With an enviable, awards-laden CV that includes One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest, The Conversation, Waiting to Exhale and That Thing You Do, editor Richard Chew talks to The Hollywood Reporter about his incredible career which includes his Oscar-winning work on 1977’s Star Wars.
“It was a walk in the dark, really. When you think of it, it was fabricated in the pre-digital age. Our editing team was up in San Rafael, which is where the initial Lucasfilm headquarters and Industrial Light & Magic were based in a warehouse. Marcia Lucas and Paul Hirsch and myself were working on different sections of the film. George assigned to me the sequence where Han and Luke and Princess Leia, along with Chewie, jump onto the Millennium Falcon and try to escape, and they have to shoot the TIE fighters. Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford were in separate shots against a greenscreen. Princess Leia and Chewbacca are looking out the cockpit windows, and that’s also greenscreen. They’re reacting to directions from George from offscreen on which way to turn and which way to look up. When George asked me to put it together, I had to follow the cues of the direction. It was a pretty crazy exercise for me, having come off straight dramatic films.
It was my third “movie movie” — it was a job, it wasn’t trying to create something iconic. I remember after one screening, we were looking at a couple of reels that included the robots. I’m a much more literal guy than George, and George has this fantastic mind. After the screening, I remember making some crack to George, like, “Well, you know, if it doesn’t work out, you could also market some toys based on what these guys look like.”
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