Episode 755: Return of the Jedi (1983)

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Oh ye, folks, it's showtime.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
People say, good mind to see this movie When they
go out to a theater they are cold sodasarn in
the monsters in the protection.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
Booth, everyone for tend podcasting isn't boring?

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Cut it off, y, Return for the climactic clash between

(00:43):
the forces of good and evil. Return to a galaxy
far far away. Return of the Tedi the next chapter

(01:05):
in the continuing Star Wars saga. The battle for freedom
rags arm, the heart of a hero, the courage of

(01:25):
a rebel, the strength of a leader, the loyalty of comrades,
the power of the horse.

Speaker 3 (01:45):
The cunning of the enemy. The destiny revealed.

Speaker 4 (01:55):
Is the fad of Father, a legend fulfilled, an epic
of heroes, villains, and aliens from.

Speaker 3 (02:06):
A thousand worlds crap.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
The quest continues, the circle closes, The saga lives on.
Return of the Jedi begins May twenty fifth at a
theater in your galaxy.

Speaker 3 (02:37):
Welcome to the Projection Booth. I'm your host, Mike White,
join me once again as mister Jamie Benning.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
Hello, how are you doing, Mike? Good to be back.

Speaker 3 (02:44):
Also back in the booth is mister Stephen scarlatta, Yo,
thank you for having me. Sci Fi July continues with
a look at Richard Markwan's Return of the Jedi, released
on May twenty third, nineteen eighty three in the US.
That is, the film concludes the original Star Wars trilogy
was supposed to be followed fairly quickly by six or
nine other films. Instead, it was followed by two Ewok

(03:07):
films and some other infrequent bones thrown to fans by lucasfilm.
From starting on ted Tween to ending by blowing up
the Death Star, the film feels incredibly similar to Star
Wars and New Hope, only not very good. We will
be spoiling this film as much as humanly possible, so
if you don't want anything ruin, please turn off the podcast.

(03:27):
Come back after you've seen the Abominable Special Edition or
any of the other futzedwith versions of the film. We
will still be here. So, Jamie, when was the first
time you saw Return of the Jedi and what did
you think?

Speaker 1 (03:40):
It was one of my very sort of formative experiences.
I lived in a little town, a little village southeast
of London, and on my seventh birthday in June nineteen
eighty three. I was taken to London by my parents,
and my sister joined us, and my aunt and uncle,
my cousins joined us as well, and we went to
Hamley's at the big toy store on I was spoiled rotten.
I think I got like snow Speeder and an Attat

(04:02):
and bitfore Tuna, and I remember looking at those card
backs with the black dowt Ewoks and all of that stuff,
and then with these giant bags. We went to see
Return of the Jedi at the Dominion, which I think
was one of the biggest screens in the UK at
the time, on seventy mil I ever remember there was
a Whita Bix advert beforehand. I loved it. I loved
the whole experience, and I have an affection for this film,

(04:22):
which I think we're going to tear down in the
next hour or so. But I do have an affection
for the film because it kind of it was the
first time I think I properly realized that films were made.
If that makes sense that there were these names attached
to the film. Yes, there was George Lucas, but there
was Ken Rauston and Phil Tippett and all of those guys,
because my sister at the time brought her behind the
Scenes book. I bought the story book in the foyer

(04:45):
after the film. My parents had pence left to spare
after the Hamley strip and they let me buy that book.
And on the train, my sister and I swapped books
and I was looking through this thing, going wow, Matt
paintings and compositing and model making and all this stuff.
And that's when I think, think that sort of jump
started my love of behind the scenes of movies.

Speaker 3 (05:04):
And Stephen, how about yourself?

Speaker 5 (05:06):
Uh yeah, I first saw it in the theater. I
was a huge Star Wars fan when it came out.
I was ten when it came out. I vaguely remember
seeing the first one and mostly remember Empire waiting in
a lobby to see it more than the actual movie.

Speaker 3 (05:22):
But when Return was coming out, I was excited. I
was at the right age.

Speaker 5 (05:26):
I had the Marvel comic that had the entire movie
and it It took me a month to finally see
it because every time we went to the theater it
was sold out or the line was around the corner,
and my family was like, no way, We're gonna sit
online for like three hours for you to see this thing.
So it took like a month and it was hard

(05:46):
waiting to Zill see that movie. It was so funny,
like maybe when the first Avengers came out, the Marvel movie.
I remember seeing it opening weekend and just being like, Damn,
we're so spoiled today that we could see a big
movie opening weekend Wolverine last year, like on a Sunday
morning at eighth in the morning, opening weekend. But when
Jedi came out, Dude, you could not get into that theater.

(06:08):
It couldn't And so it was the wait when the
movie was out to finally get a chance to get
into theater.

Speaker 1 (06:13):
I think my dad.

Speaker 5 (06:14):
Found some theater that he heard about that doesn't have
long lines, and that's how I finally got to see it. Yeah,
I loved it. I was the right age for it,
and I ate it all up Man with a Knife
from fork Man. I loved it at the time, but
throughout the years it became the one I watched the least,
and then when I got into film school, when I

(06:34):
rediscovered Star Wars. When I was in film schools, when
I came to realization, no Empire is my favorite and
probably one of the best movies ever made. And so, yeah,
it was interesting returning back to Jedi.

Speaker 3 (06:46):
For this podcast. I think I saw it maybe opening weekend. Sorry, Stephen,
I don't want to rub that in your face or anything.

Speaker 1 (06:53):
Because i'd let you Q.

Speaker 3 (06:55):
Yeah. Yeah, I don't remember how I got to see it,
but I remember it was it was me, it was
my folks. I don't think maybe they just dropped me
off or some time. I don't remember being there with
my folks at all, but but yeah, I remember the
movie theater. It was the Southgate Theater that eventually became
an AMC, which is eventually now part of the Meyers

(07:15):
Parking Lot Meyers thrifty acres for folks that are outside
of Michigan. It's a chain around here. And yeah, I
was eleven, so right around that same time, and I
don't know what it was like. I think when I
saw it initially I was stoked, but even watching it
the very first time, I was like, oh, they're just

(07:35):
doing another Death Star.

Speaker 2 (07:37):
Why.

Speaker 3 (07:37):
The biggest thing for me was Boba Fet when Boba
Fett died, and just because I had fallen in love
with that character from seeing you know, the Star Wars
Holiday special seeing Empire strikes back, the whole thing of
Consolo being frozen. I was just so, you know, like
what's going on? And I had this headcannon of when
Lando reaches down and like checks the vitals, was like, Oh,

(08:00):
he's actually sending it to like defrost in a few
hours or something, So Hana is going to like wake
up in the back of slave one and kill Bubba
fed or have a huge fight or something in that.
I just had it all built up in my head
as being like, Oh, this is going to be the
best thing ever. And then when he just died in
such a cartoonish way of like just dispatch within thirty seconds,

(08:23):
and I was like, why is he even sticking around
at Jaba's palace? Like he dropped off that the prize
it should be out getting more money. You know, bounty
hunters don't make any money standing around Jaba's palace, is
what I think. Anyway, It's not like he's on commission
or something. But yeah, so I don't know. I just
I don't know how soon after because I know, I
had plenty of action figures. I had a lot of

(08:44):
Ewok action figures, a lot of those monsters that were
on job as barge, you know, uh Rawatu had, those
guys had a lot of stuff.

Speaker 1 (08:53):
Lando and Skiff God disguised with a little helmet on.

Speaker 3 (08:57):
Oh yeah, well, dud, that was my favorite.

Speaker 1 (08:59):
That was a great for you.

Speaker 3 (09:00):
Yeah, mine was bash. I loved Hells.

Speaker 1 (09:04):
You know what Mike is about. You know, like, if
you compare anything to the Empire strikes Back, you're going
to struggle, right, So imagine if Empire had been a
really shitty movie, the Jed I would probably be revered
today because it would have been a return to form
and it would have been back to the formula and
the stuff that we love and all that kind of thing.
But when you put it up against Empire, it really
is a very, very different film. I remember when I

(09:25):
sort of rediscovered the trilogy when I was probably about
fourteen or fifteen, I think it had come out on VHS,
and my mum was like, you really want that for
your birthday? Aren't you a bit older? That kind of stuff?
And I remember watching Empire for the first time in
quite a few years and just thinking, because I knew
Jedi more because I did it on tape from TV,
I think an Empire, I was like, Wow, there's so
much dialogue and there's so much character development, and you know,

(09:48):
compared to Return the Jedi, which as my then eight
year old daughter and when we watched it a few
years ago, said to me, it's just a series of
set pieces put together. That's kind of what Returned the
Jedi is. You know, you've got the opening, and you've
got the sail bars, and then you've got the Yoda scenes,
and then you've got the Death Star stuff, and that's
kind of it.

Speaker 3 (10:07):
But it does stuff.

Speaker 1 (10:08):
But I think because of that comparison to Empire.

Speaker 5 (10:11):
I was thinking, like, is it like a Halloween three thing?
Like when Empire came out, was it not liked as much?
But throughout the years it just gained more fandom.

Speaker 1 (10:21):
I think a lot of people were kind of pissed
off at the ending, weren't they that it was like
such a downbeat ending. You know, you think about Star Wars,
it's all tied up in a bow or right, Vaders
aren't going off and maybe he's going to be in
a sequel kind of thing. But when you get to Empire,
it's very dark. You know, it doesn't have a proper
ending for people. It isn't like the Bubblegum movie that
the first one was. Yeah, it's interesting to try and

(10:43):
remember how they were perceived in sort of isolation, those
three films. But yeah, I think like you Stephen as
well over the years watching back. Even though I have
an affection for Return to Jedi, like I said at
the top, I do know it is the worst of
the three by some way. You know, it's actually quite
made in places. There's some really badly focused shots. There's

(11:03):
some pretty dodgy editing of sound under explosions and music
editing is also a little bit wonky in places. You
just don't see that in the other two as much.

Speaker 5 (11:14):
But yeah, I still dinner Well, it's all good man.

Speaker 3 (11:18):
The first movie felt like it was so poured over,
you know, you had even like Brian de Palmer helping
rewrite the open Scroll and the re edit, and Marcia
having her hand in there. And it probably didn't help
that the marriage was kind of on the rocks around
this time, so she's probably not as involved as she
was with the previous films. I think that's kind of

(11:39):
a down thing, also, not having you know, it's just
George writing and then Kasden coming in and cleaning things up.
He doesn't have a lead bracket to bounce stuff off
of either. I mean, it's just like, I don't know,
it just felt like it was missing things and just
having like mark One there, and I mean Lucas just
admitting like I wanted a director that I can control,

(11:59):
basically directing by proxy through poor Richard markwand I always
felt bad for that guy. The story is better than
the reality, the story that David Lynch tells about being
approached to direct Return of the Jedi and just the
thoughts of what Return of the Jedi could have been,
you know, if Doune didn't happen and he directed this instead.

Speaker 6 (12:19):
I was asked by George to come up to see
him and talk to him about directing which would be
the third Star Wars, and I had next door to
zero interest. But I always admire George. You know, George

(12:40):
is a guy that does what he loves, and I'd
do what I love. The difference is what George loves
makes hundreds of billions of dollars.

Speaker 3 (12:52):
That would have been wild, But I can't imagine Lynch
and Lucas's sensibilities getting on whatsoever. But hey, the sound
editing would have been fantastic, that's for sure.

Speaker 1 (13:03):
I don't want to be down on any of the
sound that is. But that whole Lynch thing, you know,
he talks about being offered the film and being with
George and then being taken upstairs and there's all these
drawings and he's like getting this headache and it's getting
worse and worse. In a way, I could sort of
imagine Lynch doing Empire more than Jedi, because Empire is
the kind of weird, spooky of film. He's got some
pretty abstract ideas, you know, the dream sequence and all

(13:26):
of that stuff, and maybe you know, if you'd left
Lynch alone, like he left Kush alone to do it,
but maybe he would have a very very very different Empire.
But Return the Jedi, I think Lynch probably made the
right decision, didn't he.

Speaker 3 (13:38):
Oh yeah, one hundred percent.

Speaker 5 (13:39):
I just love his little quote he was like, because
it was a Georgia's film, he already designed these little
bears and had all this stuff done, and he wouldn't
have had control. And I think you could just see
more of him in Dune versus we'll ever see it
in Return of the Jedi, and we would never get
Blue Velvet as like Dino's Apology in a way. You know,

(14:00):
Lucas is going to give David Lynch an apology movie
after what he puts him through for a Jedi.

Speaker 1 (14:06):
It's a real shame that, you know, Mark One didn't
live longer, because it would have been interesting to hear
his take on it. There's very little of him talking
about the movie. I remember when I was making my
returning to Jedi film, we mentor you that I dug
around for stuff, and at the time, when it was
a two thousand and eight something like that, there wasn't
much around on YouTube of him talking. There's a few
magazine interviews. You know, he did want to do the

(14:26):
best job he could. But I think, you know, as
you said, might that you know, he was employed because
he was a fast and efficient director. You know, he'd
made that I had the need or I think was
the film that Lucas saw that kind of attracted him
and he found it like really efficiently and moved and
it was kinetic and it was always like moving along.
Every scene was there for a reason, and he needed
somebody that wouldn't be there, you know, going over schedule

(14:49):
and going over budget. But yeah, I would love to
hear his sort of his answers to a lot of
the questions that have been raised about you know, was
he a puppet at the time, because some people you
speak to you on the set, I said no, No,
he was very diligent. He had it all in control.
He made a lot of the suggestions, including the the
booh stuff and you know, Jabber being there as a

(15:09):
prisoner and all of that kind of thing. So maybe
you have more more more say in the film than
we realize.

Speaker 3 (15:16):
I believe he.

Speaker 5 (15:16):
Had to say in bringing in Annakin at the ending
as a ghost.

Speaker 1 (15:20):
I thought, I read that, and I think that might
be right.

Speaker 3 (15:23):
You know which version of Anakin?

Speaker 1 (15:25):
Oh my goodness.

Speaker 3 (15:26):
I always think like Luke is going to look over
at the end of that special edition and see Hayden
Christensen there and go, where the fuck is.

Speaker 1 (15:33):
That is this guy? I mean, you know, I kind
of get why they did it. It really annoyed me
at the time, But now so much time has passed
with the prequels existing in the world, I've come to
accept that they're not for me. Then they're for another generation.
And you know, when Anakin turned up again in some
of the TV stuff, in the last couple of years.
I think it was in ah Soka. I can imagine
they were very excited, those fans, and you know, I

(15:55):
can't take that away from them. But at the time,
I said, why are you changing this movie? Some of
those tradition changes I do not like.

Speaker 5 (16:01):
I went last year to like the fortieth anniversary screening.
They had it like over here at the cinema on
the x D screen, like their rip off Imax, and
I remember sitting down at first, I'm like, I was
really excited to rewatch it because like some of my
favorite moments in Star Wars are in Return to Jedi.
That's why I have like, I appreciate the movie, but man,

(16:22):
when they're at jobs Palace in that new musical number starts,
oh good Lord.

Speaker 3 (16:28):
Oh my god. It was excruciating.

Speaker 5 (16:30):
And then you guys shared with me the original cut,
which I watched, and I had more appreciation of that,
and I was so happy not to experience that sequence again.
And the sarlac hid putting in like the mouth. It
was just like watching it in the theater. I was
so bummed by it. I was like, dude, this is brutal.
And then the effects don't hold up as much either

(16:53):
in the special edition unfortunately, but watching the version without
all that is really good though.

Speaker 1 (17:00):
I think the thing is when you see those movies,
you want to be reminded of the time that they
were made, that they are a product of that time.
Right next week on the twelfth, or this week's around
the twelfth, they're showing how the BFI here the British
Film Institute, they're showing the original nineteen seventy seven Star
Wars Die transfer print in stereo and it's been sitting
in the arcohol Wow for decades.

Speaker 3 (17:19):
I'm amazed they're allowed to show that.

Speaker 1 (17:22):
I believe it's gone to the very very top. I
won't say any more than that, but I think because
the particular festival it's only is the Film on Film Festival,
which is about showing Celli Lloyd. You know, they've got
the Twin Peaks pilot without the weird European cuts on
as well. They've got a couple of nitrate prints of
older movies. But Stars is the kind of opening night thing.

(17:42):
There's doing two screenings of it, and yeah, it's amazing
that it's happening because even at the TCM Festival, a
couple of weeks back over in the States, the Empire
Strikes Back that was shown with George there was the
special edition again. You know, you've got this one arm
of George and his endeavors to push every thing into
the digital era from the start. But now I think

(18:03):
a lot of these filmmakers are getting to that point
in their career where they're looking back to their origins
and kind of accepting their work to a certain extent.
So yeah, it's going to be interesting. Apparently somebody quite
high up is coming to announce the film or present
the film in London, so yeah, I'll feel you in
on who that is. But that should be interesting.

Speaker 5 (18:22):
Oh wow, that's amazing because I don't think I've ever
seen those versions since, like VHS or anything, because like, yeah,
like this return version, I haven't seen it in years.
You know, this is the first time rewatching it like
this because I hate all I mean, Lando breaks the
fourth wall when he has to lower his like helmet thing. Yeah,

(18:42):
but all the singers when they're singing the gibberish, it's
just they're singing it into the frame.

Speaker 1 (18:49):
That's where and the tonsils in the back of the
throat of that main singer is just like it just that, Yeah,
you're right, that stuff doesn't fit. But I kind of
see those special editions in a way as an exercise
to kind of prove that the prequels could be made.
Could we make digital environments, could we make digital characters,
and also to fund that as well, because I mean,

(19:09):
they made a heck load of money back in what
was it, ninety seven, so I can see that as
a kind of a stepping stone. But you know, I'm
fortunate enough to run the originals in some format, and
I think I was around for the trilogy screening at
Elstreet Studios or the cinema that used to be opposite E. L.
Street Studios in the early nineties. It was the last
time the original prints were shown before they were all

(19:30):
gathered up then the special editions were going to be
and I think it was like ninety two maybe, So yeah,
I'm excited to see it all these years later. Yeah,
it'd be interesting, But Jedi, I mean, the only thing
that really is miraculous about that special edition is that
Fermi Taylor, who plays Ulla the Green Dancer, looks exactly
the same, you know, twenty years on.

Speaker 3 (19:49):
While I was doing my research for this, I found
there was a whole fetish community around Ula. I didn't realize. Yeah,
but yeah, there's like subreddits and things just dedicated to
her life. What's that rule when something can be sexualized
on the internet, Like, she definitely gets sexualized. And I
think like her popularity is what really spurned the Ahsoka character,

(20:10):
because I don't think that Ahsoka would be Ahsoka without Ula.
Oh I didn't know that.

Speaker 1 (20:15):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Well, the original Return of the Jedi
had a few frames taken out of it for the
special edition because when she falls into the rank or pit,
there is a bit of a moment where her boot
pops out, and they shaved off like two or three
frames they remember for the special edition. Not that when looking,
but I just heard that.

Speaker 3 (20:33):
But yeah, you're right. It is just like such the
series of set pieces, I mean, the whole thing at
Jaba's Palace, I mean that takes up so long. Why
didn't they tell C three pm? What was going on?
Why is he so fucking clueless? Like he feels like
Marcus and Salah in the Last Crusade, where these really
competent characters from the earlier films suddenly turned into complete morons,

(20:57):
and it just feels like he's a moron through this
entire movie. Like we talked about his character in the
first movie, and when we talked about episode four I
new Help, which I still hate calling it that. When
we talked about Star Wars, that was the name of
the movie. And when we talked about Star Wars, we
talked about how George wanted him characterized like a used
car salesman, and that was there in that movie, and
I could see it in the second movie as well.

(21:18):
But there's no subterfuge at all in this film. He
just I can't tell a lie. I can't I can't
tell these people I'm a god. And I'm just like,
haven't you watched Ghostbusters?

Speaker 1 (21:27):
No?

Speaker 3 (21:27):
I guess not, because Ghostbusters was eighty four. This was
eighty three. Right when someone asked you if you're a god,
you see yes. But he just feels so stupid in
this movie and constantly like what did I do? And
like all the slapstickiness, and especially around him, like getting
smacked by Jaba, falling off the skiff, like all of

(21:49):
these things where it's just like what happened to this character?
It just you're undermining yourself.

Speaker 1 (21:54):
It's in the same thing happens to Harrison Ford's Handsello
as well. He just turns into this dfast as well.
It was just like, what's going on? Oh hit Bob
a fair, I'll hang on what your brother's sister?

Speaker 3 (22:03):
What you know? Come on, tell me what's going on?

Speaker 1 (22:13):
I can't tell you?

Speaker 3 (22:16):
Could you tell?

Speaker 2 (22:17):
Luke?

Speaker 1 (22:17):
Is that who you could tell? I'm always taken out
of a movie if kind of rules have been set
and then suddenly a character does something purely for a
little kind of story point that doesn't fit their character,
and I feel return the jedif if you refer to
the other two movies, some of the dialogue that comes
out of those characters' mouths in that movie, or some
of their actions just really don't fit with what you

(22:41):
understand about them. Yeah, that whole thing at the start
with Jab of the Heart, I love it. I love
Jab of the Heart because when I first saw him
on screen, I was like, oh, why is that thing?

Speaker 7 (22:49):
You know?

Speaker 1 (22:49):
This is amazing and it you know, I'm fortunate to
call Dave Barkley, one of the puppeteers, a friend, and
Toby Fillpott as well, and I've interviewed those guys a
few times and found out all details about that. I'm
you know, I'm far more interested in return to Didi
behind the scenes than I'm actually of the movie itself,
since maybe I was fifteen or something like that. But
I still have an affection for those scenes. But they

(23:11):
really don't make much sense, you know, the hologram, Like
why is he doing that with a hologram because he's
coming anyway? Is it like multiple attempts to do what?
But so Laya's there, she's dressed up, she's got Chewy's
and now Chewy's captured. Oh and Hansell has been released.
Now he's captured. Lay is captured. So is Luke gonna
come anyway? Or is Luke late to the party? But

(23:32):
hang on it, he left that he did the hologram message.
It just doesn't gel. But these things didn't occur to
me until I was in my twenties. Probably I just
used to sit there and just love all the hardware
and the character moments and all of that stuff. So
I don't know I've become cynical in my old age.

Speaker 3 (23:46):
The Java stuff.

Speaker 5 (23:47):
There's still some of my favorite things in a Star
Wars film. But you're right, watching it this time, I
didn't realize how long it keeps going. You just keep
introducing characters and it just goes and goes.

Speaker 8 (23:59):
And go too.

Speaker 5 (24:00):
Luke comes in, and I guess it's due to like
so many rewrites they were doing so fast on the
movie that it's very off and like you were saying,
just like all the characters are off, I don't buy,
like you said one hundred percent with Han Solo.

Speaker 3 (24:14):
It's not Han Solo.

Speaker 5 (24:15):
I don't know if it's the Carbon the Night or
wherever the hell.

Speaker 3 (24:18):
He's so much softer in this movie.

Speaker 5 (24:21):
He's not the Han Solo from Empire, and Darth Vader's
not the Darth Vader from Empire. I don't really feel
like Luke. I guess his development has to be stronger
in this movie. But when he's lurking around Jaba and
then threatening him and everything, I don't even buy his
threats to Java. Is there just something really off with
the characters period? And I think Ley is just there.

(24:43):
And I guess mostly because in the original draft she
was already supposed to be on Endoor throughout the whole
first act, and then they were with all the rewrites,
so like, oh, now, she's gonna just appear here, and
I guess that's why she has nothing to do until
she strangles Java. But it is kind of a mess
watching at this time, because you guys give me so
much stuff to read and watch, and then it made

(25:04):
me think even more about it, like, oh my god,
this movie is really a mess. I didn't realize.

Speaker 1 (25:11):
But there's a bit in from Stars to Jedi and
the Making of a Saga, the big long documentary they
released around the time of the Return of Jedi was released,
where Richard Markorn is there looking very officious for me.
He's got his clipboard and he's obviously got like script
or storyboard on it, and Harrison Ford says, okay, I'll
try and say it without moving my mouth in case
you choose not to use it. So I got the

(25:31):
feeling like you were just talking, Stevehn, that the rewrites
were happening sort of on the fly, and they were
having to shoot alternate scenes potentially, or just always have
in mind that something might not be used or could
be used in a different way. And there's also a
bit where marketed there in Jabber's Palace again with Richard
Markwon and the energy between them is really weird. I

(25:52):
think he says like old Jabber is becoming a really
big star now, and Mark Hamill says, oh, oh is he?
Or you know something like that. This just this weird
moment where you think these two are not connecting. I
don't know, I don't know what it is. I don't
think I've ever heard mal Hammill talk about Richard directly,
and I've dug through, as you know, many million interviews
over the years. I might be wrong, there might be
something out there, but he just felt like there might

(26:13):
have been a little tension on set because of course
this is a massive, massive movie, and the expectation was high.
The budget was pretty huge for the time. But again
it was you know, George throwing a lot of his
own money in as well, So just some of those
behind the scenes bits, it just feels a little bit
more clunky than it should have been or could have been.

Speaker 5 (26:33):
Going back to what you guys were talking about originally
with Empire, going off what you're saying, it's like, I
think that's why this movie is so nice is because
like he knows this is wrapping up with this one,
and he knows the next few things are going to
be Ewok movies and the Droid cartoon. He's trying to
play it as safe as possible with this movie. It's

(26:54):
got to be a success, you know, it's huge and
everything has to be played safe. He can't make another
dark sequel. And I think that's why it is what
it is.

Speaker 3 (27:04):
And like what Mike was.

Speaker 5 (27:05):
Saying, it's like everything is a callback to Star Wars
in this. You know, it's like the opening is the
same as the opening of Star Wars with underneath the
Star Destroyer and you know some of the stuff you
guys gave me where It's like Jab's Palace is the
canteena scene all over again. You know, it's like another
assault on a death Star. You know, another whole planning

(27:26):
scene about the Death Star. It's like we've pretty much
another Yoda scene.

Speaker 3 (27:30):
You know, Yoda originally wasn't in this.

Speaker 5 (27:32):
But the director wanted Yoda in it. It's like everything
we've seen before from the previous movie. It's like trying
to remind.

Speaker 3 (27:38):
You, like, oh, yeah, you love that original movie.

Speaker 5 (27:41):
We're going to start again on the desert planet we
were already at in the first one.

Speaker 1 (27:45):
It's interesting to hear some Mark Hamil interviews where he
was sort of talking about knowing what you knew from
Empire and the success of that or the relative success
of that, and the way the film and the characters
would go in he I think he says something like,
you know, returned to the Jedi. I thought I was
going to have this mohawk and I was going to
be like turned to the dark side, and like everyone

(28:07):
nobody can believe that I've been turned, and then the
last minute I kind of save them and all this
kind of stuff. And I think he said jokingly. I
think it was on a Kevin Smith round table things
some years ago. He said, I thought Bobaffett was going
to take the helmet off and it was going to
be my mother. And you know, he was looking for
all of this sort of mysterious stuff that had all
been kind of lined up, and he wanted it to
be answered in some way and to continue going in

(28:30):
that dark direction. But I think you're right, George just
wanted to make sure that it was a prophet. He
wanted to get it done. I think he was probably
exhausted by this time. Like you said, the divorce with
Marshall was going through at the time, and it just
feels like, yeah, we know the formula, let's just do
that with a few new toys thrown in.

Speaker 3 (28:48):
Even when you look at the scene of later talking
with Wicked, it's basically when Luke is talking to R
two and the swamps and or like him meeting Yoda
kind of, but Wicked doesn't speak English, so it's almost
the exact same thing where Leah is doing this.

Speaker 5 (29:02):
Now cha, well, it looks like I'm stuck here.

Speaker 1 (29:11):
Trouble is, I don't know where here is.

Speaker 2 (29:13):
Now.

Speaker 3 (29:14):
I gotta do as fine as Yoda if you even exists.

Speaker 1 (29:18):
Can sit down, you want something to eat.

Speaker 3 (29:23):
This place gives me the creeps.

Speaker 9 (29:27):
I feel like.

Speaker 3 (29:31):
Like we're being watched. Oh wait, put your weapon.

Speaker 5 (29:34):
I mean you no harm.

Speaker 10 (29:36):
I promise I won't hurt you.

Speaker 5 (29:37):
Not come here.

Speaker 3 (29:40):
The first movie feels like Luke's movie, right. The second
movie could be Luke or could be Hans's movie, because
they're both equally very important. And then it comes to
the third movie and I'm like, well, whose movie is this?
It doesn't feel like anybody's movie at this point, So I.

Speaker 1 (29:55):
Have Vader or the Empress movie. In a way, they're
the sort of biggest character.

Speaker 3 (30:00):
Exactly, and I guess it's supposed to be Anakin's redemption.
But at the same time, he's been a villain for
two films, very vicious villain, and yet now suddenly we're
supposed to see good in him, and I'm like, I
don't see what you're seeing Luke. And Luke's whole development
feels like it takes place between these two movies, because
when he shows up, it's like, Okay, to your point,

(30:21):
he's making all these threats. I don't feel like he's
a badass. I don't feel like he's any sort of
threat to Jabba whatsoever. I had read while I was
doing my research, so first I read it and then
I saw it. So when I read it, it was, oh, yeah,
the movie was supposed to start with Luke building his
lightsaber and when the beam comes out, it's green, So
we don't know is he good is he bad? Because

(30:43):
we've seen blue versus red, we've never seen a green
lightsaber before. We don't know what this guy's doing. And
so I was like, oh, that's cool, Like throw us
off the scent a little bit here at the beginning
and kind of do that thing that you were talking
about where it's like, oh, maybe he's turned to the
dark side. You know, he left his training too early,
all these things. And then I finally saw that scene.

(31:03):
I didn't think it was actually shot, but then I
saw it where you see, it's just a connector between
Darth Vader at the beginning talking to jarjirod that imperial dude.
And then we transitioned to Tattooine and you see Luke
working on the lightsaber. You see he's in a cave
and you've got R two sitting across from him. You've
got three po in the back outside, and it goes

(31:26):
basically right into them leaving and going to Java's palace.
So you don't get the sense that Luke has turned
at all. There's nothing there. It's just like, oh, yeah,
he's working on lightsaber. Okay, cool, you know. And then
that even like, had they kept that scene in there,
it would have just added more to the confusion as
far as why's he shown this hologram? Like, we know
he's here, we know he's on Tattooin.

Speaker 5 (31:47):
He feels too invincible also in this movie, you know,
I don't know what his plan was if R two
wasn't there to give him the lightsaber. First, he goes
for the gun at doesn't work, And that's the only
time you see him kind of vulnerable is the Rank
Coors scene.

Speaker 3 (32:05):
Because every other.

Speaker 5 (32:06):
Scene he's just kind of invincible. It's very odd, you know,
I'm never fearing for him at all or anything. And
when you see Darth Vader not as himself, like Jamie
has that phenomenal film youmentary you sent me and I
watched and I was blown away by it. There was
a sequence in there where Vader's choking out someone and
I'm like, yeah, that's what's missing from this movie, is

(32:26):
Vader choking motherfuckers out because you were threatened by him.
He's so scary an empire, He's choking everyone out. That's
just missing from this movie. I guess they have to
soften him so when he turns at the ending and
the whole like everyone I guess was expecting was Luke's
battle with the dark Side, it's only in that one
scene when Vader pisses him off, when he talks about

(32:48):
his sister. That's the only kind of time you see it.
But that's not at all in this movie. You don't
really get a lot of that, and It's something they
teased with Daisy Ridley's character that last trilogy and never
went through with it at all either. That's like they
always set it up, but then they just kind of
back away from it. And by the way, you're also
right about that Wicked scene. I never thought about it

(33:08):
that it's totally mirroring Luke and Yoda.

Speaker 3 (33:11):
You nailed that.

Speaker 1 (33:12):
There's something about Luke in this. It feels like they
wanted to paint him as getting above his station too early,
Like Yoda laughs at him, so certain are you? He
says about being a Jedi and that, and then Harrison
Ford or hand Solo should say, has that line, which
again doesn't fit his character. I've been out of it
for a little while and everybody gets delusions of grandeur.

(33:33):
That's not a Han Solo line. It felt like they
wanted to kind of say that Luke is kind of
going too early and it's too risky and it's too
dangerous and he could turn to the dark side. But
it isn't really developed enough for us to kind of
feel that danger until that very last moment, you know,
like you said, where Vader kind of pisses him off
and he goes it gets a bit angry and whatnot,

(33:54):
and then culminates with him throwing the lightsaber away. I
feel if they'd have built that up a little bit more,
Luke is just getting a bit too carried away too quickly,
you know, the quick and easy path and all of
that stuff. Maybe mirroring some of those threats Theo's dangers
that Yoda talks about in Empire, it would have felt
like he had more of an arc through the movie.

(34:14):
I just didn't. Yeah, I just don't buy where he
is or what he's doing.

Speaker 3 (34:18):
For most of I don't want to be this guy,
but I don't need to see every scene of connection materials,
YadA YadA. But it always feels and this is such
a minor quibble, but I'm going to bring it up anyway.
It always feels to me like the scene where he
turns himself into the Imperial Guards and they bring him
to Vader. Not seeing him turn himself in is a

(34:40):
missing opportunity to see how he would handle himself in
that type of situation. I want to see that. I
don't care about him hanging out with the Ewoks and
all that kind of stuff. I almost want him to
leave the story a little bit earlier and separate out
of me, because we see them separate right after the
whole job of skift thing where you' the Falcon goes

(35:01):
right and the X Men goes left. And thank god
he showed up at Dagoba when he did, because if
it was fifteen minutes later, Yoda would be dead again.

Speaker 1 (35:11):
It feels like the writing is inefficient in a way.
You know, it doesn't ring true like it does, particularly
an Empire and also in Star Wars. But yeah, you're right,
if you hadn't have turned up, he would have just
got one little croak ten minutes later and that would
have been it for Yoda. But again, it doesn't feel
like Lukey is stripped of anything at that point. Like

(35:31):
when you know Obi Wan dies in Star Wars, you
kind of go, oh shit, he's on his own here,
like he's just met this guy and he's his mentor
and he was going to teach him. What's going to happen?

Speaker 6 (35:40):
Now?

Speaker 1 (35:40):
Okay, they're escaping the desk Star when Yoda dies, I
think he has that moment, doesn't he. Where he says
to ar To, I don't think I can do it.
I can't do it alone. Then Ben Kenobi arrives, that's
a whole other thing. But I don't feel his vulnerability
at that point as much as I did when Obi
Wan died. I still love this movie.

Speaker 3 (35:57):
Oh no, it's all good. I'm now trying to call
you you are moron for liking this movie.

Speaker 5 (36:01):
No, no, not so.

Speaker 1 (36:03):
I just you know, it is one of my favorite
movies still because it's dumb and it's part of my childhood.
But you know, when you're a kid, these things passed
you by, all these little pot points and things and
character changes and things that don't feel right in the character.
But it's not until you get older you stop picking
it upart but you never hit people do this with Empire.

Speaker 5 (36:21):
Just all the stars aligned for Empire to make it perfect.
Lawrence Kasden, the director taking more control because Lucas was
so overwhelmed by everything.

Speaker 1 (36:33):
And the dop as well. I mean, Peter Sushitski looks amazing.
Empire hurts the other producer, Kurts.

Speaker 5 (36:40):
I think he got a different producer for this one,
which Lucas had his hands all in this one for
sure versus Empire, and not saying Lucas is, you know, incredible,
But I think there was just all these elements in that.
And then I think it was also that Kasden had
Kirshner's back more. And then when it comes time for
this movie everything Hasden wants to do, Lucas is like, nope,

(37:04):
because Kasin's more in a frame of mind of Empire.
He wants to kill off characters. He wants to kill
someone off during the Jaba scene, so the stakes are high.

Speaker 3 (37:12):
Well, hell, Harrison Ford was first in line. He's like, yeah,
kill off my character please. It was funny because when
they what was the New Star Wars movie he was
in where he died. Was that Arsa Aikins. Yeah, And
I remember right before the movie came out, I tweeted,
because it was still Twitter back then, I tweeted, Oh,
I really like the New Star Wars movie. It's such

(37:34):
a shame that Han Solo dies and people were out
for me for blood, and I was just like, I
didn't know that he actually died in the movie. I
was just taking a guest because I was like, he's
been wanting to be dead too since nineteen eighty three.
He wanted to die in this movie and like, yeah,
kill this character off. I mean, I love Han Solo
but would have really raised those steaks. Holy shit.

Speaker 1 (37:57):
Yeah, I had that same guest. I remember saying to
my wife, is the only reason Harrison's going to have
returned to this movie because he wants to be killed off? Yeah,
because there wasn't another version of the script as well,
where you know that Blast is chasing them out of
the Death Star and there's that little second have they
perished or oh no, here's the Falcon and the X
wings and stuff. They were going to actually get rid
of Lando at that point as well in one version

(38:17):
of the script, and again it would have felt like,
you know, the stakes were raised, Like you know, when
you take away a main character, you really do feel
the peril for everybody else. You think, well, anything can
happen now. But yeah, it's just played so safely. But
you know, the other thing I was saying about Peter
Sushitski's it was The dop On Empire. You know that
film looks amazing to this day. I saw it in
the cinema again. It was a special edition The Least Heinous,

(38:39):
I guess a couple of years ago, and me and
my mate turned to each other at the end and
we said exactly the same thing. We said, Wow, it
still works, doesn't it in that movie? You know, it
still really looks amazing. You look at Jedi has a
really sort of flat look to it. Alan Hume was
the DOP You know, he worked on some of the
Bonds later on, but he worked on the Carry On movies,
and you know, he was as DP, and it has

(39:02):
a very sort of fight look to it. I think
turned the Jedi.

Speaker 3 (39:06):
It's not surprising that you said James Bond because I
actually had James Bond in mine. Maybe it's because I've
been doing the ranking on Bond podcast, but I really
had James Bond in mind as far as those set pieces,
and especially some of the set pieces that go, in
my opinion, on for too long. I like the idea
of the speeder chase through the forest Moon of Indoor.
I really like that, and I like the way they

(39:27):
shot it. It just feels like it goes on for
a little too long, kind of like a lot of
James Bond chases do. But again, I think I was
probably right there with you. Jamie's first watching everything I
could get my hands on around the making of this film,
and I did the same thing for Empire. Did the
same thing for Star Wars, because back in those days
you didn't have the Internet. You couldn't go watch this

(39:49):
the YouTube special or something, and if you didn't see
it on PBS or on Nickelodeon or any of these
kind of channels, you just didn't see it. But if
you recorded it and you could just watch like over
and over again, like how did they do this Starlac
pet thing? How did they do the speeder bike? So
seeing the speeder bike sequence taking apart and showing like, oh,

(40:10):
here's where it's stopped motion and here's how we did
the speed of this, and then having who's a Ben
Burt come in talk about the sound effects. I mean,
the sound affects themselves in this movie, and that's to
me kind of the one of the funniest parts of
the film is when C three p I Is telling
the story of Star Wars to the Ewoks and it's
all through the use of sound effects, and I'm like, yes,

(40:32):
like these sound effects are classic, the whole cranking of
the ad ads and everything, and it's just like, oh,
this is so cool. But of course what I'm watching
that now, I'm just like, oh, this reminds me of
that scene in Rain of Fire where Christian Bale is
in Gerrard Butler when they're re enacting Star Wars, and
I'm just like, yes, Star Wars is this classic tale,

(40:54):
like it is the mythology of our times, and like
it's so funny because yeah, like and then like you're saying,
we went real dark with the second one, the third
one just playing it so safe and just it felt
like it was just such a kiddy movie, you know,
like having the Ewoks in there, having the Teddy Bears,
having the slapstick having like, oh my god, having fucking

(41:15):
Chewbacca do a Tarzan yell as he's swinging over and
I'm like, oh man, it was so funny because at
the same time, as I was listening to a recording
of just Return the Jedi the soundtrack, basically I've flipped
over and I was listening to We Hate Movies talking
about Revenge of the Sith, and they're like, oh, yeah,
Chewbacca does a Tarzan and yell and I was like,

(41:36):
oh god, that sounds so awful. And then I listened
to Return the Jedi and he does it again. I
was like, oh fuck, or he did it the first time.

Speaker 1 (41:42):
I should say Yeah, there's also that bit with the
speed of bike when the Scout Trooper. I love that design,
by the way, the Scout shoop. Oh, I'm with you
on the speed of Bikes. That was Nila rotis Jimiro,
who again I'm happy to say as a friend of mine,
he's actually sending me something very cool this week. Just
to quickly aside, I've interviewed him three times now and
we've become quite chatty on WhatsApp, and he sent me

(42:04):
a load of drawings that he did original drawings for
me of his iconic designs. One is a Scout Trooper,
but Regal Robot I've been doing these reproductions of macettes
of the characters that you see in that documentary. They're
all on the table.

Speaker 3 (42:17):
Oh.

Speaker 1 (42:18):
He made the design of this thing called the Yuzz'm,
which I think is the guy that sings in the
special edition. But originally it's just in Jamber's palace like
leaning up against towards this little guy with like little
pipe cleaner arms and a fuzzy kind of body. He
was sent one of them by Regal Robot and he's like,
I don't want it, I'm sending it to you. Jamie
so I'm getting that in the post this week, which
should be fun.

Speaker 5 (42:39):
I noticed him too during that making of Just Mike
said it to us, and I was like, oh, he
was a character in I't know he was a character
until the special edition.

Speaker 3 (42:48):
But keep going. I'm sorry he mean to interrupt you.

Speaker 1 (42:50):
No, no, that's fine. And Nilo said to me that
because he did some little sketch cards to go with
this model, and he said, you know, I got through
like half a dozen of these drawings and then I
realized I was bored. And that's why we didn't develop
that character, because it was a dumb character. It is
a dumb designed So I'm getting it. But the point
I was going to make was about the Scout Troopers
was there's that bit where one of them has the

(43:10):
front end chopped off with the like Luke's light saber,
and it goes it's like this really really sort of
cartoony whistling sound as it spins around, and that feels
very non Star Wars, you know, like Bember of course,
as we know, went out and gathered all of these
organic sounds, and I think that speed bike sound was

(43:32):
when he heard like a jackhammer in the road and
the air hose got a stone in it, and he
was like, wait there, and he ran off and got
his recorder and recorded that sound for the speeder bikes.

Speaker 3 (43:41):
That's incredible.

Speaker 1 (43:42):
A lot of these organics are grounded, real world sounds,
and then when you hear the Tarzan call and the
spinning speeder bike, it just feels like we're in a
tech avery kind of environment.

Speaker 3 (43:53):
It gets silly, man, the movie just gets silly. That's odd.

Speaker 5 (43:56):
I mean because it was for kids. Because I was
thinking about the third Indiana Jones movie at the trilogy,
the Crusade. It's like they did the same thing. You
had this dark temple of doom, and then all of
a sudden they're like, all right, now, let's put Indiana
Jones back as a teacher. You like that, you know,
you like the Nazis, Let's bring them back. You know

(44:17):
you liked all the traps. So in the third act
of this movie, there's gonna be traps and instead of
melting people, it's gonna be ghoulish when he drinks from
the goblet. They brought back the original. So they just
they wanted to, like, you know, do like this Raiders
DLC for a Crusade. It's the same movie as Raiders,
and it's soft again and nice, you know, and he's
kind of you know, it's something he would go on

(44:38):
it to do again. What I appreciate about Jabna's Palace
this time was I didn't realize how they pushed all
those monsters in the front and then they just had
regular people like in the background, you know, cause I've
noticed this time there was some dude that looked like
Candy Man with his jacket just shown behind Jabba.

Speaker 3 (44:54):
I was like, Oh, there's.

Speaker 5 (44:55):
Actually like regular as humans hanging out behind all these
you know, there's that weird monster just chill and not
doing anything. I was like, who all these people gathered here?

Speaker 3 (45:04):
You know, like you're talking about, why is Boba there?
I mean, it must be a happening place.

Speaker 5 (45:08):
He's just hanging out.

Speaker 3 (45:11):
Lots of musical acts there, that's for sure. Hey, Jaba
loves his mutancy. I come here for the entertainment.

Speaker 1 (45:17):
And it certainly feels like returned. The Jedi is jabbasine
compared to the Cantena scene. It feels like in Jedi
is far more sort of performative. They're all like coming
towards the camera behind Luke, and you know you've got
Claptu there going like this, and the gammery and guards
kind of stomping around, Whereas in Star Wars, you know,
they're in their booths, they're having their own chats, and
then when the lightsaber thing happens with Kenobi, they will

(45:39):
turn around to look. You know, it feels like people
are having their own lives, whereas with the Return of
the Jedi and that Jabasine, it feels like they're there
for the scene. To me when I'm watching now, well, I.

Speaker 5 (45:48):
Did think it was interesting this time around watching the Jabbazceine.
I guess the bib Tuna dude. Once Luke does the
Jedi mind trick on him, he does kind of disappear
in the back and see three PM steps forward like
he It kind of shows Jaba, like how he treats
the droids and when he's done with someone, he just
discards them, and you can kind of see it with that.
This time around, I noticed it with that character and

(46:10):
I thought that was kind of cool, like he's kind
of discarded after that scene to the background.

Speaker 1 (46:16):
Bitt.

Speaker 3 (46:17):
It is one of my favorite characters. I mean, just
the way he speaks in that kind of like pig
Latin are two daytoa type of stuff.

Speaker 1 (46:24):
And he swears like the second he's on screen, like
he calls jab bowanka and I remembers like a teenager going,
WHOA hang on a minute, did did you just say that?

Speaker 3 (46:33):
It's such a great design too, you know? Yeah, Like
I've always teeth.

Speaker 5 (46:38):
I was fascinated by his action figure too as a kid.

Speaker 1 (46:40):
I think that's yeah, because the figure kind of looked
wet as well, didn't it. It looked kind of slimy
and wet.

Speaker 3 (46:45):
Yeah. And I also wanted to take his head tail
thing and straighten it out and stuff. I love those
types of figures, you know, where you can actually interact
with them a little bit more ones with the helmets, yeah.

Speaker 1 (46:57):
The robe and the kind of chest piece underneath in
the Yeah, and the staff with this sort of spindle
on it.

Speaker 3 (47:02):
Yeah. I love that meme that's going around where it's
the I can't remember what movie it's from, where the
girls like to say those three words three.

Speaker 5 (47:10):
Words I'm yours.

Speaker 4 (47:15):
They were no longer thank you.

Speaker 1 (47:20):
That's all I needed to hear.

Speaker 2 (47:22):
I do know.

Speaker 1 (47:22):
I think of that actor Michael Carter bit Fortuna. I
think of him every time I go on the underground,
because he's the guy in American Wealth in London that's
chased through the underground.

Speaker 3 (47:32):
Oh really.

Speaker 1 (47:33):
If ever, I'm in a tube station in London and
it's kind of quiet, I feel like I'm in that
movie which scared me for years when I was a kid,
and I think of him.

Speaker 3 (47:40):
Yeah, staying with Jaba's Palace a few more minutes. Seeing
Book of Bilbafet really recast the rank or keeper who
apparently showed up in Book of Bilbeffet, but I didn't
realize it was the same character. But like this whole
thing of how the bond between a rank or keeper
and the rank corps, and like when he cries after
the ranker monster is dead, I'm just like, now I

(48:04):
feel totally bad. Like when I was a kid, I
was just like, Oh, isn't that funny this guy's crying
over a monster. But then now I'm just like, oh, man,
like this is Pathos right here. And then you compare
that to the scenes of droids have peen sensors. Now
this is a thing we put peen sensors and droids
where and that whole thing where the droid is being tortured,

(48:27):
so reminds me of just like a Disney Rider. Reminded
me of like Pirates of the Caribbean, so funny, like
the guy turns the thing, the droid turns, it comes
down and then it comes back up. Then they just
keep doing that. I'm like, that's odd.

Speaker 1 (48:41):
It feels like at some point they said they wanted
sise Noodles in the Rebo band to start up on
that big scream, and they wanted it to match with
somebody else screaming, Okay, let's make a droid do it,
and nobody went to droid's scream. You know, do they
feel pain? It's just they put that idea together and
off they went. Maybe George wasn't on the set that day.

Speaker 3 (49:00):
We're talking about how characters might die. I mean, when
Han Solo looks at the Millennium Falcon and he has us,
I don't know, it's just a strange feeling. I'm never
going to see her again, that never comes back whatsoever.
And that's like this moment of pathos where I was like,
oh wow, yeah, something bad might happen, but don't worry.
Nothing bad happens.

Speaker 1 (49:17):
It's probably when Lando was due to die, right exactly, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (49:21):
And get mon Matha and her thing where she's just like,
oh many bothans died to bring us this information, and
you're just like, oh, fuck man, that sounds like really intense,
Like give me that movie. Don't give me Rogue one,
give me the Bothens that are dying because of this.
Like that's what I want to see, is like these Bothans.

Speaker 1 (49:38):
Well that's much later, of course, isn't it. Yeah, for
a return of Jabdi. But I tried to recut a
trailer once I'll make a Return of the Jedi trailer
to make it dark. So I died with every hero
has a journey or something. I was sort of mirroring
the early prequel one, and I picked a bit of dialogue.
You know, there's that bit of dollar where Hansally says,
you're throwing away a fortune here, don't be a fool

(50:01):
to Jabber when he's trying to negotiate with him. I
put that in as the falkm was entering the Death Star,
and I proceeded with a bit of him and Lando
kind of talking or something. So I tried to use
some of the bits of dialogue to sort of kind
of make you worried about the characters and about the
iconic spaceship and stuff. And it's amazing how quickly you

(50:23):
can snip out certain scenes from that movie and give
it a darker feel, you know, the stuff with the emperor,
the lightsaber battle at the end. You get that kind
of chorus stone voices that rises up after he says,
you know, about his sister. There are moments in there
sort of sprinkled throughout, but it feels that as they
remove scenes and swap things around, they forgot what they
also had left in. In some cases that no longer work.

(50:46):
You know, they would have worked perhaps with the scenes
left in. Who knows. But there's a really good book
called The Annotated Screenplays. Lam's really good, and it kind
of picks out all of those different changes, all those
evolutions of the script. And you know, it's always tantalizing,
isn't it for fans like us to go, I wonder
what it would have been like if this had happened, X, Y,
and Z had happened. But yeah, I think there is

(51:07):
a bit of movie in there somewhere. I don't know
if there's ever been a fan at it or trying
to make it darker, because there's probably means to do
that now. I would think it'd be interesting because it
is the least favorite of a lot of people of
that original trilogy, and it's usually number three, So maybe
it's time somebody does go in there and have a
little play with it.

Speaker 3 (51:26):
I don't know if you could save it from the ewarks, though, yeah,
we all wish.

Speaker 1 (51:30):
That they were Wookies right at the time when George
was talking about the Wookies. But then we saw the
Wookies in one of the prequels and it's Revenge of
a Sith. Revenge of the Sith. It was pretty bad.

Speaker 3 (51:40):
I love that movie though.

Speaker 5 (51:41):
That's my third favorite Star Wars movie.

Speaker 3 (51:43):
I gotta say. But that's why I won't ever be
hard on you say and you like Jedi, because I
get it. I have my revenge.

Speaker 5 (51:49):
This that's my third favorite. It just got re released
and my friends want to see. I'm like, it's so good,
like hatting and blowing me off.

Speaker 1 (51:55):
It's great. It did really well. It got like in
the top five movies week, Hid in the Chops.

Speaker 5 (52:01):
Oh did he over here too? And then it was
gone in a week later.

Speaker 3 (52:04):
I wasn't able to go see it. I was so
bummed that was just a week release.

Speaker 5 (52:09):
But going back to what you were saying about the
Lando and the Millennium Falcon, what I always got from
that scene was him telling there won't be a scratch
on it, and then you start seeing it get messed up.
It turned into like that Corey Haym Corey feld Me
movie License to Drive, where he has he.

Speaker 3 (52:23):
Starts messing it up again, it just goes silly.

Speaker 5 (52:27):
I just think the first half of this movie with
Jaba and the Starlac pit and all that stuff, but
then once they start getting on. I love the speeder
bike scene though too. It's one of my favorite things.
But after that is when I start to tune out.
I mean, even though one of my favorite shots in
the Star Wars movie is the POV from the cockpit
with all the tie fighters coming at it, that's probably
one that in the Star Destroyer crashing it to the

(52:50):
other those are some of my favorite moments from a
Star Wars movie. I love that stuff, but it's just
unfortunately for me, it's like not my least favorite Star
War movie by a mile at all. But as an adult,
when I was a kid, I loved the Ewoks stuff.
I loved it, but as I got older, it just, yeah,
it doesn't work for me as it used to when
I was younger.

Speaker 3 (53:11):
And I think that's how it is. What a lot
of adults.

Speaker 1 (53:14):
Mentioning those battle scenes at the end, you know, some
of the best battle scenes in those Star Wars movies
and even some of the late ones. The complexity of
some of those shots. There's a documentary which I'm sure
you would have seen at some point. It's called How
to Film the Impossible, and they visit ILM and this
guy's got like the sheet of like a three paper
and it's got like a grid on it, and there's

(53:35):
an X to mark where every ship interacts with another
ship or crosses the path of another ship in that
famous shot where there's like seventy five elements or something.
Just the complexity that they had to go through doing
that optically just kind of blows my mind. I've spoken
to some of those guys on my podcast, and I
can never quite come to terms with just how difficult
that must have been to kind of imagine and plot

(53:58):
out and then do optically and still maintain the resolution.
And you know, there is a mistake and if famously
there is a mistake and it where two Ti fi
as appear in front of the falcon rather than behind
it where they should be, just for a frame or two.
But yeah, some of that stuff in those those bat scenes,
it's just fantastic, just the sort of choreography of it,
the way that you can read those shots and understand

(54:19):
the geography, and they're doing that with models, you know,
and doing it optically compositive. It's pretty amazing.

Speaker 3 (54:26):
Well, even just the shots of the Ewok encampment where
you've got the three or four different planes of action
and you see them in the trees and everything. I
was just like, that's really gorgeous because I think of
something like, you know, Fellowship of the Ring and they
do something similar with when they come to Ribondll and
you just see like, oh, yeah, here's this fore ground,

(54:47):
here's this background, here's this mid ground action. But to
do that all with Matt paintings and double exposures and
all these things, it's just like, wow, that's pretty amazing.

Speaker 1 (54:58):
Some of the best matte paintings in the I would say,
you know, Mike, Mike Pangrats, you know, Chris Evans and
I think Harrison Ellershaw might have done some as well,
but yeah, some of that. Whenever you see those posters
online like these are matte paintings, there's always a thousand
people going, wow, I didn't know this was a mate painting.
It's such an amazing sort of lost art.

Speaker 3 (55:14):
In a way. Leader's entrance into the movie with all
of the troopers there, and you're just like, that's a
mate painting. Like the guys that are moving are all real,
but then all these stormtroopers standing here, I'm just like,
holy shit, that is amazing that you could do that.

Speaker 5 (55:31):
The concept of that Death Star just half built. I
think it's iconic.

Speaker 3 (55:35):
It's gorgeous.

Speaker 1 (55:36):
Yeah, it really is a nice design. There's some fantastic
designs in this film. They feel like they belong, don't
they that Every kind of even the speed bikes you could,
oh yeah, they feel like Star Wars instantly. I think,
you know, having those same design as through the trilogy,
you know, Nilo and the others, Joe Johnston and yeah, just.

Speaker 3 (55:56):
Even having Joe Johnston and Ralph mcquarie doing those paintings,
I mean, it's amazing. Now when I watch some of
the newer Star Wars stuff, and I'll be like, oh,
I've seen that before. Where have I seen that? And
then I think back to those old paintings from seventy
seven to eighty eighty three, and I'm just like, that's
where I saw it. Like those images are so burn
in my mind, like seeing a throwaway character in like

(56:19):
the Han Solo story and I'm like, oh, that was
one of those McQuary paintings.

Speaker 5 (56:24):
Oh yeah, I think the Mandalorian used like concept art
from Empire dyn used with like the ice spiders or something.

Speaker 1 (56:30):
And what that's right, Yeah, that was a mcquarie, wasn't it.

Speaker 5 (56:33):
When you watch all the making of and then you
know this little book where you just see like the bibfit,
you know, whatever made it on screen, there was concepts
before it, a number of concepts before it that got there.

Speaker 3 (56:45):
All the concepts are amazing.

Speaker 5 (56:47):
Also, it's just like, but you know, they just couldn't
pull it off yet.

Speaker 3 (56:52):
We should probably address the elephant or the bantha in
the room and talk a little bit about the sister
and just this whole from a certain point of view,
And yes, there is another kind of thing. That was
the thing I was talking about in that people just
don't believe when you tell them how much Star Wars
changed from beginning to end, because somehow George seems to

(57:13):
have sold it that he knew exactly what he was
doing from the beginning, and I'm just like, no, that
is the absolute opposite of truth. He did not. He
might have had a plan, but it changed so much
as it went along. I have concepts of a plan.
My god, this whole thing of we're going to retro
fit Anakin to be your father, and that albi Wan

(57:36):
didn't tell you about this stuff, and surprise, you have
a sister, so I guess the whole sister thing. It
just feels like a way to resolve the romance between
Han and Luke and Lea. It doesn't add anything to
the story whatsoever. It might have like back during you know,
Splinter in the Mind's Eye or something like that, have
we learned that they were brother and sister? And that's

(57:59):
what those like training scenes in one of those second
second trilogy things like where we had the fake layer
that just looked absolutely terrible, you know, the d aged layer.
Like I was like, oh, well, that reminds me of
this thing. But yeah, it's like, why do we have
to have that, I guess now because of the force
powers that Ben Solo ended up having. But again, that

(58:22):
just was all, we don't know what the hell we're
doing when it came to that second trilogy.

Speaker 1 (58:27):
Yeah, I think you're absolutely right about George, you know,
and him kind of changing his mind with you. All
you got to do is look at those annotated scripts
in that book and look at any interviews he gave
early on. Yes, he had plans in his mind to
make multiple movies and relogies potentially, but he was mixing
and matching ideas, you know, and that's what he did.
And you know, like every creative endeavor, you have to
think on your feet on the day and try and

(58:49):
make the best of it. And I think occasionally he
just kind of like lost sight of where things were going.
I mean, if it was always his plan for Luke
and Leia to be brother and then what the heck
was he doing in the Empire strikes back with them
sort of creating a kind of love triangle. And yes,
that idea was there in early concepts that they were

(59:09):
brother and sister, but then he sort of abandoned that.
But then, oh, I've got enough money to make another movie. Okay,
now we need to kind of resolve this, you know,
like he didn't originally have Obi being killed off at
the start, you know, and then he realized he was
just standing around and had to have that conversation with Guinness.
I always think back to, like, there's that moment where
Luke says in Star Wars, how did you meet my father?
Or how did you know my father? And Alec Guinness

(59:31):
does this kind of intake of breath and he looks
the other way, like, chit, I've got to tell this story.
But I remember seeing an interview the Guinness where he
said that at that point, I sort of assumed that
there was a backstory. So I just realized that if
I just did a little thing with my face, that
it would look like this, some big deal went on
all those years ago between us. And of course that

(59:53):
now has resonance because of we know what I'm you know,
evolved afterwards and unfolded afterwards. But yeah, I find those
sequences really weird. In returns to edit, when Luke tells
Lea that Vader's his father, her reaction is really odd.
If she's figuring out, oh, hang on, he's my father too,
and he tortured me. And we've been chasing across the

(01:00:16):
galaxy trying to, you know, get rid of this guy.
And where's the moment where she even reacts to them
being siblings or that she's the daughter of Vader That
it's just not there. It just feels really weird, that
whole scene. And then Han Solu comes in and he
does that really weird sort of patting on the back thing,
kind of looking around with Leia. None of that feels

(01:00:36):
I think the only thing that really carries that is
the kind of is the atmosphere there. There's that mist
sort of hanging in the air, and it's quiet out
the back while all the other stuff's going on, and
then there's that nice Luke and Layer score going on.
I think it would have benefited from having a few
more takes or a few more.

Speaker 3 (01:00:53):
Rewrites that he'll see, You'll tell Luke.

Speaker 5 (01:00:56):
Caudi another unhandshole of the moment. But where I find
fasting about the other thing is I was too young
when I saw an empire in the theater to catch
the other line.

Speaker 3 (01:01:05):
It wasn't until like the.

Speaker 5 (01:01:07):
Secret History of Star Wars, when I listened to that
book over and over again. I realized, like how people
were like, who is the other? And listening to that book,
it's about oh, because George was going to do another
trilogy and the other was going to be carried on.
According to that book, that's what the other was supposed
to be the character that was going to be in

(01:01:29):
the sequel trilogy, because at that point that George Lucas
was like, I'm making another trilogy after this, and then
somehow while doing Return, he just got burned out and
was like, all right, we're not doing that. There was
a star log I wish I wrote down which date
it was, but it says right in front of me,
Star Wars saga continues and it says, you know, Revenge

(01:01:49):
of the Jedi is released.

Speaker 3 (01:01:50):
I was back when I still called Revenge of the Jedi.

Speaker 5 (01:01:52):
On May twenty fifth, nineteen eighty three, the firm begins
plans for the next trilogy of films in the nine
part saga, you know, so they were ready to go
with it, and I guess he just got so burnt
with Jedi and just knew it's gonna be a nice
movie and we're gonna have the Ewok stuff, and he
doesn't want to do him anymore. But and then that's
when the other turns into Princess Leia. It was like, Okay,

(01:02:14):
now I can turn her.

Speaker 1 (01:02:16):
Into this other.

Speaker 5 (01:02:17):
But I guess people were so upset buck in that
for waiting three years to find out who the other was.
I was too young at the time, so but that stuff.
I was all learning from secret history of Star Wars.
But I'm And then they said in this Starlog article
that they were gonna do the sequel trilogy in reverse order.

Speaker 3 (01:02:37):
They were gonna do three, two and then one. Wow, yeah,
I have it right, I'm looking right at it.

Speaker 5 (01:02:43):
That wasn't Starlog, so they did when it was Revenge
to Jedi before it turned into Return.

Speaker 3 (01:02:48):
They still had thoughts of.

Speaker 5 (01:02:49):
Making other Star Wars movies, but then some maybe it
was the divorce and everything where he was just like,
this is maybe ruining me and I want to keep
doing Star Wars is maybe the technology is not where
I want it yet, and I'm going to take some
time off.

Speaker 3 (01:03:03):
I'm going to make a lot of experimental films. Now
that's my dream. Where Sho got yeah, yeah, we got
Howard the Duck.

Speaker 1 (01:03:12):
That's kind of experimental, and Tucker.

Speaker 3 (01:03:15):
I tried watching those two Ewach movies today.

Speaker 1 (01:03:18):
Holy shit, I haven't met That was probably my worst
cinema experience as a kid. I remember saying yeah, yeah,
and my parents said, oh yeah, We've got surprise for you,
and they gave me this tick and I was like
the Star Wars like wow, and I'm sitting there going
where's Luke, Where's Hans Solo, where's Princess Leia?

Speaker 5 (01:03:40):
What is this thing?

Speaker 1 (01:03:42):
And I remember walking out of the cinema and I
was that eighty five, so I would have been like
eight or nine years old. I think it's the first
time I really experienced like the proper disappointment because where
are my favorite characters. I want to see the further
adventures of these people, you know, where is it?

Speaker 2 (01:03:58):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (01:03:59):
The old look is good either, right, the euarks in there.

Speaker 1 (01:04:01):
No, they were made pretty cheaply, you know, and they
were made or it's like the other thing you think
about Jedi, you know, as opposed to the other two.
You know, the first one they went to Chinisia. They
went to the UK of course to shoot an Elstree.
Second one they went to Fincer in Norway and then
back into the UK. Obviously also Elstreet's returned to Jeddo.
But then they did the rest of it in the States,
you know, they it feels like they didn't kind of

(01:04:23):
branch out and go to some exotic place, so you
do kind of go, oh, yeah, that's the Redwood Forest
and oh yeah, that's that's you Arizona.

Speaker 3 (01:04:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:04:31):
Yeah, maybe that was a budgetry thing as well, or
just to you know, you can kind of understand why
Lucas ended up doing so much digitally because all of
the pain he went through his sets being blown away
and flooding and white outs and snowstorms and all of
that stuff. I can totally understand it.

Speaker 3 (01:04:49):
With the Sands storm that didn't get included.

Speaker 5 (01:04:53):
But I did the shark documentary Shark Exploitation. When I
interviewed Carl Galtlieb and Joe Alves, they boil said and
swear by they wish they could have done CG with
the shark. They were like, you know, even though we
love that fucking shark, we love it and we wouldn't
want a CG. But according to them, they're like, in
a second, that's what they wish they had because they're
the ones that were in the trenches dealing with it

(01:05:16):
and the stress and the harp.

Speaker 3 (01:05:19):
But they in a second, we'd want to do a
CG One Shark.

Speaker 1 (01:05:23):
Absolutely. I mean, I'm making this Joe Al's documentary, have
been for a couple years and we're going out to
Martha's Vineyards next week to shoot some stuff with Joe.
And what's the line Joe said, you know, you might
as well give it a go because it's going to
be the best there is because nobody else is trying it,
you know. And that's how they kind of approached George.
It's like, yeah, Okay, we're gonna make this thing. We're
gonna put it in the sea, and we're gonna have
to find this location with the bed of the beach

(01:05:47):
has got to be this height and that they've got
to find, you know, places inland, and it turns out
Martha's Vineyard is the right place. George talks about building
the sal barge in Return to Jedi, how it took
three hundred laborers, five months, whatever the stats are, he
says in that documentary, and then it's on film for
like minute and a half, two minutes or something. You
just have to kind of do the best that you

(01:06:08):
can to get that thing. You don't need to show
off the thing that you've made. I think that's one
of the real lessons I learned from Georgie in that
documentary is you know, you shouldn't ever give yourself a
pout on the back for the graft that you've done,
the work that you've gone through, because maybe you need
to cut that shot out. Actually maybe it doesn't work.
Maybe it did take six months to get but maybe

(01:06:30):
it needs to come out of the movie. Maybe return
the Jedi needs more of this teachings.

Speaker 5 (01:06:36):
Yeah, that's sail bars and then the Sarlac set that
they did. It is huge and it'sn't seen to wrap
your head around that they built all that.

Speaker 3 (01:06:44):
I hate this whole thing that we have to go
back to tatuin why was Jabba? We don't have the
scene of him coming to the docking bay and threatening
hand Solough in the world that the three of us
grew up and that scene didn't exist. I was job
on tattooing, Like why couldn't his palace have been someplace else?
And it just feels like we keep coming back to

(01:07:06):
tattooing and like all of these even when it's not tattooing.
It's Jaku. It's another desert planet. And I'm just like,
come on, guys, like you know, Luke says in the
first movie, if there's a bright.

Speaker 5 (01:07:17):
Center of the universe, you're on the planet that is farthest.

Speaker 3 (01:07:19):
From classic line. This is the backwater burb. But instead
it becomes the center of the fucking universe for all
nine movies. And you're just like, for christis, can we
get away from tattooing? Thank God? They don't go back
to tattooing in an empire. Use some other planets, man,
Let's go see some other places. But this is just like,

(01:07:40):
all right, we're back here. We're doing this again. And
you know, basically, they replace Darth Vader as a bad
guy with the Emperor. And even when it came to
the Emperor as a kid, I was a little disappointed
because I was like, oh, he's just a little old man,
like I was expecting somebody like tall and grandiose and
somebody very very commanding. Instead he's just like he's like

(01:08:00):
mister Burns basically, the way he carries his hands and stuff.
It paid a pretty penny for this pretty penny, but
it was worth it, though, I do love what a
snide bastard he is, especially when they're.

Speaker 4 (01:08:12):
Like, I'm afraid the deflector shield will be quite operational
when your friends are right.

Speaker 3 (01:08:22):
Oh man, the way he's just mocking Luke, I'm like, Okay,
that's pretty good. I like that and like mcderman's voice,
especially in this movie.

Speaker 1 (01:08:32):
I think it's the best sort of version of the Emperor.
I think in the pre cause it just feels like
he's wearing this really big kind of prosthetic and it
all feels a bit fake where he's sort of hooded
and you don't quite you see his piercing eyes, but
you don't get kind of good look in. I think
that's a good thing In Jedi. I quite like the Emperor.
It's a terrible action figure. I remember sending off like

(01:08:52):
give it a row. I remember sending off tokens for
that like, and it was like one per household and
one to my other grandparents, one to my house. And
then I got, wow, it looks it looks like my nana.

Speaker 3 (01:09:03):
Those little Kenner proofs of purchase. Well, and then it
had the electric like plastic thing that you could put
on it so it looked like force the original I
didn't have that either.

Speaker 11 (01:09:14):
Ninety Yeah, this one was just like the walking stick
and a gray thing with a face. That was it,
and the cloak was plastic. It was no, they didn't
give you it was the moment, wasn't it.

Speaker 12 (01:09:25):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:09:26):
Why were jawas the best action figures because they had
the cloth cloaks.

Speaker 1 (01:09:31):
I had another Ben Canobi and I painted it like
gray and put Luke's Jedi robe on him and that
was my Emperor nice.

Speaker 5 (01:09:40):
I was so cussed up with that much better. Well,
you're talking about tattoo in. I mean it was going
back to what I was talking about with Raiders of
the Lost Stark. I think they just want to remind
people everything from the first movie again somehow by putting
it back there. That's my only thought of why they
wouldn't put him somewhere else. Yeah, because, like you said,
it doesn't you know, you could just call.

Speaker 3 (01:10:01):
It a difference. It doesn't have to be that play.

Speaker 1 (01:10:03):
You're right, And there wasn't there something in some of
the early scripts that Luke was going to go back
to Ben's house to try and discover something about building
a lightsaber, and you know, so you've got that, so
then when they remove that, it's like I was talking
about earlier, They're like, okay, so we're still on tattooing,
but we're going to do this now, So where's the
motivation to go there anymore? It doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 3 (01:10:23):
That makes sense. When I was talking about the cave,
I was thinking, oh, that kind of looks like Ben's house,
But they don't ever short from the other angle inside
the cave looking out.

Speaker 1 (01:10:32):
It is a cave in that instance, because there's a
matte painting that was unused that had like a little
cut out for R two and three PO and you
could see the X wing and presumably the Y wing
the layer and two ear arrived in. Yeah, I think again,
it's like each time they sort of change their mind
on how a scene was going to work or who
was going to be involved, they forgot the original intention
of why they were there in the first place, and

(01:10:53):
therefore it loses its meaning.

Speaker 5 (01:10:55):
Well, Yeah, like in your film Dementary, you had this
whole thing about prune faced action figure characters that were
supposed to be on endoor, and I'm like, why weren't
they on endoor helping the fight and stuff like that?
That's kind of disappointing.

Speaker 3 (01:11:07):
I never noticed those guys, Thank you, jam Neither did
I those guys.

Speaker 5 (01:11:11):
Yeah, you know, to watch Jamie's film and Dementary, it's
fucking phenomenal. Instead of watching a return watching Return of
the Jedi, watched that.

Speaker 1 (01:11:19):
Returning to Jedi still on Vimeo. But I remember when
there was that sort of little resurgence of Star Wars,
the sort of the dark times. I remember about nineteen
ninety one going to Forbidden Planet here in London, and
there was a fanzine there called the UK Star Wars
Fan Club, and it was a black and white fanzine.
I think I had a color cover, but it's all

(01:11:39):
black and white in the middle. And there was an
article in there, a feature in that each quarter or
whatever it was, and it said have you noticed I
think was the line, And I wrote in to say, oh,
I've just bought the wide screen versions of the film,
and for the first time I've seen FX seven, the
medical droid on the left hand side of the frame
in the Rebel meeting. And then wait a minute, there's

(01:11:59):
like the proof faced guys in the back and I'd
never seen them in the four by three before, and
all of that stuff, and when you bought those widescreen
editions and blew them up to horrible low resolution, there
was so much more in the frame, you know that,
Like you see that big, weird a man of Man character,
like the yellow and green guy with the staff with
the skulls on it, and all of these amazing designs
that are sort of lurking in the background. Because those

(01:12:22):
early VHS's I had, they were so murky, like you
could barely see any detail in them. I remember watching
Alien on the VHS for the first time. I could
barely see a damn thing. But yeah, I remember that
was a big thing, the UK Stars Fang Club, and
then there was that build up in like, oh, George
is going to re release the movies and he's going
to make some changes, and then there's Stars Insider magazines
coming out and all of that, and then you know,

(01:12:43):
it just was a sort of arc of disappointment from
there on.

Speaker 3 (01:12:46):
Really, let's go ahead and take a break in them.
We'll be back to talk about those dark times and
maybe talk about the unmasking of Darth Vader as well.
If we're talking about disappointments anyway, We'll be back in
a few minutes with an interview with producer Jim Bloom
right after these brief messages.

Speaker 10 (01:13:04):
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(01:13:28):
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Speaker 3 (01:13:52):
I wanted to ask you about Jedi, especially because your
title changed between Empire and Jedi, and I was curious
as far as how did your fonsibilities changed between the
two films.

Speaker 12 (01:14:03):
On the Empire Strikes Back, I was originally hired as
an assistant producer and then because of my responsibilities and
my work, Gary came to me with I'm sure George's
blessing and said, you've done such a good job, we
want to make you an associate producer and have you

(01:14:25):
share that title with Robert. Robert was one of the
great men. Originally when we were hired, because Gary offered
me a job as an assistant producer, that was my title,
you know, which could mean a lot of different things.
But I knew quite a bit about movie making at
that particular point, and I had started with them in
nineteen seventy two on American Graffiti and had stayed in

(01:14:48):
touch with them over the years. Then you know, it
was like in November December seventy eight, early seventy eight,
Gary calt and said I'd like you to be my assistant,
and it was like WHOA. I had seen Star Wars
and I had loved it, and I remember, you know, if.

Speaker 8 (01:15:06):
I need to talk quicker, just just give me a.

Speaker 12 (01:15:11):
And I also tend to jump around to quite a
bit I had gone to In the spring of seventy seven,
I went to visit Gary in his office at Universal,
and he because I had stayed in touch with him
over the years, and he was kind of like a
mentor to me, and I enjoyed talking to him, and
if I needed a piece of advice he would often

(01:15:33):
offer to me. And he took out this coffee table
book of still photos that had been camped of Star
Wars because it was a couple of weeks before the
release of the movie, and it just like blew me away,
completely blew me away. It was just like, oh my god,
look at this stuff. This is just fucking amazing. And

(01:15:53):
you know, I was just so taken with the look
of these, you know, mostly black and white, comped photos
that they put together in this coffee table book. And
then when the picture opened, I went to see it
the first weekend and I was so taken. I was
attempted to stay there and watch it again, but I
didn't want to get back in line. But I'm sure
I saw it again very soon after. But I went
to summer early early show at the Regency, which was

(01:16:15):
the big theater at the time in San Francisco, you know,
big seventeen millimeter screen, blah blah blah, and I was
just like, you know, everybody else, well that was Star Wars. Yeah,
I was just like whoa. And then anyway, after Star
Wars came out and it did so well, I went
to work in the summer of seventy seven. My first
job as a first assistant director was with Matthew Robbins

(01:16:36):
directing Corvette Summer, where I met with Corvette Summer, at
which point Mark got into a car accident and completely
blew his face apart. Unfortunately, a little bit before it
worked this great looking California surfer Kate and just destroyed
his face in this car accident, which is why in

(01:16:56):
Empire the movie opens with the wampa ripping it face apart,
because they needed a reason to say what happened to
Mark's face, and that was it. They covered him up
and the wamper rips his face apart, which is why
he looked so different. I was a very young first,
a d even by any standards. I was twenty four.
I hadn't turned twenty five yet, and it was pretty

(01:17:18):
young to be an assistant director at that time. And
then after Corvette Summer, Phil Kaufman asked me to work
on The Body Snatchers, which I did, which was great.
It still holds up today as a great movie, even
more so today than before because, you know, one of
the great lines from the movie, Donald Sutherland says to

(01:17:41):
forgetting Brooks name her last name, at the moment she
sort of becomes his love interest in the movie, you know,
with like what's happened to my husband. You know, he's
not the same anymore. And Donald says, well, maybe he's
become a Republican, you know, because he's become a pod
person and he's just like so weird. Yeah, and more
true today than it's ever been before. And it was

(01:18:01):
true in the nineteen seventies, you know, but even more
so now than it was then, unfortunately, and much to
my dismay and depression. And then after that Gary call
and he said, I'd like you to come work for
me on Empire. Oh, you know, what do you want
me to do? I want you to be my assistant producer.

Speaker 5 (01:18:21):
I want you to help me.

Speaker 12 (01:18:22):
I want you come to London. I want you to
go on location and help me make this movie because
it's going to be bigger and you'd like you were around.

Speaker 8 (01:18:32):
And it was like whoa.

Speaker 12 (01:18:34):
And I remember saying to him, you know, I said, Gary,
you know I always thought at this point in my career,
I might sort of turn my attention to becoming a
director because I'd worked with so many great directors. I mean,
it was just like mind boggling that in my short
career I had gotten to work with George and Francis
Coppola and Sam and Bob Vautman and Hal Ashby and

(01:18:54):
Phil Kaufman and Matthew and I'm sure I'm going to
forget some people, Steven Spielberg, all these great directors, and
I had learned so much from working with all of them.
Yet after working with Phil, I thought, I think I
could do this. I think I've needed to plus forty
six episodes on the Streets of San Francisco TV show
working with Carl Malden and Michael Douglass and what treat

(01:19:17):
that was. And Gary said, Jim, He said, I want
to tell you that there isn't anything that you're not
going to learn on this show working with me that
won't make you a better director.

Speaker 8 (01:19:31):
And he was right.

Speaker 12 (01:19:33):
There wasn't anything. You know, I learned so much working
on those movies, and I've learned a lot about producing
movies as well, and an incredible amount of visual effects
because my first part of working on Jedi was to
move ILM from Dan Eyes up to Santa Fell and
to hire all the guys that I brought up who

(01:19:56):
had worked on Star Wars up to Santa Fell. You
know those guy guys when you think of the core
guys and what they've all gone on to do. Jennis
muirn Joe Johnston, Richard Edlin, Phil Tippett, Ken Ralston, Bruce Nicholson,
Laurene Peterson and Steve Galli, Peter Kuran, all the guys

(01:20:18):
who went on to lead all of the key departments
at ILM. And so when I started my job on Empire,
working at the Parkway House, which is George's office, and
you know, I was in some little back room, the kitchen,
you know, it was where my office was, and you know,
working with Why used a joke I called the Parkway Princesses,

(01:20:40):
which were Jane Bay and Lucy Uchiever Golson and Chrissy England,
you know, and previously went on to run ILM and
become a great production person and all these other people.
And then they had found the warehouse in Santra Fell
where ILM was going to be. And then we went
to work on building ILM into a visual effects facil
you know, with being sort of multi purpose, which was

(01:21:04):
to be a visual effects facility, but when we weren't
making Star Wars movie, it would become a visual effects
facility for other movies. And the first two other movies
that we did at that time were Dragon Slayer and
then Raiders of the Loss, you know, the next two
movies that came through ILM, and then you know, we
got ready to do Jedi. So to serve it explaining

(01:21:25):
the difference between the two things was that I was
the general manager at ILM as well as being the
associate producer on the movie. So I had two hats
to wear, and Gary wanted me to go to run
the second unit in Norway. You know, it was like
his producer, second unit producer in Norway. And so I

(01:21:47):
moved to London in November of seventy eight and then
stayed there November December January February, scouted Norway with everybody,
and then went back with the unit in early February
when we began principal photography, and principal photography was supposed
to be five days and turned it to seven or
eight blah blah blah. And then I stayed with the

(01:22:09):
second unit, which was supposed to be two or three
weeks and became six or seven. Because as the joke is,
all the weather, it's never this bat until the movie
company shows up, and that's exactly what happened. There were
days on end when just like there were with the
first unit, that it was a complete white out and
we couldn't get up on the glacier to shoot. It

(01:22:29):
just wasn't safe to go up there.

Speaker 8 (01:22:32):
You could just you couldn't see.

Speaker 12 (01:22:33):
And we were we were in these snowcats, and we
were following.

Speaker 8 (01:22:38):
The way the cross country skiers did.

Speaker 12 (01:22:40):
The Norwegians just go out and go, but they tie
themselves and they go from poll to get up to
the glacier, to get up the mountain or go where
they were doing, because there are a lot of dangerous
grasses are But we couldn't move a unit up there
and work. And I mean we always used to joke that,
you know, they would serve pasta for lunch and from
the time got from the plate to your mouth, it

(01:23:01):
was frozen, you know, or you take a pee in
the time that the pe hit the snow, it was frozen.
You know, it was really could But then you know,
it was you know, February into March, and later in March.
Eventually it got a little bit better, and then we
got our work done and you know, some of the
most important work, which is why Gary wanted me there

(01:23:21):
was because I understood the visual effects of the movie,
and I understood how critical when you put a shot together.
It's not just the unknown Rebel troopers running away from
the explosions planted in the snow, but it's being able
to see the snow Walkers coming up from behind them
and the other guys people. You know, they hadn't made

(01:23:44):
a lot of effects movies before then. It was still
a very young business back in the late seventies and
eighties as far as what they had done on Star
Wars and what we were trying to do on Empire.
And so I used to argue with Peter McDonald, who
was the second unit director, and then he would set
up a shot and I'd look through the lens and
I'd go, Peter, we got to frame up. I said,

(01:24:04):
what do I need to frame up for? I said,
because the snow Walkers are back there, and the snow
Walkers are firing laser cannons into the snow that are
creating the explosions in the foreground, in the mid ground
that all of these troops are running away from. Okay,
he would do that, and then you've got this beautiful
battle that we created up there. And then the other

(01:24:27):
thing that I also knew that was critically important were
all of the snow Speeder helicopter background plates that we
shot with a sixty five millimeter camera mounted on a
gyroscopic Westcam rig for you know, understanding all that stuff
and appreciating the movie and knowing all of the storyboards

(01:24:51):
by heart and all of the great, you know, conceptual
work that Ralph McCrory did, who I became very friendly with,
you know, during those days. You know, I just had
a great appreciation for how beautiful the movie could be
because I knew that Ralph did it on Star Wars,
and I knew what we can do it again. And
you know, I also try to instill on everybody this

(01:25:11):
spirit core.

Speaker 8 (01:25:13):
We're making a sequel, but it's going to be better.

Speaker 12 (01:25:15):
It's not going to be shitty, because most sequels were
crappy and this was shitty. So when Empire was over,
George came to me with Howard Kazangian, and first it
was Charlie Weber, but anyway, they said, we want you
to be a co producer on Jedi, you know, and

(01:25:38):
there be two of you, you and Robert be in
the UK and you'll be over here. Because the other
mandate for Jedi different than Empires that we were going
to shoot all the location work in the United States
because it was getting too dangerous to go to Tunisia.
You had your job is stuff there, and you know,
we need you to find a desert. And George Joyce
had a vision to do a Redwood planet, you know,

(01:25:59):
Redwood planet, which is what we did. And so you know,
we had to go out and find those locations in
the US and you know, hire the cruise and blah
blah blah. The other thing that was advantageous is that
we were a San Francisco based company, not an LA
based company, and I knew who all the good crew
guys were in San Francisco, which there was one, you know,
which was which was a challenge because they're not as

(01:26:22):
talented as the LA guys were. Because at that point
I had worked with San Francisco Cruise and done a
lot of work with LA Cruise, you know on Batford
Glory and Coming Home and Close Encounters and Hack and
Pause movie.

Speaker 8 (01:26:33):
The Killer or Leading.

Speaker 12 (01:26:34):
You know, I knew what it was like to do
a studio movie, to do independent movies out of LA
how talented. You know, the movie business was in Los Angeles,
it wasn't in San Francisco, and so but I had
to kind of covel a group together that had the
chops to do a movie like Jedi. So the responsibilities changed.
And the other thing that changed was that we made

(01:26:56):
Empire and I went to London November to go was
not for me to be the general manager of ILM,
but to be system producer on the picture and to
be overseeing ILM a little bit, but to hire a
general manager. And I hired a guy who I had
worked in the live action because I felt that he
had the production responsibility that wasn't emblematic at that point

(01:27:20):
in the visual effects business in the US, because you know,
who are you going to hire. They either worked on
Close Encounters here, worked on Star Wars. You had either
worked for Doug Trumbull, or you work for you know,
the First John Company. And so I said, gee, this
makes a lot of sense to me to bring some
production guys in here, because they know about making movies.

Speaker 8 (01:27:37):
And it's not that much different.

Speaker 12 (01:27:38):
You know, you got different groups, but everybody's contributing the movie,
and the scheduling is a little bit different, and so
I brought that skill set with me to Empire.

Speaker 8 (01:27:49):
So I hired a guy who I.

Speaker 12 (01:27:50):
Had worked with on the Streets of San Francisco TV show,
who lived up there, who knew a lot of the
local guys, and I also hired him because I knew
he could make a deal with the local union rep too,
because we kind of had to do that in order
to bring the guys out of LA. And the guy
in San Francisco was a vice president in the IA
nationally and he had the cajone ace in the USIA

(01:28:15):
to tell the guys in LA, no, we're doing it
this way, and I'm going to do it that way,
and he would listen to him because he was on
that executive board. So it worked out that way. There
were other financial reasons why we didn't want to do
it with the LA group. We wanted to do it
as a San Francisco group, and we got special dispensations
from the IA in LA when we do the live

(01:28:38):
action photography to hire camera guys and construction coordinators and
special effects guys to.

Speaker 3 (01:28:48):
Do the work that had to be done.

Speaker 8 (01:28:50):
And when it came to like.

Speaker 12 (01:28:51):
Grip and electric and stuff, we mostly worked with local
guys out of San Francisco under their contract, and the
LA guys would come up and work under the Sam
Francisco contract and it got worked out. So you know,
I did a lot of that stuff. And then on
Jedi after production was over, the guy who I hired
from streets of San Francisco was like, I can't deal

(01:29:13):
with these visual effects guys. They're just it's just too
much for me. With their official effects guys are different
than live action guys. You know, live action, Oh, we're
going to go in and get it done and blah
blah blah, and you're moving all the time and it's quick,
and the visual effects guys are they're a pretty nerdy group.
I mean, if you talk to these guys, I say
it affectionately because I really love all these guys because

(01:29:36):
I knew them so well. We were all like a family.
But it's a different group because they had a very
different vision of filmmaking. You know, live action has put
the camera down, get the actors, get the shot, you know,
blah blah blah, and visual effects is like I got
to build twenty different layers on how I'm going to
put a shot together until it's finally done, and back
then everything was in the optical printer, you know, it

(01:29:56):
wasn't digital. He kind of missed being on the set.
And after I came back from London, what happened was
then we finished the Norwegian stuff and I was supposed
to stay in London for the rest of the shoot,
but Gary came to me and said, things are not
going well in Santra Fella. I want you to go
home and supervise what's happening there. And I got back

(01:30:18):
there as soon as I was there.

Speaker 8 (01:30:19):
Over a few weeks. Dick said, you're here.

Speaker 3 (01:30:22):
Thank you.

Speaker 8 (01:30:23):
It's been fun, but I'm out of here.

Speaker 3 (01:30:25):
You don't need me.

Speaker 8 (01:30:26):
You do it, you know it, you understand it better
than I do.

Speaker 12 (01:30:28):
I don't enjoy it. I'm taking off. So he left
and then I took over at ILEM and we put
the picture out, and back then it was a very difficult,
complicated movie to do because we're doing stuff that nobody
had done before. So those are different responsibilities. And when
Empire was over, I didn't want to spend my life

(01:30:50):
running a visual effects facility. I wanted to be a
film producer. I didn't want to be a visual effects general. Manager,
and George wanted me to stay on and run the place.
I saw gona like to find somebody to take my place,
because I'd like to go back and make movies again.
I liked making movies from here the script, let's go
make it all the way into the theater. But I

(01:31:11):
like working with directors. And he said okay. And then
I brought Tom Smith in, who I had worked with
right after American Graffiti. He was a documentarian, but he's
kind of a nerdy guy. I mean, I had that nightly,
a very technical filmmaker, you know, a cameraman editor, knew
a lot about filmmaking. Tom came in and it was
a good opportunity for Tom. Tom fell right in and

(01:31:33):
he became the general manager for many years until he left,
and then he became a producer at one point, you know,
produced visual effects and produced features and stuff like that.
I still talked to Tom, you know, he's still a friend.
And so then Tom came in, and then after photography
was over, Jedi was set up in such a way

(01:31:55):
that hal Berwood and Matthew Robbins, who I'd mentioned before,
who I had met on close encounters, when they came
into do additional script writing and also worked as like
the first two characters to walk off the mother ship
when it landed in the box down in because they
were at the pilots from the nineteen forties who got
carried away by the aliens. They were going to go

(01:32:16):
make a movie called The Grid, which is this great
science fiction time travel movie that I often think that
Terminator stole from at some point because it's all about
coming from the future back to the present to fix
something that will affect the future. Great we never made it, unfortunately,
you know, it's one of those I put a design

(01:32:39):
team together for Matthew al was going to be the
executive producer because he was going to off and direct.
So I was going to produce the picture, and we
were set up at the Lab Company, and we needed
a lot of pre production so to figure out what
the movie was going to look like and what it
was going to cost. This, you know, that was part
of this way of making movies then if you were
doing stuff that but he could quite visualize, and I

(01:33:02):
hired Sid Meade. You know, Sid used to be this
great designer at a wonderful great designer, industrial designer, and
Ralph McCrory and a guy named Peter Lloyd out of Colorado.
We have this great art department and this guy's turned
out all this wonderful conceptual stuff for this time travel movie.
When we were like designing the future and designing the President,

(01:33:22):
and I was in touch with a well known professor
of linguistics from UC Berkeley named George Lakeoff, who is
going to help us create a language of the future
five hundred years from now. And we were going to
do some of the future stuff with subtitles, you know,
but people would be speaking whatever English was going to be. Yeah,

(01:33:43):
it was really cool. It was a great idea. Anyway,
the right stuff came out and it was a great movie,
but it tanked. And when it tanked, the lad Company
Warner Brothers said no, we're not going to make the
grit and tell them to go find a partner. We'll
give you fifty percent of the budget. Anyway, we didn't
make the movie. There were things that I learned that
I found out later when I went to work at

(01:34:04):
studio about the way movies are made that I didn't
know then, And it's like, I wish I would have
known then what I know now. You know, which is
when I'm forgetting the guy's name at Universal, you know,
cent to me, I'll make it for sixteen million, but
I wouldn't do it a penny more. And I said,
you know, I really need eighteen to do it. He said,
I'm a only going to give you sixteen. That company
will put up eight. All put up eight, and then

(01:34:25):
you go make your movie. And I should have said,
let's go. You know, I should have just said let's
do it, because I should have learned the lesson. But
Steven taught me on close encounters, which was very funny,
which was we were getting close to going at photography
and the guys at Columbia said to Steven, lose two
days out of the schedule. You got to cut back

(01:34:46):
by two days. And it's like, I don't know where
are we.

Speaker 8 (01:34:49):
Going to find two days.

Speaker 12 (01:34:50):
And I went into a meeting with Steven's office with
the first assistant director, Truck Myers is a great ad
and I was his second. And we gave Stephen the
board and we said, Steven, we don't know where to
find two days. Here's the board. And Steven said, give
me the board. And we handed the board to Steven
and he took the board. He went and he shook it.
Two little day strips, which is how you separated the

(01:35:13):
days on a production board, fell out, and he picked
him up and he handed him to chucking me and
he said, here, those are your two days.

Speaker 3 (01:35:20):
Let's go.

Speaker 12 (01:35:21):
He knew that once they got into it and they
were making the movie, they're not going to stop him.

Speaker 8 (01:35:28):
There's no way then.

Speaker 12 (01:35:29):
You know. The thing that I learned when I went
to work at Sony as a creative and production executive
was the filmmakers tell you eighteen, and the executives tell
the corporation twenty, you know, and everybody's got a buffer
built into this thing that you're doing so that they
all look good. Well, it's just a that's a fucking game.
The Grid would have been a really great movie, particularly

(01:35:51):
because of the time. I love time travel and science
fiction type stuff, and one of my favorite movies is
Chris Mark Versus Laste, great movie. I remember producer named
Tom Luddy who passed away a couple of years ago,
who was one of the first director curators of the
Pacific Film Mark.

Speaker 8 (01:36:09):
I can Berkley and when.

Speaker 12 (01:36:11):
I came out to cal and went to school, I
used to go to the film markive all the time
and watch movies and hang out in the projection booth
with the projectionist and watch movies, or go down and
see movies and our remember Us where I first saw
Loge Italian. That just blew me away. It's like, it's
a great movie. I just love the story. I just

(01:36:32):
love the love story. You know, a guy who dreams,
and he keeps dreaming. You know that he's on the
jetty and he's witnessing something and he's not sure what
it is, and he falls in love with this woman
and who's this woman?

Speaker 8 (01:36:43):
And then they grab him.

Speaker 12 (01:36:44):
Because he's got this intense dream quality about him and
they need somebody who's a dreamer that they can send
to the past or to go figure out what's wrong. Anyway,
I just thought it was a great idea. There were
like the qualities about that that Halm Matthew borrowed to
do the Grid. It was a love story and there's
a woman in the present and a woman in the future,

(01:37:05):
and you know they're trying to solve a problem. All
the stuff just looked great. You know, the stuff that
Ralph came up with, Sid came up with. It was
just like the first time I saw the Star Wars
design stuff, it.

Speaker 3 (01:37:17):
Was like WHOA One difference as well between the two
films was Gary Kurtz. He mentioned that he was kind
of a mentor to you. How was that not having
him on the production of Jedi?

Speaker 8 (01:37:29):
It was different.

Speaker 12 (01:37:30):
Gary and George had a falling out, you know. I
think it's well documented that Empire went millions of dollars
over budget because of lots of different reasons. Georgie decided
he didn't want Gary to be the producer on Jedi,
so we hired Howard. And then Howard came in and

(01:37:52):
it was fine. It was different, you know, very different guys,
different producers, different backgrounds, you know, different sensibilities, you know,
all those things. But from my point of view, it
was fine. You know, we were working with Kirshner, was
the best of the Star Wars directors Empires. I think
Empire's best movie, you know, and I love Star Wars
as well. And then you know, I think Jedi was

(01:38:14):
a different movie than the first two for lots of
different reasons, different story thematically, where the company was at
that point in time, what the mandates were, all of
those different things. What was happening in Georgie's life, both
professionally and personally, and et cetera, et cetera. You know,
Curse is a real director. The performances that the actors

(01:38:34):
give are by far the best in Empire. I think,
you know, these some great stuff, you know, I all
these joke that Princess Leah's you know, whine in the
snow cave. I'd rather kiss a wookie, And Hans says,
I can arrange that, you know, just little things like that,
you know, or I love you know, I forgin, I

(01:38:56):
love you, I know Han soul goes, I know, you know,
there's just stuff between the characters that was. You know,
George is a great director, but I think Chris is
really an actor's director. You have that sensibility. I love
Kursh She's a great guy. I got to know him
really well. He's a very funny guy.

Speaker 3 (01:39:13):
Did you interact with Richard Markuan that much?

Speaker 8 (01:39:16):
Well?

Speaker 12 (01:39:16):
I did, yes, And I think it was a tough
show for Richard because we sort of took a director
with not the experience that like a Kersh had and
put him into George's world. So he always would look
to George, say what do you think, what do you think?

(01:39:37):
And so that was part of you know, I don't
think he quite understand visual effects the way that George
did at all. So that was also a challenge to
come on board for all of that. And George was
around quite a bit during the shooting with Richard, depending
on what was going on, because I think he sort
of needed that help and support. You know, most of

(01:39:59):
the time work was happening because it's you know, you're
in like, you know, how you want to come work
playing George's playground, you know, I mean that's kind of
what you're doing. From Star Wars to Empire was a
little bit different, but from Empire to Jedi it was
a lot different on top of that, because it's really
it's George's world. It's George's movie in a sense.

Speaker 3 (01:40:21):
And but yeah, I did.

Speaker 12 (01:40:22):
I liked Richard, but I think it was a tough assignment,
but certainly one that he was happy.

Speaker 8 (01:40:28):
To take on it.

Speaker 12 (01:40:28):
Who wouldn't be happy to take on And you want
to be a millionaire come direct these movies. I mean
that's kind of like a crass bottom line, but you know,
it's the movie that you know, it is a business
after all, and people think that way. You know, not
only that, but it's also you want to, you know,
come direct a sequel to the two most successful movies
of all time or top five or whatever it is.

(01:40:49):
It's like, how does the director say?

Speaker 2 (01:40:50):
No?

Speaker 12 (01:40:52):
They usually don't unless their last name is Spielberger says,
or you know what I mean?

Speaker 8 (01:40:57):
And that wasn't Richard.

Speaker 12 (01:40:58):
I mean, I don't know how many features Richard had
done before. You know, he did Iye of the Needle,
which is a good movie, and I think the movie
that attracted him to George.

Speaker 3 (01:41:09):
I know, with so many producers, so much of it
is solving problems, and I was curious as far as
some of the problems that you had to solve while
you're making this, from.

Speaker 12 (01:41:17):
My point of view, is logistical through. That was the
really first challenge for me was putting a unit together
without being able to call on all of the key
people out of Los Angeles and keep the quality of
the work up to where it had to be to
make a Star Wars movie.

Speaker 8 (01:41:36):
That was a big issue.

Speaker 12 (01:41:37):
The other issue was initially was finding the locations. Okay,
we want to go shoot in the desert, where do
you do that? In the United States, and you know,
we looked all over Robert and Norman Reynolds. Norman is
a great, wonderful production designer and a lovely guy, great guy.

(01:41:57):
We took this reconnaissance for about two or three weeks
where we went looking for locations for the desert and
then for the woods. We went from La outside of
Vegas to Saint George, Utah, all around Utah, into Colorado,
into the Four Corners area of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah.

(01:42:21):
You know, looking around those areas trying to find jobas
you know, where's where are we going to build a barge?
Nobody would ever build a barge can today and that
then nobody had ever built a set as big as
we built.

Speaker 8 (01:42:35):
Outside of Arizona.

Speaker 12 (01:42:38):
We built a sailboat that didn't sail in the middle
of the dunes, you know what I mean. It's like
I remember when we first talked to sailing consultants who
we hired to work on the movie, and it's like
they said, Okay, what do you want to do? He said,
we want to build a sailboat in the desert, and
they would look at us like, what, who builds a

(01:42:58):
sailboat that doesn't sell? You're going to put in the
desert where it's windy, and how are we going to
keep it from moving when the sails are sailboats, that's
how they were, and you put the sails up and
the sails apply pressure to the boat to make it
go through the water. So those are some of the challenges.
Was building this huge, fucking built a boat down in

(01:43:19):
the middle of the desert. So it was like being
down there and getting the crew in and the time
to do it all. And then the other difficult part
about the Redwoods is all the Great Redwoods are either
in national parks, in state parks, or on private property.
And the national parks and state parks are happy to

(01:43:41):
have you just stay on the path, don't walk off
the path. We need to plant some explosions in the trees.
It was like, what, no, we can't do that, nor
would you expect them to. And then the private forest
people who owned a lot of the original growth primary growth,

(01:44:02):
never touched redwood. They didn't know why anybody near it
because it was back during the Save the Redwoods time
and they didn't want word out that they had stuff
like this because they wanted to log it. They didn't
want movie people coming in, left wing movie people coming
in and letting people know where their old primary growth

(01:44:26):
forests were. So the challenge was is how do you
find somebody who's got it. Well, we did, you know,
And what's interesting is that we found this. It was
a curtain of primary growth redwood between Highway one oh
one and this completely logged out old growth strand of redwoods.
And they left the curtain up so that people on

(01:44:48):
the highway couldn't see how they demolished all of the
wood behind it. And that's why it was there, because
they were saying, okay, we're going to From their business
point of view, it was I think it was a
private company. I wasn't a public company. It wasn't like
Pacific Lumber. It was a small family group called Miller
Realm and it was like Miller and then spelled the
name backwards.

Speaker 8 (01:45:08):
That was the name of the group.

Speaker 12 (01:45:10):
And they owned these beautiful trees just south of the
Oregon border and between Crescent City and the Oregon border.
And our location supervisor for that redwood stuff a woman
named Mickey Herman. She had scouted the entire coast of California.
She knew every redwood grow from Santa Cruz to the

(01:45:32):
Oregon border. She's seen it all in helicopters. And she
hired a local guy up in Crescent City who turned out.

Speaker 8 (01:45:40):
To be a savior as far as finding this.

Speaker 12 (01:45:42):
And he found this piece of property and he knew
the people, and they invited U sent And the first
day that we went looking through the Redwood location, I
remember walking through the redwoods, the thousand year old redwood groves,
and walking down into the hill and stepping into fern
force that were the ferns were up to my shoulder

(01:46:05):
and seeking into the leaves and all of this gross
underneath these huge you know, like near woods type redwoods,
And I felt like I'd been transported back, you know,
thousands of years to be in this farce. I mean,
it was a religious experience to do that. The stuff

(01:46:26):
had never been touched. And so they said, oh, yeah,
you can shoot here. We want to put things on
the trees. Okay, do whatever you want. We need to
build a road, no problem.

Speaker 1 (01:46:36):
You know.

Speaker 12 (01:46:37):
It was like we found the redwood planet, and we
found these trees that we thought we'd never yet.

Speaker 8 (01:46:43):
It was just amazing.

Speaker 12 (01:46:44):
Those are some of the challenges. Okay, let's go find
the locations. We got to do it here in the
States because we're not going in Norway for the snow,
or not glad of Tornesia for the desert, et cetera,
et cetera. Anyway, we found everything, and we had to
kind of launch those units and make it all work.

Speaker 8 (01:46:58):
And then we had to integrate a.

Speaker 12 (01:47:02):
UK crew with an American crew because the UK guys
were only bringing their keys over, not their all their
support people. Had to integrate art departments US Art Department,
UK Art Department. And we also had a big second
unit up in the Redwoods. We had to put a
US second unit together to do all the second unit work,

(01:47:28):
all the Ewok battle stuff without the principles, you know,
with walker feet and trees falling over and tree gags
and explosions and you know, stuff like that. And we
also had the Ewoks, which was the largest congregation of
little people since the Wizard of Oz, you know, nobody

(01:47:49):
had ever made, you know, which was which is great fun,
you know in a way. And they were all up
in like you know, and we put them all together
in a like two or three motels up in it's
north of Smith River Brookings in Brookings, Oregon because it
was close and you know, it was kind of remarkable.
We also did the whole Blue Harvest thing, you know,

(01:48:11):
because I knew that we couldn't make a Star Wars movie,
you know, without somebody going, oh Star Wars shirt, there
goes the It was ten dollars became fifty. So I
said to George early on, I said, let's we need
to come in like we're making another movie. And I thought,

(01:48:32):
let's just pretend it's like making a horror movie. And
I tried to come up with the most boring name
that I could think of, and it was like Blue Harvest.
And the whole idea behind the named Blue Harvest is
it was supposed to uninspire you to ask, right. It
wasn't like a horror movie like each you're young, you

(01:48:54):
know what I mean. There was nothing active about it,
nothing made that It was too like peak your curiosity
when you think of like Dawn of the Dead, Day
of the Living, you know what I mean.

Speaker 8 (01:49:06):
There was nothing less.

Speaker 12 (01:49:07):
I said, no, no, no boring. It's like the Harvest.
That boring and the fact that you know you're going
to take that and combine it with it wasn't like
red harvest or blood harvest. It was like blue harvest.

Speaker 8 (01:49:20):
It's like blue. It's like this passive color, you know
what I mean.

Speaker 12 (01:49:26):
It was supposed to put you to sleep, and so
that's where blue Harvest came from. And the tagline was
supposed to be ridiculous, horror beyond imagination, Like who wrote
that line? It's like so cliched, you know what I mean.
It was just supposed to be dumb. And so that's
why that's where all of that came from, you know,

(01:49:48):
And it kind of worked for a while, you know,
until people started talking about Harrison and Cowrie and Mark
and R two and C three po and snow walkers
and speeders in Daha and we did it in Yngan,
we did it, so it kind of worked. The other
thing we were trying to do is that as Star
Wars it become so popular that there was a huge
following of fans who were going through the trash cans

(01:50:11):
at Isle m and looking for stuff all the time.
We just wanted to make sure that nothing happened to
attract any attention to that. So that's where Blulble Blue
Harvest was. So yeah, it worked for a while.

Speaker 3 (01:50:23):
Well, speaking of titles, what do you remember as far
as the title changing from revenge to return and then.

Speaker 8 (01:50:30):
It was revenge.

Speaker 12 (01:50:31):
And I said to George one day, and maybe other
people said the same thing, and I said to him,
I don't know if a Jedi would seek revenge. It's
not part of the Jedi philosophy. And he went to
my George imitation, Yeah, that's interesting. Now, only think about that.
You know, within like a week or so, it changes

(01:50:52):
the return of the Jedi. Revenge is a better word
for a movie, but it's not what the movie is about.
It's really about the return of the Jedi. So it
changed from I still have Revenge of the Jedi t
shirts and sweatshirts and you know, but it changed from
revenge to return. I guess other people must upset it too,
because I remember reading something about it a while ago.

(01:51:16):
But then there's a lot of not invented here stuff
that happens in Hollywood. When you have a good idea,
you sometimes find out years later that other people take
credit for it.

Speaker 3 (01:51:28):
He said, you're doing a lot with the second unit.
Was that George directing that?

Speaker 12 (01:51:32):
No, it was David Tomlin directed that, and David was
the first assistant director on Empire and then on Jedi,
and he was a good second unit director because when
we were shooting the second unit up in the woods,
the first unit was back at doing Blues screen work,
and because it was with the Principles, George wanted to

(01:51:55):
be with them, so.

Speaker 8 (01:51:56):
He gave the second unit to David. Were with that
point was.

Speaker 12 (01:52:01):
Very well versed in the Star Wars universe, having worked
on Empire and all of Jedi with. Richard had also
worked with some of the greatest directors in the world
as well in his career, and he was sort of
a really good choice and had directed second unit before.
Because the second unit stuff was mostly action stuff with
stunt men and battle stuff and special effects, and because

(01:52:25):
he had a good grasp of visual effects at that point,
he stayed on to do that, and we were essentially
shooting storyboard sequences. Just all that stuff had all been
storyboarded the head of time, so we knew which pieces
we were doing and when and what they looked like,
and everything was sort of built to accommodate all that.
David stayed on to do the second unit when we

(01:52:46):
were up in the woods, and then sometimes we had
like a third unit, and I directed a few shots,
you know, like I did in Norway Little Things, Robots
moving right to left or whole Second Night Little Things.

Speaker 3 (01:53:02):
I've always been so impressive as far as the way
that the miniatures match with the rest of that, especially
like the logs rolling in the atsdes and all that.
It looks so good.

Speaker 12 (01:53:15):
The challenge was not so much matching the miniatures to
the real, but matching the real to the miniatures, because
most of the stuff that you see is mostly models
miniature stuff, either matted into shots or complete shots with
just the miniatures in them.

Speaker 8 (01:53:35):
And you know, most of the time.

Speaker 12 (01:53:37):
We did have a full sized chicken walker up there,
but it didn't really move it just you know, wasn't
really practical to move it around. You can kind of
see it, but it was built and designed and created
a book. The great detail that the guys in the
model shop and the stop motion guys did with Phil
Tippett and John Berg and that whole stop motion group

(01:54:00):
that did a lot of the snow walker and the
little chicken walker type stuff. I'm sure if that was
the name that they finalizes.

Speaker 8 (01:54:06):
Driver.

Speaker 3 (01:54:07):
How'd you even move that thing around?

Speaker 8 (01:54:09):
Or a crane?

Speaker 3 (01:54:10):
You know, then find a spot or it.

Speaker 8 (01:54:12):
You know, it came in pieces.

Speaker 12 (01:54:13):
They bring the pieces down and then get some crane
down there or something small to kind of build it
up again. That put scaffolding around it and just construct it.
It didn't move too much when it was there. I
think the viral quill quite a few years prety limited
and maybe what it could do, and it didn't always
worked the way you wanted it to.

Speaker 8 (01:54:33):
It's like big stuff. Those are tough pieces to move around.

Speaker 1 (01:54:38):
Sounds like a.

Speaker 3 (01:54:39):
Pretty arduous shoot. But did you have fun on it?

Speaker 12 (01:54:42):
I don't know if I ever had fun shooting one
of the movies because they're just so difficult and so
complex and there are so many pieces and so many
elements that you need to keep in mind all the time,
but the way it's all being assembled and put together.
Ansley enjoyed working with the people that I worked with.

(01:55:03):
And I loved working with George because he's so brilliant
as a filmmaker, and loved working with a lot of
the English crew. I just love working with Norman Reynolds
and working with Robert Watts because they were so professional
and so much fun to make a movie with. I
love my team of people who I put together, you know,

(01:55:26):
I was you know, back in those days. It was
always very important to me because of how I grew
up in movies, to put good people together, to like
leave your personality at the door. People you know, and
you were like working on the movie together, and it's
not about ego. It's about you know, doing what's right
for the movie and making the good decisions, and you

(01:55:48):
try to leave the ego, you know, is to put
a group considerate human beings together, because I'd worked on
a bunch of movies where people were not considering and
there were too many assholes around, and it just you know,
you know, making movies is hard enough without having to
be surrounded by people like that. So it was always

(01:56:09):
very important for me to put a When people used
to say this about the movies that I produced, it
was just so nice. That was important to me to
hire key people would be good people. Life's too short,
you know, making movies is hard enough to make a
movie without having to work dickheads, you know, and so
you try to avoid that kind of stuff whenever you can.

(01:56:31):
So there were lots of people who enjoy their work,
people who care about the work. You know, people are
mean and shitty and they don't care and they're just cheap.
When somebody's faced with an opportunity of making a decision
of I can do this or I can do that.
If I do that, i'm helping them. And if I
do this this fuck them. If you're not nice to them,
they go fuck them. I asked for this or I

(01:56:52):
wanted to do that, and they said no, it's fuck
you go hang yourself. The old expression used to be,
if they're going to hang themselves, don't stand on the
rope and you try. I never enjoyed that, you know,
so that if I went to somebody and I needed
a favor, I wanted to do something, they were say sure, okay, great, Because.

Speaker 8 (01:57:07):
You try to create a team. You know, you're putting
a team of people.

Speaker 1 (01:57:12):
Together and you make a movie.

Speaker 8 (01:57:13):
You're like making this little army.

Speaker 12 (01:57:15):
It's moving around from place to place and you know,
going here and the vaving there and setting up shop
and coming in with the trucks and the people and
all the blah blah blah, and you know, and you
know it's like it's you know, no room for assholes.
I mean, that's the way I feel and I don't
like working with them, and I don't want them around
the movies that I worked on. It's just, you know,

(01:57:36):
it's kind of something I learned from working with George
and Carry is that you know that's not.

Speaker 8 (01:57:40):
The way you do it.

Speaker 12 (01:57:41):
You know there's still life. As I got older, the
other stuff you learned is that it's a movie.

Speaker 8 (01:57:46):
Be life is life.

Speaker 12 (01:57:49):
Somebody has a family member who's dying, you sort of say, yeah,
go take care of your family member for a few days,
as opposed to say, well, we got the shot tomorrow morning.
It's like, give me a break, because I've seen too
many unhappy people who in divorced families because they had
this attitude of that the show must go on. Come on, guys,

(01:58:09):
get real. It's not bring surgery. It's movie making. We'll
figure out a way to do it. I don't want
people getting hurt. You don't want people dying. They don't
want to make stupid mistakes.

Speaker 8 (01:58:20):
It's not worth it.

Speaker 12 (01:58:21):
There's another way to figure it out. But I guess
there are other people who don't agree with that philosophy.
Directors should throw a walkie talkies. Although I didn't work
with too many, I work with life's too short. It's
like it's hard enough, let's try and enjoy it while
we're doing it.

Speaker 3 (01:59:01):
All right, We were back and we were talking about
return to the Jedi, and yeah, that's funny, Jamie. I
had in my notes the dark times post Jedi, because
we went for a lot of years with nothing. As
Star Wars fans. It was, you know, you had those
two Ewok movies, you had the Droids cartoon, you had
the Ewoks cartoon, but that was about it. There wasn't

(01:59:23):
a whole lot going on. So yeah, you had like
Banther tracks and then eventually Star Wars and Cider as
a magazine. But there it was a really dry, dry
period for us.

Speaker 1 (01:59:34):
The Christmas eighty four, it must have been. I got
the Ewok village and a few of the Ewoks figures,
and I got the Rebel Troot Transport as well. I
remember my sister got a Commodore sixty four and I
was like playing with my Ewox and I'm looking across
at this Commodore sixty four and I was ignoring my
Ewox and I was going, I want one of those,
you know. And that's kind of when I gave up

(01:59:55):
Stars and my mom gave away all my stuff to
this really annoying kid down the road. I'll never forgive
or him for that. And then I remember going to
another toy shop, a toy shop that I used to
visit to buy Stars figures, and I remember seeing those here.
There were the tri logo packs. They had like the
Spanish and the Battalion and the English as well, like
your Power of the Force era, and it had like

(02:00:16):
the Barada figure and the Luke Stormtrooper figure, and some
of the more Ewoks and the Imperial Dignitary. I think
you barely see him in Return of Jedi, but I
remember going, oh, I want one of those, and my
mum said, you've grown out of that. And then there
was a period in that same toy shop I remember
passing where everything was being sold off for like fifty
p and I still regret to this day, and I

(02:00:38):
still got this image of just like all of the
toys just stacked up from all the different eras, Star Wars, Empire, Jedi,
oh my god, all of them, you know. And there
was this period between eighty five and maybe ninety one
where there was just nothing. I think you've mentioned about
Stars Insider, but The precursor to that was the Lucasfilm
Fan Club magazine. Remember seeing that one day. The thing

(02:01:01):
that really sparked it again for me was when I
found Steve sand sweets from concept to screen to collectible.
There was this gold and black book with Vader on
and it. We opened it up, my buddy and I
we were like seventeen at the time or something like that,
and it was all the figures and we're like, I
didn't know that one existed. I didn't, you know. And
we got we were started to go around you know
what we call charity shops, you'd say thrift stores, I guess,

(02:01:23):
and boot sales, table cells, just buying this stuff up.
And that's when I kind of really got back into
it all again. But I remember that period of like nothing,
and I still hankeered for more stars. I wanted like
an animated show with the further adventures of Luke and
Ann and Leia. I wanted more movies. I wanted more
video games, you know, And I guess there were some

(02:01:43):
video games, you know, tie Fire and X Wing and
all of that stuff on PC later on, But those
times they did seem like the dark times. There wasn't
much about and if you were still into Star Wars,
it was like, really, haven't you moved on Turtles or
Mask or something else. I don't know a Mask, Yeah,
those not our masters in the universe.

Speaker 5 (02:02:01):
No, but you're right, it was disappointing when you finally
found out that Return was the last movie. So I
think I brought up on when I was on a
Dune episode with Mike, like, that's how I got into
Dune was because it was supposed to be the next
Star Wars. That's why they were That's what the magazines
at the time where everything was promoting it for and
there was toys, and I'm like, oh, this is the

(02:02:22):
next June. You know. I didn't see it in the theaters,
but I rented it and dubbed it on like ripped
it to Betamax tape, and I'd watch it over and
over again to like it because I thought it was
going to be the next Star Wars. And of course
years later I learned, you know, of course it was
never going to be another Star Wars. It was so
disappointing not having another Star Wars. And then yeah, I

(02:02:43):
just kind of I don't remember the exact time I
fell out of the toys. It was probably I think
I got into Gi Joe after Star Wars because I
was still really young. I was ten when the movie
came out, so I was still playing with all that
shit and Masters of the Universe. But it was it
was sad, and then it wasn't until the early nineties,
or like I said, when I got into film schools,
when I rediscovered Star Wars again.

Speaker 3 (02:03:04):
And you can see it from a different eye, you know,
because I had roommates.

Speaker 5 (02:03:06):
We're all smoking weed at the time, and you're watching
it now in a different mind frame and rediscovering it
and being like, oh shit, my friend's a laser dis player,
my roommate, and you're like, dude, this is amazing.

Speaker 1 (02:03:18):
Oh yeah, that Definitive Collection laser it.

Speaker 3 (02:03:21):
Oh yeah, I remember, Yeah, my friend had it and
he called it the Defective Collection because there was like
missing pieces and the extras were really scant, and just
like oh yeah, Like we were excited. We were thinking, like, oh,
the Holiday Special is going to be on here, because
that was such an important part of our lives growing up.

Speaker 1 (02:03:40):
And do you know, I wasn't aware of the Holiday
Special until I started to collect style stuff again, Like
in the early nineties. I remember being a toy fair
just down the road here and this guy had a
VHS obviously boot leg, So what is this? And it
said this fills in the gap between stars and the
Impire stress back.

Speaker 3 (02:03:57):
I was like, what, there's more like?

Speaker 1 (02:03:59):
I couldn't believe, you know. And I've got home with
that same buddy of mine that we discovered since weeks
book with and we put it.

Speaker 3 (02:04:05):
In and we were just a few poor guy, Oh
my god, what.

Speaker 1 (02:04:08):
Is happening us? Have we just entered another dimension? I'd know,
because it never got screened in the UK as far
as I know, so it was completely off our radar,
never mentioned anywhere in any of the books I had.
Have you seen the documentary about the Holiday special?

Speaker 3 (02:04:23):
Oh? A Disturbance in the Forest? Yeah, fantastic. Oh I
need to watch that.

Speaker 5 (02:04:29):
I saw it live when it was on as a kid,
and for years I thought I made it up or something,
because I remember we all gathered around and watched it,
and I had a vague memory of it, and I
didn't think it was real until like the Internet and
later on, when I just like that was a real
thing that we sat around there and watched on TV
one in my.

Speaker 3 (02:04:48):
Head that cartoon with Boba Fete was like a half
an hour long. It was probably maybe like five ten
minutes or something like that, but it might have the
best thing. Yeah, and I loved him writing the dragon
and he had that cool little spear thing and just
the voice characterization, like that's right, friend, you know, I
loved that. I thought it was great.

Speaker 1 (02:05:08):
Yeah, dude, he was so badass. It was so ripe
to be put in an animated world style Wars. And
I just feel like, you know, there was that fan
a few years ago that did that kind of X
wing of tie fight, a kind of battle or something
in a kind of an anime style. He was just
a fan just with saying, Lucasfilm, give me some word,
and that's some of the best stuff I've seen. And
I would have loved that as a kid, you know,

(02:05:29):
just imagine that like a weekly series of The Further
Adventures of Droid's was a riot. But you know, it
didn't kind of scratch that itch.

Speaker 3 (02:05:38):
I'm sure had I been younger, that Clone Wars cartoon
would have been right up my street. Or like there
was another one too, not bad Batch, but there was
another cartoon that was supposed to be really good Rebels Rebels,
thank you. And I think that also would explain a
lot of stuff that's going on in the Star Wars
universe now that I'm not aware of, because even as

(02:05:58):
a kid like I would hear these things and like
they would start to build the expanded universe. Like I remember,
I was huge into the Marvel comic books, and I
really liked the comic book that came out after Jedi
where it showed Bulba Fet coming out of the Sarlac
pit because it was protected by his armor, and then
he gets picked up from buy some jahwas and then eventually,

(02:06:20):
like I think, he is on top of a sand
crawler and it crashes over the side of a mountain,
so he ends up dying again anyway, but you hear
more about the Mandalorians and all this kind of stuff,
and I was like, Wow, this is really cool, and
then you see the way that they handled it and
book at Boba Fet where it's just like, Oi, I
got rescued out of that thing. I want to be
friends with everybody, you know, Oh, you need a job,

(02:06:43):
you know, and it's just like, what the fuck is
this show? This is awful?

Speaker 1 (02:06:47):
Did you know the only thing I liked about that
show was that we were back there. We were back
in Jab's palace, and I could look at it again
for an angle. That was the only aspect to like today.

Speaker 5 (02:06:57):
He's like Han out of a carbon night man, you
just change ye.

Speaker 2 (02:07:01):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (02:07:02):
Every episode had them going in that back to tank
for you know, half the episode and flashing back to
the sand people, and I'm just like, all these poor
sand people they're gonna you know, they got massacred by Anakin.
They're probably still talking about it today. I did actually
like that show. Unfortunately, I liked the two Mandalorian episodes
that they snuck into Book and Bubba fut Phenomenal.

Speaker 1 (02:07:24):
They were great, Yeah, these are good.

Speaker 5 (02:07:25):
Phenomenal.

Speaker 3 (02:07:26):
Yeah, they're really good. Third season of The Mandalorian where
it was just like the whole Katie Sacoff thing, I'm like,
I'm getting ready to be done with the show.

Speaker 8 (02:07:34):
Guys.

Speaker 3 (02:07:34):
This was originally so great. As soon as they brought
Luke in, I was like, oh, please don't bring in Luke.
I don't need this to be tied to the Skywalker
family anymore.

Speaker 1 (02:07:44):
This is why I loved Andors so much, though, because
it didn't need to be Star Wars ultimately, and it's
really well written. The sets are amazing, the performances are amazing.
It's got a great soundtrack, it's got nods to films
that we've all discovered after we fell in love with
Star Wars.

Speaker 3 (02:08:01):
I thought that was great.

Speaker 1 (02:08:01):
And you know, I've said to friends of mine who
goes stars, never seen one. You know, I don't know
why they're are friends, but I said to them, this
is the series for you because you can watch this
and you don't really have to know anything about Jedis
or jah Wars or anything. You can just go in
and see it for what it is, which is a
great bit of TV. I think those other series they
just tried so hard to kind of connect dots in

(02:08:23):
the same way that the prequels did.

Speaker 5 (02:08:24):
You know.

Speaker 1 (02:08:24):
It's like, oh, look, there's a big arrow here to
say that was po was built by Anakin's that what.

Speaker 5 (02:08:29):
I was so disappointed by the Obi Wan show because
of the layer thing, because for years they were talking
about there was gonna be an obi Wan movie, and
I was so excited because I thought you McGregor was
perfect casting and him getting older to play obi Wan.

Speaker 3 (02:08:43):
I was so hyped.

Speaker 5 (02:08:43):
But then that TV show, it just it puts Princess
lay and it's like, why we don't need that, Why
can't we just have that Seventh Samurai Adventure?

Speaker 1 (02:08:53):
And Luke was in there as well, wasn't it at
the Homestead? I think the little Luke and I do
you know? The brother about that show for me was
when they have that fight. It wasn't the fight itself,
it was that moment where he's half an Akin half
Vader and the voice keeps changing. I was like, that
should have been in the prequels. That is what we
all wanted to see.

Speaker 5 (02:09:13):
Well, that's the problem with the prequels.

Speaker 3 (02:09:15):
For me.

Speaker 5 (02:09:16):
I like the prequels, except I don't like the Phantom Menace.
I think the Phantom Menace him being a kid throughout
the whole Phantom Menace really rushes the character development in
the two other movies. That's the one I'm not a
big fan of. I like Darth Maul and I love
the pod Race. There sequences and Phantom Menace I like.
But I liked Episode two and three way more. But

(02:09:36):
the things I liked about the prequels was at least
compared to the later sequels trilogy at least everything was different.
In the prequels, we were seeing things we hadn't seen before,
spacecraft and villains and set pieces that were original, versus
the new trilogy we got, which was, well, we had
to now go back to the original Star Wars and

(02:09:58):
show you all the cool things you liked in that again,
versus we got to see new machinery and we've never
seen a padre, so we've never seen a lot of
that stuff before.

Speaker 3 (02:10:07):
That's why I liked the prequels.

Speaker 5 (02:10:08):
But Episode one bummed me out because I thought it wasted,
and again, as a kid too much, I always kind
of wish it was like Good Fellas, where we had
him as a kid for twenty thirty minutes and then
we got to see him gradually grow up. But that
would make it a completely different movie.

Speaker 3 (02:10:24):
The second movie feels like such a waste to me.
That feels Attack of the Clones. It feels like a
detective movie that I just don't care about.

Speaker 1 (02:10:31):
Where it's you didn't get it, it doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 3 (02:10:35):
Yeah, well, I'll be ones trying to figure out who's
building these clones, who's ordering these clones. There's this whole
thing about you know, Darth Sidious and then Darth's who
was that Chrisopher Lee played to count count do you?
But he also has a Darth name. He might be
Darth Tyrannus or something. I don't know, Count dou Killa
the rush to make him Darth Vader in the last

(02:10:58):
five minutes, I was like, no, no, no, Like the
whole third movie should be him as Darth Vader. The
second movie should be The Fall from Grace, and it
just like all the rules of like, oh, Jedis can't
get married. I'm like, what what is happening here? Like
why is this the conflict? And appreciate your opinion, Steven,
I just have nothing good to say about those prequels.

Speaker 5 (02:11:19):
Whatsoever, Dude, It's all good Chris for years that I
get a lot of anger toward me for defending the people,
ate me for defending them, But it was just like
I just liked that they were different and I had
a great time.

Speaker 3 (02:11:32):
Except Phantom Menace.

Speaker 5 (02:11:33):
I'm not the biggest fan. I do love the duels
in Phantom Menace. There were so many things in Phantom Menace.
I like it, but it just can't I can't handle
him as a kid being a fighter pilot and doing
all that. It feels like he should have been a
teenager at that point of the movie doing that, but
him being still that young. I'm not gonna buy his
relationship with Finalie Portman in this second?

Speaker 1 (02:11:55):
Are you an Angel? Imagine Return of Jedi didn't exist, right,
and all of those series, the prequel let's say the prequels,
then the series, and then the sequels. Imagine they're jumping
off point was the Empire strikes back? Because if you
think about it, a lot of those shows and those
prequels and those sequels, esthetically and tone wise, they are

(02:12:16):
more Return of the Jedi than they are Empire or
Star Wars. I think, you know, as much as I
love some of those environments I've talked about, you know,
Jabber's Palace, altern of Jedi, I think that you know,
we really needed to get away from all of that
stuff and that asthetic. I'd love it if it went
down that path that the Empire was on and Luke
had really turned to the dark side and a few

(02:12:38):
people have got killed off, and imagine what we'd been
having now, maybe we wouldn't have had to wait all
these years to have and or which you know, deals
with some pretty grown up topics, and for this Jeni,
it's for our generation, right that show. It's not for
anyone else. It's not for the kids who liked Rebels
or even the prequel guys potentially, But yeah, I just
I just thought, esthetically, they do you match your to

(02:13:00):
in the Jedi more than they match anything else.

Speaker 3 (02:13:03):
It is so fitting for twenty twenty five, just this
whole idea of this push towards fascism and stuff. And
it's so funny because of course I had to think
about Trump while I was watching this, and thinking, he
probably wants to be the Emperor, but at best he's
job of the Hut, this whole thing of who's going
to pay me the most kind of thing and bargaining
with Boosh and all this stuff. You get to the

(02:13:24):
Emperor's scenes and you're just like, no, this guy knows
what he's doing. He's got everything taken care of. His
fatal flaw is that he doesn't think that Vader will
ever turn, and he thinks that those people down on
the surface of the planet of the fourth Moon of
Endoor are going to succeed. I do like there's a
deleted scene where the Emperor orders them to fire on

(02:13:46):
the moon and basically wipe out everybody, like take out
that that whole thing, including all of the imperial people
that are down there, and you have this whole thing
of Gerad like having conflicting feelings and stuff, and poor
jar Gerard is just completely elominated from the film, other
than like one scene where it's just like, oh, yeah,
I need more people. I can't build this that fast,

(02:14:07):
and it's like, okay, yeah, you're on every project that
I've ever been out on my life during my normal
nine to five. Not enough time, not enough resources, but
yet you want perfection, Okay. Great.

Speaker 1 (02:14:19):
I interviewed the editor returns It, who was Markwan's editor,
a guy called Sean Barley lives in West London, and
I went to his house for the morning and we
chatted about it and he was talking about that early
cut he did that was quite plodding. I think the
film was like two hours forty minutes or something like that,
but it had all of those scenes in. It had
those scenes with the guys gunning on the falcon dressed

(02:14:40):
in their kind of you know, camouflage, fatigues and stuff,
and more of them going down on to end or
you see the guys all sitting behind them. There's a
couple of shots back there, and you know, he said,
I actually really liked that version, he said, because it
made more sense. He then didn't say much more about it.
I really wanted to kind of prone to see if
he had like a VHS not cough of it somewhere,

(02:15:01):
but we did show me it was the splice that
he cut the film with, and went up to these
little office upstairs and there it was the little splice
and he said, oh, I've got probably half a dozen
of Revenge of the Jedi T shirts knocking around somewhere.
Oh my god, we should we go in the loft now?

Speaker 3 (02:15:16):
And god, yeah, they changed that title so late. I
mean there was a movie theater I used to go
to around here that still had a Revenge of the
Jedi poster in the marquee, you know, in the lobby,
and I was just like, oh, yeah, like that would
have been something. And yeah, just this whole like Jedi
don't take revenge thing. I was like, Okay, I guess
I can see that. But at the same time, return
is such a weak title.

Speaker 5 (02:15:38):
No, you're right, but it fits the movie because it's
such a nice movie.

Speaker 1 (02:15:41):
It was going to be return originally as well.

Speaker 5 (02:15:45):
It doesn't deserve the title Revenge of the Jedi because
it makes it sound too you know. It's just it's
a nice movie. So it asked to be return and
we got Revenge for the third Star Wars, which is.

Speaker 1 (02:15:55):
A rougher movie. And I love how many people take
responsibility for that to as well. Like I've spoken to
Jim Bloom. I haven't heard your interview with Jim, but
he says, you know, he remembers talking about it, and
how Kauzandin says that he came up with it, and
George said it was his idea, you know. And you know,
I work on big TV shows and big sports events.
I can't remember who made a decision in the thick

(02:16:15):
of it.

Speaker 6 (02:16:16):
You know.

Speaker 1 (02:16:16):
Sometimes I'm sure things I've claimed that I've done when
not my idea. Originally, it was just a little spark
of an idea that somebody else gave me and I
ran with it. I remember that there was a cinema
near us that had that poster up for a little
while as well, and I remember when I went to
see it, I was like, I thought it was this
other movie, And I can imagine those people who were
at that kind of sweet spot age for Empire going

(02:16:38):
into Jedi and seeing the word revenge and thinking, oh,
this is going to be one hell of a thing.
This is going to be for us. I'm now fifteen
or sixteen or whatever they would have been then, and
then they got this fluffy little jolly all wrapped up
in a bundle movie.

Speaker 3 (02:16:54):
It also, Jedi, isn't that it's I can't remember the
term for this, but it's both a plural and a
singular or noun. So it's like, is it more than
one Jedi? Is it the Jedi? Yes, yes, exactly, like
they've been asked out before. And if we don't know,
like we know that Yoda's around, we knew that Ben
was around, Like how many other Jedi are there? So

(02:17:16):
it feels very weird when it's like, no, no, Luke's
the last one. I'm like, I'm sure there are other
Jedi that are out there someplace, but and I was
really hoping, like no, no, this is like at the
final hour, all of these Jedi are going to show
up and be like, we're here to help you in
your fight. We're here to help take down the Death Star,
Invader and the Emperor once and for all. And I

(02:17:38):
got to say, as a kid man, when they unmasked Vader,
it was one of the most disappointing things in my
entire life.

Speaker 1 (02:17:45):
Is that you.

Speaker 3 (02:17:46):
Yeah, after seeing the back of his head in the
second movie, I was like, Oh my god, this guy
is gonna be so fucked up. And then it's yeah, Grandpa,
what are you doing here Sebastian Shaw having those big,
bushy eyebrows.

Speaker 1 (02:17:58):
I was like, oh my god, because that's the important thing.
They removed the eyebrows, because their eyebroads should have been gone. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
that unveiling. I think for a lot of people, including
David Prows, it was a disappointment. You did want to
see somebody a bit more messed up. But I think
for years I was a bit scared of that scene
in Empire where you saw the back of his head.
And what I do, or what I did i'd probably

(02:18:20):
still do to a certain extent, is if I'm scared
of something, I just sort of turn it into something else.
And I remember as a kid thinking it looked like
raspberry ripple ice cream that you can buy here, and
I done. If that was the thing in the States,
it was like vanilla ice cream with like this ripple
thread of raspberry and you get a little tasted of
a little hit of raspberry, and that's what it looked like.
It looked like a scoop of that on Vader's head.
So for years I was I was scared about seeing

(02:18:42):
what was on the other side. And when it happened,
my cousin was next to me and we were sort
of like getting a little bit closer and just thinking,
what's going to happen here? And then we both oh,
that's what it is. It's just an old.

Speaker 8 (02:18:56):
And I guess.

Speaker 3 (02:18:57):
We did see the Emperor in the second movie as well,
and he had the It was cool. It was like
chimpin monkey eyes. Yeah yeah, and then you could see
him in person. You're just like, oh, okay, back and
change it.

Speaker 1 (02:19:08):
Yet Luke had just taken the mask off, and imagine
if you'd just taken the mask off and we just
saw Luke's face just kind of go or maybe he
looked just like Luke, you know, like the dream sequence
in Empire maybe is like an old version of Luke. God,
there's so much potential with that sequence yeah, it feels
like a lost opportunity.

Speaker 3 (02:19:26):
And then the poor guy just dies, and the death
of Yoda and the death of Darth Vader they do
nothing for me. There's no feeling. I'm just like, Okay,
poor cross eyed Yoda just faded away. You know, he's
one of my favorite characters. In the second movie. They
give him such short shrift in this film. Then he
just disappears, and then yeah, like we build up to
Darth Vader and then you go, oh, he's just a

(02:19:47):
harmless old man. He's basically the Wizard from the Wizard
of Oz. You're just like, he's the guy who's pulling
the levers and everything, and you're just like, how is
this guy such a threat for the last two films,
And now you see what a weak old man he was.

Speaker 5 (02:20:02):
You weren't off completely when you were talking about like
the return of the Jedi being Jedi as I have
a podcast Best Movies Never Made, and we had JW. Wrinsler,
one of the nicest human beings I've ever met, so kind,
and he was telling us that the original version of Jedi,
during the ending when Luke has wanted with the Emperor,

(02:20:23):
that the ghosts of Obi Wan and Yoda come back
and help. They're like help defending him against the lightning
and everything, you know, and then the final, the very.

Speaker 3 (02:20:35):
Ending, is that they become human again.

Speaker 5 (02:20:37):
So in a way, that title, the way you were
thinking about it, there was a version of it where
it was Returns of the Jedi. In a way when
you were saying that reminded me of have you seen tweet?
This could have been going on for years, but I'd
just been seeing it recently NonStop, someone saying I just
realized after seventeen years of watching Star Wars. The title

(02:20:58):
episode Return of the Jedi refers to Darth Vader's.

Speaker 1 (02:21:03):
Return as Anakin and not Luke.

Speaker 5 (02:21:05):
I don't think that's where Lucas intended, but I find
it interesting because in a way it could make sense.

Speaker 1 (02:21:12):
It wasn't until later years that that ever occurred to me,
and I don't know if it was something online that
sparked that, but yeah, there's that sort of duality. Luke's
decided he's not going to go to the dark Side.
He throws his legs over away, the Jedi returned. He's
now become a Jedi. This is him reaching that kind
of peak and simultaneously, there's you know, Anakin saving his
son and getting rid of the baddest guy in the

(02:21:34):
universe and chucking him down the vent. So yeah, it
could be read like that, but I don't think anyone
talked about that at the time. Maybe for twenty five
thirty years.

Speaker 5 (02:21:43):
Yeah, all the information you guys gave me, I didn't
see that once, but I think that it is fascinating.
I saw that tweet recently in the last few weeks
getting ready for this show. It's just been popping up
everywhere all of a sudden.

Speaker 3 (02:21:55):
I'm like, oh, weird.

Speaker 5 (02:21:56):
And by the way, I mean, I don't know how
did Darth getting split in half going down one of
those things like the Emperor?

Speaker 3 (02:22:02):
How do they always survive that?

Speaker 8 (02:22:04):
Somehow?

Speaker 1 (02:22:05):
Palpatine returned.

Speaker 3 (02:22:06):
Well, even Luke's lightsaber apparently survived that as well, because
that little orange creature and was like, oh, here's Luke's lightsaber,
and I'm like, this is the blue one. This isn't
the green one oak?

Speaker 1 (02:22:19):
And what was it? Like, that's a story for another time.

Speaker 3 (02:22:22):
Yeah, that will mean any of the sequels. I do
like the person who gives the ted talk quote unquote
about how all the Star Wars movies have the wrong titles.

Speaker 1 (02:22:31):
What happens?

Speaker 9 (02:22:31):
In episode one we meet Anakin Skywalker The Rise of Skywalker.
Years later, we find out that Palpatine, leader of the Sith,
have ordered an army to destroy the Jedi. Revenge of
the Sith. In episode three, Order sixty six happens and
the Clones Attack Attack of the Clones. In episode four,
ovi Wan teaches Luke that it is time for the

(02:22:51):
Jedi to return. Return of the Jedi. In episode five,
Yoda teaches Luke how to use the Force. The Force awakens.
Episode six, both Yoda and Anak and die, which makes
Luke the last Jedi. After the Empire has destroyed, a
new empire comes. The Empire strikes back. Come on guys.
An episode eight, Luke train's ray and then sacrifices himself

(02:23:14):
to give the Resistance a new hope. Finally, in episode nine,
Palpatine returns from the dead, making him the Phantom Menace.
Thank you for coming to my ted talk lucasfilm hire
me please.

Speaker 3 (02:23:26):
Oh I never thought of that.

Speaker 5 (02:23:27):
Yeah, some of them did that with the Last Apes trilogy.
Also that all the titles are for those Because I'm
completely confused.

Speaker 3 (02:23:35):
What movie is which now Jesus, Yeah, well, I'm confused
by the sequel trilogy because I'm just like which one's
force awakens, which one's last. I just know that I
don't like any of those. I'm not like some sort
of misogynists where I'm just like, I can't handle Daisy
Ridley in this role. I just felt like, yeah, yeah, no,

(02:23:55):
I like her a lot too. I really wish that
she had joined forces with Kren like that moment that
I think we all talked about. Had she gone with him,
it would have set the whole trilogy in a way
better place and shown that conflict because instead, a good
character starts good and ends good and as good all
the way through, as opposed to somebody who actually has

(02:24:17):
a moment of doubt and then redeems themselves complication. Yeah yeah,
and Ben could have been that, but he wasn't.

Speaker 1 (02:24:25):
But you see those posts online. You know, how come
this happens and then that happens and then this didn't happen.
And the answer is always bad writing. It's never about
some expositional thing or character thing. It's just somebody didn't
think about it at the time, and they just forgot
what they had. In some cases, I'm able to sort
of compartmentalize those films as sequels, as maybe somebody has

(02:24:48):
a go at rebooting Star Wars and this is the result.
I don't have to hold them as some sort of canon.
I'm not part of a religion, as a lot of
people seem to think it is the case. But I
experienced those films, particularly that first one, The Force Awakens,
through my daughters, who were quite young at the time.
How old is that film now? Yeah, just remember them
kind of you know, skipping down the high street here

(02:25:10):
where I live and wanting to go to the Disney
store and buy an Action figure. And I thought that
was great, you know, I thought fantastic, this is their
Star Wars. And I lived the first time I saw it.
I was with my cynical forty year old mates. Okay,
so we're talking, oh, ten years ago. I'm fifteen next year,
so blummey and I remember, it's all coming out, just
going a lot to process, you know, we're just trying
to find a way to like it. And then that

(02:25:32):
second one, I didn't go on with a torn of
third one, I kind of just gave up on. Yeah, well,
I was really pleased that my kids enjoyed it, and again,
like you see another generation of people into it. And
you know, I went to Star Wars celebration here in
London a couple of years ago. I did a panel
about and OR about the visual effects and OR for
ILM and what was fantastic about that was just seeing
all the different generations of people and all the different

(02:25:54):
cost plays, the effort the people put in, and the
love they have for these tiny little moments in the films.
Like one guy, one of the best costumes I saw.
He was Obi Wan, but as a ghost, so he
had this blue neck cut and kind of stitched all
the way around him and he's appeared to glow as
he was walking along and that's just like, you know,
it's like two minutes in one of the movies. But yeah,

(02:26:15):
I love that about Star Wars that it's got. There's
so much of it now that so many people can
find what they love within it. And I've never been
one of those people who wants to defend or argue,
you know, a particular point in the movie. Just you know,
if you love it, great, if you don't, just go
and watch something else.

Speaker 5 (02:26:32):
I hear you. I like a lot of movies people
can't understand why I like. But you know, that's why
I'll never argue with people. Like when The acle I
came out, everyone's ripping it apart.

Speaker 3 (02:26:41):
I just get my opinions to myself.

Speaker 5 (02:26:44):
You know, it's like I want to go on there
and rip things apart. But I do wish they would
have went with the Duel of Fates draft instead of
Rise of Skywalk. I just thought that was a more
fitting finale to that trilogy. There was just this great
I don't know. It was like Gray with this dual
lightsaber fighting Kylo Ren with his crossguard lightsaber. It just

(02:27:06):
seemed like such a visual in my head for the
poster and just I don't know, man, instead of you know,
Kylo Ren turned into a good guy and then.

Speaker 3 (02:27:14):
Just I don't know. I found that movie to be
kind of a mess.

Speaker 5 (02:27:17):
Maybe years from now, when I returned to it, I'll
appreciate it, because that happens with me with certain If
I don't like something now years later, I could go
and appreciate it. But them getting rid of that draft,
I just always felt like, I don't know why they did.

Speaker 3 (02:27:31):
I thought it was really cool, but because they fired
the director who wrote it.

Speaker 5 (02:27:35):
Now they had to get rid of I thought a
really good story, and then instead we got the warps
chased and the movie is really cool. But that's all
I remember. I just watched it once and I was
just kind of like bummed out by it. And then
especially years later getting my hands on that draft and
then I read it and I'm like, oh my god.

Speaker 3 (02:27:54):
This is great.

Speaker 1 (02:27:56):
I have to get hold of it. You just brought
up a good point. Then they all watching you dislike them.
In years later you fall in love with the me,
you know, for me, I guess later on it would
be a good example of that. But I think that's
what's unique about these three original Star Wars films is
I've loved them in every phase of my life, you know,
since I first saw them, through my teens and my
twenties and my thirds. Now I'm in my late forties,

(02:28:17):
and I still love those movies, and still I don't
I probably don't watch them once a year anymore like
I used to a few times a year. I don't
think I've seen Star Wars for good three or four
years now. So the screening next week this week's going.

Speaker 3 (02:28:28):
To be very good.

Speaker 1 (02:28:30):
But I've always found something to like about them through
all the phases of my life. And that's pretty unique.
And I think it is really bloody hard to make
these movies and make a good one of these movies.
You know, all the tools have been there in the
past and it has not been achieved. And it just
goes to show what a miracle and Or is, and
what a miracle Empi Strikes Back is and the original

(02:28:52):
Star Wars is. You know, you think of the confluence
of all those things that had to come together, all
those artists, the timing, at the politic call landscape at
the time, the need to want to have something that
was fresh and new and exciting and different. You know,
it's pretty amazing that it happened. And hey, we happened
to be on Earth at the time they were released.
Isn't that pretty amazing We were here for Star Wars.

(02:29:14):
David Bowie, the Rolling Stokes. You know, it's kind of crazy,
really Indiana general.

Speaker 5 (02:29:19):
It's you know, just so much cool stuff growing up
with and experiencing.

Speaker 3 (02:29:23):
For the first time.

Speaker 1 (02:29:24):
You know. One of my shout out to Waz He
is a hypnotherapist right used to be an editor and
he recently got a message from somebody to ask if
you can hypnotize me to make me forget Star Wars
because I want to see it again for the first time.
He said, give it a go. I won't pass any
judgment on that, but I do love that idea of

(02:29:45):
just being able to have your memory wipe to re
experience Star Wars all over again. But then you'd have
to wipe so much else. Wouldn't you all the things
that reference it over the years and lean into it.
Wouldn't that be great to watch it again for the
first time.

Speaker 3 (02:29:59):
When we talked about a New Hope, one of my
co hosts for that was Rob Saint Mary, who really
hadn't watched Star Wars and so it was very new
for him, and he just knew so much of it
from the culture, like you were saying, like all of
the references, like I'm surprised that we have gone for
almost two hours. We haven't done like every other group

(02:30:19):
of men talking about Return of the Jedi and just
drooled about Princess Leigh and the slave girl outfit. I'm
very proud of us because like that comes back all
the time. I mean, even that friends with their fetish
for that thing, and I'm just like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, Yai.
But like, yeah, that's a major part of the culture
as well. Like now you see when you go to
like the Star Wars conventions and stuff, how many women

(02:30:42):
are dressed up like princess Ly and her slave garb.
You know, it's pretty phenomenal.

Speaker 2 (02:30:47):
You know.

Speaker 1 (02:30:47):
I think that's another example of what we were talking
about earlier where it doesn't fit the character. You think
about Empire and she's feisty and she's finding back, Okay,
she's falling in love with and Solo and you know
he's been taken off and I love you, i know,
and all of that stuff. But to see her just
sat there in front of Jabba just not saying I'm
doing anything. You just think, where is the fire? Where's

(02:31:08):
the fire gone? What has happened in the interim here? Yeah,
I'm sure it was a sexual awakening for a lot
of young men, But it's the thing that feels the
most out of place to me, I think in the
whole of that trilogy.

Speaker 5 (02:31:23):
Yeah, because she was supposed to be doing something else,
and that makes sense now she's not really doing much there,
and also like no one's like paying it you know,
like Luke doesn't even pay her no mind.

Speaker 3 (02:31:33):
It was like, yo, what do you now?

Speaker 1 (02:31:36):
He's just the stoic and doing his thing. And Hans says,
where's Ley and she goes, I'm here, and that's it.
That's all we get.

Speaker 3 (02:31:44):
You know.

Speaker 1 (02:31:44):
Obviously she does strangle him in the end, and that
is a great moment that she gets through that, and
carry would talk about that in interviews with you know,
she hated or she loved Jabba, but she hated the
what did she call it, the mung in the corner
of his mouth, and she got to strangle him in
the end was great. But yeah, it's a difficult topic,
isn't it, because so much has changed since then. And
I can kind of see what they're harkening back to

(02:32:05):
the whole kind of Arabian kind of look and the
Flash Gordon thing, and I mean Nilo Rhodashumiri designed that costume,
and I think George initially said, no way, we can't
do that, and he kept sort of pushing George all
the time with these ideas, and eventually he kind of
went for it, and then I think he he almost
regrets it, you know, And I think it was Kenna

(02:32:25):
wasn't it said they were never going to make an
action figure of her like that. Oh, I ain't know that.
And two years later as Bro did one. But it's
the bit that, you know, I've got three daughters. If
I'm watching that movie, they said to me, I think
it was about five years ago. So it's your birthday today.
What movie do you want to watch? So, oh, let's
watch with Tanage. I was probably the most family friendly
of the three, you know. And we're watching and that

(02:32:46):
bit came on, and I'm looking at my three girls,
you know who at the time, two of them are
developing into young women, and I did feel a bit shitty.
Maybe that's a fan edit that needs to be done.

Speaker 3 (02:32:56):
They covered up with Daryl Hannah's but in Splash. I'm
surprised they haven't done the same thing for Return of
the jub Oh. Yeah, digitally made her hair longer and
it looks awful. Whoever did the special effects for it
did not know what they were doing. It looks like
she's wearing a pair of panties made out of fur.

Speaker 1 (02:33:13):
In defense of the effects artists, they probably did know
what they were doing. They just didn't have the time
All the money to do.

Speaker 3 (02:33:18):
All right, guys, let's take another break in. We're going
to play a preview for next week's show. Right after
these brief messages, after all.

Speaker 5 (02:33:30):
These years, I thought I knew you, but it turned
out to be a stranger.

Speaker 7 (02:33:34):
We're fighting for our lives, and my family must survive.

Speaker 13 (02:33:51):
Yes, the most shocking experience of their lives. Doubly shocking
because it can happen to you.

Speaker 3 (02:34:01):
Still, right my trailer, what are you gonna do?

Speaker 2 (02:34:05):
Cola cops?

Speaker 1 (02:34:06):
They're busy with the new highway patrol?

Speaker 13 (02:34:10):
All right, The lawless are on the loose, making it
necessary for law abiding citizens to make their own law.

Speaker 7 (02:34:19):
I could going fire a shadow over their heads. Maybe
that'll upset them. Right, there are no civilians. We are
all at war.

Speaker 3 (02:34:45):
Give me, I'm good with the I'll stay here and
I'll kill them.

Speaker 13 (02:34:51):
This is civilization's jungle after the jackals of society have
ruthlessly ravaged it, ending the world of decency.

Speaker 8 (02:35:07):
I killed two men.

Speaker 12 (02:35:23):
I tried to kill them too, but I missed.

Speaker 5 (02:35:25):
I just wasn't a good enough shot.

Speaker 3 (02:35:45):
That's right. We'll be back next week when they look
at panic in the year zero. Until then, I want
to thank my co hosts, Stephen and Jamie. So, Jamie,
what's the latest with you, sir?

Speaker 1 (02:35:53):
Still doing the podcast? The film you mention this podcast.
I'm just in the process of editing episode one hundred
and twenty eight, and funnily enough, it's an episode that
I'm just trying to throw out there at the moment
because I'm so busy. It's an interview from ten years
ago with Anthony Forrest, who played not only the deleted
Fixer who was one of Luke's friends at Toshi Station
from the original film. We also played the move along

(02:36:15):
Stormtrooper and there's some great stories about him traveling out
to Tunisia and getting drunk on champagne with Mark Hamill
on the way back and sticking stickers all over a
sleeping Alec Guinness I think he talks about at one point.
So yeah, still doing the podcast and working on this.
Joe Alves, Jaws production designer, the camera's production designed lots
of stories from Joe we've been compiling over the last

(02:36:38):
few years. We're out to Martha's Vineyard next week to
shoot more of that. Thanks to the gofund me that
I started. If anybody's listening and wants to help us.
Then the go fund me is still active. If you
look for not your Average Joe or Jamie Benning and
go fund me, you'll find it. I just keep chipping
away at things that I love to do, so yeah,
you can find me as film We mentories pretty much

(02:36:58):
everywhere online. Also, my return of the Jedi Unauthorized Timeline book,
which you mentioned earlier on is still available. Myself and
Justin Berger released that for the fortieth anniversary. So it
chronicles the film, as it says, from seventy six to
twenty twenty three, because you know, that's the first time
Jabba the Het has talked about and we go through
the whole process sort of listing out all of the

(02:37:19):
dates and everything that happened on those dates. And this
is information you can find in Rinseler's book and in
some of the other books as well. But you know,
shown in this format is quite interesting that you'll see like, oh,
there was an Ewok costume test on the day that
the Sandstorm scene was shot, and you know, you see
the film in a kind of different light, and then
all the way through production, post production, all the way
up to its anniversary. So that's available on Amazon pretty

(02:37:42):
much everywhere you can get Amazon. Like, here's an examplele
we recreated a load of call sheets as well. Some
of the pages are just like call sheets, listing out
who was on set that day, what's the date today?
On eighth of June. Right, let's have a looked. So
here we are in June. Is the and entry for
the eighth. There's one for the ninth. Oh, there we go,

(02:38:03):
there's one for the seventh. The Hollywood Reporter announces Jedi
inned seventy million in twelve days. That was June seventh,
ninet eighty three. If we go back to eighty two June,
they've probably won during production here, so the ninth of June,
the Jedi Creature Shop schedule on those days had Tony
and Randy skin rancor whatever that means. And then like
I put a couple of bits of my interviews in there.

(02:38:25):
I've got diaries of the guys that worked on Jabba
that have never been seen before. They're not like deep diaries,
but you know, Dave Barkley says like here is so
there's these entriesome day. That's a shot that mattered the
swords of Dave and the Jabba there, but it says
first day Elstria rather at eight am. Creature Finger extends
in Stuart's lab and check out Jabber Toby and I

(02:38:46):
get inside. It's okay, and we meet with Robert Watson,
Doug and you know, just little bits that you wouldn't
have known about before because everyone's got a story, right.
But yeah, it's like you can get the paperback version
for like twenty bucks on Amazon.

Speaker 3 (02:39:00):
Fantastic and Steven, how about yourself?

Speaker 5 (02:39:02):
Yeah, I do a podcast called Best Movies Never Made?
Right now, I guess when this episode comes out, nearing
towards the end of an epic going through all the
unmade Superman movies. We just did the Mario Puzo draft,
and then we did the original version of Superman three,
and then we're gonna be doing Lives and Reborn and I.

Speaker 3 (02:39:25):
Wrote a huge article about that years ago, and yeah,
it took me forever to track down some of those scripts.

Speaker 5 (02:39:31):
Holy shit, Yeah, dude, it's massive because I do all
the outlines and oh my god. Yeah, well you thought
that Weur Batman episode was the longest. I think this
is gonna beat it. So you can check that out.
And I want to see more shark content. I know
Jaws fiftieth documentary is coming out. I got a bunch
Shutter Shark Exploitation, and I'm excited for Jamie's documentary on

(02:39:53):
Joe Alves because there's so many things we couldn't really
get into Joe olves a lot in the documentary because
we have to touch on Jaws, where we have hundreds
of other shark movies to get to. But one of
my favorite things about Joe Alves is when you watch
the opening of Jaws, when they're running by those fences
in the beginning, like, that's all Joe production design.

Speaker 3 (02:40:11):
He puts those fences up. You now, the Dude's freaking amazing.

Speaker 5 (02:40:15):
So I can't wait to see Jamie's documentary because I
just love Joe Alves and there's so much I don't
think people appreciate or even know about the guy. But yeah,
if you want to see a cool shark documentary about
shark movies, check out Shark's Ploitation on Shutter and just
the podcast in that. At the moment, I'm working on
something new, but I don't think I can announce it yet.
Hopefully going to be finishing this summer, but yeah, you

(02:40:37):
can follow the podcast on Twitter and Blue Sky Now
and Instagram and all that to see concept art from
all the movies we talk about.

Speaker 3 (02:40:45):
Well, thank you again guys for being on the show.
Thanks to everybody for listening. If you want to hear
more of me shooting off my mouth, check out some
of the other shows that I work on. They are
all available at Wadingwaymedia dot com. Thanks especially to our
Patreon community. If you want to join the community, visit
patreon dot com slash Projection Booth. Every donation we get
helps Projection Booth take over the galaxy

Speaker 9 (02:42:24):
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Episode 755: Return of the Jedi (1983)

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