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John Coppinger – His Star Wars Story

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Hello there once again! We are back telling stories, truth be told we were on our way back but we got a little side-tracked…

Where have we heard that before? We suppose that we are his kind of scum…fearless and inventive but we wouldn’t want to become one of his decorations! That’s right readers we are revisiting everyone’s favourite slug lord, Jabba the Hutt.

John Coppinger joins us as a bit of an unsung hero within Star Wars, he sculpted the iconic Jabba but was also drafted back in for a Rancor size list of characters for The Phantom Menace too. John isn’t only a Star Wars guy, he’s been involved in some great projects during his career from Harry Potter to Babe to the classic Santa Claus: The Movie and he’s sculpted some fascinating items for the National History Museum.

We cover all of that and more whilst also finding out the answer to the burning question; where is Jabba’s skin now? What are we waiting for… it’s time to say “De wanna wanga, John”

Great to speak with you John and I’m excited to hear your Star Wars story! I just spent a frankly fascinating time reading your website which is a rabbit warren of links to interesting bits of information from your career. I’d like to start by asking what got you into science fiction sculpture?

I wanted to study Biology and English at A-level but could only follow Science or Arts.  So I wound up making welded sculpture in the art room instead of studying. Bob White, the art master, covered for me and then got me a place at Maidstone Art School.

A Diploma in Art & Design led to a job at London’s Natural History Museum (NHM) as a scientific model-maker – a perfect blend of Art & Science at a time when there were many new materials and ideas about exhibition spaces to explore.

To answer your question! I believe it was the process of imagining fossil animals, mostly dinosaurs, as living creatures when all you usually have is their bones. It’s informed guesswork; very much like designing an alien creature and considering its environment and lifestyle to make it a believable entity.

Were there other potential career paths that you were going to take?

While waiting for the result of my NHM interview I’d applied to be an artificial eye fitter at the North London Eye Clinic and was offered the job! Previous to that I’d gone some way to finding a career as a journalist – The thing I thought I was best at, aged eighteen, was writing.

At 23 I worked a summer season as helmsman on a tourist day-trip boat out of Brixham, Devon.  I then applied for a post at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory to design and make traps and sampling equipment, then operate them at sea and in estuaries. It didn’t happen, but years later I visited there on a research trip for the NHM regarding a life-size model of Architeuthis dux, a giant squid.

Was Star Wars one of your first major projects?

I felt that Return of the Jedi was my first ‘real’ job in the film industry.  I’d gone freelance to work on ‘The Dark Crystal’ through knowing Brian Froud, the concept designer, and visiting the Henson Workshops in New York at his invitation.

I had to convince Stuart Freeborn, the famed make-up artist and supervisor, that I could do the job. Luckily he liked my ideas about restoring dinosaurs, and my work for the NHM generally, and gave me the job of sculpting Jabba the Hutt.

Normally, we don’t delve into small details immediately but as I am very keen to know having seen the picture, where is Jabba’s face skin now?

Jabba’s Face Skin!

We sold Jabba’s face skin, and the tip of his tail mechanism, to Brandon Alinger who runs the Los Angeles division of Propstore of London. It had survived many years longer than expected for a foam latex piece but just in case it might eventually deteriorate we took a plaster waste mould from it and converted that to a production silicone rubber mould for making fibreglass casts. I believe the original foam was sold on and preserved on a custom built display stand.

We’ve had the pleasure of talking to some wonderful people involved in Star Wars already, including Jabba performer Toby Philpott but your experience within Star Wars is slightly more unusual as you came back for the prequels as well. Besides the obvious technology differences how different did ROTJ feel to Phantom Menace for you?

I remember thinking  ‘I’ve come back fifteen years later and now I can sculpt Jabba as a young wormling!’  That wasn’t to be as the Hutts were rendered with CGI, but I got to reprise several of the original creatures – Tendau Bendon the Ithorian, Greedo, Bith musicians and others. I also did the ‘fish’ seller, Gragra, the two headed Pod Race announcer,  Fode & Beed, Barada the Klatooinian and various Jedi Senators – Adi Gallia, Oppo Rancisis the Thisspiasian, PoNudo the Aqualish and Yarael Poof for instance. Not sure I got all those names right, but hopefully expert fans will put me right!

The sets I worked on were smaller, largely because of CGI, but there was an indefinable ‘Star Wars Atmosphere’. I got to stand-in as Graxol Kelvyyn for the pod race scene, Ki-Adi-Mundi at Theed Plaza, and perform all the Wookiee Senators, including Yarua, in the voting chamber. A favourite creature species, Wookiees, and they had an extraordinary effect on other people: One young Assistant Director’s voice going high as he squeaked “Cor, it’s like meeting the Pope!”

I would say one other serious difference was security – Our boss, Nick Dudman, said “If you’re caught with a camera, even if it has no film, you’ll be fired and there’s nothing I can do about it.” Back in Jabba days the film’s Still’s Department gave us prints of his construction and finishing and trusted us not to sell them to ‘Starlog’ etc. – We did know of course that that would be a career ending move but it was a different experience of being ‘Crew’.

“Jabba Days” should certainly be an official measurement of time! What would you say is your best story from working on Star Wars?

The ‘Platinum’ award goes to the day David Tomblin, first Assistant Director on ROTJ, stomped through our operating  crew on Jabba’s throne room set with his bullhorn, jerked his thumb back at the Slug Lord and said “You’ve done a good job on that thing!”

Maybe second was demonstrating the Anxx character, the rig for both Graxol Kelvyyn and Horox Ryyder, to George Lucas and his team. With stilts two feet high and the creature’s head and neck above mine it stood eleven feet tall.  George pointed out that, given the film ratio they were using, if an Anxx stood beside Yoda both would need to be a quarter mile back from the camera. So both characters were only ever seen sitting down.

Is it strange now to see the legacy of Jabba the Hutt in things like the comics, Spaceballs, Family Guy etc. being that you were involved in his creation?

Very strange indeed! To look back over thirty years and still be asked what it was all about and what it was like. My classic response to the next, young generation at conventions who recognise Jabba is to think, or say, “You weren’t born, and likely neither were your mother and father, when we did this!”

And you are also an action figure as Graxol Kelvyyn! It must be nice to have your characters immortalized in such a way, I assume you’ve signed quite a few?

Graxol Kelvyyn

It’s both strange and wonderful! There’s even Wookiee Senator Yarua figures out there, and I posed for the stills shots on the back of the boxes.

I also lip-synced a short internal video for Lucasfilm in the Wookiee rig – Voiced by the producer Rick McCallum.  It was about a new video format they were developing I think, but I never saw the end result to see how I’d done, or even know if it was used.

More important matters now, you were on the team creating the reindeer from Santa Claus: The Movie, iconic! I read this was an 18-month project for you, did it make you dislike Christmas by the time it came around?

We did develop an aversion to Christmas music, particularly when surrounded by Santa’s Elves in the Pinewood canteen. They were a tribe of short, particularly grumpy men who began to feel dangerous, maybe because they’d been singing happy songs all morning and far too often. Someone pointed out that they were handling sharp things and were probably best avoided!

We did do some crazy hours and only really had four days off the whole time – Two Christmas Days and Boxing Days. I may be exaggerating but that was what it felt like, never really sure what season it was outside our windowless workshop.

I also remember the first time we fired up the air-ram powered reindeer on the front-projection set. They were made from real reindeer hair transposed onto flexible fabric and as they began to gallop they disappeared in a cloud of fur.  I decided we had a couple of minutes at most before they were bald and I might just take a gentle walk to the front gate!

What was actually happening was reindeer fur is so dense that what the animals had already shed in life had survived all our processes until the rigs began to run. I should say that our skins were selected by Derek Frampton, the taxidermist who worked with us, from animals in Norway that were already marked for slaughter and the animals that came to be trained in England went on to an honourable retirement in Scotland.

And you created a 34-foot giant squid for The National History Museum in London! So, my final question is what is your fondest creation among your many projects?

The Diva, The Fifth Element

I always say my two favourites have to be Jabba and The Diva, from ‘The Fifth Element’ – A classic cliche; Beauty and the Beast!

But I’ve been remarkably lucky in my career – Making props for the Royal Institution’s Christmas Lectures was the most complete fusion of Art and Science, just as I’d wished for way back at school; rigs and models being operated in front of a live audience.  High stress sometimes but also the most rewarding and extraordinary fun!

Do you attend conventions? If so, where can fans meet you next?

I still guest at conventions, with gratitude for the attention paid to all our old tales of life in the ‘Steam Age of Film’ – Like telling war stories in the pub, but people really want to hear them! I don’t have any in view at the moment, but something will turn up!!

With thanks to John, we bid him farewell! A reminder you can check out John’s work particularly sculpture on his official website here. If you enjoyed this interview why not check out our chat with Gamorrean Guard, Stephen Constantino by clicking here.

Keep checking back for more Star Wars Stories and until the next time, I’ll be there for you…Cassian said I had to.

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Their Star Wars Story

Tim Dry – His Star Wars Story

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Greetings exalted ones, once again we are heading out the Dune Sea! Jabba the Hutt didn’t just like scum in his palace, he liked his music too. Max Rebo and his band entertained him regularly in between the odd Rancor butchering…

However, within his menagerie of monsters you would be shocked to find a pair of actual musicians chilling out in the corner. This brings us to our guest, Tim Dry. Tim played J’Quille in Return of the Jedi and also a Mon Calamari officer but he was more well known for popularising the robotic mime movement of the 1980’s with Tik and Tok. Along with his Yak Face playing counterpart, Sean Crawford, he played Wembley with Gary Numan and supported Duran Duran among many other impressive musical achievements.

Today we talk about his music background, how he ended up in Star Wars, a very heavy costume and if playing in front of Her Majesty The Queen (yes the Queen is making an appearance in a Star Wars story) is as intimidating as Jabba the Hutt…

Great to speak with you Tim and I’m excited to hear your Star Wars story! You are a man of many talents being an actor, photographic artist, musician, writer and a pioneer of robotic mime so what would you say you are most famous for?

I’d say that I’m equally famous for having two character roles in Return of the Jedi and also for having been a part of that whole New Romantic music and fashion scene in London in the early 1980s as a robotic mime, making electro pop music and hanging out with cool people who were fashion designers, DJs, musicians, and artists in the new clubs like Blitz, Le Kilt, Club For Heroes and Camden Palace. My other works as a writer and a photographic artist do get me some very nice compliments and some meagre funds but nothing resonates in quite the same way as the first two. As long as I’m constantly creative and do my best to entertain people in whatever ways I can I’m happy.

Tell us about your early career and how you got started…

I was taught mime by a wonderful teacher named Desmond Jones. I started going to his classes in London in 1976 and I became obsessed with this almost unknown art form. About six months later I became a member of his mime company and we were doing shows in colleges and small theatres around London. From 1980, I was also part of a multi-media group called Shock and we mixed dance, mime, music and theatre together in a way that no one had really seen before. Barbie Wilde (Hellraiser-Hellbound) was my partner at the time and she was in Shock as well. We met Sean (Crawford) at a mime class one evening and asked him to join the group.

Fast forward a couple of years and Sean and I were working as the robotic duo Tik and Tok after Shock split up. The robot movement that we created became very popular. It was a very exciting time! Shock recorded two singles which were big on club dancefloors, they were produced by the hip London DJ Rusty Egan (Founder of New Romantic Nightclub, Blitz) and Richard James Burgess (co-founder of synthpop band, Landscape). I started writing some songs with Richard before Shock split up.

How did all of that result in Return of the Jedi?

One day in early January 1982 we were contacted by Desmond our mime teacher who said that he’d been approached by the production team on the new Star Wars movie because they were looking for mimes to play alien creatures. The reason being that as trained performers in physical theatre we could bring life and character to a costume. There were about 20 of us auditioning in front of Desmond and the co-producer, Robert Watts. We were told to just do some ‘Alien acting’ which we did.

About a week later Desmond phoned and said that both Sean and myself had been chosen along with seven other mimes to be in the movie which was wonderful. We drove up to Elstree studios a few days later to be fitted for costumes. I was given this fearsome character who was then only known as Tooth Face (J’Quille) and Sean was to play Yak Face and we proceeded to take our places on the incredible set that was Jabba the Hutt’s palace.

We did about three weeks in the palace and then a few days on his sail barge which was filmed on the back lot at Elstree, the exteriors of the barge were all filmed in the desert in the States, watching Jabba get killed by Princess Leia. Very exciting!

We had another week playing Mon Calamari Officers on the flight deck of Admiral Ackbar’s rebel ship, wearing nice light costumes, after our really heavy and hot previous outfits it was nice to actually see where we were going! With the money we earned from our work on the film we bought a couple of synths, a drum machine, FX units and a four track Portastudio so we could create our own music for our live Tik and Tok work.

Personally, what would you say is your best story from working on Star Wars?

The whole experience of being on a film set for the first time was pretty mind-blowing. The scale of it all and the attention to detail was unbelievable. There were so many people on the Jabba’s palace and sail barge sets that we could hardly move and so some of the action we should have been doing was unfortunately shelved. You had the camera crew, big cameras, performers, extras, stunt people plus the enormous heat from the lights and the smoke machines going it was very claustrophobic. But it was great fun for us to see Leia in her famous bikini climbing over Jabba and strangling him with her chain and Oola dancing before she went in the pit!

I did approach Harrison Ford, who was seated in a canvas chair on set reading his script in-between set ups, I asked him for his autograph as my then girlfriend was a big fan. He raised his head and saw this guy with long dyed black hair, wearing a sweaty white t-shirt and these huge furry trousers held up by elastic which were the bottom half of my costume. He looked momentarily disconcerted then smiled and graciously signed my bit of paper. To my horror, later that afternoon I realized that I’d actually managed to lose it somehow on my way back to the dressing room. I didn’t dare go back and ask him for another and I didn’t dare tell my girlfriend what had happened. I just said that he was really occupied with his script…sorry!

The scenes with Jabba the Hutt are iconic now and it being the third film I would guess at that point the menagerie of monsters was almost a normal thing but how was it for you?

We were told early on that it was a kind of conscious recreation of the New Hope cantina by the designers and production team, so we knew what to expect. I have to say that the creatures in Jedi were much more involved and weirder than those in the first movie. Because of the confines of the costume and poor visibility there was no way to get an overview until we saw the finished movie. I remember feeling sorry for the Gamorrean guard who took a tumble down the steps and also the poor guy who got hurled into the Rancor pit.

Was J’Quille as heavy as he looked?

Quite simply yes! I had three layers on and the fibreglass head was very heavy. They had to take it off between each take so I could get some air. The wardrobe girls would blow cold air from hairdryers down my neck. Some of the performers did actually pass out on set on day one before someone noticed what was happening. J’Quille was a heavy dude in every sense and not someone you’d pick a bar fight with!

I have to address this as I have a thing for action figures, Yak Face is an extremely valuable older figure and J’Quille I believe has been hard done by although he’s got a newer one, may I start a “Justice for J’Quille” movement? 

Yes, please do! His time will come!

What’s more intimidating; playing at Wembley, playing in front of the Queen or working for Jabba the Hutt?

Working for Jabba was a doddle! Playing Wembley wasn’t that intimidating really as because of the stage lights and the distance from the thousands of fans you couldn’t really see beyond the first few rows. Playing in front of The Queen was pretty nerve-wracking as it was done live in front of not only her and Prince Phillip but also in front of 14,000,000 people watching at home. We’d already done a show that night with Gary Numan on his Warriors tour out of London and a limo picked us up and drove us to the stage door of the Theatre Royal.

Yourself and Sean are on the convention scene together a lot, how do you feel about attending conventions?

We both love doing them. We’ve been all round the world now pretty much since 2003 and that’s a real thrill. We get to hang out together again and be naughty schoolboys! We love meeting and chatting to all the fans that come to the events, hanging out with fellow performers, having a few drinkies and some laughs. We also get to make a nice amount of cash which is always needed!

Because of COVID-19 everything has been on hold this year. Hopefully, things will settle down safely and we’ll be able to be out and about next year with our photos and our Sharpie pens.

It still amazes me that my modest contribution to a movie made 38 years ago still resonates with people of all ages from every country. Nowadays we get three generations of Star Wars fans coming along to see us and that really is incredible. I don’t think any other movie franchise has the same breadth of adulation and it really does make me proud to see all those happy faces. I shall be eternally grateful to Desmond, my mime teacher, for allowing all this to come to pass because of the skills that he imparted to me and his students all those years ago.

With that, Tim departs to his first virtual convention. In the absence of physical conventions, you can contact Tim for autographs via Facebook here.

Did you enjoy reading this interview? Why not check out the Star Wars story of fellow creature performer, Paul Warren who portrayed Varmik in The Force Awakens by clicking here.

Keep checking back for more Star Wars Stories and until the next time, I’ll be there for you…Cassian said I had to.

Their Star Wars Story

TOBY PHILPOTT – HIS STAR WARS STORY

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The illustrious Jabba bids you welcome and will gladly tell you his Star Wars story. That’s right, exalted ones, it’s time for a new tale as we delve back into puppetry with everyone’s favourite giant-slug-mobster, Jabba the Hutt!

If you appreciate Jabba the Hutt then you are the right kind of scum for our guest, Toby Philpott. Toby had the honour of puppeteering the main body of Jabba with the equally honourable Dave Barclay. Together Dave and Toby were quite literally Jabba’s right- and left-hand men but as Toby will tell us later, the Jabba Team in its entirety would be the size of a rugby team!

Jabba was a huge character in more ways than one and pivotal in bringing the main characters of the original trilogy back together. From Toby we find that learning to juggle results in jobs on Star Wars, what being inside Jabba was physically like and that you could (probably) get away with hitting Carrie Fisher in the face with a giant tongue…

Thanks for talking us through your Star Wars story, Toby. I’m really excited to hear more about you and your experiences. How are you keeping busy at the moment?

My life hasn’t changed a lot. I’ve been retired more than five years and we moved to the country a year ago which is great for the dogs. Toby’s dogs introduce themselves in the lovely garden setting. I got my first proper job at the age of 51 after being self-employed for 30 plus years and that’s what I retired from. I don’t work in showbiz anymore, but I do go to conventions. I’m missing going to a few different cities, meeting up with friends old and new and having those little adventures.

I’ve read a fantastic list of things you were involved in before The Dark Crystal and Return of the Jedi. Have you always been drawn to performing?

My parents were both teachers and performers, so it was in my family. My mum thought I was going to be an academic but I fell into performing once I dropped out of that. I wanted to be self-employed because to me adults did something that they loved; they didn’t wear a suit and work nine to five.

It all started because I went travelling with a French girlfriend. We were living in a squat in Paris selling jewellery that her friend had made. Then we hitchhiked around America for 18 months and that’s where I learned to juggle. I was living in the town of Bolinas, California and joined a group of what you would probably call hippies. We used to get into concerts for free doing a bit of clowning and juggling. I got a taste for the benefits of performing.

We went to Mexico after that where jewellery wasn’t of much interest, but they loved the performing we were doing and I slowly evolved a street show. When I got back to the UK it was winter in London. I started doing a few classes and a few shows in Covent Garden and Portobello Road, then I was doing kids’ parties and I became a court jester at medieval banquets. I was drawn to performing in that it gave me the freedom to travel and learn anything that might fit into a show.

Sounds like quite an adventure! How did all this end up with you puppeteering Jabba the Hutt?

I fell into the film business. I was training to be a mime when my teacher called me up and asked if I had looked at a trade magazine called “The Stage”. They wanted people to do big creatures for this movie which turned out to be The Dark Crystal. There were not many people ready-made to do big creatures and so they didn’t really know what they wanted. The advert asked for dancers, mimes, acrobats, clowns and people like that.

The audition started with 200 people and it wasn’t a standard one where you stand up and do your thing. Jim Henson and Frank Oz put us in a room 20 at a time with a few gloves, heads, and stuff like that and got us to improvise. If nothing else I thought we were getting a workshop in puppetry from Jim Henson and Frank Oz so I took it kind of lightly. They got us down to the ten they were going to use, and they said four of us would start immediately while they were in pre-production. We were playing aliens who didn’t look like human beings and working in very uncomfortable positions. Some needed three or four people which was unusual; they had moving eyes, ears and so on.

Working together in puppetry you need to synchronize your body movements. The main trick with a puppet is to lose yourself in the puppet. Jim was a magician; Kermit the Frog is basically a sock with two half ping pong balls, and yet, he is alive. People naturally talk to the puppet and not the human being. You don’t have to coach that, and that belief is part of what brings the puppet to life, but also the puppeteer putting in their energy through the puppet.

The way I got the job on Jedi, I didn’t apply for it and I didn’t know it was Star Wars. I got called in by a producer who asked if I would like to do a big creature on their movie and I found out many years later that Dave Barclay got me the job inside Jabba the Hutt.

When you got the Return of the Jedi opportunity was there excitement there? I know you’ve mentioned to me you were not a fan as such…

It’s not that I am not a fan, I just hadn’t seen the first two films at that point. I had heard of them, of course, so the first thing I had to do was find a cinema showing them as a double bill. I came out impressed that I was going to be in the third one and started telling my friends.

The most exciting part was that we were the main character in the scenes and I had never felt before that my movement was so crucial to the scene. Jabba has around 20 minutes of screen time and it revolves around him. We had quite a lot of close ups; Dave was doing the right hand and the mouth with the dialogue in English and I am moving the head around and my arm is inside the tongue as well as moving his left hand. He’s left-handed because the right hand is over the body so I got quite a lot of moves. I got to hit C-3PO, eat the frog, smoke the pipe, grab Bib Fortuna…and they were shot close up on a set of about 100 people on it – no pressure!

One of the reasons I say Jabba is so important is that he draws all the main characters back into one place and then he is killed off because his work is done. Talking to fans at conventions, people love Jabba. He’s bad but not necessarily evil; he’s kind of a pirate comedy villain and not really in the overall battle of good and evil. He’s fun!

That’s true, despite the fact he is essentially a giant slug, he fits the typical characteristics of an Italian mobster!

There’s a bad guy in ‘The Maltese Falcon’ who is a fat jolly soul played by Sydney Greenstreet (Kasper Gutman) and he’s a delightful, mischievous villain. I saw Jabba like that.

They started off humanoid with Jabba then went very sluggish and settled on the appearance he ended up with; there were quite a lot of versions. When Dave Barclay and I first saw him, he already looked great before we started moving him around. When we brought him to life, we tried to give him as much glee as possible because inside he’s so many layers of fibreglass, airbags and rubber. Dave and I were diving around in there to get him to move – quite the experience!

What would you say is your best story from working on Star Wars?

Normally on set you can talk to the other actors but obviously in our role we couldn’t do that. We missed a lot of experiences; I never saw Carrie Fisher in the bikini for example even though she filmed with us.

This is a story I never heard the end of…when Han Solo comes out of the carbonite and the Gamorrean Guards bring Leia over, Jabba sort of wiggles his tongue at her and the tongue really was disgusting. The first take I did it cautiously but I heard over the headphones to push out the tongue further, so I checked they had told Carrie I was going to do it. It seems they didn’t, because they wanted a natural reaction from her. Between takes the guys who made Jabba put this gunk all over the tongue, some mixture of Swarfega and KY Jelly, it was like drool. On the second take I pushed it right out and they said OK do it again but not so much. When I came out, I asked what was wrong with the second take and they said, “Oh, you stuck the tongue in her ear and licked her face”. I never got to ask Carrie Fisher about it; I didn’t know what I had done so someone could have been winding me up…

Is that frustrating? The fact that you will never know if you attacked Carrie Fisher with a tongue…

Yeah, it slows it down to say that it may not have happened. Pranks on films are very common! They said if you want to see what we did yesterday and watch it back you can learn stuff. In Star Wars I didn’t get to see the rushes so I will never know, that’s why it’s my favourite story. If anyone knows the truth about that part of film, write in!

We shall put out an appeal for it!

Well I’ve asked a lot of people at conventions! Carrie Fisher always had a big group of people around her, apart from that she may have reacted angrily to me anyway, ha-ha.

Does it take a lot of endurance to play a part like Jabba the Hutt? I imagine there’s a side to it that’s quite mentally draining…

Yes, it’s physically much harder than you think and with Jabba we were in our street clothes and we weren’t wearing him, we were basically sitting in a little tiny cave. It was normally the two of us flinging ourselves around. Keeping your energy level up through a ten-hour day is just tiring and being ready to go at a moment’s notice.

If you don’t believe me, stick your arm in the air and hold it there for 10 minutes. All the blood will rush down…and then try to move a big head around!

You’ve moved away from the film industry now and you summarised your experience with, “I was just a street juggler who got lucky.” Do you look back on your time in film fondly now?

I tried very hard to not take a steady job. In the last five years there’s been more interest in the other films, especially Labyrinth since Bowie died, and Dark Crystal because of the Netflix show.

Films had been a few lucky years of my life. In 1999 I heard that people were interested in meeting me, 20 years after I’d done the work, but if you got signatures for the whole Jabba crew it would be a rugby team! It was Jabba who got me out and about in the convention circuit so I accept the fact that Star Wars is what impresses people, and I’m proud of Jabba and the team I worked with on that.

With that we that we thank Toby for his time and let him get back to his very excited dogs! You can read more about Toby’s experiences in film at his website by clicking here as well as order autographed items in the absence of conventions.

Did you enjoy reading this interview? Why not check out the Star Wars story of Admiral Ackbar himself, Tim Rose by clicking here. Tim worked with The Muppets and Jim Henson before his career defining role as Ackbar while also portraying numerous other characters including the mischievous Salacious Crumb.

Keep checking back for more Star Wars Stories and until the next time, I’ll be there for you…Cassian said I had to.

Their Star Wars Story

Mark Austin – His Star Wars Story

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Writing Star Wars Stories we often get to hear some terrific tales, definitely not ones you’d simply store away in the cargo hold. Mark Austin’s story of working in very successful commercials lead to a dream job working on the visual effects of the Star Wars Special Editions.

Mark continues to be successful working in film. He’s worked on a few other films you may have heard of such as Avengers Assemble, Oblivion, Thor: The Dark World and a whole lot more. Did I mention this wonderful journey involved one very cool acting role? Mark portrayed everyone’s favourite Bounty Hunter, Boba Fett (You haven’t got the title yet Din Djarin!)

Shall we just get on with the story? As you wish…

Great to speak to you, Mark. The majority of your credits are Visual Effects on some huge films and Star Wars is one of your earliest jobs, so tell us how all of it began for you?

I started off in commercials for five years. I used to make the Tetley Tea Bag commercials for the round bags in the UK and Ribena was the other big one up to the point where I went to America in 1994.

The company I was working for declared bankruptcy and I thought that was the best job I could ever get in the world. I was unemployed for the first time ever. Then I got the offer to head to America. I had never been out of a job before but a friend of mine told me they were looking for animators at ILM. I was a bit apprehensive because I thought that meant computer animation, which wasn’t my strong point, but they wanted traditional animators. Long story short I got an 18-month gig working on Casper and it was on the job for Casper that all the Star Wars stuff started.

Before Casper came out all this stuff with Boba Fett happened. Everyone thinks that it was when I was working on A New Hope Special Edition doing the animation and the effects. I had to go and ask for the day off and I did the blue screen shoot during Casper production. It all came about because of some summits at Skywalker Ranch where I jumped in the Boba Fett suit a few times and I became known as the guy who fit the suit that was on hand, and everything just worked out.

In the morning was the first shot walking on – get to your mark, make sure no one’s going to trouble your boss Jabba the Hutt – and the afternoon was a bit more complicated as I had to look at where Han Solo’s eye line would have been. They put some tape where he would have been on the Millennium Falcon ramp for me to focus on. For the final sweep end of shot I had to look like this [Mark looks diagonally] but the T-Visor on Boba’s helmet is looking straight on. No one said anything to me about that but George Lucas came down and picked the shot where the helmet is facing the camera. I thought well if he likes it then I like it!

People always ask me “Why are you looking at the camera?” and the truth is you can’t see my eyes, but I’m not looking at the camera.

You’d been successful already by this point, made some great commercials, worked on Casper and now you are Boba Fett in the Special Edition. Did you feel like you’d made it at that point?

I was happy at the end of my career in commercials, a whole country knows my work and I thought I’d made it then. When I got to wear the actual suit for the summit I thought that was the highest it could get, then I wore it a second time and then for the blue screen shoot, and I’m constantly thinking it can’t get better than this. I went on to do visual effects on Avengers, X-Men: Days of Future Past happened, then Oblivion happened and it still goes up and up now that I work for Netflix. I could die right now and feel like I had more than my fair share of good fortune in my life.

I’ve read the Ronto and Jawa story on your website (enjoy finding it readers!). Is that a normal day in the life of someone in visual effects?

That whole snowball effect where an idea gets momentum is normal in visual effects. Most of the time it goes off course, you do the shot and it comes full circle. In that case it just went to the extreme and I don’t know how it ended up in the movie. I finished the job, left for Disney, but heard they were still changing stuff.

A normal day for someone in visual effects?

Personally, what would you say is your best story from working on Star Wars either in front of the camera or behind it?

The time I choked up, I did a shot for A New Hope and very quickly it became like I was just doing the background stuff. George Lucas had this scene he wanted adding in involving a Stormtrooper dismounting from a Dewback and the producer asked if we needed to shoot it with blue screen, but I said no, I can animate that.

I got the producer and I said you can be my stunt man, climb up this step ladder, hang off it and jump off and I’ll make it a Stormtrooper and a Dewback instead of you and a step ladder.

We showed that to Lucas and he asked “How did you get that footage? No way is that animated.” We said it was animated and he was really shocked. That was my crowning achievement.

I thought that your story may be something like that rather than playing Boba Fett. There are an awful lot more people who can say they wear Mandalorian armour now, but for yourself is that something you are quite happy to be known for?

Boba Fett was the one character I could relate to. When I watched the first Star Wars film I was obsessed with Stormtroopers, their uniform and all that. Then I saw The Empire Strikes Back and it was time for the Stormtroopers to move along and it was all about Boba Fett.

The whole reason I got picked to do the summits which lead to the movie part is that the guy who does the archives (Don Bies) knew I was the biggest Boba Fett nerd. His name for Star Wars nutters like me was “Squid Heads” and he said I was a Squid Head for Boba Fett.

With that came an obsession with Jeremy Bulloch, Dickey Beer, John Morton, Jason Wingreen and all the guys who played him. I never met any of them until 2015 where I did an interview with Aaron Proctor for the Boba Fett Fan Club and since then we’ve kept in contact. I was just talking to Daniel Logan [Boba Fett, Attack of the Clones] and Don Bies who ran the archives last week, too. Daniel Logan is terrible for calling at the worst time – he is calling me right now!

Boba Fett’s interesting as he’s got such limited screen time in the films, yet he maintains huge popularity. My brothers are huge fans. What do you make of the development of Boba Fett now and how he’s the catalyst for creating a show like The Mandalorian? How does he captivate so many people?

That’s the fascinating part; everyone’s stories on this are interesting. When Boba came along in 1979 before the film came out with the Palitoy mail-away figure offer, he was a big draw with all his gadgets and armour. The reason Boba doesn’t have much screen time was that this nobody character was stealing all the fandom. He was competing with the major heroes for popularity.

For me personally, I was a big spaghetti western fan. I loved The Man with No Name and the Trinity collection of films. I have always been a big fan of English knights in armour, Spartan helmets and all that stuff, so Boba Fett took all of that and put it together.

When I did the blue screen shoot nobody really knew that I did it. People I worked with did, obviously, but even some of my family didn’t know. Last year I had a friend of my mum’s who asked me what my obsession with Boba Fett is and I hadn’t told her. I didn’t want to be that guy going around telling everyone I played him; I rely on my other friends to tell them.

How did the fan films, No Disintegrations, come about?

Aaron Proctor from the Fan Club was one of the first people to approach me. He did the digging and found out who I was. He was saying about this animated series he had with Boba Fett recording a personal log. He asked if I would be interested in doing a live action version which I agreed to so long as it’s not too serious. Boba Fett is a one sentence guy, you know!

We were originally going to do four and then we ended up making 22. We are thinking of doing a few more for a second series, maybe cater to The Mandalorian audience a bit.

I’ve had a trawl through your Twitter and despite the huge films you’ve worked on and working for Netflix now, Star Wars features heavily. Why is that?

Star Wars came at a time in my life when my life was a bit upside down. A lot was going on at home so I escaped into that galaxy and made it a safe haven. I owe George Lucas big time for that. I never got a chance to tell him as you don’t have the opportunity to say things like that.

I still identify with Rogue One and The Mandalorian as they are set in the same time period. I struggle with the other new films a bit. Stormtroopers for example, had they not changed it for the new movies I would have identified with them a lot more.

I passed up a huge opportunity on the prequels as Animation Director. Disney were making a lot of counter offers and I knew from my friends they were getting “Artistic Development” training and I was talking to ILM and explained I wanted to grow as an artist. I often wondered what would have happened had I not left but I didn’t feel I was strong enough at that point in time.

You mentioned you are working for Netflix now, so what’s next for you?

Netflix had the foresight to see Disney Plus coming so there are probably over 40 movies in development right now. I’m working on an animated movie…that’s about all I can say ha-ha!

Read more about Mark’s journey in cinema on his website here and enjoy finding his hidden Ronto and Jawa story! Check out the Boba Fett YouTube shorts “No Disintegrations” here

Keep checking back for more Star Wars Stories and until the next time, I’ll be there for you…Cassian said I had to.

Did you enjoy reading this interview? Why not check out the Star Wars story of everyone’s favourite medal bearer, Nick Joseph. Read more by clicking here.