|
The Lightsabre Interview Lorne Peterson
Welcome to
Lightsabre. Our latest guest has been at
the vanguard of the Star Wars saga since December 8th 1975, and had a hand in
many of the most memorable scenes in the six films. He won an Oscar for his work on Indiana
Jones and the Temple of Doom and has worked on many of ILM’s
biggest projects, including Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Please
welcome back for the final time Kerner Optical stalwart Lorne Peterson. Q - I remember
watching a programme on BBC2 as a kid called Horizon and it focused pretty
much just on Temple of Doom. Being a kid back then it was clear the
amount of work that went into that particular film, almost more than any
other. From a modelshop point of view it must have been huge? A - Oh yeah, and a factor that isn't so much of a factor in LA is the weather, and since they were big giant sets that involved lots of water we had to do them outside, and of course it was winter time, and shooting through the night time we had to make big plastic tents, to be able to work, and then the wind and the rain would rip the tent around, rip parts of it off, and to hear it flapping all the time would drive you crazy. The tent fighting the storm. It was an intense time, and that was the reason, it wasn't that they loved me that they gave me the Oscar, it was really model intensive. Q – That's got to be
the high point of your career, accepting an Oscar? A – Q – Looking at your CV I'd say there hasn't been. A - Most people in the world, if you're working and you have a smile on your face for about five percent of your day, you're pretty happy. You're satisfied, you've just told someone something, they've just told you something, there's a few ping pong balls going in the brain, if you can walk away from a day like that and five or ten percent of it you've had a smile on your face you're quite satisfied. And I feel incredibly lucky because it's more than ten percent for me. There were very satisfying things that happened with employees, the pattern that I laid down and the people I employed, it wasn't that we were all happy-go-lucky trying to be friendly people all the time, but even people that are a little bit rusty can get the blood going and visa versa. It was very fun. And let me tell you, there's this Chinese guy, a cynic-comic, and I know a lot about history, both Islamic and European, and I'm telling this story and relating something that happened, something historical and he's just there in the background and says, just loud enough "Does anyone think Lorne just makes this shit up?" He probably had to listen to that story dozens of times, he can't believe - 'Is that really true?' Did the Neolithic people really rub sticks together to make fire? I worked with people I had major arguments with, but everyone really respected everybody else's work, and it was a challenge, it was always...in selfish times you gave the advantage by presenting a problem, and they just took the bit in the mouth. The problem would be snatched right out of your hand and they'd run with it. So it was very satisfying that way, and not that there weren't down times. I very rarely have a nightmare but there was one nightmare, a consistent nightmare I had of having a high-powered rifle and waiting for this one employee to come off the freeway. I knew where he came to a stop (laughs) I'd wait in the bushes, the light on his face would show up in the rifle sights. (Laughs) I had that dream over and over again during this one phase.
Q – Did you miss him? A - Well I haven't pulled the trigger! (Laughs) It's always the same set-up and it never went further than that. I'd see him the next morning, same as usual. But even that, I look back fondly. He certainly was a character, he certainly was a character, he just bridled at every bit, he was very cantankerous. Anyway, I'd want to say that there weren't down times but even a project as mundane as when Wild Wild West came out, which was not a terribly good movie, the part that I did was the collapse of Monument Valley and that was very difficult. They asked me to split off from Phantom Menace to do that one part, and it was like how do you make miniature rocks that were actually 12 feet high, how do you make them act like multiple tonne boulders, because boulders don't bounce they just kind of pile their way into the earth, the inertia of them just keeps them going, they don't bounce back, whereas foam rocks do. I don't know if in England you have dead blow hammers, they're like a mallet and it's plastic, and on the inside is lead shot and oil, so when you lift the hammer back and you hit something the hammer doesn't bounce because the lead shot is still travelling through the thick oil and inertia is causing more energy to be expended on the object you hit, so what I did was I took the plastic jars of different sizes inside of different rocks and then put lead shot in them with thick oil, and so each of them was like a dead blow hammer, and it fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. Then when it hit the sand, which was grounded walnut shells, it did bounce. So I got an incredible amount of satisfaction out of that , because they asked me to do it because they figured 'he's gonna know how to do it somehow, I have no idea how he's going to do it,' and I did it. And the people who asked me to do it still don't know how I did it. Q – I won't tell them! A – It's wasn't their job to dwell on how it was done, they just say 'Ok, it was done, and on to the next one.' So that was a very satisfying thing to have that happen. And yet the picture as a whole allowed us to see Salma Hayek from the back, that was the highlight of the picture. Q – Would you say that was the best special effect in the movie? A –
Q – Well always make sure if you do that you go Thursday or Friday, because Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday she's still got her top on. A – Ohhh, really? Q – Yeah! (laughs). A – (Laughs) I never quite realised it was like a serial. Q – Oh yeah. A – Well that was my fondest wish at the time, to have my face directly across from the middle of the page. Q – That's a good call (laughs) A – Q – I'll go through the back issues and see if they put you there. Well that's fantastic, thanks ever so much for your time.
A – Oh, for sure. Thanks a lot, bye. |
