Carrie Fisher: Forever princess, space grandma, and hutt slayer. Sisters Claire Fisher and Katie Marinello watch and read everything she did through her short life and storied career.
Carried Far Far Away Episode 3: IT'S STAR WARS!
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[00:00:00]
Claire Fisher: Hello and welcome to Carried Far, Far Away, a podcast project where we are going to watch and read everything that Carrie Fisher did during her short life and storied career. I'm Claire Fisher.
Katie Marinello: I'm Katie Marinello. And today we are talking about, I'm so excited. Star Wars,
Claire Fisher: Wars!
Katie Marinello: Star Wars episode four, a new hope, which I believe was at some point called Star Wars.
Claire Fisher: It was called Star Wars, just Star Wars, for a few blessed months in 1977. And ever since, they've been changing the nomenclature on a regular basis.
Katie Marinello: It is kind of amazing. Like, I don't know of any other franchise where like, there's just never a final draft, but I think it, you know, it gives us a lot to dig into and a lot to talk about. So, all right, so this was Carrie Fisher's second movie, as we mentioned last week and it came out in 1977.
Claire Fisher: So this movie was actually slated for [00:01:00] December of 76, but got pushed to May 25th, 1977, which was its original release. It has been re released many times since, as you alluded to. Since we were so shocked Last episode by How Successful Shampoo Was, I did go and look at what else was popular in 1977.
Claire Fisher: Okay, I'll give you a hint though. Star Wars out earned the second place winner by 300%. Like, it earned three times what the second place
Katie Marinello: Wow. Okay.
Claire Fisher: But do you know what the second place box office movie was?
Katie Marinello: In 77 now.
Claire Fisher: Smokey and the Bandit,
Katie Marinello: Oh, well, at least I've heard of that
Claire Fisher: but like it does nowhere near the cultural staying power.
Katie Marinello: now, but that's interesting because I feel like we kind of get this narrative that it was like, like Star Wars was like the underdog, right? Like it was a slow burn, but no, it was like wildly successful.
Claire Fisher: Well, that narrative comes from the fact that like, it was [00:02:00] hard to get it made. Right. And, and this story has been told many times, but basically science fiction had historically been the kind of thing you did with the money that was left over in your couch cushions at the end of your year of making Westerns and crime dramas.
Claire Fisher: Right. So getting Script produced and made into a movie getting things like merchandising tie ins and things like that was like science fiction world had not seen a movie done on this scale
Katie Marinello: right, right.
Claire Fisher: now, of course, to be fair, number three top earning at the box office was Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Claire Fisher: So it's not like George Lucas was the only person who had the idea that science fiction should be.
Katie Marinello: be coming back. Okay. Yeah. Good
Claire Fisher: Number four was Saturday Night Fever, which is weird to think about those being the same year. Number five is A Bridge Too Far, which is a war movie with a very stacked cast. Has some [00:03:00] fans to this day among people who prefer war movies, but I think it's safe to say that no movie that came out in 1977 could possibly have the same type of impact that Star Wars
Katie Marinello: It would have been, it would have been rough to be released that same summer.
Claire Fisher: Yeah, yeah,
Katie Marinello: I'd hate to be the Barbie Heimer of,
Claire Fisher: Exactly.
Katie Marinello: of Star Wars.
Claire Fisher: Barbie would have gone down, right?
Katie Marinello: Oppenheimer would have gone down.
Claire Fisher: Yeah. What else was going on in the world of Hollywood that year? I thought that this was interesting, too. In January, they announced that Christopher Reeve had been cast as Superman.
Katie Marinello: Oh, wow.
Claire Fisher: But in point of fact, the Superman movie was not released until December of 1978, because it, too, had trouble getting to a finished draft.
Claire Fisher: Right.
Katie Marinello: Yes.
Claire Fisher: and at the 77 Oscars, which of course were held several months before Star Wars came out, and we're honoring movies that came out in 76, the big winners were Rocky for Best Picture. And then most of the the acting awards went to [00:04:00] people who were in Network. Have you seen Network?
Katie Marinello: I'm mad as hell. Right.
Claire Fisher: Yeah. I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it
Katie Marinello: Yeah. Yeah. Well, that makes sense because Hollywood loves giving awards to movies about show business. Right.
Claire Fisher: absolutely. Yeah. Although Rocky is an outlier in that respect.
Katie Marinello: I suppose
Claire Fisher: about movies. Yeah.
Katie Marinello: Yeah. Yeah.
Claire Fisher: What else was going on in 77 when I looked this up, and I, and I kid you not, this is what came up as the top things. Jimmy Carter took office. Cambodia and Vietnam went to war.
Katie Marinello: Okay.
Claire Fisher: And a helicopter fell off the roof of the Pan Am building in Manhattan,
Katie Marinello: Jesus.
Claire Fisher: killing five people.
Katie Marinello: What was it doing on the roof of the Pan Am building?
Claire Fisher: Oh, there used to be a helipad on the roof of the Pan Am building.
Katie Marinello: Oh, I guess they had to get rid of that after,
Claire Fisher: After the incident, yes. They haven't used it since. And it's now the MetLife building, of course. Pan Am doesn't even exist anymore.
Katie Marinello: Right. Yeah. So yeah.
Claire Fisher: But, so that happened literally the week before Star Wars came out. So, you know, if you want to put this into Any kind [00:05:00] of timeline that you have that involves those two events,
Katie Marinello: was Harrison Ford involved in said, helicopter crash? Because he's been involved in most of the rest of them.
Claire Fisher: this point. Harrison Ford did not yet have his helicopter license
Katie Marinello: Got it. Got it. As far as I know. Yeah. Okay. So Vietnam and Cambodia were at war. Where were we in terms of. The Vietnam war.
Claire Fisher: the Vietnam War in terms of U. S. involvement had ended in late 73, but Saigon fell in 75. So, this was about, it was a little less than two years after, you know, South Vietnam was fully conquered.
Katie Marinello: Got it. Okay. Makes sense
Claire Fisher: It was Two years before the Iranian Revolution? I believe, though, I would have to look this up. I actually think Star Wars had a theatrical release in Iran.
Katie Marinello: Oh, interesting. Okay.
Claire Fisher: I seem to recall that tidbit, but I would have to go back and look at the Iranian box office for that.
Katie Marinello: Yeah. Okay. So, you know, obviously it's well known that, well, [00:06:00] well known, but people who don't try to say that Star Wars has gone too woke in the 2020s, That obviously Vietnam was a big influence on this story as well as obviously world war two, because he literally named the storm troopers after Nazis.
Claire Fisher: Okay, so that, that's, in the 90s, I was told, I think by Dad, the stormtroopers were named after the Nazis. What I was missing was that by the mid 70s, they were calling the American troops in Vietnam stormtroopers.
Katie Marinello: Oh,
Claire Fisher: to evoke the Nazi comparison.
Katie Marinello: Oh,
Claire Fisher: Yeah. And that, that was a slur used against, people serving in Vietnam because of the, among other things, massacres of civilians and widespread sexual violence that, the American forces were being accused of.
Katie Marinello: Okay. So it does mean that when people cosplay as stormtroopers, I still, to this day, I find it a little disturbing, but
Claire Fisher: explicit parallels with, you know, the Vietnamese conflict [00:07:00] really come in Return of the Jedi, but I mean, certainly George Lucas, who had only escaped being drafted to fight in Vietnam because he had a medical exemption certainly that was on his mind. And so, I mean, we know many, many movies made in the late seventies and throughout the eighties were very obsessed with the legacy of the Vietnam War.
Claire Fisher: So it is not surprising to learn that. There was a little of that in George Lucas's mind when he was writing this political movie.
Katie Marinello: I would say so.
Katie Marinello: So I did find it interesting. I pulled this up on Disney plus where it, resides now since the incident and the synopsis was a young farm boy intercepts a distress call from the captive Princess Leia. That was it. That was the whole, synopsis.
Katie Marinello: And I found that so interesting because obviously when you and I were talking about discussing this, it it's a little intimidating, right? Because this movie has been, I think it's fair to say, dissected, dissected. Within an inch of it's like, if we had to do a DNA test on this movie, there would be nothing left to dissect.
Claire Fisher: Yeah, this,
Katie Marinello: There [00:08:00] would be no more material.
Claire Fisher: the discussion has been done rather to death.
Katie Marinello: But we decided obviously that we were going to focus on Carrie because she was in like two seconds of the last movie, but this is her move from a certain point of view, from a certain point of view, this is her movie and I found it. Interesting that it was a that the synopsis, she's the only named character.
Claire Fisher: I mean, she is given equal billing. Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, and Harrison Ford have equal billing in the end credits, which they don't have equal screen time but they were seen as equally important to the plot and to the series, yes.
Katie Marinello: Okay. So let's talk about everybody else before we get back to Carrie Fisher. So there are a lot of characters in the book. This movie and obviously as the series goes on, there are many, many, many, many, many more characters and they've all got various conflicting backstories and you know, [00:09:00] names and, and novels and spinoffs.
Katie Marinello: And then
Claire Fisher: specials.
Katie Marinello: we don't speak of that. And then
Claire Fisher: Are you kidding? It's our next episode.
Katie Marinello: is our next episode, I know. Ha ha ha so so, I just, I tried to go with like the, the top few, but I didn't want to leave out any of the maybe more major in this movie, but not major throughout the rest of their career. Anyway, so, Mark Hamill.
Katie Marinello: Obviously Luke Skywalker by far his most well known role. And luckily he's kept a pretty good sense of humor about that over the years. After return of the Jedi, he went to Broadway to kind of distinguish himself from his Luke Skywalker role. And then his most famous role outside of Star Wars is as a voice actor for the Joker.
Katie Marinello: In the DC Comics. Over the years, he said that he and Carrie truly had a brother sister relationship. Sometimes they were speaking. Sometimes they were not speaking. But recently just a [00:10:00] couple of weeks ago, he wrote for her birthday. For those wondering how she would vote in this election, one of the last of many arguments we had was who hated the orange atrocity more and after half an hour, we had to agree to disagree.
Katie Marinello: Hashtag, carry on forever. So, I do appreciate that their relationship seems to have healed towards the end and that he always, always keeps her kind of her memory kind of alive in his social media presence. Both of them, I think really benefited from social media, from reconnecting with fans via, you know, Instagram and Twitter. Harrison Ford, on the other hand probably the most famous actor to come out of the series. I've
Claire Fisher: nothing
Katie Marinello: Nothing before this probably. And so he's often credited as being one of the top grossing actors all the time, but I did look it up and he's somewhere in the middle. He, but he has made 4. 23 billion in the box office.
Katie Marinello: And I'll take, you know, that's, that's acceptable. Do you want to guess who's right [00:11:00] above him and who's right below him? Hold on. 1, 2,
Claire Fisher: getting a, wait, what number, what rank on the total list is he? Is he like number eight? Is he number six? Is
Katie Marinello: 3, 4. 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. He's 10th.
Claire Fisher: he's 10th who's right above him? Samuel Jackson.
Katie Marinello: Sammy Jackson is actually number one.
Claire Fisher: Oh, okay.
Katie Marinello: 5.85 billion.
Claire Fisher: Reeves on that top 10?
Katie Marinello: He is not.
Claire Fisher: Okay. Cause I've heard he has a record , like most paid to play a single character, but I didn't know if over his whole career, all right. Tell us who's number nine.
Katie Marinello: Okay. Number nine is Chris Hemsworth, and number 11 is Chris evans. So Harrison Ford is a sandwich between the two. Chrises. Chris Pratt is number three. So the Chrises.
Claire Fisher: What? No love for Chris Pine.
Katie Marinello: No love for Chris Prine on this particular list. Was happy to see [00:12:00] Scarlett Johansson and Zoe Zeldana also outrank Harrison Ford.
Claire Fisher: Well, yeah, because they're both in the MCU, and the MCU has out earned everything ever made.
Claire Fisher: Yeah. And I think Harrison, like, he's probably dropped to 10th within the last 15 years, as the MCU has exploded. He
Katie Marinello: Absolutely. Number two was Robert Downey Jr. Right. Robert Downey Jr. Chris Pratt, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, outlier, obviously Zoe Zaldana, Tom Cruise. I'm Bradley Cooper and Chris Hemsworth. So Tom Cruise. Tom Hanks, Harrison Ford are the ones that didn't come from Marvel money,
Katie Marinello: so he is best known for obviously playing Indiana Jones, starring in Blade Runner portraying Jack Ryan in the spy thriller films.
Katie Marinello: Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger, and with all that, he's only received one Oscar nomination, which seems wrong. Do you know what it's for?
Claire Fisher: Air Force One?
Katie Marinello: It was not for Air Force One. I would have guessed that as well. [00:13:00] Nope. It's called Witness. He was a detective.
Claire Fisher: that one!
Katie Marinello: detective who envelops himself in the Amish community in the crime thriller Witness.
Katie Marinello: You was nominated for Best Actor. Has not won. Unfortunately, just before she died, Carrie Fisher published her diaries from the making of this particular film. And she makes it clear that Harrison Ford was fairly predatory towards her during that time. She describes the relationship as an affair, but he was 33 and married and she was 19 and drunk.
Katie Marinello: I had a crush on him for 30 years after we first saw this movie. And I'm sure we'll talk about that, but this story gave me an ick. And what made me really sad is that she wrote that she was still uncomfortable around him all these years later in 2016. So. You know, you think about a movie as opposed to TV show, you don't really expect to be with those people for the rest of your life, you know, [00:14:00] and I think about if I had to spend all this time with people I worked with when I was 19 years old, like, what would those relationships be like?
Katie Marinello: Because I couldn't even tell you who I like was closest with at work when I was 19. know where I was working when I was 19, you know, so.
Claire Fisher: when you were 19. For
Katie Marinello: not someone I would want to have, like, reunions with for the rest of my life,
Claire Fisher: the rest of my life, yeah. I mean, I think So, of the people who are in this cast, and I know we're not up to him yet, the one who had already been famous was Alec Guinness.
Katie Marinello: we're going to get there.
Claire Fisher: And he definitely did not want
Katie Marinello: So he's actually,
Claire Fisher: remembered for.
Katie Marinello: so he's actually next.
Claire Fisher: Okay?
Katie Marinello: Sir Alec Innes is probably the most famous actor going into the movie, right? He is in nine of the hundred most influential British movies, according to a list that was written in 1999. And he was nominated for best supporting actor for this role which is Yes, yes.
Katie Marinello: I had no idea. And he won for best actor, for playing [00:15:00] Colonel Nicholson in the bridge on the river Qua. So
Claire Fisher: 25 years
Katie Marinello: yes. He'd been nominated many, many times prior to this. So he obviously was in the best like negotiating position famously George Lucas.
Katie Marinello: Kind of negotiated for back end, right?
Claire Fisher: Merchandising
Katie Marinello: merchandising and, and back end film proceeds. And so Alec Guinness also got, there's all this stuff in his biography about what percentage he actually got, but
Katie Marinello: He says basically it allowed him to live. In the, as he said, modest way that he that he was used to for the rest of his life and only have to take roles that he actually wanted to take. One imagines that he was probably doing that prior to Star Wars, but he was He was a fan of the, so when the film first aired, when he first saw the film, he wrote this in his diary.
Katie Marinello: So he wasn't showboating for anyone. He said, it was a pretty staggering film as spectacle and technically brilliant, exciting, very noisy and warm hearted. The battle scenes at the end go on for five [00:16:00] minutes too long. I feel, and some of the dialogue is excruciating and much of it lost in noise, but it remains a vivid experience.
Katie Marinello: And to be fair, I said the same thing to you when I watched it the most recent time, right? The battle, the battle scene at the end goes on for five minutes too long.
Claire Fisher: I will forever and always say, let us give our thanks to Marsha Lucas, wherever she is, because it was even longer in the original script, and she edited it and made it the iconic battle scene that it now is, which goes on only five minutes too long,
Katie Marinello: point.
Claire Fisher: I've read the original novelization, Which was based on an earlier version of the script and it that last few chapters is just dull.
Katie Marinello: Yeah, he there's some like back and forth about whether he was upset that Obi Wan dies at the first, oh sorry, spoilers Obi Wan dies at the end of the first film. He says that he actually suggested it to Lucas and that he didn't want to tell him that he just couldn't keep saying all that dialogue, but of course he continued to do so as a ghost for the rest of [00:17:00] the time.
Katie Marinello: He died in 2000, so solid chance he saw the re release. I don't know if maybe some of the remastering. Some of that dialogue out of the noise, but I mean, he and Harrison Ford both have that. I have done, hundreds of films. Please stop asking me about this one that I did. 45 years ago or whatever.
Claire Fisher: Yeah
Claire Fisher: even a possibly apocryphal story of which he he asked a fan who was asking for his autograph I'll give you the autograph if you promise never to watch Star Wars again.
Katie Marinello: it's tough, right? And now we're getting into the the actors who are really only known for Star Wars and who have had various relationships with that. For example, Peter Cushing OBE. Are
Claire Fisher: he's not only known for Star Wars. He was in like a million movies before
Katie Marinello: Okay. Peter Cushing who was an actor for over six decades and included appearances in more than a hundred films. Other than Grand Moff Tarkin, he was mostly known as a lead in the Hammer production horror films for the [00:18:00] 1950s to the 1970s. And he died in 1994, which means he never even saw the remakes of his most famous role.
Katie Marinello: And I'm sorry, I'm sure that the horror films were lovely, but this is his most famous role. Oh.
Claire Fisher: I think the Doctor Who fans will fight you
Katie Marinello: Oh, Dr. Who, oh, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, I,
Claire Fisher: Whovians.
Katie Marinello: huge, huge blind spot on my part, I do apologize. I should maybe do this research not 20 minutes before we start. Okay.
Claire Fisher: All right. So Peter Cushing, God rest his soul. And who else?
Katie Marinello: Anthony Daniels who, who is listed on Wikipedia as an English actor and mime artist. And he's the only actor to have either appeared or been involved with all theatrical films in the series, as well as many of their spin offs, and he seems not at all upset that he is C3P0N. Pretty much just C3PO.
Katie Marinello: Kenneth George Baker who played R2 D2 was an English actor, comedian, and musician. He was three foot [00:19:00] eight and his adulthood, he was in John Lester's theatrical troupe of little people. Apparently some lady came up to him on the street and offered to put him in this theatrical troupe of little people.
Katie Marinello: He was in the circus for a brief time. Then he learned to ice skate and was in a lot of ice shows. And he was in a successful comedy act called the Minitones. And he actually nearly turned down Star Wars because they had reached the final on the talent show, Opportunity Knocks, he and Jack Purvis.
Katie Marinello: And then he was R2D2 in six of the Star Wars films, but he was often listed as a consultant once technology made it so he didn't actually have to be in the teeny tiny suit. On the other end of the spectrum, Peter Mayhew had gigantism. And so he, his peak height was seven feet, three inches, and he portrayed Chewbacca until 2015 in the force awakens and he retired due to health issues, but was listed as a Chewbacca consultant on the next film before he died.
Katie Marinello: And he was honored as a, with a [00:20:00] lifetime achievement award in the MTV film awards. In 1997 as Chewbacca,
Claire Fisher: Carrie Fisher presented the medal, right?
Katie Marinello: because he needed one finally. Yes. Yes.
Claire Fisher: because she, he doesn't get one at
Katie Marinello: doesn't get one at the end. Yeah. David Prouse was a bodybuilder and the physical body of Darth Vader. He was also known in the UK for being the green cross, man. Which was a superhero who taught children and young people road safety. Yes, yes, he, that's what he was best known for other than his bodybuilding career, which obviously he did quite well in he probably of these guys have the most complicated relationship with the role he wanted to be the voice.
Katie Marinello: He wanted to be the face. They kept. You know, subbing in stunt doubles for him. He was actually accused of leaking the news of being Luke's father when actually he was just a really good guesser because he said it in like 1978. Like several months after, way before Empire Strikes Back had been written.
Katie Marinello: And then in [00:21:00] 2010, he was actually banned by George Lucas for, from attending Star Wars fan conventions. And allegedly Lucas gave no reason other than he had burnt too many bridges between Lucasfilm and himself. So kind of a sad.
Claire Fisher: yeah.
Katie Marinello: There's a documentary about that, which is interesting. I apologize for saying we were only looking at actors who were only known for Star Wars because the next one is obviously James Earl Jones.
Katie Marinello: God rest his soul. Recently gone quote unquote too soon at the age of 90 he gained international fame for, so I didn't know whether he was already really well known but. He had been in Dr. Strangelove and then he'd been a theater star, but he gained his international fame for his role as the voice of Darth Vader and went on to star in everything for the next 60 years or so.
Katie Marinello: He is an EGOT winner. And a member of the American theater hall of fame. His was an interesting relationship [00:22:00] with the franchise because he wasn't on set. He didn't actually meet Carrie Fisher until they both get started on the big bang theory. He actually had chosen not to put his name on the first two movies, which is a bold move for somebody who wasn't yet famous.
Katie Marinello: But by the third one, I guess it had become famous enough. He was like, all right, I'll put my name on it. And in 2002 he received the Kennedy center honors and president George W. Bush said. People say that the voice of the president is the most easily recognized voice in America. Well, I'm not going to make that claim in the presence of James Earl Jones.
Claire Fisher: And you and I, you and I saw him live in a play.
Katie Marinello: Oh yeah, he played the grandfather.
Claire Fisher: And you can't take it with
Katie Marinello: You can't take it with you. Yeah. Yeah. He was, he was very good. Philip Mortimer Brown played uncle Owen. He's pretty much only known for that because he was blacklisted by the house un American activities committee for being a founded member of the actor's laboratory theater and was forced to move to the UK.
Katie Marinello: So this was actually his, like, Come back after being banished basically for [00:23:00] some number of years. And he eventually did move back to the U S and basically signed autographs as uncle Owen for the rest of his life, very short Wikipedia, which always makes me sad. On the other hand, Sheila, Mary Frazier.
Katie Marinello: Who played Amperoo appeared in more than 50 films and TV shows during her career and had a wide range of roles on the stage. And besides Amperoo, she is best known as Jean Ashton, the embattled mother of a wartime family in Liverpool in the television serial, a family at war, which was British. So we've never seen it.
Claire Fisher: as if we've never watched British
Katie Marinello: No, that's true. We have obviously I've never seen Dr. Who. I'm really sorry about that, Peter. I loved you in Rogue One.
Claire Fisher: I loved your ghost in Rogue One. Okay, that's your comfort.
Katie Marinello: He's actually quite good in this movie. And I I'm always fascinated by the I guess hierarchy on the Death Star.
Claire Fisher: Yeah, I was just thinking this morning, like, I don't really remember if I was ever afraid of Darth Vader, but I was very scared of Grand Moff
Katie Marinello: [00:24:00] He's very scary. It's true.
Claire Fisher: Is like, Oh, you're far too trusting as he's, you know, gleefully blowing up her home planet in front of her, right? Like that.
Katie Marinello: so let's get to the synopsis. Shall we
Claire Fisher: Okay, okay, okay.
Katie Marinello: Leia is a princess, senator, and rebel spy fighting against the fascistic government of her galaxy. Her ship is intercepted while trying to deliver plans for a superweapon to an old friend of her father's, Obi Wan Kenobi. She is taken into custody by Darth Vader, who surprises her father, but nobody cares about that.
Katie Marinello: She is tortured by him in an attempt to discover where the Rebellion is headquartered, but she resists. She is then forced to watch her entire planet be destroyed by a new, the new superweapon. Everyone she knows and loves is literally killed in front of her. Her whole world is literally blown up. I just feel like we need to dwell on that just a little bit.
Katie Marinello: She is resting in her cell knowing that her death warrant has been signed when two men show up claiming to be there to rescue her. She is immediately snarky which seems unnecessary but deserved. She does take charge and make it clear that she really only needed them to open the door. After escaping she immediately jumps into leadership mode and helps the team prepare for battle.
Katie Marinello: Her new friends blow up the Death Star and she gives two thirds of them a medal and has [00:25:00] probably the best smile in the galaxy.
Claire Fisher: alright. Good work. Okay.
Katie Marinello: How many seconds was that?
Claire Fisher: that was actually 50, even, so.
Katie Marinello: was pretty good! Given that I spent, you know, five of them on They blow up her entire planet!
Claire Fisher: They do blow up her entire planet.
Katie Marinello: Can I just say that the amount of time that I just gave it is as much time as it's given. In the grand scheme of this movie.
Claire Fisher: was a movie that wanted to skip past a lot of trauma. Like, they never mention Aunt Brew and Uncle Owen, like, ever again. It
Katie Marinello: We will talk about this in several years when we get to The Force Awakens and Et cetera, can't remember the name of the eighth movie right now.
Claire Fisher: Skywalker, and, no, The Last Jedi.
Katie Marinello: yeah, see,
Claire Fisher: Okay. All right. We will be talking about this eventually,
Katie Marinello: so when, when we talk about nephews and uncles and we never mentioned uncle Owen again, it's just mind blowing, but anyway,
Claire Fisher: a [00:26:00] lot in the extended universe. We'll, we'll, we'll turn to that for cover.
Katie Marinello: True, true. So yeah.
Claire Fisher: So I will say a couple of thoughts on the trivia around this character of Princess Leia, who, who is, as we've said, not at all typical for women in movies in the seventies. And in fact, in 1977, like there's an interview where Carrie Fisher speaks to BBC and says, What appealed to her when she got the script was George Lucas didn't want a damsel in distress, didn't want a typical princess.
Claire Fisher: He wanted a fighter, someone who was independent,
Katie Marinello: Mm hmm.
Claire Fisher: It's an interesting interview because she also says that like, she did She personally did the only stunt that Leia is involved in, where they have to swing across that chasm. It's like, she was she was in the harness with Mark Hamill, that was not a body double, right? She also mentions, and I think this is really an important lens to see it through, is that she put it as, quote, George loves films and that's what this film is about, is movies.
Katie Marinello: hmm. Mm
Claire Fisher: She said every scene is [00:27:00] Reminiscent of a scene we've loved before. So she mentioned, like, you know, homages to The Wizard of Oz, to Robin Hood, to High Noon.
Claire Fisher: The Swing Across the Chasm, I think, is from an Errol Flynn film. You know, Han Solo's character arc is kind of based on what Humphrey Bogart goes through in Casablanca. You know, deciding to take a stand in politics, even though he's usually only in it for himself. Right. But she did say that George Lucas, for all that he loves movies did not give a lot of direction to the actors, said it
Katie Marinello: Just more and
Claire Fisher: Do faster, more intense, faster, more intense. And so, you know Alec Guinness said, you know, the dialogue gets lost a little and Harrison Ford famously said, you can type this stuff, but I can't say it. You know, she felt like getting from the page to the screen and this franchise was kind of the poster child for making it up as you go along.
Claire Fisher: Right. I mean, the very fact that Alec Guinness apparently had to suggest that his character die while they were filming the movie goes to show.
Katie Marinello: Right. What was the original plan there?
Claire Fisher: [00:28:00] Exactly.
Claire Fisher: In 2014, Carrie Fisher told Time Out, quote, I am Leia and Leia is me. We've overlapped each other because my life has been so cartoony or superhero like. By this age, it would be ridiculous if I had a problem with it. Unquote. And also, a word on the infamous hairstyle, the cinnamon buns glued to her ears.
Katie Marinello: Which we both look like we have on right now.
Claire Fisher: Famously lampooned, yes, in Spaceballs it really is just her headphones, right?
Katie Marinello: Yes. Mm.
Claire Fisher: George Lucas said he saw that hairstyle in a book about Mexican revolutionaries of the early 1900s. However, researchers have pointed out Mexican revolutionaries didn't wear that hairstyle, Hopi women did. Like a Native American tribe from what's now Arizona and, and Mexico, right?
Claire Fisher: So it's possible he had seen photos of Native American hairstyles in a book about Mexican history and kind of like merged the two in his head. But yeah, the, the influence appears to be that that's actually based on a Native American [00:29:00] hairstyle.
Katie Marinello: And to be fair, her hair throughout the series just gets more and more fabulous.
Claire Fisher: her hair is an
Katie Marinello: I mean, and I will never, you know, put that down because yeah, she doesn't look great when she's a prisoner, right. But over the course of the series, her hair just gets better and better. So talking about making it up as you go along, I was struck this.
Katie Marinello: So we have mentioned before that we watched this movie a few, a few A
Claire Fisher: Many
Katie Marinello: times, like if, if we're not at a hundred, I'd be shocked.
Claire Fisher: This is probably, if we had to rank the movies we've seen the most in our lives, it probably goes Apollo 13, Return of the Jedi, Star Wars A New Hope.
Katie Marinello: maybe I think, I think actually Apollo 13 would be third, but yeah. , so I was struck this time about how we are very much just dropped in the middle of the story. So I know that he didn't really have it planned out to have this full like nine [00:30:00] movie.
Katie Marinello: Franchise, whatever, and he talked about it later as if he had, and there's all this like mythology around it, but like, we are dropped in the middle of a story, even the opening scroll is like, the rebels are in crisis or something, like, what, the who, the what,
Claire Fisher: actually wrote in here, you know, it's a movie that's very much noted for how quickly it established its universe, but as I put it in my notes and the heck with you if you didn't catch any of that, because we're not gonna explain, we're not gonna slow down, and compare it even to other action movies of the 70s, this is an extremely fast paced movie.
Claire Fisher: Like, I, I was actually,
Katie Marinello: a little long,
Claire Fisher: well, it's long by modern standards, but it's extremely fast paced. I mean, I, I was taking notes of just like, when Leia's on screen, because I, I was like, looking for the story beats and like, you know, the first 10 minutes is her story, right? The first 10 minutes is a princess hiding something in a robot, opening fire on stormtroopers, [00:31:00] getting stunned, getting captured, lying to Darth Vader.
Claire Fisher: And then she's off screen for a full half hour while they, while they establish everything
Katie Marinello: else about the entire
Claire Fisher: about the entire universe, including, you know, what type of economy is going on with droid piracy and like, where do these people drink when they want to drink, you know, and like, are there weird hermits? And is there a religion?
Claire Fisher: All of that is established in like 30 minutes, right? And then, and then we see the princess again because Vader is coming in to torture her. With a needle. And, and I was so scared as a kid. Dad told us there was only truth serum, but I mean, still, still pretty scary.
Katie Marinello: Still, yeah.
Claire Fisher: And then again, for a woman in sci-fi in the seventies to resist torture, very unusual
Katie Marinello: And, and not be shown, right? We don't see that scene. It's not used as like, torture porn or whatever.
Claire Fisher: absolutely not. And I mean, if you look at some of the things that happened to the bond girls in the sixties and seventies, you know, that selling tickets based [00:32:00] on people wanting to witness scenes in which women were in peril. Was a thing, right?
Claire Fisher: But in this case, the torture is off screen, and she resists it.
Claire Fisher: Like, the next we see is that, like, oh, they don't know how to get her
Katie Marinello: To talk,
Claire Fisher: yeah. So, I mean, even though she's not on screen a whole lot, even in, like, the first 45 minutes to one hour, she's not on the screen that much. What we get is, this is one fierce Princess, right? Like, this is the princess who opened fire on the stormtroopers who were in the process of taking her ship over, right?
Claire Fisher: This is the princess who's standing up to the two bad guys of the movie, Tarkin and Darth Vader. She insults them both to their faces.
Katie Marinello: Repeatedly. . And I also wrote down like the first time we see her, she has a gun. And I think for, again, thinking 1970 is thinking there was no princess Leia for girls before princess Leia, right. To see her immediately taking charge. Right? Like I'm not going down without a fight. I'm not going to tell [00:33:00] you anything.
Katie Marinello: I'm going to continue to stick to my cover story. There's not any screaming. There's not any like, you know, tears, like anything, even, I mean, even when her entire world is blown up, literally you know, she does, Bag on behalf of her people, because that's what a Senator should do, but she's not
Claire Fisher: should do,
Katie Marinello: right.
Claire Fisher: Yeah.
Katie Marinello: and just a person, right. A native of that, that land.
Claire Fisher: I mean, I will note that like, she wasn't alone in being a tough woman on screen in 1977 specifically, because this was the year, same year as the Bond movie, The Spy Who Loved Me, which was the first time James Bond had a Bond girl be his equal. Like, she's explicitly presented as she is him, but on the Soviet side. And, like, to the point that they're introduced in parallel scenes where, like, he's in bed with the Bond girl, DuJour, she's in bed with a man, and then Bond girl DuJour and the agent are both killed in the ensuing action [00:34:00] sequence, right? So, like, the parallelism is there. So, like, This was starting to come out in the movies more, and then it was like a year later we got Alien, you know So like, this was beginning to be a thing, that woman action heroes could be a thing, but you know, it was not yet the standard for sci fi.
Katie Marinello: And to be named princess, right. I mean, that was very intentional. It's never explained what she's a princess of how she's a princess and a Senator until 30 years later in the. Prequels, which even then it's not really explained, right? So,
Claire Fisher: Yeah, you have to turn to the extended universe for it, like, Oh, Princess is an elected position on her planet, and it means she serves in the Imperial Senate, which is mentioned, but not shown in this movie, and it's mentioned in the context of it's just been dissolved, so apparently it's not really.
Claire Fisher: Working that
Katie Marinello: off screen dissolved, right? So yeah, to purposely pick that princess title and make her this warrior[00:35:00]
Claire Fisher: It's a
Katie Marinello: refuses to be rescued. And again, I don't know that she needed to be a snarky as she was when she was being rescued.
Claire Fisher: Alright, so let's talk about the rescue scene, cause I, I, I hadn't really thought about it this way before, but I noticed like, when she's being rescued, Luke Skywalker, whom she's never seen before in her life, bursts through the door of her cell, in the uniform of the people who have been torturing her, right?
Claire Fisher: And her first lines are, aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper,
Katie Marinello: Yes, which is just mind blowing, like, are you trying to invite more torture? I'm confused.
Claire Fisher: Well, she's probably trying to keep people on their toes, right? Throw them off balance, right? And then, as soon as they're out in the hallway, and and she realizes just how harebrained this scheme to rescue her really was, because there's only one way out of here, and they've managed to alert people to their presence, so When she shouts when she grabs the gun and shouts, Somebody has to save our skins and blows a hole in the wall.
Claire Fisher: Her next line is, Into the garbage chute, flyboy. She just met Han Solo. She [00:36:00] doesn't know he's actually a
Katie Marinello: Right?
Claire Fisher: She just throws out Flyboy as a thing you can tell your inept rescuer.
Katie Marinello: they even, like, Like, I know Luke Skywalker says, I'm Luke Skywalker, I'm here to rescue you. I don't think she even knows Han Solo's name.
Claire Fisher: know Han Solo's name. She doesn't know Chewbacca's name. She calls him the big walking carpet,
Katie Marinello: right. I don't know who you are or where you've come from, but from now on you follow my lead. And so, okay, so, we grew up in the girl power era, where there's this idea that strong means mean.
Katie Marinello: Kind of sometimes, you know, or like strong me. So like, I think when we were little, it didn't really like, I'm like, girl, like nobody else was coming, right? Like nobody else was coming to rescue you. So I'm not saying she needed to be grateful because they were. I mean, objectively, Han Solo should not have fired at the intercom when.
Katie Marinello: Somebody asked for his identification numbers. That is objectively the wrong way to [00:37:00] get someone out safely. Right. And she'd been through a lot and she had just seen her entire world blown up. So if we're going to get into the psychology of it, she's handling everything quite well.
Claire Fisher: Even when they're like, threatening to blow up Alderaan, like, her reaction is to try to divert them to a different target by lying. She
Katie Marinello: Right. Right.
Claire Fisher: the place of the rebel base, and, and that is telling as well, because I mean, public service announcement here, but if you're ever being tortured torturing people makes them lie.
Claire Fisher: So if you're ever being tortured just lie, right? Like that, nobody has any right to expect that you'll tell the truth under torture, right?
Katie Marinello: Right.
Claire Fisher: But she does stay calm, cool, and collected throughout. But she gets mean, because if they're not here to actually get her out of here, then they may as well not have come, right?
Katie Marinello: They're getting her killed, which I mean, the end result was going to be the same.
Katie Marinello: It's not like she herself never makes an error in judgment, right? Like jumping into the garbage chute, not with any way to get out of it. And then, I mean, they do it again. If [00:38:00] Luke Skywalker had not been there with an intercom to somebody who had access to the computers, as Han Sola said, they would all be a lot skinnier,
Claire Fisher: yeah.
Katie Marinello: is a very weird line.
Claire Fisher: But even as, even as that's happening, you know, she's saying, well, don't just stand there,
Katie Marinello: Like, let's do something. Yeah.
Claire Fisher: this amount of agency for a captured princess, even though she's mean, right? This amount of agency and this amount of refusal to play nice was a lot for a captured princess in In a movie.
Katie Marinello: Think it still would be to this day,
Claire Fisher: certainly for the times and even today, and it certainly made an impression on little girls like us in the 90s, right, that we weren't seeing as much of that even 20 years later, right? And then I noticed that, like, once they escaped the garbage chute and they're, like, getting their clothes back on, Han says, Well, if we can just avoid any more female advice, we'll be fine.
Claire Fisher: It's like, well, nobody had any better ideas. What was your plan?
Katie Marinello: Also, like weird [00:39:00] sexism for, you know, a long time ago and it's a galaxy far, far away where there's like one woman in the entire universe. So and and we will talk about that because As kick ass as she is, I looked up women speaking in Star Wars, and other than her in the entire original trilogy, there's a YouTube video that has every other woman who speaks, it's a minute and 23 seconds long.
Katie Marinello: So, out of, out of
Claire Fisher: Bru, and In Return of the Jedi, there's one, right?
Katie Marinello: the yeah, the woman who speaks at the end of, about the second Death Star. That's pretty much it. So not great
Claire Fisher: Yeah.
Katie Marinello: let's see, we talked about this a little bit with the last movie. Sometimes men write women and they could use a woman's perspective. Now let's talk about Marshal Lucas. Tell us about Marsha Lucas.
Katie Marinello: Mm-Hmm.
Claire Fisher: so Marsha Lucas was George Lucas first wife. She ended up leaving him in the mid 80s and not having very much career in the arts since then. However, [00:40:00] she and George made American Graffiti together, which was their first big hit in 1973, and they made the original Star Wars trilogy together.
Claire Fisher: She was his editor. He wrote things, he directed things occasionally, but she was the editor. And she won an Oscar for her editing work on, I believe it was Vampire Strikes Back, right?
Katie Marinello: I believe so. Yeah. Mm-Hmm?
Claire Fisher: So, of the two of them, she's the one who's had the most. An Oscar. Worth noting. However, most of what they had worked on before Star Wars had been extremely low budget.
Claire Fisher: You know, including, for example, American Graffiti, which was done quite cheaply. And was a massive hit. According to the cinematographer Gilbert Taylor, who was most famous for doing A Hard Day's Night, Before he shot a new
Katie Marinello: Mm-Hmm.
Claire Fisher: and Dr. Strangelove he said George Lucas really had no idea how to delegate responsibility because he had never had a full crew on a movie until he made Star Wars, which means his entire career leading [00:41:00] up to that point.
Claire Fisher: And keep in mind that he was already a multimillionaire, very popular director for his work on THX 1138 and American graffiti. Everything he'd done had really been him and Marsha.
Katie Marinello: Mm-Hmm.
Claire Fisher: Throwing something together and making it work, right? So, Marshall Lucas contributions to this movie specifically, most famously include, If you read the novelization, which was based on an earlier version of the script, The Death Star is blown up when it is just minding its own business.
Claire Fisher: It is not on its way to attack Yavin. It is not established that they even know where Yavin is, right? Although, you know, the line about them tracking the Millennium Falcon is there. So, like, okay, they'll find their way to Yavin sometime in the next six months, I'm sure. When they're not so busy, right? And also, the Runs at, like, the trench runs of biplanes up the canyons, [00:42:00] which is not at all what's supposed to be happening, but that's what's happening.
Claire Fisher: Go, like, three or four loops. Of people running up that trench and getting shot, run up that trench and get shot to the point that reading it, you're kind of like, okay, stop trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results,
Katie Marinello: Right,
Claire Fisher: right? To the point that like, when I was reading the novelization, by the time Big Starklighter dies, I was kind of like, Well, we knew that was going to happen, right?
Claire Fisher: And not only because we've seen the movie, but also because we know literally anything about dogfighting tactics, right?
Katie Marinello: Mm-Hmm.
Claire Fisher: So, Marcia Lucas's contributions to this movie were actually adding a sense of tension and suspense to the entire final hour. Of the film. Right? And it is interesting, Princess Leia speaks very little in the final half hour.
Claire Fisher: She is mostly just watching on a screen, anxiously seeing if Luke's gonna pull this off. Luke and the other pilots are gonna pull this off as the Death [00:43:00] Star is advancing to kill her. But the fact that the Death Star is on its way to kill her is only established in voiceover. that wasn't in the script, that was done in editing,
Katie Marinello: Mm-Hmm.
Claire Fisher: And shortening the Death Star runs so that you see that people are being shot, but you don't need a full backstory on each of them. Tightening up also the first act, there was originally a little bit more depth given to Luke's, like, life on Tatooine.
Katie Marinello: So I do remember that from, I don't think it was like the official novelization, but it was like a picture book that we had of, the first movie. And there's this whole thing about his friends and, and going out to Tashi station or whatever, you know which is obviously mentioned.
Katie Marinello: It's interesting again, being dropped in the middle of a story where he runs into that guy who he's supposed to see in the first scene, right in the rebellion. And we're just like, Oh, I guess he's really good friends with this guy.
Claire Fisher: yeah, I mean, and if you [00:44:00] read the novelization, yeah, the backstory amounts to he's really good friends with this guy, and this guy's run away to join the rebellion. Like, that, that's, that's pretty much what it is.
Katie Marinello: Well, did he run away to join the rebellion or did he run away to join the empire? Because. Luke is trying to go join the empire.
Claire Fisher: in the novelization, and I am such a nerd for even knowing this,
Katie Marinello: Yeah. Uhhuh.
Claire Fisher: the imperial flight Academy, or whatever. The Academy, as Luke calls it trains both fighter pilots and civilian freight pilots, and
Katie Marinello: to go be a, a civilian,
Claire Fisher: he and Biggs had grown up thinking that they would someday become pilots because they had been told that Anakin Skywalker had been the navigator on a spice freighter, and they were going to go work on freighters.
Claire Fisher: The scene that got cut is Biggs has just graduated from the flight academy. He has his commission and he's come home to celebrate, but then he tells Luke, I'm going to jump ship. I'm going to join the rebellion. And Luke says, you can't do that. Like you have to play by [00:45:00] the rules. You have to stick with it.
Claire Fisher: And throwaway political line where Biggs says it's a matter of time before they come for Tatooine and then you and your aunt and uncle are just going to be working in one of their slave camps anyway, like, because Luke's argument is you can't jump ship, what would your family do if you didn't have an honest job?
Claire Fisher: And he's like, well, what's going to happen to my family anyway? And I'm going to jump ship. So then when they reunite in before the Battle of Yavin, it's a reaffirmation, like, hey, we both survived, and we've both made it off , that planet. And then Biggs death immediately afterwards is like, a little sadder?
Claire Fisher: It's not much sadder, because like, if that's your good friend who like, you just reunited with, and he died, then that's an explanation enough the heck with you if you didn't catch that, right? We are not going to slow down, and we are not going to explain it. On with the show, right?
Katie Marinello: Mm-Hmm.
Claire Fisher: So anyway, back to the point that, Editing, really, is what holds the second half of this movie together.
Claire Fisher: Because after they get off the Death Star, after Obi Wan dies, after they get off the Death Star, then it's Luke's [00:46:00] story, right? Leia does less, although she does have an interesting moment, you know, we said to be strong you have to be mean, there's an interesting moment where she chooses to comfort Luke, this kid who grew up in a desert and just, you know, Went to space yesterday and is freezing, right?
Claire Fisher: She brings him a blanket when he's crying because Ben has died. Ben
Katie Marinello: Yes. If we wanna be fair to Luke, he did just lose his parents. Right? So he, he never knew his biological parents. He was raised by his aunt and uncle. He loses them. Horrifically, I mean, truly, that is a scary scene when there's like the skeletons of, of aunt brew and uncle Owen. And knowing that he had like just left, right?
Katie Marinello: Like he would have been there. And then he watches his you know, derisively I've heard it talked about as his karate teacher, but
Claire Fisher: He watches his father's friend. His
Katie Marinello: friend who had promised him this life, right? This [00:47:00] training and all this be struck down. It's very scary. There's also,
Claire Fisher: I know people are I know what you're gonna say, because people are always so snarky.
Katie Marinello: I know, I know I don't want to compare traumas. It's not a trauma Olympics. She's very much like we need to move. Right. She says, there's no time for sorrows. We must move on. And, and so it's, it's two different ways of handling. Trauma because she has just seen her entire planet blown up. I think it's just an interesting contrast.
Claire Fisher: Defend that moment, and I will to the end, because when you've been through A horrible trauma, and then you see someone else is hurting. In many cases, it makes you feel better if you do for them what you wish someone had done for you.
Katie Marinello: yeah, you're absolutely
Katie Marinello: there was nobody to come for her when it happened. Of course, in the timeline of this movie, I think it happened like yesterday,
Claire Fisher: It happened days earlier, and so, these are two people who have had the worst week of their lives. Everything she worked for in the Senate, everyone she knew and loved, her [00:48:00] home, is gone. His poem is gone, his mentor who convinced him to go on this adventure is gone, the pilot who got them out of that Death Star is leaving and he has one friend in the entire universe, in the form of Biggs, who's about to die.
Claire Fisher: And, His second friend in the entire universe is Princess Leia, whom he just met, and whose first comment was on his height. So like, these are two people who are quite alone in the universe.
Katie Marinello: Yes, you're right.
Claire Fisher: There is a moment where they comfort each other, in a way, and that
Katie Marinello: think it's a beautiful moment and then she walks away and I'm like, dear Lord, can she just be a person? Cause they immediately start talking about what do you think of her?
Claire Fisher: Yes, so they briefly comfort each other, then they have to fight again, She deduces that they're probably being tracked, but doesn't really do anything with that information. Then Han and Luke start talking about her as a sex object, which is inevitable because it was a movie in the [00:49:00] 70s.
Katie Marinello: Right.
Claire Fisher: the action heroines, quote unquote, that we had were mainly the Bond girls. year after Star Wars came out, they made a movie in which one of the Bond girls names is Dr. Goodhead.
Katie Marinello: Yeah, so she walks out of the room and I'm just like, you know, it's such a, It's so far with the exception of, of a couple of, let me say this again. Han Solo is a Jack , let's you know, and he's supposed to be right. He's supposed to be the scoundrel. He's supposed to be the swag.
Katie Marinello: Swag. Swag, swag,
Claire Fisher: Smuggler.
Katie Marinello: smuggler, swag with all the swag. But
Claire Fisher: Don't you mean swagger? How
Katie Marinello: what All the swagger. There we go. Swag,
Claire Fisher: about we start this again?
Katie Marinello: Hansel is a jackass. He is supposed to be, he's supposed to be the scoundrel. He's supposed to be the one with all the swagger and clearly has this tragic backstory that also barely, barely acknowledged, [00:50:00] right?
Katie Marinello: But for the most part, she is treated as one of the. Adventurers throughout the story. So it's disheartening to me again, looking at it from a 2020 point of view, right? Looking at it from a 2020 point of view, not looking at it as a girl in the 1970s not being a James Bond fan to myself.
Katie Marinello: And it's disheartening that when she walks out of the room, their first thing is, well, what do you think of her? Then again, As I've mentioned, she's the only woman in the entire galaxy. So I guess they really have to worry about which one of them is going to end up with her because that's the only way that these things can go.
Claire Fisher: Yeah. And I will say, that's, that is a sin of the editors, because Luke had a, a female friend in the scene that got cut from Back on Tatooine,
Katie Marinello: So there would have been another woman. Yeah.
Claire Fisher: there are women in this universe.
Katie Marinello: so anyway, so it's, it's obviously like not, well, no, I am going to say it is, it is significant because [00:51:00] she is equal billing. She's an equal character in the movie, but the way she's treated by the fandom. For. The rest of her earthly and unearthly days is not equal is not with respect is very much a, well, who do you want her to end up with Luke or Han?
Katie Marinello: I mean really up until the end, because it's the last movie where she's revealed to be his sister. So , that's, it was, it was like, well, who's she, what, you know, who's she going to end up with? Who's it going to be? And then obviously there's much more Objectification in, in the last movie.
Katie Marinello: But yeah, I just think it's interesting. I think this became a very male centric fandom and I'm not sure that they always got the message that they were supposed to get from her.
Claire Fisher: That's fair. The question is of course, how much of that was. baked in and how much of that might be a case of fans will see what they want to see because certainly you know, I, as I'm fond of [00:52:00] reminding people, Star Trek was sponsored by a bra company in its original run. So like that was made for a female audience and screw anybody who says otherwise, right? This may have been aimed more at little boys than at little girls, although I think they were trying to be at least somewhat inclusive, right? Little tidbits that were dropped, for example, in Carrie Fisher's one woman show where she says, like, that they asked her to lose weight That, and in her memoirs saying that like, she wasn't allowed to wear a bra under the costume,
Katie Marinello: Cause there's no underwear in space.
Claire Fisher: in space.
Claire Fisher: So they, they taped her breasts down instead, which is way more painful while also probably not improving the quality of the image all that much, right? And the joke that she was told of about George Lucas, I hope I slept with you to get the job, because if not, who was that guy? The fact that Harrison Ford apparently took advantage of her when she, she was 19 years old.
Claire Fisher: Although she does describe that as consensual, it's worth pointing out.[00:53:00]
Katie Marinello: No, she doesn't describe it as consensual. She describes it as an affair.
Claire Fisher: and as an
Katie Marinello: But the way that she explains what happened, I do think this is important. The way that she describes what happens is she was drunk. There were a group of men taking her somewhere and he intervened and then took her somewhere and they slept together.
Katie Marinello: They continued to sleep together over the course of the production, but I don't think she's very like, Oh, I was so empowered in that moment. You know,
Claire Fisher: Right. So it goes to show, some of this is baked in. That this movie was made by men. And although they went out They, the movie was produced and directed and written and shot by men. It was edited by a woman. So even though there was an effort to make Leia an equal character in universe, it would be difficult to argue that Carrie Fisher was treated equally in universe.
Claire Fisher: The world the power and agency that she had as a [00:54:00] 19 year old actress in the 70s was less than the power and agency that the actors had, right?
Katie Marinello: If you think about, she's the only woman in the universe, she was probably the only woman on set most days, you know, cause Marsha wasn't going to every, you know, Tunisian, but neither was she, but you know what I mean? Like she wasn't, she was probably the only woman on set quite unless like her makeup artist or like her, her costume person might've been so yeah.
Claire Fisher: And you and I have often We've been ourselves the only woman in the room working in, you know male dominated industries or just hanging out in male dominated spaces, for one reason or another. And the power dynamics there can be very damaging even when the men make an effort to be nice,
Katie Marinello: And you, you often have to pretend to be okay with things that you're not.
Claire Fisher: So couple that with the fact that she was already beginning to show symptoms of what would eventually be diagnosed as a severe [00:55:00] case of bipolar disorder and was abusing substances Starting down the road of addiction that would eventually kill her. I think it's interesting to think that she was a teenager.
Claire Fisher: She was an adult, but she was a teenager. was not in a very privileged or powerful position, and yet turned in a performance of a woman who's incredibly powerful and definitely is the author of her own life, right? And does not take anybody's scuff, right? Anybody's, right? Regardless of the circumstances.
Claire Fisher: So I mean, honestly, the character is almost more powerful for knowing the milieu in which it was made.
Katie Marinello: absolutely. And again, as she said, it's almost impossible to separate the character from Carrie Fisher herself. And she, I think probably had many feelings about that over the years, but eventually, Found it amusing in her one woman show, she says, unless you've never seen Star Wars, in which case, why are you here? So, you know, as, as we track this [00:56:00] character, because we're going to track her for the next let's see, this is 77 at, yeah, four decades. It's going to be interesting to see how that does parallel her life, even more so than maybe some of her books, which are literally autobiographical.
Claire Fisher: Well, but no autobiography is ever an unbiased account.
Katie Marinello: well, her novels are not autobiographies, but they are autobiographical.
Claire Fisher: I'm saying some of them have an unreliable narrator. So
Katie Marinello: of them. I mean, I can't, I can't wait to read Postcards on the Edge because it is so interesting and so hard to follow because the narrators are so unreliable.
Claire Fisher: With that in mind, let's talk our next steps, because did we decide on including TV movies or not including TV movies? Cause are we going to face the Star Wars holiday special for a second time in our lives?
Katie Marinello: yeah, it's it's perfect timing. Cause it's almost Christmas.
Claire Fisher: Well, there's two other made for TV movies in between
Katie Marinello: Oh, tell me.
Claire Fisher: Comeback Little [00:57:00] Sheba.
Katie Marinello: Okay. I think we agreed that we would do anything she was credited in. That's not. Like one episode of television.
Claire Fisher: I am going to reserve judgment until I find out how easy it is to find Come Back Little Sheba, whatever that is. 1977.
Katie Marinello: It is available in its entirety on YouTube.
Claire Fisher: Okay. Then we can watch that.
Katie Marinello: Remote recovering alcoholic and his dowdy unambitious wife face a personal crisis when they take in an attractive lodger.
Claire Fisher: Ooh, I wonder who she plays. Okay. So next up will in fact be Comeback Little Sheba. At my back, I always hear the Winged Chariot coming near, which is the Star Wars Holiday Special, which was famously quickly made because A New Hope had been such a hit and they wanted to put something out before they were able to bring the Empire Strikes Back to screen.[00:58:00]
Claire Fisher: But first we'll do Comeback Little Sheba and then we'll worry about it. Ah,
Katie Marinello: Should we rank her based on Hut Slayers?
Claire Fisher: yes.
Claire Fisher: Well, of course. . This is the character who slays the Hutt. She hasn't slain the Hutt yet, but we know that Hutt is going down when he comes.
Katie Marinello: I would give her a solid 4 out of 5 Hut Slayers on this particular movie.
Claire Fisher: four out of five Hutt slayers.
Katie Marinello: Because she doesn't actually slay a hut in this one.
Claire Fisher: enough.
Katie Marinello: Yes. But the head slaying is coming, like you said, and I do think it's a strong showing for the first time we see this character. If this were the only time we see this character, I think she still would be iconic.
Katie Marinello: And yeah, it only goes up from here. Except for the holiday special.
Claire Fisher: Will tell the story the time you force me to watch it the next time you force me to watch it Because it is a it is a doozy
Katie Marinello: Yeah, I, I don't know. I bet I'll find a way to defend it.
Claire Fisher: I don't think you [00:59:00] will But for now princess leia Our Space Grandma, the queen of our hearts, is four out of five Hutzlayers, until we meet again in a
Katie Marinello: three years. Well, in a holiday special, and then in three years for Empire Strikes Back.
Claire Fisher: Yes.
Katie Marinello: But for now
Claire Fisher: people find you if they want to talk more about Hutzlaying with you?
Katie Marinello: Claire, if more people want to talk to you about the comparing and contrasting of Princess Leia with various Bond villains and Bond girls, where can they find you?
Claire Fisher: run the blog known as the Dead Fictional Girlfriends Report, deadfictionalgirlfriendsreport. com, or as one of my students recently said, wow, that's a URL, Miss Fisher.
Claire Fisher: What did we agree on for a sign off? I forget.
Katie Marinello: if my life wasn't funny
Claire Fisher: Oh, okay.
Claire Fisher: Just remember in the immortal words of Carrie Fisher, if my life wasn't funny, it would just be true.
Katie Marinello: and that's unacceptable,
Katie Marinello: Thanks [01:00:00] for listening to another episode of Carried Far, Far Away. This podcast is hosted, produced, edited, re-edited, obsessed over, and loved by Katie Marinello and Claire Fisher. You can follow the show on Facebook and Instagram at Carried Away Pod. You can email us at awaycarriedpod@gmail.com. You can follow Claire at Dead Fictional Girlfriends and Katie at Katiedaway. All clips used in this podcast are done so under the protection of fair use. Have a wonderful week and may the force be with you.
Katie Marinello: And now our space, grandma wisdom of the week.
Carrie Fisher: Now keep in mind, I am a PEZ dispenser and I'm in the abnormal psychology textbook. Who says you can't have it all?