Over the last 40-plus years, Star Wars — not only the 1977 original but its endless spawn — has been so thoroughly picked apart that it’s a safe bet there’s nothing left to surprise us. Well, maybe except this one thing: As caught by The A.V. Club, Blue Milk consumer Mark Hamill took to Twitter Saturday to share footage of his first screen test alongside Harrison Ford, who is not on social media.
My screen-test for @starwars w/ Harrison on the 1st day I ever met him. Neither 1 of us had read the script at this point, only this 1 scene. I asked George what kind of movie it was-"Let's just do it, we'll talk about that later" We never did talk about it later-we just did it. https://t.co/e7cHWoLmJk
— Mark Hamill (@MarkHamill) July 28, 2019
The tweet was actually a re-tweet, of a post by CNBC contributor Carl Quintanilla, who had found and disseminated black-and-white video footage of the two thespians, in street clothes, reading a rough draft of what would be the scene where the Millennium Falcon encounters the remains of Alderaan, Leia’s home planet.
Hamill filled in some details. For one, it was the first time they two had met. For another, they hadn’t yet read the script. For another, they had no idea going on what even kind of movie it was. “I asked George [Lucas] what kind of movie it was,” Hamill wrote. According to him, Lucas simply told them, “Let’s just do it, we’ll talk about that later.” And then they did. “We never did talk about it later-we just did it.”
And yet Ford, at least, seems to have grasped the role already. Whereas Hamill’s early take on Luke Skywalker is kind of shy, a bit lost, and very much in the larval stage, Ford has Han Solo’s jaded, sarcastic, flustered mien down pat. Still, it’s touching to see the very young Hamill — whose first on-screen this would be, while Ford at this point was already an industry regular — look so green, so unassured, even while reading for a kid who goes from zero to hero.
(Via The A.V. Club)