Monday 8 September 2014

BEHIND THE SCENES: JUST ANOTHER DAY AT THE SKIFF!



Mark Hamill and Peter Mayhew watch as Harrison Ford gets to have a sunbathe whilst conferring with director Richard Marquand. Meanwhile, the alien baddies on Jabba's execution skiff are tended to or get ready for filming. A great image that recently surfaced in J.W. Rinzler's excellent book THE MAKING OF RETURN OF THE JEDI, published by AURUM PRESS.

Meeting the very cool stuntman/actor Julius LeFlore, who played one of the Weequays (seen in this picture turning to face a costume/wardrobe assistant) at the London Film and Comic Con of 12th July 2014, Ian Trussler gathered some more behind the scenes info on the classic sequence. Le Flore confirmed the following stunt actors that appeared on the "Hero" skiff. Beyond the principles, these guards were: Peter Diamond as the Weequay who pushes Luke, Julius LeFlore - other Weequay, Dickey Beer - most fans refer to him as Barada, but actually it's Kithaba, as Barada is on the villain skiff, Paul Weston - Nikto, and Larry Holt - the masked human looking guard. Ian also cleared up the whole "who dived head first into the pit" filming mystery, which proved an interesting story. Apparently, Peter Diamond did NOT do any head-first dives into the pit- only LeFlore did those due to some problems that arose between the British and American stunt coordinators, arising from numerous injuries in the action sequences around the Sarlaac Pit. Le Flore did so on request from Glenn Randall, who directly asked him to do the dives. LeFlore was also the one who landed on Weston's leg, accidentally breaking it. 

Cheers for the info, Ian. LeFlore gave me (Scott Weller) similar BTS details when I also met him at the event, additionally telling me that he worked at ILM for around a month on JEDI's blue screen shooting, playing a Biker Scout. A really nice, laid back guy, LeFlore, in his first major event signing, was disappointed that he didn't get to see any Ewok actors at the LFCC, saying humorously that he had some "history" with them!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Any idea on the second skiff?