The Making of The Empire Strikes Back Quotes

“I was constantly insecure about whether the tone was right—tone is everything, an indefinable thing, like quality,” Kershner says. “True discipline is from within. Every artist, every painter, every novelist, anyone who does anything must do it for himself, must have his own discipline. That is really what tempers the character. That’s what makes it possible to do something beautiful and to become something beautiful. That, ultimately, is what the film I’m making is about.”
― J.W. Rinzler, The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

“Battle in the Snow has an unusual orchestration calling for five piccolos, five oboes, a battery of eight percussion, two grand pianos, and two or three harps, in addition to the normal orchestral complement,” Williams notes. “This was necessary in order to achieve a bizarre sound, a mechanical, brutal sound for the sequence showing Imperial walkers.”
― J.W. Rinzler, The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

“I suppose the unconscious mind works all the time on one’s problems,” he adds. “Sometimes themes come very painfully after hours of holding my head in my hands at the piano. Days can go by and I’ll think it is never going to come. Then I’ll sit down at the piano and it sort of pops into my mind; after two weeks of frustration, it just appears out of nowhere. Other times, I might think about a theme for a character and get it straight off. It is a strange and mysterious and frustrating process, almost impossible to describe. It was like exhuming another part of myself in a way, to have to go back and continue a score that was done that long ago. But if you can just get out of the way and let it happen, not let whatever neurotic hang-ups about writing get in the way, one is free to do it.”
― J.W. Rinzler, The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

“Editing is perhaps the only one of the film arts that has no historical antecedents,” says Hirsch. “Editing is the choice of the images, their succession, and their duration. An editor is dealing with time, which is more of a concern in the musical arts. Only film and music require that an audience comprehend the details of a work of art over a given period of time. You can read a novel in one sitting or you can take six months to read it. You can look at the edges or at the center of a painting; you’re not compelled to experience it in any order.”
― J.W. Rinzler, The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

“He’s a slick, riverboat gambler type of dude. Han Solo is a rather crude, rough and tumble kind of guy; this guy will be a very slicked down, elegant, James Bond–type. He’s much more of a con man, which puts him more in the Mr. Spock style of thinking, being smart, cool, and taking tremendous chances. An emotional Spock, someone who uses his wits rather than his brawn.”
― J.W. Rinzler, The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

“George said just off the top of his head, ‘I’d like to see a metal castle in the snow,’ ” McQuarrie says. “George was looking for a place to put Vader’s office.” In one entry, Lucas seems to have reconstructed how he arrived at the name Darth Vader—a combination of the words dark, death, invader.”
― J.W. Rinzler, The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

“Interviewed on the David Letterman show in October 1980, famed science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov exclaimed, “I enjoyed The Empire Strikes Back so much that when they finished it, I jumped up in my seat and yelled, ‘Start the third part!’ I figure at the rate they’re going, they’ll do the last few after I’m dead, which doesn’t strike me as fair.” (Asimov passed away in 1992.)”
― J.W. Rinzler, The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

“I felt ridiculous,” Prowse says of Vader’s paternity revelation. “I thought I was saying one thing and here they have me saying another.”
― J.W. Rinzler, The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

“Williams has written a terrific Darth Vader Theme and it’s so villainous,” says Hamill. “I can already hear the audience booing and hissing.”
― J.W. Rinzler, The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

“Some people think of editing as the physical act of cutting,” Hirsch says. “But that’s a misconception. The French use the word montage for editing, which means ‘to build.’ And I think that is a more precise description.”
― J.W. Rinzler, The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

“I found myself forgetting about Luke, who was standing there emoting all over the place, and watching the robot to see if its performance was going properly!” Kershner says. “That happened time and again, so I would have to pull myself back and concentrate on the actor. Without him, nothing was going to happen. But it’s hard to admit that my directing talent may be judged by the performance of an inanimate object.”
― J.W. Rinzler, The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

“Frank Oz and his crew were there, but they’d be buried down underneath the ground,” says Hamill. “I had an earpiece, so I would hear, ‘Luke, many years have you …’ but if you turned your head the wrong way, you’d pick up Radio 1 and the Rolling Stones singing ‘Fool to Cry.’ I shouted, ‘Hey, I got the Stones,’ and Kersh goes, ‘Cut!’ And he’s way across the bog saying, ‘You know, if that happens again, just pretend you don’t hear it.’ ”
― J.W. Rinzler, The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

“While Prowse, given his penchant for revealing secrets, was kept in the dark, Hamill was debriefed by Lucas and then Kershner, who called over the actor not long before cameras rolled: “I met with Mark, and said, ‘Uh, you know that Darth Vader’s your father.’ ‘Wha—?’ ‘David Prowse will be saying stuff that doesn’t count, forget it. Use your own rhythm compared to what he’s doing.’ ” “They took me aside and said, ‘This is what he’s going to say,’ ” Hamill says. “ ‘You don’t know the truth, Obi-Wan killed your father.’ ” “I told Mark, ‘Don’t tell anybody—especially don’t tell David Prowse—but I want you to be able to know, to be able to act appropriately,’ ” Lucas says. “And then Kersh worked the scene with him.” “I love when Darth Vader says, ‘The only way you’ll ever beat me is with hate,’ ” Kershner says. “It’s a lie and the kids know it. The last thing Ben says is, ‘Remember, don’t use hate.’ It’s the most important thing in the film.”
― J.W. Rinzler, The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

“I fell one time,” Hamill says. “But I was able to tuck and roll like I was taught. I was later made a member of the British Stunt Union—not just a belt buckle, but a full membership.”
― J.W. Rinzler, The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

“I have this theory that the bluescreen gives off rays that penetrate the brain and make you go crazy,” says Hamill. “Harrison really flipped out once, picked up a saw and started sawing through the console of his spaceship, which looks like metal but is made of wood. Everyone was saying, ‘You stop him,’ ‘No, you stop him.’ I sure wasn’t going to volunteer—I had no desire to wind up on the floor.”
― J.W. Rinzler, The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

“As The Register of Santa Ana, California, would report, Prowse had a habit of “giving away plot secrets.” “He doesn’t mean to,” Hamill says. “He just has this real child-like quality to please.” “David talks his head off,” Kershner says.”
― J.W. Rinzler, The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

“He has a rather fluid style,” says Hirsch, who was already cutting together scenes. “Not that he moves the camera all that much; he moves the camera at a certain moment through a scene and his staging of the action is fluid. Kersh doesn’t cover a scene in a simplistic way. He doesn’t shoot a master and then go in for close-ups. He will shoot mini masters that overlap at certain key points. It’s a subtle thing. He really knows what he’s doing.” “I stage differently from George; I use the camera differently,” says Kershner. “I use the actors in a different way. I certainly love his work but mine is just different. The photography is totally different, the lighting, the movement.”
― J.W. Rinzler, The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

“Even reloading a camera became difficult—and dangerous,” says Johnson. “Acetate film becomes brittle in cold weather, and the edges are razor-sharp. Try loading frozen film into a camera during a howling blizzard with ice and snow particles trying to blast their way into the camera!”
― J.W. Rinzler, The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

“We could have done it at our studios in England, but the movie would have then started off looking artificial,” says Kershner. “We decided to go for reality. Unfortunately, it was Norway’s coldest winter in 100 years. That’s why you prepare for a film as if you were a prizefighter—I ran two miles a day for months before it, because I knew what to expect.”
― J.W. Rinzler, The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

“The good news was that merchandise had done extremely well the previous year, with Kenner making around $100 million. Of course, Black Falcon collected its percentage from the toymaker and other myriad licensees. There was a cuddly Chewbacca; a remote-controlled R2-D2; Darth Vader piggy banks and pencil sharpeners; do-it-yourself construction kits, molding kits, painting kits, play kits, poster kits, and jigsaw puzzles; a projector for showing slides from the movie; rulers, pens, digital watches, erasers, jewelry, and more.”
― J.W. Rinzler, The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

“You have to remember,” Peterson adds, “that one of the ways that Gary Kurtz talked to me about Empire was, ‘From the model point of view, it’ll actually be easier than the first show because we already have all the models; they’ve been packaged, sent up north, and are sitting in a warehouse. So in some ways, it’ll be just operating those models again.’ Well, it didn’t work out that way at all!”
― J.W. Rinzler, The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

“Another television calamity, broadcast by CBS on November 17, was the Star Wars Holiday Special. The show featured appearances by most of the cast, except Alec Guinness, and took advantage of early McQuarrie artwork for the Wookiee planet (the story has the principals going to Chewbacca’s homeworld to celebrate Life Day). With odd musical numbers; cameos by celebrity TV stars, such as Art Carney, Harvey Korman, and Beatrice Arthur; and a campy, bizarre production décor light-years from the feeling of the first film, the Holiday Special was an example of how Black Falcon and Lucasfilm had yet to hone their approval processes.”
― J.W. Rinzler, The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

“On November 9, the services of Peter Mayhew and David Prowse were legalized. “They told me that if I dawdled any longer, they would simply get someone else to play the role, so I signed,” says Prowse. “I had to. Having no real identity in the films gives you a terrible feeling of insecurity. You are always aware that you are dispensable.”
― J.W. Rinzler, The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

“Our roles expanded quite a bit with Empire,” Tippett adds. “For the first time probably since King Kong [1933], stop-motion animation was actually being used in a big-budget motion picture. Previously, it’d been displaced to the gulag of low-budget fantasy pictures, which Ray Harryhausen had pretty much kept alive during the ’50s and the ’60s. But now George was going into that territory—and he was upping the production value, bringing his cinematic expertise and design to it. He was very well read and studied in the history of visual effects and knew what you could get.”
― J.W. Rinzler, The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

“When George first told me about the title, I wasn’t so sure he was serious,” Burtt says. “It seemed like such an extreme-sounding pulp title. But that’s what we were making: a big version of those old serials, with names like ‘Fate Takes the Wheel’ or ‘The Crimson Ghost Strikes Out.’ ”
― J.W. Rinzler, The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

“Yoda is the lead samurai from Seven Samurai,” says Kasdan of Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 film. “Seven Samurai is for me the greatest film ever made and enormously influential for George. If you see Seven Samurai, you see Yoda is Shimada, the lead samurai. He’s the mentor figure who gets the whole picture.”
― J.W. Rinzler, The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

“The writing part is always the hardest part of filmmaking. Almost anyone can direct—they won’t necessarily direct well, but the machinery works—you can take someone off the street and put them with an experienced crew and the movie will get made. But writing can’t be faked. It doesn’t run itself. It has to be worked out very specifically, word for word, image for image.”
― J.W. Rinzler, The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

“When I’m supposed to be writing, I end up making up names,” says Lucas of the mercenary’s christening. “I have a couple of little books that are lists of names. Whenever I think of a name, whenever I’m in the shower, I’m with friends, or see a sign, I write it down in my little book. So when I have a new character, sometimes I’ll go down the list and pick a name out that seems to fit that particular character.”
― J.W. Rinzler, The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

“The Boba Fett character is really an early version of Darth Vader. He is also very much like the man-with-no-name from the Sergio Leone Westerns.”
― J.W. Rinzler, The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

“When I was writing the early scripts for Star Wars, I wanted to develop an essentially evil character that was frightening,” says Lucas. “Darth Vader started as a kind of intergalactic bounty hunter in a space suit and evolved into a more grotesque knight as I got more into knights and the codes of everything.”
― J.W. Rinzler, The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back