Jon Favreau is taking on Star Wars!
And we got to talk to George Lucas, Harrison Ford, and Mark Hamill.
You know, because they’re always hanging out together like that.
Always?
I mean, at Star Wars things.
Yeah, that’s the only time I’ve seen them.
This is The Star Wars Show!
Live from the Lucasfilm headquarters in San Francisco, here’s your hosts Andi and Anthony!
Hello and welcome to the Star Wars Show, a show that finally figured out the secret to
increasing your viewership, you just add a deleted scene from the highest grossing movie
of 2017 right in the middle of it.
Yeah, which is a totally achievable and easy to repeat on a weekly basis.
Okay, I hear what you’re saying.
Which is why we have a clip this week from 2017’s 17th highest grossing film, The Boss Baby.
We don’t own The Boss Baby. Also…Star Wars, dude, all of it.
Okay then it is my mission now to make a short deleted scene from my own Star Wars version
of the film, The Bossk Baby.
Let’s just go to the news.
Last week Lucasfilm announced that Jon Favreau, the director of Iron Man, Elf, The Jungle
Book, and the upcoming live-action version of The Lion King will write and executive
produce a live-action Star Wars series.
The Emmy nominated producer and actor said in a statement, quote,
Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy added,
While no release date, title or further information has been released about the series, Star Wars
fans can catch Favreau in Solo: A Star Wars Story this May.
Finally, on Thursday, Mark Hamill received his long deserved star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
And we were there to talk to not only him, but to Harrison Ford, George Lucas, and more.
Check it out.
[Porg noises]
We are here for me to receive a star on Hollywood Boulevard.
Can you imagine?
[Crowd cheering]
Welcome to this morning’s Walk of Fame ceremony!
This is one of the largest attendances that we have had at one of these.
Today we dedicate the 2,630th star to a man we first became aware of in a movie set in a galaxy far, far, away.
Today we honor Mark Hamill.
Words truly fail me.
It’s hard to convey my gratitude, my joy, the exhilaration of being recognized this way.
I haven’t been this speechless since Force Awakens.
I think Mark’s a nice guy.
He’s enthusiastic about the science fiction genre.
You know, he’s very much like the fans.
So I think that’s why he’s so popular with them is because he’s basically one of them.
I’m very proud of Mark for getting this star.
Mark Hamill is a character that can’t be written.
He is extremely enthusiastic about everything he does.
That’s exactly what I was looking for when I was looking for Luke Skywalker.
We always had a good time working together.
He, Carrie, and I were always comfortable together.
He was a young, enthusiastic, talented actor
when I met him and he’s now a mature man and a gentle, thoughtful, fella with a beard.
Mark is a master of his own experience, his own life, and I’m happy for you, pal.
We are honored today to declare this Mark Hamill Day in Hollywood.
I didn’t know anybody in show business growing up. So to come to today, to fast forward,
to receive an honor that’s so iconic, it’s like an out of body experience.
I want to thank all of you here today.
You are with me through thick and thin and the highs and the lows and everywhere in between.
From Jedi to Joker and back again, it’s been a fantastic ride.
Thank you so much and may the Force be with each and every one of you.
[Joker laugh]
You’re watching The Star Wars show.
The captain says you are a friend. I will not kill you.
Everybody please welcome my friend Brian Herring to the show!
Thank you very much.
You are one of the most beloved characters in Star Wars right now
and people don’t know your face and that’s wild.
There’s a group of guy’s that do BB-8
and I’m the one in the green suit that you see on the DVDs running around in the desert.
Generally looking sweaty and confused.
How do you guys all work together to make BB-8 one beautiful, functioning entity?
Well, its…
BB-8 is great because he’s every tool in the box because J.J. definitely wanted there to be a physical presence on set.
And I was hired on The Force Awakens as a puppeteer consultant.
So I did some very, very early tests with
a puppet just to see if we could get any emotion out of just a ball with half a ball on top.
And J.J. liked it and so then we expanded it and I brought on Dave Chapman and we worked
together to get the performance. And then Matt and Josh developed seven different
versions for The Force Awakens. So there’s a whole load of people working
on it and we just bring it all together to make one performance so people hopefully can’t tell the difference.
From design to performance, he’s such an interesting droid.
I mean, you can get so much emotion out of him.
What was process like figuring out how to translate emotions to something that’s so different.
The trick is not to go too big or to be sensitive to the actors.
When I’m in the green suit and Daisy is talking to BB-8 and I’m about four and a
half feet behind it on the rods, I have to be in the scene but not present in the scene at all.
I’ll be talking as BB-8 to her.
So she’ll be asking it questions and I’ll be [droid noises] on the other end.
[Laughing] Wait, wait, wait, wait, so you deliver BB-8’s lines for him?
Yeah, I do BB-8’s lines.
I have to be careful not to cross over any of the actual production dialogue.
But to give the actors something to work with.
Right, I mean, that makes perfect sense.
It is there for them to look at. It is there for them to talk to.
Yeah, so we go back and forth with it.
It seems like a lot of the performers have kind of natural pairings. Like you and Dave work together a lot.
Yeah, Dave and I tend to be paired up quite a bit.
We did the baby sea cow where Mark comes in and milks it. That was a big one.
And of course Eric and Tom were in the belly of that for several hours.
So they have to be, they have to work very closely together.
So since these creatures and these aliens and these droids they take so many people.
Mhmm.
Can you tell me how that collaboration works?
Oh, exactly. If you take a character, say for instance Admiral Raddus,
and you had Paul Kasey inside the suit wearing the head
and another puppeteer called Patrick Comerford who was doing the dialogue and the animatronics on set
and then Stephen Stanton came in and he would do the voice afterwards.
So that’s a combination of three different performers there.
A lot of the time with things like the Caretakers,
I would be puppeteering one of the faces and the performer inside that Caretaker would have me in their ear directly.
I had an instance with Kiran Shah, who’s a great performer, he played Teedo.
And we shot some stuff with him on Jedah and
as I’m on the top of the set I got my remote control and one of the crew has come past
and said “oh, what are puppeteering there, Brian?”
I said “Oh, I’ve got Kiran down there. This has got his squid face, I do this.
And this has got the eyes.” And I know Kiran can hear every word that I’m saying
So I said “also, if I push this one up, his leg goes up, like this.”
And Kiran without missing a beat just raised his left leg.
[Laughing]
“And this makes it go down”
He put his leg down. “And if I wiggle both, his arms wave.”
And Kiran did this.
And he stopped doing it and the guy went away
saying “oh, you guys are brilliant!”
[Laughing]
And he walked off and I swear he thought I was actually controlling the whole of it.
Well, awesome. Thank you so much for coming by. It’s always a pleasure to chat with you.
Thank you very much, cheers.
Brian’s so delightful. I could talk to him all day long.
I am so jealous you got to hangout with the father of my beautiful, perfect, round, rolling son without me.
I’m so sorry about that.
Yeah.
While you put your burning jealousy aside we want to see your BB-8 impression,
just like Brian did for us on the show.
It can be a voice impression, a dramatic reenactment of a scene, cosplay, you in a green stocking
rolling a ball in your backyard, as long as it’s you pretending to be BB-8,
we want to see it.
Send us your BB-8’s using the hashtag #BBFake and we’ll feature our favorites here next week.
And because it’s the end of the episode, we need to remind you to like the video, subscribe
to the channel, follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, download the Star Wars app,
and go pick up The Last Jedi because it’s available to own right now!
Yes! Thanks for watching, and may the Force be with you.
Dengar rides a tricycle.
His mummy wrappings will get caught in the wheels.
Simili… Simili… Simili…
Blah, blah, blah, blah.
I’m so tired.
You’re so weird.