The Making of Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back by J. W. Rinzler (English) Hardc
The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. Coinciding with the 30th anniversary of "The Empire Strikes Back, " this lavish, fully illustrated book offers an exclusive, behind-the-scenes look at the making of arguably the greatest of the "Star Wars" films.
Includes never-before-published photos, design sketches, paintings, and more. In this lavish fortieth-anniversary tribute to the blockbuster film Star Wars: Episode V The Empire Strikes Back, New York Times bestselling author J. Rinzler draws back the curtain to reveal the intense drama and magnificent wizardry behind the hit movie-arguably the fan favorite of the Star Wars Saga.Following his The Making of Star Wars, the author has once again made use of his unlimited access to the Lucasfilm Archives and its hidden treasures of previously unpublished interviews, photos, artwork, and production mementos. The result is a comprehensive behind-the-scenes, up-close-and-personal look at the trials and triumphs, risks and close calls, inspiration, perspiration, and imagination that went into every facet of this cinematic masterpiece.
Here's the inside scoop on. The evolution of the script, from story conference and treatment to fifth draft, as conceived, written, and rewritten by George Lucas, famed science-fiction author Leigh Brackett, and screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan. The development of new key characters, including roguish hero Lando Calrissian, sinister bounty hunter Boba Fett, and iconic Jedi Master Yoda.
The challenges of shooting the epic ice planet battle in the frozen reaches of Norway and of conjuring up convincing creatures and craft-from tauntauns and snowspeeders to Imperial walkers. The construction of a life-sized Millennium Falcon and the swamp planet Dagobah inside a specially built soundstage in Elstree Studios.
The technique behind master Muppeteer Frank Oz's breathing life into the breakthrough character Yoda. The creation of the new, improved Industrial Light & Magic visual effects facility and the founding of the now-legendary Skywalker Ranch In addition, of course, are rare on-the-scene interviews with all the major players: actors Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Billy Dee Williams, Anthony Daniels, Peter Mayhew, and David Prowse; director Irvin Kershner; producer Gary Kurtz; effects specialists Richard Edlund, Dennis Muren, Ken Ralston, and Phil Tippett; composer John Williams; and many others. Punctuating the epic account is a bounty of drawings, storyboards, and paintings by Ralph McQuarrie, Joe Johnston, and Ivor Beddoes, along with classic and rare production photos. An added bonus is a Foreword by acclaimed director Ridley Scott. The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back is a fittingly glorious celebration of an undisputed space-fantasy movie milestone. Search your feelings, you know it to be true. Rinzler, executive editor at Lucasfilm Ltd.Is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Making of Star Wars, as well as the London Times bestseller The Complete Making of Indiana Jones. Advance praise for The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back These books are the acid flashback they've been promising us without the mess and fuss of dropping acid. "-Carrie Fisher, actress/author Praise for The Making of Star Wars "Rinzler's books sort of freak me out-because I feel when I'm reading them that I'm right back there!
"-Robert Watts, Star Wars production supervisor "The Making of Star Wars is perhaps the most insightful account of what it's really like to make this kind of movie. The untainted perspective from the pre-release interviews offered inspiration when I found myself in the uncertainty brought upon by the chaos of day-to-day filmmaking. Jon Favreau, director of Iron Man, Zathura, and Elf. These books are the acid flashback they've been promising us without the mess and fuss of dropping acid...
"-Carrie Fisher, actress/author "The Making of Star Warswas perhaps the most insightful account of what it's really like to make this kind of movie. The untainted perspective from the pre-release interviews offered inspiration when I found myself in the uncertainty brought upon by the chaos of day to day filmmaking. "-Jon Favreau, director ofIron Manand the upcomingIron Man 2 "Rinzler's books sort of freak me out-because I feel when I'm reading them that I'm right back there! "-Robert Watts, production supervisor ofStar Wars "This is a book I've always wanted. Is an impeccably written and researched look at the way it really happened, removed of all myth-making, step by arduous step.
A really well-written book, and that is almost unheard of in the behind-the-scenes publishing world. Digging through this fantastic book, I found myself transported back to that summer, excited once again by the dream that these amazing artists and craftsmen all shared. Moriarty, Ain't It Cool Newswebsite. THE SUMMER OF STAR WARS MAY TO DECEMBER 1977 Chapter One Star Wars was a hit. It had opened in 32 theaters on May 25, 1977, and then expanded, slowly, into several hundred more. By the end of July, it was playing in packed houses scattered throughout the United States. "To set the scene for this journal and to establish its point of view, I must go back to the summer of 1977, " writes Alan Arnold in Once Upon a Galaxy.I was with a film unit in Greece when reports began to reach us of an extraordinary movie that had taken America by storm. Some of the technicians on location had worked on the film the previous year and were surprised, even puzzled, by these reports. They could not explain the fever developing around what was being called, for want of a better term, a space fantasy, nor the fact that in American cities people were lining the streets for blocks to see it-and going back again. " "I was making a film in northern Afghanistan, says Robert Watts, production supervisor on Star Wars.
I bought my copy of Time one week and opened it straight onto a bunch of color pictures from Star Wars. I had no idea it had taken off to such a huge extent.
" "I was walking down Hollywood Boulevard after the film came out, says production illustrator Ralph McQuarrie. It was still playing at Grauman''s Chinese Theatre. The sun was setting and there was a little piece of paper blowing along the sidewalk. I picked it up and saw that it was a bubblegum wrapper with Darth Vader on it.
I thought, Gee, now I''m one of those people who make those things. It''s part of life now. " An astronaut at a party told special effects photography supervisor Richard Edlund, "that he believed it all and was glued to his seat." "It was a darn good story dashingly told and beyond that I can''t explain it, says Alec Guinness, who had played Ben Kenobi. Failure has a thousand explanations. Success doesn''t need one. " "Star Wars tumbled out in the summer of 1977 and just went cuckoo, says Mark Hamill, who had portrayed Luke Skywalker. It was like the hula-hoop or Beatles rages.
After the film came out, I broke up with my girlfriend for a while. I was like a kid in a candy store. I don''t feel I dealt with that very successfully. " "When the film came out, I seemed to do publicity for ages, which meant a lot of travel, says Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia). But I only get a sense of Star Wars'' importance when a child recognizes me and becomes speechless. Kids don''t think I''m on this planet. Very little children even believe Princess Leia is a real human being who lives in outer space. " "What Star Wars has accomplished is really not possible, says Harrson Ford, who had played Han Solo. But it has done it anyway. Nobody rational would have believed that there is still a place for fairy tales. There is no place in our culture for this kind of stuff. But the need was there; the human need to have the human condition expressed in mythic terms. " "Millions of people go to the cinema, says composer John Williams. It''s stimulating to hear people whistling your tunes. He, too, had been surprised by the film''s initial success and was relieved by its perseverance. While on the island, he hadn''t neglected his passion for film and had enticed his friend and fellow director Steven Spielberg to work on another project of his-Raiders of the Lost Ark-which would feature an adventurer-archaeologist named Indiana Jones. "I took Francis Ford Coppola to see Star Wars in a regular theater in San Francisco, " says Lucas.That was probably the first time I saw it with a real audience. It was enjoyable, but the thing of it is, by the time you get that far down on a movie, you''re so numb and so tired and so emotionally involved that it''s very hard to jump up and down and get excited. You feel good, but it''s a very quiet kind of thing. " "When it became a phenomenal success, it was amazing, says Bunny Alsup, assistant to the producer of Star Wars.
I don''t think anybody in the world expected it and it was astonishing. Back in the preview days, I remember we were trying to fill a theater with all age groups, so I was personally calling college campuses and asking,''Would anyone like to go see this movie?'_ BADLANDS After giving a few interviews, George Lucas stopped doing publicity for the film.The success of Star Wars was already different from the success of his previous film, American Graffiti (1973), inspiring massive emotional reactions domestically and around the world as it opened in foreign markets. It had enormous licensing possibilities and warranted a sequel. A follow-up, however, was going to take an enormous amount of work from someone who was in the middle of recharging his batteries. Lucasfilm wasn''t a big studio, or even a small studio.
It had a makeshift office called Park House, just north of San Francisco in San Anselmo, and-on a parcel owned by the company-a single trailer sitting in a parking lot across the street from Universal Studios in Los Angeles. The triumph of Star Wars was a mixed blessing. Making that movie had been a four-year horrific seat-of-the-pants experience-one Lucas never wanted to live through again. But he had always envisioned a grander, very different film from what he''d ended up with, so a sequel would allow him to finish the saga-and to tempt the fates once more. "It took so much effort just to get up to speed in order to make the first film and create this great world that I didn''t have the time to have any fun, to run around in it, " says Lucas.Now that I know the world and I can see it, it brings up all kinds of ideas and funny moments and adventures. In the first one, you are in a foreign environment-you just don''t know what''s going on-and it was the same for the author as it was for the audience. So I always felt if I went back to those environments using the same characters, I could make a helluva better movie. Several rumors were already extant in the media concerning follow- ups. One source said that two Star Wars sequels had been shot while the first film was being made.
The second movie, reportedly, would decide who gets the girl and feature a new battle against Darth Vader and his followers. The third movie would have Ben Kenobi return and try to restore the Jedi Knights so they could combat evil throughout the galaxies. Twentieth Century-Fox, the studio that had financed and distributed the film, responded officially that no work had been done on the sequels. Sources also stated that George Lucas wanted only to "supervise" future projects. Lucas stated publicly several times that he was retiring from the director''s chair.
"You end up not being happy anymore and working yourself to death, " he says. Star Wars became a priority; it was one of those things that had to be done:''But what if something happens to one of the actors?' It put me in a bad place personally. DISAPPEARING MAGIC During the summer of 1977, Lucas used the law office of Tom Pollock, Andy Rigrod, and Jake Bloom to begin negotiations with Fox, which had the right of first negotiation and first refusal.Back in 1976, the trio had succeeded in procuring the sequel rights and a 50-50 licensing split for Star Wars. At the time, the studio thought it had given up worthless items, because executives had no faith in the film. Nevertheless, those negotiations had taken more than a year. While Lucas anticipated a much shorter wait this time, he used the bartering period to start organizing his nearly nonexistent company.
Many potential problems loomed, not least of which was that his visual effects company, Industrial Light & Magic, had ceased to be upon the release of Star Wars. Not a single employee of ILM was on the payroll as of June 1977. Those men and women had of course sought work elsewhere.
Many former key members had simply reorganized in the facility''s original warehouse in Van Nuys, forming Apogee, whose founding members were: John Dykstra, Grant McCune, Bob Shepherd, Richard Alexander, Alvah Miller, Lorne Peterson, and Richard Edlund. "Right after Star Wars came out, there was a period where George didn''t know what to do, " model maker Steve Gawley says. But in the meantime, he didn''t need it, as far as I understand. And so the same group of folks got back together and rented the equipment, and we made a television miniseries for Universal called Galactica. " "They rented the equipment back to John Dykstra, says model maker Lorne Peterson of the effects supervisor on Star Wars. And so we were doing Galactica. Dykstra and Apogee ran their group as a cooperative.They all shared in responsibility and shared in profits equally. At least, I think it was equally. I also had my own really small company. We were struggling and then we were also working on Galactica.
" "We got hornswoggled into doing this project with Glen Larson for Universal, the Galactica, says Edlund. Glen Larson came in to ILM, the old ILM in V.
Short Title SW MAKING OF THE EMPIRE S-M/TV. Country of Publication United States.Place of Publication New York. Illustrations 4C & B/W ILLUS. At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it.