Quotes from J.W. Rinzler

Failure has a thousand explanations. Success doesn't need one.

I think Disney would have accepted this movie if Walt Disney were still alive. Walt Disney not only had vision, but he was also an extremely adventurous person. He wasn't afraid.

When George first told me about the title, I wasn't so sure he was serious," Burtt says. "It seemed like such an extreme-sounding pulp title. But that's what we were making: a big version of those old serials, with names like 'Fate Takes the Wheel' or 'The Crimson Ghost Strikes Out.' 

I've never really liked directing. I became a director because I didn't like directors telling me how to edit, and I became a writer because I had to write something in order to be able to direct something. So I did everything out of necessity, but what I really like is editing.

I'd have laughed on camera if Mark had told me for the first time on camera," Fisher says. "It would have been like, 'Carrie, your dad isn't Eddie Fisher. Hitler is.' 

Right after Star Wars came out, there was a period where George didn't know what to do," model maker Steve Gawley says. "He owned the equipment. But in the meantime, he didn't need it, as far as I understand. And so the same group of folks got back together and rented the equipment, and we made a television miniseries for Universal called Galactica.

You have to remember," Peterson adds, "that one of the ways that Gary Kurtz talked to me about Empire was, 'From the model point of view, it'll actually be easier than the first show because we already have all the models; they've been packaged, sent up north, and are sitting in a warehouse. So in some ways, it'll be just operating those models again.' Well, it didn't work out that way at all!

I fell one time," Hamill says. "But I was able to tuck and roll like I was taught. I was later made a member of the British Stunt Union—not just a belt buckle, but a full membership.

The writing part is always the hardest part of filmmaking. Almost anyone can direct—they won't necessarily direct well, but the machinery works—you can take someone off the street and put them with an experienced crew and the movie will get made. But writing can't be faked. It doesn't run itself. It has to be worked out very specifically, word for word, image for image.

George said just off the top of his head, 'I'd like to see a metal castle in the snow,' Ã¢â'¬Â McQuarrie says. "George was looking for a place to put Vader's office." In one entry, Lucas seems to have reconstructed how he arrived at the name Darth Vader—a combination of the words dark, death, invader.

He's a slick, riverboat gambler type of dude. Han Solo is a rather crude, rough and tumble kind of guy; this guy will be a very slicked down, elegant, James Bond–type. He's much more of a con man, which puts him more in the Mr. Spock style of thinking, being smart, cool, and taking tremendous chances. An emotional Spock, someone who uses his wits rather than his brawn.

Battle in the Snow has an unusual orchestration calling for five piccolos, five oboes, a battery of eight percussion, two grand pianos, and two or three harps, in addition to the normal orchestral complement," Williams notes. "This was necessary in order to achieve a bizarre sound, a mechanical, brutal sound for the sequence showing Imperial walkers.

I was thinking of starting at the old base in the first film or skipping over that and starting at a new base. We could start on the Ice Planet, which would be striking. We've never been there before, an underground installation in a giant snow bank. Very hostile, with wind blowing around and the cold. They're saying, 'We've got to get rid of the Emperor,' which we never said in the other film.

Darth Vader is only interested in Luke's friends as bait. Maybe we can create a situation where they become friends, with Han and Leia and Vader all sitting down to dinner together—the evil Count having dinner with his enemies.

As The Register of Santa Ana, California, would report, Prowse had a habit of "giving away plot secrets." "He doesn't mean to," Hamill says. "He just has this real child-like quality to please." "David talks his head off," Kershner says.

On November 9, the services of Peter Mayhew and David Prowse were legalized. "They told me that if I dawdled any longer, they would simply get someone else to play the role, so I signed," says Prowse. "I had to. Having no real identity in the films gives you a terrible feeling of insecurity. You are always aware that you are dispensable.

I felt ridiculous," Prowse says of Vader's paternity revelation. "I thought I was saying one thing and here they have me saying another.

I have this theory that the bluescreen gives off rays that penetrate the brain and make you go crazy," says Hamill.

We could have done it at our studios in England, but the movie would have then started off looking artificial," says Kershner. "We decided to go for reality. Unfortunately, it was Norway's coldest winter in 100 years. That's why you prepare for a film as if you were a prizefighter—I ran two miles a day for months before it, because I knew what to expect.

Even reloading a camera became difficult—and dangerous," says Johnson. "Acetate film becomes brittle in cold weather, and the edges are razor-sharp. Try loading frozen film into a camera during a howling blizzard with ice and snow particles trying to blast their way into the camera!

I found myself forgetting about Luke, who was standing there emoting all over the place, and watching the robot to see if its performance was going properly!" Kershner says. "That happened time and again, so I would have to pull myself back and concentrate on the actor. Without him, nothing was going to happen. But it's hard to admit that my directing talent may be judged by the performance of an inanimate object.

Yoda is the lead samurai from Seven Samurai," says Kasdan of Akira Kurosawa's 1954 film. "Seven Samurai is for me the greatest film ever made and enormously influential for George. If you see Seven Samurai, you see Yoda is Shimada, the lead samurai. He's the mentor figure who gets the whole picture.

Now it takes 150 people on a set to make a movie, so you have an enormous amount of equipment with an enormous number of resources, whereas in an electronic medium, it's much easier. Eventually, you'll be able to take a machine the size of a Betamax with a little camera and make a movie. You'll get professional-quality equipment that is in the electronic mode to give us the quality we now get with film.

Some people think of editing as the physical act of cutting," Hirsch says. "But that's a misconception. The French use the word montage for editing, which means 'to build.' And I think that is a more precise description.