Journey to Star Wars with Rian Johnson, Mark Hamill and Joanna Robinson
SXSW – Austin Convention Center, March 12, 2018
Article by Stacey Lovett and Photography by Jim Chapin
Joanna Robinson of Vanity Fair moderated a light-hearted panel with Star Wars: The Last Jedi’s director Rian Johnson speaking on the intimate documentary created during the filming of this latest addition to the empire – Jake Kasdan’s The Director & The Jedi – which premiered earlier that day. The panel included a special guest appearance by none other than Luke Skywalker himself to join in on the discussion.
Intimacy became an underlying theme to the session as Johnson professed his love for Star Wars since childhood and that admiration that runs so deep is what moved him to make every shot personal. He spoke on his early career in filmmaking advising the audience that perseverance is key to achieving your dreams, adding the importance to focus and develop your voice and not get discouraged. Johnson also stressed the importance of forming relationships early on, on a level you can truly connect on as he did with Steve Yedlin. That closeness he creates in his teamed filmmaking approaches aptly translates emotion into the pieces, portrayed in Looper as well as the three episodes of Breaking Bad he directed; stepping into a larger vision as he guided the characters into new uncharted territory each week. As myths are made to reflect our most difficult points in life, he had no other reason not to take his take on Star Wars seriously. He had to meet with coming to terms with reconciling a creative vision with the practicality of time and resources while focusing on the heart of the story, but preserving the essence remained the ultimate goal.
Nostalgia also reared its head in both the filmmaking process and the panel from Johnson’s discussion of his emotional personal camera stills documenting the project to the admission of Carrie Fisher’s disconnect with seeing herself on the screen years later – then, Mark Hamill stepped on stage to join in with his own touching accounts of Star Wars past and present, really tying together the film’s empire with the deep reverence its fandom holds for it and this face of now multiple generations. Hamell brought the audience’s elation down to a more grounded view of his time on each set of Star Wars, reliving and relating some special moments to the crowd. The documentary, he said, was bittersweet to watch as he revels in seeing due credit give to behind the scenes yet it was admittedly hard to watch at the same time as it feels like Carrie is still here. The closeness that Luke and Leia share on and off screen was like none other and lent to the connection between the characters. In a prior declaration that “reunions are inherently disappointing” Hamill admitted to having to choose the selfless thing to do for the betterment of the movies in being re-cast for this one as he’d once vowed he’d do no cameos or go beyond the run of the trilogy. He brought the tone back down to one of somber reverence of the past chapters now closed – having to face the disconnect of coming to terms with never working with Harrison Ford again to Carrie’s death as a devastating realization that they were “never getting the band back together again.” That cast connection is what Rian Johnson set out to preserve – to nail the intimacy and make it personal, focusing on contact in moving shots. Having to scale down the bigger picture in a large budget film like this, Johnson had to come to terms with scraping many smaller parts and shaping the bigger picture. These tender interactions – between the characters and of the die-hard fans – continue the emotion that started for so many over four decades ago.
Johnson’s preservation of this is proven both in the documentary and The Last Jedi – or as Hamill personally re-named it: Episode 9: The Last Paycheck.
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RIAN JOHNSON AND MARK HAMILL PHOTO GALLERY
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