Alan Arnold - Once Upon a Galaxy: A Journal of the Making of Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back

Before he entered films Alan Arnold was a journalist in London where he was born, raised, and educated. He served the British government as a press officer in Egypt and in the U.S.A.

For four years he was a foreign correspondent in New York. Film locations and journalism have taken him to thirty other countries.

Arnolds books include The Incredible Sarah, Valentino, and How to Visit America, which a critic described as one of the best introductions to [Americas] customs, characteristics, and history ever written.

Over the years Arnold has worked on some forty films with stars of past and present, from Monroe to Minnelli, Dietrich to Michael Caine, and with many distinguished directors.

Work beyond the film business brought him into touch with exceptional people in other fields, including Eleanor Roosevelt, Lillian Heilman, and Edward R. Murrow, to name three he respected and admired for their courage and integrity.

They gave me perspective, he says. They taught me that success isnt tangible, though in show business some people make the mistake of believing that it is.

The STAR WARS saga has become a legend of our time. Now you can read a blow by blow account of the filming and personalities who come together in this astounding space wars spectacular. ONCE UPON A GALAXY offers:

• In-depth interviews with all your favourite stars including, Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker), Harrison Ford (Han Solo) and Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia)
  
• Details of the filming on location at Finse in Norway and of the incredible specially built set at Elstree which houses the life-size model of Han Solos Millennium Falcon
  
• Extraordinary candid interviews with Irvin Kershner, Gary Kurtz and George Lucas, the mastermind who conceived and created the most dazzling space fantasy of all time
  

PREPARE TO BLAST OFF INTO A UNIVERSE OF GALACTIC DELIGHTS - ONCE UPON A GALAXY

SPHERE BOOKS LIMITED

30/32 Grays Inn Road, London WC1X8JL

First published in Great Britain by

Sphere Books Ltd 1980

Copyright Lucasfilm, Ltd. (LFL) 1980

TM: A trademark of Lucasfilm, Ltd.

Sphere Books authorized User.

TRADEMARK

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Manufactured in the United States of America.

To set the scene for this journal and to establish its point of view, I must go back to the summer of 1977. I was with a film unit in Greece when reports began to reach us of an extraordinary movie that had taken America by storm. Some of the technicians on location had worked on the film the previous year and were surprised, even puzzled, by these reports. They could not explain the fever developing around what was being called, for want of a better term, a space fantasy, nor the fact that in American cities people were lining the streets for blocks to see itand going back again.

The film, of course, was Star Wars and when I returned to London that autumn excitement was mounting at the prospect of its arrival there. As in America the film was getting an amazing amount of attention from the media, but the difference was that in England no one, not even the critics, had seen it. The newsmen, not the publicists, were heralding its arrival, and in some other countries a similar situation was developing. When Star Wars did arrive it was to receive the kind of acclaim accorded only to true originals.

In show business, as in other fields, originality is rare and only the passage of time can put it into perspective. Three years after the debut of Star Wars we can think more objectively about the films impact I am old enough to be able to gain insight by recalling the stage musical Oklahoma! This show began life thirty-five years ago, and historians of show business now recognize that this folksy American entertainment, which had no stars, was not just a great show but one that broke the many conventions stage musicals had previously adhered to. In its medium, Oklahoma! was a fundamental advance, a fact which no subsequent contender in the field could ignore except at its own risk.

And so it was with Star Wars. Something had come out of America that was quintessentially American, broke the conventions, and was destined to create its own legend.

In December 1977, at the Dominion Theatre, London, I was able to see for myself the exceptional degree of involvement with its audience that Star Wars evoked. It was also apparent that publicitys most potent agent, word of mouth, was spreading the films fame more effectively than a whole army of publicists could ever hope to do. When I talked with the distributors (Twentieth Century-Fox), they told me that no film in living memory had launched itself with such meteoric thrust. Far from being concerned as to how to promote it, they had the unique problem of appeasing exhibitors outside London who, reflecting public interest, were demanding the right to show it concurrently with the capital. In response to this pressure, Fox put the film into general release earlier than had been planned. Such an impatient public clamor was unique in modem times. Indeed, for something comparable we must go back to the last century and consider the crowds that gathered at the docksides in Boston and New York to await the arrival from England of fresh installments of the Pickwick Papers. If the comparison seems at first abstruse, it should be remembered that England was then still the dominant culture and that Dickens was the supreme showman in the mass medium of his time.

In the autumn of 1978 I was engaged as unit publicist for The Empire Strikes Back which was to go into production the following year, by which time Star Wars itself would have earned some $400 million at the box office and have become the most commercially successful picture in history.

What was the explanation of the phenomenal success of Star Wars? The answer still eluded me. I had marveled at the films inventiveness, especially after seeing it a second time. What an incredible feat of magicianship, a light-show, an audacious pantomime, but I really did not understand why so many Americans had come to regard the content of this movie as folklore worthy of near-religious zeal. Besides, I was concerned that even in the realms of once upon a time, technology was taking over. Was a writer with a detached and ambivalent outlook the kind of publicist this new breed of filmmaker wanted? I had misgivings.

I was put at ease by producer Gary Kurtzs attitude, which seemed to imply that when youve got a success on the scale of Star Wars you can neither rest on your laurels nor proclaim to the world how clever you are. Information, not hyperbole, would be the order of the day. This was to be the basis of these filmmakers public-relations stance and the beginning of an exciting quest for me. It led me through Norway to England and to California and imbued in me a respect for these risk takers with placid profiles, filmmakers who value the talent of the people they hire.