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The Lightsabre Interview Rick McCallum
Welcome to the second
part of our Lightsabre interview with the most vital cog in the Star Wars
machinery along with George Lucas himself, and without this man nothing we’ve
seen in the past decade would be the same.
He’s the producer of many Dennis Potter classics, saw Young Q – This is going to
sound like a strange question, do you have any creative input into the films
yourself, as a producer? A –
It totally depends on what film. On
Young Indiana Jones, absolutely, on Radioland. You know,
everything I’ve done up until Star Wars, but Star Wars is really George’s
thing. We obviously have
disagreements, we have arguments we have discussions, but at the end of the
day it really is his thing. And our
contribution comes into ways of solving problems for him. That’s what it is, in the end of the day I
wish I could say it was more, but it isn’t.
Every project is always different and every director is always
different. It just depends, but Star
Wars is his unique creature. Q – Where would you
have, not a conflict, but where would you have a discussion? Is it a tonality thing on the way it’s
played, or would it be a design aspect. Where would you not see eye to eye? A – Rarely it’s not a design thing. It’s more to do with
casting or issues that seem incomprehensible, maybe to me or other
people. That’s one of the weird things
that people find difficult to understand, is it’s about the quality of the
argument because at the end of the day there’s only one person who’s
right. It’s not the director, it’s not
anybody, it’s the audience. They tell you immediately if you’re right
or wrong. You can make a really bad
movie and sometimes it really works, because somewhere deep in there was some
kind of truth for a lot of people, and you can make a really great movie and
it just doesn’t work for people. You
just never know. But somewhere it’s
usually about some kind of truth for someone. Q – Being as immersed
with making the prequels as you were did you ever wake up one morning and
think “I just want to hire a studio somewhere and put Judi Dench and Anthony Hopkins in a room and just film a
one-camera piece” A –
Oh yeah, absolutely, we’re definitely planning to go back to both of our
roots making really deeply and uncommercial
films. That’s the one thing we’ve earned
the right to be able to do. That’s
definitely coming down the pipe, once we get through with Red Tails, which is
our next film, and really set up the Star Wars TV series, that’s the plan.
We’re in a situation where we could make ten or fifteen really highly
unsuccessful films and it doesn’t really matter if anybody sees them or not.
Q – Just to
experiment, to do something totally different? A – Just to do something completely and utterly different. Q – That’s going to
be interesting to see what comes out of that. A –
Absolutely. That’s the thing, God has a funny way of changing your plans. Who knows what’ll happen. Q – Well, we’re all
waiting here to see it! You had a hand
in different aspects of the production, so given the large group of people
that were all together during Young Indy and then onto the Prequels, you must
feel like an uncle almost. Was there a
pleasure in building up that team, and consequently knowing that you did such
a good job? A – It’s one of those things, it took a long time during Young
Indy, it took about a year before we all settled
down. And you’ve got to imagine, it
was a really unique period in English film at that point. During the eighties you could go off and
make a film, because I had a wonderful relationship with a director named
Nick Roeg (director of Castaway, starring Oliver
Reed and Amanda Donohoe) who you may or may not
know. If you made a film with Nick you
always knew there would be two or three million people around the world who
were gonna see it.
They’d all pay five dollars, that means you’d
gross fifteen million dollars. You
only get seven and a half million dollars of that, then there’s the marketing
which takes you down. So if you could
make a film for two or three million dollars with Nick you could break even,
nobody would get hurt, you might make a bit of money if it broke out a little
bit but if it didn’t, it didn’t matter because you’d at least have done
something reasonable, something good, something people would like or
respect. And then you get to make your
next movie. But by 1990 that all
changed. The eighties were a golden
period in a strange way. It was the
end of television as we know it in Q – And you see that
relationship carrying on, hopefully? A –
Absolutely, but everybody’s famous and well-to-do and I don’t know if I can
afford them anymore! (laughs) It was at this point
that the conversation was broken up by LFL publicity’s Tracy Cannobio. Rick – But I’ve got some time, so if you want to do some
more, I’m fine. Mark – You’re ok to carry on for a little bit? Rick – Yeah, absolutely. Mark – Oh fantastic, I’ll ask you another
question then. Rick – Thank you Tracy. Q – Looking at the
prequels are there any specific scenes or set pieces that really stand out I
your mind as being a particular favourite? A –
Well, we’re getting into tricky land but I’m sure this is where you’re going
anyway. Obviously Episode 3 is my
favourite, it’s the most adult. But I
knew back in 1991 there was going to be a major storm over Episode 1 and
2. George knew it, “I know I’m going
to lose a lot of my hardcore fan base, but this is the story that I want to
tell, it’s the saga of a family and it has to start somewhere.” I think anybody who was over twenty-five or
thirty years old wanted to see Episode 3 as Episode 1. That isn’t what he wanted to tell, plus he
wanted a whole new generation of eight to twelve year old boys to follow the
saga. And it’s really interesting; I
think Episode 3 brought peace to the two galaxies, the older fans and the
younger fans. But they’re two totally
different things, they’re two completely different
mindscapes, two mental landscapes that are completely different in terms of
what the expectations are and everything else. I mean most kids who were eight, nine years
old who saw Episode 1, Jar Jar’s one of their favourite characters. Q – Oh absolutely. A – They relate to Anakin because he’s eight years old, then three
years later they were eleven and three years later they were fourteen or
fifteen. Those that were ten were
eighteen when Episode 3. There’s a
whole other generation that doesn’t even like the original trilogy. They’re too slow, the effects are boring.
And then obviously you have the hardcore fans who, certainly with Episodes 1
and 2, find them totally repugnant and finally found some solace in Episode
3. Three is my favourite, there’s some scenes in there, I think in the last twenty,
twenty-five minutes are as good as we could have ever done. From the moment Anakin and Obi-Wan are
having their fight and Anakin’s legs are cut off, it’s just to me perfect.
Q – I’ve got to say,
I think Episode 1 improves with age. I
think it stands up as a better movie now. A –
It improves in direct proportion to whether you have children or not. Q – (Laughs) Well, I
don’t yet. A – If you have an eight year old kid now and you didn’t ten years
ago, and you’re watching it with them it is amazing the impact that it has. Q – Well I’ve got
nephews, I’m trying to introduce my seven year old nephew to Star Wars. We’ll see how it goes. A –
Let me know what happens. Q – I certainly will.
Little hypothetical
question. Imagine George hadn’t made
Star Wars in ’77, ’80 and ’83 and you’d got to Revenge of the Sith and next year you were looking to make A A – If we were doing it right now? Q – Yeah. A –
The trouble is that’s a really dangerous question for me, because the trouble
is we probably would’ve fucked it up. There’s things about Episode 4 and then Episode 5, not 6
necessarily because 6 was more in line with the Prequels, in terms of tone
and everything else. But I think you’d
have to go into the psychology of where George’s head is at and the impact of
young kids, because that’s one of the unique things that he has about him
still, even considering all the success and wealth and everything else, he
still kind of looks at the world from the height of an eight year old boy,
and to him that is the most powerful thing that he has. There’s just a way that he kind of
understands what a young boy would like to see, where their heads at. It’s a very unique thing that’s never been
spoiled. The thing that made Episode 4
so perfect was A – the world that we lived in, the unbelievable pressure that
was on him, the lack of effects being so locked down. Not the freedom, which is totally counter
to what I said at the very beginning of where we’re going digitally. But the issue is, everybody is imposed,
everybody has a master, no matter how successful you are, you’ve got the
release schedule of a movie. You’ve
got the release date, you can’t change it.
You have some boss, and if you don’t have a real boss like we do we
have the audience. The audience is our
boss. You have to report to somebody,
and at the end of the day it’s like I said earlier you can make a great movie
and nobody sees it. And the thing
about movies is, and you are a film maker no matter who it is, you can be
Ingmar Bergman, you can be Nicholas Roeg, whatever
– you want large audiences. Even if
you’ve made the most obscure art film, the impact is people seeing it. You’re not a painter, you’re not a
novelist. I don’t think any artist
doesn’t want to communicate. There’s a lot of pressures within the film business, but
it’s also time specific. You’re making
a film two or three years before it comes out and you have no idea what the
zeitgeist is gonna be at the times when it does
come out. That movie (Star Wars) hit
the perfect moment, and it was such an innocent moment. There’s a beautiful moment when Luke looks
out at the twin setting suns of Tatooine, and you
see all the yearning of every boy and every girl feels like when they’re
seventeen, eighteen and they just wanna get out of
the home and start to experience and live their life. And that tapped into a whole culture, it was
just after the Vietnam War, nobody knew who they were, where their place was,
and everybody had a yearning that life could be good, that there was an
adventure to be had. Q – And you reference
that so neatly in Revenge of the Sith. And then panic set in
because, just before he could reply, the phone ran out of juice and the line
to The Ranch was severed. Check back
for the third and final part of our Rick McCallum interview to see what
happened when we got a call back from Rick. |
