It's the Dearly Departed Podcast, featuring your host, historians Scott Michaels and filmmaker
Mike Dorsey. All Right, everybody, welcome, It's Dearly Departed Podcast.
I believe this is episode twenty seven, so we made it to the twenty
seven club. Scott, hooray, we're one of the few that are get
out of it right hopefully fingers probably yes, that would yeah, we don't.
We don't want to be someone else's podcast, do we. Right?
The tragedy the tragic end of the Dearly Departed Podcast. Next, that's gonna
haunt me one day. That's gonna happen and people are gonna laugh, so,
you know, hopefully not for a while, but they're gonna go hmm.
It's about the time I caught up to him. I'll make sure that
whatever tour is in your area, put your house on the route in your
honor. Okay, So we taught. We just recorded our Patreon show where
we went over all the folks that have passed away and the couple months since
we did our last episode back in early March, and so that's on our
Patreon So if you head over there and support us, you can listen for
as little as two dollars a month, and that's like a it's like a
almost an hour long show today that we did. It is patreon page.
So yeah, yeah, all the obituary, not all of them, but
most of them, and lots of weird off the cuff stories, which is
why you guys seem to like So so, yeah, what what's happening in
the world today? You just we talked about this a little on our on
our Patreon, But you went on a road trip, a big cross country
one. Yeah. Yeah, I went to I went to Florida two times,
and one time I went over. We we flew over to uh spend
a list of bit of time with my family. And then the second time
I drove over with my friend Jordan, who his YouTube channel joined the Lion.
He ended up relocating, and we drove with his dog across the country,
doing lots of odd little stops on the way and making videos. So
it's a lot of fun. We stopped in a lot of different places,
so many places that it's like I can't remember because it's so overwhelming, but
it was a lot of fun. As the first time I went, I
just uploaded a video onto YouTube on the Wolendos, the Flying Wolendos, who
are like a weird obsession of buying a family of acrobats, and I was
able to find their their home, where they where they lived, in their
grave, where they're where they're all buried. And since their big accident happened
in Detroit, where I'm from, where two of the members were killed when
I fell off the high wire, my video is devoted to those two.
But the Wolendos are incredible, incredible performers, artist. I mean, it's
it's watching them, it's just oh, it's it's just it's nerves shattering to
watch these Now now they make them more safety because because so many of them
have died. You know, at least four of them have died from falls,
including the patriarch, Carl Wooland, who famously you could see it on
YouTube. Was was, you know in San Juan, this little old man,
he's like seventy five or something and doing the teeter teeter and boom and
it's all it was all recorded and it's all on YouTube. It's a sad
but but that's that's the life of an acrobat. They and when they were
an artist like that, when they did the thing in Detroit. Two of
the members died, one of them was paralyzed, and the other girl had
severe head injuries, and they went on the next day. The rest of
the family did. It's just the show must go on. I guess,
yeah, so as as I love the Woodland is. And then there's the
we you know, we did it. I did a thing on Grady Styles,
who was the obscure boy who uh you know, he was born with
that condition where ethan ethan what's his face in an American horse tray when they
did Freak Show, did that thing where he had the hands they were like
pinchers. I could think there's a word for that. I forget where it
is. But anyway, he was a miserable human being, Grady Styles,
And well we're going to talk about that. We talked about doing the Freak
Show stuff in a future episode. So, but he was involved in a
murder, correct, right, Well, yeah, he was involved in a
murder, and then they couldn't They convicted him, but they couldn't put him
anywhere because they couldn't they know what to do with them. You know,
he's a man with two arms and two legs, but pinchers on both so
they they send the house arrested and he ended up being murdered. Uh,
he was a hateful, hateful man. And and yeah, we should do
a Freak's episode for sure. Yeah. Yeah, I learned a lot of
stuff when I was in Gibsonton where that was their sort of summer or offseason
home. And uh and we mentioned, you know a little while back on
the the other podcast, but we stopped at the Jane Mansfield crash location,
and we stopped at the Alamo, and we did the Big Bopper's Grave,
and we did we did some really interesting things because Jordan did a couple of
things he wanted to do. I did the things I wanted to do the
most, mostly the James Dean stuff in Marfa, Texas where the film a
giant. So it's just a really fun trip. And you know, you're
always taking a risk when you're traveling with somebody because you know it's like,
how is this gonna go? It could go after an hour, you know,
if it's gonna go, you know, belly up or anything. We
end up. It was great. It was great fun. So we're fun.
And you went to the Mansfield Jane Mansfield Crash site outside New Orleans.
Did right, you had been had you been there before? Though? Right?
Yeah, I've been there. Yeah, we we were. We spent
New Year's Eve, we rang in the New Year, like three years ago
at the car hit the crash site. Wow, and uh yeah, it's
uh, it's really it's really quite emotional for me to be there, and
it sounds so dramatic, but you know, so much of our life,
since we have the car that she was killed in, evolves her. You
know. Now we're sort of a reference point and people are always sending me
Jane Mansfield stuff and I read more about her, and so when you're there,
all of a sudden, you're in the dark, you know, it's
about midnight, around the time the accident happened, and we're standing there and
it's really it's overwhelming, you know, because it's such a, like I
said, a huge part of our lives, Troy and I and dearly departed.
So it was something and I just interviewed. You know why I interviewed
was the woman who was the fiance of the driver, Ronnie Harrison. Oh,
he was a young man. Yeah, yeah, they were engaged and
actually she was pregnant when the accident happened, and none of her family knew
that, and she had a really interesting story. And you know, it's
a bit of trivia. Her son is the kid. You probably know,
there's a lot of other people probably wouldn't who redid Rags of the Lost Dark
shot by shot by shot? Do you remember that story? Yeah, I
didn't realize that there was a relation. No, I had no idea.
But I've seen the documentary that they made about that. It's amazing. Yeah,
it's like the greatest fan film ever made or something. Yeah, yeah,
wow, idea. I mean, over a period of like five summers,
these kids remade like well, I mean they did it well and shot.
In fact, Spielberg saw it and like had them in for a meeting
or something, I think. So it's pretty interesting. So yeah, she's
got some wild, really wild stories. So that'll be an interesting thing to
hear one day. That's interesting too, because Spielberg, you know, that's
when he made movies like that, when he was a kid. That's how
he got into it. He had a camera and he was a teenager he
started, or even maybe even before he started making war movies and stuff with
his little friends. And yeah, that was so I and see how he
has a soft spot probably for other people that kind of do that, the
fan films and stuff like that. But it was done well. You know,
you keep writing, when's the big ball gonna happen, It's gonna look
really dumb. And it was like they did a really good job, right
and they blew up. They blew up the plane or the end they did
like the plane explosion seem while he's running away. That was like one of
the last things they shot because they never had the budget to do it,
to do a big explode. I think they Yeah, they finished it,
like when they were in their twenties or something. They gat that shot to
complete the whole thing. It was really clever, really really an odd cool
idea. I saw you posted this. The Full House creator Jeff Franklin,
who you know created the Full House series television series and is a big TV
producer. You know, he owns the Cello Drive location now the address the
plot of land where the Tate murders happened, and built a huge, mega
mansion on the property. Now it seems to take up the entire property.
Is this giant house and he's just listed it. You can now rent the
house for a steal at a quarter of a million dollars a month, and
there you are. You know what Sharon and Roman moved in. It was
twelve hundred a month, I think, but it was a different house.
But I mean, it's a complicated house because it was well Eltabelli who owned
the house, and it was renting it the Sharon and Roman lived in the
house for a good twenty years. He started renting it out the people.
The last person was Trent Resner. He moved out sold it to a brothers,
wine Trup brothers, and the wine Trup brothers were gonna make a fortune
and they tore down the house and they left one wall. There's still a
kitchen wall up there in a tree from the original house. But they were
going to make a fortune and build this house. It was called Villabella,
and then he bought it. Franklin spent another probably three years finishing it off.
And it's just this be a moth on the hill. It's this massive,
seventeen thousand square foot house. The Tate House was. You know,
it wasn't small either, but it wasn't It was modest certainly by those standards.
And it's interesting because the house that's being built above his his even more
insane. And they've been building effort at least five years and they haven't even
started. They just building the foundation for five years. So the house that's
I think part of the reason Jeff Franklin is leaving that house and renting it
out is because there's a ridiculous house being built above his. So, um,
yeah, it's a real it's something. It's something man. That that's
that is when people just don't tell you to stop. There's nobody going now,
We're not going to let that happen. You know, there's that now.
And well they did do that, didn't they. In bel Air really
recently, that guy built that house. Yeah, they kept telling him you
can't do it, you can't do it, and he kept going forward,
and finally they put their foot down and they made him tear it down.
I think they've got to go almost wouldn't It seems like that almost never actually
happens. The developers have so much have so much more power, and eventually
they went out a little bit more money at them, you know, I
mean, look at at what happened at Target in the middle of Hollywood.
You know, they were but they started building the Target store because somebody kind
of bashed forward it through the city and it got approved and it ended up
being like somebody beat taller than they were allowed to, and that target stood
there for probably what almost like eight years or something unfit. It felt like
over a decade. Yeah yeah, and then they finished it and it's open
now and it's operating. So it's like like I said, eventually I figured
it out. It just rarely just they did. They get caught out on
those things. Uh. In other current events, uh, Lady Gaga's dogs,
she got a dogs back from that shooting that happened over happened on the
street where Chibo is sunset right where um right where the floorst used to be
as well. Yeah, yeah, the Parsian floorst which sent the which sent
the rose to Maryland's grave for Joe DiMaggio. It's on that kind of that
same block, basically just north of there. There was a shooting a few
weeks ago and two of Lady Gaga's three frenchiese French bulldogs were stolen and her
dog Walker was shot. Luckily he survived and exposedly now now they've arrested five
people, including the woman who turned them in to try to get the half
million reward money that she was offering, and they Gaga. I think the
police told lady Gaga, like, hold off on paying that reward because we
this is like fishy. And then it turned out I think the woman that
turned them in is the girlfriend of the father of one of the guys that
is now accused of being so they tried to find somebody removed from them enough
that maybe wouldn't come back to them. I guess to hey, let's try
and get the reward money, which is just brazen, you know, like
they probably wouldn't have got caught if they just turned them loose or dropped them
off at a pound somewhere or something. They probably maybe they would have got
away with them, but intended to, yeah, just celtrate another rich person.
But no, they got greedy, and you know, and it was
interesting because what she kind a lot, she kind of been a flat she
did Ga Ga. I hate saying that name, but she got some flat
because what the dogs got stolen and you know, her dog walkers and you
know, got shot in the long fighting for life, screaming and stuff.
And then she writes, she tweets it because I am just heartbroken and devastating
with a picture of her dogs. It's like, Okay, she got a
bit of flaque for that, and she, you know, she was caught
up in the drama all of like social media is doing the same thing.
Though. I was like, oh, dog walker got shot. The dogs
I've been taking everybody's like, oh my god, their dog's okay. It's
like there's a human being And did you walk here about the dogs? Selling
Yeah. The poor guy was just screaming and he was I guess he knew,
uh he was a he was he was an inter, he was an
EMT or something that. But he k that his lungs were filling with blood
and he was screaming, you know. Um yeah, that's crazy wild.
And I hope she takes care of I'm sure. I mean he's already pretty
well taken care of anyways, but yeah yeah, um he um he uh.
And after he was shot, the one dog that got away that wasn't
stolen came back and I guess late next to him when while they waited for
oh that's sweet. Yeah, so um that's nice, and waited for him
while he was while they're waiting for the prey minister, get there. I
don't know. I've heard about this. They're doing a Fantasy Island reboot.
I did hear that. Yeah, really really disinterested rather quickly. Um.
And then the last movie they did, I thought the movie was fun that
they did recently. Mm hmmm, oh maybe this will be fun to Scott
who knows? Yeah, I know, you never know, you never know.
And then I was just going to show this off. I showed this
off on our Patreon, but in honor of Michael Collins, one of the
Apollo eleven astronauts passing away, I have to show this off to everybody.
My grandfather, my grandfather was an Apollo eleven or Apolo engineer, and this
is his Apollo hard hat that he that he had. And if you watch
any of the old documentary footage of the launches, you see guys walking around
with these blue hats on. He says CSM on the side, which I
believe would have stood for the Command Services Module, which is what they kind
of lived in. It was like their life support module. CSM on the
sides, his name on the front, and Apolo CSM on the back,
and then it has some of the mission stickers there's a Polo seven, Apolo
thirteen. I think that's Apolo twelve. And my guess is he put Apolo
eleven at the top. But these have long since, some of them have
fallen off over the years that he owned it, So i'm any more.
But yeah, there it is. It's an actual apollo. Uh. Mission
hard hated was his awe. Whenever anything was being worked on or whatever down
at the place, he had to wear this around. So it's so cool.
That is so cool? All right? Uh? Is that is that
it for current events? I think so anything current events? I care to
talk about the stuff that matters to us. Um. Uh. We do
have one little, one tiny piece of hate mail that's only one word long
hate mail. It's uh. We had a one star iTunes review and the
review just said cringe, which I take is a compliment. I wonder,
I don't know, maybe in order to be rating. Yeah, what what
was cringe? E? I don't know. At least they left to review.
I mean, a five star review could just as easily say cringe.
Also, it just depends on what you're into. Sure, well you consider
entertaining, but that's that's not bad hamail though a cringe no, there's a
lot. You know, I sort of it's I've got so used to the
nasty people that I'm sort of I mean, I you know, I don't
see the Patreon, I don't see the uh the the Apple things. I
should be more aware of what's going on with the reviews on mostly very positive
though we have we have like a five star average rating, and most officials
they love us and want us to do more shows and all that stuff.
So yeah, cool, Yeah, it's not it's it's some people just have
nothing better to do but just go and and last, but not least,
before we get into our main story, you have something about Marilyn Monroe.
I believe in a statue correct twenty six feet of Norma Jean and that it's
it's like a big everyone's all in a huff about it right now. Literally
has their panties in a bunch about Maryland's panties because they're bringing the statue back.
You know, the twenty six feet tall Maryland Iconic statue seven year rage
Post was here for a few years. They rented it whoever was in now
the city put together enough money or the Businessman's Association to have it permanently on
display here. So the the Palm Springs Art Museum has been designated it's the
place to put it. And everyone that works at the museum or has something
to do with the museum or everyone is me toing it to hell because because
it's showing his lady with her panties up, and they say that everyone's gonna
walk out of the museum looking at this woman's panties and it's misogynistic, and
it's like, it's Maryland. It's Maryland. You're in Palm Springs. You
know. Now, I'm not necessarily not on board with them not having it
there. I think it's a great opportunity to open up another space for it
to be a focal point for tourists, you know, put it on the
other side of town where there's some empty area. You know. I don't
I don't necessarily want her to be there, But it's just it's funny when
you see the real things that are going on in the world, the real
protests are going in the world, and these people are just screaming about this
Maryland statue in Palm Springs. And it's the famous scene, and it's the
famous scene from the sevent year Arch where she's standing over the subway grad and
it's blowing her dress up and she's fighting to keep it down. It's the
statues of that moment. So that's why some people have taken issue with the
content of it, and the fact that you can basically walk under the statue
and I guess look up the dress, but it's a statue. I don't.
I don't know. It's just yeah, it's just a location. If
it wasn't where they chose to put it, yeah, you know, we
wouldn't be having this problem. But it's it's it's just the stances that people
are taking or you know, they're they're interesting. I'll just say that.
But she was supposed to be already unveiled, but they I don't know,
it's still there's a lawsuit pending. I don't know. It was supposed to
be done a few weeks ago, but it's not. Yeah, So it's
fascinating Palm Springs life. These are not normal people problems, and here we
are, all right, So the main event is Star Wars. It's time
for the main feature, and we're recording. We're recording this on May the
fourth, which is now commonly known as Star Wars Day, May the fourth
be with you, and so you won't be watching this on May fourth,
but this is when we're recording it, so it's in the spirit of May
fourth, and we always we already wanted to do a Star Wars episode anyway,
so we figured why not. Yeah, yeah, I disagree. I
was a huge Star Wars fan when it came out. I saw the movie
probably ten times, which was a lot at that point in seventy seven when
it came out, and I had I had the sheets, I had the
posters from Burger King, I had the cups, I had uh you know,
every you know disc, the disco Star Wars album, you know the
I mean it was, you know. I was just I was a Star
Wars nut. I loved the R two D two cookie jar and at a
C through a C three po necklace. I was big into it, but
I wasn't. It wasn't for the sci fi aspect of it. I you
know, I understand the sci fi aspect of it, and that's cool,
but I loved it as a story. It was just an awesome story.
I was confused when they called it what episode five, I think is what
it was. When it first was it Episode four Episode four, Episode four
A New Hope is like now the official name of it, right. Nobody
knew that it was going to be a big hit. However, when it
was released, there were people lined up around the block like for days.
I had a time at the Chinese theater, and that's something I never really
quite understood. Um. I read a lot of I'm not finished with it
yet, but I've read a lot of the Making of Star Wars, which
is subtitled The Definitive Story Behind the Original Film Exhaustive Book, and I have
the digital copy of it, which includes multimedia stuff. It includes interview clips
with George Lucas and videos and stuff and tons of photos that you can zoom
in on because they're high quality, and I mean, it is everything you
want ever would want to know pretty much about Star Wars. And it's funny
because George Lucas, yeah, he didn't think they were gonna original budget was
gonna be three million dollars, which in today's money would be like eighteen millions,
so even today it would be considered a low budget film ended up blowing
up ballooning to you know, two or three times that amount by the time
it was done, but he didn't think it would make more than sixteen to
twenty million, So even with him, there's kind of a contradiction and that
he didn't think it was going to make that much, and yet he was
planning this whole universe that he also felt this wouldn't be the last one that
they were going to make, and that's why he wanted to have all the
ancillary rights, the you know, the stake in the merchandizing and all that
stuff, because he felt like this was going to go somewhere, and he
made the movie because American Graffiti was a surprise hit, another movie kind of
like Star Wars, where the studio didn't really believe in it until it came
out and was a smash and people loved it. And George Lucas realized that
at that time period in the late seventies, they really weren't making movies for
young young people and kids anymore. They were not that twelve to twenty year
old age demo which used to be who all the movies were made for,
practically weren't getting anything because Westerns were out of fashion, you know, swashbuckling
movies were out of fashion. Sci Fi was kind of Goofy and so there
it was just serious, like serious dramas and cop content. Police content was
basically all people were doing. And he was like, wow, it was
a huge opportunity here, and he was totally right. Yeah, I guess
Fox had thought they put their money behind the Other Side of Midnight and they
thought that was going to be the huge hit of that summer and ended up
you know, no, no, I mean it opened up, didn't open
on like a hundred screens or something, and then within you know, a
month, it was it was seventeen hundred screens. It was something, you
know, an insane growth. Uh. They must have been making prints,
you know, like crazy over time, making prints of that movie to get
it out there. But uh, but the man, the hype, the
hoopla, that was such a big deal. Have you ever heard this?
Um, somebody made an audio recording of the audience watching Star Wars in the
initial in its original run back back in siventy seven. It's a really great
thing. Oh really, well somebody else, somebody, that's what somebody?
Have you ever put it out there? Because somebody actually did that and they
actually released it for the the ending scene, you know when they blow up
the Death Star. They actually padded it in there, and you can hear
the audience reacting and then the big cheer that goes up when it happens,
and it's really freaking cool. It's a great like historical artifact, you know,
and it legal pirated audio recording of the movie, but a great ends
up being a great store of a document. Yeah. I snuffed my cassette
player in which was you know at that point probably like that, and I
I recorded the whole movie. I was. I was a nut for that
movie, so you know, I still I haven't listened to it, but
I mean, I have all my cassettes. I should check that out.
I did that for the Rocky Horror Picture Show too, which was which is
kind of fun in retrospect, you know, because he's just encapsulates the moment.
But Star Wars that was wow. That was bananas. That was such
an insane fun movie. And uh, it's it's fascinating to watch like the
clips without the sound effects and the green screen and stuff like that, and
the and before it was color graded and everything, it just looks really rough.
Yeah. Yeah, I just they were weighing it. They were,
I mean, some of it was just what they say that uh alec Ginnis
was like, they're giving him lines like the day of I think, you
know, it was like a script like every day and the dialogue is ridiculous
to begin with. And that was kind of funny going through the drafts project,
the process of writing the script, all the various drafts at George Lucas
wrote, and he keeps sending it in and nobody understands what the story is.
That sounds cool, but like every act of the audition was like,
yeah, I had to read the script like eight times before I realized,
before I figured out how it all went, what the hell he was trying
to say? And George Lucas was brilliant because what he did. He realized
this and he ended up putting up close to half a million dollars of his
own money during the development period of Star Wars. When he was writing the
script, he had no guarantee yet that they were actually going to make it.
He was just getting paid a little bit of money to write it.
They didn't know it was going to green light yet. But he was making
all this money from American graffiti and he just started putting his own money into
hiring mainly this guy named Ralph McCoy who did all the concept art and did
all the designs, because Lucas realized, you can't really make sense of the
script, so let me give them visual aids, the studio execs and actors
and whoever, or to show them Here's what the characters are gonna look like.
Here's what the space ships are going to look like. When iver we
talk about the death Star, here's what the death Star we think is going
to look like. And that he'll bring it to life for people. They
understand what was written, they understood pictures of the pictures and could see all,
okay, I see what you mean and what you're trying to do,
and that really probably may maybe Star Wars would have never been made. Very
likely had George Lucas not self funded basically the founding of ILM, Industrial line
Magic and the and the model building he hired model builders and Ralph McCorry to
do the artwork. If he had not taken that risk with his own money,
it might not have ever gotten green light green light as a result.
Yeah, and the script are I mean the acting, well, he was
basically making a Western in space. I mean, that's what it was.
It was just it was cowboys in an Indian sort of thing, and h
you know, bad guys, good guys ultimately, and the princess and you
know, the fairy whatever. Yeah, it's just yeah, it was sort
of yeah, Western in space. Honestly, he was taking a proven formulat
and just spreading it out there. But the special meats were outstanding with nobody
was doing that nobody. Yeah, he hired some people that had worked on
two thousand and one Space Odyssey because that was the gold standard, even you
know, almost a decade later when they made Star Wars, that was still
the one that everybody was trying to emulate. So he brought some of those
people in and they basically had to build a lot of their own equipment,
or at least modify equipment for the motion capture because the shots that he wanted
to do he didn't want. It used to be that when he did an
effect shot, the camera would be locked off because you couldn't have the camera
moving around because then if you try to put two images together, it looks
wrong. So and then he felt that that sent a visual queue to the
audience that oh, this part is not real because we're about to do a
special effect. He felt like it took audiences out of it. So he
wanted to be able to do effect shots where the camera's moving. So they
had so they created m they already kind of had it, but his motion
motion control camera where they could duplicate the same camera move precisely over and over
again, so that they would all match up when they put all these models
together, because you could have four or five different shots in one shot basically
compiled together, and the camera had to be moved exactly the same way every
time. But he wanted that so the audience would never get taken out of
it. It would still have the almost handheld like quality to it that all
the other scenes add. And I think that's one of the big reasons that
it worked as well as it didn't didn't look as kind of hokey as a
lot of other um sci fi movies before it y you know, yeah,
and after be honest, and when they were on that that vehicle, that
floating vehicle, there was a term for that. It's the It was the
land the land Speeder is what it was called. It was called the lands
okay, but it was really in the movie. I didn't even remember seeing
in seventy seven. Think, you know, it looks a little when you
look underneath that. It was a bit, you know, if we're supposed
to be floating and you can yell, it was a bit, a bit,
And now it's like it's on wheels, yeah, and it had They
did the effect by just using mirrors, yeah, to cover the wheels up,
and it looks like it's floating. And I looked this up. It
was one thing I caught it. I gotta go back to Ralph McCoy for
a second. He passed away in March third, twenty twelve. He worked
he was famous for Star Wars trilogy. Of course, he also worked on
the original Battlestar Galactica series. He worked on Et Cocoon. He was a
groundbreaking conceptual His artworks just beautiful. And I saw a piece of little ephemera,
this envelope that was sent in with some of his conceptual drawings had his
address on it at the time, and he lived at the corner of Curson
and San Vicini in Los Angeles, and I was like an apartment building there.
I think it was seven. I think it was ten seventy one South
Curson Avenue, and so, and that's there's still a building there today.
So depending on what unit you have, you very well may live in the
apartment where Ralph McCoury drew by most most of the concept art for Star Wars.
I hope that he m I hope that Lucas gave him points, you
know, from the growth of the movie. I really do so. I
know he gave He gave that to Ale Ginnis. Alghinnis got two percent yeah,
yeah, And I always heard that Carrie and Harris and Mark got a
percentage too, But nobody's ever come out and said that they've been bitter about
merchandise, but they've never of course, they've kind of kept their mouth shut
about the other stuff. I think they got points. I don't think they
You know, it was a goat nowhere movie. Nobody knew what was going
to happen. It was just Yeah, I think a lot of them,
I know, I know. I did come across um when I was reading
up on David Prouse, who was the man in the Darth Vader suit who
did the actual physical acting on screen for most of it. He was supposed
to get residuals off Return of the Jedi that he claims he never gotten so
I suspect that maybe they didn't get it off the first movie, but when
it was a hit, and you know, they came in to negotiate for
their next roles, they probably were like, okay, we want to back
end piece of this. So but now Prows, I remember his thing,
the guy that was Vader he was supposed to get. I don't think it
was gonna be points. He said it. But he was also banned from
Star Wars conventions for years because he burned bridges, they said with Lucasfilm.
But he said that originally when they took off Darthader's mask, it was supposed
to be his voice, and then they changed it to another actor, and
so he claimed to have gotten screwed over by Lucasfilm, and Lucasfilm just got
tired of him. There's multiple So, first in the first movie, while
they're filming, he gets replaced by a stuntman for a lot of the sword
fighting scenes, a lot of the lightsaber scenes, because he kept breaking the
props and he just he wasn't he just wasn't trained up enough at sword fighting.
So the choreographer for the movie was a stand in for him to do
that those fight scenes so first day, and he was a little rubbed wrong
about that he didn't get to do those. He tried to get him to
let him do him later and Return of the Jedi, they wouldn't let him.
He wanted to do that. He wanted to be the one to throw
the Emperor, you know, at the end of Return of the Jedi,
because the guy, the stuntman was having trouble getting it right. And I
think they still wouldn't let him. So he was but heard about that.
Then there's some debate about whether or not he knew that they were going to
replace his voice with James Earl Jones or not. And I think he has
no problem with the fact that James Old Jones did the voice. I think
he just didn't he thought it was going to be his when they recorded the
film, and then Lucas changed his mind and post about yeah, because they
sounded what Carry Fisher called him like Darth Darth Farmer or something like that.
They made some good a joke because he had a what's called a West Country
accent, which I don't know what that sounds like. It's Bristol, but
I mean it's funny in England to the guy down the street has a different
accent. They have so many different accents there. But he was from Bristol.
But but yeah, she it was just not become farmer. Yeah who
you thought. But you know, I have a friend who was who was
one of the stand ins for Vader and for Chewbacca in the first in the
first three films actually, and his name was Stephen Kalka, and he was
in the Rocky Horror Pictures Show. He was the tall, skinny Transylvanian with
the long hair in the Rocky Horror Picture Show. And when I interviewed him
for that, you know, I was listening to that interview again this week
for this for this podcast, and we talked for an hour about Rocky Horror
and about different commercials that he was in and this and that, and he
goes, and I did Star Wars, but I don't talk about that because
no one, you know, no one really thinks about that. And this
is a mid nineties when I interviewed him, and now you go to his
page on Facebook. I mean, he is famous, like huge in the
Star Wars world. He does all the conventions because he was the stand ins
for both Chewbacca and for a Darth Vader during the original film and are the
original three films, and coincidentally, David Prowse was originally offered Chewbacca, and
I kind of gave him a choice to do because he's six foot six,
bodybuilder. He could have, you know, played Chewbacca probably if he'd really
wanted to. And he wanted to be Vader because he wanted to be the
bad guy. He thought everybody remembers the villain, is what he says.
So now I'm gonna go out. I'm gonna I'm gonna say something that maybe
controversial. I don't think so. But they were in costumes and they weren't
using their voices, right, you know, Peter Mayhew and David Prouse and
Kenny Baker, they were in costumes. They didn't use their voices right,
And they was saying like, you know, when when uh when uh as
the other guy that just Peter Mayhew died? Like or are they going to
make the other episode of Star Wars without him? It's like, well,
they already, yeah, they already know. Yeah, it's a costume.
And I know, I'm not trying to dismiss there's movement acting most aptiently,
Bye bye, it's a costume. One of the reasons that Um that Daniels
was cast as as the three Pio was because he had a lot of experience
mining apparently, so since he doesn't have a mouth that can move, it's
all action. It's all movement and actions. Plus he has to be a
robot. Um But David Proud, But David Prouse. The final kind of
injustice to him was in Return of the Jedi when they pulled a mask off.
Here's as finally a chance for you to see his face, and instead
it's an actor named Sebastian shop Like he just got like every step of the
way. I think he felt like he was screwed over. And then there
was the money issue with the residuals that he claimed about Return of the Jedi
and um but like you said, he was in ended up getting banned from
Star Wars events in twenty and ten because he just they couldn't trust him to
not say stupid, you know, controversial things. I guess you know,
and heard said he burned too many bridges. He was now he was also
we'll talk more about about the films, but he was in a lot of
Hammer films to the Hammer Horror movies which were also filmed at Brace Studios,
which were Rocky Horror related. There's a there's a few Rocky Horror references in
both these, uh both of the movies, because Brace Studios was across from
Oakley Court, the big mansion that was used in Rocky Horror and also used
in some of the some of the uh the Hammer Horror films, the House
of Dracula Christopher Lee Ones, and so they were sort of like the British
classic universal horror films from Britain in the seventies. But he was in a
couple of those with Peter Cushing, who was grandmof Tarken and David Prowse is
the most recent cast member to pass away. He passed away on November twenty
eighth of twenty twenties, so just a few months ago, and his sister,
I believe, revealed that it was COVID nineteen. I think they kind
of kept that quiet at first, but then we eventually said it was COVID
and he was eighty five years old, and then he talked about being in
horror films and stuff. Peter Cushing or yeah, Peter Cushing, who was
Grand mof Tarken. He was in you know, Frankenstein and Dracula and The
Abominable Snowman and the Mummy, the ones they did back in the fifties.
He was in a bunch of those movies. I guess because he just had
that look that great that he had that great face with the cheek bones and
they kind of hollowed out cheeks. He just had that that facial bone structure
for it. I think to play that kind of play those dark characters.
Um And like I think that George Lucas had him in mind. Number one.
I think he knew who he wanted, I believe at that point.
Yeah, Peter Cushing and the one the only one that I know that he
really pursued from day from pretty much day one just about is Guinness. He
wanted Guinness to play Obi Wan or somebody, you know, like the Obi
Wan character kept switching and was for a time it was it was more of
a general character and then you know, a general in the military, and
then he became Obi Wan and whatever. But he wanted, he really pursued
Sir Alec Guinness, whereas Princess Leigh and Han Solo and Luke were all kind
of up in the air up until just a few months before they started shooting,
or even weeks. But he really wanted to see and Cushing claims claimed
that he was offered Obi Wan first. That's interesting. That's yeah, that's
what he That's what he said. He said. He was also approached by
John Carpenter to play the Doctor Loomis in the first Halloween movie being seventy seven,
which which would have been you know, all right, that would have
been Okay, did did you see did you see the Rogue one Star Wars
movie? Rogue one? Probably, it's fantastic. It's so freaking good.
I think it's the best one of the new films that they've made is Rogue
one. Um, and it's but they it's all about the it's like a
little prequel to the first Star Wars. It's all about how they got the
plans for the Death Star. Yeah, and they brought back they since Peter
Cushing passed away in August eleventh, nineteen ninety four, from he had had
cancer for many years. He was eighty one. Um, he had been
dead for decades by the time they made Rogue one, and they needed his
character back, so they they brought him back with CGI as and they brought
back Kerry Fisher as a young Princess Leigh as well for the kind of the
final shot in the movie. So uh, And there was a lot of
um controversy whether it's ethical or not. This is one of the big conversations
going on in filmmaking right now. Is it ethical to do CGI really life
like close up CGI shots of actors that are dead and basically have them do
a performance that they didn't do and they didn't sign off on essentially, right,
they didn't agree to. Yeah, I thought it was great. I
thought, I think it's awesome. It will see spectfully it is sentimentally,
yeah, you want to see them again. But you're right. I had
that problem with when Natalie Cole did the dwo ice with their father. You
know, he wasn't approached, he wasn't asked, and they're they're they're kind
of what when they somebody described George George, who was the producer for the
for the Beatles, Martin George anyway, he George Martin, thank you.
Yeah. And when they were doing the song the soundtrack or Love the Vegas
Show, and it was they're putting together sort of mashups of all the Beatles
songs. He was. He said it was like putting a mustache on the
Mona Lisa. And that's sort of an interesting way to put it, you
know, when you're when you're when you're taking a piece. That's so a
lot of people will call perfect and manipulating it, and they call it deep
fake. I guess that's what they were. It was sort of yeah,
yeah, uh so, I I did. Somebody said that the James Dean
estate had sold or off, you know, settled on an agreement to do
a movie with James Dean. Not it just like fabricated James Dean. It's
um uh yeah, ethically, I do. I do think it's it's dodgy.
I think it's really dodgy. Yeah, it's like it's like a weird
kind of cloning and uh and I don't know, I don't know if I'm
into that. You're right, it kind of like they got a fortune for
it, though, no doubt about it. Peter Cushing's family, Oh yeah,
I'm sure they got a fortune. They have him set. They most
likely did have, because there's um there's a it's kind of a state by
state law in the US how life rights work after someone passes away. Um,
I think a lot of times it's the seventy year rule that exists,
kind of a copyright in law in general. In New York, I think
it doesn't exist. And coincidentally, in Tennessee it is forever you have to
go and get the permission. And that is because of Elvis in the Elvis
estate. They got that past in Tennessee, so that you have to go
through the Elvis estate to do anything with his So that like because of those
hologram shows they were doing or something. I don't know what the timing of
when that law got past in Tennessee. I just know it has something to
do with with Elvis is in his estate interest. But yeah, they probably
almost I would say almost definitely had to go to Cushing's estate and give it
his okay. And the same thing with Carrie Fisher. But Fisher had been
in some of these movies, they might have already been worked into her contract
that you know, something happens. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. You
ever watched bow Jack Horseman? Oh god, it's so it's so I love
it so much. I love that show so much. But I think I
believe there was a plot line with him where they he gets replaced on a
show he's on by his own a CGI version of himself, and then finds
out that in his contract he signed that a way so they can replace him
with a fake version of him. Serious. I wonder, I wonder why,
um, I wonder why we haven't seen deep fake porn, you know,
yeah, like like people like you know, Fair Faucet or James Dean
or I mean, it's one of the things that a lot of actresses especially
are concerned about obviously with you know, with with their image being used like
in that way. Obviously there's already you know fake uh you know, naked
shots of that they say are of celebrities that are that are just lookalikes.
They already use lookalikes and stuff. But yeah, it is, It's been
a hot topic for a long time. They have those filters on on on
you know, you could do it on your phone now, put yourself in
smoking the bandit or something and uh so I would imagine that exists. But
it's I've seen parody porn. I've said the scar there's a couple of Star
Wars parody porn, you know, but which which are quite good as far
as special effects and their costumes. They did a good job with it,
but probably not going to get endorsed by George Lucas, though like Spielberg,
get the rate they do. I don't know there's a some sort of free
freedom of you know, parody they can get away with it. I'm not
quite sure the legists of all that. But my guess is that it is
still so technologically difficult to really pull off a good deep fake for an extended
scene that the resources they would take to create it, it would take a
company to get behind that, and a company who's knows they're gonna probably get
sued by whoever it is that they're faking. So my guess is right,
they just don't want to They don't want to touch it, but non no
pun intended, but the technology absolutely. Um, who do you want to
talk about next? We talk about Peter? Well, we gonna have about
Peter Mayhew if you want, Yeah, sure, yeah, And he was
Chewy and five, He was Chewy and five Star Wars films, the original
trilogy, the the third of the Prequels, the last film of the Prequels
trilogy, and in the first of the new trilogy. He was in all
of those, and then and then when the new trilogy came along, he
was in the first one, but he was already kind of starting to pass
the torch on to the actor that was going to replace him. And there's
some nice behind the scenes stuff of them, you know, getting to know
each other and a new actor being you know, very respectful of the role
he's taking over and learning, learning Mayhew's movements and stuff so that it's believable.
And I don't know, I think he's done a great job. It's
a costume. Sorry, I'm sorry. I don't I don't I know him,
you know, I just say they're saying that, you know, Mayhew
was a big guy, seven foot tall or something like that. Seven he
was seven foot three, seven foot three, and he wasn't but he wasn't.
Although he wrote two songs, two books, Growing Up Giant in My
Favorite Giant, But he wasn't a giant. He didn't have giantism. But
he was just a really tall guy. And he said, they say that's
all his research, by going to the zoo and learning, you know,
watching the animals. I mean maybe he did, I'm sure, and he
probably had the audition, you know, the movement. I'm not I'm not
belittling him at all. Sure, but you know, passing the torch to
another guy in a costume, no lines, you know, none of those
noises came out of him. He was just a guy in a costume.
Again, it sounds like I'm being shitty. I don't mean it that way.
I'm just saying, right, I could have done it. I probably
could have done it with a bit of with a bit of help, you
know, and about another foot on me, It's all right. Um.
Yeah. They he was seven foot three as a result of a genetic disorder
called Marphin syndrome or Marphin or Marfan syndrome. So he as he said,
he wasn't It wasn't gigantism or giantism or whatever the term is that you just
said. He said it wasn't that because he didn't had He said, he
didn't have the big head that typically came with that. He had a normal
sized person's head. He was just that people that have Marphin send him tend
to be very tall and skinny and have kind of lanky, gangly arms and
legs. So, but he was working as a hospital orderly. Yeah,
when he was cast as Chewbacca, and you know, had his whole life
changed. I just had a memory that just came back. And maybe I
told the story before, and I probably this is really a gross story.
Well Mayhew, yeah, we taught we he passed. He has passed away
since we started doing this series, so we did mention him. But I
don't know if you've told it yet, but to tell it again because I
don't remember. It's a such a gross story. It's such a gross story.
Maybe, but it was really Now. I was really hungover, really
hungover, and my acts was doing a radio show and it was live.
Usually they do in the studio, this was live in front of an audience,
and Peter Mayhew was one of the guests and we were talking afterwards,
and I had to I had to. I had to pass gas. So
so I walked far away, you know, maybe twenty five feet away,
and I was like, you know, mine of my own business, and
you know, doing what I had to do. And then my ex I
could tell he's pointing at me and talking to Peter Mayhew and making some kind
of remarkableut what I'm doing. It's like, all of a sudden, I
just freaked out. I panicked and I went back up there and started talking
to him. I brought it with me and we're just talking, and all
of a sudden, it just because really bad, and people are just really
uncomfortable because everyone knows it was me, and it was just it was so
it arrived when you arrived. It was it was bad. It was really
gross and now in retrospect, still very uncomfortable. But I shared my my
very personal space with Peter Mayhew and he was angry about that, but not
angry because it's British, you know, British. You're just like, we
know what's going on here, but sorry the Wookie. The Wookie did not
win in that moment. Just what you're trying to say? No, And
he had the last line in the film. He had the very last line
in the first Star Wars movie. Yeah he rous, Yeah, he's the
only one who doesn't get a medal. But then he gets to growl at
the end. Yeah, the last line. He was also in the what
were you even born when this movie came out? Star Wars? Yeah?
Okay, Star Wars came out a year before I was born. Empire Strikes
Back came out when I was two. My big one. So I've always
existed in a world that has Star Wars in it. My big film was
Return of the Jedi. I freaking adored Return to the Jedi even to this
day. I know it's not the most popular of the original trilogy. A
lot of people didn't like the Ewoks. I was like six or seven.
I freaking loved the Ewoks. I was an Ewok for Halloween. I'll if
you watched the video version of this. If you watched the video version,
threw up the costume that my mom hands sewed from fake fur of my Ewok
costume, it's awesome. I was I think the following year I was Han
Solo. But it was just an outfit that I picked out that I know.
I looked nothing like Han Solo, and that's what I told everybody I
was. And I just remember my mom kept asking me, do you sure
you don't want me to make you a costume. I was like, no,
this will. I'll just put this vest on and carry this like plastic
gun around and people will know I'm Han Solo. But yes, exactly,
But but but the Ewok costume was one for the ages. It's the of
all the ones. My mom she was a sewer. Of all the ones
she did, it was the best one. So I have photos of it,
so I'll post it. Oh yeah, definitely, that's so cool.
That's so cool. And I'll just say one other thing. I remember that
came out, and then I remember we had a family reunion up in Tahoe
in this big house in the in the woods and those big trees and around
Tahoe reminded me so much of you know Indoor, you know, the Ewoks
in the Ewok Village, And for me, it just like cemented in my
mind, like that was like real, like that's all real. Like I
just saw returning to Jedi and now I'm where it looks like they filmed Ewalk
stuff. It was just made very real to me, you know. And
I remember my cousins and I played Star Wars stuff and doing Star Wars arts,
and yeah, it's really cool. Another weird connection to Rocky Horror.
My friend Sadie, she was she was an e walk who was a little
Transylvanian in the Rocky Horror Pictures show ang with Kenny Baker, who was an
e walk in some of those scenes. I didn't know that. Yeah,
he played he played I forget which one it was, but they have names
apparently, so Peter Mayhew. Since we've talked about his death before, he
had a bunch of health issues, largely related to his height. He had
double knee replacement surgery in twenty thirteen. He had been in basically confined to
a wheelchair for a couple of years leading up to that, finally got his
knee knees replaced. Then two years later in twenty fifteen, he got hospitalized
for pneumonia. In twenty eighteen, he had spinal surgery, and finally on
April thirty, twenty nineteen, he had a heart attack and passed away.
He was seventy and heart conditions are another side effect of having the Marphin syndrome
that he had that made him tall. So just as much as the little
people live forever, tall people just tend to not. They have all kinds
of problems. Yeah, yeah. So he is buried in Reno, Texas,
which is northwest of outside Fort Worth. He lived in Texas with his
wife. I think his wife was Texan and he lived in a place called
Boyd, Texas for years and years and years with his wife. And he
is buried in the Azel Land Memorial Park in Reno, Texas, Azeland,
Azeland, and I looked it up and they have a recreation of Christ's tomb
with the rock rolled away on. It's part of their cemetery. So look
up a cemetery. Yes, I'd never seen it before. It is quite
a site. Yeah, and he wasn't forgot though. He was in the
Star Wars Christmas special that they threw together that year, themUS Infamous Christmas Special,
and I had I had the forty five of what do you get a
Wookie for Christmas? I probably still do, but but yeah, where Carrie
Fisher sings the song at the end, I think, right, I think,
oh, I don't remember her at all. I think so, oh
my god. They were just throwing that it was a b Arthur in that.
I mean, yeah, it was. Yeah, they had to get
it wasn't Chris, it wasn't Christmas. It was like it was like the
Wookies Life Day or Life Force Day or something like that. And the whole
the plot is trying to get Chewy home to his to his Wookie family,
uh you know, in time for this special holiday. And that's basically the
gist of it. Yeah, yeah, it was is notoriously one of the
most campy things ever made, and for a long time you couldn't get it
unless you know, you passed around tapes of people had bootleg copies of it.
Now of course because the Internet you can find it. It's everywhere.
But it's almost like they shot it and then tried to forget it ever existed
after after it aired. So, I mean, this became a people.
I don't know if people nowadays would realize what an industry this thing became.
I mean it was everywhere. You know, there were there were there were
tribute record albums, and there were like dozens of them, and the costumes
and the you know, the other you know, the parodies they did of
it, and the uh, you know, it became a It started a
whole new sci fi genre and they were throwing these babies out on TV shows
and everything. I mean it really changed movies and uh and pop culture.
There was so much Star Wars stuff everywhere, and it was just couldn't get
away from it. I mean all that the toys, they were just kicking
them out. God, everything was soap and candies and you name it.
It was Star Wars everything, and I had it all I had all that
Star Wars stuff. I was still have some of my old comic books and
magazines meant, you know, Mad Magazine and stuff like that. Um I
just loved it, loved it, loved it. The Star Wars toys were
like what the older kids had when I was growing up, because by the
time I came around, it was G I Joe and I remember the Star
Wars ones were a little more primitive because you couldn't been the elbows and he
couldn't been the knees on the figures and on G I Joe. You could,
um see, there was more you could do with them. And but
I remember, I remember Star Wars toys being prevalented. It was like if
I went over to a friend's house, his older brother had like a bunch
of Star Wars toys that seemed to be like if I'd been born just a
few years earlier, I probably would have had a you know, a Millennium
Falcon, yeah, you know, which was kind of the Millennium Falcon.
I think was like the ultimate with the you know, the Holy Grail Star
Wars toy to own because it was so they did, it was so well
designed, it was it was huge yeah, yeah, I was. I
went to the auction house last year when they were selling the Once Upon a
Time in Hollywood cars and they had a whole thing on Star Wars there,
and it was really something to be there and to be see one of those,
Like I believe it was that ship, the first one that comes in
the first movie that comes. I was in it swoops up there was like
right there. I mean I could have touched it. You know, there
were pieces of it they were broken off. I could tell it had been
around, but it was like nobody, you know, They're just like,
yeah, I have a look around. And I was like, I mean,
it wasn't just anybody off the street. We made arrangements, but I
could have just went like that and broke a huge pieces off. But you
know, they had one of the Imperial Story Trooper original from the seventy seven
movie. They had a Darth Vader, but I don't think that was ever
screen used. I think it was used as a for appearances, but it
was true to the original costume. But um, but that was it was
pretty cool to see that stuff up close. But see again, I was
more of a I loved it, but I loved the movie I loved the
story I was you know, the the guns and the spaceships and things,
those are all fun. I loved it. But it wasn't my either.
That was it was more of the pop culture stuff that really uh it really
got me going. Love that, so rest in peace, Rest in peace.
The marketing, I can't, I mean, that's what. It just
blows my mind when I think about it, that's all. And now those
dolls, those little dolls are worth a forchune, you know, yeah,
yeah, they're there. It's like, you can't. You can't just buy
dolls and play with them anymore. You know. You gotta keep in the
box. You have to be before and they can't. You know, we
get to wrap them in and tissue and do and like the sneaker heads that
buy shoes they never wear because they're worth thousands. Yeah yeah, yeah,
yeah. I'm a terrible collector because I want to play with everything I could.
I would never well yeah exactly unless I was like unless I was like
a rich kid and I could buy two of everything and not open one of
them. There's that too, yeah truly. Yeah. Uh So Kenny Baker,
we mentioned him earlier R two D two. He was Kenny Baker was
three foot eight, and I was wondering he was. He was three He
was literally half the height of Peter Mayhew. If he took another Kenny Baker
and had him stand on his own head, he would he would be looking
pretty much eyeball to eyeball with Peter Mayhew. So yeah, he was very
tiny, and I believe, based on reading this book that I've been reading,
he is the first person that they cast because the guys making the props
needed a little needed to know who was going to go in there the little
trash can you know for for R two D two, And they needed to
put him in there so that they knew what they were building would actually work
with a person in it. And so he ended up being I believe the
very first actor cast, or at least that's the gist I got from reading
this book, because they needed him before they needed all the other actors.
It makes sense. Yeah, and uh and but famously, famously you want
to talk about David Prowse and feuds, Kenny Baker and Anthony Daniels, who
played C three PO, have one of the most infamous feuds in Hollywood history.
They hated each other hated. I knew that they did. I didn't
know it was that big of a deal. Kenny Baker. I read a
couple of things that he said that you know, he wasn't very sociable,
but I never heard any kind of real nasty Baker. Well, I think
what happened was they didn't get along, and then it was kind of let
sleeping dogs lie. But then in the early two thousands, I think Baker
started talking trash again and interviews he called Daniels the rudest man I've ever met.
He said that Daniels was belittling to him. It would always call him
little man. That I guess. He walked up to Daniels one time to
talk to him, and Daniels was rude and snapped. You know, can't
you see him talking or having a conversation. He referred to Daniels as golden
balls. And then Daniels has said that he doesn't know where this is coming
from, but he um but publicly, Daniels said that working with Baker was
like working with a bucket. I think basically, Daniels is I think part
of it, too, is that he felt Daniels felt that Baker's comments about
him were not fair because he Baker was just mad that Daniels didn't seem to
want to socialize with him. But I think also the problem is that Daniels
didn't Daniels saw that what he was doing a C three P was an actual
acting perform and Baker, Yeah, and I think he saw Baker's just like
a prop. He's operating a prop. He's not actually acting. The thing
doesn't talk, He's just rolling around in this thing. What does you know.
I think he kind of felt like we're not on the same level,
you know. And plus Daniels is like, because he wasn't talking, Daniels
had to create his own dialogue in his head of what R two D two
was probably saying to him so that he could react to it. So Daniels
felt like what he was doing was like a really hard job, and and
just Jesus didn't feel like Baker was at his level. And then later on
when Baker wanted to do the fan conventions with Daniels, because all great would
that be R two, D two and C three PO actors together, Daniels
wouldn't do it. So there was a financial I don't think Daniels does any
of those things. Does he he could make a fortune doing this, but
I don't think he. I think he started doing it more recently, but
at the time he wasn't interested. Yeah, he's a thespian. Yeah,
Kenny Baker. You know, he's a guy that that into the suit.
You know, there was no real acting and I'm not saying, you know
there were you know, if they could have done away with it and just
had a computerized they'd have done it, you know. And even as the
guy in the costume, if those outtakes, he was always like, you
know, ramming in the walls and stuff like that. You know, there
are a lot of scenes where he was not uh where. You know,
I didn't dismissing what he did. He was he was. He was in
Time Bandits, he was in The Elephant Man. He was also in a
like I said, there's another rocky horror thing. He was in a movie
called The Wombles. Were like, uh, kind of what they would be
in America. They were like a family, a live action family of these.
There were wombles. They were like little animals, and there were little
people in suits. And my friend Sadie was a womble, and so was
Kenny Baker with him, and she she told me that Kenny was pursuing her
and wanted to wanted to marry her, and uh and uh, and she
wouldn't have anything to do with that. But they maintained a real friendly relationship
for many years. And I said they were both They were both Ewoks.
Kenny was. He was supposed to have a much larger part and as an
e walk, but he ended up being ill and ended up being a minor
Eak. They had names, some of them did, Yeah, I mean
not. I mean they weren't named in the movie, but I guess they've
had and maybe they had names in the script, so you could tell the
difference between him and now the fans have picked up on that what their different
names were. Yeah, um, yeah, you got to be a real
fan in all that. The names of the Ewoks. Yeah, I was
just a generic Ewok for for Halloween. I don't know what my ewak name
was. He was a brown ewalk, that's all. It was. Uh,
speaking little people. When Kenny Baker went to his interview to get the
role for R two D two, he brought his cabaret partner with him,
another little person named Jack Purvis, and Jack Purvis because of that, ended
up getting a role as they had jahwa In in Star Wars. Oh right,
right, okay, I know that name, but I didn't I didn't
go forward. He was another little person that acted in a bunch of stuff
just like the just like they did. You know, it's like Kenny Baker
did. Yeah, yeah, because I knew he was part of like a
troop or a trio or something. And and he almost didn't take the part
because she didn't want to break up the you know, break up the band
as a sure, sure, sure, and wisely did because they kept him.
You know, those people made a fortunate autograph shows like id even carried
did the autograph shows. Uh, you know, she she'd show up and
they could pay. He could charge a fortune to sit there and sign autographs,
you know, and it's like fifty bucks cash for you know, a
half a second of their lives. She was very very kind and talk to
people, but it was, you know, very much an industry. And
here I am for eight hours. I'll do this for eight hours and I'm
out of here. And that's an easy ten grand cash for her. Yeah,
absolutely, I mean you do one of those every couple of months or
every quarter or whatever, and you have enough to survive on, then why
wouldn't you? Yeah, you know, I mean he did, Yeah,
because I doubted and I doubt that Kenny Baker got points. You know,
he probably got like five hundred bucks a week the first time, and then
you know, as some movies went on and made more money, he got
paid more money. But it was a sentimental pay because anyone could have been
in that thing that was that little you know, I mean it sounds so
dismissive, but but he was. He was the inside of a costume like
the robot and lost in space. You know. Yes, it's a guy.
It's a guy. Uh And that sounds really rude. I don't need
it that way, you know, I'm going with that, don't you know
what I mean? Yeah, it would take some training. I'm not gonna
say it's just somebody goes in. Well. Rt D two, Yeah,
it was just Originally, Originally rt D two was supposed to walk. His
three little legs were supposed to kind of shuffle, I guess, kind of
like if you've ever seen Interstellar, the little robot they have in that that
kind of does this thing. He was supposed to kind of like that.
It was supposed to kind of lumber along, and then I think they realized
it was just too difficult to make that work, and the Adam start and
Adham roll instead. Well they he does it a couple of times in the
like at the ending of the Throne Room ending, he does walk up because
everybody kind of walk he has like what Dan does. Yeah, yeah,
so, um so, yeah, that was all you know that was talking
about. Yeah, that was all those emotional chords were We're brought out for
that movie. Everyone was so into that. It was such a glorious ending
to that movie. It really was. Um So. Kenny Baker passed away
on August thirteenth, twenty sixteen. He had had a lung condition for a
long time. I think had something to do with his death. He was
he was eighty one years old. R I P R I P R two
D two. Um So, okay, I guess we talk about Alec Ginnis.
Yeah, and I've got um, I've got some small little characters we
can mention. But yeah, let's sir Alec Ginnis, whom originally was excited
until he heard it was a science fiction movie and was unsure if he wanted
to do it much like I think. Um, I think Anthony Daniels felt
kind of the same way. At first, not he was at Guinness was
not sure he wanted to do a science fiction movie. But then when he
read the script, he loved it, and he was he was a page
turner, you know, kind of like what you've said about the story.
He's like, he wanted to turn the next page to see what happened next.
He was really engrossed by it, and he had to read it a
few times, just like everybody else did, until he really fully understood it.
But um, but he ended up accepting it. And I think,
uh, Harrison Ford said he thinks that Alc Ginnis took the part because Ginnis
saw it is a very American movie is kind of like a Western, which
you know, I had a lot of connections to plot wise, and so
that's how he kind of saw it, and maybe that's why he jumped on
board. Probably getting paid fifteen grand a week in nineteen seventy six was probably
another incentive. Yeah, And in the film was the only one that was
really a name in that movie. I mean, there's Peter Cushing u and
and he always but he really panned the dialogue, didn't He always said,
you here's so many different things. The only reason he wasn't gonna do it.
But then he saw America graffiti and he like George Lily guess so,
but then you always hear that he really, he really, you know,
dismissed the dialogue and said it was hokey and he hated it. However,
he got points. He made a lot of money for that movie. Nobody
knew who was going to make any money, so he made bank. I
mean that guy was rolling in it just from I don't know. Nobody got
the image stuff, nobody got that merchandizing stuff. But he got points from
the gross of the movie or that net I don't even know what that means.
But of the earnings of the movie he got, he got money.
He got money, so Sir Alec Guinness. He was an Oscar winner for
the Bridge over the River Kwai, of course, famous for Lawrence of Arabia,
Doctor Zivago, and so he and Lucas was against casting, for the
most part, casting famous people in Star Wars because he believed that if the
audience recognized an actor, it would take them out of the fantasy of the
film, right, He felt like, if you put Robert Redford in your
movie, now it's a Robert Redford movie, it's hard to imagine Robert for
it is not Robert Redford, So how do you imagine him, you know,
as a swashbuckler in space? He just felt like it took it.
And it was the other reason that George Lucas didn't originally didn't want to cast
anybody from American Graffiti because again he didn't want people he saw in his last
movie to be in this this epic fantasy film that he was making. And
then eventually, of course he changed his mind because Harrison Ford was in American
Graffiti and he ended up auditioning several actors in addition, you know, for
He Dreyfus was another one that was in the running for Han solo for a
while. It was also an American Graffiti, so he eventually kind of changed
his mind on that a little bit. But yeah, Sir Alec Ginnis was
the only real big star at that time. Even though Carrie Fisher was famous,
she hadn't really been in much of anything yet when she took on.
But yeah, yeah, eliciness was huge in Britain. But really ordinary looking.
You know, he wasn't going to steal anybody's thunder. He he was
a kind, older looking gentleman who didn't need to do movies, you know,
hugely successful on the stage. They put him up there with you know,
John Gilgood, and there's there's like three of those Olivier in fact,
I think they were all friends. But you know, hugely successful onstage,
Shakespearean actor, but not known enough to be you know, a distraction.
And he's really Obi wan Kenobi is really not in it for all that long?
Is he? I mean? Is he? I don't. I think
a lot of it The plot revolves around him so much. But is here
right in the first movie? Yes? And then his voice only obviously for
the most part, shows up as a fourth ghost, you know, at
certain points, but he's mainly just in Luke's head with voiceover for the rest
of it. Yeah, so have you so now we've talked about this before.
How you know it became a common trope in Hollywood, just like everybody
said they were supposed to be at Sharon Tate's house the night of the murders.
Everybody tried to say they warned James Dean not to drive his car,
that Porsche, that he was gonna die if he kept racing. Yeah.
Right. George Stevens claimed to have told that story. And one of the
people that claims to have told him this is Sir Alec Ginnis. And this
came out in an interview he did right or the same year I believe the
Star Wars came out. He talked about um. He claims that he met
James Dean outside a restaurant in Hollywood in LA Area about a week before James
Dean died. And I think Alec Ginnis had gotten into a fight with somebody
or something or he couldn't get back into the restaurant for some reason, and
James Dean rolled up and said, Hey, you know, I'm going in.
I'm going in, just come in with me. And so they went.
They went in together. But before they did, Alec Ginnis said he
checked out this porst that was in the parking lot, and he said it
still had like the Cell of Fame kind of rapping on at certain ports of
it to you know, protect the paint job and whatever. And he told
and he started talking to James Dean about this car. And he says that
James Dean told him it could do a top speed of one hundred and fifty
miles an hour, and Guinness claims that he told James Dean he said,
if you drive this car within a week from this point, you'll be you'll
be dead. He said, it's now Thursday, or you know, Friday
night at ten pm. By next this time next week, you'll be dead.
And he was so. I don't know if that's true or not,
but he I've listened to the actual audio of the interview, and it's sounding
he's a very matter of fact about it, and he doesn't drive me as
a guy who tells BS stories, So I don't know. I tend to
I tend to believe it. I guess I have no reason not to,
even though I know a lot of people have said that they did warn him
not to drive. I don't. I mean, I I think not.
That's my guess. That's my I don't think. You know, he's a
he's an actor. He's probably a you know, someone that would live,
dine out on a good story and sure and and have a lot of people
listen to him. May I'm not saying that in an interaction didn't happen,
but you know, maybe he saw and he goes, you're getting you know,
that's a death trapper or something like that. But that's because you know,
growing it was now ten o'clock on Friday and within seven days. What
are you saying? And it's like, I, you know, I think
so, but you know what, they might have had an interaction and and
it's possible, but yeah, yeah, what it just sounds like it's been
in bellied any any He claims they had a you know, a lovely evening
at the restaurant and he was and he was very sad when it happened,
like everybody else was. He said he wished he'd gotten to know him better.
And you know, he lived. So yeah, so uh Al again
has passed away on August fifth, two thousand, from liver cancer. He
was eighty six. He's the only one out of the cast that was nominated
for any or you know, yeah, the cast. He was nominated for
Best Supporting Actor that year. I mean it one other Oscars it won for
uh I think it was Achievement, Special achievement and special Effects and sounding visual
effects and it was now and I believe John Williams was nominated in one for
the score best original score. Oh my god. When I was in band
in high school, we did the Star Wars team. Could you imagine it
had to be a parent and listen to it. Band doing like a fifteen
minute orchestral version of Star Wars by like kids who weren't even into it,
most of them. Oh my god, the agony demost have been. I
was in the marching band at Arizona State University and we did we did a
Star Wars show, but we were college kids. We were a little bit
better, and we had fifty two trumpets in our band. Yeah, it
sounded pretty good, but yeah, score orchestra. I can see it would
be a little I would love to I would love to hear recording of that.
I really would. But you said so Guinness had two point two five
interest in the revenue from it, and and he said he had asked to
confirm with the additional point five in writing, but was told it was reduced
to point two five. I'm not quite sure dialogue because he'd been yeah,
sorry. But it was revealed in the seventy seven interview with Michael Parkinson that
it was in supported by many public comments. Mark Hamill. They were all
speaking highly of him and is anyway, it doesn't really matter. He didn't
quible he made a fortune. I think they said that he Um, what
if the film gross something like one hundred million dollars and he had or four
hundred million dollars and he had two percent interest in the revenue, which which
who knows after Hollywood accounting has taken into account how much actually made it to
him, But probably a pretty good amount because I'm sure they negotiated a good
deal for him if he was you know, because everybody knows what Hollywood accounting
is. They knew what it was back And it's not just getting up percentage,
just making sure you're high enough on the pecking order that you get it,
that you get that money, you're not so far down that it all
gets sucked up by other You know, the Hollywood accounting is very famous for
the shady accounting practices that they do. And you think you're in for two
percent, but then you realize you're in for two percent of the remaining ten
percent that the studio doesn't take as a distribution fee. After you know,
all these other people, there's like a hierarchy to who gets their percentages.
Basic, yeah, very and there's a running joke in Hollywood and no movie
has ever made money as far as Hollywood accounting is concerned. They always find
a way to say that it didn't make anything. So um. But the
casting was a while. Jodie Foster, for one, at one point was
kind of in the lead to play Leia, but she was too young because
she was fifteen. Terry Nunn, who went on to be the lead singer
of Berlin, that was in the lead, but she was also a minor
is a that is according to the Definitive book, and she's talked about it.
Yeah, she didn't and Mark Hamill even commented that he um, he
saw her because Mark Hamill didn't think he was going to get it either,
but he knew she had auditioned and he he saw her collecting unemployment like in
an employment line, like a week after he had auditioned, and she was
like, I didn't get it, and she's like, what about you?
And he said I didn't get it either, because he didn't think he did.
Okay, so yeah, but Terry nine, but Terry n was was
she did she did? Um. There's pictures of her, I believe doing
you know, doing the audition like in there with George and reading reading for
it. Tons of people, Nick Nulty Audition, Tommy Lee, Jones,
Travolta, Kurt Russell, Christopher Walkin was in the It was a favored to
play Haunt at one point he would have been a little bit older. But
one of the reasons they went with carry Fisher is because, unlike Jodie Foster
and Terry Nune, Carry Fisher was eighteen and so you didn't have to worry
about child labor laws filming, which you do with when you work with miners,
they can only work a certain number of hours a day, whereas adults,
you know, you can kind of kind of abuse more. Um,
that's why a lot of times child actors, why a lot of times child
actors are twins, because then they can rotate the twin in and get a
full day of filming out of the two. Well that makes sense. Yeah,
yeah, but Kerry, Yeah, you spend a lot of time in
Britain anyway, so that's probably I didn't didn't hurt things, but yeah,
I just listened to the audiobook of Todd Fisher, who's her brother, Carry
Fisher's brother. Oh well, sorry's let's stay with with Alec Ginnis. We
did we finish, We did finish him didn't. Yeah, I'll just say
one more thing about the casting process. When they started doing the casting,
Brian de Palma and George Lucas were and I guess assume still are very good
friends. And Di Palma was casting for Carry the movie care that's right,
and they and he pitched the idea of well, we're both looking for kind
of the same age group, and you're gonna and he already knows Lucas is
doing this huge cattle call. He wants to see everybody. So Depalmas like,
I'll just sit in with you and we'll cast both films together, and
Depauma ended up casting most of his you know, the leads out of those
sessions, and Lucas couldn't make his mind up. So eventually De Palma got
bored with the process and you know, left it to Lucas to run the
rest of the time. But yeah, they weeks they sat together and cast
for both Carrie and Star Wars, which then led to confusion for the actors
because they didn't know who what they were auditioning for. Ye and the palmer
was a better director at the time, so Carrie said that she wanted to
do. She thought that she was going to be doing Carrie. That's what
she thought was gonna you know, because she'd made you know, Carrie doing
carry Uh but uh, yeah, she thought that that I think that's the
part she thought she might get. So she was sort of surprised that they
got she got Star Wars, but that that that audiobook was fascinating that Todd
Fisher did. I was really surprised. I was expecting it to be um,
you know, me a lot of inserting yourself into situations. But they
were really close, and it was it was it was a really interesting story,
the two of them, and Debbie Reynolds. They were all three of
them close. But uh but yeah, fascinating, fascinating story, those three,
that family, Eddie Fisher and Harry Fisher and Debbie Reynolds. And yeah,
I mean Carrie Fisher was born into Hollywood royalty by every death, by
the very definition of it. She's the daughter of Beddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds,
I mean yeah. And when she started, um, she was,
in addition to being an actress's a bit of a social light. She'd liked
to throw big parties in New York, and there's a great I think it
may be an excerpt from her book, but I read it as an article.
Um, there's some great stories about her hanging out with the cast of
SNL and oh yeah, and her friendship, her friendship with John Belushi,
which kind of centered on their both their love of cocaine, their mutual love
of cocaine, but also they were just good platonic friends. You know,
Belushi was married the whole time. But uh, and I remember the SNL
cast were in awe of Carrie Fisher and why why did she even want to
hang out with them, because she was Hollywood royalty and they were just,
you know, a bunch of dumb kids from Second City. They were just
kind of like, oh wow, they were kind of starstruck by her,
even though at this point they're like some of the biggest comedians in the country
because and else this big, you know, cultural phenomenon. So it's kind
of funny to hear people kind of taken off with their own careers. But
then Carrie Fisher rolls in and it's like, oh, here's like the real
the real starlet is among us. Yeah, yeah, she was. Yeah,
she certainly brought along a a cachet with her just by her birthright certainly,
but she she also earned her own way, uh, into into pop
culture. She was I knew her, uh, not like we weren't super
friends, but I knew her fairly well and when from my time in England,
and she was she was just exhausting to be around. Nice, but
the biboler stuff made her really difficult to be around. And she was she
was like, you know, you were just this is this is It was
like you couldn't follow it and uh, but but she was. I say,
she was super super nice and just as uh, you know, throughout
the one liners, the bumper sticker one liners all the time. You know,
she always had some kind of remark to make. Um, we're talking
about drinking or something like that. She said, I'm not I'm not in
AA, I'm just I'm just a or something like that, you know,
making a kind of just But she also told me a really interesting anecdote.
And I don't know what he even got started on, but she told me
she says, famous people, Um, when you become famous, people don't
want to talk to you anymore. I may have told you this before,
might have mentioned people don't want to talk to People don't want to talk to
you anymore. They only want to listen to you. So you can go
up to somebody and go I love you, I love you, and and
uh, and then you can start spouting out and you could talk about anything.
You could say I had the shittiest day, dotty duh, and people,
the fans just got, you know, leaning on your every word and
smile and giggle and joke. And then that she said, that's why celebrities
have this distorted view. What they have to say is important to other people
because people give them that power. And as it was very it was interesting
to get that anecdote because she saw it from all around and she she knew
that she was born into an odd situation and and she struggled with bipolar and
drug addiction and her relationship with her parents, etcetera. But she was able
to parlay that into that career of being this this this writer. That was
pretty yeah, pretty pretty funny, pretty good stuff. She was a she
was a fantastic author. She wrote Postcards from the Edge. It was going
to started out if she wrote as a book kind of semi autobiographical, which
sin of course, got made into the movie. Um. She was also
a script doctor in Hollywood, which, if you don't know what a script
doctor is, people listening, Um, you're usually an uncredited role. You're
brought in to punch up a scriptum, to help sometimes just to be brought
into bright It could be as simple as we want you to pump up the
punch up the dialogue for this specific character, right, or it might be
the whole script we want you to look at or whatever. But a script
doctor, it's there job to come in and kind of fine tune a script.
And she supposedly worked as a script doctor on Hook for spielberg sister act
the wedding Singer Lethal Weapon three, And I believe she also did some script
doctor work on some of the prequel Star Wars movies, m which she probably
was happy to not get accredited for, but she was also she said that
she is the most successful actress in Hollywood, and I was like, well,
what do you mean. She says, well, I've been in so
many blockbusters. I may have had just a cameo in them, but I
was in you know, when Harry made Sally, I was in Star Wars,
and I was in Charlie's Angels I was in. You know, she
was in all these hit hit movies that by by box office standards, she
was the you know, the most successful financial actress of all times at that
time. Yeah, I can see that, Yeah, totally. Yeah.
She was also in the Burbs. It's one of my favorites that she was
in. She played Tom Hanks's wife, remember who He's not in it a
whole bunch because she leaves. She leaves with the kids at a certain point
once his antics get out of control. But yeah, she's funny and that
we talked about that in The Wizard of Oz. That uh, that were
the Ods movie that they did with the with the Dwarves and she was Chevy
Chase and that was with Chevy Chase they were making The Wizard of Oz.
Uh, you know that were we talked about the during the Wizard of Oz
episode it was under the Rainbow and it was all about the bunchkins filming The
Wizard of Oz the Ulver Hotel and they were, you know, swinging from
the rafters and it's a you know, it's a terrible, terrible movie.
But but yeah, she's she's done some clonkers. That's for sure. But
uh, but who hasn't amazing act, amazing, amazing writer. So um
so you you mentioned her bipolar. So the one story I have about Carrie
Fisher. I never met her, but I was. Um. I was
shopping a couple of years ago as in a clothing store, and the person
working at the clerk work at the store. We started talking and somehow I
maybe maybe it was a few years ago, maybe Carrie Fisher just died.
I don't remember, but she um. But this this worker said that they
had previously worked at another big clothing store in la It is very well known
and when they worked there at the time, it was kind of famous.
The store was open until midnight. That was kind of one of their things
that they were known for. It was this kind of high end clothing store
and they were up until midnight. And they said that Carrie Fisher used to
come in and and shop at like she'd come in at like, you know,
eleven thirty midnight or so, and they'd keep the store open later for
it because they know she was going to buy a lot. But they said
they felt kind of bad because it was obvious that Carrie was kind of having
a manic episode. A lot of times when she was coming in and buying
all these clothes and they're like, I don't know if we should be selling
her all this. But then they're like, well, she'll probably come back
tomorrow or the next day and return whatever she doesn't like when she kind of
comes back down again. But they said she never did. She never returned
anything. She would come in and just buy a ton of stuff and being
a super positive kind of manic mode and apparently just kept it. Yeah,
and she never will. She never wore shoes. He used to make me
nuts dirty feet and she always put him on like she always put him on
the chair. I always put him on the sofa. And it was like
I just have a thing about feet anyway, But it was just always always
it was, yeah, and you're credited in a Tarantino movie and you have
a thing against feet. I know right now it's I think, Peter,
you know, I don't want to see other people's feet now. And she
anyway, But anyway, she was I liked there a lot. She was
really nice and just just difficult to be around sometimes and just funny. We
so, yeah, this the book that Todd Fisher wrote was was really interesting
how they had went to see the first screening of Star Wars, the first
the first New Hope and that was at Fox. It was like an advanced
meaning and they kind of snuck in when the credits, you know, and
she was like scared to death because it was all this hooplah at on Fox,
on the Fox all day, all wore nobody knew what was going to
happen. And by the time they, you know, the movie goes over
with they're all sitting here with their mouths wide open, going, what did
we just watch? This is incredible? Right? So so she um,
you know, she she definitely learned how to embrace it. But you know,
and I do think they got some kind of profit sharing somehow, but
not the marketing. And she was she would always make you know, cracks
about stuff like that because she would bring out on talk shows. She would
bring out toys of her you know, when she made those pets dispensers,
and she was, you know, look at this, you can snap my
neck back and then can throat. That's that's um she she had. She
did that great um speech, that roasting of George Lucas when you got the
AFI lifetime achievement Award and if you haven't seen it, everybody listening, you
should gets on YouTube. It's amazing. And she goes into that. She
says that, um, she can't look at herself in the mirror without sending
George a couple of bucks. He owns her likeness. And she makes in
the Pezda spencer that her daughter whenever her daughter would get mad at her,
she'd break out the Pezda spencer and pull candy out of her throat. And
then she said, or the shampoo bottle where you twisted my head off and
poured soapa on my neck. Yeah, and how, oh, and how
George Lucas, Um, George Lucas wouldn't let her wear a bra underneath,
you know, like the famous metal bikini and all the all the other office
she wasn't allowed to wear a bra because George Lucas told her there was no
underwear in space. Okay, right, but all the other characters had cod
pieces, Yeah, exactly. It's funny. But she she got a lot
of flak for the haird And I don't know if there was ever any kind
of if there was ever any regret on George Lucas's part for that. The
heir and her for the little cinnamon bun buns on the side of her head.
Yeah, but she was she, I mean she was she knew how
to get a joke out of everything. And I've seen it on a dozen
shows. But she makes me laugh every time. But she says, I
went someone you know on the Ellen Degenera show when she did her the first
sitcom, Carrie Fisher, you know, played just a quick cameo in this
bookstore as herself and Helen grabs the buns, looked on Princess Leiah and she
goes, you know, as many times as I see that, I never
get tired of it. You know, she was always uh it makes me
laugh every time. I never get sick of it. And she but yeah,
that she um got I mean the Blues Brothers another highest grossing movie.
Uh, you know, she she was just so much stuff. And that's
how I think she hooked up with all of that Saturday Night Live clan.
Well, supposedly I read that she said that, uh you know, back
she was friends with Dacroid and Blush in the SNL cast, and when she
did, she was agreed to be in Blues Brothers. Supposedly, the agreement
was that Blues John and dan Ackroid would get to play like aliens or some
type of creature in the next Star Wars movie, and George Lucas was like
no, so she pitched it to him much money, but she was still
in Blues Brothers obviously as the mystery woman. I just remember there was a
guy I knew comic he's probably still around. His name was Scott Kaporo And
in another comic I knew named Greg Pruchs, and both of those guys were
hired to be sportscasters in one of the Star Wars movies. I forget which
one it was, but there were two sportscasters that were you know, aliens
or whatever, but they were celebrity voices and it was these two guys.
I just remember that. Forgot about that. It's probably the prequel where they
had the pot where they had the pod racing. It was like it was
like a Ben Her type of chariot race. But okay, they called podracers.
That's the only thing I can think of where they might have had that
kind of character. I don't remember. Yeah, I mean it started getting
a bit silly when they doings business, and I really the biggest problem I
have with the Star Wars the original trilogy is that they won't give us the
original version pre nineties when they went in and did all the really what's now
extremely dated CGI from the nineties, which they went and added to the original
trilogy. So because George Lucas wanted it to match up better with the prequels
that he was about to come out with, so they added all types of
little alien creatures in the things. They added scenes. There's now a whole
song and dance sequence in it that's just terrible. And there's a really bad
they put in a deleted scene where Han Solo talks to us. They and
he talks to Job of the Hut and there's but they hadn't designed the Job
of the Hut creature yet at the time, so they didn't realize he's gonna
have a tail. So there's a scene a moment where in Han Solo is
supposed to walk behind him, but they realize he can't walk behind him because
there's a big taiale there. So they did this. It's just it's awful.
This like digital. They make Harrison Ford kind of pop up and back
down again as he's walking like the show always he's stepping up. It looks
it looks like I did it, and I don't know how to do it
like that. It looks so it looks so clear. I can't it looks
so bad. I can't believe they were like, yeah, let's let's do
it, let's put it out there. I can't. I really cannot believe
that they that they approve that it looks so bad. I just the fans.
They want so badly to have the original trilogy unmessed with. And granted,
there were other tweaks that were made through various releases, little little things
that were done to it, you know, in the years before they did
the big thing in the nineties. But I just give me like the digitally
cleaned up, fine remastered but original call Star Wars Classic Caught whatever you want.
I know George Lucas is completely dead set against it. I'm ever doing
and releasing that, And I don't know if Disney is part of their deal
when they acquired the thing, agreed to never ever release the original versions of
the film. But it really sucks that we can't get a We can't get
that. I can't get a four K or blu ray copy of the original
trilogy before they mess with it. Like, I mean, Disney, I
can't imagine them not having that in the deal. You know, when they
run out of making more Star Wars movies, they'll just reissue them all,
go back and repack and you're like clashic version and stuff Wars whatever you want
to call it. Yeah, yeah, I mean when you go into the
there's so many things that were so advanced in that movie, but then when
you go to the cantina, some of those are really bad. You know,
those costume characters they were they were like, you know, just mannequin
heads. They didn't have any moving parts, you know, a lot of
pere just that's where they That's where it's because the studio cut down in their
preproduction time, and that just ended up costing them later as they said,
they cost them unity of costing them twice as must to shoot some of these
things because they wouldn't let them have a skeleton crew through an extra six weeks
of pre pro to get things like the alien costumes perfect and fine tuned.
And so there's there are moments in it where the seams show a little bit
where you realize, oh, this was rushed. It's amazing that looks as
good as it does, but there's still some moments that don't look Have you
been to that that cantina bar on Hollywood Boulevard? I haven't. No,
It's it's on the same block as the Vine Street Cinema, and it really
is. It's it's made to look like the cantina and it's got you know,
all the rocks and everything, and the drinks were these really bizarre looking
concoctions and the most awful drinks you'll ever imagine. But the guys are dressed
like the bartender in the cantina, and uh, it's it's interesting, you
know, it was like the Beetlejuice bar they had going for a while,
but it's so you know, I don't know if they're going to open it
again after this business, but but it's it's right there on Hollywood and Vine
practically. Do you have any other carry Fisher stories? And what context did
you meet her? Was it was it during your ex's show that you met
her? When? Yeah, he when when we were together, he wanted
to meet her. He wanted to be friends with her, that's what he
wanted. That was before, a way before he even had a show.
He's like, I want to know her. I want to be friends with
her. So when he started the ball rolling, he got her on as
a guest and they hit it off. So we you know, we saw
each other socially several times. So I said, I want to misrepresent it
as being friends. Like we called each course, I mean, she called
the house, but it was like I want to talk to you know,
the other one, you know, So it wasn't like we talked a whole
lot. You know, we ended up in the green room at you know,
a couple of different things and ended up having conversations. But it was,
you know, we weren't friends friends, so but she wasn't. She
was a nice It's just funny, funny for certain, absolutely funny. Actually
one of the last things she did was my ex's show in London. Oh
yeah, there's the last interview she did was that I knew she was on
a flight coming back from London. I didn't realize that. Yeah, that's
what I think. She did his show, and then she did another quick
game show and then she was on the plane back when she had the heart
attack. Yeah, so it was December twenty third, twenty sixteen flight from
London to la and she suffered what was described as a medical emergency on the
flight. Um. And then but she survived and but then passed away four
days later, um, at the age of I believe sixty. She was,
Yeah, and Todd was saying, Todd, her brother was saying that
she you know, there was a there was a while where they really thought
she might pull through although she had been out for her heart a chap for
like ten minutes. So the odds of them getting her out with little you
know, damage, right, that great, but they you know, of
course you hold hope. But eventually that wasn't going to happen. And uh,
and she ended up passing away. And then bizarrely, you know,
her mother died like the next day. It was like the most bizarre crazy
Yeah, Debbie Reynolds. Debbie Reynolds, her mother suffered a stroke on December
twenty eighth. So yeah, the following day suffered a stroke and was pronounced
Dad at Cedar Sinai And Um, I believe his brother was the one that
said that. Shortly before Debbie Reynolds died, she said, I want to
be with Carrie. Yeah, that she believed that that Carrie passing at least
was a contributing factor to the stroke that it hit her mom. So,
you know, I thought that was going to be bs when I read those
quotes, but reading listening to his entire fourteen hour book, I believe it.
And he's not representing himself differently than he was there. He remembers it
and he believed it that that was what it was. These were as two
closest people in his life, and they didn't want to live with these Debbie,
they had a strained relationship a lot of times, but she was extremely
protective of Carrie and had a special you know, probably your favorite, I
guess, and so so yeah, it was that was wild. The joint
funeral with the whole at the Forest Lawn and Carrie's buried in the prozac bottle
or whatever prozac pill. Yeah, so she supposedly some of her ashes are
buried next to her mother in Forest Lawn and then the rest are in an
urn that shaped like a giant prozac pill, which you can see this is
with her mother. Yeah when there okay, yeah, because that was like
her cookie jar or something at home. And uh and then when they were
looking for an earn for her. Tom was like Billy to the daughter,
Billy, Uh, Billy Lord. I think they thought that she would have
thought it was funny, and I think they're probably right. The public definitely.
I mean, if you see everything pictures of her house, it is
freaking wild house. Yeah. And well, Billy, they were going to
sell the house when Billy decided to keep the house and they're redoing it.
And they had that auction of all their stuff, a lot of her stuff
and Debbie stuff because Debbie, you know, saved those costumes and you know,
Debbie oh man, you know, somebody deserves to be haunted by the
ghost of Debbie Reynolds because of the lengths that she went to to save and
preserve Hollywood costumes. Uh, you know, and and back in the seventies
when no one was doing it, and she's you know, she got Maryland
seven year edge dressed, and she's got the singing in the brain business,
and she's got all these costumes. And this person said they were going to
help them. George Lucas said no. Steven Spielberg said, no, sell
the stuff. I suggest you sell it. These people, you know,
they were gonna do this deal, and it here it fell through, and
you know, finally she's like, screw it, I'm old, I need
the money, and we're getting rid of it. So all those costumes are
out into the world because no one would give her her freaking museum. And
that just blows. And now ironically there is a Ken Academy museum that Steven
Spielberg contributed many millions of dollars too. And now I guess according to Todd,
he said that Debbie he was going to give them some of the Debbie
costumes that they ain't get rid of, and he says, I will only
give these two if you call it the Debbie Reynolds wing or something. Yeah.
So I don't know if that's going to happen, but I know that
that was that was that was spoken. So and I hope so she really
got God, you know, she got screwed. And if you if you
do that story at Debbie Reynolds and those costumes, it is it's criminal or
what they what they did not do for that heritage of that entire town,
of the entire industry. And you know, she had like the original camera
that was used in Gone with the Wind. You know, she saved everything.
She bought everything. She went broke buying this stuff. And Carrie,
you know, they were they had, you know, a struggle of life,
you know, the two of them together. But Carrie was a big
proponent of that too, you know, trying to get things off the ground,
to get that museum done for her mother. And and Todd was the
man who took care of all those things. I don't know. It just
is really sad and that that is that woman got screwed over, I think.
But anyway, speaking of people that got screwed over, well, okay,
so Carrie passed away and she's buried in a in a Prozac pill giant
which you can find pictures of online, her of her brother carrying it at
the memorial service. It's like the size of a football. Yes, the
I'm trying to say that up for in the Grammys, it did was up
for Best Album of the Year. It's the Star Wars soundtrack, and they
lost too. They'd lost to Fleetwood Mac rumors they that's one in one Album
of the Year, and uh, which is interesting. And do you know
what else happened in that ceremony the Best Newcomer of the of the Grammys that
year, They were up for The Cars were up for it the best Newcomer.
They lost over a group called A Taste of Honey. Now do you
do you remember a Taste of Honey? I think I remember the name,
but not really. It's a disco song called Boogie Oogie Oogie to you just
can't Boogie no More. And that is what the Cars as best Newcomer lost
out to. That. That is something that is something that's always really bugged
me, and I always wanted to say that out loud because it really always
bothered me a great deal. The reason that the reason that the reason that
John Williams did the Star Wars score was asked to do it is because of
another film we've talked about. It's because of Jaws, and Jaws had come
out the year before they went into production on In fact, I think Jaws
was in post production while they were in pre production on Star Wars, or
maybe it's something like that. They were still in development, because it was
Star Wars was in development for a couple of years. But regardless, George
Lucas of course his friends with Spielberg and heard the score and liked it,
and Spielberg's was really enthusiastically. Oh, you got to meet this guy,
John Williams. He's great and he does classical style orchestration, which is what
Lucas wanted. He wanted a big classical score and the rest of his history.
And John Williams did the Washington Space theme song on TV and he did
Value of the Dolls. He was around. He was Johnny Williams of the
Value of the Dolls and the credits, and then you know, he went
on of course Raiders and Superman. And I saw a video on YouTube recently
where there were these two guys I think one of them had a trombone and
one of them at a trumpet and they stood in front of John Williams house
and started playing, yes, playing the Star Wars. Did you see he
came out? Yeah, I think I don't know, we didn't come out
something, but he came out. He came out and talked to them.
It was he was really nice to them. It was really cool. And
I don't know if that was a planned thing or if it just happens that
he came out with home and came out and yeah, he talked to him,
was really nice. Hold on one second, I found this. I
think it was in my mom's records or possibly in our friend Kelly's record collection.
I can't remember which, but uh it is Dion Warwick in Valley of
the Dolls. Finally, Oh nice, nice, and that's beautiful. The
girl who made Alfie has done it again with the theme from Valley of the
Dolls. So she's great, she's great, want it, I'll take it?
Oh oh my god, Yeah I don't have that. That'd be great.
I will put If you don't have this, I will put it in
your collection. Awesome. So the I just want to quickly. There's a
couple of other people I just want to shout out. So there was Fraser,
Sheila Frasier was aunt Beru, who was you know who adopted his Luke
Skywalker. She was fifty seven when they made the movie. They wanted to
hire someone who was had a little British accent. She was actually born in
Australia. Huge on the stage and also did a lot of Hammer films.
Again, she was another person that did the Hammer horror films the body snapped,
the body, steelers and etc. But she died at the age of
seventy seven in two thousand. Phil Brown played Uncle Owen, who was sixty
one when they made the movie. And he's an interesting backstory. He was
blacklisted during the McCarthy era. Yeah, and he was born in He was
born in Massachusetts and he was never a part of the Communist Party or anything,
but he was. It was guilt by association. He was in a
an actors group. That was that they suspected. So he got blacklisted in
fifty two. And yeah, he fled to England. And the reason he
got the part is he's from Massachusetts and George Lucas wanted an actor with a
kind of ironic, kind of funny that Frazier needed to be a British accent,
but he wanted uncle Owen to have a heavy American accent. And there
was this there was this American from Massachusetts who's living in England where they're filming.
So the part. Yeah, I wonder what the what the reasoning was
for that, because obviously there was right, you know that she should be
she should have a British accent, he have an American one. Nothing is
done accidentally, so yeah, I wonder what that was. And he said
that they wanted to cast a kur mudgeon and he was naturally a kurmudgeon,
so it was easy for him to play the role. Yeah. He passed
away in February ninth, two thousand and six, from pneumonia. He was
eighty nine. He was in Chaplain too, wasn't he He was a projectionist
in Chaplain. Was I just watched that again, like two days ago.
I didn't even because I know the Coveney was the camera operator um for like
the Max Sinnett stuff and some of the other films that they had him do.
I didn't. Yeah, man, now I gotta watch it again so
I can find Uncle Owen. But yeah, he can't. I mean,
he came back to America and he was doing the conventions. He loved it.
He was eating it up, you know. So uh so he really
enjoyed the notoriety. Not bad for a you know, on probably three minutes
screen time right the most, you know, so good for him. But
he had a name, and he didn't he wasn't covered up by you know,
a mask, so it was his face you see on screen, So
I can see, Yeah, it's uncle Ohen. Everybody recon would recognize him.
Yeah, I could see how it would. Andrew with the Blue Milk
rum. And the last one was that Jack Purvish guy. I didn't know
he was Kenny Baker's friend, but he was the chief Chatwa and uh and
uh and he died in Hertfordshire and in ninety seven. So uh. Now
there was another one I thought was a pretty weak special effect where the Jawa's
eyes they were like they they look like flashlights. Basically. Yeah, that
was bad. That was bad. So I don't know if he if he
touched those up. I only saw that updated version once. Um, it's
been as many years since I used to have the eight millimeter black and white
you know, a little three minute roll of Star Wars. They probably still
have it somewhere and um, but it was interesting because you know, how
do you how do you put a you know, full length movie into you
know, an eight minute eight millimeter black and white thing, you know with
subtitles because there was no sound and uh and uh, but you could really
see I remember seeing the tie fighters and you know how the tie fighters would
spin when they were when they were you could see how in black and white
you could see the different cuts and how they how they edited it together.
You know, they just fox was just throwing stuff out there just making anything
they could for marketing. I mean, they just they didn't care and they
were just throwing it out there. But um, but yeah, do you
know what do you know what TIE stood for? No twin ion engine engine.
So there you go, there's a bit of of That's why TIE fighting.
That's why it's always spelled capital T, capital I, capital E because
it's initials for something. Yeah. Ye wow, there's so many Yeah,
just um, yeah, it was iconic that movie was. It's been a
lot to me when it came out, and I loved it. I loved
it and uh, and obviously it still has staying power. We're still talking
about it. You know, it's still a referenced all the time when they
carrying those guys are brought on is. I think they called them legacy performers
when they were coming in for the last batch of Star Wars movies. Yeah,
bringing the three of them back and uh and the other guys that were
in costumes. The only the only thing that disappointed me was that they never
had the three of them together again. They reunited. There was a scene
with Han and Leia together where they kind of reunite, and then there's a
scene in the second film with Leia and Luke together. But they never put
the three of them together, and they weren't apparently we're going to because they
killed Han in the first film and the first of the new films, so
I thought, well, maybe maybe they were planning on finally putting them together
in the third film. But then Carrie Fisher died before they made the third
film, and that screwed up their plans. But they had killed Han Solo
off in the first one, so he wasn't unless he was going to somehow
come back as a fourth ghost. Well they see g I am back to
be younger before the first movie. I mean I would have thought, yeah,
I mean, I guess they could have always I don't know. I
don't know. I mean, they killed Han off in the first episode in
the first episode, and you don't see Luke until the last shot of that
movie, so that was they for whatever reason, I don't know why they
we're never going to put the three of them together on screen, even though
you got them all to come back. And I think it's kind of what
everybody it wasn't funny and Disney, and Disney is always about that sort of
manipulating emotion. So you'd thought there was all that hype with the three of
them coming back, and I'm sort of surprised that Disney didn't do that.
Um but or maybe they want to. I don't want to be a toxic
I don't want to be a toxic fan or whatever and get into the nitty
gritty of that. But that was the one thing that stood out to me
as a disappointment was But Disney, you know what, they're not stupid.
They probably do have that footage somewhere. They're just gonna redo it, you
know, rerelease it as the you know, I'll bet you, I'll bet
you maybe you know, in another ten twenty years. But because Lucas,
you know, they what Disney, they sold it. I couldn't tell you
for how much, but they Lucas sold it to them, and they already
made it back like in the first movie. You know it was it was,
It wasn't the several billions of dollars I believe that they paid for it.
Yeah, but they they made that back in the first of the you
know, the last batch that they did investment. And Lucas hates them because
they're doing things with characters. So so yeah, I Disney. Yeah,
they're not stupid. They got all this stuff and they can't. I'll bet
you. I'll bet you we'll see it. Yeah. Oh, you bought
the four K disc set for one hundred bucks. Well guess what. He
didn't get all of it. No, it is the super special Edition.
I'll buy it. No, Honestly, dude, if they if they put
the original trilogy un messed With on four K disc, would I would pay
very good money. I would pay premium money to tone a copy of that,
because it sucks that I have a copy that I basically have to fast
forward the stuff I don't like whenever I watch it. It just kind of
sucks. But some of the stuff they messed with before they did the big
nineties thing was like they kept tweaking the hologram with Leia when she does though
you know, help me over one, You're my only hope. Thing that
there are two unit plays. They kept messing with that effect for some reason.
At one point they added scan lines to it, and it seemed like
every time they came out with the rereleased the film and they did something new
to that. I don't know why they had. They took issue with how
that effect was done. I thought it was fine the old versions that I
saw of it. But yeah, I mean I'm saying this and I literally
just spent the last year updating one of my own films and adding a bunch
of stuff into it and redoing the color grade and stuff. Yeah, I
get that. Yeah, but when you're talking about something that you know,
several millions of people are into kind of it's again, it's like rush on
the Mona Lisa kind of thing. You got to be really careful, you
don't you don't distract from uh, you know what the original intention was.
Interest interesting how Carrie Fisher you know her in that you know, tied up
in the slave girl thing. Oh my god, people are that's like icon
That's like a lot of young men's first thing was seeing Carrie Fisher a slug
that is um Yeah, that that turned it. I was surprised at how
iconic that became, how many people attribute that to their first crush. And
it was great behind the scenes photos of her and her double laying and sunning
themselves in the desert between takes, lounging and I think those costumes, I
think they're both in the costumes, so definitely I think they're both definitely skimpily
clothed in this uh in the sun bathing shot. I think they're in those
costumes, but I can't remember. But yeah, yeah, cool, all
right, did we do it? Did we do Star Wars? I think
we did? Yeah. That was h yeah, it was It was a
lot of that was really interesting. I'm really I found that fascinating. Not
in a way that you know, it's really interesting about me, Mike,
you know, I just I'm like an actor. I just like people to
hear me talk. Yeah. Yeah, so um but yeah, that was
fun. Thanks, that was cool. Thank you guys. We will see
you guys next time and um we uh again. Check out our Patreon if
you haven't already. Dearly Departed podcast on Patreon, and also we do if
you only listen to the audio versions of this, we also do a video
version that we release usually a couple of days after the audio version on Scott's
YouTube channel, which is now It's Dearly Departed with Scott Michaels. Do you
think I froze? So It's Dearly Departed with Scott Michaels is the name of
the channel on YouTube. Yeah, check it out. You got I'm gonna
you got like sixty thousand followers and subscribers now some crazy amounts, seventy thousand.
Yes, that's awesome. So, and Scott puts up all kinds of
extra content he went through. Uh, was it Rock Hudson's Rolodex that you
recently did? Yes? Yes, yeah, and that's cool. Did you
see the why I had that opened up? I had that Ted Cassidy life
mask lurch from the Adams Family. Oh my god. I mean it's like,
it's like this, it's massive. That was likened fairly recently too.
So yeah. So check out Dearly Departed with Scott Michael's on YouTube while you're
at it, and we will see you. We are going to make it
out of the twenty seven club. We will see you with episode twenty eight
in a few weeks. May the Force be with you always. Yes.
This has been an episode of the Dearly Departed podcast. Dig up more episodes
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next time.