Earlier this year, a photo appeared on the internet of the cast and principal crew of the new Star Wars film gathered for a script reading.
For a global fan community, this represented the culmination of decades spent dreaming.
There they all were – Harrison Ford chatting amiably with director J J Abrams, Carrie Fisher having a chin-wag with new cast member Daisy Ridley.
Mark Hamill was deep in conversation with Max von Sydow and, dotted around them, were cast members classic and new, ready to embark on the continuation of a phenomenon that started not far from that room some 38 years earlier.
My eyes were drawn to the bottom of that picture, to the back of a head, a mop of brown hair sat behind producer Kathleen Kennedy. I wondered who it was. I didn’t think this might be a celebrity whose involvement had yet to be announced. I just… wondered who it was. What were they doing in the room on this momentous occasion? That is how my mind has been trained. Not to look at what’s going on in the foreground but instead drawn to the denizens of the periphery, wondering what their stories might be.
For the past 18 months, I’ve been making a documentary called Elstree 1976 . It’s a film about Star Wars which isn’t really so much about Star Wars as about who that person on the periphery is. I’ve tracked down and interviewed the people behind the masks and helmets in the first film, from highly respected veteran actors to extras who spent just a day on set. From cinema’s most iconic villain to characters who didn’t even make it on to the screen in the final cut. I wanted to know who these people were and how this global cultural phenomenon had affected their lives.
The making of Star Wars is by now a well-documented Hollywood legend, but I found the perspectives of those Britons and North American expats on the sidelines to be refreshingly reflective, sardonic and bemused. Here are some of their recollections…
Laurie Goode
Played Stormtroopers throughout the production and is most famous for banging his head whilst rushing through a door; one of the most notorious on-screen bloopers in cinema history
"I must have eaten a bit of food that was off. I put this Stormtrooper’s costume on, got on the set and as soon as I put it on I wanted to go to the loo. Upset stomach. I took the costume off in this cubicle; juggling myself about trying to get it all off, hanging it up. Went to the loo, put it all back on again, got on the set and then wanted to go back to the loo again! I couldn’t concentrate, I was shuffling along and I hit my head. No one said 'Cut', so I’m thinking to myself I’m not in shot and when it came out, I thought, 'That’s me!'"
Paul Blake
Played Greedo, the bounty hunter killed by Han Solo in the Cantina scene
"I was working with Anthony Daniels, who played C3PO, on Jackanory. He rang me after the show one night and said 'I’m doing this film, it’s a science-fiction film and the director’s asked me if I know any other youngish character actors around who could do it, and I said you might be interested.'
The next day, I found myself at Elstree and I walked out very early in the morning after a long journey, desperate for something to drink. Walked out on to this massive soundstage, with this spaceship – the Millennium Falcon – at the other end. There’s nobody there except for one bloke in the corner. He looked like an assistant, so I said, 'Excuse me, my name’s Paul. Somebody’s called me over here to see some guy, you couldn’t get me a cup of coffee, could you?' And he went and got me a coffee.
I said, 'Thank you very much, do you know this guy called Lucas? George somebody-or-other? He’s the director of this.'
He said, 'I’m George Lucas.' So I’d made George Lucas go and get me a coffee.
He said, 'This alien – do you want to do it?' It was as simple as that. Being a serious young actor, I said, 'George, how do you want me to play this alien?' and he said, 'Well, do it like they do in the movies,' – which is the best advice anyone can ever give you about being in a film, really."
Anthony Forrest
Played Fixer, a friend of Luke Skywalker, who was completely edited out of the film. He does appear on screen, however, as the Stormtrooper mind-tricked by Ben Kenobi to say “These aren’t the droids we’re looking for.”
"I sometimes now think that maybe the fact that Fixer’s not actually in the finished film has made the character more famous than if he had made the final cut; he might have been completely forgotten. We shot the sequences and you can still see the footage [as an added extra on the Blu-ray version of the film]. He’s a friend of Luke’s who, basically, runs Tosche Station. He’s part of this group of young people who are hanging out in the nether regions of [Luke’s home planet of] Tatooine.
One thing that I’ve always felt about [the making of] Star Wars is that it was much more like an indie film. It didn’t feel like a Hollywood film. It felt much more homely, much more independent than that. I think that part of it was that George was a young film-maker at the time and he’s very good, he surrounds himself with great people, very talented people, so he’s very open-minded like that. I do remember, and it was probably very cheeky of me, but I do remember when I had a chance, I asked George, 'How do you like directing?' and he said, 'I don’t. I like to write.'"
Angus Macinnes
Played Gold Leader, one of the pilots killed during the assault on the Death Star
"I got into the cockpit to do this scene and George said 'Have you learnt your lines out of sequence?' and I said 'What are you talking about?' and he said 'Just your lines,' and I said, 'No… I’ve learnt my lines with the cues,' you know, somebody cues me and I talk…
He said 'No, just do your lines.'
And so we started shooting and it was just a nightmare. I mean, it turned into a s---storm because I couldn’t remember anything without the cues. I needed that other voice to respond to, so I kept drying. I knew the lines perfectly well, I just couldn’t remember them [laughs]. I thought, 'What am I going to do here?' and I started sweating, so I needed a make-up artist there with a mop. I mean, I was sweating; buckets.
I was in a flat panic and [George] came and said 'Well, can you read them?' and I said 'Yeah, let’s do that.' I was so panicked at that point that I would have done anything. If he’d said, 'You need some heroin,' I would have rolled my sleeve up.
So, I had a piece of script on this leg, a piece of script on this leg and I had a chunk of script above me and a chunk of script over here. So, we shot the whole thing and I read the stuff off [them]. There’s no performance – in that sense – at all. It’s just reading lines and I thought, 'I don’t care. I’ve just got to get out of here.'"
Dave Prowse
Played Darth Vader, although the character was voiced by actor James Earl Jones. At the end of Return of the Jedi, Vader has his helmet removed
"Everybody comes up and says, 'It wasn’t you they unmasked as Darth Vader, was it?' and I say, 'Well, no, it wasn’t actually.'
The guy that played Darth Vader was a guy called Sebastian Shaw and Sebastian Shaw was a good friend of Alec Guinness’ s and, by all accounts, he was out of work. He’d been out of work for a long period and he was having a bad time financially. And he said to Sir Alec, 'Could you do me a favour?' He said, 'I’m destitute. Is there any chance of you having a word with George Lucas to see if there’s a possibility of a part in this movie?'
So Alec had a word with George and George said, 'The only part we can offer you is the dying Darth Vader.' And all this was done without me knowing anything about it. I mean, I’m watching the movie and they unmask somebody completely different and then you sort of think, 'Well, why wasn’t that me?' But then, when you learn how it all came about, you know, if it helped him in any way, then all well and good.
But everybody comes up to me and says, 'Why wasn’t it you that was unmasked as Darth Vader?' And I say, 'I’ll tell you about it later.'"
Garrick Hagon
Played Biggs Darklighter, Luke Skywalker’s best friend. His role was significantly cut down in the final edit
"George didn’t say much. Irene [Lamb – casting director] didn’t say much. Even when I got the script, I didn’t really understand it. I was doing a television play – The Lady of the Camellias for the BBC – and I had it on my desk and Kate Nelligan, who was the star, said 'What’s that?' and I said 'Oh, I don’t know… space thing, I’m going to do it in Tunisia.'
'Oh,” she said, 'wouldn’t you rather be doing the next thing I’m doing for the BBC? It’s called Shakespeare.'
'I’d really like to be doing that!'
Anyway, I told her I was committed to this film… When I went down to Jerba to shoot it, I knew a little bit more about it, but most of us were mystified as to what it might be. It was a bit of a romp, really. We just did stupid things. I remember going out and hiring horses, Tony Forrest, Mark [Hamill] and myself, racing up and down the beach, which I later learned is verboten; you don’t take the star on a horse ride and go dangerously fast. But we did. It was kind of a holiday atmosphere."
Derek Lyons
Played both a medal bearer and a Massassi Temple guard in the film’s final scene
"I got on very well with Mark Hamill; we found out we had the same date of birth – September 25. It was like a holiday camp, we had these tents outside H stage and we’d all eat together. I remember there was a big set to the left of H stage and Mark asked, 'What is it, Derek?' and I found out it was the Oliver stage, from Lionel Bart’s Oliver, so I said, 'Look, Mark, if I bring my camera – the next day – we can get some photographs taken.'
Now, I didn’t want a photograph taken with Mark Hamill because he was Mark Hamill — I didn’t know who the hell he was, I didn’t know who anyone was. Anyway, the next day I brought my little camera and we went and looked at these amazing Dickensian sets and Peter Mayhew [Chewbacca] followed us and we took some photographs.
So I took photographs of Mark, Mark took photographs of me, Peter Mayhew took photographs of me and Mark. We got on so well. Every day, we chatted and laughed and he was great."
Pam Rose
Played the bulbous-headed alien Leesub Sirln in the background of the Cantina scene
"I didn’t know half of what was going on. They’d say, 'Stand there, talk to him.' It was just like any other job except you looked weird. They made a full head cast and from that they moulded the big head. Then they put on a thin film, looks like skin, then you had all the hair and stuff, then the make-up and then you got the outfit on. So it was quite a long process. I think by day five, I’d had enough because when they pull the glue off your head, it pulls all the baby hair off your face. It was getting quite sore after five days."
Jeremy Bulloch
Played fan-favourite bounty hunter Boba Fett in the sequels to Star Wars
"I was aware of Star Wars… my half brother Robert Watts was associate producer and he said, 'It’s going very well, why don’t you get your agent onto this; there’s a small part, probably a couple of days, but it’d be fun for you to do.' I was in a play down at Leatherhead and I said, 'When does the filming start?' He said, 'Tomorrow.' It was that quick.
So the agent said to go down, I was seen and I got dressed in the costume. I was taken on to set where they were doing the Wampa – the big snow creature – and I thought 'This is incredible!'
I was in with the helmet on, walking around and I finally stopped in front of George Lucas and he said, 'Well, yeah, uh huh, mm-hmm, OK. Welcome aboard, it’s not a big role but I think you’ll have some fun.'
I thought, 'Is he talking to me or someone behind me?' So, I was turning my head and just looking and then was sort of… eased off the set.
'Elstree 1976’ will be released in 2015. You can watch the trailer, pre-order the DVD, Blu-ray or download and become part of the project by visiting kickstarter.com
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