Thanks, everybody! The speech went great and people seemed amused by the trivia tidbits. I appreciate all your effort! 
Aww, so that means we’re done? 
Man…and I was gonna say that Oola (the Twi’lek dancer in Jedi) loses her top as she falls into the Rancor pit.
:eek:
::In a Soup Nazi Voice:: No, no trivia for you! The thread is ov-ah!
Ummm, Ord Mandell has already been mentioned, right? No, I guess not. Well, if it hasn’t, according to IMDB, “Encounter at Ord Mandell” was released on 33 1/3 LP, starring the voices of the original cast. It is an extremely rare item. In the Hoth command center, in The Empire Strikes Back Han, Han references “That bounty hunter we ran into on Ord Mandell”.
I also have seen that the Matrix movies have charector from the video games in them, and more of the story to The Blair Witch Project is expanded in the games. Was this the first example of even the least little reference to the story being in an alternate medium in a movie?
In fact, they suggested that Chewie should wear pants.
The original title of the first film was The Star Wars, and the hero was named Luke Starkiller (maybe because he destroys the Death Star at the end? That’s my hypothesis). The studio wasn’t too fond of this name, as it sounded like a battle between celebrities (“People might think it’s a movie about Clint Eastwood fighting Steve McQueen.”) In a compromise, one word was removed from the title: “The.”* A 20th Century-Fox promotional booklet entitled “26 for '76” featured the following synopsis (apparently, the film was originally to have been released in 1976):
An early unusued poster went for the nostalgia pitch with the following slogan: "First, Buck Rogers. Then, Flash Gordon. Now, Luke Skywalker. Star Wars- it’ll make you feel like a kid again." Although Lucas was inspired by the space serials of the 1930s, this slogan was dropped since they planned to attract real kids as well and not just their parents.
The first set of Star Wars action figures was released in 1978. Originally, Kenner had planned to have them in stores by Christmastime, but couldn’t make it. Toy stores were sent $10 “Early Bird Certificate Packages” in their place. It included stickers, a stand for all 12 figures, and a mail-in coupon good for four figures- Luke, Leia, R2, and Chewie- that would be shipped as soon as they were made, as well as a fictional membership card for the Star Wars Space Club signed by Luke. The promo material describes Leia’s unique hairdo as “Star Puffs” (still a registered trademark of Hasbro to this day). Little did they know this would be the start of an action figure line that continues to this day. The other eight original figures were C-3PO, Han, Darth Vader, Obi-Wan, a Jawa, a Tusken Raider (Sandperson), a Stormtrooper, and the Death Squad Commander.*
Just because it’s weird, here’s the full text of a certificate from a licensed product…unsual since it’s from a pair of Underoos. Apparently, becoming a Jedi knight is as easy as putting on Underwear that’s Fun To Wear™!*
*Source: Star Wars Scrapbook by Stephen Sansweet. ©1998 Lucasfilm Ltd. Sansweet is also the author of a book on the action figure line.
I can’t quote chapter and verse to you, but a friend of mine reports that in the first movie, there’s a scene on (in?) the Death Star where some evil guy or other is rattling on about Darth’s fascinaton with this old religion, and just generally unwisely criticizing him, and the Big Guy cuts him off just as he’s saying the words “hidden fortress.” You know, as if to say, “Ix-nay on the Urosawa-Kay.”
My friend cites this as a rare example of wit in Lucas’s oeuvre.
“Your sad devotion to that ancient religion has not helped you conjure up the stolen plans, or given you the clairvoyance to locate the Rebels’ hidden fortre…” Ack! Gurgle… Choke!
Yeah, that’s a good’n. I never thought of it as a “Don’t mention The Hidden Fortress!” joke though, just as a sly reference. It’s funnier if you look at it that way.
Not exactly. When Jabba is pulling her closer by the chain around her neck, one breast falls out right before an edit. So it’s not AS she falls but a minute before.
I believe Fox’s marketing department were worried that folks would think the movie was about aging starlets duking it out, a la Joan Crawford or something. Supposedly, after Star Wars became a big cross-demographic success, all those marketing studies were burned. 
No, actually what he said was that some of the dialogue is silly, he finds it extremely difficult working with green/blue screen, and that the title for Episode II was stupid. Other than that, he’s always careful to point out that he’s ENJOYED working on Star Wars.
I’ve heard different versions of Guinness-some say he wanted old Ben to be killed, others say he was really pissed when he found out about it.
Archive Guy-d’oh, you’re right. Although technically, that would also have been correct, “from a certain point of view.” (Although I believe that Hamill knew the real story.)
Oh, how about this one-supposedly, Carrie Fisher was high on cocaine while making Empire.
Some more trivia…
The sound FX man, Ben Burtt, got the sound for the stormtroopers’ lasers by tapping a wrench against a guy wire for a telephone pole.
He was looking for the sound of the Millenium Falcon’s engine when he checked into a motel room. The AC was malfunctioning and about to give out. He recorded it and that is the hum of the Falcon’s engines.
I don’t know if “Easter eggs” count, but a good example of them in Ep 1 are that ET’s race is in the galactic senate, and the the “pod” from 2001 is in the junkyard at Watto’s shop.
The name of the furry creatures in Jedi is never heard in the movie. Not once will you hear the word Ewok in the original cut of Jedi.
The Imperial March is the most famous piece of music from the Star Wars series, but it didn’t appear in the soundtrack until Empire. It wasn’t in the first (or fourth, as it were) at all.
…aside from the Opening Crawl music, I think you meant to say…
From what I remember of reading Guinness’s diary, he always liked the movie (“I thought it was a charming little film” or some such), but was appalled at the marketing blitz and obsessive fans for a fluff piece. I don’t think he asked for his character to be killed; the original movie was shot out of sequence so it wouldn’t have mattered, plus Guinness appeared in the two sequels as well.
Jeremy Bulloch was hired to do Boba Fett because he was a body-language instructor, and could convey menacingly w/o dialogue.
Ray Park, the martial artist who played Darth Maul, had such a slight, squeaky voice that they had to hire another actor (Peter Serafinowicz) to do his voice. Ray Park was also the character “Toad” in X-Men.
Nathan Hamill, Mark Hamill’s son, had an uncredited turn in TPM as a pod-race spectator and Naboo palace guard.
The internal layout of the Millenium Falcon, as seen onscreen, can’t possibly fit into the ship, as seen on-screen.
The Millenium Falcon cockpit set didn’t have any kind of “steering wheel” controls, and Harrison Ford demanded them. IIRC, this was for TESB.
There’s some dispute about that. Lucas has claimed in the past that he realized during filming that keeping Kenobi alive but wounded after his duel with Darth meant the other heroes would be spending time dragging Ben around like so much (heh) deadweight; he decided to kill Ben to resolve the problem and add some emotional weight to the movie. So if Alec Guinness was looking for a way out of doing sequels, he must have been silently thrilled when Lucas approached him about the plot change…
Guinness’ appearance in Empire was done solely as a favor for Lucas, who was stressing out at the time from the pressure of making a sequel. Guinness says he doesn’t recall if he even took any money from his Empire cameo, and was occasionally spotted looking awkward at sharing screen time with a Muppet.
(Anecdotes courtesty of Empire Building by Garry Jenkins)
Some semantic trivia: Jabba means “frog” in several Slavic languages.
Lucas’s original choice for the role of Obi Wan was Toshiro Mifune (star of several Akira Kurosawa samurai classics- best known English language performance was probably Toranaga [the Tokugawa character] in Shogun)
James Earl Jones received $7,000 for his work in STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE. (I’m guessing he received that per word for SITH.)
Partly. Like many of the sound effects, it’s a composite. The dominant sound of the Falcon’s engines is the P-51 Mustang.
(In a similar vein, an important part of the sound of a TIE fighter fly-by is the sound of wheels on wet highway.)
A little old school Star Wars gold excerpted from my comic/mag collection-- The World of Star Wars (A Compendium of Fact and Fantasy from Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back), 1981, Gatefold Magazine
(Kind of a fluff piece but still amusing!)
There’s also a really cool article/story in here about Storm Troopers that I will try to post when I get a chance. It is titled SOLDIERS OF THE EMPIRE!
By the way, I want to thank all y’all. I went to see the movie Friday night, and they were having a trivia contest to determine who got to go in first to sit down.
Needless to say, between what I already knew, and this thread, I came in first.