen the documentary that theymade about that. It's amazing. Yeah,
it's like the greatest fan film evermade or something. Yeah, yeah,
wow, idea. I mean,over a period of like five summers,
these kids remade like well, Imean they did it well and shot.
In fact, Spielberg saw it andlike had them in for a meeting
(07:32):
or something, I think. Soit's pretty interesting. So yeah, she's
got some wild, really wild stories. So that'll be an interesting thing to
hear one day. That's interesting too, because Spielberg, you know, that's
when he made movies like that,when he was a kid. That's how
he got into it. He hada camera and he was a teenager he
(07:53):
started, or even maybe even beforehe started making war movies and stuff with
his little friends. And yeah,that was so I and see how he
has a soft spot probably for otherpeople that kind of do that, the
fan films and stuff like that.But it was done well. You know,
you keep writing, when's the bigball gonna happen, It's gonna look
really dumb. And it was likethey did a really good job, right
and they blew up. They blewup the plane or the end they did
(08:18):
like the plane explosion seem while he'srunning away. That was like one of
the last things they shot because theynever had the budget to do it,
to do a big explode. Ithink they Yeah, they finished it,
like when they were in their twentiesor something. They gat that shot to
complete the whole thing. It wasreally clever, really really an odd cool
idea. I saw you posted this. The Full House creator Jeff Franklin,
(08:41):
who you know created the Full Houseseries television series and is a big TV
producer. You know, he ownsthe Cello Drive location now the address the
plot of land where the Tate murdershappened, and built a huge, mega
mansion on the property. Now itseems to take up the entire property.
Is this giant house and he's justlisted it. You can now rent the
(09:01):
house for a steal at a quarterof a million dollars a month, and
there you are. You know whatSharon and Roman moved in. It was
twelve hundred a month, I think, but it was a different house.
But I mean, it's a complicatedhouse because it was well Eltabelli who owned
the house, and it was rentingit the Sharon and Roman lived in the
(09:24):
house for a good twenty years.He started renting it out the people.
The last person was Trent Resner.He moved out sold it to a brothers,
wine Trup brothers, and the wineTrup brothers were gonna make a fortune
and they tore down the house andthey left one wall. There's still a
kitchen wall up there in a treefrom the original house. But they were
(09:45):
going to make a fortune and buildthis house. It was called Villabella,
and then he bought it. Franklinspent another probably three years finishing it off.
And it's just this be a mothon the hill. It's this massive,
seventeen thousand square foot house. TheTate House was. You know,
it wasn't small either, but itwasn't It was modest certainly by those standards.
(10:07):
And it's interesting because the house that'sbeing built above his his even more
insane. And they've been building effortat least five years and they haven't even
started. They just building the foundationfor five years. So the house that's
I think part of the reason JeffFranklin is leaving that house and renting it
out is because there's a ridiculous housebeing built above his. So, um,
(10:31):
yeah, it's a real it's something. It's something man. That that's
that is when people just don't tellyou to stop. There's nobody going now,
We're not going to let that happen. You know, there's that now.
And well they did do that,didn't they. In bel Air really
recently, that guy built that house. Yeah, they kept telling him you
can't do it, you can't doit, and he kept going forward,
(10:52):
and finally they put their foot downand they made him tear it down.
I think they've got to go almostwouldn't It seems like that almost never actually
happens. The developers have so muchhave so much more power, and eventually
they went out a little bit moremoney at them, you know, I
mean, look at at what happenedat Target in the middle of Hollywood.
You know, they were but theystarted building the Target store because somebody kind
(11:13):
of bashed forward it through the cityand it got approved and it ended up
being like somebody beat taller than theywere allowed to, and that target stood
there for probably what almost like eightyears or something unfit. It felt like
over a decade. Yeah yeah,and then they finished it and it's open
now and it's operating. So it'slike like I said, eventually I figured
it out. It just rarely justthey did. They get caught out on
(11:37):
those things. Uh. In othercurrent events, uh, Lady Gaga's dogs,
she got a dogs back from thatshooting that happened over happened on the
street where Chibo is sunset right whereum right where the floorst used to be
as well. Yeah, yeah,the Parsian floorst which sent the which sent
(11:58):
the rose to Maryland's grave for JoeDiMaggio. It's on that kind of that
same block, basically just north ofthere. There was a shooting a few
weeks ago and two of Lady Gaga'sthree frenchiese French bulldogs were stolen and her
dog Walker was shot. Luckily hesurvived and exposedly now now they've arrested five
(12:20):
people, including the woman who turnedthem in to try to get the half
million reward money that she was offering, and they Gaga. I think the
police told lady Gaga, like,hold off on paying that reward because we
this is like fishy. And thenit turned out I think the woman that
turned them in is the girlfriend ofthe father of one of the guys that
(12:41):
is now accused of being so theytried to find somebody removed from them enough
that maybe wouldn't come back to them. I guess to hey, let's try
and get the reward money, whichis just brazen, you know, like
they probably wouldn't have got caught ifthey just turned them loose or dropped them
off at a pound somewhere or something. They probably maybe they would have got
away with them, but intended to, yeah, just celtrate another rich person.
(13:05):
But no, they got greedy,and you know, and it was
interesting because what she kind a lot, she kind of been a flat she
did Ga Ga. I hate sayingthat name, but she got some flat
because what the dogs got stolen andyou know, her dog walkers and you
know, got shot in the longfighting for life, screaming and stuff.
And then she writes, she tweetsit because I am just heartbroken and devastating
(13:28):
with a picture of her dogs.It's like, Okay, she got a
bit of flaque for that, andshe, you know, she was caught
up in the drama all of likesocial media is doing the same thing.
Though. I was like, oh, dog walker got shot. The dogs
I've been taking everybody's like, ohmy god, their dog's okay. It's
like there's a human being And didyou walk here about the dogs? Selling
(13:50):
Yeah. The poor guy was justscreaming and he was I guess he knew,
uh he was a he was hewas an inter, he was an
EMT or something that. But hek that his lungs were filling with blood
and he was screaming, you know. Um yeah, that's crazy wild.
And I hope she takes care ofI'm sure. I mean he's already pretty
well taken care of anyways, butyeah yeah, um he um he uh.
(14:16):
And after he was shot, theone dog that got away that wasn't
stolen came back and I guess latenext to him when while they waited for
oh that's sweet. Yeah, soum that's nice, and waited for him
while he was while they're waiting forthe prey minister, get there. I
don't know. I've heard about this. They're doing a Fantasy Island reboot.
(14:39):
I did hear that. Yeah,really really disinterested rather quickly. Um.
And then the last movie they did, I thought the movie was fun that
they did recently. Mm hmmm,oh maybe this will be fun to Scott
who knows? Yeah, I know, you never know, you never know.
(15:03):
And then I was just going toshow this off. I showed this
off on our Patreon, but inhonor of Michael Collins, one of the
Apollo eleven astronauts passing away, Ihave to show this off to everybody.
My grandfather, my grandfather was anApollo eleven or Apolo engineer, and this
is his Apollo hard hat that hethat he had. And if you watch
(15:24):
any of the old documentary footage ofthe launches, you see guys walking around
with these blue hats on. Hesays CSM on the side, which I
believe would have stood for the CommandServices Module, which is what they kind
of lived in. It was liketheir life support module. CSM on the
sides, his name on the front, and Apolo CSM on the back,
and then it has some of themission stickers there's a Polo seven, Apolo
(15:48):
thirteen. I think that's Apolo twelve. And my guess is he put Apolo
eleven at the top. But thesehave long since, some of them have
fallen off over the years that heowned it, So i'm any more.
But yeah, there it is.It's an actual apollo. Uh. Mission
hard hated was his awe. Wheneveranything was being worked on or whatever down
(16:11):
at the place, he had towear this around. So it's so cool.
That is so cool? All right? Uh? Is that is that
it for current events? I thinkso anything current events? I care to
talk about the stuff that matters tous. Um. Uh. We do
(16:32):
have one little, one tiny pieceof hate mail that's only one word long
hate mail. It's uh. Wehad a one star iTunes review and the
review just said cringe, which Itake is a compliment. I wonder,
(16:55):
I don't know, maybe in orderto be rating. Yeah, what what
was cringe? E? I don'tknow. At least they left to review.
I mean, a five star reviewcould just as easily say cringe.
Also, it just depends on whatyou're into. Sure, well you consider
entertaining, but that's that's not badhamail though a cringe no, there's a
lot. You know, I sortof it's I've got so used to the
(17:18):
nasty people that I'm sort of Imean, I you know, I don't
see the Patreon, I don't seethe uh the the Apple things. I
should be more aware of what's goingon with the reviews on mostly very positive
though we have we have like afive star average rating, and most officials
they love us and want us todo more shows and all that stuff.
(17:40):
So yeah, cool, Yeah,it's not it's it's some people just have
nothing better to do but just goand and last, but not least,
before we get into our main story, you have something about Marilyn Monroe.
I believe in a statue correct twentysix feet of Norma Jean and that it's
(18:06):
it's like a big everyone's all ina huff about it right now. Literally
has their panties in a bunch aboutMaryland's panties because they're bringing the statue back.
You know, the twenty six feettall Maryland Iconic statue seven year rage
Post was here for a few years. They rented it whoever was in now
the city put together enough money orthe Businessman's Association to have it permanently on
(18:30):
display here. So the the PalmSprings Art Museum has been designated it's the
place to put it. And everyonethat works at the museum or has something
to do with the museum or everyoneis me toing it to hell because because
it's showing his lady with her pantiesup, and they say that everyone's gonna
walk out of the museum looking atthis woman's panties and it's misogynistic, and
(18:53):
it's like, it's Maryland. It'sMaryland. You're in Palm Springs. You
know. Now, I'm not necessarilynot on board with them not having it
there. I think it's a greatopportunity to open up another space for it
to be a focal point for tourists, you know, put it on the
other side of town where there's someempty area. You know. I don't
I don't necessarily want her to bethere, But it's just it's funny when
(19:15):
you see the real things that aregoing on in the world, the real
protests are going in the world,and these people are just screaming about this
Maryland statue in Palm Springs. Andit's the famous scene, and it's the
famous scene from the sevent year Archwhere she's standing over the subway grad and
it's blowing her dress up and she'sfighting to keep it down. It's the
statues of that moment. So that'swhy some people have taken issue with the
(19:37):
content of it, and the factthat you can basically walk under the statue
and I guess look up the dress, but it's a statue. I don't.
I don't know. It's just yeah, it's just a location. If
it wasn't where they chose to putit, yeah, you know, we
wouldn't be having this problem. Butit's it's it's just the stances that people
are taking or you know, they'rethey're interesting. I'll just say that.
(20:00):
But she was supposed to be alreadyunveiled, but they I don't know,
it's still there's a lawsuit pending.I don't know. It was supposed to
be done a few weeks ago,but it's not. Yeah, So it's
fascinating Palm Springs life. These arenot normal people problems, and here we
are, all right, So themain event is Star Wars. It's time
(20:26):
for the main feature, and we'rerecording. We're recording this on May the
fourth, which is now commonly knownas Star Wars Day, May the fourth
be with you, and so youwon't be watching this on May fourth,
but this is when we're recording it, so it's in the spirit of May
fourth, and we always we alreadywanted to do a Star Wars episode anyway,
(20:48):
so we figured why not. Yeah, yeah, I disagree. I
was a huge Star Wars fan whenit came out. I saw the movie
probably ten times, which was alot at that point in seventy seven when
it came out, and I hadI had the sheets, I had the
posters from Burger King, I hadthe cups, I had uh you know,
every you know disc, the discoStar Wars album, you know the
(21:11):
I mean it was, you know. I was just I was a Star
Wars nut. I loved the Rtwo D two cookie jar and at a
C through a C three po necklace. I was big into it, but
I wasn't. It wasn't for thesci fi aspect of it. I you
know, I understand the sci fiaspect of it, and that's cool,
but I loved it as a story. It was just an awesome story.
(21:33):
I was confused when they called itwhat episode five, I think is what
it was. When it first wasit Episode four Episode four, Episode four
A New Hope is like now theofficial name of it, right. Nobody
knew that it was going to bea big hit. However, when it
was released, there were people linedup around the block like for days.
I had a time at the Chinesetheater, and that's something I never really
(21:55):
quite understood. Um. I reada lot of I'm not finished with it
yet, but I've read a lotof the Making of Star Wars, which
is subtitled The Definitive Story Behind theOriginal Film Exhaustive Book, and I have
the digital copy of it, whichincludes multimedia stuff. It includes interview clips
with George Lucas and videos and stuffand tons of photos that you can zoom
in on because they're high quality,and I mean, it is everything you
(22:18):
want ever would want to know prettymuch about Star Wars. And it's funny
because George Lucas, yeah, hedidn't think they were gonna original budget was
gonna be three million dollars, whichin today's money would be like eighteen millions,
so even today it would be considereda low budget film ended up blowing
up ballooning to you know, twoor three times that amount by the time
it was done, but he didn'tthink it would make more than sixteen to
(22:42):
twenty million, So even with him, there's kind of a contradiction and that
he didn't think it was going tomake that much, and yet he was
planning this whole universe that he alsofelt this wouldn't be the last one that
they were going to make, andthat's why he wanted to have all the
ancillary rights, the you know,the stake in the merchandizing and all that
stuff, because he felt like thiswas going to go somewhere, and he
(23:03):
made the movie because American Graffiti wasa surprise hit, another movie kind of
like Star Wars, where the studiodidn't really believe in it until it came
out and was a smash and peopleloved it. And George Lucas realized that
at that time period in the lateseventies, they really weren't making movies for
young young people and kids anymore.They were not that twelve to twenty year
(23:25):
old age demo which used to bewho all the movies were made for,
practically weren't getting anything because Westerns wereout of fashion, you know, swashbuckling
movies were out of fashion. SciFi was kind of Goofy and so there
it was just serious, like seriousdramas and cop content. Police content was
basically all people were doing. Andhe was like, wow, it was
(23:45):
a huge opportunity here, and hewas totally right. Yeah, I guess
Fox had thought they put their moneybehind the Other Side of Midnight and they
thought that was going to be thehuge hit of that summer and ended up
you know, no, no,I mean it opened up, didn't open
on like a hundred screens or something, and then within you know, a
(24:07):
month, it was it was seventeenhundred screens. It was something, you
know, an insane growth. Uh. They must have been making prints,
you know, like crazy over time, making prints of that movie to get
it out there. But uh,but the man, the hype, the
hoopla, that was such a bigdeal. Have you ever heard this?
Um, somebody made an audio recordingof the audience watching Star Wars in the
(24:32):
initial in its original run back backin siventy seven. It's a really great
thing. Oh really, well somebodyelse, somebody, that's what somebody?
Have you ever put it out there? Because somebody actually did that and they
actually released it for the the endingscene, you know when they blow up
the Death Star. They actually paddedit in there, and you can hear
the audience reacting and then the bigcheer that goes up when it happens,
(24:55):
and it's really freaking cool. It'sa great like historical artifact, you know,
and it legal pirated audio recording ofthe movie, but a great ends
up being a great store of adocument. Yeah. I snuffed my cassette
player in which was you know atthat point probably like that, and I
I recorded the whole movie. Iwas. I was a nut for that
movie, so you know, Istill I haven't listened to it, but
(25:17):
I mean, I have all mycassettes. I should check that out.
I did that for the Rocky HorrorPicture Show too, which was which is
kind of fun in retrospect, youknow, because he's just encapsulates the moment.
But Star Wars that was wow.That was bananas. That was such
an insane fun movie. And uh, it's it's fascinating to watch like the
clips without the sound effects and thegreen screen and stuff like that, and
(25:41):
the and before it was color gradedand everything, it just looks really rough.
Yeah. Yeah, I just theywere weighing it. They were,
I mean, some of it wasjust what they say that uh alec Ginnis
was like, they're giving him lineslike the day of I think, you
know, it was like a scriptlike every day and the dialogue is ridiculous
(26:03):
to begin with. And that waskind of funny going through the drafts project,
the process of writing the script,all the various drafts at George Lucas
wrote, and he keeps sending itin and nobody understands what the story is.
That sounds cool, but like everyact of the audition was like,
yeah, I had to read thescript like eight times before I realized,
before I figured out how it allwent, what the hell he was trying
(26:25):
to say? And George Lucas wasbrilliant because what he did. He realized
this and he ended up putting upclose to half a million dollars of his
own money during the development period ofStar Wars. When he was writing the
script, he had no guarantee yetthat they were actually going to make it.
He was just getting paid a littlebit of money to write it.
They didn't know it was going togreen light yet. But he was making
all this money from American graffiti andhe just started putting his own money into
(26:47):
hiring mainly this guy named Ralph McCoywho did all the concept art and did
all the designs, because Lucas realized, you can't really make sense of the
script, so let me give themvisual aids, the studio execs and actors
and whoever, or to show themHere's what the characters are gonna look like.
Here's what the space ships are goingto look like. When iver we
talk about the death Star, here'swhat the death Star we think is going
to look like. And that he'llbring it to life for people. They
(27:08):
understand what was written, they understoodpictures of the pictures and could see all,
okay, I see what you meanand what you're trying to do,
and that really probably may maybe StarWars would have never been made. Very
likely had George Lucas not self fundedbasically the founding of ILM, Industrial line
Magic and the and the model buildinghe hired model builders and Ralph McCorry to
(27:30):
do the artwork. If he hadnot taken that risk with his own money,
it might not have ever gotten greenlight green light as a result.
Yeah, and the script are Imean the acting, well, he was
basically making a Western in space.I mean, that's what it was.
It was just it was cowboys inan Indian sort of thing, and h
you know, bad guys, goodguys ultimately, and the princess and you
(27:52):
know, the fairy whatever. Yeah, it's just yeah, it was sort
of yeah, Western in space.Honestly, he was taking a proven formulat
and just spreading it out there.But the special meats were outstanding with nobody
was doing that nobody. Yeah,he hired some people that had worked on
two thousand and one Space Odyssey becausethat was the gold standard, even you
(28:15):
know, almost a decade later whenthey made Star Wars, that was still
the one that everybody was trying toemulate. So he brought some of those
people in and they basically had tobuild a lot of their own equipment,
or at least modify equipment for themotion capture because the shots that he wanted
to do he didn't want. Itused to be that when he did an
effect shot, the camera would belocked off because you couldn't have the camera
moving around because then if you tryto put two images together, it looks
(28:37):
wrong. So and then he feltthat that sent a visual queue to the
audience that oh, this part isnot real because we're about to do a
special effect. He felt like ittook audiences out of it. So he
wanted to be able to do effectshots where the camera's moving. So they
had so they created m they alreadykind of had it, but his motion
motion control camera where they could duplicatethe same camera move precisely over and over
(29:02):
again, so that they would allmatch up when they put all these models
together, because you could have fouror five different shots in one shot basically
compiled together, and the camera hadto be moved exactly the same way every
time. But he wanted that sothe audience would never get taken out of
it. It would still have thealmost handheld like quality to it that all
the other scenes add. And Ithink that's one of the big reasons that
(29:22):
it worked as well as it didn'tdidn't look as kind of hokey as a
lot of other um sci fi moviesbefore it y you know, yeah,
and after be honest, and whenthey were on that that vehicle, that
floating vehicle, there was a termfor that. It's the It was the
land the land Speeder is what itwas called. It was called the lands
okay, but it was really inthe movie. I didn't even remember seeing
in seventy seven. Think, youknow, it looks a little when you
(29:45):
look underneath that. It was abit, you know, if we're supposed
to be floating and you can yell, it was a bit, a bit,
And now it's like it's on wheels, yeah, and it had They
did the effect by just using mirrors, yeah, to cover the wheels up,
and it looks like it's floating.And I looked this up. It
was one thing I caught it.I gotta go back to Ralph McCoy for
a second. He passed away inMarch third, twenty twelve. He worked
(30:08):
he was famous for Star Wars trilogy. Of course, he also worked on
the original Battlestar Galactica series. Heworked on Et Cocoon. He was a
groundbreaking conceptual His artworks just beautiful.And I saw a piece of little ephemera,
this envelope that was sent in withsome of his conceptual drawings had his
address on it at the time,and he lived at the corner of Curson
(30:32):
and San Vicini in Los Angeles,and I was like an apartment building there.
I think it was seven. Ithink it was ten seventy one South
Curson Avenue, and so, andthat's there's still a building there today.
So depending on what unit you have, you very well may live in the
apartment where Ralph McCoury drew by mostmost of the concept art for Star Wars.
(30:53):
I hope that he m I hopethat Lucas gave him points, you
know, from the growth of themovie. I really do so. I
know he gave He gave that toAle Ginnis. Alghinnis got two percent yeah,
yeah, And I always heard thatCarrie and Harris and Mark got a
percentage too, But nobody's ever comeout and said that they've been bitter about
(31:15):
merchandise, but they've never of course, they've kind of kept their mouth shut
about the other stuff. I thinkthey got points. I don't think they
You know, it was a goatnowhere movie. Nobody knew what was going
to happen. It was just Yeah, I think a lot of them,
I know, I know. Idid come across um when I was reading
up on David Prouse, who wasthe man in the Darth Vader suit who
(31:36):
did the actual physical acting on screenfor most of it. He was supposed
to get residuals off Return of theJedi that he claims he never gotten so
I suspect that maybe they didn't getit off the first movie, but when
it was a hit, and youknow, they came in to negotiate for
their next roles, they probably werelike, okay, we want to back
end piece of this. So butnow Prows, I remember his thing,
the guy that was Vader he wassupposed to get. I don't think it
(32:00):
was gonna be points. He saidit. But he was also banned from
Star Wars conventions for years because heburned bridges, they said with Lucasfilm.
But he said that originally when theytook off Darthader's mask, it was supposed
to be his voice, and thenthey changed it to another actor, and
so he claimed to have gotten screwedover by Lucasfilm, and Lucasfilm just got
(32:23):
tired of him. There's multiple So, first in the first movie, while
they're filming, he gets replaced bya stuntman for a lot of the sword
fighting scenes, a lot of thelightsaber scenes, because he kept breaking the
props and he just he wasn't hejust wasn't trained up enough at sword fighting.
So the choreographer for the movie wasa stand in for him to do
that those fight scenes so first day, and he was a little rubbed wrong
(32:45):
about that he didn't get to dothose. He tried to get him to
let him do him later and Returnof the Jedi, they wouldn't let him.
He wanted to do that. Hewanted to be the one to throw
the Emperor, you know, atthe end of Return of the Jedi,
because the guy, the stuntman washaving trouble getting it right. And I
think they still wouldn't let him.So he was but heard about that.
Then there's some debate about whether ornot he knew that they were going to
replace his voice with James Earl Jonesor not. And I think he has
(33:07):
no problem with the fact that JamesOld Jones did the voice. I think
he just didn't he thought it wasgoing to be his when they recorded the
film, and then Lucas changed hismind and post about yeah, because they
sounded what Carry Fisher called him likeDarth Darth Farmer or something like that.
They made some good a joke becausehe had a what's called a West Country
accent, which I don't know whatthat sounds like. It's Bristol, but
(33:30):
I mean it's funny in England tothe guy down the street has a different
accent. They have so many differentaccents there. But he was from Bristol.
But but yeah, she it wasjust not become farmer. Yeah who
you thought. But you know,I have a friend who was who was
one of the stand ins for Vaderand for Chewbacca in the first in the
first three films actually, and hisname was Stephen Kalka, and he was
(33:53):
in the Rocky Horror Pictures Show.He was the tall, skinny Transylvanian with
the long hair in the Rocky HorrorPicture Show. And when I interviewed him
for that, you know, Iwas listening to that interview again this week
for this for this podcast, andwe talked for an hour about Rocky Horror
and about different commercials that he wasin and this and that, and he
goes, and I did Star Wars, but I don't talk about that because
(34:15):
no one, you know, noone really thinks about that. And this
is a mid nineties when I interviewedhim, and now you go to his
page on Facebook. I mean,he is famous, like huge in the
Star Wars world. He does allthe conventions because he was the stand ins
for both Chewbacca and for a DarthVader during the original film and are the
(34:36):
original three films, and coincidentally,David Prowse was originally offered Chewbacca, and
I kind of gave him a choiceto do because he's six foot six,
bodybuilder. He could have, youknow, played Chewbacca probably if he'd really
wanted to. And he wanted tobe Vader because he wanted to be the
bad guy. He thought everybody remembersthe villain, is what he says.
So now I'm gonna go out.I'm gonna I'm gonna say something that maybe
(35:00):
controversial. I don't think so.But they were in costumes and they weren't
using their voices, right, youknow, Peter Mayhew and David Prouse and
Kenny Baker, they were in costumes. They didn't use their voices right,
And they was saying like, youknow, when when uh when uh as
(35:21):
the other guy that just Peter Mayhewdied? Like or are they going to
make the other episode of Star Warswithout him? It's like, well,
they already, yeah, they alreadyknow. Yeah, it's a costume.
And I know, I'm not tryingto dismiss there's movement acting most aptiently,
Bye bye, it's a costume.One of the reasons that Um that Daniels
(35:44):
was cast as as the three Piowas because he had a lot of experience
mining apparently, so since he doesn'thave a mouth that can move, it's
all action. It's all movement andactions. Plus he has to be a
robot. Um But David Proud,But David Prouse. The final kind of
injustice to him was in Return ofthe Jedi when they pulled a mask off.
Here's as finally a chance for youto see his face, and instead
(36:06):
it's an actor named Sebastian shop Likehe just got like every step of the
way. I think he felt likehe was screwed over. And then there
was the money issue with the residualsthat he claimed about Return of the Jedi
and um but like you said,he was in ended up getting banned from
Star Wars events in twenty and tenbecause he just they couldn't trust him to
not say stupid, you know,controversial things. I guess you know,
(36:27):
and heard said he burned too manybridges. He was now he was also
we'll talk more about about the films, but he was in a lot of
Hammer films to the Hammer Horror movieswhich were also filmed at Brace Studios,
which were Rocky Horror related. There'sa there's a few Rocky Horror references in
both these, uh both of themovies, because Brace Studios was across from
(36:51):
Oakley Court, the big mansion thatwas used in Rocky Horror and also used
in some of the some of theuh the Hammer Horror films, the House
of Dracula Christopher Lee Ones, andso they were sort of like the British
classic universal horror films from Britain inthe seventies. But he was in a
couple of those with Peter Cushing,who was grandmof Tarken and David Prowse is
(37:15):
the most recent cast member to passaway. He passed away on November twenty
eighth of twenty twenties, so justa few months ago, and his sister,
I believe, revealed that it wasCOVID nineteen. I think they kind
of kept that quiet at first,but then we eventually said it was COVID
and he was eighty five years old, and then he talked about being in
horror films and stuff. Peter Cushingor yeah, Peter Cushing, who was
(37:38):
Grand mof Tarken. He was inyou know, Frankenstein and Dracula and The
Abominable Snowman and the Mummy, theones they did back in the fifties.
He was in a bunch of thosemovies. I guess because he just had
that look that great that he hadthat great face with the cheek bones and
they kind of hollowed out cheeks.He just had that that facial bone structure
(37:59):
for it. I think to playthat kind of play those dark characters.
Um And like I think that GeorgeLucas had him in mind. Number one.
I think he knew who he wanted, I believe at that point.
Yeah, Peter Cushing and the onethe only one that I know that he
really pursued from day from pretty muchday one just about is Guinness. He
(38:21):
wanted Guinness to play Obi Wan orsomebody, you know, like the Obi
Wan character kept switching and was fora time it was it was more of
a general character and then you know, a general in the military, and
then he became Obi Wan and whatever. But he wanted, he really pursued
Sir Alec Guinness, whereas Princess Leighand Han Solo and Luke were all kind
of up in the air up untiljust a few months before they started shooting,
(38:43):
or even weeks. But he reallywanted to see and Cushing claims claimed
that he was offered Obi Wan first. That's interesting. That's yeah, that's
what he That's what he said.He said. He was also approached by
John Carpenter to play the Doctor Loomisin the first Halloween movie being seventy seven,
which which would have been you know, all right, that would have
(39:06):
been Okay, did did you seedid you see the Rogue one Star Wars
movie? Rogue one? Probably,it's fantastic. It's so freaking good.
I think it's the best one ofthe new films that they've made is Rogue
one. Um, and it's butthey it's all about the it's like a
little prequel to the first Star Wars. It's all about how they got the
(39:27):
plans for the Death Star. Yeah, and they brought back they since Peter
Cushing passed away in August eleventh,nineteen ninety four, from he had had
cancer for many years. He waseighty one. Um, he had been
dead for decades by the time theymade Rogue one, and they needed his
character back, so they they broughthim back with CGI as and they brought
back Kerry Fisher as a young PrincessLeigh as well for the kind of the
(39:50):
final shot in the movie. Souh, And there was a lot of
um controversy whether it's ethical or not. This is one of the big conversations
going on in filmmaking right now.Is it ethical to do CGI really life
like close up CGI shots of actorsthat are dead and basically have them do
a performance that they didn't do andthey didn't sign off on essentially, right,
(40:12):
they didn't agree to. Yeah,I thought it was great. I
thought, I think it's awesome.It will see spectfully it is sentimentally,
yeah, you want to see themagain. But you're right. I had
that problem with when Natalie Cole didthe dwo ice with their father. You
know, he wasn't approached, hewasn't asked, and they're they're they're kind
of what when they somebody described GeorgeGeorge, who was the producer for the
(40:36):
for the Beatles, Martin George anyway, he George Martin, thank you.
Yeah. And when they were doingthe song the soundtrack or Love the Vegas
Show, and it was they're puttingtogether sort of mashups of all the Beatles
songs. He was. He saidit was like putting a mustache on the
Mona Lisa. And that's sort ofan interesting way to put it, you
know, when you're when you're whenyou're taking a piece. That's so a
lot of people will call perfect andmanipulating it, and they call it deep
(41:00):
fake. I guess that's what theywere. It was sort of yeah,
yeah, uh so, I Idid. Somebody said that the James Dean
estate had sold or off, youknow, settled on an agreement to do
a movie with James Dean. Notit just like fabricated James Dean. It's
um uh yeah, ethically, Ido. I do think it's it's dodgy.
(41:25):
I think it's really dodgy. Yeah, it's like it's like a weird
kind of cloning and uh and Idon't know, I don't know if I'm
into that. You're right, itkind of like they got a fortune for
it, though, no doubt aboutit. Peter Cushing's family, Oh yeah,
I'm sure they got a fortune.They have him set. They most
likely did have, because there's umthere's a it's kind of a state by
(41:47):
state law in the US how liferights work after someone passes away. Um,
I think a lot of times it'sthe seventy year rule that exists,
kind of a copyright in law ingeneral. In New York, I think
it doesn't exist. And coincidentally,in Tennessee it is forever you have to
go and get the permission. Andthat is because of Elvis in the Elvis
(42:07):
estate. They got that past inTennessee, so that you have to go
through the Elvis estate to do anythingwith his So that like because of those
hologram shows they were doing or something. I don't know what the timing of
when that law got past in Tennessee. I just know it has something to
do with with Elvis is in hisestate interest. But yeah, they probably
(42:28):
almost I would say almost definitely hadto go to Cushing's estate and give it
his okay. And the same thingwith Carrie Fisher. But Fisher had been
in some of these movies, theymight have already been worked into her contract
that you know, something happens.Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. You
ever watched bow Jack Horseman? Ohgod, it's so it's so I love
it so much. I love thatshow so much. But I think I
(42:51):
believe there was a plot line withhim where they he gets replaced on a
show he's on by his own aCGI version of himself, and then finds
out that in his contract he signedthat a way so they can replace him
with a fake version of him.Serious. I wonder, I wonder why,
um, I wonder why we haven'tseen deep fake porn, you know,
(43:15):
yeah, like like people like youknow, Fair Faucet or James Dean
or I mean, it's one ofthe things that a lot of actresses especially
are concerned about obviously with you know, with with their image being used like
in that way. Obviously there's alreadyyou know fake uh you know, naked
shots of that they say are ofcelebrities that are that are just lookalikes.
(43:37):
They already use lookalikes and stuff.But yeah, it is, It's been
a hot topic for a long time. They have those filters on on on
you know, you could do iton your phone now, put yourself in
smoking the bandit or something and uhso I would imagine that exists. But
it's I've seen parody porn. I'vesaid the scar there's a couple of Star
(43:57):
Wars parody porn, you know,but which which are quite good as far
as special effects and their costumes.They did a good job with it,
but probably not going to get endorsedby George Lucas, though like Spielberg,
get the rate they do. Idon't know there's a some sort of free
freedom of you know, parody theycan get away with it. I'm not
quite sure the legists of all that. But my guess is that it is
(44:21):
still so technologically difficult to really pulloff a good deep fake for an extended
scene that the resources they would taketo create it, it would take a
company to get behind that, anda company who's knows they're gonna probably get
sued by whoever it is that they'refaking. So my guess is right,
they just don't want to They don'twant to touch it, but non no
pun intended, but the technology absolutely. Um, who do you want to
(44:45):
talk about next? We talk aboutPeter? Well, we gonna have about
Peter Mayhew if you want, Yeah, sure, yeah, And he was
Chewy and five, He was Chewyand five Star Wars films, the original
trilogy, the the third of thePrequels, the last film of the Prequels
trilogy, and in the first ofthe new trilogy. He was in all
(45:06):
of those, and then and thenwhen the new trilogy came along, he
was in the first one, buthe was already kind of starting to pass
the torch on to the actor thatwas going to replace him. And there's
some nice behind the scenes stuff ofthem, you know, getting to know
each other and a new actor beingyou know, very respectful of the role
he's taking over and learning, learningMayhew's movements and stuff so that it's believable.
And I don't know, I thinkhe's done a great job. It's
(45:30):
a costume. Sorry, I'm sorry. I don't I don't I know him,
you know, I just say they'resaying that, you know, Mayhew
was a big guy, seven foottall or something like that. Seven he
was seven foot three, seven footthree, and he wasn't but he wasn't.
Although he wrote two songs, twobooks, Growing Up Giant in My
(45:52):
Favorite Giant, But he wasn't agiant. He didn't have giantism. But
he was just a really tall guy. And he said, they say that's
all his research, by going tothe zoo and learning, you know,
watching the animals. I mean maybehe did, I'm sure, and he
probably had the audition, you know, the movement. I'm not I'm not
belittling him at all. Sure,but you know, passing the torch to
(46:14):
another guy in a costume, nolines, you know, none of those
noises came out of him. Hewas just a guy in a costume.
Again, it sounds like I'm beingshitty. I don't mean it that way.
I'm just saying, right, Icould have done it. I probably
could have done it with a bitof with a bit of help, you
know, and about another foot onme, It's all right. Um.
(46:37):
Yeah. They he was seven footthree as a result of a genetic disorder
called Marphin syndrome or Marphin or Marfansyndrome. So he as he said,
he wasn't It wasn't gigantism or giantismor whatever the term is that you just
said. He said it wasn't thatbecause he didn't had He said, he
didn't have the big head that typicallycame with that. He had a normal
(46:57):
sized person's head. He was justthat people that have Marphin send him tend
to be very tall and skinny andhave kind of lanky, gangly arms and
legs. So, but he wasworking as a hospital orderly. Yeah,
when he was cast as Chewbacca,and you know, had his whole life
changed. I just had a memorythat just came back. And maybe I
(47:17):
told the story before, and Iprobably this is really a gross story.
Well Mayhew, yeah, we taughtwe he passed. He has passed away
since we started doing this series,so we did mention him. But I
don't know if you've told it yet, but to tell it again because I
don't remember. It's a such agross story. It's such a gross story.
Maybe, but it was really Now. I was really hungover, really
(47:43):
hungover, and my acts was doinga radio show and it was live.
Usually they do in the studio,this was live in front of an audience,
and Peter Mayhew was one of theguests and we were talking afterwards,
and I had to I had to. I had to pass gas. So
so I walked far away, youknow, maybe twenty five feet away,
(48:04):
and I was like, you know, mine of my own business, and
you know, doing what I hadto do. And then my ex I
could tell he's pointing at me andtalking to Peter Mayhew and making some kind
of remarkableut what I'm doing. It'slike, all of a sudden, I
just freaked out. I panicked andI went back up there and started talking
to him. I brought it withme and we're just talking, and all
of a sudden, it just becausereally bad, and people are just really
(48:28):
uncomfortable because everyone knows it was me, and it was just it was so
it arrived when you arrived. Itwas it was bad. It was really
gross and now in retrospect, stillvery uncomfortable. But I shared my my
very personal space with Peter Mayhew andhe was angry about that, but not
(48:50):
angry because it's British, you know, British. You're just like, we
know what's going on here, butsorry the Wookie. The Wookie did not
win in that moment. Just whatyou're trying to say? No, And
he had the last line in thefilm. He had the very last line
in the first Star Wars movie.Yeah he rous, Yeah, he's the
only one who doesn't get a medal. But then he gets to growl at
(49:13):
the end. Yeah, the lastline. He was also in the what
were you even born when this moviecame out? Star Wars? Yeah?
Okay, Star Wars came out ayear before I was born. Empire Strikes
Back came out when I was two. My big one. So I've always
existed in a world that has StarWars in it. My big film was
(49:36):
Return of the Jedi. I freakingadored Return to the Jedi even to this
day. I know it's not themost popular of the original trilogy. A
lot of people didn't like the Ewoks. I was like six or seven.
I freaking loved the Ewoks. Iwas an Ewok for Halloween. I'll if
you watched the video version of this. If you watched the video version,
threw up the costume that my momhands sewed from fake fur of my Ewok
(49:57):
costume, it's awesome. I wasI think the following year I was Han
Solo. But it was just anoutfit that I picked out that I know.
I looked nothing like Han Solo,and that's what I told everybody I
was. And I just remember mymom kept asking me, do you sure
you don't want me to make youa costume. I was like, no,
this will. I'll just put thisvest on and carry this like plastic
gun around and people will know I'mHan Solo. But yes, exactly,
(50:22):
But but but the Ewok costume wasone for the ages. It's the of
all the ones. My mom shewas a sewer. Of all the ones
she did, it was the bestone. So I have photos of it,
so I'll post it. Oh yeah, definitely, that's so cool.
That's so cool. And I'll justsay one other thing. I remember that
came out, and then I rememberwe had a family reunion up in Tahoe
(50:44):
in this big house in the inthe woods and those big trees and around
Tahoe reminded me so much of youknow Indoor, you know, the Ewoks
in the Ewok Village, And forme, it just like cemented in my
mind, like that was like real, like that's all real. Like I
just saw returning to Jedi and nowI'm where it looks like they filmed Ewalk
stuff. It was just made veryreal to me, you know. And
I remember my cousins and I playedStar Wars stuff and doing Star Wars arts,
(51:07):
and yeah, it's really cool.Another weird connection to Rocky Horror.
My friend Sadie, she was shewas an e walk who was a little
Transylvanian in the Rocky Horror Pictures showang with Kenny Baker, who was an
e walk in some of those scenes. I didn't know that. Yeah,
he played he played I forget whichone it was, but they have names
(51:30):
apparently, so Peter Mayhew. Sincewe've talked about his death before, he
had a bunch of health issues,largely related to his height. He had
double knee replacement surgery in twenty thirteen. He had been in basically confined to
a wheelchair for a couple of yearsleading up to that, finally got his
knee knees replaced. Then two yearslater in twenty fifteen, he got hospitalized
for pneumonia. In twenty eighteen,he had spinal surgery, and finally on
(51:54):
April thirty, twenty nineteen, hehad a heart attack and passed away.
He was seventy and heart conditions areanother side effect of having the Marphin syndrome
that he had that made him tall. So just as much as the little
people live forever, tall people justtend to not. They have all kinds
of problems. Yeah, yeah.So he is buried in Reno, Texas,
(52:16):
which is northwest of outside Fort Worth. He lived in Texas with his
wife. I think his wife wasTexan and he lived in a place called
Boyd, Texas for years and yearsand years with his wife. And he
is buried in the Azel Land MemorialPark in Reno, Texas, Azeland,
Azeland, and I looked it upand they have a recreation of Christ's tomb
(52:37):
with the rock rolled away on.It's part of their cemetery. So look
up a cemetery. Yes, I'dnever seen it before. It is quite
a site. Yeah, and hewasn't forgot though. He was in the
Star Wars Christmas special that they threwtogether that year, themUS Infamous Christmas Special,
(52:58):
and I had I had the fortyfive of what do you get a
Wookie for Christmas? I probably stilldo, but but yeah, where Carrie
Fisher sings the song at the end, I think, right, I think,
oh, I don't remember her atall. I think so, oh
my god. They were just throwingthat it was a b Arthur in that.
(53:19):
I mean, yeah, it was. Yeah, they had to get
it wasn't Chris, it wasn't Christmas. It was like it was like the
Wookies Life Day or Life Force Dayor something like that. And the whole
the plot is trying to get Chewyhome to his to his Wookie family,
uh you know, in time forthis special holiday. And that's basically the
(53:39):
gist of it. Yeah, yeah, it was is notoriously one of the
most campy things ever made, andfor a long time you couldn't get it
unless you know, you passed aroundtapes of people had bootleg copies of it.
Now of course because the Internet youcan find it. It's everywhere.
But it's almost like they shot itand then tried to forget it ever existed
(54:00):
after after it aired. So,I mean, this became a people.
I don't know if people nowadays wouldrealize what an industry this thing became.
I mean it was everywhere. Youknow, there were there were there were
tribute record albums, and there werelike dozens of them, and the costumes
and the you know, the otheryou know, the parodies they did of
(54:21):
it, and the uh, youknow, it became a It started a
whole new sci fi genre and theywere throwing these babies out on TV shows
and everything. I mean it reallychanged movies and uh and pop culture.
There was so much Star Wars stuffeverywhere, and it was just couldn't get
away from it. I mean allthat the toys, they were just kicking
(54:42):
them out. God, everything wassoap and candies and you name it.
It was Star Wars everything, andI had it all I had all that
Star Wars stuff. I was stillhave some of my old comic books and
magazines meant, you know, MadMagazine and stuff like that. Um I
just loved it, loved it,loved it. The Star Wars toys were
like what the older kids had whenI was growing up, because by the
(55:02):
time I came around, it wasG I Joe and I remember the Star
Wars ones were a little more primitivebecause you couldn't been the elbows and he
couldn't been the knees on the figuresand on G I Joe. You could,
um see, there was more youcould do with them. And but
I remember, I remember Star Warstoys being prevalented. It was like if
I went over to a friend's house, his older brother had like a bunch
of Star Wars toys that seemed tobe like if I'd been born just a
(55:24):
few years earlier, I probably wouldhave had a you know, a Millennium
Falcon, yeah, you know,which was kind of the Millennium Falcon.
I think was like the ultimate withthe you know, the Holy Grail Star
Wars toy to own because it wasso they did, it was so well
designed, it was it was hugeyeah, yeah, I was. I
went to the auction house last yearwhen they were selling the Once Upon a
(55:46):
Time in Hollywood cars and they hada whole thing on Star Wars there,
and it was really something to bethere and to be see one of those,
Like I believe it was that ship, the first one that comes in
the first movie that comes. Iwas in it swoops up there was like
right there. I mean I couldhave touched it. You know, there
were pieces of it they were brokenoff. I could tell it had been
(56:07):
around, but it was like nobody, you know, They're just like,
yeah, I have a look around. And I was like, I mean,
it wasn't just anybody off the street. We made arrangements, but I
could have just went like that andbroke a huge pieces off. But you
know, they had one of theImperial Story Trooper original from the seventy seven
movie. They had a Darth Vader, but I don't think that was ever
screen used. I think it wasused as a for appearances, but it
(56:30):
was true to the original costume.But um, but that was it was
pretty cool to see that stuff upclose. But see again, I was
more of a I loved it,but I loved the movie I loved the
story I was you know, thethe guns and the spaceships and things,
those are all fun. I lovedit. But it wasn't my either.
That was it was more of thepop culture stuff that really uh it really
(56:52):
got me going. Love that,so rest in peace, Rest in peace.
The marketing, I can't, Imean, that's what. It just
blows my mind when I think aboutit, that's all. And now those
dolls, those little dolls are wortha forchune, you know, yeah,
yeah, they're there. It's like, you can't. You can't just buy
dolls and play with them anymore.You know. You gotta keep in the
(57:14):
box. You have to be beforeand they can't. You know, we
get to wrap them in and tissueand do and like the sneaker heads that
buy shoes they never wear because they'reworth thousands. Yeah yeah, yeah,
yeah. I'm a terrible collector becauseI want to play with everything I could.
I would never well yeah exactly unlessI was like unless I was like
a rich kid and I could buytwo of everything and not open one of
(57:36):
them. There's that too, yeahtruly. Yeah. Uh So Kenny Baker,
we mentioned him earlier R two Dtwo. He was Kenny Baker was
three foot eight, and I waswondering he was. He was three He
was literally half the height of PeterMayhew. If he took another Kenny Baker
(57:59):
and had him stand on his ownhead, he would he would be looking
pretty much eyeball to eyeball with PeterMayhew. So yeah, he was very
tiny, and I believe, basedon reading this book that I've been reading,
he is the first person that theycast because the guys making the props
needed a little needed to know whowas going to go in there the little
trash can you know for for Rtwo D two, And they needed to
(58:21):
put him in there so that theyknew what they were building would actually work
with a person in it. Andso he ended up being I believe the
very first actor cast, or atleast that's the gist I got from reading
this book, because they needed himbefore they needed all the other actors.
It makes sense. Yeah, anduh and but famously, famously you want
to talk about David Prowse and feuds, Kenny Baker and Anthony Daniels, who
(58:43):
played C three PO, have oneof the most infamous feuds in Hollywood history.
They hated each other hated. Iknew that they did. I didn't
know it was that big of adeal. Kenny Baker. I read a
couple of things that he said thatyou know, he wasn't very sociable,
but I never heard any kind ofreal nasty Baker. Well, I think
what happened was they didn't get along, and then it was kind of let
sleeping dogs lie. But then inthe early two thousands, I think Baker
(59:07):
started talking trash again and interviews hecalled Daniels the rudest man I've ever met.
He said that Daniels was belittling tohim. It would always call him
little man. That I guess.He walked up to Daniels one time to
talk to him, and Daniels wasrude and snapped. You know, can't
you see him talking or having aconversation. He referred to Daniels as golden
(59:29):
balls. And then Daniels has saidthat he doesn't know where this is coming
from, but he um but publicly, Daniels said that working with Baker was
like working with a bucket. Ithink basically, Daniels is I think part
of it, too, is thathe felt Daniels felt that Baker's comments about
him were not fair because he Bakerwas just mad that Daniels didn't seem to
(59:52):
want to socialize with him. ButI think also the problem is that Daniels
didn't Daniels saw that what he wasdoing a C three P was an actual
acting perform and Baker, Yeah,and I think he saw Baker's just like
a prop. He's operating a prop. He's not actually acting. The thing
doesn't talk, He's just rolling aroundin this thing. What does you know.
I think he kind of felt likewe're not on the same level,
(01:00:12):
you know. And plus Daniels islike, because he wasn't talking, Daniels
had to create his own dialogue inhis head of what R two D two
was probably saying to him so thathe could react to it. So Daniels
felt like what he was doing waslike a really hard job, and and
just Jesus didn't feel like Baker wasat his level. And then later on
when Baker wanted to do the fanconventions with Daniels, because all great would
that be R two, D twoand C three PO actors together, Daniels
(01:00:36):
wouldn't do it. So there wasa financial I don't think Daniels does any
of those things. Does he hecould make a fortune doing this, but
I don't think he. I thinkhe started doing it more recently, but
at the time he wasn't interested.Yeah, he's a thespian. Yeah,
Kenny Baker. You know, he'sa guy that that into the suit.
(01:00:57):
You know, there was no realacting and I'm not saying, you know
there were you know, if theycould have done away with it and just
had a computerized they'd have done it, you know. And even as the
guy in the costume, if thoseouttakes, he was always like, you
know, ramming in the walls andstuff like that. You know, there
are a lot of scenes where hewas not uh where. You know,
I didn't dismissing what he did.He was he was. He was in
(01:01:22):
Time Bandits, he was in TheElephant Man. He was also in a
like I said, there's another rockyhorror thing. He was in a movie
called The Wombles. Were like,uh, kind of what they would be
in America. They were like afamily, a live action family of these.
There were wombles. They were likelittle animals, and there were little
people in suits. And my friendSadie was a womble, and so was
(01:01:45):
Kenny Baker with him, and sheshe told me that Kenny was pursuing her
and wanted to wanted to marry her, and uh and uh, and she
wouldn't have anything to do with that. But they maintained a real friendly relationship
for many years. And I saidthey were both They were both Ewoks.
Kenny was. He was supposed tohave a much larger part and as an
(01:02:05):
e walk, but he ended upbeing ill and ended up being a minor
Eak. They had names, someof them did, Yeah, I mean
not. I mean they weren't namedin the movie, but I guess they've
had and maybe they had names inthe script, so you could tell the
difference between him and now the fanshave picked up on that what their different
names were. Yeah, um,yeah, you got to be a real
fan in all that. The namesof the Ewoks. Yeah, I was
(01:02:25):
just a generic Ewok for for Halloween. I don't know what my ewak name
was. He was a brown ewalk, that's all. It was. Uh,
speaking little people. When Kenny Bakerwent to his interview to get the
role for R two D two,he brought his cabaret partner with him,
another little person named Jack Purvis,and Jack Purvis because of that, ended
up getting a role as they hadjahwa In in Star Wars. Oh right,
(01:02:49):
right, okay, I know thatname, but I didn't I didn't
go forward. He was another littleperson that acted in a bunch of stuff
just like the just like they did. You know, it's like Kenny Baker
did. Yeah, yeah, becauseI knew he was part of like a
troop or a trio or something.And and he almost didn't take the part
because she didn't want to break upthe you know, break up the band
as a sure, sure, sure, and wisely did because they kept him.
(01:03:13):
You know, those people made afortunate autograph shows like id even carried
did the autograph shows. Uh,you know, she she'd show up and
they could pay. He could chargea fortune to sit there and sign autographs,
you know, and it's like fiftybucks cash for you know, a
half a second of their lives.She was very very kind and talk to
(01:03:34):
people, but it was, youknow, very much an industry. And
here I am for eight hours.I'll do this for eight hours and I'm
out of here. And that's aneasy ten grand cash for her. Yeah,
absolutely, I mean you do oneof those every couple of months or
every quarter or whatever, and youhave enough to survive on, then why
wouldn't you? Yeah, you know, I mean he did, Yeah,
because I doubted and I doubt thatKenny Baker got points. You know,
(01:03:55):
he probably got like five hundred bucksa week the first time, and then
you know, as some movies wenton and made more money, he got
paid more money. But it wasa sentimental pay because anyone could have been
in that thing that was that littleyou know, I mean it sounds so
dismissive, but but he was.He was the inside of a costume like
the robot and lost in space.You know. Yes, it's a guy.
(01:04:16):
It's a guy. Uh And thatsounds really rude. I don't need
it that way, you know,I'm going with that, don't you know
what I mean? Yeah, itwould take some training. I'm not gonna
say it's just somebody goes in.Well. Rt D two, Yeah,
it was just Originally, Originally rtD two was supposed to walk. His
three little legs were supposed to kindof shuffle, I guess, kind of
(01:04:38):
like if you've ever seen Interstellar,the little robot they have in that that
kind of does this thing. Hewas supposed to kind of like that.
It was supposed to kind of lumberalong, and then I think they realized
it was just too difficult to makethat work, and the Adam start and
Adham roll instead. Well they hedoes it a couple of times in the
like at the ending of the ThroneRoom ending, he does walk up because
everybody kind of walk he has likewhat Dan does. Yeah, yeah,
(01:05:02):
so, um so, yeah,that was all you know that was talking
about. Yeah, that was allthose emotional chords were We're brought out for
that movie. Everyone was so intothat. It was such a glorious ending
to that movie. It really was. Um So. Kenny Baker passed away
on August thirteenth, twenty sixteen.He had had a lung condition for a
long time. I think had somethingto do with his death. He was
(01:05:24):
he was eighty one years old.R I P R I P R two
D two. Um So, okay, I guess we talk about Alec Ginnis.
Yeah, and I've got um,I've got some small little characters we
can mention. But yeah, let'ssir Alec Ginnis, whom originally was excited
(01:05:45):
until he heard it was a sciencefiction movie and was unsure if he wanted
to do it much like I think. Um, I think Anthony Daniels felt
kind of the same way. Atfirst, not he was at Guinness was
not sure he wanted to do ascience fiction movie. But then when he
read the script, he loved it, and he was he was a page
turner, you know, kind oflike what you've said about the story.
He's like, he wanted to turnthe next page to see what happened next.
(01:06:08):
He was really engrossed by it,and he had to read it a
few times, just like everybody elsedid, until he really fully understood it.
But um, but he ended upaccepting it. And I think,
uh, Harrison Ford said he thinksthat Alc Ginnis took the part because Ginnis
saw it is a very American movieis kind of like a Western, which
you know, I had a lotof connections to plot wise, and so
(01:06:30):
that's how he kind of saw it, and maybe that's why he jumped on
board. Probably getting paid fifteen granda week in nineteen seventy six was probably
another incentive. Yeah, And inthe film was the only one that was
really a name in that movie.I mean, there's Peter Cushing u and
and he always but he really pannedthe dialogue, didn't He always said,
you here's so many different things.The only reason he wasn't gonna do it.
(01:06:53):
But then he saw America graffiti andhe like George Lily guess so,
but then you always hear that hereally, he really, you know,
dismissed the dialogue and said it washokey and he hated it. However,
he got points. He made alot of money for that movie. Nobody
knew who was going to make anymoney, so he made bank. I
mean that guy was rolling in itjust from I don't know. Nobody got
(01:07:15):
the image stuff, nobody got thatmerchandizing stuff. But he got points from
the gross of the movie or thatnet I don't even know what that means.
But of the earnings of the moviehe got, he got money.
He got money, so Sir AlecGuinness. He was an Oscar winner for
the Bridge over the River Kwai,of course, famous for Lawrence of Arabia,
Doctor Zivago, and so he andLucas was against casting, for the
(01:07:42):
most part, casting famous people inStar Wars because he believed that if the
audience recognized an actor, it wouldtake them out of the fantasy of the
film, right, He felt like, if you put Robert Redford in your
movie, now it's a Robert Redfordmovie, it's hard to imagine Robert for
it is not Robert Redford, Sohow do you imagine him, you know,
as a swashbuckler in space? Hejust felt like it took it.
(01:08:06):
And it was the other reason thatGeorge Lucas didn't originally didn't want to cast
anybody from American Graffiti because again hedidn't want people he saw in his last
movie to be in this this epicfantasy film that he was making. And
then eventually, of course he changedhis mind because Harrison Ford was in American
Graffiti and he ended up auditioning severalactors in addition, you know, for
(01:08:27):
He Dreyfus was another one that wasin the running for Han solo for a
while. It was also an AmericanGraffiti, so he eventually kind of changed
his mind on that a little bit. But yeah, Sir Alec Ginnis was
the only real big star at thattime. Even though Carrie Fisher was famous,
she hadn't really been in much ofanything yet when she took on.
But yeah, yeah, eliciness washuge in Britain. But really ordinary looking.
(01:08:56):
You know, he wasn't going tosteal anybody's thunder. He he was
a kind, older looking gentleman whodidn't need to do movies, you know,
hugely successful on the stage. Theyput him up there with you know,
John Gilgood, and there's there's likethree of those Olivier in fact,
I think they were all friends.But you know, hugely successful onstage,
Shakespearean actor, but not known enoughto be you know, a distraction.
(01:09:23):
And he's really Obi wan Kenobi isreally not in it for all that long?
Is he? I mean? Ishe? I don't. I think
a lot of it The plot revolvesaround him so much. But is here
right in the first movie? Yes? And then his voice only obviously for
the most part, shows up asa fourth ghost, you know, at
certain points, but he's mainly justin Luke's head with voiceover for the rest
of it. Yeah, so haveyou so now we've talked about this before.
(01:09:47):
How you know it became a commontrope in Hollywood, just like everybody
said they were supposed to be atSharon Tate's house the night of the murders.
Everybody tried to say they warned JamesDean not to drive his car,
that Porsche, that he was gonnadie if he kept racing. Yeah.
Right. George Stevens claimed to havetold that story. And one of the
people that claims to have told himthis is Sir Alec Ginnis. And this
(01:10:11):
came out in an interview he didright or the same year I believe the
Star Wars came out. He talkedabout um. He claims that he met
James Dean outside a restaurant in Hollywoodin LA Area about a week before James
Dean died. And I think AlecGinnis had gotten into a fight with somebody
or something or he couldn't get backinto the restaurant for some reason, and
(01:10:31):
James Dean rolled up and said,Hey, you know, I'm going in.
I'm going in, just come inwith me. And so they went.
They went in together. But beforethey did, Alec Ginnis said he
checked out this porst that was inthe parking lot, and he said it
still had like the Cell of Famekind of rapping on at certain ports of
it to you know, protect thepaint job and whatever. And he told
and he started talking to James Deanabout this car. And he says that
(01:10:56):
James Dean told him it could doa top speed of one hundred and fifty
miles an hour, and Guinness claimsthat he told James Dean he said,
if you drive this car within aweek from this point, you'll be you'll
be dead. He said, it'snow Thursday, or you know, Friday
night at ten pm. By nextthis time next week, you'll be dead.
And he was so. I don'tknow if that's true or not,
but he I've listened to the actualaudio of the interview, and it's sounding
(01:11:18):
he's a very matter of fact aboutit, and he doesn't drive me as
a guy who tells BS stories,So I don't know. I tend to
I tend to believe it. Iguess I have no reason not to,
even though I know a lot ofpeople have said that they did warn him
not to drive. I don't.I mean, I I think not.
That's my guess. That's my Idon't think. You know, he's a
(01:11:41):
he's an actor. He's probably ayou know, someone that would live,
dine out on a good story andsure and and have a lot of people
listen to him. May I'm notsaying that in an interaction didn't happen,
but you know, maybe he sawand he goes, you're getting you know,
that's a death trapper or something likethat. But that's because you know,
growing it was now ten o'clock onFriday and within seven days. What
(01:12:03):
are you saying? And it's like, I, you know, I think
so, but you know what,they might have had an interaction and and
it's possible, but yeah, yeah, what it just sounds like it's been
in bellied any any He claims theyhad a you know, a lovely evening
at the restaurant and he was andhe was very sad when it happened,
like everybody else was. He saidhe wished he'd gotten to know him better.
(01:12:25):
And you know, he lived.So yeah, so uh Al again
has passed away on August fifth,two thousand, from liver cancer. He
was eighty six. He's the onlyone out of the cast that was nominated
for any or you know, yeah, the cast. He was nominated for
Best Supporting Actor that year. Imean it one other Oscars it won for
(01:12:50):
uh I think it was Achievement,Special achievement and special Effects and sounding visual
effects and it was now and Ibelieve John Williams was nominated in one for
the score best original score. Ohmy god. When I was in band
in high school, we did theStar Wars team. Could you imagine it
(01:13:11):
had to be a parent and listento it. Band doing like a fifteen
minute orchestral version of Star Wars bylike kids who weren't even into it,
most of them. Oh my god, the agony demost have been. I
was in the marching band at ArizonaState University and we did we did a
Star Wars show, but we werecollege kids. We were a little bit
better, and we had fifty twotrumpets in our band. Yeah, it
(01:13:32):
sounded pretty good, but yeah,score orchestra. I can see it would
be a little I would love toI would love to hear recording of that.
I really would. But you saidso Guinness had two point two five
interest in the revenue from it,and and he said he had asked to
confirm with the additional point five inwriting, but was told it was reduced
(01:13:56):
to point two five. I'm notquite sure dialogue because he'd been yeah,
sorry. But it was revealed inthe seventy seven interview with Michael Parkinson that
it was in supported by many publiccomments. Mark Hamill. They were all
speaking highly of him and is anyway, it doesn't really matter. He didn't
quible he made a fortune. Ithink they said that he Um, what
(01:14:19):
if the film gross something like onehundred million dollars and he had or four
hundred million dollars and he had twopercent interest in the revenue, which which
who knows after Hollywood accounting has takeninto account how much actually made it to
him, But probably a pretty goodamount because I'm sure they negotiated a good
deal for him if he was youknow, because everybody knows what Hollywood accounting
(01:14:41):
is. They knew what it wasback And it's not just getting up percentage,
just making sure you're high enough onthe pecking order that you get it,
that you get that money, you'renot so far down that it all
gets sucked up by other You know, the Hollywood accounting is very famous for
the shady accounting practices that they do. And you think you're in for two
percent, but then you realize you'rein for two percent of the remaining ten
(01:15:03):
percent that the studio doesn't take asa distribution fee. After you know,
all these other people, there's likea hierarchy to who gets their percentages.
Basic, yeah, very and there'sa running joke in Hollywood and no movie
has ever made money as far asHollywood accounting is concerned. They always find
a way to say that it didn'tmake anything. So um. But the
(01:15:26):
casting was a while. Jodie Foster, for one, at one point was
kind of in the lead to playLeia, but she was too young because
she was fifteen. Terry Nunn,who went on to be the lead singer
of Berlin, that was in thelead, but she was also a minor
is a that is according to theDefinitive book, and she's talked about it.
(01:15:47):
Yeah, she didn't and Mark Hamilleven commented that he um, he
saw her because Mark Hamill didn't thinkhe was going to get it either,
but he knew she had auditioned andhe he saw her collecting unemployment like in
an employment line, like a weekafter he had auditioned, and she was
like, I didn't get it,and she's like, what about you?
And he said I didn't get iteither, because he didn't think he did.
Okay, so yeah, but Terrynine, but Terry n was was
(01:16:10):
she did she did? Um.There's pictures of her, I believe doing
you know, doing the audition likein there with George and reading reading for
it. Tons of people, NickNulty Audition, Tommy Lee, Jones,
Travolta, Kurt Russell, Christopher Walkinwas in the It was a favored to
play Haunt at one point he wouldhave been a little bit older. But
one of the reasons they went withcarry Fisher is because, unlike Jodie Foster
(01:16:33):
and Terry Nune, Carry Fisher waseighteen and so you didn't have to worry
about child labor laws filming, whichyou do with when you work with miners,
they can only work a certain numberof hours a day, whereas adults,
you know, you can kind ofkind of abuse more. Um,
that's why a lot of times childactors, why a lot of times child
actors are twins, because then theycan rotate the twin in and get a
(01:16:54):
full day of filming out of thetwo. Well that makes sense. Yeah,
yeah, but Kerry, Yeah,you spend a lot of time in
Britain anyway, so that's probably Ididn't didn't hurt things, but yeah,
I just listened to the audiobook ofTodd Fisher, who's her brother, Carry
Fisher's brother. Oh well, sorry'slet's stay with with Alec Ginnis. We
(01:17:17):
did we finish, We did finishhim didn't. Yeah, I'll just say
one more thing about the casting process. When they started doing the casting,
Brian de Palma and George Lucas wereand I guess assume still are very good
friends. And Di Palma was castingfor Carry the movie care that's right,
and they and he pitched the ideaof well, we're both looking for kind
(01:17:38):
of the same age group, andyou're gonna and he already knows Lucas is
doing this huge cattle call. Hewants to see everybody. So Depalmas like,
I'll just sit in with you andwe'll cast both films together, and
Depauma ended up casting most of hisyou know, the leads out of those
sessions, and Lucas couldn't make hismind up. So eventually De Palma got
bored with the process and you know, left it to Lucas to run the
(01:17:58):
rest of the time. But yeah, they weeks they sat together and cast
for both Carrie and Star Wars,which then led to confusion for the actors
because they didn't know who what theywere auditioning for. Ye and the palmer
was a better director at the time, so Carrie said that she wanted to
do. She thought that she wasgoing to be doing Carrie. That's what
she thought was gonna you know,because she'd made you know, Carrie doing
(01:18:19):
carry Uh but uh, yeah,she thought that that I think that's the
part she thought she might get.So she was sort of surprised that they
got she got Star Wars, butthat that that audiobook was fascinating that Todd
Fisher did. I was really surprised. I was expecting it to be um,
(01:18:40):
you know, me a lot ofinserting yourself into situations. But they
were really close, and it wasit was it was a really interesting story,
the two of them, and DebbieReynolds. They were all three of
them close. But uh but yeah, fascinating, fascinating story, those three,
that family, Eddie Fisher and HarryFisher and Debbie Reynolds. And yeah,
(01:19:02):
I mean Carrie Fisher was born intoHollywood royalty by every death, by
the very definition of it. She'sthe daughter of Beddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds,
I mean yeah. And when shestarted, um, she was,
in addition to being an actress's abit of a social light. She'd liked
to throw big parties in New York, and there's a great I think it
may be an excerpt from her book, but I read it as an article.
(01:19:24):
Um, there's some great stories abouther hanging out with the cast of
SNL and oh yeah, and herfriendship, her friendship with John Belushi,
which kind of centered on their boththeir love of cocaine, their mutual love
of cocaine, but also they werejust good platonic friends. You know,
Belushi was married the whole time.But uh, and I remember the SNL
cast were in awe of Carrie Fisherand why why did she even want to
(01:19:46):
hang out with them, because shewas Hollywood royalty and they were just,
you know, a bunch of dumbkids from Second City. They were just
kind of like, oh wow,they were kind of starstruck by her,
even though at this point they're likesome of the biggest comedians in the country
because and else this big, youknow, cultural phenomenon. So it's kind
of funny to hear people kind oftaken off with their own careers. But
then Carrie Fisher rolls in and it'slike, oh, here's like the real
(01:20:10):
the real starlet is among us.Yeah, yeah, she was. Yeah,
she certainly brought along a a cachetwith her just by her birthright certainly,
but she she also earned her ownway, uh, into into pop
culture. She was I knew her, uh, not like we weren't super
(01:20:31):
friends, but I knew her fairlywell and when from my time in England,
and she was she was just exhaustingto be around. Nice, but
the biboler stuff made her really difficultto be around. And she was she
was like, you know, youwere just this is this is It was
like you couldn't follow it and uh, but but she was. I say,
(01:20:57):
she was super super nice and justas uh, you know, throughout
the one liners, the bumper stickerone liners all the time. You know,
she always had some kind of remarkto make. Um, we're talking
about drinking or something like that.She said, I'm not I'm not in
AA, I'm just I'm just aor something like that, you know,
making a kind of just But shealso told me a really interesting anecdote.
(01:21:20):
And I don't know what he evengot started on, but she told me
she says, famous people, Um, when you become famous, people don't
want to talk to you anymore.I may have told you this before,
might have mentioned people don't want totalk to People don't want to talk to
you anymore. They only want tolisten to you. So you can go
up to somebody and go I loveyou, I love you, and and
(01:21:41):
uh, and then you can startspouting out and you could talk about anything.
You could say I had the shittiestday, dotty duh, and people,
the fans just got, you know, leaning on your every word and
smile and giggle and joke. Andthen that she said, that's why celebrities
have this distorted view. What theyhave to say is important to other people
because people give them that power.And as it was very it was interesting
(01:22:06):
to get that anecdote because she sawit from all around and she she knew
that she was born into an oddsituation and and she struggled with bipolar and
drug addiction and her relationship with herparents, etcetera. But she was able
to parlay that into that career ofbeing this this this writer. That was
pretty yeah, pretty pretty funny,pretty good stuff. She was a she
(01:22:30):
was a fantastic author. She wrotePostcards from the Edge. It was going
to started out if she wrote asa book kind of semi autobiographical, which
sin of course, got made intothe movie. Um. She was also
a script doctor in Hollywood, which, if you don't know what a script
doctor is, people listening, Um, you're usually an uncredited role. You're
brought in to punch up a scriptum, to help sometimes just to be brought
into bright It could be as simpleas we want you to pump up the
(01:22:53):
punch up the dialogue for this specificcharacter, right, or it might be
the whole script we want you tolook at or whatever. But a script
doctor, it's there job to comein and kind of fine tune a script.
And she supposedly worked as a scriptdoctor on Hook for spielberg sister act
the wedding Singer Lethal Weapon three,And I believe she also did some script
doctor work on some of the prequelStar Wars movies, m which she probably
(01:23:15):
was happy to not get accredited for, but she was also she said that
she is the most successful actress inHollywood, and I was like, well,
what do you mean. She says, well, I've been in so
many blockbusters. I may have hadjust a cameo in them, but I
was in you know, when Harrymade Sally, I was in Star Wars,
and I was in Charlie's Angels Iwas in. You know, she
(01:23:39):
was in all these hit hit moviesthat by by box office standards, she
was the you know, the mostsuccessful financial actress of all times at that
time. Yeah, I can seethat, Yeah, totally. Yeah.
She was also in the Burbs.It's one of my favorites that she was
in. She played Tom Hanks's wife, remember who He's not in it a
(01:24:00):
whole bunch because she leaves. Sheleaves with the kids at a certain point
once his antics get out of control. But yeah, she's funny and that
we talked about that in The Wizardof Oz. That uh, that were
the Ods movie that they did withthe with the Dwarves and she was Chevy
Chase and that was with Chevy Chasethey were making The Wizard of Oz.
Uh, you know that were wetalked about the during the Wizard of Oz
(01:24:21):
episode it was under the Rainbow andit was all about the bunchkins filming The
Wizard of Oz the Ulver Hotel andthey were, you know, swinging from
the rafters and it's a you know, it's a terrible, terrible movie.
But but yeah, she's she's donesome clonkers. That's for sure. But
uh, but who hasn't amazing act, amazing, amazing writer. So um
(01:24:45):
so you you mentioned her bipolar.So the one story I have about Carrie
Fisher. I never met her,but I was. Um. I was
shopping a couple of years ago asin a clothing store, and the person
working at the clerk work at thestore. We started talking and somehow I
maybe maybe it was a few yearsago, maybe Carrie Fisher just died.
I don't remember, but she um. But this this worker said that they
(01:25:10):
had previously worked at another big clothingstore in la It is very well known
and when they worked there at thetime, it was kind of famous.
The store was open until midnight.That was kind of one of their things
that they were known for. Itwas this kind of high end clothing store
and they were up until midnight.And they said that Carrie Fisher used to
come in and and shop at likeshe'd come in at like, you know,
(01:25:31):
eleven thirty midnight or so, andthey'd keep the store open later for
it because they know she was goingto buy a lot. But they said
they felt kind of bad because itwas obvious that Carrie was kind of having
a manic episode. A lot oftimes when she was coming in and buying
all these clothes and they're like,I don't know if we should be selling
her all this. But then they'relike, well, she'll probably come back
tomorrow or the next day and returnwhatever she doesn't like when she kind of
(01:25:53):
comes back down again. But theysaid she never did. She never returned
anything. She would come in andjust buy a ton of stuff and being
a super positive kind of manic modeand apparently just kept it. Yeah,
and she never will. She neverwore shoes. He used to make me
nuts dirty feet and she always puthim on like she always put him on
the chair. I always put himon the sofa. And it was like
(01:26:15):
I just have a thing about feetanyway, But it was just always always
it was, yeah, and you'recredited in a Tarantino movie and you have
a thing against feet. I knowright now it's I think, Peter,
you know, I don't want tosee other people's feet now. And she
anyway, But anyway, she wasI liked there a lot. She was
(01:26:36):
really nice and just just difficult tobe around sometimes and just funny. We
so, yeah, this the bookthat Todd Fisher wrote was was really interesting
how they had went to see thefirst screening of Star Wars, the first
the first New Hope and that wasat Fox. It was like an advanced
(01:27:00):
meaning and they kind of snuck inwhen the credits, you know, and
she was like scared to death becauseit was all this hooplah at on Fox,
on the Fox all day, allwore nobody knew what was going to
happen. And by the time they, you know, the movie goes over
with they're all sitting here with theirmouths wide open, going, what did
we just watch? This is incredible? Right? So so she um,
(01:27:20):
you know, she she definitely learnedhow to embrace it. But you know,
and I do think they got somekind of profit sharing somehow, but
not the marketing. And she wasshe would always make you know, cracks
about stuff like that because she wouldbring out on talk shows. She would
bring out toys of her you know, when she made those pets dispensers,
(01:27:43):
and she was, you know,look at this, you can snap my
neck back and then can throat.That's that's um she she had. She
did that great um speech, thatroasting of George Lucas when you got the
AFI lifetime achievement Award and if youhaven't seen it, everybody listening, you
should gets on YouTube. It's amazing. And she goes into that. She
(01:28:04):
says that, um, she can'tlook at herself in the mirror without sending
George a couple of bucks. Heowns her likeness. And she makes in
the Pezda spencer that her daughter wheneverher daughter would get mad at her,
she'd break out the Pezda spencer andpull candy out of her throat. And
then she said, or the shampoobottle where you twisted my head off and
poured soapa on my neck. Yeah, and how, oh, and how
(01:28:29):
George Lucas, Um, George Lucaswouldn't let her wear a bra underneath,
you know, like the famous metalbikini and all the all the other office
she wasn't allowed to wear a brabecause George Lucas told her there was no
underwear in space. Okay, right, but all the other characters had cod
pieces, Yeah, exactly. It'sfunny. But she she got a lot
(01:28:54):
of flak for the haird And Idon't know if there was ever any kind
of if there was ever any regreton George Lucas's part for that. The
heir and her for the little cinnamonbun buns on the side of her head.
Yeah, but she was she,I mean she was she knew how
to get a joke out of everything. And I've seen it on a dozen
(01:29:15):
shows. But she makes me laughevery time. But she says, I
went someone you know on the EllenDegenera show when she did her the first
sitcom, Carrie Fisher, you know, played just a quick cameo in this
bookstore as herself and Helen grabs thebuns, looked on Princess Leiah and she
goes, you know, as manytimes as I see that, I never
get tired of it. You know, she was always uh it makes me
(01:29:38):
laugh every time. I never getsick of it. And she but yeah,
that she um got I mean theBlues Brothers another highest grossing movie.
Uh, you know, she shewas just so much stuff. And that's
how I think she hooked up withall of that Saturday Night Live clan.
Well, supposedly I read that shesaid that, uh you know, back
(01:29:59):
she was friends with Dacroid and Blushin the SNL cast, and when she
did, she was agreed to bein Blues Brothers. Supposedly, the agreement
was that Blues John and dan Ackroidwould get to play like aliens or some
type of creature in the next StarWars movie, and George Lucas was like
no, so she pitched it tohim much money, but she was still
in Blues Brothers obviously as the mysterywoman. I just remember there was a
(01:30:23):
guy I knew comic he's probably stillaround. His name was Scott Kaporo And
in another comic I knew named GregPruchs, and both of those guys were
hired to be sportscasters in one ofthe Star Wars movies. I forget which
one it was, but there weretwo sportscasters that were you know, aliens
or whatever, but they were celebrityvoices and it was these two guys.
(01:30:45):
I just remember that. Forgot aboutthat. It's probably the prequel where they
had the pot where they had thepod racing. It was like it was
like a Ben Her type of chariotrace. But okay, they called podracers.
That's the only thing I can thinkof where they might have had that
kind of character. I don't remember. Yeah, I mean it started getting
a bit silly when they doings business, and I really the biggest problem I
(01:31:06):
have with the Star Wars the originaltrilogy is that they won't give us the
original version pre nineties when they wentin and did all the really what's now
extremely dated CGI from the nineties,which they went and added to the original
trilogy. So because George Lucas wantedit to match up better with the prequels
that he was about to come outwith, so they added all types of
(01:31:28):
little alien creatures in the things.They added scenes. There's now a whole
song and dance sequence in it that'sjust terrible. And there's a really bad
they put in a deleted scene whereHan Solo talks to us. They and
he talks to Job of the Hutand there's but they hadn't designed the Job
of the Hut creature yet at thetime, so they didn't realize he's gonna
(01:31:49):
have a tail. So there's ascene a moment where in Han Solo is
supposed to walk behind him, butthey realize he can't walk behind him because
there's a big taiale there. Sothey did this. It's just it's awful.
This like digital. They make HarrisonFord kind of pop up and back
down again as he's walking like theshow always he's stepping up. It looks
it looks like I did it,and I don't know how to do it
like that. It looks so itlooks so clear. I can't it looks
(01:32:12):
so bad. I can't believe theywere like, yeah, let's let's do
it, let's put it out there. I can't. I really cannot believe
that they that they approve that itlooks so bad. I just the fans.
They want so badly to have theoriginal trilogy unmessed with. And granted,
there were other tweaks that were madethrough various releases, little little things
that were done to it, youknow, in the years before they did
(01:32:33):
the big thing in the nineties.But I just give me like the digitally
cleaned up, fine remastered but originalcall Star Wars Classic Caught whatever you want.
I know George Lucas is completely deadset against it. I'm ever doing
and releasing that, And I don'tknow if Disney is part of their deal
when they acquired the thing, agreedto never ever release the original versions of
(01:32:53):
the film. But it really sucksthat we can't get a We can't get
that. I can't get a fourK or blu ray copy of the original
trilogy before they mess with it.Like, I mean, Disney, I
can't imagine them not having that inthe deal. You know, when they
run out of making more Star Warsmovies, they'll just reissue them all,
go back and repack and you're likeclashic version and stuff Wars whatever you want
(01:33:18):
to call it. Yeah, yeah, I mean when you go into the
there's so many things that were soadvanced in that movie, but then when
you go to the cantina, someof those are really bad. You know,
those costume characters they were they werelike, you know, just mannequin
heads. They didn't have any movingparts, you know, a lot of
pere just that's where they That's whereit's because the studio cut down in their
(01:33:42):
preproduction time, and that just endedup costing them later as they said,
they cost them unity of costing themtwice as must to shoot some of these
things because they wouldn't let them havea skeleton crew through an extra six weeks
of pre pro to get things likethe alien costumes perfect and fine tuned.
And so there's there are moments init where the seams show a little bit
where you realize, oh, thiswas rushed. It's amazing that looks as
(01:34:02):
good as it does, but there'sstill some moments that don't look Have you
been to that that cantina bar onHollywood Boulevard? I haven't. No,
It's it's on the same block asthe Vine Street Cinema, and it really
is. It's it's made to looklike the cantina and it's got you know,
all the rocks and everything, andthe drinks were these really bizarre looking
(01:34:25):
concoctions and the most awful drinks you'llever imagine. But the guys are dressed
like the bartender in the cantina,and uh, it's it's interesting, you
know, it was like the Beetlejuicebar they had going for a while,
but it's so you know, Idon't know if they're going to open it
again after this business, but butit's it's right there on Hollywood and Vine
(01:34:45):
practically. Do you have any othercarry Fisher stories? And what context did
you meet her? Was it wasit during your ex's show that you met
her? When? Yeah, hewhen when we were together, he wanted
to meet her. He wanted tobe friends with her, that's what he
wanted. That was before, away before he even had a show.
He's like, I want to knowher. I want to be friends with
her. So when he started theball rolling, he got her on as
(01:35:06):
a guest and they hit it off. So we you know, we saw
each other socially several times. SoI said, I want to misrepresent it
as being friends. Like we calledeach course, I mean, she called
the house, but it was likeI want to talk to you know,
the other one, you know,So it wasn't like we talked a whole
lot. You know, we endedup in the green room at you know,
(01:35:26):
a couple of different things and endedup having conversations. But it was,
you know, we weren't friends friends, so but she wasn't. She
was a nice It's just funny,funny for certain, absolutely funny. Actually
one of the last things she didwas my ex's show in London. Oh
yeah, there's the last interview shedid was that I knew she was on
a flight coming back from London.I didn't realize that. Yeah, that's
(01:35:47):
what I think. She did hisshow, and then she did another quick
game show and then she was onthe plane back when she had the heart
attack. Yeah, so it wasDecember twenty third, twenty sixteen flight from
London to la and she suffered whatwas described as a medical emergency on the
flight. Um. And then butshe survived and but then passed away four
(01:36:10):
days later, um, at theage of I believe sixty. She was,
Yeah, and Todd was saying,Todd, her brother was saying that
she you know, there was athere was a while where they really thought
she might pull through although she hadbeen out for her heart a chap for
like ten minutes. So the oddsof them getting her out with little you
know, damage, right, thatgreat, but they you know, of
(01:36:32):
course you hold hope. But eventuallythat wasn't going to happen. And uh,
and she ended up passing away.And then bizarrely, you know,
her mother died like the next day. It was like the most bizarre crazy
Yeah, Debbie Reynolds. Debbie Reynolds, her mother suffered a stroke on December
twenty eighth. So yeah, thefollowing day suffered a stroke and was pronounced
(01:36:54):
Dad at Cedar Sinai And Um,I believe his brother was the one that
said that. Shortly before Debbie Reynoldsdied, she said, I want to
be with Carrie. Yeah, thatshe believed that that Carrie passing at least
was a contributing factor to the strokethat it hit her mom. So,
you know, I thought that wasgoing to be bs when I read those
(01:37:15):
quotes, but reading listening to hisentire fourteen hour book, I believe it.
And he's not representing himself differently thanhe was there. He remembers it
and he believed it that that waswhat it was. These were as two
closest people in his life, andthey didn't want to live with these Debbie,
they had a strained relationship a lotof times, but she was extremely
protective of Carrie and had a specialyou know, probably your favorite, I
(01:37:38):
guess, and so so yeah,it was that was wild. The joint
funeral with the whole at the ForestLawn and Carrie's buried in the prozac bottle
or whatever prozac pill. Yeah,so she supposedly some of her ashes are
buried next to her mother in ForestLawn and then the rest are in an
urn that shaped like a giant prozacpill, which you can see this is
(01:38:01):
with her mother. Yeah when thereokay, yeah, because that was like
her cookie jar or something at home. And uh and then when they were
looking for an earn for her.Tom was like Billy to the daughter,
Billy, Uh, Billy Lord.I think they thought that she would have
thought it was funny, and Ithink they're probably right. The public definitely.
I mean, if you see everythingpictures of her house, it is
(01:38:24):
freaking wild house. Yeah. Andwell, Billy, they were going to
sell the house when Billy decided tokeep the house and they're redoing it.
And they had that auction of alltheir stuff, a lot of her stuff
and Debbie stuff because Debbie, youknow, saved those costumes and you know,
Debbie oh man, you know,somebody deserves to be haunted by the
ghost of Debbie Reynolds because of thelengths that she went to to save and
(01:38:47):
preserve Hollywood costumes. Uh, youknow, and and back in the seventies
when no one was doing it,and she's you know, she got Maryland
seven year edge dressed, and she'sgot the singing in the brain business,
and she's got all these costumes.And this person said they were going to
help them. George Lucas said no. Steven Spielberg said, no, sell
the stuff. I suggest you sellit. These people, you know,
(01:39:08):
they were gonna do this deal,and it here it fell through, and
you know, finally she's like,screw it, I'm old, I need
the money, and we're getting ridof it. So all those costumes are
out into the world because no onewould give her her freaking museum. And
that just blows. And now ironicallythere is a Ken Academy museum that Steven
(01:39:28):
Spielberg contributed many millions of dollars too. And now I guess according to Todd,
he said that Debbie he was goingto give them some of the Debbie
costumes that they ain't get rid of, and he says, I will only
give these two if you call itthe Debbie Reynolds wing or something. Yeah.
So I don't know if that's goingto happen, but I know that
that was that was that was spoken. So and I hope so she really
(01:39:53):
got God, you know, shegot screwed. And if you if you
do that story at Debbie Reynolds andthose costumes, it is it's criminal or
what they what they did not dofor that heritage of that entire town,
of the entire industry. And youknow, she had like the original camera
that was used in Gone with theWind. You know, she saved everything.
(01:40:14):
She bought everything. She went brokebuying this stuff. And Carrie,
you know, they were they had, you know, a struggle of life,
you know, the two of themtogether. But Carrie was a big
proponent of that too, you know, trying to get things off the ground,
to get that museum done for hermother. And and Todd was the
man who took care of all thosethings. I don't know. It just
is really sad and that that isthat woman got screwed over, I think.
(01:40:36):
But anyway, speaking of people thatgot screwed over, well, okay,
so Carrie passed away and she's buriedin a in a Prozac pill giant
which you can find pictures of online, her of her brother carrying it at
the memorial service. It's like thesize of a football. Yes, the
I'm trying to say that up forin the Grammys, it did was up
(01:41:01):
for Best Album of the Year.It's the Star Wars soundtrack, and they
lost too. They'd lost to FleetwoodMac rumors they that's one in one Album
of the Year, and uh,which is interesting. And do you know
what else happened in that ceremony theBest Newcomer of the of the Grammys that
year, They were up for TheCars were up for it the best Newcomer.
(01:41:26):
They lost over a group called ATaste of Honey. Now do you
do you remember a Taste of Honey? I think I remember the name,
but not really. It's a discosong called Boogie Oogie Oogie to you just
can't Boogie no More. And thatis what the Cars as best Newcomer lost
out to. That. That issomething that is something that's always really bugged
(01:41:50):
me, and I always wanted tosay that out loud because it really always
bothered me a great deal. Thereason that the reason that the reason that
John Williams did the Star Wars scorewas asked to do it is because of
another film we've talked about. It'sbecause of Jaws, and Jaws had come
out the year before they went intoproduction on In fact, I think Jaws
(01:42:13):
was in post production while they werein pre production on Star Wars, or
maybe it's something like that. Theywere still in development, because it was
Star Wars was in development for acouple of years. But regardless, George
Lucas of course his friends with Spielbergand heard the score and liked it,
and Spielberg's was really enthusiastically. Oh, you got to meet this guy,
John Williams. He's great and hedoes classical style orchestration, which is what
(01:42:34):
Lucas wanted. He wanted a bigclassical score and the rest of his history.
And John Williams did the Washington Spacetheme song on TV and he did
Value of the Dolls. He wasaround. He was Johnny Williams of the
Value of the Dolls and the credits, and then you know, he went
on of course Raiders and Superman.And I saw a video on YouTube recently
(01:42:57):
where there were these two guys Ithink one of them had a trombone and
one of them at a trumpet andthey stood in front of John Williams house
and started playing, yes, playingthe Star Wars. Did you see he
came out? Yeah, I thinkI don't know, we didn't come out
something, but he came out.He came out and talked to them.
It was he was really nice tothem. It was really cool. And
I don't know if that was aplanned thing or if it just happens that
(01:43:18):
he came out with home and cameout and yeah, he talked to him,
was really nice. Hold on onesecond, I found this. I
think it was in my mom's recordsor possibly in our friend Kelly's record collection.
I can't remember which, but uhit is Dion Warwick in Valley of
(01:43:39):
the Dolls. Finally, Oh nice, nice, and that's beautiful. The
girl who made Alfie has done itagain with the theme from Valley of the
Dolls. So she's great, she'sgreat, want it, I'll take it?
Oh oh my god, Yeah Idon't have that. That'd be great.
I will put If you don't havethis, I will put it in
(01:44:00):
your collection. Awesome. So theI just want to quickly. There's a
couple of other people I just wantto shout out. So there was Fraser,
Sheila Frasier was aunt Beru, whowas you know who adopted his Luke
Skywalker. She was fifty seven whenthey made the movie. They wanted to
hire someone who was had a littleBritish accent. She was actually born in
(01:44:24):
Australia. Huge on the stage andalso did a lot of Hammer films.
Again, she was another person thatdid the Hammer horror films the body snapped,
the body, steelers and etc.But she died at the age of
seventy seven in two thousand. PhilBrown played Uncle Owen, who was sixty
one when they made the movie.And he's an interesting backstory. He was
(01:44:47):
blacklisted during the McCarthy era. Yeah, and he was born in He was
born in Massachusetts and he was nevera part of the Communist Party or anything,
but he was. It was guiltby association. He was in a
an actors group. That was thatthey suspected. So he got blacklisted in
fifty two. And yeah, hefled to England. And the reason he
got the part is he's from Massachusettsand George Lucas wanted an actor with a
(01:45:13):
kind of ironic, kind of funnythat Frazier needed to be a British accent,
but he wanted uncle Owen to havea heavy American accent. And there
was this there was this American fromMassachusetts who's living in England where they're filming.
So the part. Yeah, Iwonder what the what the reasoning was
for that, because obviously there wasright, you know that she should be
(01:45:33):
she should have a British accent,he have an American one. Nothing is
done accidentally, so yeah, Iwonder what that was. And he said
that they wanted to cast a kurmudgeon and he was naturally a kurmudgeon,
so it was easy for him toplay the role. Yeah. He passed
away in February ninth, two thousandand six, from pneumonia. He was
eighty nine. He was in Chaplaintoo, wasn't he He was a projectionist
(01:45:59):
in Chaplain. Was I just watchedthat again, like two days ago.
I didn't even because I know theCoveney was the camera operator um for like
the Max Sinnett stuff and some ofthe other films that they had him do.
I didn't. Yeah, man,now I gotta watch it again so
I can find Uncle Owen. Butyeah, he can't. I mean,
he came back to America and hewas doing the conventions. He loved it.
(01:46:20):
He was eating it up, youknow. So uh so he really
enjoyed the notoriety. Not bad fora you know, on probably three minutes
screen time right the most, youknow, so good for him. But
he had a name, and hedidn't he wasn't covered up by you know,
a mask, so it was hisface you see on screen, So
I can see, Yeah, it'suncle Ohen. Everybody recon would recognize him.
(01:46:42):
Yeah, I could see how itwould. Andrew with the Blue Milk
rum. And the last one wasthat Jack Purvish guy. I didn't know
he was Kenny Baker's friend, buthe was the chief Chatwa and uh and
uh and he died in Hertfordshire andin ninety seven. So uh. Now
(01:47:03):
there was another one I thought wasa pretty weak special effect where the Jawa's
eyes they were like they they looklike flashlights. Basically. Yeah, that
was bad. That was bad.So I don't know if he if he
touched those up. I only sawthat updated version once. Um, it's
been as many years since I usedto have the eight millimeter black and white
(01:47:26):
you know, a little three minuteroll of Star Wars. They probably still
have it somewhere and um, butit was interesting because you know, how
do you how do you put ayou know, full length movie into you
know, an eight minute eight millimeterblack and white thing, you know with
subtitles because there was no sound anduh and uh, but you could really
see I remember seeing the tie fightersand you know how the tie fighters would
(01:47:47):
spin when they were when they wereyou could see how in black and white
you could see the different cuts andhow they how they edited it together.
You know, they just fox wasjust throwing stuff out there just making anything
they could for marketing. I mean, they just they didn't care and they
were just throwing it out there.But um, but yeah, do you
know what do you know what TIEstood for? No twin ion engine engine.
(01:48:16):
So there you go, there's abit of of That's why TIE fighting.
That's why it's always spelled capital T, capital I, capital E because
it's initials for something. Yeah.Ye wow, there's so many Yeah,
just um, yeah, it wasiconic that movie was. It's been a
lot to me when it came out, and I loved it. I loved
(01:48:38):
it and uh, and obviously itstill has staying power. We're still talking
about it. You know, it'sstill a referenced all the time when they
carrying those guys are brought on is. I think they called them legacy performers
when they were coming in for thelast batch of Star Wars movies. Yeah,
bringing the three of them back anduh and the other guys that were
in costumes. The only the onlything that disappointed me was that they never
(01:49:01):
had the three of them together again. They reunited. There was a scene
with Han and Leia together where theykind of reunite, and then there's a
scene in the second film with Leiaand Luke together. But they never put
the three of them together, andthey weren't apparently we're going to because they
killed Han in the first film andthe first of the new films, so
(01:49:23):
I thought, well, maybe maybethey were planning on finally putting them together
in the third film. But thenCarrie Fisher died before they made the third
film, and that screwed up theirplans. But they had killed Han Solo
off in the first one, sohe wasn't unless he was going to somehow
come back as a fourth ghost.Well they see g I am back to
be younger before the first movie.I mean I would have thought, yeah,
(01:49:45):
I mean, I guess they couldhave always I don't know. I
don't know. I mean, theykilled Han off in the first episode in
the first episode, and you don'tsee Luke until the last shot of that
movie, so that was they forwhatever reason, I don't know why they
we're never going to put the threeof them together on screen, even though
you got them all to come back. And I think it's kind of what
everybody it wasn't funny and Disney,and Disney is always about that sort of
(01:50:09):
manipulating emotion. So you'd thought therewas all that hype with the three of
them coming back, and I'm sortof surprised that Disney didn't do that.
Um but or maybe they want to. I don't want to be a toxic
I don't want to be a toxicfan or whatever and get into the nitty
gritty of that. But that wasthe one thing that stood out to me
as a disappointment was But Disney,you know what, they're not stupid.
(01:50:29):
They probably do have that footage somewhere. They're just gonna redo it, you
know, rerelease it as the youknow, I'll bet you, I'll bet
you maybe you know, in anotherten twenty years. But because Lucas,
you know, they what Disney,they sold it. I couldn't tell you
for how much, but they Lucassold it to them, and they already
made it back like in the firstmovie. You know it was it was,
(01:50:50):
It wasn't the several billions of dollarsI believe that they paid for it.
Yeah, but they they made thatback in the first of the you
know, the last batch that theydid investment. And Lucas hates them because
they're doing things with characters. Soso yeah, I Disney. Yeah,
they're not stupid. They got allthis stuff and they can't. I'll bet
you. I'll bet you we'll seeit. Yeah. Oh, you bought
(01:51:15):
the four K disc set for onehundred bucks. Well guess what. He
didn't get all of it. No, it is the super special Edition.
I'll buy it. No, Honestly, dude, if they if they put
the original trilogy un messed With onfour K disc, would I would pay
very good money. I would paypremium money to tone a copy of that,
because it sucks that I have acopy that I basically have to fast
(01:51:38):
forward the stuff I don't like wheneverI watch it. It just kind of
sucks. But some of the stuffthey messed with before they did the big
nineties thing was like they kept tweakingthe hologram with Leia when she does though
you know, help me over one, You're my only hope. Thing that
there are two unit plays. Theykept messing with that effect for some reason.
At one point they added scan linesto it, and it seemed like
(01:51:58):
every time they came out with therereleased the film and they did something new
to that. I don't know whythey had. They took issue with how
that effect was done. I thoughtit was fine the old versions that I
saw of it. But yeah,I mean I'm saying this and I literally
just spent the last year updating oneof my own films and adding a bunch
of stuff into it and redoing thecolor grade and stuff. Yeah, I
(01:52:20):
get that. Yeah, but whenyou're talking about something that you know,
several millions of people are into kindof it's again, it's like rush on
the Mona Lisa kind of thing.You got to be really careful, you
don't you don't distract from uh,you know what the original intention was.
Interest interesting how Carrie Fisher you knowher in that you know, tied up
(01:52:45):
in the slave girl thing. Ohmy god, people are that's like icon
That's like a lot of young men'sfirst thing was seeing Carrie Fisher a slug
that is um Yeah, that thatturned it. I was surprised at how
iconic that became, how many peopleattribute that to their first crush. And
(01:53:12):
it was great behind the scenes photosof her and her double laying and sunning
themselves in the desert between takes,lounging and I think those costumes, I
think they're both in the costumes,so definitely I think they're both definitely skimpily
clothed in this uh in the sunbathing shot. I think they're in those
costumes, but I can't remember.But yeah, yeah, cool, all
(01:53:32):
right, did we do it?Did we do Star Wars? I think
we did? Yeah. That wash yeah, it was It was a
lot of that was really interesting.I'm really I found that fascinating. Not
in a way that you know,it's really interesting about me, Mike,
you know, I just I'm likean actor. I just like people to
(01:53:53):
hear me talk. Yeah. Yeah, so um but yeah, that was
fun. Thanks, that was cool. Thank you guys. We will see
you guys next time and um weuh again. Check out our Patreon if
you haven't already. Dearly Departed podcaston Patreon, and also we do if
you only listen to the audio versionsof this, we also do a video
(01:54:14):
version that we release usually a coupleof days after the audio version on Scott's
YouTube channel, which is now It'sDearly Departed with Scott Michaels. Do you
think I froze? So It's DearlyDeparted with Scott Michaels is the name of
the channel on YouTube. Yeah,check it out. You got I'm gonna
you got like sixty thousand followers andsubscribers now some crazy amounts, seventy thousand.
(01:54:39):
Yes, that's awesome. So,and Scott puts up all kinds of
extra content he went through. Uh, was it Rock Hudson's Rolodex that you
recently did? Yes? Yes,yeah, and that's cool. Did you
see the why I had that openedup? I had that Ted Cassidy life
mask lurch from the Adams Family.Oh my god. I mean it's like,
(01:55:00):
it's like this, it's massive.That was likened fairly recently too.
So yeah. So check out DearlyDeparted with Scott Michael's on YouTube while you're
at it, and we will seeyou. We are going to make it
out of the twenty seven club.We will see you with episode twenty eight
in a few weeks. May theForce be with you always. Yes.
(01:55:27):
This has been an episode of theDearly Departed podcast. Dig up more episodes
at Dearly Departed pod dot com andon iTunes and Google Play. See you
next time.