Was Obi-Wan's Fate Changed at the Last Minute? | Icons Unearthed: Star Wars

[00:00:00][music] In 1976, [music] here in Tunisia, North Africa, this tiny [music] town of Tatooine and other locations all over the country, became less of a wretched hive of scum and villain and more of a harrowing film shoot location. It's like waging a war when you're out in the middle of the desert. [music] >> Besieged by inexperience. Nobody knew what we were doing.

[00:00:33]>> And questionable [music] decisions.

[00:00:35]>> Cut. What am I doing here? I am not liking this. George is getting crosser [music] and crosser as I get it wronger and wronger.

[00:00:44]>> And on this shoot, everything went wronger.

[00:00:46]>> The crew didn't understand what we were making.

[00:00:49]>> Ryan de Palmer said, "George, you got to get rid of that force thing." He does not know what he's talking about.

[00:00:56]>> We were always on the verge of blowing up.

[00:01:00]>> And this is the story of how one man's [music] often controversial vision.

[00:01:04]>> I don't like George's choices of the aliens.

[00:01:07]>> Did very much blow out.

[00:01:09]>> George went, "Oh god, now I have to make a sequel."

[00:01:14]>> What have we here?

[00:01:16]>> Sending shock waves around the world. A lot of directors didn't [music] want to do the sequels for decades to come.

[00:01:23]>> It was bought by a local music shop and they were using [music] as a trash can, >> the first three movies.

[00:01:30]>> And I did ask George, does he come back in any other form? And he went, "No, he's dead."

[00:01:37]>> To the three prequels, which had their own set of problems, both on the screen. He was especially stunned by all the criticism of Jar Jar >> and on the page.

[00:01:52]>> It wasn't connected. Random thoughts.

[00:01:54]>> George, I don't know why he does these things.

[00:01:57]>> When I read the script in my [music] hotel room, I threw it into the corner of the suite.

[00:02:03]>> So, strap in. This is where the fun begins. And hold on tight as we dig deep. Carrie Fish has pulled out half an hour's worth of hair for hair and makeup to crimp it back in >> to discover the gems.

[00:02:17]>> It's the only time I've ever heard somebody tear into George [music] Lucas >> and reveal the secrets.

[00:02:24]>> The way he dealt with my leaving him was to decide that I never existed [music] >> on Icons Unearthed Star Wars.

[00:02:36]>> Don't even go there.

[00:02:38]Heat.

[00:02:51]Heat. [music] >> [music] [music] >> From the beginning of time, the story [music] of humanity is one of struggle, love, and hate, war, and peace. But it's the relationship between parents [music] and children, fathers and sons, that really captures our imaginations and one particular story more than any other.

[00:03:33]No, not that one. That's a different kind of father and son story altogether.

[00:03:38]But Star Wars is the story of [music] a father and a son, both oncreen and off.

[00:03:45]How one young Californian was [music] driven to greatness through conflict, perseverance, and the greatest [music] motivation of them all. It's about the hope that there could be a resolution to that incredibly painful relationship.

[00:04:02]>> I know there is good in you. Good in you. Good in you. Good in you. Good in you.

[00:04:08]>> George's father was a small town small businessman in Modesto, California. And as it happened, George Lucas [music] was a small boy in that same town.

[00:04:17]>> George Lucas was born on May 14th, 1944.

[00:04:20][music] His dad was George and his mom was Dorothy Bombberger. His father is working a great deal in order to take care of the family.

[00:04:30]George was part of that generation that didn't have TV for the first part of their childhood. So he listened to science fiction radio dramas growing up >> until the radio gave way to a [music] new kind of square box. and he begins watching what was very common content for kids [music] at that time, movie serals from the 1930s that got put on television. Flash [music] Gordon, Buck Rogers.

[00:04:52]>> Pretty soon, it became [clears throat] obvious George was watching a little too much TV.

[00:04:56]>> George didn't like [music] going to school as a young kid.

[00:04:59]>> What he did like was cars.

[00:05:02]>> It was really what he thought he was going to do. He thought he was going to be a professional car racer.

[00:05:06]>> His love of speed was about to bring George to the first major turning [music] point in his life.

[00:05:12]In 1962, in his senior year, he was struck by another teenage driver at 90 mph.

[00:05:19]The car flips over [music] four times, hits a walnut tree, and he was thrown from the vehicle.

[00:05:28]>> So, George is in the hospital recovering from a near-death experience, and he thinks, "Wait, maybe there's a reason I was [music] spared."

[00:05:35]>> Thanks in part to that walnut tree, the young George Lucas had acquired a sense of destiny. He begins to realize he wants to do something meaningful with his life.

[00:05:44]>> But what?

[00:05:44]>> He decided to go to college, which is something he never really intended to [music] do.

[00:05:48]>> Or in George's father's case, something he didn't want him to do.

[00:05:52]>> His father owned a stationary store.

[00:05:55][music] When you have a father who owns his own business, it's like join me and together we can control the stationery empire.

[00:06:02]>> He did not get the approval [music] that any young man wants from his father.

[00:06:07]>> George and his dad clashed [music] a lot. I don't think his dad much had much expectations for George.

[00:06:13]>> But he [music] did have plenty of advice.

[00:06:15]>> Own your own business. Don't work for other people. Make your own financial decisions.

[00:06:22]>> Putting some distance [music] between himself and his father. George set out to prove him wrong.

[00:06:29]But he quickly found a new family of sorts at the University of Southern California. George was a transfer student [music] from Modesto Junior College and I was in the cinema department and George showed up and said, [music] "Tell me what goes on here."

[00:06:45]>> And George begins to think, "Huh, movies."

[00:06:49]>> George was clearly in the right place, even if the titles of his student films suggested a proclivity for mathematics.

[00:06:55]>> THX 1138 for EB, >> which won George [music] a National Student Film Festival.

[00:07:01]>> Incredible.

[00:07:02]>> George was creative. He [music] thought out of the box. He was a rebel.

[00:07:07]>> George was on a lot of people's radars.

[00:07:09]>> I knew he was an intuitive [music] genius.

[00:07:12]>> And momentum continued to build for this rebellious intuitive genius. His love for filmm was soon joined by romantic love when he started dating assistant editor Marsha Lou Griffin.

[00:07:24]>> When George and I were dating, we used to go to films a lot. We saw [music] 2001 and George was very inspired by that. You thought I can make a movie in outer [music] space with spaceships that look real.

[00:07:37]>> He decided he wanted to make like a new type of sci-fi film like Flash Gordon, but in the 70s.

[00:07:43]>> But first, the young and bold George Lucas would need to get his foot in the door at Hollywood. And in 1968, [music] he did just that.

[00:07:52]>> Warner Brothers was giving out internships, and he ended up getting assigned a feature that was being made, then a musical called Finian's Rainbow.

[00:08:01]to the Rainbow >> which was being directed by Francis Forcopla.

[00:08:06]>> The two of them form a relationship that's very similar in a way to Han Solo and Luke Skywalker.

[00:08:11]>> Why don't y'all run him? I thought you said this thing was fast.

[00:08:13]>> Watch your mouth, kid. You're going to find yourself floating home.

[00:08:15]>> Where you have the sort of the older, slightly cynical, more experienced Copala very much being like an older brother figure to George Lucas.

[00:08:24]>> And from then on, George was under Copala's umbrella. Lucas worked on the film of the rain people and filmed a making of documentary called filmmaker which was about Copala in the process.

[00:08:35]>> All I want to do is get the film going.

[00:08:36]Uh well you can imagine Warner Brothers financing a picture when they haven't read the script and they don't even know who the hell the people are in it.

[00:08:43]>> And so George told Francis's girlfriend was an assistant editor and so Francis said, "Well, bring her in." And that was my first feature film assisting.

[00:08:54]I don't think at the time anybody ever thought that this was going to be a transitional time in American film with all these younger people coming in and that was our friends and all of a sudden we were making all these movies. Copala was a really big deal at that point.

[00:09:13]>> And Warner [music] Brothers made a really big deal with Copala, signing him up for seven pictures.

[00:09:20]>> One of which was destined to [music] become a reboot of George's post-apocalyptic student film.

[00:09:25]>> THX 1138 >> produced by Copala and written, edited, and directed by George. He set out to make his first feature with his now wife [music] Marsha Lucas by his side.

[00:09:36]>> He was editing it and I was his assistant. And he would call me, "Does this scene [music] work for you?" Does that scene work for you? It was always asking my opinion.

[00:09:43]>> He has always been an experimental filmmaker. Everything about that film challenges you.

[00:09:53]>> And then Copala told Lucas, you can't make these cold, impersonal science fiction films and expect to get an audience. You have to do something with [music] emotion.

[00:10:04]>> No, you're wrong.

[00:10:05]>> And famously, Lucas said something like, "It's not hard to make people cry. I'll show you. I can do it.

[00:10:10]>> And George knew exactly [music] where to go for an emotional story back home.

[00:10:16]>> So he decided to make a movie about his youth.

[00:10:18]>> This coming of age film focused [music] on an idilic version of George's youth.

[00:10:22]>> We are going to remember all of the good times is what we're going to do.

[00:10:26]>> But it was just a movie after all.

[00:10:28]>> Bye son. Call us when you get >> George's [music] reality was quite different. His father did not respect the entertainment industry. So no matter how big a success you are in the entertainment industry, it's not the same as success in a respectable field.

[00:10:43]>> But George's father's disapproval was soon replaced by the disapproval of the studio because with Copela busy on Godfather 2, >> George has left to deal with the studio on his own, which he was not a fan of.

[00:10:54]In fact, that experience cemented his dislike for the Hollywood studio system.

[00:10:59]Yet, despite the [music] difficulties, >> American Graffiti isn't just a hit. It is a blockbuster. It earned $140 million at the box office. It remains [music] one of the greatest profit to cost ratios of a film ever made.

[00:11:14]>> And that was the genius $700,000 movie.

[00:11:17]>> George Lucas had arrived.

[00:11:19]>> American Graffiti is printing money. And now George is the hottest director in [music] town.

[00:11:24]>> He was offered a lot of films. He turned down everyone because he has this [music] ambitious project.

[00:11:32]>> I really want to make a sci-fi film and reinvent the genre.

[00:11:36]>> George gets to work >> like a new type of sci-fi film >> on an idea he seemed destined to make.

[00:11:42]>> Flash Gordon [music] in the 1970s.

[00:11:44]>> This idea was actually Flash Gordon.

[00:11:47]>> He made an inquiry into the rights to Flash Gordon.

[00:11:52]He was turned down.

[00:11:55]Luckily for us all, [crying] Dino Dearentes had beaten George to the punch, which left George with only one option.

[00:12:03]>> He decided [music] to make his own space opera.

[00:12:07]>> So George is thinking, "Okay, I make a space opera even more [music] successful than American Graffiti. I could make my own independent studio."

[00:12:15]>> And this almighty concept poised to change cinema history was called [music] >> was actually entitled Journal of the Wills. He puts down on paper sort of a two-page summary.

[00:12:27]>> Well, really more of a first draft of a first draft which George would soon [music] toss out anyway.

[00:12:31]>> So, exactly what the wills are is a little bit fuzzy. But an allgether different story was slowly coming [music] into focus.

[00:12:43]In January of 1973, George has written a summary of what he's envisioning now named the Star Wars. It's the story of a general named Luke Skywalker who helps a princess who at the end of the story turns [music] out to be a demigod.

[00:13:01]George at this stage is putting together a 14-page treatment [music] that he's going to bring around to the studios to shop Star Wars.

[00:13:07]>> The first studio was Universal >> because Universal had the first right of refusal [music] after American Graffiti >> and refused they did. Next up was [music] United Artists.

[00:13:18]>> And they also passed on Star Wars because everyone thought sci-fi m that's dead.

[00:13:26]>> There aren't a lot of big science fiction films made at this time. Really, the only big ones are the Planet of the Apes films.

[00:13:33]>> So, by picking sci-fi, everyone thought that George was just making a big huge mistake.

[00:13:38]>> And there was another problem.

[00:13:40]>> Nobody could really grasp what it was.

[00:13:42]So he felt in order to make it clear to people, he needed something visual.

[00:13:46]>> So one of the things George does is he brings in Ralph McQuary who produces about a dozen illustrations.

[00:13:52]>> And what was really nothing more than an element of George's [music] sales pitch became something much more.

[00:13:58]>> McQuary did the first designs of C3PO and R2-D2.

[00:14:04]>> A dozen of those paintings were the art direction of the movie. So he brings this idea [music] to 20th Century Fox, >> specifically to the office of an unlikely lad.

[00:14:15]>> Alan Lad Jr. was the son of the movie star Alan Lad.

[00:14:20]>> Alan Lad Jr. is [music] frantically searching for a film that will get a young audience into the theaters >> because 20th Century Fox's audience was as old as the hills.

[00:14:30]>> The studio almost went into bankruptcy and then they came out of bankruptcy with The Sound of Music. With the studio hanging on by a thread, Alan [music] Lad Jr. bet it all on this young director who had made one failed sci-fi movie and one hit nonsci-fi movie.

[00:14:48]>> Alan Lad Jr. saw an early screening of American Graffiti and he was really impressed with it. And his basic approach was, I want to be in business with George Lucas.

[00:14:58]>> George Lucas's space opera had found its first audience, an audience of one who [music] was prepared to back his vision.

[00:15:05]Although not entirely sure what the Star Wars is, he inks a deal with George Lucas in 1973. [music] And the agreement is that Lucas will be paid $15,000 to develop the story, $50,000 to write the [music] script, and $100,000 to direct the film.

[00:15:21]>> So George just had to whip up a script.

[00:15:24]Easy. Since he already had the story, >> he sold the film to Laddy as the Dirty Dozen in Outer Space.

[00:15:36]But the script became a lot of things.

[00:15:39]>> Took him actually about four years to write the script, >> but only about a year to ink what would turn out to be an incredibly consequential contract with Fox.

[00:15:48]>> What he really wanted was the rights to the sequel.

[00:15:51]>> Because like his dad had always taught him, >> retain control and ownership always his goal. the biggest lesson from his businessman father.

[00:16:02]>> To which Fox said, "Sequels? What sequels?"

[00:16:05]>> He was interested in doing a sequel [music] if it worked out. He felt he had enough material.

[00:16:10]>> Oh, and there was one more thing.

[00:16:12]>> He asked for merchandising rights and Fox gave it to him easily because they didn't think there was going to be any market for a sequel and no value in the merchandising.

[00:16:23]>> And for that, we can thank none other than Dr. Doolittle. I think it'll be a film which all the family including the animals are going to want to see.

[00:16:32]>> The Doctor Dittle [music] toys did little sales sealing the fate of movie merchandise.

[00:16:37]>> It spectacularly bombed to the point where no manufacturers wanted to get involved in a heavy way with movie merchandising. [music] >> George wasn't interested in more money.

[00:16:47]He just wanted the rights to make any sequels that could be made.

[00:16:50]>> It [music] was a gamble and right now it was all riding on one script with more than one problem. We all felt you needed a female character.

[00:16:58]>> That doesn't sound too hard.

[00:17:00]>> And so George wrote the first female heroine.

[00:17:03]>> The helpless princess [music] demigod became >> feisty princess who takes on the empire.

[00:17:09]She's the first female superhero, I think.

[00:17:12]>> But one thing the early scripts for Star Wars did contain [music] was something that was nothing short of cosmic.

[00:17:19]>> He believes that the young [music] people are drifting. They have no faith.

[00:17:25]They are seeking some kind of a message that gives their lives a purpose.

[00:17:31]>> George Lucas believed he had a universal message and he called it >> the force. The force.

[00:17:38]>> Yes, the force.

[00:17:40]>> I was raised Christian Scientist.

[00:17:42][music] We used to say man is spiritual and not material. And the force is something [music] that's spiritual.

[00:17:48]>> It's an energy field created by all living things. And so when he had the force written into the movie, I knew how important that was. It had to be important. That hell was the glue that held it all together. Georgia had conceived [music] a Bible for a new cosmology, but he still needed some apostles to write the scripture.

[00:18:06]>> So George was fantastic [music] with narrative plot. He wasn't so fantastic at writing dialogue.

[00:18:14]>> Dialogue is not his strong suit. And so Gloria Catz and Willard Huck come in.

[00:18:20]They worked on American Graffiti and they punch up Star Wars.

[00:18:24]>> About 80% of the Star Wars final [music] draft is their writing.

[00:18:28]>> When I read it, I said, "This is great.

[00:18:30]This is really working. I love this."

[00:18:32]And then [music] George said, "I'm making this movie for 10-year-old boys."

[00:18:35]And I thought, "This is a movie 10-year-old boys are going to love." But I didn't [music] think the rest of the world was going to love it.

[00:18:45]With the script [music] ready to roll, Star Wars was due on screens in under two years, and George still [music] didn't have a producer. All he knew was that it wasn't going to be him.

[00:18:56]>> So, George really didn't like handling money and scheduling, so he hired a producer to deal [music] with all of that.

[00:19:03]>> Gary Curts, who George knew from American Graffiti, was signed on to produce in early 1975. [music] George had 100% of the creative development and Gary Curts had 100% of logistics.

[00:19:15]>> And after the staggering financial [music] success of American Graffiti, having Gary on board could only be a good thing.

[00:19:21]>> Oh, Gary. Gary was an odd bird.

[00:19:25]>> But still, George and Gary were solid, so no problems there. And as for the editing, Marsha would do it, of course.

[00:19:33]>> No, I was not going to edit Star Wars.

[00:19:36]we're going to be on location in London, Indonesia, and I wanted to be a lady of leisure, and I wanted to have a baby.

[00:19:43]And George said, "Yeah, I guess we're going to afford to have a baby now."

[00:19:47]Instead, that honor would go to a British editor. Not that they were anywhere near having anything to edit yet.

[00:19:54]>> They obviously knew as Star Wars was shaping up that they were going to need to do special effects.

[00:19:59]>> Make that extra special. Special effects. Normally in special effects in the past, the camera stood still, but the model moved. Instead, George wanted the camera to move. He wanted that for the dog fights, and he wanted that for the special effects.

[00:20:15]>> What Lucas imagined was the classic World War [music] II film, Dam Busters in space.

[00:20:22]>> There had never been a dog fight in a science fiction film before.

[00:20:26]>> And so, with it never being done, >> who's going to do this? Lucas realizes if it's going to be done, they're going to have to do it themselves.

[00:20:34]>> George's first call was to visual effects maestro Douglas [music] Trumbull. Trumble did not want to do the effects for Star Wars cuz he didn't want to do another space picture. He then referred Lucas to one of his assistants, John Dystra.

[00:20:48]>> Right out of college, I went to work at Trumble Film Effects. I was a freelance photographer becoming visual effects guy who got invited to work on a movie that had aerial dog fights. I was young and dumb enough to go, "Sure, I can do that."

[00:21:06]>> Well, time will tell. Working out of a rented warehouse in Van Nice, [music] the team's first act of creation wasn't a piece of film. It was a piece of branding. You had to have a name for the company and it didn't want to be a movie company name. I said, "Well, we're in an industrial area, so we should be industrial lighting and magic." [music] >> Which turned out to be appropriate because John and his crew were about to create a new [music] industrial standard. There was a huge amount of design and invention that had to be done because traditional camera techniques were not suited to doing [music] that kind of work, >> which meant literally reinventing the camera.

[00:21:47]>> And he had to do so on only a $2 million budget.

[00:21:50]>> It was sketchy because we had to build stuff from scratch. It's like taking off in an airplane [music] and completing the construction of it while you're in flight. While John's team began creating a whole [music] new world, Lucas began looking for people to fill it.

[00:22:06]>> He did casting calls in New York.

[00:22:08]>> Well, it was the director who clammed up during [music] auditions.

[00:22:12]>> George was terrified of casting. He wouldn't look at the actors. He wouldn't talk to [music] the actors.

[00:22:17]>> At least he could get away with doing half a job by doing a dual casting call with his director pal, Brian De Palmer, >> who was looking for actors for his upcoming movie. So they were basically seeing all the young actors in Hollywood for both Carrie and Star Wars.

[00:22:32]>> He wanted unknowns in those roles. He didn't want to have actors recognizable to the audience.

[00:22:38]>> Who is this?

[00:22:39]>> Many young upandcomers auditioned. Han Solo [music] could easily have been Kurt Russell.

[00:22:44]>> What's that little droid carrying around and so blasted important?

[00:22:47]>> But for George [music] Lucas, the choice was obvious.

[00:22:50]>> And he came home from New York one day.

[00:22:51]He was so excited he found the perfect actor to be Han Solo. It was Christopher Walkin.

[00:22:56]>> Can I confess something?

[00:22:58]>> The same unique Christopher Walkan who would go on to play the [music] psycho brother in Annie Hall.

[00:23:03]>> I just thought he's not a soldier of fortune, handsome hung that I envision Han Solo to be.

[00:23:10]>> Marsha had her heart set on another actor.

[00:23:12]>> You got to use Harrison Ford.

[00:23:14]>> Han Solo man. I'm Captain of the Millennium Falcon.

[00:23:19]>> I just thought he had a lot of screen presence. I thought he was handsome and I thought he was charismatic. I'm not going to take you on an impossible chase across the galaxy.

[00:23:27]>> Casting consultant Fred Roose agreed, but Lucas didn't want to reuse actors >> and he was like, I don't want to use you because I've used you in American Graffiti.

[00:23:36]>> So Fred hatched a plan.

[00:23:37]>> Harrison Ford was actually hired at the studio to build I believe it was a doorway for the offices that they were building and that was actually a trick on the part [music] of Fred Roose. that was on George's mind and they started to ask him to read with the other actors.

[00:23:54]That doorway would literally be Harrison Ford's door to stardom.

[00:23:59]>> This is not a game. You know, >> Harrison Ford does read with 50 or 60 different actors and actresses.

[00:24:06]>> And when it came to the princess, >> the princess, >> ironically, and also casting Carrie, they cast Carrie.

[00:24:13]>> Carrie Fischer, the daughter of Eddie Fischer and Debbie Reynolds. Hiding is useless now.

[00:24:19]>> She had done shampoo.

[00:24:20]>> Are you my what? What are you really talking about?

[00:24:23]>> Making it with my mother >> and had made a really big impression.

[00:24:28]>> I'm Luke Skywalker. I'm here to rescue you.

[00:24:31]>> And for the man who would [music] eventually save the galaxy, that was nearly this golden spun head of hair.

[00:24:39]>> William Cat was a contender for Luke Skywalker, >> but more of a contender for Carrie. So instead, a little known TV actor was looking to move up.

[00:24:49]>> Fear is their greatest weapon.

[00:24:51]>> Lucas really liked him pretty much right away.

[00:24:54]>> But when it came to Obi-Wan Kenobi, >> George, he originally wanted Tashiro Mafuni to play Obi-Wan, >> who basically played a kind of Obi-Wan Kenobi type character in the hidden fortress.

[00:25:08]>> That didn't work because Fox wanted the reassurance of at least one big name.

[00:25:13]And Alec Guinness at that time was a very wellrespected actor.

[00:25:16]>> I fear to do it.

[00:25:18]>> Alec Guinness read the script.

[00:25:20]>> Very interesting.

[00:25:21]>> And decided he hated it.

[00:25:23]>> The line I've always heard, he said, "The dialogue is ropey." Which I think means not great.

[00:25:27]>> But before Sir Alec Guinness went on his [music] merry way, >> you can go about your business.

[00:25:33]>> Fred Roose got on the phone with him and explained to him what the film was going to be and how pivotal the role was going to be. And that made Guinness finally agree to do the film.

[00:25:45]>> Once I heard Alec Guinness was hired, you know, the thing is going to be a blockbuster.

[00:25:50]>> Easy to say now because at the time there were plenty more actors who needed convincing.

[00:25:55]>> 3BO. I didn't want to be in his film.

[00:26:01]The cast was coming together reluctantly and I had a very bad feeling [music] about big films Hollywood and then to meet somebody who was exactly the opposite of what I'd assumed. He wasn't a potbellied cigar smoking kind of loudmouth you know it was George small kind of dimminative gentle shy wearing one of the worst check shirts [music] I'd ever seen.

[00:26:26]>> George had only a couple of questions.

[00:26:28]You're an actor? Yes. Um, you you're good at mime.

[00:26:34]Well, quite good. Mhm. Like, what do [music] I say to this man with whom I have nothing in common?

[00:26:40]>> And if George's awkwardness wasn't confusing enough, then the room's decor certainly was.

[00:26:45]>> Looking around the office, they had paintings of weird stuff [music] around the room. There was a big ball thing and then there was a black helmety thing and then there was some spaceship with zooming and then in the distance there was this figure.

[00:27:04]>> Not just any figure. [music] This painting created by Ralph McQuary to help sell Star Wars to the studios while Anthony Daniels was buying it too.

[00:27:13][music] The Ralph McQuary concept painting was so uh I don't even to this day I don't really have a word for it.

[00:27:20]>> But after seeing that, Anthony knew exactly what to say to George.

[00:27:25]>> Please may I play the part? Imagine saying that. And George went and that was the beginning.

[00:27:33]>> The biggest actor on the set [music] physically at least would be the man no one would see.

[00:27:38]>> David Prow, who was actually a bodybuilder who then segueed into acting.

[00:27:43]They were looking for big actors to play Chewbacca and Darth Vader.

[00:27:50]And Pra chose Vader because he said the villain is going to be the more memorable character.

[00:27:56]>> Now to bring the practical [music] world of Star Wars to life, Lucas would need a set decorator, >> which at that time was in charge of props, vehicles, [music] interiors of the sets, weapons, everything.

[00:28:09]>> Lucas approached the young Roger Christian. The two had a similar vision for the [music] world of Star Wars.

[00:28:14]>> My impression was a spaceship should be like an old car in a garage that you've kept going and it's dripping oil and all of this. Little did I know at the time I was actually describing the Millennium Falcon. [music] >> Roger was hired, but he had to do it on a nearly impossible budget.

[00:28:30]>> I had 200,000 to set decorate this entire film with.

[00:28:34]>> That's the real trick, isn't it? When [laughter] I read the script and did my breakdowns of what we required, I thought, well, you I can't do this conventionally. This is never going to work. Plus, we didn't have time.

[00:28:45]>> On March the 22nd, 1976, Hollywood landed on the desert sands of Tunisia for the first day of filming.

[00:28:52]>> What a desolate place this is.

[00:28:54]>> George Lucaset was quiet and a little tense.

[00:28:58]>> So, they start filming and they chose this place because it hardly ever rains there. And it rains there.

[00:29:04]We're talking [music] winds, floods, all that jazz.

[00:29:09]>> I know the sets were blown away.

[00:29:12]>> Even parts of a sand crawler ended up a mile away.

[00:29:15]>> The whole thing turns into a mud. We couldn't work.

[00:29:18]>> Isolated with few resources [music] in the middle of nowhere.

[00:29:22]>> George had to make do with what he could to try to catch up. [music] >> At one point, they even managed to drop the Vista Vision camera.

[00:29:30]The silence was like we're in the middle of nowhere.

[00:29:34]>> You know, it's like waging a war when you're out in the middle of the desert and you have to feed people and transport people.

[00:29:40]>> Or as Sir Alec Guinness [music] put it, >> he said filming isn't usually like this.

[00:29:46]You will be in other films and you will find them different.

[00:29:49]>> Star Wars might have been different, but at least the actors had each other and their daily allowance or per DMs. He called me over and he said, "Have they given you your pdeium yet?" I had no idea what a pdeium was. And he also had no real idea what he was getting himself into. I was kind of in this carropus, this shell. And I think the scary thing was with an Allen key closed that. So my neck is now in a metal ring.

[00:30:18]>> And he realized when he got that suit on, he couldn't go to the toilet. There was nothing.

[00:30:22]>> Don't get technical with me. We were all kind of making it work.

[00:30:26]>> Hugely complicated. Remember walking over to the sand crawler, wobbling over really and within about three steps crushed my plastic shoe into my foot.

[00:30:37]But C3PO wasn't the only droid having malfunctions.

[00:30:41]>> With R2-D2, most of the running was done with us pulling him down a wooden track.

[00:30:47]Put a bit of sand up and pull him along.

[00:30:49][music] Meanwhile, Anthony Daniels was getting to know Kenny Baker, the actor who played R2-D2 off camera.

[00:30:55]>> He was delightful because he was an entertainer.

[00:30:58]>> But on [music] camera, the two barely communicated >> because Kenny in that egg with all the equipment in it and everything couldn't hear him. So, he would speak to him and then he wouldn't get a reaction.

[00:31:09]>> We didn't really have a relationship. Is odd because on screen obviously we had a huge relationship, but it had to be all in my mind. It had to be improvised.

[00:31:19]I've just about had enough of you.

[00:31:21]>> The only thing clunkier than the droids was the dialogue.

[00:31:24]>> I couldn't say the first line [music] because it made no sense.

[00:31:28]>> Vaporators.

[00:31:29]>> My first job was programming binary load liters. Very similar to evaporator.

[00:31:34]And I got it wrong three times.

[00:31:36]>> All George would say was, "Do it again faster.

[00:31:39]>> Do it again faster."

[00:31:40]>> Of course, I can say.

[00:31:41]>> And George is kind of getting [music] crosser and crosser as I get it wronger and wronger. And he looked at me dead face. you don't worry about the voice.

[00:31:49]You can say anything you want. We can fix it later.

[00:31:53]>> That was fast becoming a mantra on the set.

[00:31:56]>> He's not an actor's director. He's a visual filmmaker.

[00:31:59]>> To say to an actor, you [music] can say anything you want. The rest of the actors look at you like, "What's going on here?" Right? And over the course of the weeks that followed, Mark, Carrie, and myself would sit there going, "God, this is never going to work." Even the cool and calm-headed Sir Alec Guinness was pushed to the brink.

[00:32:17]>> He did have a bit of a tantrum one day when I think delays had just [music] gone on so much that he sort of blew up and the crew began to turn on each other.

[00:32:27]>> I was standing there and suddenly I'm getting these Yeah. And it's coming up very loud.

[00:32:32]>> In the shadow of the sand crawler, cinematographer Gil Taylor [music] and producer Gary Kurts were having a bit of a row. And Gil is saying in totally certain terms, who is lighting this movie? Because if I'm lighting this movie, you goodbye.

[00:32:51]>> The mounting stress and confusion we're even showing on screen.

[00:32:55]>> We do.

[00:32:56]>> 3PO [music] lives in a world of confusion.

[00:32:58]>> Do you think they'll melt us down?

[00:33:00]>> And panic and [music] disdain and otherness. And I think it probably helped. But the chaos and setbacks certainly weren't helping George.

[00:33:09]>> He was complaining about the robots falling over and the Jawas weren't were running around like little kids and they were supposed to be evil characters.

[00:33:18]>> He said, "My days I get up in the morning, I've got a rock sack and they fill it with rocks and it's so heavy I'm stuck on the ground." Well, throughout the day I managed to get rocks out and right at the end of the day I can stand up again and they fill it up with rocks again.

[00:33:32]>> How did we get into this mess? I got the sense he hated it.

[00:33:38]>> The machinery of Star Wars was literally falling apart in the [music] desert.

[00:33:43]>> I don't think I can make it.

[00:33:45]>> The logistical problems were nothing compared to the massive holes in George Lucas' script, which was still shifting like the desert sands.

[00:33:54]>> In the shooting script, Obi-Wan lives.

[00:33:57]>> If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful.

[00:34:02]and he stays around until the end of the film, but after they escape from the Death Star, he doesn't really have much to do.

[00:34:08]>> You should not have come back.

[00:34:10]>> Oh, yes, he should. Cuz Obi-Wan needed something to do, and the second act needed [music] a turning point. And >> I thought, well, I've got some ideas, George.

[00:34:18]>> And finding it would prove to be a turning point for the entire franchise.

[00:34:22]>> I said, but [music] I really have this idea that I think could work because of the Force. May the Force be with you.

[00:34:29]The force was already with Marsha. Like a true Jedi, she understood its potential.

[00:34:35]>> I said, "What if Darth Vader kills Obi-Wan Kenobi?"

[00:34:43]>> And Obi-Wan Kenobi [music] disintegrates when they're escaping. George said, "I like that idea."

[00:34:48]>> What Marsha wanted to unlock was more than just a good death scene. It would work because when Luke is listening to Obi-Wan, when he's in the trench run, he hears Obi-Wan tell him, >> "Use the force, Luke."

[00:35:04]>> And in the script, Obi-Wan was in the rebel war room talking to Luke. But I said, "He can still say all that stuff he needs to say to Luke.

[00:35:13]>> Let go, Luke."

[00:35:14]>> And George said, "I like that idea." And so I sort of pride myself on [music] killing Obi-Wan Kenobi. [laughter] >> With the script still in flux, the production headed to El Street Studios in England. Happy to escape the desert heat.

[00:35:28]>> It was hotter than being in the desert.

[00:35:30]>> The English facility had the seven sound stages Star Wars needed and it was cheap. The >> UK at that time was exactly half the price of America.

[00:35:39]>> And so the Millennium Falcon took shape in the English countryside. It may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts.

[00:35:46]>> Wanted to give Star Wars that dusty western [music] feel, Roger got down and dirty.

[00:35:52]>> If I buy scrapped airplane junk, I could make the universe that we wanted.

[00:35:58]>> And so >> I bought mounted because [music] it was cheap. No one wanted it. I started with the Millennium Falcon cockpit. I found some old fighter pilot seats I bought. I stuck those in at the back. Junk parts were the key to everything from R2-D2's dome.

[00:36:14]>> We went around the back of the studios and found an old lamp top >> to Luke's [music] binoculars.

[00:36:18]>> I found three different camera parts and glued them together >> which led to the [music] lightsabers.

[00:36:24]>> This was a battery casing for a graphics camera which were the cameras that the press used.

[00:36:31]>> And for the Tuskin Raiders more primal [music] weaponry, the gaffy sticks.

[00:36:35]>> I found that Tokyo Warrior stick. I'd never seen anything like it. I drilled the end and stuck a medieval mason.

[00:36:41]>> But after all this digging, the oldest piece of junk that Roger would use had already been dug up for him.

[00:36:47]>> The prop master one day told me to go up in the attic in the prop room. There was a full-size dinosaur skeleton. Well, that's become the crate dragon now, [laughter] and we couldn't afford to take it back.

[00:37:00]We left it there.

[00:37:01]>> Hey. Hey. [screaming] [laughter] On set, the cast was starting to feel much like those dinosaur bones stuffed in an attic.

[00:37:09]>> Millennium 4 could cockpit is like this big.

[00:37:12]>> It's better on this side of it than this side.

[00:37:14]>> It's better this there on your right.

[00:37:17]>> It was sweltering.

[00:37:19]>> This is where the fun begins.

[00:37:20]>> I'm standing there dribbling, feeling disgusting, feeling sweat cripping. Every shot between shots, [music] somebody would come up to Mark Hamill and go, "Okay."

[00:37:35]>> Shooting on English soil, Lucas found he could ill afford even the slightest delay.

[00:37:40]>> You had to stop at 5:30 and they pull the plug. Even if you're in the middle of dialogue, they didn't care. Boom.

[00:37:46]>> If you were going to go longer on a particular day, you had to get the Union Guilds to [music] vote yes. Gary Curts always said if you wanted to get some decisions about next day we would go to the pub because they'd always be in there.

[00:37:58]>> Most days they didn't give George the extra time.

[00:38:01]>> Most of the crew [music] didn't really understand what we were making and they were not very supportive to George at all.

[00:38:09]>> George didn't really understand his English [music] crew and the feeling was mutual because they also disliked him and they had no respect for him. George says to this day that only five people stood by his side and I was one of those >> and the rest of the crew fought him, mocked him, disparaged the whole project.

[00:38:26]>> Worst of all, director of photography Gilbert Taylor simply didn't share his director's vision.

[00:38:32]>> It started on the first morning I witnessed it. George was looking through the viewfinder setting up a shot. He said, "What are you doing to George?

[00:38:40]That's my job. You look after the actors. I'll set up the shots." Now, Gil wasn't just anybody.

[00:38:46]>> He had an E- type Jaguar. When he would leave the studio, he had a scarf trailing off behind him. It was like a cartoon. It was great.

[00:38:53]>> George, on the other hand, didn't find any of it funny.

[00:38:57]>> People were rude to him. I felt really bad for George. [music] >> The only person that like he felt he could vent his frustrations to was the one key American, Gary [music] Kurts.

[00:39:07]>> But George had his own complaints when he came to his handpicked producer.

[00:39:12]>> What is happening? you're supposed to have my back. [music] >> And so after everything that had led him to this point, all George could ask [music] was, >> "Why are these things happening to me?"

[00:39:26]>> With the British crew resisting George Lucas's creative [music] endeavors, American producer Gary Curts was getting resistance from George.

[00:39:33]>> For Lucas, everything was a setback. And poor Gary is over here trying to keep George happy while also trying to stick [music] to schedule and budget. But Gary Kur wasn't keeping anyone happy and there was simply no pleasing Gilbert Taylor.

[00:39:46]>> I think he resented being on this science fiction film that he didn't know anything about.

[00:39:50]>> Shooting on the Death Star set soon resulted in the death of something else.

[00:39:55]>> The first day on the Death Star, the big conference room. He walked off, said, "I can't like this." And walked off the [music] set. But this was a common occurrence every day.

[00:40:05]>> Increasingly isolated on his own film and under pressure, George's health began to suffer. George became, as days went by, more and more suppressed [music] and depressed by all the weight of the big movie.

[00:40:19]>> There was no restbite and early samples from his English editor weren't giving anyone a new hope.

[00:40:26]>> And we screened some of the cuts and I was not very happy. The editor was cutting without talking with George.

[00:40:34]>> And after the studio started seeing those early cuts, it was George who needed to talking to.

[00:40:39]>> When Alan Lad Jr. saw the assembled footage done by the English editor, he actually took George aside and said, "I'm getting a little worried."

[00:40:47]>> Suddenly, George's entire dream was on the line.

[00:40:51]>> There's the danger of George Lucas getting removed from his own production.

[00:40:54]>> And George told him, "I know what I'm doing, and this is not what I want it to be." George was increasingly finding himself worried sick, literally. [music] >> While filming, George is not eating well. He's not sleeping well, and he's getting sick a lot.

[00:41:09]>> There were these stories about a couple of key scenes. He coughed during and ruined the take. And he was really mad at himself for that. But even if it was all unraveling in London, at least [music] George could rely on his crack handpicked visual effects team at ILM, who by now were well on their way to making progress.

[00:41:31]>> We've now gone nine months and we've spent a million dollars and we haven't got a single frame of film yet.

[00:41:40]>> Months of blue screen and blue sky thinking got ILM almost exactly nowhere.

[00:41:46]>> We were spending money like crazy.

[00:41:48]Nobody knew what we were doing.

[00:41:50]>> Dyster is having some issues with his motion control cameras and he's thinking, I don't have to tell George this right this second because they were talented and would figure it out eventually.

[00:42:00]>> We basically knew that we could mold technology to create the art. It's like trusting the force to make these kind of ideas [music] play on the screen.

[00:42:10]>> But even the force wasn't going to save the rapidly disappearing budget.

[00:42:15]They had [music] used quite a bit of the special effects budget on the R&D and getting the place set up.

[00:42:21]>> And George came home and he was so depressed and worried.

[00:42:24]>> He had hoped there were going to be quite a number of shots. And apparently there was only one.

[00:42:30]>> Hard dropping out of the ship and then cuts in about a second.

[00:42:34]>> A large chunk of the special effects budget had effectively paid for [music] just one completed shot.

[00:42:40]>> He felt sold out, lied to. He really felt he had been played by Dystra.

[00:42:47]>> It was like, are they going to finish it? Because they had no idea. We weren't even certain.

[00:42:52]>> And the studio was like extremely paranoid because here's a bunch of these kind of long-haired guys.

[00:42:59]The board at Fox, we thought like we're not going to make that much money and this thing is costing so much. So, there was a lot of pressure to speed it up.

[00:43:07]They sent their own production people down to find out what all these hippies were doing out in Van Eyes. What they discovered was less a production house than a fun house.

[00:43:16]>> We had a hot tub out in the parking lot and it was full of cold water because it was so hot. [music] Had an escape slide from the 727.

[00:43:23]>> You could get up on the roof and then slide down that into the hot tub.

[00:43:27]>> Everybody was sliding down the slide in their underwear and bathing suits. And that's when the production people from Fox showed up and said, "Is this what we're paying for?"

[00:43:35]>> But the one person who really needed a way to cool off wasn't getting any relief. George actually became so stressed out that he ended up in the hospital.

[00:43:44]>> Over a Fox, Alan Lad Jr. had discovered his production had already been put on life support.

[00:43:50]>> Alan Lad Jr. is called before the Fox executive board. So they tell him, you know, you better get this done. We're going to pull funding on this film. Lad says to [music] Lucas, "You've got a week. This film has to get finished in a week because I'm going to be going back before the board." [music] They're pulling the plug on the movie.

[00:44:07]>> Movie movie. And as George Lucas lay in a hospital bed, his entire world on the brink of collapse, >> make your own financial decisions.

[00:44:16]>> I don't think his dad had much expectations for George.

[00:44:19]>> Could it be that his father was right after all?

[00:44:29]>> [music]