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Stars lined up to join the Force
Sunday, May 16, 1999 By Ron Weiskind, Post-Gazette Movie Editor
NEW YORK -- A short time ago in a calamity not so very far away, Liam Neeson was a Belfast stage actor seeing "Star Wars" for the first time while real wars were taking place regularly on the city's streets. Catholics and Protestants battled each other as Northern Ireland maintained its longstanding acquaintance with the dark side of the Force.
"There was a lot of unrest and lots of troop activity," he says. And yet, he adds, "It was actually the first time I saw a cinema absolutely packed with people. I'd never seen a movie theater with every seat filled -- all ages, too. And everyone had been transported by this extraordinary film."
Neeson went on to film stardom as Irish martyr Michael Collins, Scottish hero Rob Roy, righteous Gentile Oskar Schindler, persecuted Frenchman Jean Valjean. But now he's entering the realm of legend, as the Jedi knight Qui-Gon Jinn in "Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace."
Despite the passage of time, the attraction of the "Star Wars" movies hasn't changed, he says.
"They're based on epic heroic mythological stories. Every culture has them, and it's essentially the same story that we do recognize in some way, and we feel the need to be told them.
"And also, I think, we are living in such a complex world -- this confusion every which way we turn with our elected leaders, with countries going to war with each other, with refugees and famines -- that we want to see something that makes the world and makes life more palatable, that reminds you of the basic pillars of wisdom -- loyalty, integrity, truth, justice -- which 'Star Wars' stands for."
Neeson acknowledges that he sought out a role in the new film, that working for Lucas had been on his wish list since he'd seen "American Graffiti." He found that acting in a movie dominated by special effects presented unfamiliar challenges.
"There was more technique to work on because of the nature of the film. Some high percentage of it was blue-screen work, which means you're basically acting with nothing there. That was difficult for the first couple of weeks.
"Through it all, I just wanted to be as absolutely simple and concise as I possibly could be. I'm known as an extrovert actor, but I just wanted to be really, really, really minimum amount for maximum effect. Because at the end of the day, in this world of 'Star Wars,' if I'm acting with something with two long ears and is an amphibian, it's the same as talking to you."
That "something" turns out to be a creature called Jar Jar Binks, who acts effectively as the film's comic relief. He's played by Ahmed Best, who was discovered by the producers in the San Francisco production of the dance show "Stomp." The technical demands on Best were even more unusual. Without knowing what it looked like, he created the template for how Jar Jar moves and sounds. Those images were then fed into a computer, which produced the final image.
Best, who is 25 and hails from Brooklyn, was 4 years old when the original "Star Wars" came out. When he saw "Phantom Menace" on screen for the first time, he admits to being distracted. "Harrison Ford was sitting next to me. I was watching 'Star Wars' sitting next to Han Solo."
Jake Lloyd, the 10-year-old actor who plays young Anakin Skywalker (the future Darth Vader), has had his own up-close-and-personal experiences -- with overzealous fans.
His family moved from Calabasas, Calif., to Los Angeles after the first trailer for "Phantom Menace" came out in theaters. Why? "It felt too close with people in tents on our front lawn," Jake says. "I thought they were insane. They were like, 'Oh my God, it's him.' "
He saw the original "Star Wars" when he was 5. His reaction? "Whoa! Darth Vader rules!" He insists he felt that way before he knew he'd play the character as a young boy.
That was about the time he got into acting. "I begged -- my dad [a film-set medic] and my mom [who is starting her own production company] -- and I begged them because I saw Arnold Schwarzenegger in 'Terminator 2.' I wanted to be Arnold." He wound up playing Schwarzenegger's son in "Jingle All the Way."
So Darth Vader was once the spawn of Schwarzenegger? It gets better. Pernilla August, who plays Anakin's mother in "Phantom Menace," also played Swedish director Ingmar Bergman's mother in the biographical drama "The Best Intentions."
Thus, she reasons, "Bergman and Darth Vader have to be brothers."
There's another "brother" in "Phantom Menace": Samuel L. Jackson, who plays Jedi knight Mace Windu. Jackson remembers seeing the original "Star Wars" and wondering where the black people were.
"I said, 'I guess we have our own planet somewhere, and they just haven't stopped by yet.' "
"Phantom Menace" goes in the other direction. "The great thing about this film is there's green people, there's blue people, there's furry people, there's bald people, there's people with tentacles, there's people with wings, people with 12-foot necks, there's stuff crawling. No one ever mentions anybody's differences. They're just kind of there. ... I think that's part of George [Lucas'] message. Nobody's shocked by how anybody looks."
Jackson's reaction to seeing the first "Star Wars"?
"I was thinking that I should have been in it, and that if they made another one I needed to be in that one, and what can my agent do to make that happen. It was, to me, this '70s Errol Flynn swashbuckling movie that I'd always wanted to be a part of, because I'd always wanted to do something that exciting and that adventurous, and here it was. It took me 22 years to figure out how to make that happen, but I got it now."
So does Natalie Portman, who plays Queen Amidala of the planet Naboo, who will figure prominently in Anakin Skywalker's future. Unlike Jackson, though, she thought long and hard about whether to accept the role, which commits her to the next two "Star Wars" films as well.
"It places you in the limelight and pushes you into the public more than any other film," she says. "It's a huge commitment to make as a 14-year-old [she's almost 18], to be deciding that I was going to be doing three films in the next 10 years. It's a huge decision to make at any time in your life."
Not only that, but Portman says she had not seen the prior "Star Wars" films at the time she was offered the role.
And perhaps that proves that even hype has its limits.
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