I Am C-3PO--The Inside Story Read online

  “Why couldn’t he get the lines right?” he grumbled expletivly for all around to hear. The fact that Harrison had just rejigged the scene with the director and Billy was hanging upside down in the severe heat of Yuma’s desert, perhaps had something to do with it.

  Marquand tried it with me in the forest. Hearing my name spoken from behind a bush in the adjacent clearing, I was beside the camera in moments.

  “That’s the second time you’ve kept us waiting.”

  “What?”

  “Okay. Let’s start.”

  “Wait a minute. What are you accusing me of, in front of the crew?”

  “Never mind.”

  I dropped the exchange because now we were both wasting time. Some days later, the schedule was suddenly changed, so that Harrison could fly to LA for a premiere of his latest, non-Star Wars adventure. He had indeed, become the star he truly deserved to be. As we watched him walk, Indiana Jones-like out of the clearing, Marquand turned to me, suddenly his best buddy.

  “Now you and I can get on with making this movie together.”

  “Richard. Throughout the production you have belittled me. Ignored me. Given me no useful direction. Cut takes when I am still performing. I would prefer you not to speak to me for the rest of the shoot.”

  I turned from his blank expression and walked over to George who was hovering. I gestured behind me.

  “I can’t dub the movie with him. Okay?”

  Lovely Howard Kazanjian produced the whole thing in the most gentlemanly fashion. The attitude of the producer can make a huge difference to the atmosphere on any production. The film business has its own peculiar rules on how people are treated. There has yet to be an HR Department like other industries. It’s better simply not to complain – if you want to work again. Howard somehow managed to contain the awkward situation and made a very popular film that audiences love. And many fans loved the Ewoks. And, as I had requested, George directed my ADR sessions.

  It was here that we incorporated real Ewok words, covering my place-holder lines recorded on set. It had been huge fun working with Ben on the language. He and I had listened to recordings of weird dialects from around the world. We wrote down sounds and phrases and jiggled them about to make credible-sounding sentences.

  “Princess Leia wassay wad-ma Artoo. Oss va-ta-ta rundi, Darth Vader! – un chemko vaskeemo tee a tum de Death Star. Oss meechi un Jedi, Obi-Wan Kenobi. Ee mana macha Vader con yum num. Toronto Gosh – Toronto Gosh. Master Luke ah chimeny Choo-Do. Choo-Do. Uta Millennium Falcon ah – chimeny Cloud City.” And so on.

  Yum num still makes me smile. Along with the drama of – Han Solo, Teekolo Carbon! We had to stop sometimes, falling about with laughter. Certain sentences sounded too hilariously vulgar. We didn’t use them in the end. Ewoks are meant to be cute.

  I was shocked. I had wandered into the back-lot behind the stages at Elstree. It was the area where productions could build outdoor sets, do what they wanted here. I remembered seeing the snow-bound gas station from The Shining when we’d shared the studios with Stanley Kubrick. Literally tons of salt had been dumped across the whole area to create the right effect; and the same inside the stages. I recalled sneaking into the set of the garden maze. Big signs declared “Closed Set” but there was no one around. Nosey, I pushed open the heavy, sound-proof door.

  It was genuinely amazing inside and I shouldn’t have been there. Tall green hedges were set against the snow piled on the ground. Even though it was inside Stage Two, next to my dressing room, it seemed genuinely chill as I trespassed on. Then. Horror! I looked down. My trainers had left perfect prints in the fresh fake snow. I froze – in the emotional sense – before working out my escape. So as to limit the damage I’d already done, I carefully walked backwards in my footprints. At last, I reached the edge of the set and walked nonchalantly out of the stage as if I had never been there.

  How extraordinary and spine-tingling to see the finished film in the movie theatre. There was the maze. There was the little boy hero escaping from crazy Jack out in the snow. And he did it by walking backwards in his own footprints, exactly as I had done. I wondered if Mr Kubrick had got the idea from seeing my footwork. Probably not.

  It was a damp, gloomy day and the gas station and maze were long gone – so was the snow. We were reaching the end on this shoot and I wanted some fresh air, away from the Ewoks and the fuggy atmosphere of Jabba’s palace. But now there were clouds of smoke here as well. Two crew members were making a bonfire. I realised what they were doing. But why?

  They paused in their destruction to explain. Its huge steel frame had already been sent to a scrap yard. They were disposing of the rest – the wood and painted panels that were flaming and smouldering in front of us. No longer wanted, too expensive to store, the Millennium Falcon was finally going down in flames.

  I felt a strange emotion as I gazed at the mess. This craft had taken me and my friends on so many exciting journeys. It was a part of our family. It was known and loved around the planet. An icon. What an unfeeling fate – to be wrecked, torn apart, burnt. Immortalised on film but never to exist again in real life. No goodbyes. No speeches. Just this acrid pyre.

  I bent down at the edge of the wet grass and picked up some bundles of wiring. I’d seen them lining the Falcon’s corridors. It didn’t matter what they were for. They looked important – and real. Nearby were some small plastic grills about to be melted down. I picked up this doomed souvenir of a magnificent creation and thumbed mud off the black shape – a word stamped on them. “Ford”. And it didn’t mean Harrison.

  These were car parts.

  So it had been pretend after all.

  It was the end. George wasn’t going to make any more Star Wars films. His once-planned trio of trilogies was going to remain just the one. That was okay. My memories were, to say the least, mixed. I had certainly moved up the chain from being ignored to having my name on the poster – and to being a deity – albeit of the Ewoks – and to being included in some publicity bashes. Perhaps there was an enduring, residual emptiness in my mind – feeling trivialised for playing a role in total disguise – inferior to the other cast whose faces could be seen. Also, I had some good times. Made a living. Made friends. Got to know my golden friend.

  But I would soon find that my life as Threepio was far from over.

  42 ride

  1986 – Flower Street – Burbank – California.

  Tom Fitzgerald sat behind his desk. He was the creative director-producer. He and his fellow Imagineers would combine talents with Lucasfilm and ILM to create a thrilling ride in the Disney theme parks. In his simple office, he conjured the most extraordinary adventure in the air between us, simply with his voice and gestures. He was describing, with vivid energy, the Star Tours experience.

  Guests would be hurled into space, under the incompetent piloting skills of Captain Rex. Being his first day on the job, there would inevitably be some problems. This meant experiencing many of the most dramatic and exciting moments from the three Star Wars movies – the viewport screen constantly alive with a seamless view of the drama, with the passengers seat-belted into the hurtling flight simulator. Thrilling!

  Entering the spaceport prior to departure, the guest would be immersed into the world of space travel. While weird announcements and flight information filled the air, passengers followed a snaking path. It led them past a StarSpeeder 3000, similar to the vehicle they would soon be boarding. This particular one was currently under repair. Artoo doing the mechanics – Threepio directing from a control platform, up above them. Things would not go well, especially with the craft’s space cannons about to explode. This was where I would come in.

  I stood before the camera, in front of a mock-up of the control console, in an otherwise empty studio. Tom directed my performance, as I instructed and cajoled an eyeline that was the non-existent Artoo. I was wearing jeans and a shirt �
�� and a sandbag. The latter kept my feet steady, in one place. My left leg would be the conduit for all the wires needed to activate the animatronic figure I would become.

  Tom and I had such fun, as we recorded the 12-minute performance that would eventually be an endless loop in the parks. And that would include Paris Disney. So I recorded the lines in French as well. Months later, they realised that the French take twice as long to say anything. So we had to re-record a truncated script to fit with the animatronic programming. But I was concerned that the talented team of Imagineers, the utterly brilliant and inventive team who actually create the experiences at Disney parks, would make Threepio too human. I impertinently briefed the animation programmer, that this droid’s movements were unique. David Feiten listened impassively. I just hoped I had made myself clear.

  Many months later, in the middle of the night – a time when installations and maintenance are done at Disney parks – I stood in the new but empty spaceport. There was Threepio, going through his procedures. It was uncanny. He was just as real as if I were inside. David had done a stupendously good job. Later I would tell him my ecstatic reaction. He would smile, slightly. He always did a good job.

  But now I stood there alone. When we’d filmed the sequence, Tom directed me to put a glance down, towards where the audience would be passing through. Standing there, gazing up at my golden friend, the machinery that was hidden inside turned his face down towards me. He looked straight into my eyes. I felt my soul turn over. We gazed at each other for a moment. Then he looked up and went back to nagging Artoo. It was as memorable a moment as my first encounter with Ralph McQuarrie’s concept painting, so many years before.

  Opening Night! Well, the rehearsal, anyway. I stood up on my stage, waiting to make an entrance. It was four in the morning. The brilliantly talented David Schaefer, concealed somewhere nearby, was twiddling Artoo’s controls. David was still accompanying me too, on all sorts of gigs around the world. I sang his praises to Tom, suggesting Disney could well use his skills. So they gave him a job. Stupid of me – our happy times together were no more. But his talents were clearly made for a higher level responsibility than mopping my face and driving Artoo. But that was later. Now. At Anaheim Disney. All systems ready for the spectacle.

  GO!

  A giant flying saucer appeared high in the night sky. Its long, delicate arms fringed the rounded body, as it rose up into sight. A sensational theatrical stroke. It flew towards me, so high above. Now it was nearly overhead. My pre-recorded voice sounded out through an array of speakers. Threepio began landing procedures for his arrival with Artoo, ensuring that Mickey was standing by to greet them. As my words echoed through the empty park, the saucer paused – sort of. For now, it was moving away. Now back again, as it started to swing like a giant pendulum. The arms began to flounce as they beat the air. The motion grew stronger. Stronger. Suddenly. Pieces of the craft tumbling. Breaking. Falling. Crashing.

  It seemed that the giant prop was suspended on a wire. The blacked-out helicopter supporting it was flying four hundred feet higher. It stopped in the right position and hovered. But the prop had gained its own momentum during the brief flight. It didn’t stop. It paused, as if considering the situation, then corrected itself in the opposite direction. And began to oscillate, till it self-destructed and fell to earth. There was an eerie silence. Just the hammering of the helicopter dropping back down to the car park.

  In the sound booth some five hours later, I was recording a new script. This time I would be “beamed down” from space, rather than make a hard landing.

  Twenty-two years later, Tom was back. The original intention, when Star Tours was launched, was to revise the film every few years with a new adventure. For whatever reason, the original film was still running after all that time. At last, that was all about to change in a massive update. No more celluloid film, rushing endlessly behind the cabin walls, through the projector and back. Solid-state digital was the thing. And in 3D. And with branching storylines from all six Star Wars films, providing multiple, randomised adventure combinations which would fly guests to all sorts of destinations. And there were other special effects too. Really special effects. Wow!

  Tom paused. He had sad news. It seemed that Captain Rex had retired, due to metal fatigue. Star Tours needed a new pilot. And they had found one. See-Threepio.

  I was back at Burbank with Tom, recording Threepio’s dialogue as pilot, for what was going to be another wild ride. Star Tours – The Adventures Continue. I was so amazed at ILM’s new footage that, several times, I forgot to speak my lines – so I had to watch it again, which was fun. Earlier, we had actually been filming live-action sequences for the pre-flight monitors. There was the StarSpeeder 1000, an earlier model, since it was to encompass events from the prequels. It was actually a larger version than the ride vehicle, so that I could enter while wearing Threepio’s rather wider shoulders. I fussed around the hangar and up the ramp to the door. It still wasn’t quite wide enough. Rather than rebuild and reschedule the whole shoot, I slid in sideways.

  Prior to take-off Threepio would appear on the cabin monitor. Then as the protective shutter rolled down he would spin round to face the passengers. We filmed me in the pilot’s chair – for real. Except that the rotation mechanism wasn’t quite as state-of-the-art as I’d imagined. It was actually the smallest member of the crew, crammed in a corner under the chair, out of sight. On command, he clutched the seat and whizzed me round. And back again. It looked good on film – looked very funny on set. I tried to insist that protocol demanded Threepio raise his hand in a polite greeting to the guests. This would not be advisable, they said. Given the dynamic movement of the vehicle, lurching through the galaxy, all day, every day, anything not tied down would fall off within a week. With my protective instincts towards my gold chum, I agreed his hands could remain glued to the armrest controls throughout.

  Of course, Threepio wasn’t meant to be on the flight at all. He was merely doing a maintenance check when Space Traffic Control set him on automatic take-off. Poor thing. After years of racing through the worlds of Hoth, Kashyyyk, Tatooine, Naboo and Coruscant – with a side step through the terrifying Death Star, Tom and the team crafted even more thrills based on the last trilogy of the Saga. Meaning the adventures will continue non-stop for our golden pilot, who is doomed to be terrified on an hourly basis, every day of the year, until metal fatigue finally takes its toll of him, too.

  But for me, Star Tours was, and is, the best ride of my life.

  43 radio

  It was more than ten years after we had finished the radio version of The Empire Strikes Back, when the phone rang.

  I remembered the fun Mark and I had, making the original New Hope and Empire radio series for National Public Radio. I’d felt sad that we never completed this incarnation of the trilogy, otherwise so fully represented in every merchandise-filled bedroom of every Star Wars fan across the world.

  Given my long association with radio, I was glad to be a part of NPR’s adaptations. For a start, I didn’t have to wear the gold suit. But more than that, I felt that it presented the wonderful story that George Lucas had created, in a form available to anyone who had a radio. No admission charges, no standing in line, no stink of popcorn. Just the actors’ voices, Tom Voegeli’s effects, and the imagination. It worked splendidly back in 1985. Then ten years’ silence.

  But now Highbridge Audio were planning a production of Return Of The Jedi, with previously unpublished passages from John Williams’ outstanding scores. Three hours of radio need a lot more music to fill out the scenes. Would I care to be involved? Was Brian Daley writing the scripts again? Yes, he was. Yes, I would.

  Months later I was sitting in a boardroom in Los Angeles with Tom, once again the editor, and John Madden, who had directed our previous efforts. Brian couldn’t join us. He was fighting cancer and sorry not to be with us at the script conference. We were sorry, too. There a
re always rewrites in any project. We each had lists of comments and suggestions. Many vanished as John and I hammed up the lines out loud and made Brian’s writing come alive – just the way he’d written them. Perhaps because we both had jetlag, we were hammier than usual but the room resounded with raucous laughter at Brian’s humorous inventions.

  Studying Brian’s script, it was clear just how difficult it is to describe exotic scenes, only in sound. Imagine trying this with Jabba’s palace – a nightmare in all senses of the word. And Brian had given me a problem. He had put much of the scene’s description into a conversation between Threepio and another character, lurking in that mass of strange creatures. Unfortunately, he had made my companion Boba Fett. I was against Fett bonding so closely with Threepio. It simply wasn’t protocol. So, in a nifty pinch from Timothy Zahn’s Tales From Jabba’s Palace, we changed Boba for Arica, an exotic beauty we assumed to be partying on in the unseemly melee.

  Jabba’s film subtitles were not a problem, as Threepio naturally made them his own. But sometimes, when the great Jabba is being particularly disgusting, his own Huttese speaks louder than any translation. And, of course, there were my own lines. I’d always loved the way Brian developed Threepio’s character in his scripts. He had a real ability to capture the droid’s strange mixture of humourless comedy and his oddly bleak but loving personality. No other writer had been able to do this for Threepio – outside his movie incarnation. Only Brian, at the end of the Ewok storytelling scene, could find a radio way of capturing the droid’s deeply-felt frustration with Han Solo.

  So there we were again – me, Ann Sachs as Leia, and Perry King as Han. Everyone was lying that we didn’t look ten years older than the last time we’d met. A happy new addition to the team was Josh Fardon, who had joined us to play Luke Skywalker – at least one member of the cast was the right age for the part. With Ayre Gross playing Lando, I was the only original member of the movie cast present in the studio. Would I be able to restrain myself from giving helpful advice? The question never arose. All the members of team grasped their characters without any assistance from me. Anyway, John patiently masterminded everything with his confident direction, so we all felt comfortably supported by the genial atmosphere he created.