tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-62848660517775650562024-03-12T17:23:43.969-07:00The Harrison Ford Story (Air Pirate Press)AirPiratePresshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13136561512898563240noreply@blogger.comBlogger22125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6284866051777565056.post-11275939728436238542013-08-18T04:38:00.000-07:002014-05-01T05:34:55.835-07:00Chapter 8, Part 2 - Harrison Ford: Indiana Jones is back<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">WHEN THE SHOOTING STARTS</span></h3>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Filming on <i>Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom</i> began on 18th April 1983 on location in Sri Lanka and in Macao. When the Chinese sequence was safely in the can, the Macao unit joined the crew in Kandy and, with the two crews working side by side, the location work was wrapped in three weeks. From that lush setting, the cast and crew came back to earth with a bump, spending the next twelve weeks toiling through the British summer at EMI’s Elstree Studios at Borehamwood, just outside London. </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Director Spielberg and his two principal actors arrive at <br />London's Heathrow Airport for the studio shooting </i></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Additional location scenes were filmed in Northern California in the United States, where Hamilton Air Force Base stood in for Shanghai Airport and the Tuolomne River played the part of the Ganges. Principal photography finished on September 8 1983 without incident, barring one mishap, though the special effects work would continue up until March 1984.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Like </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Raiders</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> before it </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> is packed to overflowing with complex and dangerous stunt work. The ‘one mishap’ very nearly shuttered production on the movie when Harrison Ford fell from an elephant and aggravated an old back injury – with a third of the picture still to be completed! Ford was jetted back to Los Angeles to undergo emergency laser surgery and filming was halted while the star recuperated. </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Riding an elephant (and falling from one) are all in a day's<br />work for the average action movie star.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When he returned to the set, he found the most strenuous stunts – including his battle with the henchmen of Mola Ram and his climactic fight on the rickety rope bridge – were still before him. Fortunately for Ford, his doctors had patched him up perfectly and filming resumed without a hitch. Ford, as usual, was dismissive about the incident.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘I’m now as fit as a fiddle,’ he said, ‘but I could never have done it without Vic Armstrong. Guys like Vic are invisible. They never get any credit. Nobody ever interviews them.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Armstrong had worked with Ford several times before, on <i>Raiders of the Lost Ark</i>, <i>Blade Runner</i> and <i>Return of the Jedi</i>, doubling for Ford when the going got too rough. Armstrong was philosophical about Ford's remarks.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘We have to be invisible,’ he conceded, ‘if people are going to believe in the film.’</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Peas in a pod ... Vic Armstrong (left!) was often mistaken <br />for Harrison Ford on set</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Maybe ‘invisible’ isn’t the right word, for Armstrong bears a striking resemblance to Harrison Ford. While working on the set of </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Raiders</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, so many people mistook Armstrong for Ford that it came to be something of a running gag. But there’s more to doubling for an actor than just physical resemblance. Of Ford, Armstrong said, ‘He’s a natural athlete and he wants to do it all. I say to him, “H, we can’t afford to get you smashed up in this scene because we’ve got a whole crew that needs to make a living.” And he says, “Yeah, you’re right,” and does the scene anyway. He could have made a great stunt man himself.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">THAT’S A WRAP!</span></h3>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When Steven Spielberg called ‘Cut!’ for the last time on 8th September 1983, it’s unlikely that he would have realised just how literally that order could be taken. As with <i>Raiders</i>, certain scenes had been cut from the screenplay before and during shooting, obviously with Spielberg’s blessing, but when <i>Temple of Doom</i> was presented to the censors, the word ‘cut’ began to take on sinister overtones.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On the plus side, the scenes that had been excised from <i>Raiders</i> had been modified and incorporated into <i>Temple of Doom</i>.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘The idea of the plane crash and then jumping out of the door in a life raft had, at one time, been in the original,’ confirmed Huyck.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘The other thing was the mine car,’ added Katz. ‘George had thought of the mine car race for <i>Raiders</i>. But I don’t know how it was written or what happened to it. He wanted a roller coaster ride.’ And he got one!</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Though much of the mine-car roller coaster scene was shot <br />with miniatures, some of it was filmed full size, <br />with Harrison Ford and Ke Huy Quan riding the truck.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So there was every reason to believe, then, that scenes cut from <i>Temple of Doom</i> could find their way into some future Indiana Jones movie. Like the scene in which Kate Capshaw, as Willie, was to wrestle a boa constrictor.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘We had a snake scene that Kate wouldn’t do,’ explained Huyck. ‘They had a boa constrictor and they had trained it. For weeks in advance, she had been trying to psyche herself up for this. She said she touched it and, the first time, it sort of ... undulated. And she thought she was going to die. She started sweating. Then they tried to put it on her shoulders to show her what it would be like, and she just freaked out. Steven (Spielberg) was sort of ashen and said, “That’s all right.”’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘It was a very funny scene,’ added Katz, ‘because there she is, being strangled by a snake, and Indy is just helplessly standing there!’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘So they didn’t do it,’ continued Huyck. ‘Kate just couldn’t do it. That’s when Steve said, “Okay, if you’re not going to do this, there’s no way you’re not going to do the bug scene.”’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But Lucas, never one to waste a good idea, did recycle the sequence for <i>Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull</i>, almost twenty-five years later.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Another cut, involving the child Maharajah, ended up causing the film to be a little less clear than it should have been. It comes as something of a surprise to audiences to discover, late in the film, that the young monarch is under the control of the Thuggees. A couple of explanatory scenes had been written, but had never been filmed. During the banquet sequence, the prime minister Chattar Lal is seen talking to the shadowy figure of Mola Ram in the gardens outside the Palace. Later, Indy is teaching the young Maharajah how to use his whip. When the child comes to try it himself, he gets it wrong and hurts himself. Short Round laughs and a scuffle follows. During the scrap, Short Round sees the Maharajah’s eyes glow red, and understands something weird is going on. Presumably these scenes were taken out, sacrificing clarity for pace, as the dinner sequence was long in itself.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A far different kettle of cuts was the chunk of <i>Temple of Doom</i> hacked out by overzealous censors in their never-ending quest to protect those who share their sensitive dispositions, but not their incorruptibility. The film was given a PG rating for its American release and immediately came under fire from journalists and parents’ associations across the country.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘The movie,’ said <i>The New York Times</i>, ‘in addition to being endearingly disgusting, is violent in ways that may scare the wits out of some young patrons.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Parents who had taken their young children to early preview screenings said their offspring were particularly disturbed by the scene in which Mola Ram tears the still-beating heart from the chest of a living sacrifice victim and the victim’s subsequent immersion in boiling lava. The PG rating was called into question in some quarters, and the distributing company, Paramount, added a warning line to the newspaper ads, which read: ‘This film may be too intense for younger children’.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>OK, this probably is a bit intense for eight year olds ...</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the UK the British Board of Film Censors took a harder line. Numerous changes were requested from Paramount before the BBFC would grant the picture the desired PG rating. Secretary of the Board, James Ferman, felt that the US version of the movie couldn’t even get a fifteen rating under the British system. To obtain a fifteen, the scene in which ‘the slow burning of a man in absolute agony’ is shown would have to go. Faced with the threat of an eighteen certificate, Paramount decided to make cuts to the British release print. Yet, even in this toned down version, the film drew some flak for its violence. The late Alexander Walker, admittedly not noted for his tolerance towards youth-oriented movies, dismissed the picture as ‘Indiana Jones meets the Marquis de Sade.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Harrison Ford took such criticisms in his stride. ‘This is a completely moral tale,’ said the actor, ‘and in order to have a moral resolve, evil must be seen to inflict pain. The end of the movie is proof of the viability of goodness.’</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-D4qXJGNPbV8/UhCvc1wDHxI/AAAAAAAAAWk/aWnqeO8OB7k/s1600/chap08-20_HappyVillagers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-D4qXJGNPbV8/UhCvc1wDHxI/AAAAAAAAAWk/aWnqeO8OB7k/s320/chap08-20_HappyVillagers.jpg" height="219" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>... and, of course, </i>Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom<i> does<br />provide the statutory Happy Ending.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Still, in spite of all the fuss, <i>Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom</i> was yet another in a long line of box office records for George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford. No matter what the critics and the censors thought, the cinema-going public gave the movie the best vote of confidence they knew how. Between them, they spent enough ticket money to propel <i>Temple of Doom</i> to the top end of the movie charts for 1984, putting it in the number three slot, just a whisker behind <i>Ghostbusters</i> and <i>Beverley Hills Cop</i> in the battle for the number one slot and raising it to number 88 in the all-time box-office champs list with a take of almost $180 million in the US and $333 million worldwide. In addition, the American Academy nominated the film in the category of Best Score and awarded the movie an Oscar for Best Special Effects. And no one can argue with that kind of success.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And while the critics and the audiences were chewing over <i>Temple of Doom</i>, Ford was moving onto another of his ‘small time’ films, <i>Witness</i>. ‘It’s a calculated departure,’ stated Ford. ‘This movie is the story of an Amish woman and a Philadelphia cop and the intelligence of the script gives me some wonderful cloth to cut.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And despite their earlier denials, Spielberg announced in the early part of 1984 that he would be directing the third Indiana Jones film, and Ford, too, had been signed for the project. ‘Playing Indy,’ said Ford, ‘is just a fun thing to do!’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">WHAT NEXT FOR THE HARRISON FORD STORY?</span></h3>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Where I go next with this blog is something I have to think about. My original plan was to put the whole of <i>The Harrison Ford Story</i> online. In my day job, I manage websites and in that arena, the conventional wisdom is that no one wants to read extended chunks of text on a screen. We all find it difficult and we all read far slower from a screen than we do from the printed page. And <i>The Harrison Ford Story</i> can be bought in its printed form very inexpensively online from Amazon.co.uk or from any number of online retailers.</span><br />
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<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0956914918/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=utf8&tag=thestoryworks-21&linkcode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeasin=0956914918%22"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sxAJ9C3Rr7o/UhCxMYU50CI/AAAAAAAAAWw/EXdiGW9S76U/s320/A_cover_1190x1796.jpg" height="320" width="211" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So I'm probably doing everyone, myself included, a disservice by continuing down this route. I have no evidence that anyone is reading this, so I think I'll hold off for a while - unless you tell me differently.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Alan McKenzie, Aug 2013</i></span></div>
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AirPiratePresshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13136561512898563240noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6284866051777565056.post-35944773467492598282013-07-28T01:55:00.002-07:002013-07-28T01:56:54.126-07:00Chapter 8, Part 1 - Harrison Ford: Indiana Jones is back<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">From Box Office Draw to Box Office Phenomenon</span></h3>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘Playing Indy is just a fun thing to do.’ Harrison Ford</span></h4>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Every time a big, successful movie looms over the cinematic horizon, you can bet, sure as sunrise, that the same relentless movie-making machinery will grind into motion.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The first stage of this process is that every bozo with a budget in Film City, USA will think he can reproduce the elements that made the original the success it was. Within months, a flood of dismal, copycat movies will be jostling for space on screens around the world. Then, the makers of the film that started it all will begin work on a sequel – if only to show the rip-off merchants how it should be done.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Which is exactly what happened with <i>Raiders of the Lost Ark</i>.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In rapid succession, film-goers were forced to suffer <i>High Road to China</i> (ironically starring George Lucas’ first choice for Indiana Jones, Tom Selleck), <i>Invaders of the Lost Gold</i> (actually just an Italian horror movie <i>Horror Safari</i> opportunistically retitled), <i>Hunters of the Golden Cobra</i>, a kind of spaghetti <i>Raiders</i> starring ex-model David Warbeck and directed by Italian hack-meister Antonio Marghereti, and <i>Treasure of the Four Crowns</i>, another cheesey Italian effort, this time in 3D. Then, in early 1983, the American screen trade paper <i>Variety</i> announced that work had begun on the follow-up to <i>Raiders of the Lost Ark</i>.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF ... WHAT?</span></h3>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘Steven Spielberg is helming <i>Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom</i> on location in Sri Lanka (with lensing in Hong Kong and London’s Elstree Studios to follow) for Lucasfilm Ltd and Paramount, with Harrison Ford reprising his title role characterisation first seen in <i>Raiders of the Lost Ark</i> and Douglas Slocombe back as cinematographer, Kate Capshaw, who had roles in <i>A Little Sex</i> and the current sci-fier <i>Dreamscape</i> is Ford’s new leading lady.’ All of which must have come as something of a surprise to certain American fan magazines which were getting excited about a <i>Raiders</i> sequel called ‘Indiana Jones and the Temple of Death’.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Other than that, information was hard to come by. Not that Ford would have put talking to the press very high on his list of priorities anyway. He had married Melissa Mathison on March 14, 1983, a short time after obtaining his final divorce from Mary and mere weeks before beginning work on <i>Temple of Doom</i>.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What was known was that Lawrence Kasdan, busy with directing his latest film, <i>The Big Chill</i>, had passed on the scripting chores. Lucas had turned to his old friends Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck, who had worked wonders with Lucas’ original draft of <i>American Graffiti</i>.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">George Lucas himself had hinted at the contents of further <i>Indiana Jones</i> films around the time <i>Raiders</i> was released and confessed that Indy was his personal favourite of the characters he had created. ‘If I could be a dream figure, I’d be Indy,’ He told American magazine <i>Rolling Stone</i>. ‘It’s not just that I’m interested in archeology or anthropology; a lot of that got into Star Wars too. It’s just that Indy can do anything. He’s a lot of Thirties heroes put together. He’s this renegade archeologist and adventurer, but he’s also a college professor, and he’s got this Cary Grant side, too. In some stories, we’ll see him in top hat and tails. We don’t want to make him Superman – he’s just open to all possibilities. <i>Raiders</i> will be the most action oriented of the <i>Indiana Jones</i> movies – the others should deal more with the Occult.’</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WU7CbxCgrNo/UfTUNjAVvMI/AAAAAAAAAQc/YFXoDf7S1N8/s1600/chap08-13_OnSet_crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="217" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WU7CbxCgrNo/UfTUNjAVvMI/AAAAAAAAAQc/YFXoDf7S1N8/s320/chap08-13_OnSet_crop.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>OK, maybe not top hat and tails, but definitely another side to <br />Indiana Jones ... kind of a "Bogart in Casablanca" look</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lucas had no problems convincing director Steven Spielberg to re-sign on the dotted line. ‘I’d hate to let it slip through my fingers into some one else’s hands,’ said Spielberg. ‘I’ll certainly not be involved in the third or the fourth one, but I really want to do the follow-up, because the story is even more spectacular than <i>Raiders</i>.’</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-AV2OSQ9p5-M/UfTXC0WzpYI/AAAAAAAAAQs/HDiIUGqpTso/s1600/chap08-19_Bogart_Indy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="120" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-AV2OSQ9p5-M/UfTXC0WzpYI/AAAAAAAAAQs/HDiIUGqpTso/s320/chap08-19_Bogart_Indy.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Coincidence? I think not ...</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Harrison Ford was also expressing his pleasure at the prospect of appearing in <i>Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom</i>. ‘Of course I’m doing the second <i>Raiders</i> film,’ he said. ‘With great pleasure. And for the first time, I think, in the history of sequels and good directors, Steven Spielberg is going to direct it. So this is very exciting for me. It was one of the best working relationship experiences of my life working with Steven.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Pleased as he was, Ford was a little disturbed to hear from <i>Starburst</i>’s Tony Crawley that there were a total of five <i>Indiana Jones</i> films on the Lucasfilm launching pad, in varying stages of development. After completing filming on <i>Return of the Jedi</i>, the actor said, ‘Actually, I’m only committed to one film at the moment. That’s another <i>Indiana Jones</i> film. I had hoped to have a year off between the end of Jedi and the beginning of the next Indy film. Five (<i>Indiana Jones</i> films) is okay with me. I mean I really enjoy working on them. And I really enjoy the character very much. And certainly I couldn’t hope for better company than Lucas and Spielberg. But having done one, I don’t think I’d do four more of anything. They must be talking to Roger Moore ... one at a time for me!’</span><br />
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<h3>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">THE WRITE STUFF</span></h3>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Though they were newcomers to the Indiana Jones series, script-writers Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz were no strangers to Lucasfilm Ltd. They had written the screenplay for Lucas’ first big hit, <i>American Graffiti</i>, succeeding in producing a workable script where others, including Lucas, had failed.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Huyck and Katz, a husband and wife team, had met at University in California, worked together at Francis Coppola’s studio where they first encountered Lucas and went on to write <i>Graffiti</i> (1973), <i>Lucky Lady</i> (1975) and <i>French Postcards</i> (1979).</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The writers were first contacted about writing <i>Temple of Doom</i> in February, 1982. ‘We flew up to George’s house with Steven Spielberg and spent four days there,’ said Huyck. ‘In the first hour, George told us what he had in mind. Essentially, the story started in Shanghai and had Indy get into a situation in which his plane crashes. Then he’s asked by villagers to recover a sacred stone. That’s the basic outline we were given and we started building from there.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The events in <i>Temple of Doom</i> take place a year before those in <i>Raiders</i>. Consequently, the new script called for a completely new cast of supporting characters, notably Short Round, Indy’s child companion and ‘bodyguard’ and Willie Scott, a nightclub singer.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘We sat around trying to come up with names for the new characters,’ explains Huyck, ‘and we said that since George named Indiana Jones after his dog, Steven Spielberg and us should be able to name the characters after our dogs. So Steve named Willie after his dog and we named Short Round after ours. But our dog is named after a Korean child in the Sam Fuller movie <i>The Steel Helmet</i> (1951).’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘Short Round really came out of the notion that George wanted a child in the movie,’ adds Katz. ‘He wanted a girl, but we didn’t like that idea too much, and Steve didn’t feel comfortable with it, either. So we thought of the idea of Short Round and then of his character. How he participated in the script developed out of the story conferences.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The script went through three full drafts on its way to completion, with pauses for less major rewrites along the way. The first draft took Huyck and Katz six weeks, ‘because we wanted to get something we could talk about immediately,’ says Huyck. The second draft took another six weeks, with the third draft being completed in a breakneck four weeks of work. From there, the writers were called away to attend to their next project, <i>Best Defense</i>, though throughout the period of shooting on <i>Temple of Doom</i>, they were continually called upon by Steven Spielberg for polishing on the final draft.</span><br />
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<h3>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">FINE TUNING</span></h3>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With the script out of the way, the production crew could turn their attention to the casting of both the supporting actors and the locations. In the September of 1982, the ‘line’ producer of <i>Temple of Doom</i>, Robert Watts, set off for Asia with the movie’s production designer, Elliot Scott.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘First we went to Hong Kong,’ said Watts, ‘looking for locations for the Chinese sequence. Hong Kong was too modern and we had to rule it out. From there we went to Macao, which hasn’t been developed as much as Hong Kong, and we found locations that would do for Shanghai. Then we went to India, where the bulk of the movie is supposed to take place, and we found most of the locations we wanted. The only problem was that they were miles apart.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘Carrying on to Sri Lanka, we found, to our surprise, that we could get almost everything we wanted in the environs of one town, Kandy, with the exception of the Maharajah’s Palace.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was decided to base the production location at Kandy with only three days set aside for filming the Palace sequences on mainland India. Then Watts ran into hurdles. The Indian Government has rigid policies concerning the making of movies within its borders. A number of changes to the script were asked for. Too many for Lucasfilms’ liking.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘George Lucas had very clear ideas on how the film should be,’ said Watts. ‘It is an adventure and the things that happen couldn’t possibly happen in real life. But the film, if it is to work, has to have the look and feel of reality. We were prepared to go so far to meet the Indian Authorities’ demands, but to have gone the whole way would have robbed the film of that element. In the end we decided it wasn’t worth it, least of all for three days shooting, and we closed our Bombay office.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To get around the problem of being denied the necessary location, the filmmakers decided to build the Palace on the backlot at Elstree Studios and use matte paintings – a special effects technique to incorporate realistic artwork into live action footage – for the long shots.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Watts’ next objective was to take care of casting the actors. ‘The film has a very small cast,’ said Watts, ‘though this is not always apparent because there are always lots of people on the screen. In fact, I would say that it is possibly the smallest and most difficult casting I’ve ever worked on.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That Harrison Ford would appear as Indy was never in dispute. But finding the right actor to portray Short Round caused all concerned headaches.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘We had open casting calls in New York, Vancouver, London – anywhere with a substantial Chinese community,’ explained Watts, ‘and out of hundreds of boys there was only one who was really suitable.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ke Huy Quan was discovered during casting sessions in Los Angeles. A Vietnamese refugee, his English was good, but not so polished as to sound like a native American.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-F0xI2pBAwoc/UfTYxR7j_FI/AAAAAAAAAQ8/YwR0ynM8jW0/s1600/chap08-09_InTheTemple_crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="159" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-F0xI2pBAwoc/UfTYxR7j_FI/AAAAAAAAAQ8/YwR0ynM8jW0/s320/chap08-09_InTheTemple_crop.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Ford with supporting cast members Ke Huy Quan and Kate Capshaw.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For the key role of villain Mola Ram, Indian star Amrish Puri was cast. ‘The only trouble was,’ said Watts, ‘that being such a popular actor in India, he was working on eighteen films at once. Scheduling him was a nightmare!’</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-RyEU8A15dKo/UfTZyph0ywI/AAAAAAAAARI/hJG7O8469Q0/s1600/chap08-21_MolaRam_crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="161" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-RyEU8A15dKo/UfTZyph0ywI/AAAAAAAAARI/hJG7O8469Q0/s320/chap08-21_MolaRam_crop.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Top Bollywood star Amrish Puri was cast as as the <br />dastardly villain Mola Ram.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The casting of Kate Capshaw for the part of Willie Scott was a lot more straightforward. Capshaw had been introduced to the character of Indiana Jones when she was dragged, under protest, to see <i>Raiders of the Lost Ark</i> in 1981. ‘I went, very petulent and sulky,’ admitted Capshaw, ‘and stayed that way for about two minutes! When I came out, I would have been a great advertisement for going to see that movie.’</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VfExMXNHc-o/UfTanQCbSnI/AAAAAAAAARU/5hwzJVYn3cA/s1600/chap08-22_Cabaret_crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VfExMXNHc-o/UfTanQCbSnI/AAAAAAAAARU/5hwzJVYn3cA/s320/chap08-22_Cabaret_crop.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Kate Capshaw got to perform a spectacular cabaret routine <br />in the opening sequence of</span></i> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Temple of Doom</span>.</td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A couple of years later, Kate Capshaw’s agent just happened to be out jogging with one of the casting directors on <i>Temple of Doom</i> ... and the rest is history. ‘Every director has a gut feeling for who a character is, what their special qualities are. They don’t know who has “got it”, but they’ll know it when they see it. Steven felt I had it when he met me.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With <i>Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom</i> the plan was to set it apart from <i>Raiders</i>, with Indy himself as the only linking factor. This was underlined in the filmmakers’ approach to the character of Willie Scott. Kate Capshaw was at pains to make Willie as different from Karen Allen’s Marion Ravenwood as she could. Where Marion was tom-boyish, Willie was feminine, Where Marion was tough and capable – up to a point – Willie was nervous and flappable.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘Willie has led this pampered life,’ explained Capshaw, ‘and feels that’s what’s due to her – to be cared for and looked after. She meets Indiana Jones, a person unlike anyone she has ever been involved with, and ends up going off with him. In the course of their adventures, all of her earlier life is stripped away from her and Willie must fall back on her own resources. She discovers that she is a strong woman and a very gutsy lady.’</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The screen writers Huyck and Katz don’t necessarily share Capshaw’s vision of Willie. Their intention was to depict Willie as an ordinary person caught up in extraordinary situations, whose first reaction to the assorted plights she finds herself in is to crack up, not an attribute that Huyck particularly admired; ‘I never really cared for the character very much in the first place,’ he said. ‘But we felt that she was reacting realistically to the kind of things Indiana Jones goes through ... the kind of situations where, since she’s not so tough – as few people would be in those situations – she’d scream.’</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OSw3h58Cwd0/UfTb5E2Nw4I/AAAAAAAAARk/q48EtnR3Kug/s1600/chap08-11_EvilIndy_crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="136" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OSw3h58Cwd0/UfTb5E2Nw4I/AAAAAAAAARk/q48EtnR3Kug/s320/chap08-11_EvilIndy_crop.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Kate Capshaw spent most of the movie squealing and complaining,<br />which didn't endear the character to fans ...</i></span></td></tr>
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</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I thought that this take on the film’s female lead was its biggest liability. Willie did little more than scream throughout the whole picture, and ended up as little more than a typical ‘damsel in distress’, but that kind of talk tends to upset Gloria Katz.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘People have very mixed feelings about Willie,’ said Katz. ‘I’m a little offended by the idea of a macho woman. I think that’s a woman as conceived by men. I don’t think that’s a woman that necessarily, realistically exists. When you’re covered in insects, your instinct is to scream! So I think Willie represents the audience’s realistic point of view, what they would be like if they were thrown out into the jungle. True, it’s not a brave, strong woman but it’s a different kind of woman and, I think, a more realistic one.’</span><br />
<h4>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Next: More Temple of Doom</span></h4>
<br />
AirPiratePresshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13136561512898563240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6284866051777565056.post-46656891056918967772013-07-21T03:01:00.002-07:002013-07-27T22:29:37.348-07:00Chapter 7, Part 2 - Harrison Ford: Contract Player No More<br />
<h3>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">MAKING MOVIES</span></h3>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By January 11 1982, the <i>Return of the Jedi</i> cast and crew were safely ensconced in EMI’s Elstree Studios just outside London, and shooting began. The production was using all nine sound-stages. Sets were put up and torn down with alarming speed as the juggernaut movie careened through its paces. Down came the gate of Jabba’s Palace, up went the Death Star docking bay. Jedi technicians built an impressive redwood forest inside one hangar-like sound stage, then built the Ewok village among the trees.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Studio shooting forged ahead at break-neck speed and was completed in an amazing 78 days. From there, Marquand and his team flew to America and spent the next eight weeks filming the Tatooine scenes in the blazing heat of the Arizona desert. The Endor scenes were shot in the cooler redwood forests of Northern California.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mLSClAtIX6Y/Ueuseze_tjI/AAAAAAAAAPU/5bppzQZquZs/s1600/chap07-11_endor2_crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mLSClAtIX6Y/Ueuseze_tjI/AAAAAAAAAPU/5bppzQZquZs/s1600/chap07-11_endor2_crop.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Return of the Jedi <i>was shooting under the fake title of "Blue<br />Harvest" in the North Californian redwood forests.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In an effort to keep the curious at bay, and the prices of the local shop-keepers down, the Arizona filming was conducted under a cover title of </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Blue Harvest</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> – ‘Horror Beyond Imagination’ said the crew’s tee-shirts. ‘Is that what the film’s about?’ asked somebody of George Lucas, ‘No,’ he replied wryly, ‘that’s the making of the movie.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Marquand explained his directing technique to the American magazine <i>Prevue</i> in an interview published just before the release of <i>Jedi</i>. He admitted that he rehearsed the actors, ‘but not in their moves. I like to show them the sets, give them an idea of the action and go through the script with them very carefully. I can’t stand it when an actor walks on the set saying he cannot deliver a line that a writer, a producer and a director spent eight months working on. I won’t have it.’ </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yet Harrison Ford is well-known in movie circles for the amount of input he likes to have into the script. Marquand was aware of this preference and had no criticism of Ford in this area. If Ford wanted dialogue changes, Marquand was prepared to accommodate him because, ‘he’ll have good reasons and he’ll say it a week before shooting. He’ll explain why, and you’ll either agree, in which case you’ll go to the producer and the other actors and express his points, or you’ll explain why the line is there. If you can explain it to him, he’ll do it because he’s a professional.’</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/--3GCzjXWxVY/UeutLogIV9I/AAAAAAAAAPc/NWXLad8pxjU/s1600/chap07-12_endor_bts_crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="211" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/--3GCzjXWxVY/UeutLogIV9I/AAAAAAAAAPc/NWXLad8pxjU/s320/chap07-12_endor_bts_crop.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Ford and Fisher clown around on the Endor set, while<br />Anthony Daniels and Peter Mayhew take a breather <br />with their masks off.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Overall, Marquand’s aim was to create ‘real relationships and real action that stem from real emotions.’ He was wary, rightly so, of allowing the dazzling special effects to take control of the film. But if he needed aid or advice, he felt secure in the knowledge that George Lucas would always be on hand to help him out.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘Having George Lucas as an executive producer on this film is like directing <i>King Lear</i> with Shakespeare in the next room!’ said Marquand.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lucas himself had sufficient confidence in his <i>Star Wars</i> movies to put his money where his mouth is. Unlike other major movie productions, which borrow money from wherever they can get it, then insure their borrowings like crazy in case the film flops, Lucas was using his personal fortune to finance <i>Jedi</i>.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘I decided,’ said Lucas, ‘I had the most faith in my own films. I’m using my profits to make more films.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And Lucas’s secret was to incorporate into his movies something that most contemporary filmmakers forget. ‘One of the most important things is to create an emotion in the audience,’ says Lucas. ‘The movie can be funny, sad or scary, but there has to be an emotion. It has to make you feel good or laugh or jump out of your seat.’ Whether Lucas had injected enough emotion into <i>Jedi</i> would be left to the critics and, more importantly, the audiences to decide.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-M4WXdwh3mko/Ueut0nwTRKI/AAAAAAAAAPk/o3fK8QARbdQ/s1600/chap07-14_sunbathing.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="144" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-M4WXdwh3mko/Ueut0nwTRKI/AAAAAAAAAPk/o3fK8QARbdQ/s320/chap07-14_sunbathing.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Carrie Fisher and her stand-in relax between takes on the Tatooine set.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the meantime, Ford had taken time out between the completion of principle photography on <i>Jedi</i> and the film’s release to go house hunting. Sun Valley, Idaho was considered but abandoned as it was already full of Hollywood ex-pats. Harrison and Melissa then looked at Wyoming and settled on the town of Jackson Hole, where they were shown an 800 acre property. Ford had found his paradise.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">RELEASE OF THE JEDI</span></h3>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s unlikely that George Lucas was really worried that <i>Jedi</i> would turn out to be a clunker. The film opened on the traditional date of May 25th, 1983 in America, followed by the British release on June 2nd, 1983. Although the reviews were, in the main, favourable, a few harder-to-please folk managed to find fault with the film.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘Taken on its own terms,’ ventured <i>Time</i> magazine, ‘<i>Return of the Jedi</i> is a brilliant, imaginative piece of film-making.’ <i>Time</i> then went on to say that <i>Jedi</i> sacrificed the human element for its fascination with dazzling special effects, a familiar complaint of the up-market magazines of the <i>Star Wars</i> films. ‘The other flaw,’ said <i>Time</i>, ‘is the ending: in all three films, Lucas has almost entirely avoided the rank sentimentality to which his story is vulnerable. In the final minutes of <i>Jedi</i>, he succumbs, however, and ends his trilogy with one of the corniest conclusions in recent years.’</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GVhzOVowQIk/UeuuhkAPHyI/AAAAAAAAAPs/PCwqmuGo22Q/s1600/chap07-13_jedighosts_crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="262" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GVhzOVowQIk/UeuuhkAPHyI/AAAAAAAAAPs/PCwqmuGo22Q/s320/chap07-13_jedighosts_crop.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>I suspect Time magazine was referring to this cheesey insert, <br />of the smiling dead jedi - the original release had Sebastian <br />"Humpty-Dumpty" Shaw as the late Anakin Skywalker, <br />the later re-release had Hayden Christensen</i></span>.</td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Playboy</i>’s Bruce Williamson thought that <i>Jedi</i> was, ‘another rousing entertainment in George Lucas’s nine-part epic derived from <i>Star Wars</i> ... in its script, <i>Return of the Jedi</i> falls a bit short of its predecessors and director Richard Marquand doesn’t quite have Lucas’s magic touch ... Lucas continues to make movie-going the kind of innocent, awe-struck pleasure it used to be when we were all light-years younger.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It should be explained that when this review was written, Lucas had intended producing a trilogy of <i>Star Wars</i> films that came after <i>A New Hope</i>, <i>Empire</i> and <i>Jedi</i> as well as the trilogy that later preceded them. Lucas announced those plans as abandoned after <i>Star Wars III</i>, but more recent reports indicate that the last trilogy of <i>Star Wars</i> movies is back on again, with Ford, Fisher and Hamill returning to there roles - presumably older and wiser.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Variety</i>, the trade paper of American show business, seemed to fall into line with the criticisms that <i>Time</i> had made. ‘Lucas and Co have perfected the technical magic where anything and everything – no matter how bizarre – is believable ... the human and dramatic dimensions have been sorely sacrificed ... Harrison Ford, who was such an essential element of the first two outings is present more in body than in spirit this time, given little to do but react to special effects.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I thought that <i>Return of the Jedi</i> was certainly the least successful of the original three <i>Star Wars</i> movies, artistically. Its worst failing was that it fell into the same trap as <i>Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom</i> – the filmmakers loaded it to excess with similar elements from its predessessors to the point where the overall effect was one of overkill. While there are some great sequences in the movie – the battle on Jabba’s barge and the chase on the speeder bikes through the forest of Endor – there are elements that simply jar. The Ewoks are probably my least favourite <i>Star Wars</i> characters ever and Jabba the Hutt’s gremlin-like pet Salacious Crumb is excedingly annoying though not, I suspect, in the way the filmmakers intended. It was as though Lucas was trying – none-too-successfully – to cater to the kiddie market.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KrqqcGaE7fM/UeuxICo8kMI/AAAAAAAAAQM/XXzDckMy51M/s1600/chap07-15_salacious_crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="141" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KrqqcGaE7fM/UeuxICo8kMI/AAAAAAAAAQM/XXzDckMy51M/s320/chap07-15_salacious_crop.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>One thing I could do without in </i>Jedi<i> was this character. <br />Wasn't wild about the way the Ewoks were handled either.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Audiences either didn’t read the reviews, or didn’t care what they said anyway. The film was safely into profit inside three months and, as the end of 1983 rolled round, <i>Jedi</i> was the number one grossing film of the year and nineteenth of the list of the top US box-office hits of all time earning a staggering $309 million. Worldwide, the gross was an even more impressive $572 million, $40 million more than <i>Empire</i> ...</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Academy nominated <i>Jedi</i> for four awards, in the categories Best Sound Effects Editing, Best Sound, Best Art Direction and Best Score, and awarded a Special Oscar to Richard Edlund, Dennis Muren, Ken Ralston and Phil Tippet for Achievement in Special Effects.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Mto9pYMu44w/UeuwH41L0pI/AAAAAAAAAP8/usl_CrQUgcY/s1600/chap07-08_sandbattle_crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="149" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Mto9pYMu44w/UeuwH41L0pI/AAAAAAAAAP8/usl_CrQUgcY/s320/chap07-08_sandbattle_crop.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>The Special Oscar for Achievement in Special Effects <br />was well-deserved.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Harrison Ford was not surprised that George Lucas had been proved right again and that most of the critics were out of touch with what the audiences wanted. ‘People want fairy tales in their lives,’ he told <i>Time</i> magazine. ‘I’m lucky enough to provide them. There is no difference between doing this kind of film and playing King Lear. The actor’s job is exactly the same: dress up and pretend.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">THE LAST ACT OF HAN SOLO?</span></h3>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At the time, <i>Return of the Jedi</i> marked the final instalment in the <i>Star Wars</i> saga. It also marked the last screen appearances of Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia and Han Solo. Other stories in the epic tale would tell of the Clone Wars and the rise of the Empire in the first trilogy (filmed as <i>The Phantom Menace</i>, <i>Attack of the Clones</i> and <i>Revenge of the Sith</i>), while the story of the rebuilding of the Galactic Democracy was to be told in the then-abandoned final trio of movies. Harrison Ford was not entirely unhappy that his stint as an interstellar star appeared to be over. ‘The story that Han Solo was part of,’ explained Ford to <i>Starburst</i>’s Tony Crawley, ‘which is “The Adventures of Luke Skywalker”, in my guise of best friend is over. The story completes itself in this third film. I had a great time on <i>Jedi</i>. I’m glad I did it. I’m glad I did all three of them. But as well, I’m glad ... I don’t ... have to do any more. After <i>Jedi</i>, the saga goes back in time, so Solo’s not in the next three. There will be nine films in all. Just three for Solo. I assume they will not replace me with another person to play Solo ...’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now that George Lucas has sold the sequel rights to Disney and the rumour-mill is saying that JJ Abrams will be in charge of the the final three movies of the originally-planned nine part story, it's possible Harrison Ford will return to the role of Solo as a kind of elder statesman of the <i>Star Wars</i> universe. It may even appeal to Ford’s sense of humour to do it.</span>AirPiratePresshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13136561512898563240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6284866051777565056.post-9805119027488639192013-07-12T10:16:00.002-07:002014-01-28T04:48:47.722-08:00Chapter 7, Part 1 - Harrison Ford: Contract Player No More<br />
<h3>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">From ‘Get me Harrison Ford’ to ‘Get me a Harrison Ford type!’</span></h3>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>‘Harrison Ford is a pure cinema actor, there is nothing theatrical about him – it’s just him. He doesn’t mind if his shirt’s out or his hair’s ruffled or his profile isn’t beautifully lit. What matters is what he’s doing.’ Richard Marquand, director of <i>Return of the Jedi</i></b></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The close of <i>The Empire Strikes Back</i> left Han Solo (Harrison Ford) sleeping the sleep of the living dead, frozen in a block of carbonite and on his way to the palace of Jabba the Hutt, an alien criminal mastermind, to suffer the penalty for dumping a cargo of illegal spices belonging to Jabba. Some of the more imaginative <i>Star Wars</i> fans put this fact together with the knowledge that Harrison Ford had only signed for one <i>Star Wars</i> picture at a time and began to circulate rumours that neither Ford nor Solo would be appearing in the third <i>Star Wars</i> film, <i>Return of the Jedi</i>.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rU8_k9V3NRc/UeBOAYmY26I/AAAAAAAAAPE/26Li6UukZ68/s1600/chap07-HanPopcicle_crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rU8_k9V3NRc/UeBOAYmY26I/AAAAAAAAAPE/26Li6UukZ68/s320/chap07-HanPopcicle_crop.jpg" height="255" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Some speculated that Harrison Ford would be<br />frozen out of</i> Revenge of the Jedi.</span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But shortly after the release of<i> Raiders of the Lost Ark,</i> Harrison Ford went on record in the American magazine <i>Starlog</i> to put paid to such wild speculation. ‘If I hadn’t been able to do some of my other movies I might have felt differently about doing <i>Return of the Jedi</i>. As it stands, I’m delighted to be coming back. Han, Luke and Princess Leia were created to tell this story, so I’m glad to be in on the third act.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yet, just how Han Solo would return was a closely guarded secret. Nobody involved with the production would talk without the express permission of <i>Star Wars</i> creator George Lucas. Then Lucas himself broke the silence in a pre-<i>Return</i> interview – though he was giving nothing away. ‘The original (<i>Star Wars</i>) idea kind of got segmented, and the fact that the story is a fairy tale got lost, especially in the beginning, because the science fiction took over. I think that <i>Return</i> for better or worse, is going to put the whole thing in perspective.’</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-RFReb0sCfzI/UeA46qldKgI/AAAAAAAAAOs/jztzLRGO4OI/s1600/chap07-1_crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-RFReb0sCfzI/UeA46qldKgI/AAAAAAAAAOs/jztzLRGO4OI/s320/chap07-1_crop.jpg" height="236" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>The opening shot of </i>Return of the Jedi <i>- as the cast </i><br /><i>is assembled for the final chapter of their adventure.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: bold;">FINDING MR WRITE</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Originally, George Lucas had intended to tell the story of Luke Skywalker’s struggle against the Empire in just one film. But as he completed the first draft of the tale, he realised that he had far too much story to fit into one two-hour movie. So he simply cut the story in two and continued to work on the first half. Before long it became apparent to Lucas that even two feature films would be too little screen time to tell the story in and three films would be needed.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Though Lucas wrote and directed <i>Star Wars: A New Hope</i>, the tremendous success of the film meant that Lucas’s energies were divided between running Lucasfilm and overseeing the flood of merchandising which followed in the Star-wake, as well as supervising preparations for future Lucasfilm movie projects. In short, there was no way Lucas could write or direct any more <i>Star Wars</i> films ... even if he wanted to.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>The </i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Empire Strikes Back</i>, Lucas had hired Lawrence Kasdan to craft the screenplay and Irvin Kershner to direct. With <i>Return of the Jedi</i>, he resolved to use a new writer/director team.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yet, well-laid plans, particularly in the movie business, have a habit of going awry. The October 1981 issue of <i>Starlog</i> magazine carried a story under the title of "Kasdan Gets Revenge" (<i>Revenge of the Jedi</i> was the shooting title for <i>Return of the Jedi</i> and Fox even went to the trouble of printing teaser posters bearing that title – I know because I was given one by someone at Fox at the time).</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BkoFACWfI1M/UeA3kiRQUZI/AAAAAAAAAOg/OCYPMLXAVDg/s1600/chap07-posters.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BkoFACWfI1M/UeA3kiRQUZI/AAAAAAAAAOg/OCYPMLXAVDg/s320/chap07-posters.jpg" height="244" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>The two versions of the </i>Jedi<i> one-sheet - don't know if the <br />"Revenge" version is valuable, but it's a nice souvenir <br />of my </i>Starburst<i> days.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘It’s a big surprise to me that I’m writing <i>Revenge of the Jedi</i>,’ said Kasdan. ‘George Lucas called me on the phone and asked me to do the script as a favour to him. I told George that I hadn’t planned on doing any more ‘just writing’ on films.’ He said, “Aw, come on. I’ve done it. Paul Schrader did it for Martin Scorcese. What difference does it make?”</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘I’m doing the script because I feel I owe George a lot. Besides, I like working with him. There’s also a certain satisfaction in finishing the trilogy. Additionally, writing Jedi will be very rewarding financially.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">George Lucas had, as with <i>The Empire Strikes Back</i>, roughed out the plot of the movie first, embracing the main story-points and character developments. He was looking to Kasdan to bring pacing and humour to the final script. Kasdan, Lucas and director, Richard Marquand, spent a solid week discussing the thrust of the story and settling any differences of opinion they had as to the direction <i>Return of the Jedi</i> should take. From there on it became Kasdan’s baby.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘<i>Revenge of the Jedi</i>’s basic thrust is to wrap up the trilogy’s story,’ Kasdan revealed in the same interview. ‘You can assume that Jedi’s structure will be like that of <i>Star Wars</i> and Empire, cutting back and forth. You could probably guess which of the characters will be returning. There will also be some new characters.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Because of the suddenness of Lucas’s request, Kasdan was left with little time in which to complete his assignment. ‘It’s a similar situation to the terrible time problem we had on <i>Empire</i>, but I think this time I’ll have a much freer hand, because the <i>Jedi</i> screenplay George gave me isn’t nearly as far along as <i>Empire</i>’s was.’</span><br />
<h4>
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<h4>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">THE HAND ON THE HELM</span></h4>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The search for the man to direct <i>Jedi</i> was every bit as exhaustive as Lucas’s original Star Wars casting sessions had been. Lucas started out with a list of literally hundreds of British and American directors who could, conceivably, direct the third part of the trilogy. Lucas’s first choice was Steven Spielberg, who had to turn the offer down because of the threatened Director’s Guild strike. Another director in the frame was David Cronenberg, who probably would have made a very interesting <i>Star Wars</i> movie ...</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After cutting away others who couldn’t do the film because of scheduling, prior commitments and lack of enthusiasm, the list fell to just two names, one of which was Richard Marquand whose previous credits included a horror movie called <i>The Legacy</i> and the war-time adventure movie <i>Eye of the Needle</i>.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vCKKUZFeSk8/UeA4Wl7REVI/AAAAAAAAAOk/Ga3vSbEG_Hs/s1600/chap07-4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vCKKUZFeSk8/UeA4Wl7REVI/AAAAAAAAAOk/Ga3vSbEG_Hs/s320/chap07-4.jpg" height="209" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Richard Marquand directs a strange blue elephant thing-y</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘George Lucas told me he wanted a director who could work fast, somebody – possibly from television – who could think on his feet, improvise quickly, and work with actors. Finally – and I think this is the most important thing – somebody who could work with him,’ said Richard Marquand. ‘Finally, there were only two of us left in the running. This was about April or May of 1981.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Though most people associated with <i>Return of the Jedi</i> have been reluctant to discuss who didn’t get through the selection process, Mark Hamill did let it slip in an interview that Marquand’s rival for the job was David Lynch, director of <i>The Elephant Man</i>.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘David decided he didn’t want to do a George Lucas movie,’ explained Hamill, ‘Because he felt he couldn’t be constantly answering to another producer. George didn’t want to restrict somebody that original, so they came to an amiable parting of the ways. Ironically, David left to make <i>Dune</i> for Dino De Laurentiis.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With Marquand selected to helm <i>Return of the Jedi</i>, preproduction work got underway with a vengeance. Marquand was far more than a puppet director, and had a healthy input into the way the movie would shape up as a kind of punch-line to the first two films.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘I had a whole plan of the way I wanted to present each character, each new character,’ Marquand told me in February 1983, ‘to make <i>Jedi</i> slightly different from the other films. <i>Empire</i> ends in a kind of explosion – everyone’s going off in different directions. I thought it would be nice if we opened Jedi with a tremendous sense of mystery. A ‘where is everybody?’ sort of feeling. We know that Vader and the Emperor are really on the Rebel’s tails after <i>Empire</i>, which ended on a kind of dark note. I thought it would be nice to pick up on that. All the heroes are scattered to the four corners of the Galaxy and then I could bring in each one in an interesting way. George liked that idea. Larry (Kasdan) picked up on it and turned it into something terrific. Then I was talking about killing off one of the major characters. George wouldn’t have that.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This almost certainly would have been the Han Solo character. As Ford revealed in a later interview, ‘I thought it would give the myth some body. Solo really had no place to go. He’s got no papa, he’s got no mama, he’s got no story. But that was the one thing I was unable to convince George of.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Richard Marquand’s next step was to get together with the principal actors and hash out how the main characters would develop in the film. “‘You know this character. Tell me what this character’s got to offer in terms of the </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">public and the box-office and the story,” I said. I discovered some nice things about the characters, which we were able to inject into the film.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Marquand has nothing but praise for Hamill, Fisher and Ford. ‘Carrie Fisher has made no secret of the fact that she’s this sort of boy in girl’s clothing,’ Marquand told me, ‘who marches up and down and shouts at everybody. She felt her character could do with a bit of development. And that happened to coincide exactly with my feelings. In the last movie, the Princess became such a bitch, she really was a drag. I was sure there was a lot more depth there we could use. And more comedy, too. Turn her into more of a woman. So I worked with Carrie on that. She’s a very sexy, attractive lady and in this film we’ll get to find that out.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘Mark’s character, Luke Skywalker, is the one that develops through the whole series. That’s the area of jeopardy. Will Luke move towards the Dark Side of the Force? He does; you see the darkening as he is led in this direction.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-oamNt0MdRd4/UeA5iFB9XyI/AAAAAAAAAO4/YtGIU5ZSY0A/s1600/chap07-3_crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-oamNt0MdRd4/UeA5iFB9XyI/AAAAAAAAAO4/YtGIU5ZSY0A/s320/chap07-3_crop.jpg" height="186" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) sported a whole new look <br />for </i>Return of the Jedi<i>.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘Billy Dee Williams had all sorts of ideas about Lando Calrissian. His past, and where he had come from, the kind of skills he had. We realise that he was the first owner of the Millennium Falcon. We didn’t really get to know him in <i>Empire</i>, we just learned to distrust him.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘Harrison Ford’s great, he really is. He’s a very professional actor. A man who is now quite a major box office star. He gets on with it. Doesn’t suffer fools gladly. If you don’t know what you’re going to do on the day, he gets a little confused and upset. But he’s terrific as an ally, someone who understands the craft of being a movie actor.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Next: The shooting starts</i></span>AirPiratePresshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13136561512898563240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6284866051777565056.post-74172449730094395272013-05-28T08:31:00.000-07:002014-01-29T04:59:38.691-08:00Chapter 6, Part 3 - Harrison Ford: From Artisan to Artist<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As was his custom on his other films, Ford did most of his own stunts for <i>Blade Runner</i>. One memorable scene had him clinging precariously to a ledge, hundreds of storeys above the teeming streets.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘We were using a 65mm Mitchell camera,’ explained effects man David Dryer, ‘which weighed about 75 pounds. With that kind of weight cantilevered out over Ford there was always the chance that the camera would break a casting and come right down on him. So we rigged a special plate and support to get the camera actually looking back down on itself.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was Rutger Hauer’s job to haul Ford up onto the roof. ‘Harrison didn’t want to fall down that twenty foot drop, or whatever it was. So he was hanging there, with a wire for support, but it was still kind of tough to get him up.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But Ford was dismissive of the danger involved. ‘That shot where I’m hanging from the girder ... well, god knows, I’m not hanging 30 storeys above the ground there. Not only am I not hanging from the girder, I’ve got a safety belt on and a wire that’s got me clipped to the bottom of the girder ... and I’m acting like I’m hanging from a girder, from the contortion of my face, the sweat of my brow. That’s all acting ... wonderful acting!’ But on a more serious note Ford is careful to draw a clear distinction between what he does and ‘real’ stunts. ‘What I’ve done in <i>Raiders of the Lost Ark</i> and <i>Blade Runner</i> is “physical acting”. Stunts are falling off a tall building or crashing a car. Something you’re silly enough to think isn’t going to hurt the next day.’</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wgB0JgEydFA/UaTNNn5GE_I/AAAAAAAAAOI/nwywm2gj9NQ/s1600/chap06_18_crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wgB0JgEydFA/UaTNNn5GE_I/AAAAAAAAAOI/nwywm2gj9NQ/s320/chap06_18_crop.jpg" height="236" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Ford claims he wasn't really dangling from a girder by his fingertips <br />30 storeys above the ground ... but I don't believe him for a second.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Meanwhile, rumours abounded that Ford had drastically altered his appearance for the movie, one American newspaper even claiming Ford played Deckard with a shaved head. ‘The crewcut was my idea,’ said Ford. ‘And I had to talk Ridley into it, because he was afraid that it might make me less ... gorgeous. The haircut couldn’t be done unless Ridley was there. It took about four hours to get it. With long pauses for consideration by Ridley. My ambition was always to get it right down. Real short. I wanted to give the impression of a character who has given upon himself, was unconscious of his appearance and had lost, to a large degree, that ego that keeps us all doing things like combing our hair, brushing our teeth and all of that. I thought it was important to suggest that and change my appearance in some way. I think it’s more interesting for an audience, even if they know right away who it is. They don’t have the same expectation of you if you don’t look the same. It gives you a foot forward.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘And one of the other things that drives me nuts when doing a four month shooting schedule is when someone is fiddling with your hair between every shot. I just can’t stand that. It just drives me nuts. If I could have short hair on every film ... I mean, some of my best friends are hairdressers, but it does drive me nuts. The first thing I do after a film where I have long hair is cut it all off.’ The beard was also Ford’s idea. ‘The first day of <i>Blade Runner</i>, I’m shaved. When the events begin to take over my life, it hardly seems a proper time to shave ... when things are going the way they are in Blade Runner, there doesn’t seem time for a bath and a shave. I think that kind of detail goes to make up the character. I try not to lose sight of those little things.’</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Rdw15tfVrfU/UaTKeRrCGbI/AAAAAAAAANg/FDVEPqzJVUM/s1600/chap06_03_crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Rdw15tfVrfU/UaTKeRrCGbI/AAAAAAAAANg/FDVEPqzJVUM/s320/chap06_03_crop.jpg" height="320" width="255" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>An early continuity pic of Ford ... here his hair <br />is longer than it appeared in the final movie.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By this time, Ford had had a chance to think through Deckard’s relationship with Rachael. ‘It’s clear that Deckard doesn’t think very much about women at all,’ he told the author of <i>Blade Runner</i> souvenir magazine. ‘He’s the type of guy that would see them occasionally but not have any use for them around the house. He has a wife and child but they seem to have gone in search of a better life. Deckard acknowledges on Rachael’s first appearance that she is attractive. But then she becomes a puzzle and, when he figures out she is a replicant, he seems to have no further use for her. He sees Rachael as a zero. But her display of emotion, even though he knows it’s false, implanted, pulls him out of his despair. As he begins to become involved with her, he is forced to confront what is really going on around him.’</span><br />
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<h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">THE RELEASE</span></h3>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Director Ridley Scott called ‘cut!’ for the last time on <i>Blade Runner</i> during the second week of July, 1981. The production was already over-schedule and over-budget. The filmmakers busied themselves with such vital post-production activities as editing, dubbing and adding the excellent Vangelis music. The following January, the first of the <i>Blade Runner</i> trailers was released in America. It featured scenes from the movie under the music of the Inkspots, enhancing the idea of <i>Blade Runner</i> as a 1940s pastiche.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A rough cut of the film previewed in Denver, Colorado. The feedback from that screening indicated the fans were unhappy with the abrupt ending of Deckard and Rachael stepping into the lift and the doors slamming shut behind them.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘Fortunately, we had also shot an alternative ending, with Deckard and Rachael leaving the city together in a Spinner, heading towards the unpolluted Northwest,’ said Scott. Also at this stage, there was no Harrison Ford voice-over to explain the more ambiguous scenes in the film. I was lucky enough to see this version at an early preview in London around March, 1982, and feel this ‘first draft’ to be far superior to both the theatrical release cut and the later ‘Director’s Cut’ released on VHS video.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When the film came out on June 25, 1982 in America, the 1940s look and the laconic (some would say, ‘bored’) narration was singled out by the critics as the chief target for attack. Ford was a little defensive about such comments. ‘I thought it had the makings of a very original film,’ he said. ‘It was no ambition of mine to play the character like a Forties Bogart figure, but it was always on Ridley’s mind. It was always my hope that there wouldn’t be a voice-over, that we wouldn’t need one. I thought the character needed to be a representation of a certain type of physical environment, the result of that kind of life. The voice-over was always Ridley’s idea, from the beginning.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Scott was a little more philosophical. ‘We never addressed the problem of the voice-over early enough,’ he told me. ‘I wanted the voice-over from the beginning. The screenplay was written with a voice-over.’ But that wasn’t the voice-over that appeared in the finished film. And Scott was far from happy with the end result. ‘The voice-over is an essential part of the Marlowe-type character of Deckard and also to a degree helps clarification. One of the most interesting aspects of <i>Apocalypse Now</i> was the voice-over. It was incredible. I think Coppola went on for nearly six months trying to get that right. I think, with hindsight, I would have re-done the voice-over in <i>Blade Runner</i>, and I think Harrison would as well.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As it turned out, the final narration was no masterpiece and it jarred against the other aspects of the production. Of particular note was the corny speech over the scene in which replicant Roy Batty dies. Ford’s tired voice proclaims. ‘I don’t know why he saved my life. Maybe in those last moments he loved life more than he ever had before. Not just his life. Anybody’s life. My life. All he’d wanted were the same answers the rest of us want. Where do I come from? Where am I going? How long have it got? All I could do was sit there and watch him die.’ Raymond Chandler, it’s not.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-M8cVW-6P1gY/UaTLBNbZHFI/AAAAAAAAANo/2VumUUJy4vE/s1600/chap06_11_crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-M8cVW-6P1gY/UaTLBNbZHFI/AAAAAAAAANo/2VumUUJy4vE/s320/chap06_11_crop.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Ridley Scott directs Ford during the final showdown <br />with Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer).</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Almost predictably, the reviews weren’t good.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Playboy</i>’s Bruce Williamson thought <i>Blade Runner</i> was a ‘major disappointment’ despite ‘smashing production values and fine actors’ and summed up the movie saying, ‘by the time Ford and Hauer face off for their climactic showdown, <i>Blade Runner</i> had grown dull – a simple case of Philip Marlowe meets Frankenstein.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The British trade publication <i>Screen International</i> felt ‘the special effects dominate the film while the plot and characters fade into the background,’ and pointed out that ‘in spite of his voice-over ironies, Rick Deckard is no Philip Marlowe.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The American trade bible <i>Variety</i> said that ‘Ford’s frequent inertia mutes the detective angle of the story which is couched in some hard-boiled Chandleresque narration and in the long run proves to be the weakest aspect of the pic.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Some critics believed that the level of violence in <i>Blade Runner</i> was more explicit than was necessary. Ford countered this in his usual eloquent style. ‘There’s a really unfortunate and ill-advised attitude to the violence in the film. I am conscious of violence in a film. I abhor it when it is used for the sake of itself. I was anxious to make sure this character represented the abhorrence of violence. And he does. He wanted to get out of the police force because he couldn’t stand the killing. After every incident of having to kill someone, the character’s revulsion is clear. And, ironically, he is not killing human beings. That’s what the thematic backbone of the film is. They’re not really human beings. And yet, his empathy with something that looks like a human being – which is later to lead him into a romance with a machine affects him.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In spite of the negative criticism of the film, Ford’s performance was praised. Scriptwriter David Peoples was enthusiastic about Ford’s portrayal of Rick Deckard. ‘Harrison is an absolutely magnificent actor,’ he commented. ‘He’s amazing. He’s like the great old guys. He becomes Deckard. I mean, you don’t see him act like Deckard, he is Deckard and Deckard is different from Han Solo and entirely different from Indiana Jones. In <i>Blade Runner </i>he’s a seething guy with a lot inside him. He’s a guy who’s got a lot of problems, who’s holding a lot in, and Harrison does it brilliantly.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Science fiction author and friend of Philip K. Dick’s, Norman Spinrad was more restrained about Ford’s performance. ‘Harrison Ford is fine in the rather undemanding role of Deckard,’ a comment that seems to me to be sniffy and dismissive.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In my view <i>Blade Runner</i> remains probably the most literate science fiction film ever made. Ford’s performance is a masterpiece of understatement and contributed mightily to the film’s artistic success. Ford himself has spoken critically of his involvement in the film, stating that he’s very unhappy with Ridley Scott’s later claims that Deckard was <i>always</i> intended to be a replicant. However, I never got that Deckard was any kind of replicant from the movie in any of its cuts, just that the momentary doubt about his own humanity the character experiences is enough to finally convince Deckard that replicants are worth no less than human beings.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8QNlfjFnEHw/UaTMAke8vDI/AAAAAAAAAN4/lEWl3WFPjBM/s1600/chap06_17_crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8QNlfjFnEHw/UaTMAke8vDI/AAAAAAAAAN4/lEWl3WFPjBM/s320/chap06_17_crop.jpg" height="192" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Some people thought this scene indicated that Deckard <br />was a replicant because his eyes glowed in the same <br />way as Rachel's ... I'd want more evidence than that.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yet <i>Blade Runner</i> was an extremely important step in Ford’s career. It was his first opportunity to show what he could do as a serious actor. It was becoming obvious that Ford was a far better actor than his <i>Star Wars</i> and <i>Raiders</i> vehicles allowed audiences to see. But further expeditions into the area of serious acting would have to wait. Already the date for the beginning of principal photography of the third part of the <i>Star Wars</i> saga was approaching. It was almost time for Ford to return to the worlds of robots and rayguns as Han Solo in <i>Return of the Jedi</i>. But not before he’d rested up a while. ‘It would take an Act of Congress to get me to work before <i>Jedi</i>,’ he said, ‘I haven’t had six months with the kids for a long time.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But Ford would be back at work quicker than he expected. Melissa had been around on set much of the time during the filming of <i>Raiders</i>, working with Spielberg on the script for <i>E.T.</i> During the filming of <i>E.T.</i>, Spielberg had Melissa work with the child actors, rehearsing their scenes. It was inevitable that Ford would end up with a role in the movie. Spielberg also persuaded Melissa to play the part of the nurse who takes the “drunk” Elliot to the principal (played by Ford). As with most of the other adults in the film, their faces would not be seen. But nervous Melissa’s hands trembled so badly during her scene she pleaded with Spielberg to scrap the footage. So not for the first time in his career one of Ford’s performances was consigned to the cutting room floor.</span><br />
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AirPiratePresshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13136561512898563240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6284866051777565056.post-77306599750000335192013-05-18T07:55:00.000-07:002013-05-28T08:32:47.654-07:00Chapter 6, Part 2 - Harrison Ford: From Artisan to Artist<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">THE CASTING</span></h3>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Harrison Ford’s involvement in <i>Blade Runner</i> goes back further than that of David Peoples. ‘They first asked me about <i>Blade Runner</i>,’ said Harrison Ford, ‘when I was doing ... hmm, <i>Empire</i>, I guess – I have such a bad memory. They were going to make it in London at that point in their plans and I said, “Well, thank you very much, gentlemen, but I don’t want to work in London any more. I want to go home.” Five of my last eight films have been made in London. When they came back to me, it turned out that they couldn’t put it together in London for some reason.’ That reason was intertwined with the collapse of Filmways and the involvement of Tandem Productions and The Ladd Company.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However, according to the book <i>Harrison Ford: Reluctant Hero</i>, Scott had approached Ford during the filming of <i>Empire</i> in 1978, not about <i>Blade Runner</i>, but about <i>Alien</i>, to play the role of Captain Dallas. Ford turned it down as he didn’t want to play another space pilot and the role went to Tom Skerrit. Scott’s approach to Ford about <i>Blade Runner</i> was during the filming of <i>Raiders</i> in 1980.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-h03-_GVaci0/UZeRjc2xD9I/AAAAAAAAAMw/av7jbzYQH6Q/s1600/chap06_04_crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-h03-_GVaci0/UZeRjc2xD9I/AAAAAAAAAMw/av7jbzYQH6Q/s1600/chap06_04_crop.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Hard to believe now that anyone other than Ford could <br />have played Deckard, but the producers also approached <br />Dustin Hoffman</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I asked Associate Producer Ivor Powell to explain the ins and outs of the move from London to LA. ‘After getting Filmways in as the major and the distributor, the next problem was how to shoot the film. Despite all the location scouting we did, there was no one place that had the concentration of architecture that was right. As always, with a film like <i>Blade Runner</i>, it comes down to how you are going to crack the script, how you’re actually going to make it work, how the logistics are going to work and how they are going to work within a price. The budget was gradually being pushed up and Filmways, I guess, were being carried screamingly along with it, and though we were unaware of it at the time, they were having tremendous cash-flow problems. They believed in the project, but I don’t think they had the money for a twenty million dollar movie. The budget had gone from about twelve or thirteen million dollars, which was totally impractical, right up to twenty million plus. Finally, Filmways collapsed and Michael Deeley, very cleverly I think, turned the film around to Tandem Productions (the company of Jerry Perenchio and Bud Yorkin) and The Ladd Company in a very short space of time, though we went through a terrible hiatus where we were trying to hold the crew together. The directors’ strike was looming for later that year. We knew if we didn’t start the movie by a certain date, we would never start at all. It was one of those pictures that you knew that if it didn’t get made then, it would never get made at all. It wasn’t every director’s cup of tea. Finally, the cash-flow started and we got off. We had, at that time, attempted to do a budget. I’d done a quick budget, which had come in at seventeen or eighteen million dollars, if we were making the picture in England. But if we’d made the move to England, it would have been too late to beat the director’s strike, which ironically never happened anyway. So for that, and some other reasons, we made the movie there, at the Burbank Studios.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With the production base re-located to Hollywood, Harrison Ford once more became available for the leading role as Rick Deckard, blade runner. But for many of Ford’s fans, <i>Blade Runner</i> was a radical departure from the kind of film that had endeared their hero to them. Ford was following his oft-stated intention to avoid type-casting and ensure that each of his roles was sufficiently different from the last.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OirrfFslyIU/UZeTRwTkmaI/AAAAAAAAANA/kKzTxCkO8l0/s1600/chap06_02_crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OirrfFslyIU/UZeTRwTkmaI/AAAAAAAAANA/kKzTxCkO8l0/s1600/chap06_02_crop.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ford almost didn't sign for Blade Runner because it was originally <br />scheduled to be filmed in the UK and Harrison didn't want to make<br /> another movie in Britain right after Star Ward and Raiders</span></i></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ford was finally signed for <i>Blade Runner</i> while the finishing touches were being put on <i>Raiders of the Lost Ark</i>. And, as with <i>Raiders</i>, Ford was not the filmmakers’ first choice for Deckard. I asked Ivor Powell why Harrison Ford had been picked for the role. ‘By popular demand, really,’ said Powell. <i>Raiders of the Lost Ark</i> hadn’t come out then, so we didn’t know if it was going to do well. At one time, we were even talking to Dustin Hoffman, and that would have been a totally different picture. Dustin is not a macho character and he asked Ridley, “Why the hell do you want me to play this macho character?”</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘Ridley was searching for more than just a superficial, macho film,’ continued Powell. ‘He wanted a real character in there, and Dustin, as I understand it, put forward some wonderful ideas. But it wasn’t the film we were talking about making. Finally, I think it just came down to the fact that Harrison fitted the bill.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ridley Scott also told me that, as far as he was concerned, Harrison Ford was the man for the job. ‘He has a very unusual quality that shines through in two pictures, <i>The Conversation</i> and <i>Apocalypse Now</i>. It’s a strange, slightly sinister, side. Very low-key and sombre. Almost a different Harrison Ford. Very dangerous. It fitted the nature of both Deckard and the film very well. The only other actor we saw for the part was Dustin Hoffman. He was looking for a different kind of movie. But, god knows, I’d like to work with Hoffman some day. After things fell through there, we went straight to Harrison. He’d been under consideration from the beginning.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And at the beginning, Ford seemed pleased to be involved in the project. ‘I’m preparing to start work on <i>Blade Runner</i>,’ he told an American fan magazine, shortly before <i>Raiders</i> opened. ‘I’m sure I was considered for the film as a result of <i>Star Wars</i>, just as Ridley (Scott) proved his capabilities in this genre with <i>Alien</i>.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘I can’t complain so far. <i>Star Wars</i>, <i>Empire</i>, <i>Raiders</i> and <i>Blade Runner</i> are classy, high- quality melodramas, not pot-boilers. They all contain currents of intelligence and morality, and are handled with taste. I’m looking forward to <i>Blade Runner</i>. I think I can give it an aspect that will set it apart from <i>Raiders</i> or <i>Star Wars</i> or anything else I’ve done.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And while on a trip to Britain to promote <i>Raiders of the Lost Ark</i>, Ford had apparently brought his enthusiasm for <i>Blade Runner</i> with him. As he told the British magazine, <i>Films</i>, ‘<i>Blade Runner</i> is an important step towards more serious roles. And I think it will be a very commercial film because of its unique vision. But I was serious about it because of the people involved and was happy to find out that Ridley was interested in developing the density of the characters as well. I felt that we could work together to present a character who was interesting and very different to anything else I’ve done until now.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ford and Scott laboured long and hard to achieve something they could be proud of. ‘We have a lot of discussions about scenes,’ said Ford during filming, ‘but not about motivation. I don’t ask him what my motivations are and he doesn’t ask me what they are. The discussions are usually about practical matters – what we’re trying to get out of a scene, what the obligations are on him as master of the story and me as the character. Then we look for common ground to accomplish the story points and the character points at the same time. And sometimes that’s done without any discussion at all, and sometimes we discuss all hell out of it!’</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Vf2S3tZWc4o/UZeT3ecil6I/AAAAAAAAANI/Pf9v8cF1tHY/s1600/chap06_15_crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Vf2S3tZWc4o/UZeT3ecil6I/AAAAAAAAANI/Pf9v8cF1tHY/s1600/chap06_15_crop.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ridley directs Ford in the cut scene where Deckard visits the <br />injured blade runner Holden, who's been put in a ventilator <br />by Leon (Brion James).</span></i></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This process was underlined by Ridley Scott. ‘There is always a period of rehearsals before the film, and I at least try to get a couple of weeks for casting and reading through the script. I usually take a certain amount of time and tell the actors about the overall film, not just about their particular parts. It’s usually a lengthy process, but then it is worth it because they know how they sit, how they figure within the overall piece. It is very important that they understand the entire thing.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ford was also aware that the characters must be clearly defined before the first foot of film ran through the camera. ‘Ultimately it is the actor who has to perform the act and commit it to film. So, while a director’s job is incredibly complicated and difficult, there are elements that are never resolved – how a prop should work, whether the character carries his gun here or carries it there. These may be simple little details, but they are only decided when somebody gets a strong attitude about things and begins to form a point of view. The character Deckard does finally. He begins to develop a point of view about the circumstances around him.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yet for all this there seemed to be a fundamental difference between Deckard as Ridley Scott saw him and the character as envisaged by Ford, Scott’s Deckard was apparent to the director as far back as the Hampton Fancher versions of the script. ‘It started to emerge for me,’ said Scott, ‘that Deckard was a kind of Philip Marlowe character, which is an obvious comparison. Harrison figured he should go for utter reality, almost like de Niro’s Travis Bickle in <i>Taxi Driver</i>.’ Ford himself saw Deckard as, ‘... a reluctant detective who dresses like a middle-aged Elvis Costello. He’s a skilled investigator, an expert in his field, but he’s a little out of practice when the movie opens. He’s lost his motor drive. Exterminating people, even non-human ones, is not something he likes to do, and he’s not comfortable with authority. He’s very tough, but he’s no match for a top-of-the-line replicant.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Tough though Deckard may have been, he didn’t seem to be quite tough enough to resist the aspect of Chandler-esque pastiche that was creeping into the movie. Under Scott’s direction, <i>Blade Runner</i> seemed to be taking shape as a kind of homage to the great black-and-white noir movies of the Forties. As the film’s director of photography, Jordan Cronenweath, told <i>American Cinematographer</i>, ‘Ridley felt the style of photography in <i>Citizen Kane</i> (1940) most closely approached the look he wanted for <i>Blade Runner</i>. This included, among other things, high contrast, unusual camera angles and the use of shafts of light.’ All the film lacked at this stage was a punchy voice-over narration delivered in the kind of lazy drawl made famous by Humphrey Bogart. ‘The generation of the idea of a voice-over came very quickly,’ said Scott. ‘Eventually a screenplay was written with a voice- over very much in mind.’ Ford wasn’t happy at the prospect of a voice-over narration, but for the time being kept his counsel. There was still the problem of being able to satisfy the requirements of the script without compromising his own goals and principles.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘My object,’ Ford told an American fan magazine, ‘every time out of the gate is to contrast the public’s last known impression of me. So, with <i>Blade Runner</i>, I’m working against<i> Raiders of the Lost Ark.</i> They originally wanted Deckard to wear a big felt hat. I told them I had just finished wearing one in <i>Raiders</i>, so we changed that.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Despite evidence to the contrary, Ford felt that the science fiction content of <i>Blade Runner</i> was minimal. ‘I wouldn’t call <i>Blade Runner</i> science fiction,’ he said, ‘because it’s much different from the public’s conception of sf-based on movies they’ve seen in the past.’ Granted, but <i>Star Wars</i> was actually less worthy of the tag Science Fiction than <i>Blade Runner</i>. ‘There are special effects in it,’ he continued, ‘but they’re kind of throwaways. From a technical point of view, <i>Blade Runner</i> is not an effects film, but I’m sure Doug (Trumbull)’s work will add a great deal to the story.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And even at this early stage, Ford was aware of the film’s noir potential. As he told the reporter of <i>Movie Guide</i>, ‘<i>Blade Runner</i> is a big city detective story, the kind Raymond Chandler might have written, but it takes place in the future. It’s realistic and gritty and takes place entirely on Earth.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Still, for all the confusion over what <i>Blade Runner</i> and Deckard were all about, Ford was enjoying working with Scott. At least for the time being. ‘Ridley’s very particular and demanding in all elements of the production. I knew he was a great visual stylist, but I was glad to find depth and subtlety of character.’</span><br />
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<h3>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">THE FILMING</span></h3>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The filming of <i>Blade Runner</i> finally got under way on March 9, 1981, after a year of preproduction planning and an additional fourteen weeks of constructing and dressing sets. The project was already running three months behind schedule.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Actual locations, both in the United States and in Europe, had been considered by the film’s producer, Michael Deeley. But finally, the idea of location filming had proved both impractible and undesirable. The production team were happy to settle for shooting the exteriors on the Warner Brothers New York street set, which had been used for such earlier detective yarns as <i>The Maltese Falcon</i> (1941) and <i>The Big Sleep</i> (1946) as well as more recent fare like 1982’s <i>Annie</i>.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Industrial designer Syd Mead and<i> Blade Runner</i>’s production designer Lawrence Paull had been hard at work for twelve months creating the backdrop against which the drama would be played. The cast had been assembled and carefully coached in the lore of <i>Blade Runner</i>. The on-set smoke machine was switched on. The real work could begin.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Most of the action in the movie takes place at night. This meant the cast and crew knuckling down to a gruelling, hours-of-darkness shooting schedule. Lunch was called at midnight and the ‘day’s’ work ended at four or five in the morning. Scott and his key cast and crew members had to survive on an average of four hours of sleep a night, which prevented the kind of family atmosphere Ford had been used to on the Lucas films.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Unlike Lucas, who delegated many of his responsibilities as a filmmaker, Scott preferred to be personally involved in every aspect of the process. Reports filtered through to the trade publications that Ford and Scott weren’t getting along. These reports hinted that Ford was unhappy with Scott’s attention to the mechanics of film-making, a fascination that ran to the extent of Scott operating his own camera during key scenes, a charge Ford denied. ‘It was no big bone of contention between us,’ said Ford. ‘I don’t think he ever got around that problem. He just learned to accommodate the reality. Ridley was able to shoot a few things he really wanted to. And he’s very good. Especially with the hand-held camera. I think there’s quite a few shots in the film with Scott operating his hand-held camera. He likes to watch the performance through the lens. As an actor, I’m glad he wasn’t able to do that all the time. I think it’s better to have his attention on other things. He knows that’s the way I feel. I think that when a director is looking through the camera, he’s watching the edges to be sure where everything is. I want a director to be helping me with a whole scene, the performance. It’s not that this isn’t possible, or that Ridley hasn’t done it before ... and very well.’</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rPCp61JZcYE/UZeUcethghI/AAAAAAAAANQ/f_btaCf9RGs/s1600/chap06_13_crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rPCp61JZcYE/UZeUcethghI/AAAAAAAAANQ/f_btaCf9RGs/s1600/chap06_13_crop.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Sean Young has reportedly said that Ford was difficult <br />to connect to on a personal level.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ford kept himself pretty much to himself during the seventeen weeks of shooting. His co-star Sean Young would have welcomed more collaboration between them. ‘I think Harrison is probably an all-or-nothing type of person and he can’t really relate to other cast members full out, because he feels he might become too wrapped up, and by being friendlier with the crew, he can avoid that whole mess.’</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Rutger Hauer was less open in his views on working with Ford. ‘I only had two moments in the film with Ford,’ he said. ‘I didn’t work that long with him, but he was fine. Our scenes were very clearly written in the script. I didn’t feel there was a problem of communication because we didn’t have to talk about it. It was just a matter of doing it without getting hurt.’</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Next: The stunts and the press reaction to Blade Runner</i></span></div>
AirPiratePresshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13136561512898563240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6284866051777565056.post-6848255283139910882013-04-07T01:01:00.000-07:002014-01-28T05:52:11.549-08:00Chapter 6, Part 1 - Harrison Ford: From Artisan to Artist<br />
<h4>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘Harrison has an immense understanding of the entire movie-making process. You can’t fool him. He always knows exactly what is happening. His contributions were tremendous, on a story level as well as to his own character. He brought many ideas to me. In fact, it got bloody embarrassing. They were so good there was no way I could wriggle out of using them.’ Ridley Scott, director of Blade Runner</span></h4>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The release of <i>Blade Runner</i> in May, 1982 (September, 1982 in Britain) marked a definite attempt by Harrison Ford to change his image. The fan-following built up by such light entertainment vehicles as the <i>Star Wars</i> pictures and <i>Raiders of the Lost Ark</i> were puzzled by the singular lack of humour in Ford’s performance. So much so that they stayed away in droves. <i>Blade Runner</i> was not initially a commercial success.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-iQffTLvvJTY/UWEjhVfP47I/AAAAAAAAAL0/F7m69l4Ze44/s1600/chap06_01_crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-iQffTLvvJTY/UWEjhVfP47I/AAAAAAAAAL0/F7m69l4Ze44/s1600/chap06_01_crop.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Ford fans were puzzled by the lack of humour <br />in the actor's </i>Blade Runner<i> performance.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But <i>Blade Runner</i> was perhaps Ford’s most important film up to that point. Certainly, it was his first opportunity to sustain an Acting performance in a starring role. The insight and depth he brought to the character of Rick Deckard showed that Ford was capable of far more than the wisecracking characterisations of Han Solo and Indiana Jones would lead audiences to suspect.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">More than that, the backdrop against which the drama of Blade Runner was played out, although futuristic, was grittier and more realistic than the fantastic environments of Indy and Solo.</span><br />
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<h3>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD</span></h3>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">No matter how skilled a film’s performers and technicians are, unless the blueprint from which they work – the script – is tightly crafted, the final movie will suffer as a result. Most movie people agree that just about all the problems encountered during the shooting of a film can be traced back to difficulties left unresolved by the scriptwriter – yet when everything goes swimmingly, it’s the director who gets all the credit.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The script of <i>Blade Runner</i> was based, loosely, on the novel <i>Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?</i> by respected science fiction author, the late Philip K. Dick, who died tragically on March 2nd, 1982, shortly before the completed film of <i>Blade Runner</i> was released.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ICjvLPy7I2Y/UWEkHcszr8I/AAAAAAAAAL8/VLZj-OKg70s/s1600/chap06_10_crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ICjvLPy7I2Y/UWEkHcszr8I/AAAAAAAAAL8/VLZj-OKg70s/s320/chap06_10_crop.jpg" height="320" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">No, it's not real ... but don't you wish it was?</span></i></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The need for the script to be ‘right’ is so universally recognised by filmmakers that it often takes longer to produce a screenplay that everyone is satisfied with than it does to shoot the actual film. <i>Blade Runner</i> is no exception. Work began on the transfer of Dick’s story to the screen almost a decade before the film was released.</span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘It all began years ago,’ Dick told <i>Starlog</i>. ‘Martin Scorsese and Jay Cocks were both interested in <i>Androids</i>, but they didn’t option (purchase the film rights to) it. That was the first movie interest in any property (story) of mine. Then later, Herb Jaffe optioned it and Robert Jaffe did a screenplay back about 1973. The screenplay was sent to me and it was so crude that I didn’t understand that it was actually the shooting script. I thought it was a rough. I wrote to them and asked if they would like me to do the shooting script, at which point, Robert Jaffe flew down here to Orange County. I said to him then that it was so bad that I wanted to know if he wanted me to beat him up there at the airport or wait until we got to my apartment.’</span>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VLsPIcbSuMA/UWEkrneZLFI/AAAAAAAAAME/BLUjNToOwHI/s1600/chap06_05_crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VLsPIcbSuMA/UWEkrneZLFI/AAAAAAAAAME/BLUjNToOwHI/s1600/chap06_05_crop.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>The first scene of </i>Blade Runner<i> opens with this arresting visual ...</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Jaffes made little progress with their attempts to put <i>Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?</i> on the big screen. But the Jaffes weren’t the only film folk interested in the project. Some time in 1974, Hampton Fancher approached Dick with a view to obtaining the film rights to the novel, but as the rights still rested with the Jaffes, Dick was unenthusiastic. Then, in 1977, the Jaffes let their option on the film rights lapse and within a year, Fancher and his partner Brian Kelly found themselves in possession of the movie rights for Dick’s novel.</span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Kelly approached Michael Deeley, Oscar winning producer of <i>The Deer Hunter </i>with a view to raising finance for further development, but the reception was cool. Deeley felt that there would be too many problems involved in translating Dick’s complicated story to the big screen. Nevertheless, Kelly and Fancher persevered. Fancher produced an eight- page outline for the film which so impressed Deeley that he encouraged the partners to come up with a full script. ‘I hadn’t ever intended to write the screenplay myself,’ Fancher recalled, ‘but I was convinced that this was the only way to get the project off the ground.’</span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘Lord knows,’ commented Dick, perhaps uncharitably, ‘I didn’t think much of his screenplay.’ But despite Dick’s reservations, Kelly and Fancher took their script to Deeley once again. ‘He loved it,’ said Fancher.</span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Deeley began to hawk the script around the production companies in Film City. ‘People were interested,’ said Fancher, ‘but they wanted changes. They’d want a happy ending or they’d want something else changed. It was pretty precarious there for a while. I think there were about four or five drafts written before Ridley Scott came into it. When Ridley came in that sort of wrapped it up because of the <i>Alien</i> reputation. That’s what it needed for the studio to get down to business with it.’ On the strength of Ridley Scott’s participation, Michael Deeley had put together a deal with Filmways. At this point the title of the project had changed from <i>Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?</i> to <i>The Android</i>.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3f1atPyP7Sw/UWElSJ8HJYI/AAAAAAAAAMM/w6j3cciNFkU/s1600/chap06_07_crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3f1atPyP7Sw/UWElSJ8HJYI/AAAAAAAAAMM/w6j3cciNFkU/s1600/chap06_07_crop.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>The smarmy blade runner Holder (Morgan Paull) <br />runs the Voigt-Kampff test on Leon</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At the time Scott was approached to direct <i>Blade Runner</i>, he was scheduled to helm Dino De Laurentis’ multi-million dollar adaptation of the best-selling series of <i>Dune</i> novels by Frank Herbert. But delays in the production made it possible for Scott to squeeze <i>Blade Runner</i> in before beginning work on <i>Dune</i>. (For the record, <i>Dune</i> was later filmed by the team of director David Lynch and cinematographer Freddie Francis).</span><span style="font-size: small;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What was it about the script that convinced Ridley Scott to take on the project? ‘What appealed to me, having just done <i>Alien</i> which was very interesting, was the involvement in just developing that future environment further. I love that whole process, almost as much as any other part of movie making. I just didn’t want to step off onto ordinary ground again. What I felt was great about the script was that it was dealing with the near future. It had to be a familiar city, which it is. A lot of aspects of that city are familiar right now. In fact, a lot of people who will see the film, will experience that kind of future themselves. I also liked the aspect that there was a real character in there, rather than a two-dimensional cardboard character, which happens too often with science fiction films. Because the film is usually dominated by a monster or event the characters do, essentially, take second place.’</span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After Ridley Scott was signed to direct, a major revision of the script, by now called <i>Dangerous Days</i>, began. Initially, Fancher was resistant to some of the changes proposed. And as a co-owner of the project, Fancher was in a position to dig his heels in. But pressure to alter portions of the script became so great that Fancher realised the only way out of the situation was to bring in another writer.</span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Enter: David Peoples.</span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As Fancher remarked later, ‘I was surprised when I got Peoples’ script. Those things that Ridley had wanted that I thought couldn’t be integrated into the script had been rendered by Peoples in ways that were original, tight and admirable. I really liked it. But we never actually collaborated. He came in on very short notice and he had a lot of work to do, but he did it very fast and very well.’</span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Peoples had been brought into the project during November 1980. Shooting was still several months away. ‘I read the script,’ said Peoples, ‘and immediately felt that it was so good that I was disappointed, because when they came to have a meeting I told them I couldn’t make it any better. It was a terrific script. I don’t know which ones Phil Dick read that he didn’t like, but certainly the one I read was absolutely brilliant. And that was the one I worked from to make the changes Ridley wanted, to make it more his vision.’</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--6BMTvhDpjk/UWEm7RTvtxI/AAAAAAAAAMc/NIQNlc-HK0E/s1600/chap06_12_crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--6BMTvhDpjk/UWEm7RTvtxI/AAAAAAAAAMc/NIQNlc-HK0E/s1600/chap06_12_crop.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Ridley Scott directs extras in a Los Angeles street scene.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Throughout this process of re-writing, Ridley Scott kept a watchful eye on the developing script. Another title change was instigated.</span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘The final title actually came from an obscure science fiction paperback (by Alan Nourse),’ Ivor Powell, the associate producer told me. ‘This paperback had something to do with doctors in the future, when doctors and medicines are banned. There are all these illegal doctors who go out to administer medical help to the sick, and the people who supply them with instruments when they run out are called blade runners. Hampton Fancher gave that name to Deckard in his script as a code-name. I’m not sure whether it was Hampton or Ridley who came up with the idea of calling the film Blade Runner.’</span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Dutifully, the filmmakers bought the rights to Alan Nourse’s <i>Blade Runner</i> novel, only to discover that there was another book of that name by William Burroughs. Originally Nourse’s novel was to be filmed and Burroughs had been hired to adapt the script. But when the movie fell through, Burroughs had his version of the story novelised and published in book form. Blade Runner’s producers were forced to purchase the rights to that version of the story, too.</span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the meantime, David Peoples was running into problems. During his revision of the script many of the sets and vehicles were either under construction or already built.</span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘One time I changed a scene,’ said Peoples, ‘and somebody said, "Jesus, you wrote the ambulance out!" I said, "So what?" and they said, "Well, it’s already built."’</span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Peoples gives full credit to Ridley Scott as the true architect of <i>Blade Runner</i>. ‘If anybody was authoring it at this stage it was Ridley. He was dominating, supervising and caring about what went on here. Then, down the line, Harrison Ford and Rutger Hauer made some really nice contributions in the way of dialogue. I would sometimes be writing a scene that Ridley would be shooting the following week, and twice I guess, I was writing stuff that was going to be shot that day.’</span><br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Next: Casting Blade Runner</span></b>
AirPiratePresshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13136561512898563240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6284866051777565056.post-66428837922305755532013-03-17T01:05:00.005-07:002013-05-28T08:34:59.445-07:00Chapter 5, Part 3 - Harrison Ford: Matinee Idol<br />
<h3>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?’</span></h3>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Most people would think that an actor who also did so many of his own stunts, like Harrison Ford, would have enough on his plate in a film like <i>Raiders of the Lost Ark</i>. Not so. The folk who made <i>Raiders</i> knew that the more severe the trials suffered by the hero, the more the audience would be rooting for him. Also, a hero with a failing seems more vulnerable and easier to identify with for an audience. So the filmmakers gave Indiana Jones a fear of snakes and needless to say, Indy met more than just a few snakes during his adventures in <i>Raiders</i>. The Well of Souls was filled with them.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘Steven Spielberg kept wanting more and more snakes,’ said Ford, ‘but he had to make do with six thousand garden and grass snakes flown in from Holland, and used bits of garden hose to fill the spaces the boas and pythons couldn’t.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Fords’s co-star, Karen Allen, wasn’t mad about doing the scene in the Well of Souls at first. ‘Harrison has on his boots and gloves, and leather clothes, and I have naked arms and nothing on my legs or feet. In the beginning it was tough, because I just couldn’t stand the snakes on my feet. But I got used to them.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Producer Frank Marshall, who shot some of the snake footage, wasn’t wild about reptiles, either. ‘I had to cure myself of a common phobia of snakes. But once you see other people, like a snake handler, not worry about it, then you touch one. Then I got to be real comfortable with them. Some of the shots I did were a real challenge. Snakes aren’t afraid of anything, they’d even go right into the fire. So we had to invent a way to get them to stay away from the fire.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Though most of the snakes used in the scene were harmless, the crew did use a couple of cobras, whose bite can kill, to add a little real danger for Indy.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘When we used the cobras,’ recalled Howard Kazanjian, the film’s co-executive producer, ‘we had a hospital gurney on the set, and outside the stage we had ambulances with open doors. On the end of the gurney was an open medical kit with a hypodermic needle placed into the phial of serum from India.’ This does sound like a typical piece of studio hype.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The publicity folks obligingly airbrushed the cobra's <br />reflection out of the picture in this still, but <br />you can see it quite clearly in the movie.</span></i></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the shot where Indy comes face-to-face with the angry cobra, it’s pretty easy to see the cobra’s reflection in the sheet of glass that separates them. The gurney and the hypo were probably for the unfortunates whose job it was to handle the snakes off-camera.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Harrison Ford dismisses Indy’s fear of snakes with his characteristic easy smile. ‘They don’t bother me at all. When I was a kid, I worked in a boy scout camp as a nature councillor, I used to collect them. Used to run and catch every snake we could. And I’m amazed that that’s the most frightening scene for most people.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But, as I said, all heroes must have a failing. There is something the intrepid Ford doesn’t like. ‘Spiders!’ he told <i>Movie Star</i> magazine. ‘Not because they’re creepy, but inside my house they multiply, and then their kids have kids. Ugh. All those spiders all over the place.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One particularly gruesome scene in <i>Raiders</i> does just happen to have a few spiders in it. The scene in the Temple in Peru. But unlike the scene with the snakes, it was the spiders that had to be watched out for rather than their human co-stars. ‘It’s funny how people think tarantulas are so dangerous,’ said producer Frank Marshall, ‘when in fact they’re very fragile creatures. If they fall or you drop them, they die. You have to be very careful with them. We did lose one of them one day when two got in a fight – a battle to the death.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But for Ford, it was the snakes that had the last laugh: shortly after the opening of <i>Raiders</i>, Ford told author Tony Crawley of a strange incident. ‘Back home,’ said Ford, ‘just the other week – you’re not going to believe this – I got bitten by a damn snake in my garden!’</span><br />
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<h3>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘I put as much of myself into the characters as possible.’</span></h3>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The only other thing Harrison Ford had to do in <i>Raiders of the Lost Ark</i> was portray the character of Indiana Jones. Director Steven Spielberg had nothing but praise for Ford’s abilities as an actor. ‘Harrison is a very original leading man,’ he said. ‘There’s not been anybody like him for 30 or 40 years. In this film he is a remarkable combination of Errol Flynn in <i>The Adventures of Don Juan</i> and Humphrey Bogart as Fred C. Dobbs in <i>Treasure of the Sierra Madre</i>. He carries this picture wonderfully.’ </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5p-8J0z6SWE/UUVz8amM-MI/AAAAAAAAALM/85cUVUuhH4g/s1600/chap05_03.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5p-8J0z6SWE/UUVz8amM-MI/AAAAAAAAALM/85cUVUuhH4g/s1600/chap05_03.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Ford effortlessly conveyed the many aspects of <br />Indy's character - scholar, brawler, adventurer, scoundrel.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ford was well aware of what was expected of him. ‘It’s a question of responsibility to define the character for the audience, to make the film as good as you can.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But he had a good ally in Steven Spielberg. ‘Steve allowed a kind of collaboration that was really a lot of fun for me. I like to become really involved as much, and as long, as possible. If I had a little bit of an idea, Steve added to it, and then I added to it, and then he added to it, and it built into something we both thought was better than before ... or so stupid we both ended up rolling about on the floor with laughter.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And, in the spirit of Indy’s line in the movie, ‘I’m making this up as I go,’ Ford and Spielberg were making changes to the script even during actual shooting.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘My only impulse to change lines comes when the words are impossible to get out of my mouth,’ said Ford. ‘The process of film-making involves so many situations and personalities that it becomes a very liquid medium. The physical presence of actors and crew are concrete factors, but the script should relate to them more like a road map of probabilities than a rigid blueprint.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The biggest change Spielberg and Ford made to the script was to delete the ‘Sword vs the Whip’ duel that was written as a climax to the battle in the marketplace in Cairo. In the film, Indy comes face to face with a giant of a swordsman. The swordsman performs an intricate routine with a huge scimitar. Indy, unimpressed, pulls out his revolver and shoots him. Not sporting, but efficient.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘I was in my fifth week of dysentery at the time,’ recalled Ford later. ‘The location was an hour and a half drive from where we stayed. I’m riding to the set at 5.30am, and I can’t wait to storm up to Steven with this idea. I’d worked out we could save four whole days on this lousy location this way. Besides which, I think it was right and important, because what’s more vital in the character’s mind is finding Marion. He doesn’t have time for another fight. But as is very often the case, when I suggested it to Steven – “Let’s just shoot the sucker” – he said, “I just thought the same thing this morning.” Sure, the idea was nothing. Putting it on film, that’s the most difficult part.’</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-A6IjvSp-vEc/UUV0b7do26I/AAAAAAAAALU/OgomErAtq0c/s1600/chap05_09.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-A6IjvSp-vEc/UUV0b7do26I/AAAAAAAAALU/OgomErAtq0c/s1600/chap05_09.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>The whip vs scimitar battle would have been fun, but Ford <br />and Spielberg were right to drop it. Indy had to save Marion ...</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That scene also told the audience much about Indiana Jones. The world-weary expression on Indy’s face as he draws his gun, sums up the character’s directness. As Ford explains, ‘Indy is a kind of swashbuckling hero type, but he has human frailties. He does brave things, but I wouldn’t describe him as a hero. He teaches, but I wouldn’t describe him as an intellectual. I wanted to avoid any elements in the role that might be too similar to Han Solo. But Indy doesn’t have any fancy gadgetry keeping him at a distance from enemies and trouble. The story is set in 1936, after all, and he’s right in there with just his battered trilby and a bull-whip to keep the world at bay.’</span><br />
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<h3>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Star!</span></h3>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘All I care about is good acting,’ George Lucas was once quoted as saying. ‘Star value is only an insurance policy for those who don’t trust themselves making films.’ But when <i>Raiders of the Lost Ark</i> opened in America on July 12th, 1981, that’s exactly what Harrison Ford had plenty of.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘There’s more excitement in the first ten minutes of <i>Raiders</i>,’ said <i>Playboy</i>’s Bruce Williamson, ‘than any movie I have seen all year. By the time the explosive misadventures end, any moviegoer worth his salt ought to be exhausted.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Just about all the reviews were of the same opinion. <i>Raiders</i> was a masterpiece of popular cinema. ‘Surely destined to go down in history as one of the great, fun movies,’ said Britain’s trade journal, <i>Screen International</i>.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘<i>Raiders</i> represents Spielberg’s best work in years, a return to the briskness and coherence that have been missing since <i>Jaws</i>,’ said <i>Time</i> magazine.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At the press screening I attended in 1981, the opening twelve minutes received a standing ovation from the several hundred jaded film hacks in attendance. Now that’s a reaction.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The film’s reception at the box-office was nothing short of exuberant, which came as no great surprise, ending up as the highest earning movie of 1981. Its position in the all-time box-office hit list is just as impressive, with the film at the 40th position earning a US gross of over $242 million.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At the 1981 Academy Awards, <i>Raiders</i> was nominated in the categories Best Music, Best Cinematography, Best Director and Best Picture, and won for Best Sound, Best Special Effects, Best Art Direction and Best Editing. The film also earned Ben Burtt and Richard Anderson a Special Oscar for Achievement in Sound Effects Editing.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ford himself was happy about his involvement in the film and the end result.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AOaOFkVKipk/UUV5DP93ZnI/AAAAAAAAALk/u58EdVBv56s/s1600/chap05_06.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AOaOFkVKipk/UUV5DP93ZnI/AAAAAAAAALk/u58EdVBv56s/s1600/chap05_06.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Indy and Marion share a </i>Gone with the Wind<i> moment <br />as they're reunited after all those years.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘<i>Raiders</i> is really about movies,’ he explained. ‘It is intricately designed as a tribute to the craft. I’m quite in awe of the film, and the way it was accomplished. Steven set out to make an epic film, technically complex, on a short schedule. He finished twelve days early and under budget. He didn’t waste any time in retakes. Steve was very fast and efficient, and that’s the way I like to work.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yet his experience on <i>Raiders</i> did leave Ford with one cautionary thought ‘I occasionally wonder how much longer I can perform in heavy action roles,’ he told an interviewer. ‘Working in sub-zero blizzards and 130 degree deserts is incredibly demanding, physically. Sometimes I think the most difficult part of being in films is being cool as an airplane rolls over your leg – and acting like it doesn’t hurt at all.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As Harrison Ford’s next film project drew closer, his attitude had mellowed a little ‘With me,’ he said, ‘the last film is always the toughest. I’ll soon be down on record as saying <i>Blade Runner </i>was the toughest.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By the time Ford had finished with <i>Raiders</i> in late 1980 and returned to his home in Benedict Canyon, Melissa had moved in with him and the tabloids were inexplicably in another feeding frenzy. One of the first guests they welcomed as a couple was British film director Ridley Scott who was courting Ford for the lead in his next picture, a science fiction detective yarn based on the Philip K. Dick novel <i>Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?</i></span><br />
AirPiratePresshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13136561512898563240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6284866051777565056.post-40639335531487950362013-02-17T06:16:00.001-08:002014-01-29T05:25:41.269-08:00Chapter 5, Part 2 - Harrison Ford: Matinee Idol<br />
<h3>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Keeping Indie independent</span></h3>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Despite his enthusiasm for the project, one aspect of <i>Raiders</i> bothered Ford. ‘My only immediate reservation about playing Indiana Jones,’ said Ford, ‘was that in the script the character was a little bit like Han Solo. Steven Spielberg and I wanted to make sure that the characters were spread apart. We did that by making use of the opportunities that existed in Lawrence Kasdan’s screenplay.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Time was too short for a re-write of the script. Yet Spielberg recognised in Ford a native ability with dialogue and wanted to implement some of Ford’s suggestions. What happened was like a scene out of a Let’s-make-a-movie movie. ‘The production was based in London,’ said Ford, ‘and Steve and I sat on the plane from Los Angeles and went through the script, line by line, for fourteen hours. By the time we got to Heathrow, we’d worked out the entire film.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s just as well that they had, for no sooner had Spielberg and Ford arrived in Britain than the entire cast and crew were whisked off to La Rochelle in France to spend the first five days of the movie’s shooting schedule filming the submarine hijack of the Bantu Wind. It was during these five days that Ford was to get his first taste of the stunts he would be required to perform in the course of portraying Indiana Jones. ‘Swimming to the submarine didn’t involve danger,’ said Ford, ‘it only involved discomfort.’ The worst was yet to come.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-17L7J6C6DEM/USDdNxrfzrI/AAAAAAAAAKM/MhSIQQXLZjs/s1600/chap05_05.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-17L7J6C6DEM/USDdNxrfzrI/AAAAAAAAAKM/MhSIQQXLZjs/s1600/chap05_05.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Steven Spielberg directs Harrison Ford in the Peruvian Temple set <br />that features in the strong opening of </i>Raiders of the Lost Ark.</span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Star Wars</i> had put the phrase ‘special effects’ into everyone’s mouth. Suddenly, after <i>Star Wars</i> opened, reviews were peppered with the words. It was as though George Lucas had invented the concept all by himself. With <i>Raiders</i>, Lucas was to elevate another previously ignored movie art to star status. Stunts.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Much was made, at the time, of the fact that Harrison Ford did many of his own stunts for the film. ‘Hell,’ he quipped, ‘if I hadn’t done some of the stunts in <i>Raiders</i>, I wouldn’t have been seen in the movie at all.’ Yet strangely Ford is no kind of keep fit freak. ‘People always ask me how I keep in shape. Every time the question comes up, I can manage to sneer. It’s a common enough question, considering <i>Raiders</i>. And I say, being in movies is enough exercise for me.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In reality, Ford was lucky enough to have some of the best stuntmen and stunt directors in the business working with him. Stuntmen are always used for the most dangerous ‘gags’ for the simple reason that if the star of the film were to hurt himself and hold up shooting, hundreds of thousands of dollars would be wasted.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘There were some very capable stuntmen doing some of the action bits, but I probably did a good deal more action stunts than an actor normally would do. That was important because we wanted to have our fights always be character fights, instead of just having whatever spectacular event a stuntman could come up with. Indiana Jones fights in a certain way, which Steven (Spielberg) let the stuntmen and me choreograph. Some of Indy’s battles are incredible. “How can Indy possibly do all this?” We had to take the edge off that with a bit of humour and at the same time not make fun of the material. So Indiana Jones had to be a character with a sense of humour. It’s Indy’s way of looking at life that makes our fights unique!’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Glen Randall was the stunt co-ordinator on <i>Raiders</i>. Says Randall, ‘They talk about the dangers stuntmen go through, wrecking cars and airplanes, but I think the stunt that gets the most people hurt in this industry is the simple fight routine. When you throw a punch, you’re throwing it with all the force you’d normally use to hit someone, but you’re missing them by inches. There are a lot of stuntmen who just cringe when they find out they’ve got to do a fight with an actor who’s not had a lot of experience doing them – ’cos nine times out of ten, they’re going to get hit!’</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-e6YJLd4CA5s/USDdvUr3MHI/AAAAAAAAAKU/VMQUaZo3Q94/s1600/chap05_10.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-e6YJLd4CA5s/USDdvUr3MHI/AAAAAAAAAKU/VMQUaZo3Q94/s1600/chap05_10.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Harrison Ford raced the boulder ten times <br />- astonishing that he won every time.</span></i></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One of the most spectacular thrills in <i>Raiders</i> is in the opening sequence when Indy races the giant rolling boulder for the exit in the Temple. It was Ford himself outracing the rock. ‘Looked a little scared that scene, didn’t I? I’d have to have been crazy not to be. It wasn’t a real boulder, but it wasn’t cardboard, either. It took 800 pounds of plaster to make it roll right. And if I had tripped, I could have been in big trouble. The director thought at first we ought to use a stuntman - but I thought I could do it and Glen Randall, our stunt coordinator, agreed. We all felt the more action scenes I could personally do, the easier it would be for the audience to identify with and believe in the character. But if I didn’t trust the stunt guys who were manning the safety devices and looking out for me, I never would have done it. No way!’ The scene was shot from five different angles, twice from each angle. ‘So Harrison had to race the rock ten times,’ said Spielberg. ‘He won ten times and beat the odds. He was lucky. And I was an idiot for letting him try!’ </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Indy’s escape from the Well of Souls provided an opportunity to the filmmakers for a really spectacular stunt. In an effort to break a hole through the wall of his prison, Indy </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">topples a huge statue of a jackal god and rides it as it falls, a tip of the hat, perhaps, to Slim Pickens’ riding the Atom Bomb to his last round-up in <i>Dr Strangelove</i>. Harrison Ford, intrepid but not stupid, knew the time to step aside for professional stunt double Martin Grace.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As Glen Randall explained, ‘The Jackal was 28, maybe 29, feet high. Plaster of Paris but still incredibly heavy. And we put big hydraulic rams on one leg and hinged it at the bottom so we knew exactly the plane it was going to fall in. It could only fall one way, if everything went right. We had a huge breakaway wall for it to fall through.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But for all the planning, something went wrong as the stunt was filmed. If you watch closely during this scene in the movie, you’ll see ‘Indy’ lose his footing for an instant as the statue begins to topple. ‘Yes, it went too soon,’ agreed Martin Grace. ‘And that’s when you have to think very fast. I was actually still hanging down when it started going. I should have been actually on my position ... Stunt people are usually very fast thinking people. In situations like that you have to think very fast and get it together. We’ve got sort of lightning reflexes, very sharp minds and that’s a great combination to come up with the goods.’ Grace emerged unscathed.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With Ford doing so many of his own gags, it’s no surprise that he had a couple of near misses himself.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘There’s a scene where I run through the jungle,’ Ford told an American magazine, ‘swing on a vine, let go the vine, fall into the river, grab onto the pontoon of a seaplane that’s taxi-ing, get onto the wing and climb into the cockpit as it was taking off – and the plane crashed on take-off.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Of course Ford wasn’t hurt. But it does show that no matter how careful you are, accidents will happen.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Ford and George Lucas sit in the shade beneath <br />the Flying Wing aircraft on location in Tunisia.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Harrison Ford must have been on a lucky streak during the filming of <i>Raiders</i>. He had had another near miss on location in Tunisia during the shooting of the Tannis Dig sequence. Ford told the story to <i>Prevue</i>, the magazine published by Raiders’ concept artist Jim Steranko. ‘Indy has a fight which takes place in and around the propellers of a Flying Wing airplane. The engines are running full tilt and one set of wheels is chocked, so the plane’s going round in circles. The bad guy is supposed to throw me down in front of the wheels and I was supposed to roll over backwards to get away from the wheels.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘All day long the technical crew was having trouble with the plane. It weighed a couple of tons, so they were powering it with low-gear, high-torque electric motors – the kind that can push through a brick wall without slowing down. They had to stay out of camera range, at the end of a cable 50 yards away.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘I still wanted to do the fight myself. I’m able to add bits of character touches to moments like these, and when the audience recognises the actor, it adds credibility to what is normally straight action stuff. We rehearsed the scene several times, then decided to shoot it.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Y9aGzo7-NiU/USDlRlNqFfI/AAAAAAAAAKo/Lg2O3jEr-_Y/s1600/chap05_16.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Y9aGzo7-NiU/USDlRlNqFfI/AAAAAAAAAKo/Lg2O3jEr-_Y/s320/chap05_16.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Ford wanted the audience to see it was really him fighting<br />the tough German soldier beneath the Flying Wing.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘Everybody’s ready and the take begins. I go down and start to roll away – and my foot slips, right under the rolling plane’s tyre.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘Everybody was yelling, “Stop! STOP!” while the tyre crawled up my leg. Luckily the brakes worked – inches before my knee was crushed – but I was pinned to the sand.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘I’m not normally a worrier, I know they’re not going to kill the main character in a twenty million dollar film. I also know Indy wouldn’t look good with a peg-leg. I was a lot more careful about stunt work after that!’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And he’d have to be. Still to come was the hazardous chase in which Indy starts by leaping from a horse onto the speeding German truck that’s carrying the Ark, and ends with our hero falling from the front of the truck, crawling hand over hand beneath the vehicle, then being dragged for a couple of miles down the road in the dirt before climbing up the tail board. You’d think for that Ford would insist on a stuntman. He did, and he got one ... for the long-shots. In the close-ups, there was Ford, hanging onto the rear of the truck, scraping up the gravel road on his belly. As usual, Ford was dismissive. ‘It couldn’t possibly be dangerous,’ he said at the time, ‘because I have a few more weeks shooting the picture.’</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nvZsQrCm4ts/USDlufQyFQI/AAAAAAAAAKw/j_ocHw2UnTw/s1600/chap05_18.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nvZsQrCm4ts/USDlufQyFQI/AAAAAAAAAKw/j_ocHw2UnTw/s320/chap05_18.jpg" height="190" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>It's pretty unlikely that it's actually Ford in this shot <br />- almost certainly stuntman Martin Grace.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Being so closely involved in so many of the gags on <i>Raiders</i> has given Harrison Ford a stuntman’s outlook as far as ‘falls’ are concerned. ‘The stuff that always turns out to be dangerous is the stuff nobody thinks about. It’s not the dangerous stunts – which you think about, protect yourself, calculate and worry about, so that you take the danger out of it – it’s the stuff you didn’t think was dangerous that sneaks upon you.’</span><br />
<br />AirPiratePresshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13136561512898563240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6284866051777565056.post-48427376170501196972013-02-09T08:23:00.003-08:002013-05-28T08:34:59.444-07:00Chapter 5, Part 1 - Harrison Ford: Matinee Idol<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">From the Stars to Star</span></h3>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>‘Harrison Ford is more than just an actor playing a role in <i>Raiders of the Lost Ark</i>. He was involved in a lot of the decision-making about the movie as we went along. And this wasn’t by contract, it was because I sensed an exceptional story mind and a very smart person and called on him time and time again.’ Steven Spielberg, director of <i>Raiders of the Lost Ark</i></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘The little film that George Lucas and Steven Spielberg decided to make together is growing by the minute. Shooting begins of <i>Raiders of the Lost Ark</i> on May 15th, 1980 at George’s happy hunting ground of Elstree Studios – and already, before a single shot is completed, they have four sequels in the planning stages,’ was how British fantasy film magazine <i>Starburst</i> announced the start of work Lucas’ follow-up to the <i>Star Wars</i> saga in February, 1980. The report gave Lawrence Kasdan as the script writer, Frank Marshall as producer, but no hint as to the cast.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Before long, rumours were circulating that <i>Raiders of the Lost Ark</i> was not a new project at all, but the third part of the <i>Star Wars</i> saga. Said <i>Empire Strikes Back</i> producer Gary Kurtz of that idea, ‘I can categorically deny that. It’s not science fiction at all. It’s a Thirties action adventure type story about a search for a lost treasure. A typical Clark Gable, soldier-of-fortune kind of movie.’</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">No more news issued from the Elstree set of <i>Raiders</i> until the movie opened in America on May 25th and at London’s Empire cinema on July 30th, 1981.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>FROM THE SANDS OF HAWAII TO THE SANDS OF THE SAHARA</b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The tale of <i>Raiders</i>’ genesis was reported both in Dale Pollock’s <i>Skywalking</i> (the George Lucas biography) and in Tony Crawley’s <i>The Steven Spielberg Story</i>. Both books told of Lucas’s retreat to the Hawaian beaches to forget the horrors of making <i>Star Wars</i>, and of Spielberg’s joining him there with the news that <i>Star Wars</i> had been a monumental hit. Over a sandcastle, the world’s two most successful filmmakers hatched a plot to make a movie that would mix the mythic qualities of the occult and the derring-do of the Saturday matinee serials and out-Bond Bond in the process. The co-author of the original story of Raiders, Philip Kaufman, was originally slated to direct, but when he dropped out of the project, Spielberg stepped in.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At this stage, the project still had no writer. Until Spielberg introduced a young Chicago advertising copywriter, Lawrence Kasdan to Lucas. Spielberg had read a screenplay by Kasdan called <i>Continental Divide</i> and was trying to acquire it to produce for himself.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4-RIpMdPRfQ/URZgwKrgecI/AAAAAAAAAJU/EbkzVTaCt-k/s1600/chap05_11.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4-RIpMdPRfQ/URZgwKrgecI/AAAAAAAAAJU/EbkzVTaCt-k/s1600/chap05_11.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Behind the scenes on location in Tunisia, with Karen Allen,<br />Spielberg, Ford and Rhys-Davies.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘When Spielberg first read it,’ said Kasdan, ‘he told my agent, “I’m doing a movie with George Lucas and I think this guy would be great to write it. Would it be all right if I showed George <i>Continental Divide</i>?” And we, of course, agreed. Then I came in and met George – he had read the script and liked it – and at that first meeting, George hired me to write <i>Raiders</i>.’</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lucas, Spielberg and Kasdan spent a week thrashing out the basic plot of <i>Raiders</i>. These sessions were preserved for posterity on tape and at the end of the week Kasdan went off to write the first draft script.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘I left those meetings feeling I was in pretty good shape and then sat down and realised, Uh-oh, this is going to be hard!’ said Kasdan. And hard it was, at least hard enough to keep the young writer occupied for a full six months.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Finally, Kasdan took the finished script in to show Lucas. What happened next came as something of a shock. The scriptwriter working on <i>Empire</i>, Leigh Brackett, had died suddenly. Lucas desperately needed a writer to take over. Could Kasdan handle it? ‘But you haven’t even read <i>Raiders</i>, yet,’ protested Kasdan. Lucas only smiled. He was following his instincts – which were rarely wrong.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Meanwhile Spielberg had read Kasdan’s <i>Raiders</i> script and was delighted. ‘Larry didn’t stick with our story outline one hundred percent,’ commented Spielberg, ‘A lot of the movie is Larry’s own original ideas, his characters. George provided the initial vision, the story and the structure of the movie. Then George and I together provided key scenes throughout the film. And Larry essentially did all the characters and tied the story together, made the story work from just a bare outline, and gave it colour and some direction.’</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With the script in the safe hands of Lawrence Kasdan, Lucas and Spielberg could turn their attention to who was to play the key role of Indiana Jones.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The auditions for the movie were to be held at Lucasfilm’s West Coast offices. ‘We wanted an unknown, originally – a total unknown. Conceitedly, George and I wanted to make a star out of Johnny the Construction Worker from Malibu. We couldn’t find a construction worker in Malibu, so we began looking at more substantial people in the film industry.’</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Both Lucas and Spielberg had a picture in their mind’s eye as to the kind of hero they were looking for. Lucas saw Jones as a scruffy playboy, the kind of adventurer who, on duty, dressed like Humphrey Bogart in <i>Treasure of the Sierra Madre</i>. Spielberg’s Jones was more of a grizzled alcoholic, gruffly romantic and ruggedly handsome.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-R6ZSgjNR0W0/URZ2j-IIpcI/AAAAAAAAAJo/2su8m8ZCsLA/s1600/chap05_sterank01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="178" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-R6ZSgjNR0W0/URZ2j-IIpcI/AAAAAAAAAJo/2su8m8ZCsLA/s320/chap05_sterank01.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Steranko's visualisation of Indiana Jones made it into the<br />film pretty much intact.</span></i></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lucas and Spielberg then approached well-known Marvel Comics artist Jim Steranko to produce some concept paintings to nail down a visual appearance of the character of Indiana Jones and his world. Steranko came back with four paintings, which defined the appearance of Indy, from the fedora hat, which Steranko had added unbidden, to the leather jacket which Lucas had asked for and the Sam Brown webbing, again Steranko’s addition. Lucas and Spielberg were so impressed with the artist’s work that they asked him to produce a further fifty paintings, one for each major scene in the movie. But the catch was that the artist would only have fifty days, a deadline that would be gruelling, to say the least. Steranko, not wanting to turn in sub-standard, rushed work, declined the assignment.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The filmmakers’ first choice for the role was TV actor Tom Selleck. Selleck was enthusiastic but aware that the new pilot he was working on, <i>Magnum P.I.</i>, might turn into a full series for CBS television. CBS didn’t seem to be in much of a hurry to take up the option for the first series of the show. ‘The show had sat there and nobody wanted it. And the option was about to lapse,’ recalled Lucas. Itching to get on with <i>Raiders</i>, Lucas contacted <i>Magnum</i> production company Universal with a request that Selleck be released from his contract. But while Universal were agreeable, CBS were suddenly alerted that the two biggest names in Hollywood were interested in ‘their’ star for a movie and instantly picked up Selleck’s contract for <i>Magnum P.I.</i> So Lucas and Spielberg still had no lead actor for <i>Raiders</i>.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘We were stuck,’ said Spielberg. ‘We had three weeks left to cast the part of Indiana Jones, and there was nobody close. Then I saw <i>The Empire Strikes Back</i> and I realised Harrison Ford is Indiana Jones. I called George Lucas and said, “He’s right under our noses!” George said, “I know who you’re going to say!” I said, “Who?” and he said, “Harrison Ford! Let’s get him.” And we did!’</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-24ZpKvGVg7o/URZ3NSD4q0I/AAAAAAAAAJw/9XJGDrfZT4Q/s1600/chap05_03.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-24ZpKvGVg7o/URZ3NSD4q0I/AAAAAAAAAJw/9XJGDrfZT4Q/s1600/chap05_03.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Harrison Ford was able to play the many sides of Indiana<br />Jones' character with ease - he was at the same time<br />brawler, scholar and sophisticate</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">According to <i>Skywalking</i>, Harrison Ford had read the script for <i>Raiders</i> shortly after Kasdan had finished it but had remained cool towards the project. ‘They could find me if they wanted to,’ Ford is quoted as saying. Nevertheless Ford must have known that the part was perfect for him. ‘It was clearly the most dominant single character in any of George’s films,’ said Ford, ‘quite in variance with his theories about movie stars and what they mean.’</span></div>
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AirPiratePresshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13136561512898563240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6284866051777565056.post-52878266993936751112013-01-25T22:59:00.004-08:002014-01-29T05:55:40.693-08:00Chapter 4, Part 2 - Harrison Ford: Return of the Hero<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On the set Irvin Kershner, the director of <i>The Empire Strikes Back</i>, would find that scenes didn’t work and would have to alter carefully storyboarded sequences at the last minute. And because of these alterations he was forced to give precious shooting days over to rehearsals of the new sequences and relighting of the sets.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The animatronic puppet that played the character of Yoda also proved to be one almighty headache. ‘Actually there’s very little of Yoda in the picture,’ Kershner told <i>Starburst</i>’s John Brosnan, ‘and his scenes only took about ten days of filming, but they were very long days. He was monstrously difficult to work with and, on average, it took us three-and-a-half hours to shoot just two lines of his dialogue. The rehearsals took a lot of time too because we had a bank of tv monitors and three, sometimes four, technicians to manipulate Yoda. Frank Oz was coordinating it with me and we were both wearing earphones and mikes. The set was built four or five feet above the floor so we could have all kinds of mechanisms underneath Yoda ... and it took endless rehearsals because you’d start and one of Yoda’s eyes would go in the wrong direction or one ear would suddenly fall down, and I’d have to say, “Up with the left ear,” or “Now take the left eye and move it around to the right ... that’s right, now focus it a little closer.”</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Q6wt-X9nf7U/UQN812AJjNI/AAAAAAAAAIk/_ZrU0PE4Afw/s1600/Chap04_empire03_crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Q6wt-X9nf7U/UQN812AJjNI/AAAAAAAAAIk/_ZrU0PE4Afw/s1600/Chap04_empire03_crop.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><a href="http://www.moviesoundclips.net/download.php?id=2410&ft=wav">"Who's scruffy-looking?"</a></i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘Frank Oz would be watching the tv screens and I’d be watching the screens and the creature but we were the only ones who could hear what Yoda was saying. The crew and Mark Hamill heard nothing – they didn’t know what was happening. Finally, we had to put a tiny earphone on Mark – a tiny miniature earphone with a very fine wire going back behind his ear so he could hear what Yoda was saying.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nevertheless the results were worth the bother. Yoda is a very convincing creation on the screen and the character won over the hordes of <i>Star Wars</i> fans instantly.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the meantime, the problems that Kershner was experiencing were costing the production money. The ‘standing still’ budget (the money it cost to keep the production in business without shooting a single foot of film) was a staggering $100,000 a day. It was left to George Lucas to try to find the extra money from somewhere to ensure completion of the picture. Eventually he was forced to turn to 20th Century-Fox for help, something he wanted to avoid at all costs. And with the mounting financial pressures on <i>The Empire Strikes Back</i>, relationships between Irvin Kershner, George Lucas and Gary Kurtz became strained.</span><br />
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<h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">WORKING WELL</span></h3>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yet through all this, Harrison Ford had only good things to say about Irvin Kershner. ‘He was wonderful,’ Ford enthused. ‘He’s a different kind of director. But we also had a very close relationship on the level of freedom to contribute.’ Kershner, a director sensitive to the needs and talents of his actors, encouraged every contribution Ford was willing to make. ‘Occasionally, I feel very sure about the changes,’ says Ford, ‘like the “I love you”, “I know” scene. I knew that my last speech had to be a strong character line. I convinced Kersh to give me the “I know” decision and I’m grateful he did. When George finally saw the sequence cut together, he said, “It’s a laugh line. I’m not sure it belongs there. This is a serious, dramatic moment.”</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘I said, “I think it really works.” and Kershner agreed with me. So George said, “Okay, go with it.”</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘From what I’ve seen and heard, the “I know” line really does work. It relieves a grim situation without generating laughs or diverting the drama. It also serves to make Solo’s plight more poignant and memorable.’</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-K3vhl5sO8KQ/UQN-Zwph1kI/AAAAAAAAAJA/oHLRyPGtjkk/s1600/Chap04_empire06_crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-K3vhl5sO8KQ/UQN-Zwph1kI/AAAAAAAAAJA/oHLRyPGtjkk/s1600/Chap04_empire06_crop.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>The Ford/Fisher chemistry was the chief reason <br />that Ford's dialogue changes worked.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Harrison Ford has no qualms about altering a line of dialogue that a writer might have spent months on if he feels it will improve the end result.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘Writers sometimes have to live with a script so long,’ he says firmly, ‘that it begins to suit them too well – they can’t see the validity of changes.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lawrence Kasdan wasn’t too happy with some of the changes that had been made to his script – sometimes on the very day of shooting. ‘Han and Leia’s relationship is not at all what I had envisaged,’ Kasdan told the American magazine <i>Starlog</i>. ‘I could be the only person who feels this way, but I thought their romance had a touch of falseness about it. Han and Leia’s scenes were among what I was proudest of in my script, but they hardly remained. Their being changed had a lot to do with the circumstances of filming, Kershner and the actors’ feelings about doing their roles again. I was one of the people who wasn’t crazy about Harrison Ford in <i>Empire</i>.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When <i>The Empire Strikes Back</i> opened in America on May 21st, 1980, <i>Star Wars</i> fans across the country had been queuing for three days. The film recovered its cost three months after that and eventually went on to pull in nearly as much in ticket sales as the original <i>Star Wars</i> movie. Not bad for a film that caused just about everybody connected with it so many sleepless nights.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">GOOD PRESS, BUT ...</span></h3>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The critics’ reception of <i>The Empire Strikes Back</i> was only a little short of a standing ovation.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Variety</i> wrote, ‘Having already introduced their principal players, the filmmakers now have a chance to round them out, assisted again by good performances from Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher. And even the ominous Darth Vader is fleshed with new – and surprising – motivations.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>The Washington Post</i> thought, ‘the total effect is fast and attractive and occasionally amusing. Like a good hot dog, that’s something of an achievement in a field where unpalatable junk is the rule.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>The San Francisco Chronicle</i> said, ‘The emotional landscape of <i>The Empire Strikes Back</i> is the richest in the <i>Star Wars</i> trilogy. Every character is more developed, more familiar, more quirky in this movie. Han, the smart-aleck, now is in a full-court press to woo Princess Leia, and his repeated mocking of her “royal highnessness” goads her into a classic mating ritual of teases and glances – and wet kisses.’ </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NTfxXdH6bbc/UQN91CWXieI/AAAAAAAAAIw/RRHZOX__5Dk/s1600/Chap04_empire02_crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NTfxXdH6bbc/UQN91CWXieI/AAAAAAAAAIw/RRHZOX__5Dk/s1600/Chap04_empire02_crop.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Ford and "Her Royal Highnessness" Carrie Fisher <br />horse around on the Millennium Falcon set.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yet some did point out that the ending of the film was no ending at all and smacked of the same kind of thinking behind the cliff-hanging endings of the old Saturday morning serials – a cheap shot to get the audiences back for the third part of the trilogy. Harrison Ford backed the filmmakers’ decision in the face of such comments and answered them smoothly.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘I have no real defence for that argument,’ he admitted, ‘but what obligation is there to tie up every question with an equal answer? The cliff-hanger is because the trilogy was really constructed in the classic form of a three-act play. Naturally, there are going to be questions in the second act which have to be resolved in the third. I guess it really depends on what you go to a movie for. I figure there was at least eleven dollars worth of entertainment in <i>Empire</i>. So if you paid four bucks and didn’t get an ending, you’re still seven dollars ahead of the game.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Audiences agreed and voted with their cash. <i>Empire</i> was safely the biggest earner of 1980 and its worldwide box-office of almost $534 million means that it’s the 39th highest grossing movie of all time.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Academy nominated the movie in the categories for Best Art Direction and Best Score and awarded <i>The Empire Strikes Back</i> the Oscar for Best Sound, as well as a Special Achievement Oscar for the Special Effects.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The accusations that <i>Empire</i> was too serial-like could have been an omen of Ford’s next project. Though he didn’t know it at the time, Harrison Ford would go on to star in George Lucas’s homage to those same Saturday morning serials in the brilliant 1930s-style adventure movie, <i>Raiders of the Lost Ark</i>.</span><br />
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AirPiratePresshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13136561512898563240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6284866051777565056.post-72129206097203648852013-01-20T07:41:00.000-08:002015-09-12T07:01:12.675-07:00Chapter 4, Part 1 - Harrison Ford: Return of the Hero<br />
<b><span class="Apple-style-span""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 24px;">... and back again</span> </span></b><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>‘I’m very cautious of the word “star”. I do my job. I have been very lucky. Now I have to figure out how to milk it without letting it dry up.’ Harrison Ford</b></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On March 7th, 1979, the Unit Publicist of <i>The Empire Strikes Back</i> released the following bulletin to the world’s news agencies: ‘American actor Harrison Ford has reached the snow stricken pass at Finse, Norway, to start work in <i>The Empire Strikes Back</i> in a manner to justify the claim that the show must go on.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘He arrived in the engine compartment of a snow-clearance vehicle, the only thing that could move along the Oslo-Bergen single track railroad which avalanches and collapsed snow tunnels have blocked.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘Ford had flown from London to Oslo to catch the train which travels a circuitous route across some of the most hostile winter terrain in Europe. At Geilo, a sizeable ski resort 30 miles east of his destination, the train was stopped in blizzard conditions.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘The railroad had decided to return its train to Oslo. But the filmmakers needed Harrison Ford for scenes in the morning. So they radioed the train to unload the actor who then, by two improbable taxi rides, reached Ustaoset, just 23 miles from Finse. That was where the snow plough found him, to bring him along the track between 50 foot high snow drifts to Finse, which he reached at midnight.’ </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In retrospect, the makers of <i>The Empire Strikes Back</i> should have taken Harrison</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ford’s hectic arrival at the first location of the film as an omen of things to come. ‘<i>Empire</i> went about $6 million over budget,’ star Mark Hamill later said, ‘and ten weeks over schedule, which drove George (Lucas) crazy because he doesn’t like to see waste.’ Lucas would have been particularly wary of waste on <i>Empire</i>, as it was financed with his own money, a fact he pointed out frequently to the cast and crew alike.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Uknpg9zeUH4/UPwOdT1mXwI/AAAAAAAAAIA/M4WHRWQFBIs/s1600/Chap04_empire04_crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Uknpg9zeUH4/UPwOdT1mXwI/AAAAAAAAAIA/M4WHRWQFBIs/s1600/Chap04_empire04_crop.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>The</i> Empire <i>principals horse around on a Norwegian glacier.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The script for </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>The Empire Strikes Back</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> was written by Lawrence Kasdan after he’d done the screenplay for </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Raiders of the Lost Ark</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. Kasdan explained the beginning of his involvement with the </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Empire</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> project in the American magazine </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Starlog</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘I had absolutely no indication that my writing <i>Empire</i> was even being considered. Once I got the job I was excited because I liked <i>Star Wars</i> very much. I thought it was great art, in that <i>Star Wars</i> hooked into the archetypal images registered in our subconscious of how children perceive the world.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Kasdan had been brought in after the death of respected science fiction and film writer Leigh Brackett, best known for her screenplays for <i>The Big Sleep</i> (1946) and <i>Rio Bravo</i> (1959). Before engaging Kasdan, George Lucas had completed a second draft, based on Brackett’s first draft version. Kasdan hadn’t read the complete Brackett script. ‘I only skimmed it. It was sort of old fashioned and didn’t really relate to <i>Star Wars</i>. George had the story very well outlined, but there were sections in his script which, when I read them, made me say to myself, “I can’t believe George wrote that scene. It’s terrible.” I later learned that George wrote stuff like that simply so that whoever wrote the next draft would know that a scene covering approximately the same kind of material that his sequence dealt with belonged at that point in the script. My job was to take George’s story and make it work through altering the dialogue and the structure. Naturally a movie is not a screenplay, but you can’t make a good movie without a good script.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">FILMING EMPIRE</span></h3>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After the nightmare George Lucas had gone through writing and directing <i>Star Wars</i> he decided that kind of involvement in so complicated a film project was simply more than he was willing to take on. His idea was to complete a rough draft of the script for <i>Empire</i> then turn it over to a professional writer for completion and polishing up. Then, with a professionally produced screenplay, he would turn his attentions to finding a director with the experience and the enthusiasm to helm the movie. He was looking for someone he knew and could trust to remain faithful to his original vision. He finally settled on Irvin Kershner, who had been one of his film teachers during his college days at USC in California. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘I knew George and (<i>Empire</i> producer Gary) Kurtz at the University of Southern California,’ Kershner confirms, ‘where I took courses and also taught. Through the years I occasionally saw them, but we weren’t close friends.’</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Harrison Ford on the Hoth hangar set between takes.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Irvin Kershner, or ‘Kersh’ as he was called by the <i>Empire</i> crew, had started his working life as a professional musician. ‘Before all this, I played violin and viola for chamber music and orchestras. I wanted to be a composer, originally, so I started with music. Then I went into art and photography. I travelled for the UN, UNESCO, for Syracuse University, for USC, for the State Department, and made hundreds of documentaries. I always did my own photography, until I began working in Hollywood.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">’</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Kershner’s film debut was with the 1958 film, <i>Stakeout on Dope Street</i>. From there he went on to direct such varied movies as <i>Loving</i> (1970), <i>Raid on Entebbe</i> (1977) and the John Carpenter scripted horror thriller <i>Eyes of Laura Mars</i> (1978).</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Kershner was brought in on the <i>Empire</i> project while Leigh Brackett was still working on her screenplay. ‘She was about halfway through the script when I became involved,’ said Kershner, ‘and we decided to let her finish the thing before getting into meetings with her about the re-write – because I knew I’d want a re-write. So while I waited, I had discussions with George and some of the art people who were starting on the initial drawings, just sort of slowly getting started. And when she handed me the first draft, she said she was going into hospital that weekend for a check-up – and she never came out.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘So suddenly we had a first draft script on our hands and a definite start date for the picture on March 5th, 1979, which meant we’d have to get moving. So we took the script and started reading it and making a few changes – then George said, “You know, we’ve got to bring in a writer. Someone who is strong on dialogue and who can take on the burden of getting it whipped into shape.” So we brought in Larry Kasdan, and for months we would meet at my apartment in Los Angeles and go over it section by section. He would go off and re-write a section for a few days or a week, then he’d come back and we’d go over the pages he’d done, then he’d do another section. We did a very extensive re-write but it was still basically her script.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘When we’d polished it to the point that I thought it was now workable I came over to London and began pre-production, which for the first few months consisted of making drawings. I visualised and drew up the whole film to create the flow of it, to get the feel of the sets and the actual staging of scenes and even the cutting. It had to be very precise – so precise that drawings were made before the art director began to make the sets. Then we began to incorporate how the special effects would be done and I had to keep altering the drawings accordingly.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘It took about six months producing those drawings – we ended up with a book a foot thick. I sent copies to George and to all the technicians so everyone knew what they would be doing. With this book it was possible to get the flow of the picture established, which was the most important thing of all. Because as soon as you have a picture with a lot of gadgetry, blue screens, matte shots, super-impositions, etc, it tends to become very stiff if you’re not careful. The actors become as stiff as the gadgets themselves.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-s_y-wN-sV3Y/UPwPjagZt-I/AAAAAAAAAIQ/GizQpeyam1E/s1600/Chap04_empire07_crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-s_y-wN-sV3Y/UPwPjagZt-I/AAAAAAAAAIQ/GizQpeyam1E/s1600/Chap04_empire07_crop.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Ford glowers at the camera for a publicity picture on the Hoth set.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘That was a major problem because the whole picture is special effects. People don’t realise that almost every shot has something in it that’s a special effect, and about half the effects were done completely on the set. Yoda, for instance was a total special effect and all done on the set. We added nothing to him later. Then there were the mechanical effects like the water effects and the fogs – there were so many things that we created right there ... but, of course, there were many shots where I could shoot live action and then send the scene back to the studio in San Francisco for the opticals to be added. It was really a locked down situation on many of those shots. I mean, there were shots where we had to use the VistaVision camera (a special camera in which the film runs through the gate horizontally instead of vertically, giving a clearer image definition), it had to be exactly four-and-a-half feet off the ground, it had to be pointed no more than fifteen degrees up, the light had to come from the right, it had to be orange – all because of the special effects that would be added later – and then I could be free as I wanted within that frame.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘Then we reached the point where, in some shots, all I had was a completely black set and a few actors. It looked silly – nothing but a couple of lines drawn on the floor for the actors and that was it. I wouldn’t see the finished scene for maybe six months after I shot it, then I get back a piece of film that’s been married and the whole thing comes to life – it has a background and something flying around and other moving elements. It was a similar situation with some of the snow battle scenes – all I had were some men running towards me, smoke bombs, a few explosions and one man stumbling and falling in the foreground. And then the special effects team start working on it – they put in the three huge Walkers, which was a remarkable job, and then later they put in the laser blasts coming out of the Walkers, one of which hits the man I’d had fall over months before ... so it was all working backwards.’</span>AirPiratePresshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13136561512898563240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6284866051777565056.post-34058645718750819182013-01-14T11:55:00.003-08:002015-09-12T06:59:22.466-07:00Chapter 3, Part 2 - Harrison Ford: New Directions<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">HAND-OVER STREET</span></h3>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Harrison Ford was next moved from one World War Two tale straight into another. ‘After <i>Force Ten</i> I was looking forward to doing some building alterations to my house in the Hollywood Hills when Kris Kristofferson dropped out of <i>Hanover Street</i> in England,’ explains Ford. ‘They asked me to come to London and take over his role at very short notice. I played an American B-52 bomber pilot stationed in wartime Britain who falls in love with an English nurse (Lesley-Anne Down) married to a British Intelligence Officer (Christopher Plummer). I enjoyed making it, but the long schedule meant it was quite some time before I saw my home again.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Despite the fact that Ford got along well with his co-stars, Ford hadn’t entirely enjoyed his involvement in the movie, and didn’t talk much about the film until it was long behind him. ‘I don’t even like to think about <i>Hanover Street</i>,’ said Ford just before the release of <i>Raiders of the Lost Ark</i>. ‘The director (Peter Hyams) and I did not get along. I’ve never even seen the film.’ All of which begs the question, then why appear in the movie at all? Ford had an answer for that. ‘My motivation for doing <i>Hanover Street</i> was because I had never kissed a female human being on the screen before. The characters I played were totally sexless, and here was a movie that was being touted as a romance. That was a clear, obvious reason for doing it.’ Then he added, ‘There are a lot of other reasons, which may or may not have been the right ones for doing it.’</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-dw1yoypB4M8/UPRPGFc1k_I/AAAAAAAAAHE/ujF8j6LUyQU/s1600/chap03_hanover04_crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-dw1yoypB4M8/UPRPGFc1k_I/AAAAAAAAAHE/ujF8j6LUyQU/s1600/chap03_hanover04_crop.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Harrison Ford puckers up for his first screen kiss ... ahhh!</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What Ford doesn’t explain is that if he hadn’t taken the role, the project would have in all likelihood have collapsed, leaving a crew of 120 jobless and the backers General Cinemas out of pocket to the tune of $7 million. Something else Ford doesn’t mention is that the long separation from Mary would put a big strain on their marriage.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But for all that, the critics were less than kind about <i>Hanover Street</i>. Said <i>Playboy</i>’s Bruce Williamson, ‘Ford, as a romantic leading man, is fairly stolid and one-dimensional, labouring hard to simulate the kind of casual charm that Redford, Newman and a dozen other male actors must work hard to conceal when they want to be taken seriously. Hyams gives us a pair of lovers who seldom appear to enjoy each other very much.’ Uncharitable, perhaps, but cinema audiences seemed to agree on the whole and the film, taking just $3 million in the US, set no box-office records.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To be fair, while the movie plods during the romantic sequences with the gorgeous Lesley-Anne Down and a distinctly uncomfortable-looking Harrison Ford – due mostly to a complete lack of chemistry between the two – it picks up during the mission when Plummer and Ford operate behind enemy lines disguised as Nazis.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pxTtJqr5RgE/UPRO-EvlMNI/AAAAAAAAAG8/iQmTqRDG2E4/s1600/chap03_hanover03_crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pxTtJqr5RgE/UPRO-EvlMNI/AAAAAAAAAG8/iQmTqRDG2E4/s1600/chap03_hanover03_crop.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Harrison Ford, not disguised as a nazi.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The movie gossip magazines, like </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>People</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, were more interested in making a story out of Ford and his </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Hanover Street</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> co-star Lesley-Ann Down being more than just co-workers. But there was more to the failure of the Fords’ marriage than just idle gossip. The fact was that Mary was becoming increasing more uncomfortable with the circus that went along with Harrison’s blossoming film career. Pictures of her in the post-</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Star Wars</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> hoopla showed her on Harrison’s arm, uneasy with the frenzied activities of the paparazzi around her. In was almost inevitable, in retrospect, that cracks would begin to appear in Mary and Harrison’s relationship.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘I wasn’t prepared,’ said Ford, ‘either by experience, maturity or disposition to be a good husband or good father the first time around. I wasn’t easy to live with. I was bitter and cynical.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When the separation came in 1978, Harrison and Mary kept the split amicable. Ford felt he could do no less. ‘I owe everything to Mary,’ he told an interviewer. ‘Without her, I wouldn’t be in the cinema today, because I wouldn’t have accepted the role of Han Solo. When Lucas made me the offer, I hadn’t been in front of a camera for three years. Mary wasn’t only beautiful and kind, she gave me the confidence to accept. She pushed me back into the cinema.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ford voiced his regret when he said, ‘The cinema separated us, and I will never forgive it for that.’</span><br />
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<h3>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?</span></h3>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One of the post-<i>Star Wars</i> projects you’ll never see mentioned in any interview with Harrison Ford is probably one of the most entertaining, for all the wrong reasons: <i>The Star Wars Holiday Special</i>.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For some reason, probably the insistence of Fox executives that the studio needed something <i>Star Wars</i> on tv during the run-up to Christmas, George Lucas okayed the making of the <i>Holiday Special</i>, then somehow managed to get most of the cast to agree to appear. And that was when Lucas wisely took a step back from this project and left Ford, Fisher, Hammill et al to make the best of it. Merry Christmas, guys ...</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ImQLnWjpeNg/UPRhiRA_qRI/AAAAAAAAAHY/u_4YhKeWOiA/s1600/chap03_swholspec01_crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ImQLnWjpeNg/UPRhiRA_qRI/AAAAAAAAAHY/u_4YhKeWOiA/s1600/chap03_swholspec01_crop.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>The Star Wars Holiday Special - probably the worst tv show ever.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s proved nigh impossible to track down any solid information about the hows and whys of the making of this tv terror. Those who appeared in it will not even admit to its existence. Questioned about it at a science fiction convention in Australia a few years later, Lucas remarked, ‘if I had the time and a sledgehammer, I would track down every bootlegged copy of that program and smash it.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However, a little diligence and fifteen minutes searching the DVD section of eBay allowed me to buy a copy on disk. And guess what? <i>The Star Wars Holiday Special</i> is everything you’ve heard and more.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Far and away the worst aspect is the interminable framing interludes with Chewbacca’s Wookiee family, conducted entirely in the Wookiee language (no subtitles) with the ill- considered help of character actor Art Carney and <i>Blazing Saddles</i> star Harvey Korman (in drag, no less). These sequences appear to have been shot live with multiple cameras, a common tv technique at the time, but the pace is leaden, making the scenes seem to run far longer than they actually do.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are some <i>non sequitur</i> contributions from rock band Jefferson Starship (chosen no doubt more because of their cosmic-sounding name than for any suitability of their music) and a weird ‘man’s entertainment’ video watched by Granpa Wookiee which features hot star of the period Diahann Carroll.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s not all dreadful – balancing the appalling cantina sequence, with The Golden Girls’ Bea Arthur as the bar tender, is the moderately interesting animated sequence which introduces mercenary Boba Fett for the first time.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The grim Wookiee framing sequence is brought to its long overdue climax when Han Solo and Chewbacca show up and pitch an Imperial Stormtrooper over the balcony of the Wookiee home – then Carrie Fisher sings a song which sets a string of platitudes to the tune of the <i>Star Wars</i> theme.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Based on this and the trance-like appearances by the other <i>Star Wars</i> principle actors, you could be forgiven for thinking that Ford, Fisher and Hammill had been blackmailed into appearing in this travesty, so flat are their performances.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By the end of the treacle-like 97 minutes, you’ll be ready to cheerfully strangle anyone who wishes you a Happy Life Day.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A bit of a bonus for me was the inclusion on the disk of some original Kenner toy ads from the period – no real connection to the Star Wars Holiday Special, though you can be sure that the audience of the show was bombarded with commercials not unlike these ...</span><br />
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<h3>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">GO WEST</span></h3>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Towards the end of 1978 Harrison Ford, unlike Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher, had not signed up before <i>Star Wars</i> for all three movies, but he had agreed to appear in <i>The Empire Strikes Back</i>. Ford had negotiated with George Lucas for better terms. He also wanted to see the character of Han Solo become ‘more dashing’. Lucas agreed readily to the terms, although, in the end, Ford ended up making no more than his two co-stars from the <i>Star Wars</i> sequel.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the meantime, Ford had just time for one more movie before returning to the camp of George Lucas, <i>The Frisco Kid</i>.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The project had originally come up during the filming of <i>Heroes</i>. In his interview in <i>Playboy</i> for August 1977, Henry Winkler mentioned that he was considering an oddball buddy movie called, at that time, "No Knife", about an immigrant Hasidic rabbi crossing America from East to West to set up a rabbinate in San Francisco, helped along the way by a bandit with a heart of gold. Although it wasn’t made clear which role he was considering, it was pretty unlikely that he was considering the role of the Rabbi. What wasn’t mentioned was that director Aldrich’s first choice for the role – indeed the actor he had in mind while he was pulling the project together – was the legendary cowboy John Wayne. But rumour has it that an over-zealous studio exec tried to bargain with Wayne’s agent over Wayne’s fee, causing Wayne to drop out.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Finally, Winkler too passed up the role, though Gene Wilder, already a pretty big star with films like <i>Blazing Saddles</i>, <i>Young Frankenstein</i> and <i>Silver Streak</i> behind him, was signed for the part of Avram, the trainee rabbi.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s not such a stretch to deduce that Winkler mentioned he was dropping out of the project during the filming of <i>Heroes</i> and suggested Ford take the Tommy Lillard role.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What is surprising is that a usually reliable director like Robert Aldrich could turn out such a turkey of a movie. Yet in the film business you’re only as good as your last picture and the critics were unimpressed by such earlier Aldrich credits as <i>Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?</i> and <i>The Dirty Dozen</i>. Said one reviewer, ‘Aldrich is stuck up the wrong turning he took with <i>The Choirboys</i>. Like that film, <i>The Frisco Kid</i> is based on the dangerous assumption that a number of comic episodes will add up to a comedy ... one only hopes that his itch for comedy has been well and truly scratched.’ It’s been suggested by some film commentators that because Aldrich fashioned the project with Wayne in mind for the Tommy Lilliard role, he was depressed and disappointed when his first choice of star dropped out and took his disappointment out on Ford.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pfzJeo-MVbM/UPRieQ5l9TI/AAAAAAAAAHk/10ZG1TTP4Hw/s1600/chap03_friscokid02_crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pfzJeo-MVbM/UPRieQ5l9TI/AAAAAAAAAHk/10ZG1TTP4Hw/s1600/chap03_friscokid02_crop.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Gene Wilder and Harrison Ford make an unlikely comedy duo in </i>Frisco Kid.</span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ford’s thoughts about his involvement in the project have passed unrecorded, but <i>The Frisco Kid</i> will go down on record as the last of the films of this period that Ford should never have been involved in.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Over the next rise was Ford’s return to the role that had made him a household name a few years earlier ... Han Solo.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">HARRISON AND MELISSA</span></h3>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With the break up of his marriage to Mary, Ford had to find a new home. Not far from the residence of Fred Roos, Ford saw the house he was looking for – a well-constructed 1941 clapboard dwelling that he could work and rework until it was the perfect reflection of the American classic style that Ford had grown up with.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The other big change in Ford’s life as 1978 drew to a close was his deepening friendship with Melissa Mathison. A year earlier, during the publicity tour for <i>Star Wars</i>, Ford had met up with his old friend Fred Roos who was producing <i>The Black Stallion</i> for Francis Coppola in Toronto. Also at the dinner was the screenwriter Melissa Mathison, whom Ford had met in passing in the Philippines during the shooting of <i>Apocalypse Now</i>.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Melissa had been a journalist, working for <i>People</i> magazine, then was offered a job as an assistant on <i>The Godfather Part II</i> through a family connection with the Coppolas. It was Francis Coppola who encouraged Melissa to move from journalism into screenwriting, culminating in an assignment to re-write the script for <i>The Black Stallion</i>.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ford and Mathison were seeing each other regularly during the filming of <i>The Frisco Kid</i>. In fact, Ford had asked Kid producer Mace Neufeld to look at some of Mathison’s work. Neufeld would come to regret not taking Ford’s advice when Mathison later wrote the screenplay for <i>ET</i>, a film that went on to out-gross <i>Star Wars</i>.</span><br />
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AirPiratePresshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13136561512898563240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6284866051777565056.post-50864033830268418062013-01-04T22:28:00.000-08:002015-09-12T06:57:48.398-07:00Chapter 3, Part 1 - Harrison Ford: New Directions<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 24px; font-weight: bold;">From Star Wars to Wars Star</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>‘When I saw Star Wars before it was released, I realised the power of it as a piece of film-making, and set out deliberately to try to do something that would contrast with the character of Han Solo.’ Harrison Ford</b></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The principal photography of <i>Star Wars</i> was completed in the August of 1976. It would be nine months before the movie was dropped on an unsuspecting American public. But Harrison Ford didn’t sit around and wait for success to come to him. The role in <i>Star Wars</i> was his biggest achievement in the eleven years he had been in movies. He was aware that Han Solo had been a major role in a major film. If he was to avoid the typecasting he feared would follow in the wake of Star Wars he had to make his move immediately. He cast around for a part that would avoid the flippant derring-do of the Solo character, and found it in a rather grim tv horror movie, <i>The Possessed</i> (1977). Starring James Farentino, the film was a cynical reworking of some of the themes from 1973’s <i>The Exorcist</i>, pitting Farentino’s unfrocked priest against a bunch of demons in a girls’ boarding school. Ford played the cool biology teacher all the girls had a crush on.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Ford looks fresh-faced in the </i>Exorcist<i> knock-off, </i>The Possessed<i>.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Harrison Ford’s next film role was yet another piece of space filling, which he did at the request of his old friend Fred Roos. Francis Coppola was about to begin work on his latest project, a Vietnam war tale which had been written by John Milius and had originally been slated to be directed by George Lucas as a ‘mockumentary’ on location in Vietnam while the conflict was in full effect. As it worked out, Lucas had stepped aside and Coppola himself ended up in the director’s chair. The film was the now-legendary <i>Apocalypse Now</i>, which was shot in the Phillipines and starred Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando and Robert Duvall.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘My scene was shared with Martin Sheen,’ recalls Ford. ‘It wasn’t a big role for me, just a nine-day cameo as a US Army Intelligence Colonel. I had my hair cut short and presented another image, Vietnam style.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As, perhaps, a tip of the director’s hat to Lucas’s early involvement in the movie, Coppola had Harrison Ford’s character wear a name-tag on his uniform which read ‘Col G. Lucas’.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Ford was almost unrecognisable as "Col G.Lucas" in </i>Apocalypse Now<i>.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘It’s just the one scene,’ says Ford, ‘the laundry list scene – it told the audience all they needed to know for the rest of the movie. And when George (Lucas) saw it, the scene was half-way over before he recognised me. That was exactly the way I wanted it.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When asked by writer Tony Crawley how he would compare Lucas and Coppola as filmmakers, Ford replied, ‘It’s really presumptuous for an actor to get into that kind of discussion. More so for me, I’m not intellectually equipped to make such judgements. Let’s see – they both have beards and glasses, and a difference in personality. I know what the differences are, but it would take me about two days to explain it. Certainly, they both allow their actors enormous freedom. Francis lets you make a choice and then moves everything to support you, to make it work for you. He’s really delightful.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But as much as Ford may have enjoyed the experience, brief as it was, on <i>Apocalypse Now</i>, it was still really only walk-on cameo. Word of Ford’s performance in <i>Star Wars</i> must have been getting around, because Ford was offered a meaty supporting role in a middleweight Hollywood movie called <i>Heroes</i>.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Heroes</i> was the film which marked the big-screen debut of Henry Winkler. Winkler had shot to fame in the phenomenally successful <i>Happy Days</i> tv series. It's commonly believed that <i>Happy Days</i> was based, unofficially, on <i>American Graffiti.</i> However, the basis for <i>Happy Days </i>was an episode of top-rated tv show <i>Love, American Style</i> ("<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5l-sUjzbK18">Love and the Happy Days</a>", 25 Feb 1972) that aired before Lucas' film went into production. In any case, Winkler had grown tired of being so irreversibly identified with ‘The Fonz’ and had selected <i>Heroes</i> for his escape from television. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The story concerned the uncertain adventures of a returning Vietnam veteran, whose ambition it is to set up a worm farm in Nowheresville, California, and his relationships with his best pal (Harrison Ford) and his girl (Sally Field). Jeremy Paul Kagan was the director.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Ford had the thankless task of playing Henry Winkler's best buddy in </i>Heroes<i>.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘I did <i>Heroes</i> for short money,’ says Ford. ‘It wasn’t a big part, and I wasn’t paid big money.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The filming of <i>Heroes</i> was straightforward enough except for one hiccup which involved Harrison Ford and occurred before even a foot of film had run through the cameras.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘Ten days before shooting <i>Heroes</i>,’ recalls Ford, ‘Jeremy changed my character from a mid-Western to a Missouri farm-boy. So off I went to Missouri with a tape-recorder to learn the accent. I bummed around for about three days and went and met the actual type I was going to play – a guy interested in cars. I went into an auto-part store and told them I was a writer because if you tell them you’re an actor, you spend the rest of the time talking about movies – and it also puts a certain distance between you and them.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When it was released, <i>Heroes</i> proved not to be the cinema box-office success Henry Winkler was looking for. The film was over-long and patchy and sank without a trace.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘It was a good part,’ says Ford philosophically, ‘but Henry Winkler was the real star of the film.’ His next role, as the American Ranger Lieutenant-Colonel Barnsby in <i>Force Ten From Navarone</i>, brought him a little closer to centre-stage.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>LEARNING THE WAYS OF THE FORCE</b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Taking the role in <i>Force Ten From Navarone</i> was probably one of the sounder career decisions made by Harrison Ford during the period that immediately followed <i>Star Wars</i>. Although it was another supporting role, the fact that it was a major Hollywood style movie made it preferable to a leading role in a small independent production.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘It’s fun to do those supporting roles, because they’re good character pieces,’ Ford pointed out to an interviewer. ‘The problem is that they don’t usually write character parts as the leads of the movies. Unfortunately, you can’t always play the supporting roles because of the complicated vision that people in this industry have. Hollywood only really takes notice when you’re being paid the money and given the billing that a “lead actor” gets. That’s why <i>Force Ten from Navarone</i> was important for me to do. Its cast was a “package of big names” which included me.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Force Ten from Navarone</i> was a belated sequel to the 1961 war adventure <i>The Guns of Navarone </i>and tells how the only survivors of the first adventure, Major Mallory (here played by Robert Shaw) and Sergeant Miller (Edward Fox) are sent to Yugoslavia with Lt Col Mike Barnsby (Harrison Ford) and his squad of US Rangers to find and eliminate Nicolai Lescovar, the German spy who sabotaged the original mission and who is now posing as a Yugoslavian resistance fighter.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ford must have seen something in the character he could work with. In a press junket interview before the film was released, he did talk about the character as though he respected the kind of person Barnsby was. ‘He’s a man of real capacity. He flies, he fights, he’s got brains, but everything works against him. At the last minute he gets the Robert Shaw and James Fox characters tacked onto his mission, so there’s a lot of adversity in the relationship between them, until he begins to need them and they begin to need him – a nice kind of continuity of cross purposes that become established and finally resolved. An interesting character. I think it’ll work.’</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Ford didn't really have much to work with in the humourless <br />role of Barnsby in </i>Force Ten from Navarone<i>.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Force Ten from Navarone</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> was released it wasn’t well received by the critics, though </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Playboy</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">’s Bruce Williamson gave the film a cautious thumbs-up, saying, ‘Guy Hamilton builds Force Ten into a straightforward, man-size adventure – a nostalgic toast to the good old war years, when we unequivocally rooted for our side to win.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>The Monthly Film Bulletin</i> was less charitable. ‘Leadenly scripted and directed, this rather belated sequel to <i>The Guns of Navarone</i> is depressingly short on thrills and almost completely lacking in suspense.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For me the biggest problem was the clash between ex-Bond helmer Guy Hamilton’s decidedly old-fashioned movie-making style (even more so when you compare it to George Lucas’ staging and direction on <i>Star Wars</i>, filmed a year or two earlier) and the very contemporary acting style of Ford, clearly ahead of his time and waiting for the rest of the movie industry to catch up with him.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ford is the first to admit that there wasn’t very much in</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Force Ten from Navarone</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">he could work on. ‘Mike Barnsby was one of those macho, tough-guy parts that everyone thought I should be doing.’</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He expanded on this in another post release interview. ‘<i>Force Ten from Navarone</i> was an attempt, in a way, to objectify the success of <i>Star Wars</i>. It wasn’t a personal success for me. It was George’s movie, his success. Nonetheless, I wanted to take advantage of the chance to work. And it was a job I did for the money. And I was lost, because I didn’t know what the story was about. I didn’t have anything to act. There was no reason for my character being there. I had no part of the story that was important to tell. I had a hard time taking the stage with the bull that </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I was supposed to be doing. I can’t do that, and I won’t ever do that again. It wasn’t a bad film. There were honest people involved making an honest effort. But it wasn’t the right thing for me to do.’</span>AirPiratePresshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13136561512898563240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6284866051777565056.post-87725052512522042832012-12-20T04:49:00.000-08:002015-09-12T06:55:05.002-07:00Chapter 2, Part 3 - Harrison Ford: Breaking In<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">STAR WARS STAR</span></h3>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Harrison Ford was not to remain a professional carpenter for much longer because, by the time <i>American Graffiti</i> was released to strong reviews, director George Lucas had finalised a deal with Twentieth Century-Fox to make a space adventure movie called <i>Star Wars</i>. Ford was familiar with the project, but nurtured no ambitions about being in the movie. After all, he hadn’t been one of the principle players in <i>Graffiti</i> and probably felt his contribution had been minimal.</span><br /><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘George (Lucas) had let it be known that he wasn’t going to use anybody from <i>American Graffiti</i>,’ said Ford. ‘Not because we’d disappointed him, but he was writing a whole new thing and needed new faces. But old Fred Roos did it again. He prevailed on George to see me after he’d seen everyone else.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The story of how Harrison Ford ended up with the role of Han Solo is another one of those tales that Ford tells better than anyone else. He recounted it within a short interview for the London events magazine, <i>Time Out</i>.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘The reason I ran into George Lucas again was because Francis Coppola’s art director inveigled me into installing a very elaborate raised panel in his studio office. Now, I knew they were casting and I thought it a bit coy to be around Francis’s office, being a carpenter, during the day. So I did the work at night. Well, one day something came up and I got stuck and I had to work at the studios during the day. And, sure enough, that was the day that George Lucas was doing the casting for <i>Star Wars</i>.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Harrison Ford as Han Solo from Star Wars</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘There I was, on my knees in the doorway, and in comes Francis Coppola, George Lucas, four other captains of the industry and Richard Dreyfuss. In fact, Dreyfuss came through first and made a big joke out of being my assistant. That made me feel just great. I felt about the size of a pea after they walked through. But, weeks later, when they’d tested everybody else in the world, I got the part.’ </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ford is guilty of a little over-simplification here. The casting for <i>Star Wars</i> was as meticulous, at the very least, as the casting on <i>American Graffiti</i>. Lucas knew he was going to have to interview literally hundreds of young actors and young hopefuls just to find the three people to portray the key lead roles. So in the early part of 1975, he joined forces with another young director making his first major picture, Brian De Palma, who was looking for a teenage cast for <i>Carrie</i>. For about eight weeks, De Palma and Lucas were seeing 30-40 young actors and actresses a day. Lucas sat quietly making notes and entering the names of those who particularly impressed him on a Second Interview list. After Lucas tripped over Ford in the doorway of Coppola’s office, the young filmmaker approached Ford for assistance with the video tests for the <i>Star Wars</i> auditions. The idea was that Ford, whom Lucas felt at ease with, would read the male parts for the actresses testing for the role of Princess Leia. Ford initially didn’t mind doing the favour for Lucas, whom he liked, but after a </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">time became irritated with having to read a part which he thought he would never play.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">According to Dale Pollock’s book,<i> Skywalking</i>, it was Ford’s "churlishness" that won him the part of Han Solo. But it’s far more likely that George Lucas saw in Harrison Ford elements of the character he envisaged for Solo. Ford had a certain forthright and honest way of expressing himself that isn’t a million light years away from Solo’s lines in the movie.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At one stage, Lucas was considering a black actor for the role of Solo. This idea probably evolved into the character of Lando Calrissian in <i>The Empire Strikes Back</i>.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But also to be taken into consideration was Lucas’s unique concept of ensemble casting. Lucas had decided on Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher as one trio. But if any of them had been unable to take part in the film, Lucas had a reserve team waiting in the wings to step in. It was all of one group or all of the other – no mixing and matching. Lucas’s second group was Christopher Walken, Will Selzer and singer Terri Nunn, who would later front the band Berlin.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In some documenting of the <i>Star Wars</i> casting story, it has been reported (admittedly by me, as well, in earlier editions of this book) that Nunn was a former <i>Penthouse</i> Pet. However, given that she was 15 when she auditioned for <i>Star Wars</i>, this seems unlikely on two counts. Firstly, it would have been illegal for Nunn to have modelled for <i>Penthouse</i> before the <i>Star Wars</i> casting and secondly, it seems pretty unlikely that Lucas would have auditioned a nude model for a pivotal role in his wholesome family film. While some sources assert that Nunn did appear in <i>Penthouse</i> for February 1977 under the name of Betsy Harris, I had been unable to find any confirmation of this at the time this book was published. Indeed, Terri Nunn herself had denied it many times. In an interview with the online <i>Exclusive</i> Magazine, Nunn was asked about the rumour of her <i>Penthouse</i> appearance and replied, ‘No, that one’s not true! I don’t know who that is, but that wouldn’t even be legal. But, I have heard about this before. I haven’t seen her, but people need to think about the age. It’s a good story, but it’s not me, sorry!’ And even if it were true, the date of the photoshoot would have been long after the <i>Star Wars</i> auditions.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_48i3aztxCQ/UNL5rfECSEI/AAAAAAAAAEU/eSrbt6999wA/s1600/chap02_penthouse77_crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_48i3aztxCQ/UNL5rfECSEI/AAAAAAAAAEU/eSrbt6999wA/s1600/chap02_penthouse77_crop.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Is this Terri Nunn on the cover of the Feb 1977 issue of Penthouse?</i></span></td></tr>
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<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Then, in 2011, Nunn claimed in an interview with radio DJ John Aberley on his interview show "Life Unedited" on Pennsylvania station WCHE that she really was the model Betsy Drake in that issue of Penthouse magazine. "It was me. Yeah, it was me. It was very hush-hush at the time, because, honestly, it was kinda illegal. I was sixteen. I met the guy at a party and he offered the idea, and I was, like, 'Yeah, I wanna do that, you know.' I was trying to be sexy and I didn't feel very sexy. I was in my teen years. And he shot that when I was, let's see, sixteen … and I was seventeen when it came out. About eight months later. So I still wasn't eighteen when it came out."</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Fyhcq39UMi8/UNL5UqIjAAI/AAAAAAAAAEE/hh_4r8q5YZw/s1600/chap02_NotTerriNunn_crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="248" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Fyhcq39UMi8/UNL5UqIjAAI/AAAAAAAAAEE/hh_4r8q5YZw/s320/chap02_NotTerriNunn_crop.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Above: <i>"Betsy Drake" in </i>Penthouse. Below: <i>1980's publicity pic <br />of Terri Nunn. Are they the same person? I really couldn't say.<br />How about you?</i></span></td></tr>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3Ltlapkgomw/UNL5YiFVsgI/AAAAAAAAAEM/fdrno5RICKw/s1600/chap02_terrinunn_crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="248" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3Ltlapkgomw/UNL5YiFVsgI/AAAAAAAAAEM/fdrno5RICKw/s320/chap02_terrinunn_crop.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In any event, George Lucas decided to go with the ensemble of Mark Hammill, Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher. ‘For me, at least,’ said Ford about the casting of his trio, ‘it was obvious what the relationship would be, simply by looking at the others. It was apparent the characters were very contemporary and the situation very simple – without meaning that in a derogatory way. It was simply straightforward, a clear human story. I mean, I didn’t have to act science fiction.’</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">George Lucas had worked out backgrounds for all his characters. Solo had been abandoned by space gypsies at a very early age and was raised by creatures called Wookiees until he was twelve. He eventually became a cadet at the Space Academy, but was thrown out for selling exam papers to his peers. Eventually he became a smuggler, living outside the laws of the Empire. Yet at the same time, Lucas knew that his actors could add the little touches that would bring the characters to life on the screen.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘Very little time was wasted,’ said Ford in the Lucas biography, <i>Skywalking</i>. ‘George didn’t have an authoritarian attitude like so many directors: “Kid, I’ve been in this business twenty-five years. Trust me.” He was different. He knew the movie was based so strongly on the relationship between the three of us, he encouraged our contributions.’</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s the little contributions Ford makes to the characters he’s playing that makes him such an interesting actor. Which shows that Lucas’s shrewdness won out over his own ‘all new faces’ rule for <i>Star Wars</i>. Ford goes on to explain how he went about filling in the spaces in Solo’s personality.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘George Lucas gave me a lot of freedom to change little parts of the dialogue which weren’t comfortable.’ Ford is being charitable here. In <i>Skywalking</i> it said that Ford’s favourite way of pulling Lucas’s leg during filming was to say, ‘You can type this shit, George, but you sure can’t say it.’</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘We worked together on it,’ continues Ford. ‘I really like working with him.’</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The part of Han Solo was the biggest chance of Ford’s career to show what he could do as an actor. ‘This was the first time I had a character big enough to take space instead of just filling in spaces as I did at Columbia and Universal. I could do that for the first time.’</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ford had worked with big name, heavyweight actors before, but never with such a ‘legend’ as Sir Alec Guinness. Most of the cast were in awe of Sir Alec and Ford was no exception.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘He gave me many sleepless nights. I’d be thinking, “I’m supposed to be in a movie with Sir Alec Guinness. He’ll laugh at me just once ... and I’ll pack up and go home.” But, of course, he never did. He’s really a very kind and generous person.’</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When questioned by <i>Ritz</i> magazine whether Ford was using the title ‘Sir Alec’ out of respect or because Guinness insisted on it, he replied with his customary tact, ‘Let’s just say he prefers it.’</span><br />
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<br />
<h3>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">THE CHANGING FACE OF THE MOVIES</span></h3>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When <i>Star Wars</i> opened in the United States on May 25th, 1977, it garnered rave reviews and within months had become the most successful movie of all time. Several critics likened Ford’s performance in the Han Solo role to John Wayne’s style of acting. This was news to Ford, never a movie fan himself.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘I never thought about that,’ said Ford, ‘until I kept seeing it mentioned in the reviews.’ Besides, Ford was well aware that it would be impossible to get away with imitating other actors for very long.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘If I end up acting like John Wayne, and I know I’m acting like John Wayne, then I’m in heaps of trouble. But if I don’t realise I’m acting like John Wayne, and I am, then that is simply part of my subconscious supplying something that is necessary for the role. I was never aware of doing a routine. Acting is so intensely personal that if you’re not operating – totally – within your own resources, there comes a moment when you’ll be stuck, you won’t know who to imitate. Much better to use only your own personality and resources as a tool and keep them both sharp and well-oiled.’ </span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Probably Ford’s finest moment in <i>Star Wars</i> is when he is in the prison block of the </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Death Star trying to rescue the Princess. Both Solo and Luke are disguised in Imperial Storm Trooper costumes, with Chewbacca posing as their prisoner. The three dispatch the prison guards – noisily – and draw the attention of the officer in charge of the detention area. The officer calls the prison block on the intercom and demands to know what is happening. It’s left to Solo to try to convince the unseen Imperial officer that all is well. Realising that his reassurances are falling on deaf ears, Solo fires his blaster into the control panel to cut off the irritating stream of questions. Solo’s sense of desperation is portrayed with nervous realism and, more importantly, with humour. The scene was played that way after careful consideration by Ford, ‘and done in one take. I never learned the dialogue for it because I wanted to show desperation. I told George Lucas I wanted to do it all the way through first time. I just said, “Stop me if I’m really bad.” He didn’t.’</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One side effect of the success of <i>Star Wars</i> was that it conferred instant celebrity on the three principle players. For an actor who values his privacy, that could have been a problem for Harrison Ford. ‘Fortunately, I don’t have as unique a physiognomy as Carrie or Mark do, so I’m much less recognised in the streets – about which I’m very happy. That could get heavy. It happens infrequently enough, and people are usually very nice, because the film is very broadly accepted – so that’s a pleasure. But when they know where we’re going to be, and they’re sitting outside the hotel – all these autograph people – sometimes that’s a drag. But none of that really bothers me.’</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9GqBRwYDF0M/UNL6FWU3xqI/AAAAAAAAAEc/yFU5x_1s-GY/s1600/chap02_starwars01_crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9GqBRwYDF0M/UNL6FWU3xqI/AAAAAAAAAEc/yFU5x_1s-GY/s1600/chap02_starwars01_crop.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Harrison Ford's portrayal of Han Solo became one of the <br />great cultural icons of the late 1970s.</i></span></td></tr>
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<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Compounding the fame achieved by Ford through his appearance in <i>Star Wars</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> was all the merchandising that trailed in the wake of the movie. Suddenly, the toy shops were full of plastic Han Solo figures, jigsaws bearing Ford’s features and assorted paraphernalia. And, in addition to the toys, there was the fact that just about every magazine published was finding excuses to report on the <i>Star Wars</i> phenomenon. There were novelisations of the film, comic strip adaptations by juvenile publishing giant Marvel Comics and a series of novels, unrelated to the film, starring Han Solo and his Wookiee friend Chewbacca. There have been three Han Solo novels by Brian Daley published by Sphere Books; <i>Han Solo at Stars’ End</i>, <i>Han Solo and the Lost Legacy</i> and <i>Han Solo’s Revenge</i>, and three by A.C. Crispin published by Bantam; <i>The Paradise Snare</i>, <i>The Hutt Gambit</i> and <i>Rebel Dawn</i>.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The other major change in Ford’s life brought about by the success of <i>Star Wars</i> was the financial one.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘I believe in the work ethic,’ said Ford. ‘That was the middle class way I was brought up. When I was offered Han Solo, I was paid less for that than when I was a carpenter.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">’</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That was so while he was actually working on the film. But Ford, like Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill, later received a percentage of the film’s profits. Two thirds of a percent may not sound like much, but that fraction of a point totted up a healthy $53,000 for Ford in the first three months that <i>Star Wars</i> was on release. And with <i>Star Wars</i> having taken a staggering $798 million worldwide to date, making it one of the highest grossing movies of all time, Ford has done quite nicely out of Lucas’ little science fiction film.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘Not that money means very much in my life. But suddenly having it made it possible to move into a large house in the Hollywood Hills and equip a large workshop on the premises where I now spend all my spare time making furniture. I don’t think success has changed me. Sure, I live in a big house. But I still manage to be a pretty private sort of a guy. My greatest pleasure is my work and the nearest thing I’ve got to a hobby is my carpentry. I don’t go to parties and I’m not involved in the Hollywood scene. Who knows, maybe if I had socialised a bit more, success would have come much sooner, because in Hollywood, to succeed, you have to know the right people. By some irony, all the right people – like George Lucas and Francis Coppola – all knew me, and I didn’t even have to hustle for their attention.’</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And in the months that followed, while Ford was waiting for work to begin on the <i>Star Wars</i> sequel, <i>The Empire Strikes Back</i>, he didn’t have to hustle for the attention of other filmmakers, either. In fact, Ford was the busiest of the <i>Star Wars</i> stars during that period.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘That could be because I made an effort to take advantage of the film offers that being in <i>Star Wars</i> gave me,’ he later said. ‘I think people in this industry realise that I’ve played, and am capable of playing, these different types of characters. I was able to do small parts once in a while due to the popularity of <i>Star Wars</i>. I’ve been really lucky to have <i>Star Wars</i> as a part of my life.’</span>AirPiratePresshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13136561512898563240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6284866051777565056.post-79755945485325615592012-12-15T23:33:00.002-08:002015-09-12T06:55:04.997-07:00Chapter 2, Part 2 - Harrison Ford: Breaking In<br />
<h3>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">WHO WAS THAT MASKED CASTING DIRECTOR?</span></h3>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The enormous success of <i>American Graffiti</i> didn’t change Harrison Ford’s life overnight. Where actors were singled out for praise, it was always the principals, Richard Dreyfuss and Ronny Howard, who got the credit. Lucas, too, was suddenly a star. But for Ford, it was back to carpentry and the infrequent tv appearances.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ford took a role in the cult tv show <i>Kung Fu</i>, appearing as a character called ‘Harrison’ in the episode ‘Crossties’ (season 2, 1974), a story about angry farmers battling the railroad company that wants to snatch their land.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was Fred Roos, again, who was responsible for getting Harrison Ford his next two roles. Francis Coppola was putting together another project, the highly praised <i>The Conversation</i>. Naturally he hired Fred Roos to cast the movie. And, inevitably, Roos turned once again to Harrison Ford for one of the smaller, but hardly less vital, parts in the picture.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘I still did the odd carpentry job after <i>American Graffiti</i>,’ recalls Ford. ‘But before too long there was Coppola’s film, <i>The Conversation</i>, which I did with Hackman. I turned up playing an evil young henchman (who works for Robert Duvall’s Director character) in that movie. There was no role there until I decided to make him a homosexual.’</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In an effort to make something more of his role than just another walk-on, Ford had bought a loud green silk suit for the then huge sum of $900. At the script read-through, Coppola was astonished at Ford’s outfit. ‘What are you?’ he asked unkindly. Ford explained his idea for the character. In 1974 gay characters would have been a risk, but Coppola was nothing if not a gambler. ‘Hey, that’s really good,’ he told Ford and instructed production designer Dean Tavoularis to create a room for the character, by now named Martin Stett, that underlined his lifestyle.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CDS7z3MDXIA/UM13lEruG8I/AAAAAAAAADc/uMhHx9cgkfY/s1600/chap02_Conversation-Ford-tie.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="178" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CDS7z3MDXIA/UM13lEruG8I/AAAAAAAAADc/uMhHx9cgkfY/s320/chap02_Conversation-Ford-tie.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Harrison Ford with Gene Hackman in The Conversation</i></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Again an important director had listened to and agreed with Ford’s ideas.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>The Conversation</i> tells the story of surveillance expert Harry Caul (Gene Hackman), who records a conversation between a young couple as they walk through San Francisco. When Harry plays the tape back in his workshop, he notices a sentence in the conversation which suggests the couple are in some kind of danger. He takes the tape to the Director (Robert Duvall) of the large corporation that hired him, but on an impulse refuses to hand the tapes over to the Director’s assistant, Martin Stett (Harrison Ford). Later, while visiting a surveillance equipment exhibition, Harry runs into Stett again. The young man tries to put pressure on Harry to hand over the tapes. Harry refuses. At the same exhibition, he meets and befriends another investigator, Bernie Moran (Allen Garfield). They have a few drinks together and return to Harry’s workshop for a party. Also at the party is a call-girl, Meredith (Elizabeth MacRae) with whom Harry spends some time. But when he wakes </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">up, Harry finds that the tapes of the conversation have been stolen. He tries to contact the Director but fails. Fearing that a murder is about to be committed, he takes a room next to the one in which the young couple have arranged to meet. He breaks into the couple’s room and is horrified to find that a murder has been committed. The Director has been killed, apparently by the couple that Harry thought were in danger. Back at his apartment, Harry is warned to keep what he knows to himself as he, too, is under surveillance. Harry searches his own apartment thoroughly for the listening device but finds nothing.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-CjyUaAOZ8Cw/UM13n7dniEI/AAAAAAAAADk/qimEbW7sxlE/s1600/ch2_Conversation.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-CjyUaAOZ8Cw/UM13n7dniEI/AAAAAAAAADk/qimEbW7sxlE/s320/ch2_Conversation.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Harrison Ford plays the slightly sinister Martin Stett in </i>The Conversation<i>.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>The Conversation</i> received much praise from the critics. <i>Monthly Film Bulletin</i>’s David Wilson said, ‘<i>The Conversation</i> is an unqualified success, a complex, reverberating study of a man trapped by guilt ... It is a measure of that success ... that the comparison which most obviously suggests itself, <i>Blow-Up</i>, leaves Antonioni’s film looking empty and inert.’</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Variety</i> said, ‘A major artistic asset to the film – besides script, direction and the top performances – is supervising editor Walter Murch’s sound collage and re-recording. Voices come in and out of aural focus in a superb tease.’</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Vincent Canby wrote in <i>The New York Times</i>, ‘The members of the supporting cast are almost as good as Mr Hackman, particularly Allen Garfield as a surveillance expert from Detroit who bugged his first phone at the age of 12 and then went on to become famous in the trade as the man who told Chrysler that Cadillac was getting rid of its fins.’</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But good though Ford’s performance in<i> The Conversation</i> might have been, again he went unnoticed by the critics. The one big success still eluded him.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">BACK TO TELEVISION</span></h3>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A few months after the release of <i>The Conversation</i>, Ford turned up in an episode of the legal drama show <i>Petrocelli</i>, ‘The Edge of Evil (season 1, 1974), playing Tom Brannigan. It was to be Ford’s last appearance in episodic television.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ford next had a walk-on part in the tv movie <i>Judgement: The Trial of Lt Calley</i>, a courtroom drama set in the wake of a Vietnam atrocity, directed by Stanley Kramer and based on a true incident (‘I played the witness who cries,’ said Ford), and a more substantial role as the eldest son of Sarah Miles’s Jennifer Blackwood in the lavish tv production of <i>Dynasty</i>.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Dynasty</i> is a sprawling tale of the fortunes of the Blackwood family and their migration to Westmore, Ohio in 1823. John Blackwood (Harris Yulin), the head of the family is a man of unbending principles whose dearest ambition it is to farm the 100 acre piece of land he has acquired. His wife, Jennifer (Sarah Miles) and his brother Matt (Stacy Keach) both feel there is more money to be made in the carriage business. Eventually, Jennifer leaves John for Matt after being accused of infidelity by her husband. But the relationship doesn’t work out and Jennifer returns to John. Realising the depth of her husband’s hatred for her she endeavours to build the Blackwood carriage business into an empire. Matt returns to Westmore and tries to convince John to sell the farmland to the railroad for a huge profit. Though John refuses, Jennifer’s youngest son, Carver (Gerrit Graham) conspires with Matt to kill John and sell the land. After John’s death, Jennifer, unaware of the conspiracy, passes over her eldest son, Mark (Harrison Ford) and appoints Matt to run the Blackwood business.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Variety</i> complained that <i>Dynasty</i>’s ‘last half hour concentrates too much on Miles’s ungrateful grown-up offspring’ and that it ‘really encompassed too wide a time span to be handled properly in a two-hour movie.’ Ford had the pretty thankless role of the ‘nice son’ so didn’t have the material at hand an actor needs to stand out in a cast. Unsurprisingly, Ford’s contributions passed unmarked by contemporary critics, and looking at the film today I can see why they might have been unenthusiastic. Ford’s acting is earnest but unshowy. I don’t think Ford was bad in the role, but that his style was simply ahead of its time.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So Harrison Ford was still an acting carpenter.</span><br />
<br />AirPiratePresshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13136561512898563240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6284866051777565056.post-8470576289581657592012-12-05T23:43:00.000-08:002016-02-10T05:49:33.769-08:00Chapter 2, Part 1 - Harrison Ford: Breaking In<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "itc clearface"; font-size: 18px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">From Touch ‘n’ Go to Turning Point</span></b></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>‘Acting is basically like carpentry – if you know your craft, you can figure out the logic of a particular job and submit yourself to it. It all comes down to detail.’ Harrison Ford</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Even though, at the beginning of 1970, Harrison Ford was no longer under contract to Universal and his acting career seemed to be in freefall, his carpentry business was going from strength to strength. Among his clients were the good and great of Hollywood: Sally Kellerman, Joan Didion, and James Coburn. ‘I worked mostly for people that were well-off and who could afford to indulge me,’ he said.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">‘What I learned from carpentry, above all,’ he continued, ‘was a work ethic. I used to be very lazy, but now I find I can’t enjoy myself when I’m not working. It saved my life to have another way of making a living. Carpentry gave me the possibility of choice. I didn’t want to do episodic tv any more, because I was afraid I’d burn myself out before I got a chance to do any decent feature films. Besides, I was too young. I was 24 and I looked 19.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">So Ford had become a lot choosier about the kind of roles he auditioned for. He continued to make occasional tv appearances, but only if the role had something to offer him. He’d often attend auditions in his workman’s overalls and took the position that he didn’t need to act to feed his family. ‘If they know you’re dependent on them, they value you less,’ he rationalised. During 1970, the top film and tv producer Norman Lear, who had such successes as The <i>Andy Williams Show</i> (1962), <i>Divorce American Style</i> (1967) and <i>The Night They Raided Minsky’s</i> (1968) to his credit, was putting together a new comedy show for CBS. Based on BBC television’s <i>Till Death Us Do Part</i>, the new show was called <i>All in the Family</i> and was to star Carroll O’Connor in the Warren Mitchell role. Ford was up for the part of the Anthony Booth son-in-law character Mike Stivic. The role would have been a great showcase for Harrison, but he was unable to get past his distaste for the racist character of Archie Bunker and turned the part down.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Around the same time, Ford was offered some lucrative tv commercial work by a fellow Ripon alumnus, Bill Haljum, by then an executive with a Chicago ad agency, which he also turned down, saying that no one in the film industry would take him seriously if he did mouthwash commercials.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Throughout 1970 and 1971, Ford switched between carpentry and acting, appearing in various tv shows like <i>Dan August</i> (season 1, ‘The Manufactured Man’, 1971) and, probably through the influence of William Fucik, a couple of episodes of the James Arness vehicle <i>Gunsmoke</i> (the Season 18 episodes ‘The Sodbusters’, 1972, and ‘Wheelan’s Men’, 1973), sometimes as guest star but more often in a supporting role.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">However some imminent changes in Ford’s life would mean he suddenly needed to make some substantial money. The old Ford luck kicked in, in the shape of Fred Roos.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">‘When my wife, Mary, became pregnant with our second child, Willard, I realised my health insurance, that I’d had when Ben was born, allowing us to have a baby for about 25 cents a pound, was no longer in force. Because I hadn’t made $1,200 in the previous year. So I had to make $1,200 to keep my health insurance. I said, “Well, I’ve got to do something.” And a friend of mine, Fred Roos, was casting a George Lucas picture and said I ought to be in it because it was going to be a big hit. It was in every way.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">This was to be the change in fortune that would set Harrison Ford on his way.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>THE WRITING’S ON THE WALL</b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In early 1972, a young filmmaker called George Lucas was struggling with the Hollywood system to get a pet project off the ground. The movie he wanted to make was a kind of musical autobiography, a story of 1960s teenagers wasting away their lives, cruising the streets of small-town California, to the accompaniment of the local radio station blaring out the rock ‘n’ roll hits of the day.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Lucas had had a qualified success with his first feature film, <i>THX 1138</i>, made for Warner Brothers. That is, critics had spoken highly of the film, but the public stayed away in droves. Needless to say, Warners were not interested in financing what they viewed as an indulgent, un-commercial project, despite the very commercial title of <i>American Graffiti</i>.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Lucas had no choice but to hawk the project around the other movie factories in town. He hired former film school classmates Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz to help him develop a ‘treatment’, an outline of the story, in an effort to give the movie moguls something they could understand. All went well. United Artists gave the go-ahead, and a sum of money, for Lucas to produce a full script. Lucas asked Huyck and Katz to write the screenplay. However, they had just landed a deal to write and direct their own horror picture in Britain, and couldn’t find time to help Lucas with the script. (For the record, the horror movie became the undistinguished <i>Messiah of Evil</i>, 1972.)</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Lucas was in a bind. He told his <i>Graffiti</i> line producer, Gary Kurtz, to find a substitute writer. Kurtz suggested another film school peer, Richard Walters. Lucas, sure that his project was in safe hands, set off for the Cannes Film Festival where <i>THX 1138</i> was entered in the competition.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">When Lucas returned from France, he read the Walters script and wasn’t pleased with what he found. Walters had done a good job, all right, but it wasn’t the story Lucas had in mind. To make matters worse, Kurtz had spent all the United Artists advance on this one screenplay.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Luckily for Lucas, Huyck and Katz returned from their horror movie expedition to Britain, and agreed to pitch in and help out.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Despite United Artists dropping out of the project, all went well. Lucas managed to interest Universal. A young executive there was very keen to give young filmmakers the opportunity (and a very low budget) to make the kind of films they wanted too. This executive, Ned Tannen, gave Lucas $750,000 to make the picture, provided Lucas’s old friend and mentor, Francis Coppola, flush from his <i>Godfather</i> success, agreed to become producer.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">With the go-ahead from Universal, Lucas engaged Coppola’s casting director, one Fred Roos, to cast the film. Roos and Lucas conducted an old-time Hollywood talent search in an effort to find just the right performers for the roles, each of which portrayed (perhaps a little indulgently) a different facet of Lucas’s own personality. Finally, Lucas selected four or five actors for each of the principal roles and conducted screen tests using video equipment, an unheard of procedure in Hollywood at the time. The idea was to assemble a cast that worked well as a group rather than relying on a band of actors who were individually outstanding. Strangely enough, the final selection each turned out to have star careers ahead of them: Ron Howard (who later went from the phenomenal success of tv’s <i>Happy Days</i> to directing feature films like <i>Cocoon</i> (1985), <i>A Beautiful Mind</i> (2001) and <i>The Da Vinci Code</i> (2005), Richard Dreyfuss (star roles in <i>Jaws</i>, <i>Close Encounters of the Third Kind</i> and an Oscar for <i>The Goodbye Girl</i>), Candy Clark, Cindy Williams and Kathleen Quinlan. And helping out in the secondary parts were Susanne Somers. Bo Hopkins, Paul Le Mat and ... Harrison Ford.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">‘</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I was Bob Falfa – the boy in the cowboy hat,’ Ford later remarked. It must have been Ford’s new forthright confident air that made Lucas pick him for the Falfa role.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">‘When I went for the interview, I wasn’t there as a person who needed a job to put bread on the table,’ said Ford. ‘I had, for once, a real life behind me. When you’re an out-of-work actor and you walk into an audition, you’re an empty vessel. So this was a significant change in my personality. I had got my pride back.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The film was on a very tight budget and Ford’s salary was set at the SAG scale rate of just $485 a week, about half what he made at carpentry. Ford’s first instinct was to turn the part down, after all, he had a family to support. However Roos managed to persuade him to take the role by upping his fee to $500 a week. For Ford, it wasn’t the money, it was the principle.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In the film, Falfa is a cocky out-of-towner who roars into town in a black hot-rod to take on the resident champion in a drag race. Each time he is seen in the film he is with a different girl, eventually carrying Ron Howard’s girlfriend Laurie (Cindy Williams) with him during the final drag race of the picture. The shooting schedule for <i>American Graffiti</i> was gruelling. The night-time location </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">filming began at nine in the evening and broke, just before dawn at around five-thirty. ‘It was fun,’ smiles Harrison Ford, ‘It was like a party, but not a Hollywood party. It was a real low budget movie, even for those days. I only got a couple of hundred dollars a week.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">There were no dressing rooms. The actors sat in the same trailer as the costumes. ‘ Ford was the oldest of the principal players on me film, though rather than setting an example of professional sobriety, he was more often than not the mastermind behind many of the pranks played on unfortunate victims during the filming.</span><br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QssYPhh94yk/UL-gVY3DgOI/AAAAAAAAAC4/C8zcThA5soA/s1600/chap02_ford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="135" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QssYPhh94yk/UL-gVY3DgOI/AAAAAAAAAC4/C8zcThA5soA/s320/chap02_ford.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">At first, bored with all the sitting around waiting till he was needed, Ford took to gunning his hot rod, a powerful, custom-built Chevrolet racer that had been used in the previous year’s <i>Two Lane Blacktop</i>, up and down the main strip of the location town Petaluma. But the local police stepped in and threatened to arrest Ford and impound the car. Then, joined by his newfound partner-in-crime, Paul Le Mat, Ford embarked on a series of pranks which made the rest of the cast very nervous. They drank beer then climbed up the Holiday Inn sign to leave the bottles at the top, they peed in the hotel ice dispenser and tried to set fire to the director’s room. ‘Harrison and Paul were pretty wild,’ recalled Candy Clarke. ‘They were drinking a lot of beer in those days. I found them very intimidating, like Hell’s Angels types.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Another time, Ford and Le Mat were hurling beer bottles from their balcony into the hotel parking lot. One of the bottles smashed the windshield of a Cadillac so Richard Dreyfuss tried to get them to stop. An argument ensued and ended with Harrison and Paul flinging Dreyfuss off the balcony into the shallow end of the swimming pool, two floors below.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Dreyfuss was due to shoot close-ups that night, but emerged from the swimming pool with a cut on his forehead which no amount of makeup could cover. Lucas took the news quite well, better than the staff of the Holiday Inn who asked Ford to leave. He was moved into the nearby Howard Johnson’s, separated from the rest of the cast.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">‘I was a bit of a carouser in those days and was in the company of other hell-raisers,’ confessed Ford. ‘If I’d been in the company of priests I would have behaved differently.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">However, working with director Lucas was an entirely new kind of experience for Ford. Completely different from the old-school, ‘just do it, okay?’ directors that Ford had been used to working with in Hollywood, Lucas seemed to be open to suggestions and listened to the people around him. At the beginning of filming, Lucas asked Ford to get his hair cut even shorter than Ronny Howard, Paul Le Mat and Charles Martin-Smith to make him seem different from the local kids. Reluctant to loose the remainder of his longish hair, Ford countered with, ‘What if I wear a cowboy hat?’ Lucas thought for a moment, then said, ‘Yeah, that’s a good idea. Let’s try it.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">At the ‘wrap’ party, at the end of filming, Lucas screened a twenty-minute extract for the cast and crew. Most were sure that they were on to something good. When the lights went up. Ford turned to his neighbour, Cindy Williams, and said, ‘This is great!’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The film had been shot, on schedule, inside 28 working days (or rather, nights), but George Lucas’s problems were far from over. Universal didn’t like the movie and wanted to re-cut it. It was here that Coppola really earned his money as producer. He flatly refused to allow Universal to tamper with the film, and offered to write Ned Tannen a cheque for the whole of the budget, in effect, buying <i>American Graffiti</i>, lock, stock and soundtrack from Universal. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">After much arguing back and forth, Tanner sort of got his way and was molified with a couple of cuts, then previewed the film. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>American Graffiti</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> was a hit with everyone except Harrison Ford and Richard Dreyfuss, who sneaked out of the preview before the film ended, because they were so embarrassed at their big-screen appearance.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The scenes that disappeared were Terry the Toad’s encounter with a fast-talking car salesman, John Milner and Carol’s walk through the automobile scrapyard and Bob Falfa singing </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">‘</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Some Enchanted Evening</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">’</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> to Laurie. Ford’s scene, which he had ad-libbed and Lucas had kept, was cut not because his singing was inferior (though, admittedly, it’s not Caruso either) but because Rodgers’ and Hammerstein’s estates, who owned copyright on the song, wanted too much money for its inclusion in the movie (though, for the 1978 re- release, these scenes were reinstated).</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The critics were pretty much of one voice in loving the film. <i>The New York Times</i> wrote, ‘<i>American Graffiti</i> is a very good movie, funny, tough, unsentimental. It is full of marvelous performances from actors (especially Candy Clark, Richard Dreyfuss, and Cindy Williams) hardly known for previous screen credits.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Trade newspaper <i>Variety</i> said, ‘Without exception, all players fit perfectly into the concept and execution, and all the young principals and featured players have a bright and lengthy future. And so does Lucas.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Graffiti</i> was released and eventually pulled in a staggering $115 million on the modest outlay of $750,000. Universal made its money back 50-fold.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">As a bonus, the movie received five nominations at the 1974 Academy Awards (the one with the streaker), including Best Editing, Best Screenplay, Best Director, Best Picture (all lost out to <i>The Sting</i>) and Best Supporting Actress (Candy Clarke, beaten by 10 year old Tatum O’Neill), though it won Golden Globes for Best Musical and Best Newcomer for Paul Le Mat.</span>AirPiratePresshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13136561512898563240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6284866051777565056.post-10240190431994238272012-11-13T10:40:00.000-08:002015-09-11T23:11:54.128-07:00Chapter 1, Part 3: Harrison Ford, the Early Days<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(continued)</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>OUT OF THE FRYING PAN?</b></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was Walter Beakel who once again came to Ford’s rescue. He knew an agent, Dick Clayton, who would take Harry on as a client. Clayton in turn knew Monique James who ran the New Talent program at Universal and secured an interview for Harry. Beakel personally coached Ford for the meeting, with the result that James accepted Ford into her ‘family’ and the young actor was once again under contract to a major Hollywood studio.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It might seem strange that Harrison Ford would give up one studio situation, which he hated, for another which probably wouldn’t be a lot better. He still had to suffer through acting classes and the trainee actors were given small roles in tv episodes and ‘movies of the week’. But at least Harry was getting roles. ‘The situation at Universal was somewhat better. But they never really had the guts to use me outside of television.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ford embarked on another round of appearances in such Universal tv shows as <i>The Virginian</i> (in the season five episode ‘The Modoc Kid’, and season six’s ‘A Bad Place to Die’, both 1967), <i>Ironside</i> (in the season 1 episode ‘The Past is Prologue’,1967) and the tv movie <i>The Intruders</i> (filmed in 1967, but not broadcast until 1970). Ford was also assigned to a role in another Civil War drama, the 1968 Universal movie, <i>Journey to Shiloh</i> (1968), written by <i>Star Trek</i>’s Gene Coon. Ford played Willie Bill Bearden, one of seven young Texans who leave home under the leadership of Buck Burnett (James Caan) in search of adventure in the Confederate Army. They plan to join up with General Hood’s Richmond Raiders but after several adventures en route – one of their number is killed in a card game, they witness the lynching of a runaway slave, Buck falls in love with a saloon girl, Gabrielle (Brenda Scott) – they are inducted into a Pensacola unit because of their outstanding horsemanship. Suddenly, they are face to face with the true horror of war at Shiloh. The Confederates are routed and four of the youngsters, including Willie Bill, are killed. The survivors of the battle are put to flight and Buck is wounded escaping from the Confederate military police, who are hunting down deserters from Shiloh. Buck regains consciousness in a military hospital, but is horrified to find his arm has been amputated. He learns that the last member of his band, Miller Nalls (Michael Sarrazin), was to be shot as a deserter, but has escaped and is hiding out in a barn severely wounded. Buck defies orders to go to Miller, but finds him close to death. Touched by the story of the seven young men, General Bragg (John Doucette) calls off the military police and allows Buck, the sole survivor, to make his way home.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ford’s role in the film was so minor that it has proved impossible to track down a review that singles out his performance, though The Monthly Film Bulletin said of the film in general, ‘the acting is often strident and the script too naively emotional not to fall into mawkishness at times ... (but) well worth a look.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Still, someone at Universal must have been pleased with the work Harry Ford did because he, along with fellow cast members Michael Sarrazin and Don Stroud were flown to New York to audition for director John Schlesinger who was preparing to film <i>Midnight Cowboy</i>. Though, in the end, the inge nue role went to Jon Voigt.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Despite not getting the <i>Midnight Cowboy</i> role, it seemed that Harrison Ford’s luck was taking a turn for the better. Beakel introduced Ford to a producer/casting director called Fred Roos. Roos had been one of the first to see the talent and charisma of a young actor called Jack Nicholson and had cast him in two low-budget movies for Lippert, <i>Back Door to Hell</i> and <i>Flight to Fury</i> (both 1964). He saw a similar intangible something in the young Harrison Ford, and suggested him for the lead in a new movie by Italian maverick director Michelangelo Antonioni, <i>Zabriskie Point</i> (1969). Antonioni had made something of a name for himself as a director whose films reached the lucrative ‘now’ generation. His earlier film <i>Blowup</i> had opened to the bafflement of the establishment critics and the delight of the target audiences.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Roos managed to get Ford in to see Antonioni, but the director couldn’t see what Roos saw. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘He was not a leading man in the way they thought of leading men at that time – not pretty enough,’ said Roos. ‘The strongest quality I saw was his great sense of masculinity. There was a kind of dangerous intensity he had, and combined with all that was this droll sense of humour. And then he had extreme confidence but nothing braggadocio.’ Nevertheless, Roos managed to get Ford three days work in the movie as an airport worker.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Zabriskie Point</i> tells the story of a rebellious American student, Mark (Mark Frechette) who finds himself involved in a campus riot. When a policeman is shot Mark is a suspect and is forced to lie low. He steals a small private plane and sets off across the Arizona desert, heading nowhere in particular. He crosses paths with Daria (Daria Halprin) who is heading towards Phoenix in a borrowed car for a meeting with her new employer, Lee Allen (Rod Taylor). Mark lands his plane and is given a lift by Daria. They stop in Death Valley and make love amidst the sand dunes. When Daria is stopped by a police patrol, Mark decides that the only way out of his dilemma is to return to the plane and give himself up to the police. He paints the plane with slogans and outlandish colours and sets off for Los Angeles. But when he arrives, a police reception committee is waiting and Mark is shot dead before he can explain. Daria hears the news on the car radio before she arrives at her meeting and for a while seems to deliberate whether or not to continue. Reaching </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">a decision, Daria presses on to Allen’s luxurious mountainside villa and, after wandering aimlessly around the house for awhile, climbs back into her car and drives some distance from the house. She looks back to the villa and imagines it and all it represents being blasted to smithereens by a huge explosion. Smiling, she continues on her journey to nowhere.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As it turned out, Antonioni seemed to experience inordinate difficulties in achieving the results he wanted with <i>Zabriskie Point</i>. The script sported the names of five writers and the movie was recut by the director several times. In the cutting and re-cutting Harrison Ford’s part (‘In fact, the whole sub-plot,’ says Ford) was snipped out and consigned to the oblivion of the cutting room floor. Which is probably just as well.<i> Zabriskie Point</i> was not a success and did nothing to enhance the careers of any involved with it.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ford went back to another round of supporting roles in Universal tv shows like, <i>My Friend Tony</i> (‘The Hazing’, 1969), <i>Love, American Style</i> (the segment, ‘Love and the Former Marriage’, 1969) and a couple of episodes of <i>The F.B.I.</i> (the fourth season ‘Caesar’s Wife’ and the fifth season ‘Scapegoat’, both 1969).</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Then Universal had one last try to launch Ford in some kind – any kind – of youth- orientated film. They loaned Ford back to Columbia Pictures for the film, <i>Getting Straight</i> (1970). The film followed the misadventures of Harry Bailey (Elliott Gould) and his girlfriend Jan (Candice Bergen) as they fight to keep their heads above water on an American University campus beset with student unrest. Eagle-eyed film fans might have spotted Ford in the role of Jake, but the movie was locked in time as a product of the late Sixties and did nothing to open up Ford’s career. Though he was growing older and gaining more experience, the parts he was getting were becoming ‘smaller and more one- dimensional.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘I was given tiny spaces to fill,’ says Ford. ‘Nothing where you could take space. Maybe they were right, I probably wasn’t ready. But I was getting older. Except, when I was twenty-one every one thought I was seventeen. All soft and putty-like but aging fast on the inside, going crazy. I had to get away from it. Yet I had invested maybe four years and I didn’t want give up. I still wanted to be an actor when l grew up. When I started acting, I thought of it as being an awesome task, exciting and frightening and a wonderful way for someone with no degree to live. I suppose being the son of a former radio actor and advertising executive in charge of Chicago’s tv commercials, I should have known better. I was not prepared for the disillusionment I found as an actor in the studio system.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At the same time Ford still couldn’t bring himself to play the studio game. He hadn’t endeared himself to Monique James with the required sucking up, so it probably came as no surprise when Universal let him go, towards the end of 1969. Ford was unemployed and reluctant to continue hiring out his face for small parts in tv shows.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘I was worried that I’d become over-exposed.’ says Ford. ‘Used up in three seasons and never have a long-term career. So I decided to stop taking small tv parts and become a carpenter. I’d had no training in carpentry, any more than I’d had in acting. But I set my mind to it. My first assignment was a $100,000 recording studio for Sergio Mendes. Fortunately, the Encino Public Library was three blocks away. I’d be standing on Mendes’ roof with a text book in my hand.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For all Ford’s inexperience in carpentry, the business paid well. He made more from that Mendes job than he had for his first walk-on part as the bell-boy in the Coburn picture. Soon, the carpentry game was paying Ford well enough that he could take on his own architects and builders. ‘That’s when I realised the correlation between money and respect.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘Take a lot of money off people and they’ll treat you with respect. They’d ask, “How much is all this going to cost?” And I’d say, “Well, I don’t know. All can tell you is that when it’s done, it’ll be done right.”’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At last, Ford was not at the beck and call of the studio heavies. And he was loving every minute of it.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘When I started carpentry,’ he recalls. ‘I liked it so much partly because it was such a relief from what I’d been doing before. For about eight years in the late Sixties and early Seventies, I did cabinets, furniture, remodelling. It was great! I could see my accomplishments. So I decided not to do any more acting unless the job had a clear career advantage. Altogether, I’d have to say I spent fifteen years in the acting business, but I made my living as a carpenter. I am not a Hollywood success story. Still, I didn’t worry about money. I had an understanding wife. I was playing pretty fast and loose with life.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">During 1970, Fred Roos introduced Ford to a former colleague, manager Patricia</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">McQueeney. She had worked for Roos and Gary Marshall when they ran Compass Management and was already managing the careers of Martin Sheen, Teri Garr, Frederick Forrest and Cindy Williams. She agreed to meet with Ford to assess his potential. ‘He sat on the couch in my office, his head down, his hands between his knees,’ McQueeney later recalled, ‘and kind of frowned at me, looking up at me underneath his brows, extremely uncomfortable and slightly embarrassed. At the time he was working as a carpenter and had done some parts around town and I can remember looking at him and thinking, “What in the world am I going to do with him?”’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">McQueeney, like others before her, soon found that Harrison Ford was his own man and had a very clear idea about the kind of roles he would consider and the kind he wouldn’t. ‘He was always careful about the roles he chose, even when he was stone broke,’ said McQueeney. ‘I can never change his mind to do or not do something. I can jump up and down and beg and do a little dance, but it never does any good.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But whatever happened to the guy who had given him such a hard time at Columbia, Jerry Tokofsky? Incredibly, Ford would run into him – almost – a few years later. He told the story on the <i>Oprah Winfrey Show</i> in 1997. When Oprah asked, whatever happened to that guy, Ford replied, ‘He’s an executive in 20th in the television department . I know that because one day maybe 15 years ago [in 1982] I was sitting in a commissary in 20th having lunch, and a waiter came up to me with a little silver tray with a card on it, which I’d only seen in movies. And I picked up the card, and I looked at it, and on it was the name of the man who I’d had that conversation with. And I turned the card over and it said “I missed my bet”. And I looked around the room, and much to my pleasure – I didn’t know which one he was.’</span>AirPiratePresshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13136561512898563240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6284866051777565056.post-7720750971608320792012-11-04T03:27:00.003-08:002015-09-11T22:50:25.368-07:00Chapter 1, Part 2: Harrison Ford, the Early Days<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(continued)</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Harry and Mary met with the director of the Williams Bay Repertory Company, William Fucik, and the older man was impressed with Ford’s quiet confidence and serious mindset. Fucik had worked for one of California’s best-regarded theatres, The Pasadena Playhouse and had coached Paul Newman 15 years earlier at Williams Bay and by then was a well-known acting coach in Hollywood. With the opening of the season just weeks away, Fucik took a gamble and offered Ford the job, figuring that he had the raw material to work with and could bring Harry up to standard in time.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ford made his professional stage debut on 26 June 1964 in the production of <i>Take Her, She’s Mine</i>. The next morning, he and Mary were married and the couple spent their honeymoon getting used to being part of a theatre company. Ford went on to roles in <i>Night of the Iguana</i> (in which he forgot his lines on stage), <i>Dark of the Moon</i>, <i>Sunday in New York</i> and even a musical, <i>Little Mary Sunshine</i>. Both audiences and critics enjoyed his performances.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As the season drew to a close, Ford and Fucik discussed Harry’s options in the acting business. Through his movie connections, Fucik was acquainted with Gunsmoke star James Arness and suggested that Ford try Hollywood, though Ford habitually offers a more light-hearted tale to any reporter who asks how he’d ended up on the West Coast.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘I went to Los Angeles,’ he’d recall. ‘I didn’t know any of the names of the motion picture studios. I didn’t know any actors. I didn’t know anything! And of course I’m not an Angeleno by birth or by heart – it’s just the place where I find myself today. But Los Angeles is where you have to be if you want to be actor. You have no choice. You go there or New York. I flipped a coin about it. It came up New York, so I flipped again. When you’re starting out to be an actor, who wants to go where it’s cold and miserable and be poor there? Better to be poor in the sunshine than in the snow. That was my idea, anyway. So we loaded all our stuff into the Volkswagen, drove off and didn’t stop until we saw the Pacific. As far as l was concerned, that Ocean must mean California – fine! Let’s stop here, Laguna Beach. About 60 miles south of LA. I did a play, <i>John Brown’s Body</i>, at the playhouse there, but the thought of doing it over and over again just stopped me. Luckily. Columbia Pictures’ New Talent programme scout saw me and sent me to see the head of casting there.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That’s not an accurate telling of story, but the reason Ford tells it that way is because Fucik was an intensely private man who shunned publicity. Once, when Paul Newman had given Fucik credit for being the best acting coach the actor had ever had Fucik called his prote ge and asked him never to mention his name publicly again. In truth, it was Fucik who suggested Hollywood and offered Harry and Mary a place to stay in California, and that’s why the Fords loaded up their decrepit VW van and headed west. Ford had simply followed Fucik’s wishes and edited him out of the story.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Fords took regular jobs – Harry working in a boatyard, then in a department store, Mary worked as a doctor’s receptionist – while Harry continued to study with Fucik and then with Fucik’s friend Bob Wentz. Through Wentz, Ford landed an audition at the Laguna Beach Playhouse and, in February 1965, auditioned for a part in Doug Rowe’s production of <i>John Brown’s Body</i>. His performance gathered good reviews from the local press, including one from the Laguna News/Post which said, ‘Harry Ford may be the best young actor in the area – and this is his area debut.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was during this period that Ford picked up his trademark scar in a ‘fast car crash. I was driving through Laguna Canyon. I had come from my job as an assistant buyer in the knick-knacks and oil paintings department of Bullocks department store and as I turned round to put my seat belt on, I ran into a telegraph pole ... later on I ran into a bad stitcher!’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As the run of <i>John Brown’s Body</i> came to a close, it was Laguna Playhouse musical director Ian Bernard who suggested Ford might want to try his luck at Columbia Studios. Bernard was a former actor turned writer and musician who had sold a screenplay to Columbia, Synanon. Bernard arranged an interview for Ford at Columbia with his contact Billy Gordon, head of casting at the time, whom Ford referred to as the ‘little bald-headed guy’ in his subsequent retellings of the tale. Harry dutifully showed up with his customary quietly serious mindset, hoping the old Ford luck would land him a contract.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Even in the 1960s the major Hollywood studios were keeping scores of young good- looking hopefuls on the payroll and using them in bit parts in movies. Ford told movie journalist Tony Crawley the story of how he was hired and made it sound like something out of a 1930s musical.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘I walked into this small, heated, walnut-panelled office. There was a little, bald-headed guy with a stub of a cigar, white on white shirt, white on white tie, sitting behind a desk. Two telephones. Behind him a man who looked like a racetrack tout on two more phones. I sat in the only chair available, right in front of the desk, and listened to them discussing big names and big money. Then the bald guy looked at me as if he’d discovered a snake in his soup. “Who sent you here?” I told him. He turned to the other guy and said, “Who’s that?” “I dunno,” the other guy said.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘The bald guy turned back to me. “That’s all right ... doesn’t matter. What’s your name? How tall? How much do you weigh? Any special hobbies, talents, capacities? Speak any foreign languages? Okay, fine. If we find anything for you, we’ll let you know.”</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘I walked out of the office, down the hall and pressed the button for the elevator. When it didn’t come immediately, I realised that I had to pee. I went round the corner to the bathroom, went in, took a pee, came out and the assistant guy was running down the hall yelling, “Come back, come back.” Obviously, if I’d gone down in the elevator, it wouldn’t have been worth his while chasing me.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘So I went back to the office. The little bald guy says, “You’re not the type we’re usually interested in, but how’d’ya like to be under contract?” Sure, absolutely. And about six months later, I was. For $150 a week. And all the respect that implies.’ Ford was told to report to the Head of Columbia’s New Talent Program, Walter Beakel, a fellow Chicago-an who had overseen the early career of <i>Working Girl</i> director Mike Nichols.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It might seem to some that Harrison Ford’s acting career was well and truly on its way. Perhaps Ford himself thought that at first, too. But it wasn’t going to be that easy.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Head of the studio Mike Frankovitch was spending a lot of time at the London office of Columbia, supervising pictures like <i>A Man for All Seasons</i>, <i>Georgy Girl</i> and <i>Oliver!</i> So the running of the LA offices fell to a tough-talking ex-producer called Jerry Tokofsky. The two did not get along. In those early days Ford was subject to what seemed like an endless string of ignominies. First, the Screen Actors Guild told him that as there was another actor called Harrison Ford, he’d have to change his name. Ford bit his tongue and added an initial of ‘J’, even though he has no middle name. The fact that the original Harrison Ford had been dead for eight years by this time seemed either not to matter or be unknown to the SAG. The next outrage to be visited on Harry was to be told by management that his regular, college-guy haircut wasn’t right and they sent him to the studio hair stylist. Ford came out with an Elvis quiff and a short fuse. Finally, that same management decided that ‘Harrison’ was too pretentious and that he would have to change his name. ‘I suggested “Kurt Affair”,’ said Ford. ‘After that, there was no more talk of changing names.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘It was 1965,’ he continued, ‘and Columbia was still playing 1925. You had to come to the studio every day, in a jacket and a tie, go to acting class, eat in the executive dining room, submit yourself to photo layouts. Six starlets and six fellas playing football on Malibu Beach in front of a Chevrolet Nova for a glossy magazine ... you know the kind of thing, “Photos courtesy of Columbia Pictures.” Horrible, really. Worse than any factory. Nobody ever knew your name at the Studio, or cared a damn about you. I went nuts.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nevertheless, Ford stuck it out. ‘It was less sophisticated than modelling, but it was a way of being acknowledged as an actor while I learned to act.’ At least, that was the plan. But if the truth be known, Ford’s career was on hold.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘I wasn’t learning anything. But around that time I bought a house near the Hollywood Bowl and decided to take out everything I didn’t like about it. I’d never done any carpentry before, but I got the books from the library, got the tools and did it.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>THE MAIDEN VOYAGE</b></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Whatever their other faults in the handling of their contract players, Columbia did sooner or later use the better ones in bit parts in their movies. Eventually, Ford’s number came up, mostly due to the ongoing support of Walter Beakel. He had a part. ‘I played a bell boy in <i>Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round</i> (1966). One day’s work. Nothing uplifting. I had to say, “Paging Mr Jones, paging Mr Jones,” or something like that and then James Coburn would wave me over and I’d give him a telegram. That was it!’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For the record, the line was actually, ‘Paging Mr Ellis.’ But regardless, Ford’s first movie appearance didn’t set the film community alight. In fact, Jerry Tokofsky was less than pleased with his ‘performance’.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘The guy who was the vice-president of Columbia at the time – maybe I’m spilling the beans here, but that guy is no longer in the business and l am – he called me into his office after that film. Now, remember. All I had to do was deliver a telegram, right? ‘“Kid,” he says – they always called me “Kid”, probably because they didn’t know who the hell I was – “Kid, siddown. Lemme tell you a story. First time Tony Curtis ever appeared in a movie, he delivered a bag of groceries. A bag of groceries! You took one look at that person and you knew he was a star. You ain’t got it, kid! Get back to class, because you ain’t going to work again in this studio for six months, maybe a year. Get yourself together.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ford was amazed. ‘I thought I had to act like a bellboy ... it didn’t occur to me till years later that what they wanted me to do was act like a movie star.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was as if Ford’s hopes for an acting career had been dashed. He was trapped in a seven-year contract with a studio which wouldn’t let him act. But eventually he did act again.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the autumn of 1966, Columbia Pictures took over production of a Roger Corman movie called <i>The Long Ride Home</i> (1967, aka A Time For Killing) and installed b-movie director Phil Karlson. The movie pitted Glenn Ford’s Union soldier Major Walcott against imprisoned Confederate officer Captain Bentley (George Hamilton) in a fairly unremarkable American Civil War drama. ‘Harrison J. Ford’ turned up playing a young officer, Lieutenant Shaffer. Not one contemporary review noticed the presence of the young Ford.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Columbia then cast Harry in the movie version of a hit Broadway play. ‘I got a small part in <i>Luv</i> (1967),’ commented Ford. Small is right. Having trouble remembering what Ford had to do in that one, I checked the cast and credits of the movie meticulously. Ford was so far down the list that he must have dropped off the bottom. No mention is made of him in the studio’s list of actors for that movie. But he played the role of a ‘Hippy’ who punches Jack Lemmon’s character on the nose after a fender bender. He didn’t make very much impression in this one either.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But Beakel – and probably only Beakel – continued to believe that Harry had that indefinable something that would take him far in the industry. Beakel’s prote ge Mike Nichols had been signed to direct the hottest new property in Hollywood, <i>The Graduate</i>. Every agent in town with a twenty-something actor on their books was pushing their guy for the choice role of Benjamin Braddock opposite Anne Bancroft’s Mrs Robinson. Several well-known names auditioned for the part and were rejected, including Warren Beatty, Robert Redford and even Burt Ward, later to be cast as tv’s Robin alongside Adam West’s Batman. Beakel persuaded Mike Nichols to see Ford, and despite his inexperience, Harry was called back for a second interview, which must have meant Nichols was taking him seriously, but ultimately, the role went to the more experienced Dustin Hoffman.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘Was I demoralised?’ asks Ford. ‘You bet I was. I was going nowhere fast. This was the atmosphere when they let me go.’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Tokofsky called Ford into the headmaster’s office and to give him another dressing down. ‘The head of the studio, Mike Frankovitch, was still in Europe, so this other guy had to make the determination whether or not they should take up the option on my contract after eighteen months.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘“Kid,” he said – what else? – “as soon as Frankovitch is back I’m going to tell him we ought to get rid of you. I don’t think you’re worth a thing to us. But I know your wife is pregnant, you need the money, so I’ll give you another couple of weeks. Just sign the piece of paper my secretary has. Okay, boy? Now, get out of here!”’</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ford had had enough. He was tired of being pushed around by men behind desks. He told Tokofsky where he could stick his money and was fired on the spot.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘I had that kind of spirit, but nothing behind it. Three days later, I was under contract to Universal.'</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">More to follow >></span>AirPiratePresshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13136561512898563240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6284866051777565056.post-54379339439057079732012-10-28T11:24:00.001-07:002015-09-11T22:46:18.277-07:00Chapter 1, part 1 - Harrison Ford, the Early Days<br />
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<b>From College to Contract Player to Carpentry</b></div>
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<b>‘My job is pretending to be Indiana Jones, or whoever, and I consider personal information about <i>me </i>can only water down the illusion.’ Harrison Ford</b></div>
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Harrison Ford has a reputation for being a very private man, and he has spoken little in public of his early life, often responding sharply when asked a question by a journalist he deems too personal. ‘I was raised in Chicago,’ said Ford once in a rare moment of self-revelation. ‘Nothing too remarkable there. Just the usual. Baseball, fooling around with cars. I was a loner type. Not very active in sports. I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I was a kid.’</div>
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Harrison Ford was born on July 13th 1942 of an Irish Catholic father, Christopher Ford (born John William Ford) and a Russian Jewish mother, Dorothy Nidelman (born Dora Nidelman). His father had started his working life in Vaudeville, the same as his father. But by the 1930s the American music hall was in terminal decline as radio and movies rose to become the staple entertainment of the mass market. Ford Sr cannily moved into radio, joining the Federation of Radio Actors in 1938. But within three years he’d changed careers, and became writer at WENR Chicago, though his resonant, baritone voice meant that he still did a fair bit of voice-over work.</div>
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Harrison Ford’s unusual given name came from his maternal grandfather, Harry Nidelman – ‘I think it’s Yiddish for “son of Harry”,’ Ford joked in 1994. His childhood was middle-class and uneventful, though he deliberately avoided trouble by calling himself ‘Harry’ rather than ‘Harrison’. By his own admission he was not an outstanding scholar. Loner he may have been, but he showed no special interest in the traditional pursuits of loners. No long hours with his nose buried in books. No solitary Saturday afternoons immersed in the adventures of John Wayne at the neighbourhood cinema.</div>
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‘I didn’t spend much time at the movies,’ he told an interviewer, ‘I’m not a scholar of Bogart’s mannerisms, so I miss a lot of the film references that people like Spielberg and Lucas toss around.’<br />
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Given that Ford’s father had strong ties to acting and the entertainment industry, it might seem strange there were few games of ‘dress up and make believe’ in Ford’s childhood. In fact his earliest ambition was to be a coalman. ‘My dad would get all dressed up, go to work, come home, sit at the dinner table and bitch like crazy about those bastards at work,’ said Ford. By comparison, Ford Jr thought the life of a coalman seemed far more attractive. ‘He didn’t go home at night and tell his wife how uncooperative the coal was.’ The idea of acting didn’t occur to him until much later on.</div>
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In 1948, Christopher Ford changed jobs again. He joined a growing ad agency, Needham, Louis and Brorby. With the War firmly behind them, Americans were demanding more and more in the way of luxury goods. And it looked like the new-fangled television was just the way for manufacturers to sell their products to a hungry public. By the mid-1950s, Ford was a manager at NL&B and was earning enough to move his family from the inner city to the suburb of Morton Grove.</div>
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The 12 year old Harry Ford attended MS Meltzer Junior High on Ballard Street and almost immediately ran into trouble with some of the tougher kids at the school. Every day he was taken to the top of a hill by these kids and pushed down it.</div>
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‘They weren’t so much beatings as exercises in ritual humiliation,’ Ford recalls. ‘It wasn’t important that I suffer physically, just that I not think that I was the equal of my mates. I knew the ritual had a form and a shape to it, and that it was far more efficient just to tumble down the hill in a satisfying way and then make my way up, rather than have to fight those guys to get back into the parking lot.’</div>
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The point of these indignities was never explained, but Ford had an idea of why he was being punished. ‘They might have sensed an underlying arrogance that they didn’t want to allow to blossom,’ he said. ‘That probably came from the distance at which I held myself from people. And still do.’</div>
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In 1956, Ford moved on the Maine East High School, one of the highest achieving high schools in America at the time. As he’d done at Meltzer, young Harry contrived to keep a low profile. He wasn’t athletic and confined his activities to the more nerdy pursuits, like the model railway club and the audiovisual club and, through that, became involved in the school’s amateur radio station, WMTH, though as a technician rather than as ‘talent’. In the meantime Christopher Ford’s star was still in the ascendant at the Needham agency and the family moved to a larger house in a better neighbourhood, North Ridge, in 1957.</div>
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Some of Ford Sr’s work ethic must have rubbed off on Harry, as he had a string of part- time jobs during his teenage years. ‘My parents came through the Depression and we were taught to believe that we were not entitled to comfort,’ Ford explained.</div>
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One of his first jobs was as a cook on a luxury yacht. He found his recipes in a copy of The Joy of Cooking that his mother had given to him and tells a story about how cooking a meal for his employers on a very choppy lake while feeling hopelessly seasick, ‘was probably the most heroic thing I’ve ever done.’</div>
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His longest running job was at the Evening Pipe Store, which specialized in pipes and special blends of tobacco. It was here that Harry took up smoking, a habit he’s not been able to kick.</div>
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From Maine East High, Harrison Ford went on to Ripen College in North Wisconsin, a liberal arts college that didn’t have too stringent entry requirements, following in the footsteps of another alumnus Spencer Tracy. He spent the best part of three years studying English and Philosophy, but with ever-diminishing results. Casting around for some way to boost his grades – failure was unthinkable with his father shelling out the best part of $2000 a year in tuition fees – Harry Ford approached the drama professor Philip Bergstrom and was accepted onto the course. Ford was beginning to lose his babyface looks and his voice was deepening as he matured. He was cast as the lead in The Threepenny Opera at the college theatre, The Red Barn. For Ford, it was a turning point.</div>
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An unexpected bonus of becoming involved in the campus drama scene was that suddenly, Ford had access to girls. He began seeing a girl called Mary Lee Franke who’d been in The Threepenny Opera with him, but as Mary Lee was ‘pinned’ to another boy (college-speak for ‘going steady’), the pair had to meet in secret.</div>
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As Harry entered his final year at college, he wasn’t able to muster the energy to be interested in getting a degree in Philosophy. ‘I would sleep for four or five days at a time,’ he recounted in 1994. ‘There was one class I never went to. I remember once when I slept for seven days and finally roused myself got myself out of bed, managed to get dressed – this seemed to be taking an intense effort – and actually made it to class. All of this seemed to be happening in slow motion. I even put my hand on the door of the classroom, but I seemed unable to turn the doorknob. So I let it go and went back to sleep.’ To me this sounds less like bone idleness and more like a bout of depression, though no mention of any such condition has ever surfaced in any other accounts of Ford’s youth. Despite all this, Harry Ford started seeing a new girlfriend in November 1963, Mary Louise Marquardt. Friends and teachers all seemed surprised as Ford was, by this time, something of a star on campus, and Mary was a quite sober and studious girl. But for some reason, the two very quickly became inseparable and the romance began to get serious.</div>
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By mid-1964, Ford’s combined Philosophy/English degree was in serious doubt. ‘Suddenly I discovered that I had no idea how I was going to make a living in those two areas, so I just stopped going to classes – they kicked me out a few days before graduation.’ Three days before graduation to be precise. ‘Bounced in academic disgrace, much to the embarrassment of my parents, who had made a reservation at a motel in town for the ceremony.’</div>
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Christopher Ford was far from happy to find out that after spending $8000 on his son’s education, there would be no graduation for young Harrison. ‘My parents had paid for four years of education and at the end of it there was no degree, ‘ said Ford. ‘It was not taken lightly.’</div>
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Ejected from the protected existence of college life, Ford found himself face to face with the real world. So he took two momentous decisions. He would marry Mary that summer and pursue a career on the stage.</div>
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‘It was important to be able to announce to people what I was going to do with my life, even if it was only to say the thing that appalled them most,’ said Ford later. ‘It proceeded naturally enough from the fact that I wasn’t going to graduate from college. Now I was off on an adventure, with no sense really of what the odds were because I never knew anybody who was in that work. I don’t think my family thought it was going to work out, but they never discouraged me. Discouragement was something I was always happy to have. Some resistance, you know?’</div>
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Where others might have struggled, Harry had little difficulty finding work as an actor, even in Wisconsin. ‘I decided to stick to acting, with drawing room comedy in mind. So I did one season of summer stock (the American equivalent of repertory) immediately after college, in Williams Bay. That’s a resort community on the shores of Lake Geneva. Not the Swiss one, the one in Wisconsin.’</div>
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It was the old Ford luck that led to his engagement with the Williams Bay Repertory Company. The Company had taken on three ‘resident actors’, talented youngsters who were to serve a kind of apprenticeship through the summer season. One of these young actors had let the company down and the Company director William Fucik needed a replacement. He asked around if anyone knew of a local young actor who might make an adequate replacement and Harry Ford’s name came up.</div>
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More to follow >></div>
AirPiratePresshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13136561512898563240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6284866051777565056.post-10053778214316661372012-10-28T10:58:00.000-07:002015-09-11T22:44:41.591-07:00THE HARRISON FORD STORY: Introduction to the Third Edition<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Back in 1984, when the first edition of this book came out, the first chapter started this way:</span></b><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>SOMEWHERE</b> along Hollywood Boulevard’s sidewalk of showbiz fame, where the names of the stars are imbedded in the very concrete beneath the tourists’ feet, there is an entry for Harrison Ford. Well, of course there is! Ford is one of the biggest box‐office draws of the Eighties. You’ll find him in major roles in four of the five most successful movies of all time. It would have been five out of five had his cameo role as Elliot’s headmaster in ET: The Extra-Terrestrial – written as it happens by the second Mrs Ford, Melissa Mathison – not been cut from the movie at the last minute. So if any of Film City’s army of ‘Stars’, Superstars’ and ‘Megastars’ deserves the honour of having his name immortalised in concrete, Harrison Ford’s the one, right?
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5zfXgWUjn8s/UI1wak700GI/AAAAAAAAABE/RDxIFk7QWC8/s1600/hford_silent.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5zfXgWUjn8s/UI1wak700GI/AAAAAAAAABE/RDxIFk7QWC8/s320/hford_silent.jpg" style="float: left; margin-bottom: 1.5%; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 1.5%; margin-top: 0px;" width="260" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Harrison Ford of silent Hollywood</span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘Except,’ chuckles Ford, ‘that’s not my star! It was put there years ago for an old time (silent) matinee idol also called Harrison Ford. No, I’d never heard of him, either. Or not until the Screen Actors’ Guild told me I’d have to change my name. That’s why I’m Harrison J. Ford in two of my earliest films. When I heard the old man had passed on, I called up the SAG about it. They couldn’t confirm his death, but I dropped the J. anyway.’
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The original Harrison Ford is not one of the better-remembered silent stars. He made his film debut in 1915, in a picture called Up the Road With Sally. His career blossomed and within a few years he was co-starring with such performers as Lon Chaney, notably Shadows (1922). As the Twenties wore on he gravitated towards comedies like Up in Mabel’s Room and The Nervous Wreck. Little was written in the fan magazines at the time. The earlier Ford was just as hard to pin down in interviews as his namesake. ‘He has a neat habit,’ said one contemporary journalist, ‘of placing the blame for good work onto the innocent shoulders of others. “Mary Provost is a great little actress to work with in comedy” or “Phyllis Haver is splendid in it also” are the sort of facts he will remind you of if you compliment him on his own acting.’ The first Ford died at the age of 73 on 2nd December 1957, ten years after retiring from acting.
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘If they ever decide to put an entry there for me,’ says Ford, ‘they needn’t bother. It’s there already. And I kind of like the idea of using his.’ Sentimental perhaps, but the old man would probably have approved.
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qDUxCPq1_Pg/UI1xzjjlJ6I/AAAAAAAAABM/NrrIP8eH6hs/s1600/ford_chap004c_bw.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qDUxCPq1_Pg/UI1xzjjlJ6I/AAAAAAAAABM/NrrIP8eH6hs/s1600/ford_chap004c_bw.jpg" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Our</i> Harrison Ford as he appeared in <b>Star Wars</b></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s a good story and though a lot has changed since 1984 – most notably the addition of a star for our Harrison Ford on Hollywood Boulevard in May 2003 – it would have been a real shame to have left it out completely. But it also contains some inaccuracies and omits some interesting details that have come to light since 1984, so I’ve made a point of adding them in the relevant places in this revised third edition. The original first eight chapters have been re-written and expanded and further seven chapters have been added to cover the Harrison Ford movies since 1984. And the final chapter, summing up Ford’s career has also been augmented with further research. Hopefully, this will give a more complete overview of the actor’s career to date.
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Alan McKenzie, October 2011
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">More to follow >>
</span>AirPiratePresshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13136561512898563240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6284866051777565056.post-65019916848753000932012-10-15T10:33:00.001-07:002015-09-11T22:43:42.085-07:00How The Harrison Ford Story by Alan McKenzie came to beI first tackled writing a book about the life and films of Harrison Ford back in the 1980s. I was still working as Editor on <b><a href="http://www.starburstmagazine.com/">Starburst magazine</a></b>, and we'd just run the serialised feature, "The Steven Spielberg Story" in the mag, a three parter by <i>Starburst</i> stalwart Tony Crawley.<br />
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For some reason, I happened to be speaking to Zomba Books publisher Maxim Jakubowski a month or two later and he was asking me whether I had any good ideas for movie books. I thought of Tony's mammoth Spielberg piece and figured that it could be turned into a book without too much sweat by Tony, so I suggested that Maxim give Mr Crawley a call. He did, and Tony soon had a book out chronicling the life and times of the super-star director to coincide with the release of <b>ET</b>, also titled <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Steven-Spielberg-Story-Tony-Crawley/dp/0946391068/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1350320319&sr=1-2">The Steven Spielberg Story</a>.<br />
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But that wasn't enough with Maxim. Pretty soon he was looking for another property - some other super-star to add to his growing line of movie books. It seemed pretty easy. The other meteoric star was the charismatic actor of <b>Star Wars</b> and <b>Raiders of the Lost Ark</b> - Harrison Ford, and no one had yet released a Ford biography. The catch was, Maxim wanted me to write it. So I turned again to my friend and colleague Tony Crawley. I knew that Tony had interviewed Ford at length several times, most often at the Cannes Film Festival. I asked Tony if he'd be okay with me lifting quotes from his interviews. Tony had a better idea and generously turned over all his Harrison Ford transcripts to me. And that was what formed the backbone of the first edition of <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0956914918/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thestoryworks-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=0956914918%22">The Harrison Ford Story</a>, published in 1984.<br />
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<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0956914918/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thestoryworks-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=0956914918%22"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">The Harrison Ford Story - third edition</span></a></div>
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The following year Maxim asked me to do a revision and update the books to include <b>Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom</b>, which was due for release. It seemed like a good idea, so I set to work and added a chapter on the newest Indy movie. And that edition sold well, too.</div>
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I left <i>Starburst</i> magazine in 1985 and began to freelance, mostly magazine articles around movies, but I also co-authored <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0831742402/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thestoryworks-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=0831742402">Hollywood Tricks of the Trade</a>, writing the sections on makeup and special effects (BBC stuntman Derek Ware wrote the section on stunts). And right at the end of that three-year stint as a freelance author, I was commissioned to write <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1581807163/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thestoryworks-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=1581807163">How to Draw and Sell Comic Strips</a> for US publisher Northern Light.</div>
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But other interests were pulling me away from writing about movies and just as the How to Draw book was being published, I became involved with <i>2000AD</i> comic, initially as a freelance writer, writing <i>Future Shocks</i> and the first story in the series that was to become <i>The Journal of Luke Kirby</i>, "Summer Magic". By mid-1987, I had joined the <i>2000AD</i> team as a freelance contributing editor - an association that was to last until the end of 1994, though my freelance status had ended at the end of 1993, when I was asked to join the staff and take up the role as editor of The Galaxy's Greatest Comic.</div>
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After leaving <i>2000AD</i>, I noticed the Internet seemed to be enjoying increased popularity, and set about finding out how I could get involved. By the end of the 1990s, I was earning my living as an online editor and front-end developer and had less time than ever for writing about movies.</div>
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But I never lost my interest. And in 2009, I set up Air Pirate Press with my old <i>2000AD</i> colleague Brett Ewins and we published the first book though the fledgling imprint, <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/095691490X/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thestoryworks-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=095691490X">The Art of Brett Ewins</a>. </div>
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Casting around for something else that might make a good project for Air Pirate Press, I thought of <i>The Harrison Ford Story</i>. Why, with a bit of elbow grease I could bring that project up to date, covering the rest of Harrison Ford's movies from <b>Witness</b> (1985) right up to <b>Cowboys & Aliens</b> (2011).</div>
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It took me the best part of a year, but I researched all the movies Ford had made since the second edition of the book. I had a look at some of the other books that had come out in the years since 1985, but I was happy that no other author had taken a similar approach to me. And then I set to, extensively re-writing all the existing chapters and adding another seven chapters and a massively detailed filmography.</div>
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<i>The Harrison Ford Story</i> (third edition) was published in October 2011 by Air Pirate Press, but it took me this long to think of the idea of serialising it as a blog. If I'd been smarter, I might've done it the other way around.</div>
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Most of the text will be published here. No need for the filmography/videography chapter. That information is already available online. And if this generates any interest, maybe the next blog will be a new, unpublished Air Pirate Press project. Hope you enjoy it.<br />
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Alan McKenzie welcomes feedback on this or any of the posts in this blog.</div>
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