ISBN: 9781620953556
© Tim Dry 2012
MY SPECIAL THANKS TO:
Robert Watts
Desmond Jones
Sean Crawford
Barbie Wilde
Mark Penicud for the cover design.
And all the promoters who have invited me to be an autograph guest at Star Wars Conventions worldwide.
But the biggest thanks, admiration and praise must go to Mr George Lucas.
The man who cinematically blew our minds and those of generations to come with the persistence of his extraordinary vision.
FOREWORD.
by Robert Watts.
(Producer of Star Wars Episodes IV - VI)
Tim Dry trained first as a mime artiste and indeed it is in this capacity that our paths first crossed. This you will discover whilst reading his highly amusing account of his experiences in the sometimes crazy world of show business.
Mime as a form of entertainment and communication transcends all national boundaries, as words form no part of its expression. Thus it is universal in appeal and can create emotion in people of any language or culture. The nearest equivalent in the world of movies, from which I come, are the silent films of yesteryear. The words on the cards would be in the language of the country in which the film was being screened. The emotion being supplied by the actors and the action, the only sound being a person live in the movie theatre tinkling on a piano to enhance the scene on screen. Think of the early work of Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin. Both of whom were masters of their craft.
Tim’s career in the entertainment business has been eclectic to say the least. Although initially a mime, he has certainly used words to great effect in his varied career. His music and performance art in the early 1980s, with his creative partner Sean Crawford, as Tik & Tok, was cutting edge and led to an invitation to appear on the Royal Variety Show in 1983 in front of HRH The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh. He is also an inspired photographic artist and this book demonstrates that he is a dab hand at putting words together in a highly humorous manner. Strange for a mime, but then again life is strange.
The heart of the book describes his experiences at the many Star Wars Conventions that have mushroomed all over the world.
I met Gary Kurtz, who was to produce the original Star Wars in Los Angeles in early 1972 at MGM studios, having just returned from finishing shooting a movie in Mexico called The Wrath of God, starring Robert Mitchum and Rita Hayworth. I had also done, amongst other movies, two Sean Connery James Bonds: Thunderball and You Only Live Twice, 2001 A Space Odyssey with Stanley Kubrick and Papillon with Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman. So Gary came to me to ask me about shooting in England. As a result I was engaged as Production Supervisor in September 1975 on Star Wars now called Episode IV – A New Hope. By the time I encountered Tim we had completed The Empire Strikes Back and Raiders of the Lost Ark and had started shooting Return of the Jedi.
I first met Tim in January 1982 at Desmond Jones’ mime school in Shepherds Bush, London. We were casting mimes to play the outrageous monsters in Jabba the Hutt’s palace. Tim was cast as a bad creature known then as Tooth Face. But he also played a good guy, a Mon Calamari Officer on the flight deck of a rebel ship commanded by Admiral Ackbar.
The world of Star Wars Conventions is an unusual experience. It is a world unto itself, a parallel reality to the one in which we exist on a day-to-day basis. I attended my first ever Convention in Los Angeles in May 2007 and I was blown away by how it had all grown since I left Lucasfilm after delivering Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in May 1989. It was at Celebration Europe in London in July 2007 that I reconnected with Tim, and he began to send me chapters of his writing.
I am delighted to have been asked to write this foreword to a book that I know will make you chuckle and one that provides an insight into the life of a highly multi-talented individual. I wish you all a fun time as you explore Tim Dry’s take on this strange world. Fun and laughter are happiness, something that we all seek, for it is an aspect of love. You will find it in this book.
CHAPTER 1.
CAUSE AND EFFECT.
(How it all began)
The screen is black. There is no sound. Unhurriedly, frame-by-frame, an image starts to manifest from out of the nothingness. The camera pulls back incrementally to show first the face and then the upper torso of a man in his mid fifties wearing a black suit, sitting motionless at a table with his head tilted down to the right and his eyes staring at several piles of photographs spread out in front of him. He has an expressive face that one can see is almost Buster Keaton-esque in its potential to portray both comedy and tragedy in the same beat.
We zoom gently out and we see that the man clutches a Sharpie pen in his right hand and is poised as if to apply his signature to a picture that he has chosen. Sounds commence to become audible as the scene starts to brighten. A cacophony of ambient noise, music and voices begins to build in volume as the lights come up.
As the camera pulls further back to a wide shot it is revealed that this man is just one of many sitting in rows behind similarly festooned tables in a large and very brightly lit room. Actually, it’s a lot more than merely a “room”; it’s a cordoned-off area inside a building larger than an aircraft hangar. The noise is louder now. It swirls and contains bytes of electronic sound, dialogue and the activity of a great many people. The parade of costumed visitors and those clad for normality passing by our seated hero is in slow motion. Everyone is moving gracefully in the way that only the over-cranked camera can provide, but he is still motionless. His face shows an enigmatic, yet slightly confused smile, as if is this is a moment that he is continuing to be a witness to and to be familiar with, but one that he is somehow not a participant in. From the Tannoy speakers distributed throughout the hall comes an echoing, disembodied voice excitedly and repeatedly welcoming us all to: “Celebration IV in Los Angeles! The biggest Convention EVER for worldwide fans of the Star Wars saga!”
Above this spacey footage we now hear a voiceover saying:
“I feel …dislocated. Adrift in time and space. How did I get here? This is so strange and yet somehow wonderful. Am I worthy? I’m just a tiny molecule in the scheme of things. Am I worthy? Well, obviously I must be, otherwise I wouldn’t have been invited. But how did this happen?”
With a cinematic device that is so familiar to aficionados of films that involve a degree of time travel, we ripple back to:
The early morning of the 9th of January, 1982.
I judder awake in the cold light of a new day. My dream of the future splinters out from my recently woken mind and dissipates, leaving just a few strands to grasp at before they too are gone. It’s my birthday! I’m 30 years old now and who knows where the time goes? I’m dressed and coffee-fuelled by 10 AM. Why? Because I’m on my way to an audition for a part in a movie. Not just any old movie mind you, no, this is for a minor creature feature role in the upcoming third episode of the Star Wars trilogy: Revenge Of The Jedi. I was ready. Star Wars, let me count the ways!
Sometime in December 1977, I’d gone along, with my partner of the time, Barbara, to watch a movie (I can’t for the life of me remember what it was) at one of the biggest cinemas in London‘s Leicester Square. Before the start of the main attraction, they showed a trailer for a forthcoming feature. The two of us sat transfixed with snacky nibbles and soft drinks forgotten as the house lights darkened and the huge screen suddenly burst into life to reveal an endless panoply of unknowable stars, with a voice over saying: “Somewhere in space this may all be happening right now…” Then we were sucked immediately into a galactic battle unlike anything I’d ever seen before in its speed and realism, introduced to the main characters and plot structure, and then about 30 seconds later, spun out back into reality, breathless and exhilarated. “This is a film I have GOT to see as soon as possible!” I shouted to myself. I did, several weeks later and I was hooked. I felt that I could now confidently stride into my bank as this new and wonderful galactic villain Darth Vader in my head and fearlessly demand from the manager an extension on my overdraft. Refusal to comply would result in the mental strangulation that DV had perfected so chillingly well. I wasn’t really drawn to the Dark Side as such. I just loved the outfit, the breathing and the Light Sabre.
The 1970s were a pretty poor time for Sci Fans in the UK. There hadn’t been a lot of space movie action since the Sixties. It seemed to be a dead genre now that times had shifted to a more grim pragmatism socially and cinematically. In 1977, Punk was in full noisy flight in England, with all its attendant musical and sartorial ugliness. I was still a bit of an old hippie at heart back then and I nonetheless wanted the dream of a more romantic and optimistic world in which to live. I was finding myself just a little cut off from what everyone else seemed so desperate to be a part of. I wasn’t into the new trend of youthful pseudo politics or the somewhat manufactured patriotic fervour of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee celebrations going on all around me that year. I wanted escape from all that. I had my books and my music of course, but they were somehow now over familiar. So the imminent arrival of Star Wars and the current release of David Bowie’s majestic and optimistic single Heroes were about all I had to cling onto in that present. I can’t remember whether Close Encounters had been released by then or not. If it had then that makes three things.
I was 25 years old and a professional mime artist, working as part of a nine-person company and doing shows here and there in the UK. I was obsessed by this ancient, non-vocal storytelling art and had been for about two years or so. And quite probably for the first time in my life, I was actually pretty good at something and that motivated me to pursue it as much as I could. I loved the romanticism of this silent, black and white world, where you could transfix an audience merely by a hand gesture, a facial expression, or a curve of the body in space. I just wondered if I was ever actually going to make some money from it?
Flash forward to January, 1982.
Over the previous three years, things had become somewhat different in my life in an unexpected but very exciting way. From the summer of 1979, I had been a member of a bizarre burlesque and multi media group named Shock, along with Barbara, and as such had achieved a pleasing level of notoriety and recognition. We released a couple of singles on RCA Records, toured the UK repeatedly, had a club residency in New York at the legendary Ritz Club, supported Gary Numan for three nights at his “Farewell” shows at Wembley Arena, terrified nightclub patrons in Bangkok and other places, and generally had a pretty wild time. But, because all good things sadly have a finite lifespan, it had inevitably combusted and now I was creatively reborn as half of a mime/music duo called Tik & Tok, alongside another ex–Shocker, Sean Crawford.
We had become pretty popular and well-liked in England over the preceding year. We refined and built upon a form of mechanical mime movement called Robotics. (You see? There’s that Sci-Fi creeping in!) And we made that style into our own distinctive act. We told anyone who’d listen that we wanted to be, in all seriousness, as much like machines as possible. We were making our own music for our performances and were doing regular TV appearances and live shows in clubs and cabaret. And the one thing that made us even more visually outstanding was our use of costume and liberal appliance of make-up. Not only for our act but also in day-to-day life, too. This was the time of the New Romantic fashion and pop music explosion in England and Tik & Tok were right in the middle of it. We really were hanging out with the likes of Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, Culture Club, et al, and partying like mad as often as we could. And that was a lot, believe me!
Since the demise of Punk at the end of the 1970s, a great many young people were searching for something more colourful and theatrical to become involved in socially. And thanks to a handful of adventurous DJs playing only a mix of Bowie, the new sounds of Kraftwerk, Ultravox and other European electronic music in clubs that they’d take over for one night a week, a whole new audience who just wanted to dress up and have fun was born.
Sean and I had all of our clothes made for us by his girlfriend at the time, Jane Kahn, who had a shop in Chelsea, and her designs were a stunningly outrageous and original combination of Japanese Kabuki, Mediaeval and Sci-Fi, with liberal applications of silver studs, fur and feathers. It was theatrical and flamboyant, and we played it all absolutely for real. Our heads were shaved at the front except for a central tuft, everything remaining was dyed jet-black and we grew the back into long rat-tails. We glued metal spikes and different coloured glass jewels onto the shaved area and wore black and red at all times. We became Tik & Tok 24/7 and refused to answer to our real names at all (unless it was to our parents or to government officials). We created our own little safety bubble, and it protected us from the slings and arrows of the “Real World” very successfully.
Tik & Tok appeared on over a dozen UK TV shows by the beginning of 1982 alone and performed in clubs all over the country. The press loved us, of course, because we gave good copy and we were visually outrageous, but at the same time, refreshingly and charmingly polite. It was a mutual courtship. Today I re-read the diaries that I kept from those frenetic times and marvel at how busy and how energetic we were, both socially and professionally. “Oh youth, optimism, confidence, humour and skill, what a heady potion thou dost make in combination!” And now things were going to get even more exciting…
Desmond Jones, my mentor and mime teacher for the previous six years, phoned me out of the blue sometime in the first week of January 1982 and asked if I was available to come to his school this coming Saturday to audition for a major Hollywood movie. An audition?
“Oh God, have I got to do something Shakespearean or Pinteresque?” I quavered.
“No, not at all,” he said with a smile in his voice. “It’s for a Sci-Fi movie. In fact, you’ll be meeting one of the co-producers of Star Wars. He’s looking for some mimes to play creatures in the new sequel.”
“WHAT? You cannot be serious!” my brain screamed.
He was. This was about as big as a big fantasy thing gets. I mean ME, auditioning for Star Wars!
So I gird my tights and pack my loins and make my way to Desmond’s school in West London, trying to walk nonchalantly into a room full of fellow mimes in competition. Des is there, of course, and also a guy who looks important, but casual in a film producer-kind of way. It transpires after an introduction that this gent is the legendary Robert Watts and, yes, he is indeed at the top of the Producer Tree for his work on the preceding two Star Wars movies and even more so for this new one. And, if those three weren’t enough by themselves, he’d also got a modest little flick called Raiders Of The Lost Ark under his production belt, too. Therefore, by 1982, he was “Un Grand Fromage” of the first order. In spite of this stellar Hollywood status, Mr Watts came across to us as friendly, open and still excited about it all.
I change into my rehearsal kit and check out the opposition: there’s Sean (well, I knew he’d be here, because we’d exchanged breathless phone calls just the day before), a lot of people that I didn’t know and a few that I did. Sean and I had stopped going to Desmond’s classes when things started to heat up T&T-wise a couple of years back, so there was an influx from his newer student base. Mr Watts tells us that this is the follow up to The Empire Strikes Back and that we would be auditioning to play members of Jabba the Hutt’s entourage in his subterranean palace. Jabba, being a kind of Galactic “Kray Brothers in one” kind of guy, has his own dodgy empire of wheelers and dealers, and is naturally keen to surround himself with some villainous alien back-up. And that’s where we come in. Or some of us anyway.
They’re looking for about nine performers for this specific location and the production team is going to have to choose from about twenty-five of us. Desmond gives us a bit of “Creature Movement” acting preliminaries and then we’re off. In any group situation like this, it’s best not to try and sneakily check out what the person next to you is doing. You’ll either get despondent or over cocky. Nope, the wisest thing to do is to just focus on being heavy, malignant and potentially dangerous and move accordingly in an alien way. I sway, lurch, grunt and throw in a bit of undulation. And then, just for a variational tease, a hint of robotic movement. Fifteen minutes later, it’s a clap of hands and a “Thank you all very much. We’ll be in touch.” I look at Sean and we give each other that wry shrug that goes with the subtext “Hey, who knows?” and make our way back to our homes.
Over the next week, Tik & Tok are distracted from thinking: “Did we? Should I have? Oh God, I really want this,” etc., by our current work schedule. David Bailey takes our portrait with a scantily clad model for Ritz Magazine on Friday, we’re in the recording studio for two nights recording and mixing, we do three evenings of Robotic Cabaret at a place called Coconut Grove in London’s West End, we meet with the producers of a Horror/Sci-Fi film that will eventually be called Xtro for upcoming involvement, feed our cats and our girlfriends, and generally enjoy life in our bubble.
Then sometime during the next few days the phone rings. It’s Desmond: “Tim, they want you for the film! Can you go along to Elstree Film Studios on Tuesday 9:00 AM next week for a costume fitting, a meet and greet, and a rehearsal?”
“Erm, let me just look in my diary. (Fake page rustling sound.) OK, yep, I can do that.” I nonchalantly reply.
I put the phone down, fall to my knees in my living room and punch the air with both arms whilst loudly declaiming “YESSSSSS!!!” in the way that footballers obviously copied from me a decade or so later. My cat looks at me in a slightly supercilious, but expectant way and I see the little one-track feline thought balloon above her head:
“Hey, Dad, that’s great news! Does this mean that you’re going to upgrade my food quality now?”
“Yes baby, it does. It looks like I’m off on an amazing journey…
CHAPTER 2
INSIDE THE PALACE OF DREAMS.
(Filming Return Of The Jedi)
London is pretty dark, cold and deserted at 6.30 in the AM in January. Its daytime throngs of people and their hustle and bustle are still asleep for a while longer. A sickly moon lowers above chimney tops and office blocks, and the sodium streetlights cast a misty orange pall over the neon signs on buildings. The streets are slick with dew and whatever else falls from the sky in a huge city at night. It’s quiet. Here and there you’ll spy a lonely drunk howling at the world as he prepares his soiled sleeping bag for a day in the doorway of a church or a shop. A few late night revellers can be seen in the more groovy parts of town, staggering their way homeward after hedonistic clubland revels. Why, only two mornings previously, I was doing the exactly the same thing after a long and hectic night of shoulder rubbing, drinking and loud music. I’d become used to working with a body clock that ran contrary to the norm. But here I am now, in a car together with Sean and another “Mime Who Got The Job” named Graeme Hattrick, roaring along at a modest, but excited pace through the city’s outskirts on our way to the suburban town of Boreham Wood in Hertfordshire.
Graeme has very kindly opted to drive the three of us to the studio complex at Elstree Studios for an 8.30 AM call, for this is our first day of costume fittings and rehearsals for Revenge Of The Jedi. We’re like kids on our way to the world’s biggest members only sweetshop, trying hard to appear professional, but exuding giggly and nervous energy at the same time. Naturally enough, myself and Sean (as Tik & Tok) are clad, even at this ungodly and spooky hour, in some of Jane Kahn’s evocative fantasy clothing as per every other day in 1982. We really are going for our big adventure in style. I have always loved being driven through London at night -- you can really see it with different eyes. History and ghosts, buildings ancient and modern, it’s like a huge film set in its own right.
Elstree Studios was originally developed as just two sound stages for filming in 1925, and occupied a large plot of vacant land on the edge of the town. Over the decades more sound stages and studio facilities were added until, by the early 1980’s, Elstree was the most popular and well-used studio facility in England. George Lucas had already filmed Episodes IV and V of the Star Wars saga there and Raiders Of The Lost Ark had completed at the studios in 1981. We were about to step into Movie History.
We pull up at the studio gates at about 8.00, explain who we are to Security, park the car and make our way to the production and wardrobe offices and workshops situated somewhere inside the maze of buildings. The vast and looming sound stages look mystical and evocative in the early morning light and in my mind are filled with teeming celluloid dreams from past, present and future. Suddenly, standing on stage in some suburban hellhole performing a modestly good mime show to fourteen indifferent people and a bored dog, seems a very, very long way away.
I try to be nonchalant as we are led into a large room filled with half-sculpted creature heads, bits of alien torsos, scale models, weapons and many creatively intense people beavering away at bringing the denizens of another galaxy to life, but my trousers threaten to fill with gaseous excitement and overwhelm all within earshot. The air in the room is heavy already with the smells of latex, acetone, spray glue, paint and the addition of a bum gust from me would probably cause the whole mix to ignite.
We meet co-producer Robert Watts again, who introduces us to the three key members of the team who have been labouring for months to create this extraordinary world for us all to inhabit. Namely, Phil Tippett (creature design), Stuart Freeborn (make-up designer) and Stuart Ziff (cool surname) who is the Chief Articulation Engineer. We also bump shoulder pads with the other mimes from Desmond’s audition that made it inside the magic rectangle and it transpires that none of us has the faintest idea of who or what we shall be portraying in this grand venture.
Both Sean and I are transfixed and absorbed by how these rows of blank heads made of pus-coloured latex rubber will shortly be airbrushed, given hair, warts, distressed and transformed to look like the denizens of an underworld beyond imagining. Let’s face it, it’s what we dreamt of as Tik & Tok -- to be colossally successful visual artists with financial access to making your wildest, most unearthly visions of stage and video performance come true. Well, here we are!
It has been decreed that I shall be encased in the head and the costume of a creature known (at this stage of filming) as Tooth Face. According to the preliminary sketches and models that I saw, this dentally malformed member of Jabba’s motley crew is a six foot five beast, hairier than a Turkish fisherman’s armpit, in some ways akin to the Abominable Snowman in looks and charm, and is not remotely lovable or in any way cute. You see? Typecast at such an early age! I look like the “Before” part of a full body waxing programme that will only hit Britain 20 years later.
As a test, they lower the prototype head gently down over my own and then fire off some Polaroids. Does it sit comfortably? Not exactly, not yet. It’s going to need some more padding inside it. My real eyes are looking out through the nostrils of this fearsome looking alien and at first it seems to weigh a ton. I really hope that I don’t have to sneeze in character because I certainly don’t fancy blowing my own eyeballs!
Off comes the head for adjustments, etc., and now I do the fitting for the actual body costume. This consists of three layers. First, I have to squeeze my way into a white Lycra body suit that is such a tight fit that every organ in my body feels visible. Not a good look for anyone this, unless you’re some rippling-muscled ballet dancer with a crotch packed like an egg box. Next I climb into a padded foam suit that covers everything except head, hands and feet. This gives me the body shape of the Michelin Man and again is wonderfully unflattering, especially with my skinny face with its dyed black hair sticking out of the top. Thankfully it doesn’t really weigh that much although it does make any natural movement a bit difficult. But it’s all character building, right? Now I descend my legs into a pair of what are basically furry trousers that look and smell like a Yak pelt that is in need of some serious dry cleaning. These are held up by heavy duty elastic. So at this point I look like some grotesquely overweight and hirsute Polish labourer with a pinhead.
Luckily everyone else is too engrossed in his or her own discomforts and embarrassments to notice my new fashion statement for spring 1982. The shaggy torso is now fitted on and this is Velcro’d all the way up the back so it can be easily removed. Step four: I stick my feet into a pair of hairy boots that come complete with clawed toes. Hands go into long, shaggy and taloned gloves that extend up to my elbows and thus my brand new body is complete. I’m certainly in character in terms of whiff, that’s for sure.
Finally the head is placed back on over my own, et voila! Tooth Face is here and is ready to kick some ass! I try out a few weighty and menacing moves and seem to suitably impress the watching costume and make-up people. I’m sweating already after even a modest amount of exertion and fervently hope that I’m not going to be asked to do anything too energetic once we’re on set.
All around me (if I swivel in a full body style), I can see the others being issued with their creature heads and body parts. It seems to be pretty random as to who gets what. Sean is having a huge, vertiginous cranium that resembles that of a camel with a drinking problem hoisted onto his shoulders. He looks like a dromedary on his way to the Cantina to bang a few back whilst waiting for an alien Mickey Rourke to show up and cause some mayhem. His real eyes are positioned somewhere around the mouth of the head.
Gerald Home (another Desmond alumni) is being fitted with a Squid Head that makes him look like he deserves to be beaten to a pulpo and served up for supper in a waterside restaurant somewhere on Skiathos.
Our friend Graeme is easing himself into a costume that resembles that of a large female marsupial with a hormone imbalance. I was pretty glad I missed that one. At least my character looks mean and tough. All the credited Mime Artists are here today, either climbing into or out of costumes and body parts, or flexing out some creature moves for themselves, the producers and the technicians. There’s also a puppeteer with one arm up the rectum of what at this stage of its creation looks like a huge, bald, alien chicken. We all change back into our civilian clothes as the crew have a confab about necessary changes to be made. Then it’s a “Thanks guys! See you all here tomorrow!” That was Day One of our costume fitting.
We come back bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for our second attendance for wardrobe and make-up at 8.30 AM the following day. We’ve got the driving into Elstree thing down pat and our early morning routine for the next three weeks is mapped out with ease. Our motto is: “No left turn unstoned!” Somehow overnight all of our costumes and masks have been tweaked and twiddled into more comfortable (well, almost) and practical configurations and we’re starting to feel quite at home in them. But that was only in the cool and unrestricted environment of the fitting rooms. The real test would come later on once we’re all on set under the heat of the lights.
We move to a photographic studio and pose individually for some photo portraits for reference, continuity and maybe publicity. Then all of us mimes are posed in a group around the actor Michael Carter, who is playing a character called Bib Fortuna -- apparently he’s Jabba The Hutt’s right hand man. It’s a dirty job but someone’s got to do it. Bib is a tall, thin creature with an unpleasantly bulbous, pale pink head that has two tentacle type things growing out from each side, which he rakishly wears draped around his neck and shoulders like a pair of ghastly fleshy scarves. The Elephant Man and he would appear to share the same DNA. His eyes are red and resemble those of an alley cat who’s overdone the catnip too many nights running. His mouth is filled with sharp, pointy teeth and instead of fingernails, he’s got claws. Funnily enough he wouldn’t look that out of place in some of the dark nightclubs that Tik & Tok frequent.
The photographer arranges us like some kind of unearthly football team or a work’s outing from hell and bangs off a series of full colour shots. Everybody seems happy with how we look, a few High Fives are given and received amongst the stressed, but jolly crew (to us Brits that was a bit confusing as we’d never seen that before), and our heads are gently removed by female wardrobe assistants who clasp them possessively to their bosoms on their way back to the prop room. We’re escorted over to the huge sound stage where we’ll be filming all of the Jabba’s palace and throne room scenes. This takes quite a time as we are forced to shuffle due to the confines of the costumes and I wish that someone had taken a picture of us. “Hey Mom, look at the pinheads with weird alien bodies!”
This is our first glimpse of the inside of Mr Hutt’s cosy underground den of iniquity and very impressive it is too. Despite the attendance of carpenters and set builders drilling, sawing, bashing and making last minute adjustments, I really got a sense of how absolutely REAL this was going to be. Normally on a film or TV set the wall that Our Hero stands proudly in front of is actually made from some cleverly painted pieces of plywood held up at the back by battens weighed down by sandbags. Here’s the angst-ridden Assistant Director’s headset dialogue back to his colleagues in the control room: “Please, don’t let him lean against the wall! Shit, too late! Quick, someone pick up Mr Big Actor and you others try and put the set back together!” This is a phenomenon you could witness in British TV shows like Dr Who in its early years. The brave Doctor and his ever present nubile young female assistant would be running down a corridor being hotly pursued by a Dalek or a Cyberman and you could see the walls wobbling as they act their way past. But not here. Oh no. This is a completely authentic environment. The throne room has a ceiling, four walls and a floor -- surrounded by dark nooks, crannies, doorways and blind alleys, and is to all intent and purpose a real building. It’s all slimy, dank, stone surfaces that look unwholesome. Fantastic!
We make our entrance in awe and await our orders. Enter Mr David Tomblin, the First Assistant Director. He’s a genial man with an imposing physical and vocal presence, whose job it is to organize people like us and other players into position when we’re about to turn over for a take. In fact, what he does is to implement all the little details that the main director, Richard Marquand, is going to be too busy with the lead actors to attend to. Of course, the First Assistant Director has a 2nd and a 3rd AD at his command and they will delegate further on down the food chain if necessary. It is very much like a military operation, which of course it needs to be for the whole thing to function as designed.
Nothing is left to chance. David scatters us at intervals around the throne room -- some of us lounging on cushions in the smoky, recessed archways and others lurking on foot in a secretive manner against pillars. Luckily Sean and I are amongst those chosen to be languid creatures reclining in a quite probably drug-induced haze for our first few scenes. And these are the ones when C-3PO and R2-D2 are ushered into the presence of Jabba to deliver their holographic message from Luke Skywalker by the fearsome Bib Fortuna. It’s all set up then. That’s where we’re going to be for the next week or so. We get changed and scamper off homewards.
The first day of filming:
Sean and I are allocated our own personal dressing room in a block adjacent to the sound stage and this is great for us. It’s like the production team know that we are a professional duo and have very kindly put us together for the duration. We set about decorating it for our needs. Nothing too elaborate really, just a few pictures, some incense, a basic Casio keyboard, a Roland Drumatix drum machine, two pairs of headphones and one of our primitive analogue synths. In a planning ahead kind of moment, we thought we might as well equip ourselves to be able to possibly rough out some ideas for a simple little Electro ditty or two whilst we’re hanging around. Our costumes are hung up all ready for us to ease into when called, we have a large tub of neutral-smelling talcum powder on hand to help us squeeze into our Lycra body suits, an assistant brings us coffee and water, and we’re good to go when required.
Around mid-morning we hear the approaching crackle and hiss of an assistant being instructed by walkie-talkie to summon us to the set. We clamber into our triple-layered costumes as quickly as we can and are led out onto the set where our character heads await us. God, this really is amazing! Right before our eyes squats the mighty galactic slug Jabba upon his throne (he is one BIG Mother I can tell you!) with a green-skinned, nearly naked dancing girl chained to his side. Meet Mr Repulsive! If there is such a thing as an interplanetary Ugly Stick then this colossal mollusc has been beaten with it from day one.
The room is vast, gloomy, filled with smoke and now totally complete. Each of us has at least one female helper who is there solely to make our stay on set as comfortable as possible. They gently lower our creature craniums down over our own and I think that this is a brand new interpretation of being given head. Stop it! You’ve got work to do. Once we’re all ensconced in our delegated positions and everyone else on set is primed the action begins. David Tomblin’s instructorial voice now achieves the velocity and volume of a mad, but benign dictator and we are all absolutely ready for Take One. We can’t even see the cameras. That’s how real this all is.
“TURN OVER -- and ACTION!” To our right enters a campily befuddled C-3PO and a beeping R2-D2, who, led by Bib Fortuna, approach Jabba and begin to bargain for Han Solo’s life. You all know the story backwards I’m sure, so I don’t need to retell it, do I? Those of us stashed in the alcoves do some lolling and a bit of languid acting as our two mechanical protagonists entreat Slug Boy to release Mr Solo from his slab of Carbonite. It’s a fairly laid back scene from our POV. After all, we’re the cool bad guys hanging out with Jabba and we’re used to the comings and goings of his victims and playthings, so there’s no flailing of limbs and shock horror reactions to be had here. Hey, just another couple of Droids, right? They come and they go down here.
No sooner than the scene kicks off than it’s then suddenly halted by the magisterial Tomblin tones and it’s back to square one for Take Two. Being new and virginal in 1982 to the tiresome repetition and baffling delays of the film-making process, we try to convey the “Huh?” moment to each other, but to no avail. We can’t actually turn our heads to look at each other. Our gallant and ever-ready assistants whisk to our sides and remove our creature craniums so that we can breathe in-between shots. I had no idea that sitting in full costume and moving our heads just a little bit under all the lights and with the many smoke machines pumping out their possibly carcinogenic fumes would generate as much heat and perspiration as this on the set. So much so that by Take 6 of the same shot (and this is still only Scene 1 of this set up), we’re all heading towards the precipice of hyperventilation and oxygen deprivation. And that’s just two more “ations” than we need to work comfortably with on this location. Oh, that’s another “ation”, isn’t it!
So, the answer to the question that I always get asked by autograph collectors and fans at every Convention is: “YES, IT WAS HOT IN THE COSTUME. VERY HOT!” Just to allay any possible thoughts along the lines of “Ooh, get him, Mr Whinging Performer who’s getting paid a fair wedge for being in a Star Wars movie. So what’s his problem?” I’d like to quote right here from the very useful guide booklet to the making of Jedi called The Official Collectors Edition (yep, still got my own, slightly soiled original copy), wherein the producer of the film, Howard Kazanjian, says:
“The breathing problems for our actors in the creature suits first showed up on the sets at Elstree. One of our scenes had about thirty creatures in it. Some of the heads take up to twenty minutes to put on and the head could only stay on that individual for one or two minutes. At the end of the take, no matter how good or bad the take had been, the head had to come off just to allow the person to breathe. Try to imagine the confusion and chaos in a scene with twenty or thirty creatures on a set accompanied, of course, by twenty or thirty wardrobe people.
For some of the creatures, the heads hadn’t even been designed to come off and the creature handlers would stick hair blowers, turned on full cold, into the mouths of the masks so the actors inside could breathe. This sounds crazy, but the danger of asphyxiation was very real. I’ve seen a few strange sights on sets in my time in the movie business, but few were as strange as watching two creature handlers on their hands and knees, pouring cold air from a blower up the mouth of a terrifying-looking alien creature. Some of those actors inside those suits deserved medals.”
That’s me! I demand my medal right now! Ok, so it was twenty-nine years ago, but I think I’m now due a visit to the Palace to get anointed by Her Majesty for my services to the film industry. Don’t you?
The main reason why filming scenes of this scale take so long is not really anything to do with mistakes made by the actors (or ourselves naturally), but has a hell of a lot to do with the complexity of the set. For example, the whole thing was built six feet above the real floor of the sound stage, to enable puppeteers to work from underneath. Because it was a real three dimensional environment, no one could just stroll on and off the set in-between takes for a smoke or a large alcho-livener, and that’s very unusual. So once you were in there, that was it. You were stuck until they broke for a new set-up. Need a piss? Forget it! They should have fitted the costumes with the apparatus that astronauts use in space when they get the urge. Maybe these days they do? And air con too? How about a drip feed attached to an optic on your back that circulates a vodka martini when the need becomes irresistible? That’s the sort of suffering for my art that I feel I could happily take on board these days if Mr Epic Director calls. In fact, I’ll have it written into my contract, darling! Back then it was lay off the coffee, or else. Actually that wasn’t too much of a hardship, as those of you who’ve worked on film or TV shoots will know that what has been stewing for four hours inside those tall silver cylinders with spouts is not really the refreshing caffeine beverage as we know it. This stuff tastes like elk piss with a squirt of coffee flavouring and is the colour of Mississippi River water. You can feel the enamel being stripped from your teeth with every mouthful.
Imagine then, that because of all this activity by a huge amount of people confined in a very hot enclosed space, by about midday it’s all getting a tad claustrophobic. Performers were wilting like three-day-old funeral lilies. Between takes, our creature area looked like the Somme without the blood and guts. That is until some very clever and considerate technician devised the usage of the cold air blowers that Mr Kazanjian spoke about earlier. People were hidden in the ceiling and behind walls to enable them to operate some of the creatures that were animatronic or mechanical. That’s why it took so long to orchestrate all the creatures, actors, cameramen, creature handlers and lighting technicians to all be in the exact right place at the right time to shoot just one tiny scene.
Film-making is a pretty slow and repetitive process at the best of times, even for comparatively simple set-ups with just a few actors, lights, and cameras, etc., so you can imagine how much exact planning had to be worked out and strictly adhered to. It made the Cantina sequence from Episode IV look like a home movie. Don’t get me wrong, I loved every bizarre moment of it all and any whining was strictly confined to my head. The guys I felt really sorry for were the three puppeteers actually incarcerated in Jabba’s torso operating his arms, eyes and tail. Imagine that.
“Hello Darling. What did you do at work today?”
“Well, I spent eight hours inside the body of a giant green slug. How was your day?”
So Toby Philpott, Mike Edmonds and Dave Barclay come on down to Buck House and receive your MBEs for your services to the Lucasfilm empire.
The subsequent few days of filming were taken up by us creatures repeatedly watching and reacting to C-3PO getting biffed by Jabba, poor old green Oola being thrust unceremoniously into the Rancor pit after refusing Hutty’s offer of slimy sex in a motel room on one of the outer moons of Endor, and the night time entrance of Princess Leia (disguised as Boushh, the bounty hunter) with the captured Wookie, Chewbacca. That sort of name has just got to be bad for the colour of your teeth, whether you’re an alien or not, right? It’s up there with “Drinka Bottla Red Wine A Day” or “Lotta Coffee Sinka”. But hey, ol’ Chewy’s a jovial sort (unless you’re his dental hygienist) and likes nothing better than to aid those in peril that he’s taken a shine to. He’d be a good pal to take along to a football match or to see your bank manager when he calls you in to discuss exactly why they won’t give you an extension to your overdraft.