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The Blue Milk Tasted Terrible, And Other Fascinating "Star Wars" Stories I Learned From Set Designer Roger Christian

As a massive Star Wars fan since I was a little kid, May 4th is a fun day to celebrate one of the greatest movie series ever made. Roger Christian After reading Roger Christian's excellent book Cinema Alchemist, I reached out to hear more about his work as an Academy Award winning set designer on A New Hope and second unit director on Return of the Jedi and The Phantom Menace. Here is everything I learned from the man who helped bring R2-D2, the Millennium Falcon, the lightsaber (and more!) to life. Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 1. R2-D2 was the first character created for Star Wars: A New Hope. Roger: When we read the script, there was only John Barry, myself, and Les Dilley in a little tiny studio with George [Lucas] and Gary [Kurtz]. There was no money then to make the film. John Barry realized that the two storytellers were R2-D2 and C-3PO. C-3PO we knew we could do; in the film Metropolis, released in 1927, they had a gold robot. We knew we could do better 40 or 50 years later. R2-D2 was a problem, because without him working there wasn't a movie, and radio control was very primitive at the time. It didn't really work very well, despite what the special effects team thought. It was deemed that we better try and see how we could do it. While talking about it, I mentioned "Daleks" [from Dr. Who ] as an example because they had little people in them, moving them around. The original "Daleks" scared the hell out of me when I was a child. And so we decided to make one. George was given strict instructions to cast a 3 foot 8 high, small person. Kenny Baker was perfect, and we realized he was very strong and also very funny. 2. The original R2-D2 prototype was built from marine plywood with Monty Python carpenter Bill Harman. Roger Christian Roger: We decided, okay, let's build one. What do we do? I got my friend, Bill Harman, who was the carpenter who did the Monty Python films. He brought the wood in, which was marine ply, so you could bend it. I've got some Monty Python notepaper scanned from Bill Harman, whereby there's a tiny, rough drawing of R2-D2 on it. That's all we had to work with. We worked out that if we put his feet into the bottom of the two legs, in the two-legged version, we could probably make him walk. And so Bill built that. Then he said, "Well, I can't make the top rod." So I went next door to the old lighting studios and found the junk heap, where everything was being thrown away. I found a lamp top that fitted perfectly. I got it for 10 shillings, and Bill scraped it out, got the stuff out of it, and then that fitted. I got some stuff from one of the old trading posts, as it was called. I grabbed a handful of bits, including lights from a Dakota, and stuck those on to give it a bit more feel. Bill gave me a pen knife and some wood, and I carved the little arms on the front, and he stuck those on. In the junk that I bought, there was also a fighter pilot's harness. Bill said, "Oh, we'll staple that inside!" He did, and then Kenny [Baker] could actually take the weight of the cylinder and the top like a rucksack. George [Lucas] and Gary [Kurtz] came over, and Kenny took three steps forward and then fell over! But that's probably the most auspicious moment on Star Wars, because we knew then, actually, we could make a movie. 3. The blue milk Luke drinks in A New Hope tasted terrible, and was more difficult to make than expected. Roger: I had thought, "Oh, well, that's easy." I got some milk and some blueberries and mixed them up, and, no, it didn't work at all. I don't know why, but it curdled nothing, and it then became kind of a huge problem for me trying to find what would work. It's not like these days where you can go around any health food store and buy so much stuff. I knew that Mark [Hamill] had to drink it, so I couldn't put paint in it. I eventually found a coloring that would work, which made the milk blue. That went out with me to Tunisia the day they filmed in Matmata, at the old hotel that's underground, which we used for his homestead. I had to leave the day before shooting because I had to get Mos Eisley ready, and I forgot that milk is not very popular in Tunisia. I've got a feeling that Joe Dipple, who was the prop master in charge on the floor, probably got camel milk because that's probably all that was available. We were miles out in the mountains where Matmata was, so there wasn't a shop you could just go to. I know that Mark has said in interviews, "Wow, I drank this stuff, and it tasted horrible." Mark did very well with it. But now you could go into L.A. and go to Disneyland and get yourself some blue milk, and now it will be easy. But it actually drove me a bit mad to get that right. 4. The Millennium Falcon was the first set George Lucas ever saw. Roger: The Millennium Falcon was the first set we ever did. John Barry designed it. It's actually very much the shape of one of the big American bombers. If you look where they're looking out in the cockpit, it's got the same roof structure and everything. Everything we did was kind of familiar, and Ralph McQuarrie [concept designer] used to work at Boeing, so everything that he did worked. There was so little money, and the set had to move, so John Barry built it on truck tires and had four big beams. The grips could then move it up and down to give it a bounce. George showed everybody 2001: A Space Odyssey, and he'd employed Harry Lange, who was an art director on 2001. Harry was given the job of doing the Millennium Falcon cockpit. He was doing it all beautifully. I kept going in, and you know, they called me boy because I was so young, with hair down my shoulders and Cuban boots. I'd go in and say to Harry, who was very elegantly dressed, "Harry, you're not going to mess this up!" I think he just thought, " Who is this child coming in here like this?" Eventually, I wore him down, and he said, "Well, I'm done here. It's yours." So I took his seats out. I got some fighter pilot seats, which I thought looked far more rough, and put those in. I stuck in bits and pieces all over it and gave it a kind of a more Millennium Falcon look, which is described as a "piece of junk." I got George [Lucas] down, and this is the first set he ever saw, so we were a little bit nervous. John only had the money to do the set looking out the front and looking in the back — there was no money to do side views properly or anything. It was all very economically worked out. I'd tried to get the jump-into-hyperspace lever working, and I just couldn't get it to, so I'd stuck it in and various things like that. And then George smiled and looked at it, and he saw Star Wars. There it was in front of him. 5. In certain scenes, you can see a pair of dice in the Millennium Falcon that later disappear. (In the upper middle, between Luke and Obi-Wan.) Roger: I always like to personalize sets. Han Solo is a gambler, and I remembered that Harrison Ford put big dice in Ron Howard's car in American Graffiti, and they were very fashionable at the time. So I said, "I think Han Solo is a gambler. We should hang a pair of dice in here. Not only that, it was good luck for you on Graffiti, George. I think it might be good luck for us." George liked the idea, so I got six pairs, the big fluffy ones, like he had, but that just didn't look right. I wound up getting all the way down to little, tiny dice, which George liked, and I hung those in. The DP [Director of Photography] took them out after two shots. So they're in one or two shots in Star Wars, and then they're missing. I don't know if he didn't like it, or they were creating problems for him or something, and they never got put back. J.J. Abrams put the dice back in Force Awakens, but then they cut the scene they were in. So they didn't appear there, but they appeared [in The Last Jedi ] when Luke presents them to Princess Leia, in memory of Han Solo. So there, the dice came through. 6. Roger's "Holy Grail" moment of creating the lightsaber is when he found Graflex handles at a camera shop. 20th Century Fox, Lucasfilm Ltd Roger: I was a huge science fiction and mythology fan. I was very grounded in it. I loved King Arthur growing up, and King Arthur is represented by Excalibur [his mythical sword]. I knew that what George had written, this saber of light, would be the icon of this film — if we could make it work. I literally had no money to make this film with; I never had enough money to make any prop. I couldn't put it through the workshops and have it done, so I relied on found objects. I didn't say to my buyers who got me stuff to work with, "Find me this specific object," I just said, "Find me bits of cameras. Find me bits of old calculators." I went around four airfields and got as much as I could; I could buy jet engines that were sitting in the rain and mountains of old scrap. I bought truckloads, and everything that I saw and found went into my room on the shelves, thinking, "Well, it'll be useful when I have to do something." I had some camera bits from a still camera and a movie camera, and I put together Luke's binoculars. I stuck three bits of camera together, and I thought, "Well, that works. That looks like what I think it should be." But I thought I'd put some lenses on the front, just cheap camera lenses, and it'll make it look like binoculars for the audience to understand what it was. So I went down to the camera shop where we got everything in London, and having got those, I said to the manager, "I gotta make this weapon. It's a kind of science fiction weapon," and he said, "Well, we've got some torches." I said, "No, no, no torches." The special effects boys had made some, and they looked terrible and were rejected by George. The shop rented out Graflex cameras, which were the cameras that the press used from the '40s on. They had a huge quantity of them to rent to period films. The manager said, "Under those shelves, there's a load of boxes. Go pick one out and have a look; see if you can find anything." So it was the first box, literally, and I pulled out this box and opened the lid. There was tissue paper, and inside were three of the Graflex handles. It was the Holy Grail moment for me; it was beyond what I could imagine. There was this beautiful silver handle that looked like a lightsaber, at least what I thought it should look like, and it had a red button, and it had the weight and the shape. So I grabbed all three and raced to my office. An example of a Graflex camera. I will always see a lightsaber now, when I look at this! 7. George Lucas recently wrote a foreword for Roger's autobiography, Cinema Alchemist, reflecting on when he first held the lightsaber. Roger Christian / Via Roger: Everything I did on Star Wars, every bit of junk I found, I changed 10 or 20% to give it a Star Wars look. I had some T-strip left over from the barrel of the Sterling submachine gun I used for making the blasters. I stuck those around and thought, "Well, there's a [lightsaber] handle." I didn't like the clip where it clipped onto the camera itself. I undid that, and there was the bubble strip, and I thought, "Wow, that just fits!" This was all super glue. They were super glued together. And I thought, "Here it is!' I called George's office and said, "You better come over, George; I think I found the lightsaber," and then George held it. George just wrote a foreword for me — they republished Cinema Alchemist [Roger's book], and he never does this. I was so honored. He even put his name on the cover for me. He says, "I still remember to this day when Roger showed me an old camera part and created a lightsaber. But that was probably one of 20 things he did that day!" 8. The lightsaber glow effect used a combination of reflective material on the blades and rotoscoping. Roger: With the lightsaber, that was it, apart from: how do you make a glowing blade? There was virtually no way to do it, and we'd made a decision that the blades shouldn't go through each other. They should hit like samurai swords do because that's what everything was based on. I had done some museum shows and stuff like that with a friend. We used front projection paint and would get a 'glowing' effect on these exhibitions. So I suggested we try that. We went over to the special effects, and the cameraman who took away my dice [who removed the dice from the Millennium Falcon] was there. I suggested how we paint it, and the cameraman then walked out and said, "That won't work, and I'm not having that on my set. You'll ruin the lighting." George overruled him and said, "Try it, Roger." So the special effects drilled out my Graflex handles, put in a little motor with a dowel on it, and it worked! We got a bit of a glow on set, which obviously George augmented later. There was a thing called rotoscoping, where you could paint each frame by hand. If you watch the rehearsals on YouTube, Dave Prowse and Alec Guinness were able to hit into each other so the blades didn't cross. The blades broke a lot. We had to have so many sticks because they're pretty fine and thin. Each lightsaber was carefully chosen, and I don't know why, but that Graflex handle, to me, was the perfect lightsaber. I realized Obi-Wan Kenobi was an old mystic, so I wanted something old and different for him. We made his out of an old Rifle Brigade part. Then Darth Vader's, I kind of handed that over to the special effects team. I thought this should be engineered; it should look more cold. They found one of the Graflex handles that is a little bit more machined, and it had a black end on it, so that became Darth Vader's. I knew the lightsaber would be the icon, but I never dreamt it would become apparently the most iconic prop in the history of cinema — which I put together for about $15. 9. Roger worked as a second unit director on Return of the Jedi. 20th Century Fox, Lucasfilm Ltd / Via Everett Collection Roger: There's a lot of stuff that cannot be scheduled for the first unit. Often, it's stuff like huge fight scenes and chases, and there are also more boring things like hands doing stuff. A ton of that gets shifted over to a second unit. In George's case, there was never enough time because he was actually directing the second unit himself on Return of the Jedi. He decided he wanted to spend more time with the director on the first unit, so they called me up and asked, "What are you doing?" I was waiting at home for Paramount to give me the money to make a film, and they asked, "Well, can you come and take over?" I walked onto the set, and they said, "Listen, we haven't got time to finish this." It was a massive battle scene on one of the destroyers with six cameras rolling. There were pieces of engine that flew through the crashing window with stuntmen. They just said to take that over and get it shot. That's what I had to do. I had to do that whole fight sequence, and I then carried on doing stuff like that. George asked me to work with the Ewoks, and I had 10 days of filming Ewoks partying. There were parts of the scenes that he had shot with some of the main actors, and I got to finish all of those. 10. Roger returned to work as a second unit director on The Phantom Menace. Roger Christian Roger: George is never happy directing. It's not his most loved thing. This was a huge shoot, and they decided to shoot it in just 12 weeks. George divided the film in two, and we had two fully trained units. I had one unit, and George had the other. I literally shot almost half of that movie. Most second unit directors don't quite get that much. But, because I came through as friends with George and I came through the whole process from the first one, I knew the world very clearly. I've always worked very conscientiously on budgets and filming, so I would only shoot exactly what he needed for the cut. The day I arrived there, I looked around and I asked what was about to happen. There was a massive, massive car-sized lump set that they were going to fire into this set. I saw all the camera gear piled up, which is worth a lot of money, all the lenses, the cameras, and everything. I went to the DP and the department, and I asked, "Can we move that equipment back, about to the back of the stage?" They were complaining, obviously, because they were so busy, and I said, "Just do it." This thing overshot and landed right where all that equipment would've been. And Robert Watts [production manager], I remember he came up to me and said, "Roger, you just earned your entire salary today." 11. Roger especially enjoyed working on the Darth Maul fight sequences. Roger Christian Roger: Nick Gillard became the stunt coordinator, and Nick is a genius, and Ray Park [Darth Maul] is a genius — extraordinarily talented. I started out on that in Tunisia, and in the film, there's a fight between Qui-Gon and Darth Maul as the ship's taking off, and Darth Maul leaps off at the last bit. There's an amazing shot where he lands in the desert with a sunset beyond, and it's like a mythic shot. You can see it in the trailer. Originally, he actually landed, and I think in the film, he doesn't land. It's just a static shot. There he's standing, looking at the ship going away. But originally, he actually did a perfect landing. 20th Century Fox, Lucasfilm Ltd The shot of Darth Maul watching the ship take off. Roger Christian Then, on stage [the final Darth Maul fight], George would shoot the reactions with Darth Maul, Qui-Gon, and Obi-Wan, and I was left to shoot all the fighting. That's kind of what a second unit does. I was in heaven just watching this and filming what's going on, especially when you have masters like Nick Gillard [stunt coordinator]. I love that scene when Ray brought out that double-sided lightsaber. It just blew me away — Darth Maul is an iconic character. 12. George Lucas and Roger are still good friends. Roger Christian Roger: I've always kept very closely in touch. If I go to Skywalker Ranch and he's there, I go and have a long lunch with him. You know, we talk about our children and other stuff. So I've kept a friendship, and he wrote this beautiful foreword for me. At the end he said, apart from all that, Roger is still a very good friend. I personally think that George gave the world something to believe in, which the world needs. I deeply connect with the whole mythology. We need myths. We need heroes and all of this, and he did it in a very deep way. It wasn't on the surface. There are so many stories there. There are endless, endless worlds to bring to life. Thank you so much to Roger for sharing so many incredible memories about the making of Star Wars! Check out Roger's website, autobiography (available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble), and social media to learn more about his incredible career.