Star Wars article in NEON Magazine

"This will never work ..."

DWARVES, GIANTS, OAP´S, COKE-HEADS, AND A JOBBING CARPENTER. TWENTY YEARS AGO, THEY WERE ASSEMBLED IN HERTFORDSHIRE BY A MAN WITH A SCRITP NO ONE COULD UNDERSTAND. SOMEHOW THEY MANAGED TO CREATE THE GREATEST FILM EVER MADE. THIS IS THEIR STORY.

It is 1976. Garth Pearce is a struggling 23-year-old film journalist, desperate for a story somebody - anybody - will pay him to publish. It´s taken two decades. Here, finally, is his exclusive report from the set of Star Wars...

The good news is that I´ve been invited onto my very first film set. The bad news is that Sir Alec Guinness and Peter Cushing, the true stars of this "space adventure fantasy" called The Star Wars, are not prepared to be interviewed. Instead, I´m sold a tragic line-up by the desperate PR on the end of the phone. Let´s see. We´ve got Mark Hamill, "the hero and a nice guy"; Dave Prowse, "the villain and a huge guy"; Harrison Ford, "the a-bit-quiet-and-boring guy". And Carrie Fisher: "You can have lunch with her, but she´s kind of odd." It doesn´t, frankly, sound at all promising.

A few days later, at 10am on the morning of June 22, 1976, at Elstree Studios, Hertfordshire, it´s already horribly apparent that this movie is going nowhere. It´s hard to explain, but nothing looks quite right. Sci-fi movies have been in the doldrums for the best part of a decade, and everyone´s looking distinctly uncomfortable. This is already officially the hottest summer in British history, and it´s 80 degrees in the shade. The set seems messy and not even remotely high-tech. This could be an episode of Dr Who. What am I doing here?

And just when I´m thinking things can´t get any worse, I hear Dave Prowse speak. He´s dressed from head to foot in black to play ´Darth Vader´ and, at 6ft 6in, looks like a giant. But he´s speaking in this light, rolling Somerset accent, which makes him sound more like the proprietor of an isolated West Country village shop than an arch villian. He´s 42 years old. He lived with his mum in Bristol until he was 28. He has an openness that, in my naïvete, I assume he shares with everyone on the film. He´s been bodybuilding since he was 17, when he started at Charles Atlas course. "I got very interested with exercises and my mother thought I was going funny bringing home all these pictures of naked men," he recalls. "Instead, I found that once I started bodybuilding I couldn´t stop."

He appeared in the Mister Universe contest of 1960 and won a British heavyweight weightlifting championship title in 1962. Since then, his career has fluctuated from playing Frankenstein in Hammer Horror movies to training the former Prime Minister, Edward Heath, at London´s Grosvenor House Hotel. "He´s the only guy who I disliked intensely in public life," Dave tells me, "but found in private you couldn´t meet a nicer person."

So how did he get involved in The Star Wars? "When they were casting, I was aked to come up for an interview. They offered me two parts: one, Chewbacca, a hairy gorilla, and the other a villian called Darth Vader. I said, "Don´t say any more - I´ll take the villian." Why? "People always remember te baddie of the pictures. I just hope that no-one forgets who plays the baddie on this one, because I play him in a mask. Still, they are using my voice."

It all sounds very haphazard. A villian with a Wurzels accent played by a man whose claim to fame is that he tried to remove the paunch from Edward Heath? What sort of film is this? I glance around. The great Elstree Studios, opened in 1926, have seen great days. But today is not one of them. Last year, owners EMI closed six of nine stages and
announced 213 redundancies, leaving a skeleton staff of just 48. The six films they´ve managed to get made here in the last 12 months include Confessions Of A Driving Instructor and Stand Up Virgin Soldiers.

On the set of The Star Wars, though, everyone is putting on a brave face. This is a new system, in which the studio offers freedom for independent producers to hire whom and what they like, including stages and offices, for any given amount of time. Since 20th Century Fox had booked the whole studio for 18 weeks, Elstree is pinning its hopes on the heroes and villians of The Star Wars to rescue it from impending financial disaster.

My feelings of foreboding aren´t helped by seeing Mark Hamill, 24, plaing a character called Luke Skywalker. His cv includes a role in the American soap General Hospital, and he looks about 12. As he strides over to me, he´s still burbling after his first meeting with Sir Alec Guinness. "I´ve been, like, on pins and needles around here, waiting to see the great man," he says. "I asked him if there was anything I should go and see in the West End of London. I fully expected him to say there was a four-and-a-half hour version of Coriolanus or something. And he said, Housewife Superstar. I did, and was appalled and delighted by Barry Humphries. It was a perfect example of how Sir Alec really is - so unpretentious. A real star."

Exactly. A real star I won´t be interviewing. Hamill is also enthusiastic about his co-star, Carrie Fisher, with whom there are rumours of a romance. All I know about her is that she´s Debbie Reynold´s daughter. "I have to keep on reminding myself she´s only 19," says Mark Hamill. "She seems so mature and I feel younger, emotionally. What a life she´s led. Her best friends seem to be the chorus members of No No Nanette, or whatever her mother did for a revival on Broadway."

Mark´s life has been a little mixed-up too. "As a child, I was moved across America 3,000 miles at a time from New York to San Diego," he says. "I just wanted to fit in. On the East coast you wear loafers and sweaters. In California it´s Levi´s and tennis shoes."

So is The Star Wars going to transform his life? "I´m playing the juvenile lead in a fantasy," he says, reality caving in on him suddenly. "And I know I look young, because I´m being offered the part of teenage virgins all the time. But ... Well, you never know. And, whatever, we all get along great. Carrie, Harrison and I always share a car to and from the studio each day."

A lackey approaches me to tell me that I´m to have lunch with Carrie Fisher. The hand-out I´ve been given describes her as "kooky", but to my untrained eye this appeares to be a euphenism for "deranged". A brief mention in gossip columns earlier in the year had her down as the "precocious" daughter of Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher; her mother has been twice divorced and her father is on his fourth wife.

Sitting down, she eats melon and sips a Coke. "Maybe I´ll get on to alcohol when I grow up," she laughs. Twice, she bounds up enthusiastically from the table to "go to the bathroom". Perhaps she has a summer cold coming up ...

"If I wasn´t Debbie Reynolds´ daughter, I´d probably make cracks about the girl who was," she says in an I´m-levelling-with-you-now voice. "People expect me to be very spoilt, sophisticated and have a lot of advantages. It´s just a situation I can do nothing about. No-one chooses their parents. To me, it´s been a normal life. It´s only when I compare what I´ve done with other people my age that I think maybe it´s been different. And, of course, it has. When I was 13, I´d be making friends with people around 30 in the showbusiness scene."

A waiter interrupts us to say there is a phone call for her. Could she take it in the lobby? She´s gone for ten mintues, and when she bounces back to the table, she´s singing. "Five foot-two, eyes of brown... It´s like in those films where a phone call is arranged to impress someone," she says. "You know, Sir Laurence Olivier? No - I cannot work with you!" She shrieks with manic laughter. I´m quickly led away.

Now it´s time to meet Harrison Ford, known to the world as one of the guys from American Graffity. No matter how hard I try, I seem unable to get a smile from Harrison. What sort of name is that anyway? And he´s playing someone called ...? "Han Solo." Hmm. "My character is the voice of reason, the voice of the public," he intones earnestly. "I took it because it´s a good story and there is a chance to work with Sir Alec. He´s something of a legend." I know, I´d love to interview him. Later, a couple of crew members volunteer that Ford is their favourite personality on the set. He´d been taking an interest in the work of the sparks and the chippies, and is always ready with a word and a greeting.

It turns out that he´d been working as a carpenter in LA until only a few weeks before. Ford himself doesn´t tell me any of this. All I want to do is to get away from him quickly. Who is this serious American, with long sideburns and a sloping face, who looks like he´d rather be anywhere but Elstree? Considering he´s 34, he´s pretty vague about what he´s been up to. "Quite a few films and TV parts, which I guess you won´t know," he says, accurately. "But this is the best film and crew I´ve ever worked with. I have high hopes of something special."

Some chance. A softly-spoken yokel bodybuilder, a choirboy, a spoilt little rich girl and a nobody actor, all toiling in the 80 degree heat at a washed-up studio. Who´s kidding who? Sir Alec must have lost his marbles.

Source: NEON, February 1997