The Lightsabre Interview

Lorne Peterson

Welcome to Lightsabre. Our next 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. Please welcome back Kerner Optical stalwart Lorne Peterson.

Q - You mention books, and obviously Sculpting the Galaxy came out not too long ago, how pleased were you with that, because it's a fantastic effort.

A - Well thank you.  I'm not a born and bred writer, as I said to the publishers, I said I probably couldn't write my way out of a wet paper bag.  Not that I can't turn a clever phrase, it's just that I have permanent writers block.  Blood and sweat, and then finally it comes, and then the writers block returns again.  It really was a big effort, but then without the editors I had and the art directors I had it wouldn't have happened.  By cell phones and computer they would communicate with me and say 'Well, next Tuesday you have to have the beginning of chapter two rewritten again so it only takes 200 words, and then there'll be a meeting on Wednesday, have that with you'.  It was tough sometimes. 

Q – Different kind of pressure?

A – A different kind of pressure, and yet after the way it came out, especially the really big book, I don't know if you've seen the one that's five inches thick, we did that one little step at a time.  It originally had to be a little bit bigger to have the Death Star pieces, they were two inches thick, and then needed to be three inches thick.  Then we had to bite the bullet, get the little speeder in there, get the book in there, it has to be this high.

Lorne and Eric Roth

Q – I was going to ask you about the speeder, that must have been a real blast from the past going back to that because it was the original concept of the speeder wasn't it?

A - Yeah, you know the speeder that's in there is modelled after the one where the Tusken Raiders are following Luke and Ben along when they're looking for R2-D2.  We did that because you only have so much stage space, and the arc that it travels, we used the two foot one, the arc would be quite large, twenty five feet or so.  So we built that little speeder, and the speeders not perfect too, if you look at it we didn't want to make it so that it was perfect.  The original one wasn't, it would be seen from quite some distance away.  But the original of that,. I don't know if you know the story, George Lucas came to me in '79, '80, and he was going to Japan to meet the head of Toho Studios, who did Godzilla, and he wanted to bring a gift he could carry on a seat on the Airplane and hand to him in a very nice case, and so he said 'Try to find one of the models that would fit that bill', and so that's the one that did.  So the original exists in Japan.  That was one of the reasons, not only the size but the fact that it no longer exists here.  We have no idea where it is in Japan, the man would probably be deceased now because he was an old man.

Q – There's probably a black market of all these missing things around the world.

A - Oh, you're absolutely right.  You get phone calls once in a  while. I got one from France recently from some collector wondering 'What items do you have?'  There are people out there that are almost rabid, after anything, and some of them have an amazing ability to latch on to things.

Q – Some of these guys must live next to the dumpster.

A – There have been.  I mean it's gone past the dumpster phase now but during the late '70's and '80's for sure.  I pulled up one night and out popped a couple of teenagers from behind the dumpster.  Somebody got the very original Death Star that way.

Q – Out of the dumpster?

A – Yeah.  Well, it was just used for that one shot, it was an incredibly well detailed, and it got a little bit scratched and damaged while cleaning things up and there wasn't this thought of preserving everything.  And so it got thrown in the dumpster and somebody happened to get it and eventually it wound up in Seattle in somebody's collection.

Q – Are there any ambitions in the film industry that you've not yet fulfilled, or do you feel, now that you're nearly at the end of your time that you pretty much did everything you wanted to do?

A – Well I never, me personally, people like Dennis Muren asked me 'What is it you really want to do here?'  Because his ambition at that time was to direct, he wanted to direct a small film.  And I didn't.  I told him I think being in the model shop fits my skills exactly.  It was a perfect fit for me, for the skills that were there, the aesthetic sensibilities, that kind of thing.  The things that I do like, it's almost like I need to get my fingernails dirty, that kind of work.  There's zillions of people who have written a script, they want to get their ideas across, and that's so far from anything I'd ever thought of.  It's just so distant.  There's even a bumper sticker in L.A, L.A is the hotbed for film, and the bumper sticker says 'Honk if you've written a script', honk and wave, and everybody probably has.  But I don't have a story idea in my head, a different type of film that I want to do.  I mean fantasy of fantasy, if I lived my life doing artwork like Francis Bacon, that would be 'Oh man!'  I wouldn't want to be Francis Bacon, but something like that. I think long ago I aspired to those people at the vanguard, they are people I really admire.  They are explorers out there with nothing but a paintbrush.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

Q – You won your Oscar in 1984 for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.  How much are you looking forward to the new Indy movie, it's got to be quite an exciting time.

A – Yeah it is, it is.  I haven't participated as much on it.  We did some it it.  Oh it wouldn't be giving away anything to say that there's a flood, that word all by itself is not literally a flood like Noah's Ark or anything.  It's such an interesting challenge to take it to the '50's, the Cold War, Russians, Indiana Jones in the same outfit.  It'll be interesting to see.

Q – And Harrison still looks the part?

A – He certainly does, yeah, and that wry humour that he has. I've seen little bits of the footage, but I wasn't involved in it to the same level that we were on the other films, especially Temple of Doom.  Quite frankly the reason that I got the Oscar for it was that at the time everybody's cousin that knew either Spielberg or Lucas and was a director wanted to do films with ILM.  So the house was already full, but our mandate was to basically never turn down Spielberg.  If Lucas wanted something or Spielberg wanted something there was no saying 'Well, we're too busy'.  That was a Lucas mandate, down from him.  So I got together with Denis Muren and we thought what was necessary, and he had the idea to shoot the whole effects as if you were shooting a live action movie.  So we needed to make large miniatures and shoot them with all the elements in it.  The only element in the water tunnel added is Indy and Short Round and Willie running, and we did a lot of shots like that.  The lava with the slave being dropped in it, that kind of thing.  They couldn't go through optical, there was a bottleneck, and we were doing everything we could to do as many elements all at once as possible.  And then I said it's really going to fall on the shoulders of the model shop, so be sure to put my name up somewhere.  And so here we are with that, I was kind of surprised.  It was a very model intensive show.