When someone writes a blockbuster movie or bestseller, it’s easy to think that it was all the result of a stroke of creative genius and it happened organically. But in almost all cases nothing could be further from the truth.
Take the Stars Wars movie franchise, for example. There are several intriguing backstories as to how things came to be the way they were in the Star Wars movies. Here I must mention a writer named Chris Taylor who discovered them and wrote a book aptly titled: How Star Wars Conquered the Universe: The Past, Present, and Future of a Multi-Billion-Dollar Franchise.
For example, Taylor tells the story of when Star Wars creator George Lucas showed a rough cut of the film to his colleagues Steven Spielberg and Brian De Palmer. Spielberg thought it would be a huge success, but was mercilessly mocked by De Palmer. He told Lucas what’s all this “Fuck the Force? Where’s all the blood when people get shot?” But sarcasm aside, De Palmer was a talent. Lucas knew it. And De Palmer wanted to help his friend. So he and Jay Cocks, another writer and critic for Time magazine, agreed to rewrite the opening story. Do you remember. The big yellow words at the beginning of the movie, which disappear into outer space. The words give the backstory of the Empire and the rebel alliance.
And there are many other intriguing and tasty morsels.
How about the origin of the Han Solo Wookiee? That came after the sound editor for one of George Lucas’s other projects hired a voice actor named Terry McGovern. And McGovern brought along an old Army buddy named Bill Wookey.
You may be starting to get where this is going.
At some point, the marijuana must have been smoked because a heavily stoned McGovern improvised during a voice-over recording: “I think I just ran over a Wookey.” Lucas, who might just as well have been stoned, who knows, thought what McGovern had said was funny and jotted down the line in McGovern’s notebook, but changed Wookey’s spelling so it ended in the letters ‘I’ and ‘e’. . By the way, McGovern was also hired to be a voice actor in Star Wars. Remember the scene where Obi-Wan-Kenobi hypnotizes one of Darth Vader’s Storm Troopers into saying, “These aren’t the droids we’re looking for?” Well, that was Terry McGovern’s voice saying it. McGovern received the princely sum of $200 for his screen immortality. Bill Wookey, McGovern’s friend, never met George Lucas and had no idea that his name would inspire movie history. That was until Bill Wookey saw the movie and other people who saw it also said that he must have inspired the Chewbacca character. Bill Wookey is a hairy, bearded man who stands at 6 feet 3 inches.
There’s a back story that Taylor tells that I particularly like. This is the origin of the name of the small droid R2 D2.
George Lucas was also responsible for the movie American Graffiti. He and a man named Walter Murch did the sound mixing. But to get the job done properly, they needed to match the dialogue to the actual actuality of the film. So they wrote the letters R for reel and D for dialogue on film cans. Of course, each can was numbered so there was no confusion. Apparently one day (this is a true story) Murch yelled, “I need R 2 D 2” and everyone on set cracked up. Lucas laughed too but also wrote the line down in his notebook.
The Vietnam War played a big role in shaping the Star Wars trilogy. Lucas was rejected for the draft because of his diabetes. But even before making Star Wars, Lucas wanted to create a documentary-style anti-war film about Vietnam. It would be called Apocalypse Now, a title devised by one of Lucas’s friends. Instead, the project was taken over by Francis Ford Coppola, who gave Lucas his first film job working on the musical Finian’s Rainbow. Taylor says in his book that in 1973, Lucas wrote a note about Star Wars: “A huge technological empire hunting down a small group of freedom fighters.” In a way, that was how Lucas viewed the Vietnam War. The Empire being the United States and the freedom fighters the Viet Cong. Star Wars apparently had a hard time getting the required backing from a studio. He pitched to United Artists but was turned down. Universal had an option on the production, but never bothered to give Lucas an answer. He took the project to Disney but they also said no. Finally Fox said yes and the rest is history.
In case you’re interested, Fox permanently owns the rights, but Disney will get a piece of the action. They bought LucasFilm for $4 billion two years ago.
But I’ve saved the absolute best anecdote for last. Taylor’s book talks about how Han Solo was cast. Lucas considered Harrison Ford, but initially dismissed him because he thought a potential Star Wars audience might be distracted if a cast member from American Graffiti (Ford had a small part) suddenly showed up in his next movie.
Harrison Ford, was unemployed at the time and had returned to his original job, as a carpenter. Would you believe that one of his carpentry jobs was at the American Zoetrope offices where Lucas was casting for Star Wars? Ford was installing a new door. Lucas saw Ford working and decided that he would invite him to audition for the role of Han Solo after all, and Ford got the job. He just goes to show that everything happens for a reason. Imagine how different everything could have been if Lucas had gone with his other option, Christopher Walken instead of Harrison Ford? Would Star Wars still be the blockbuster with a very different Han Solo? I doubt it.