38 / STAR WARS INSIDER
INTERVIEW: GARY KURTZBut when Monday came, Kubrick
was still shooting his movie. Kurtz
recalled: “I said, ‘You’re striking
that set, right?’ And he said, ‘Well,
maybe I just need one more day.’
After that day, he said, ‘Okay, I’ll just
get by with what I’ve got,’ but he
wasn’t really happy about it.
“I did give Stanley a tour of The
Empire Strikes Back sets. He told
me the ice in the Hoth sets looked
pretty believable. He asked what we
were going to do about seeing the
characters’ breath. I told him,
‘We’ve given up on that.’”
It transpired that when the crew
moved to Norway to shoot the Hoth
exterior scenes, they discovered
that the only time that you can
actually see breath in cold weather
is between freezing point and 10
degrees Celsius. “If it gets colder
than that, the moisture in the air
just disappears,” Kurtz explained.
“So, if its 20 degrees below, then you
won’t see any breath!”
Filming in Norway caused no
end of production issues, but the
inclement weather lent a reality to“Kershner was an actor’s director.
He worked very hard with our main
people, to add depth to their parts,
and they really responded to that.”
Studios at the same time as
we were making Empire, and
I had a lot of confl ict with
him,” Kurtz said. “There was a
fi re that destroyed one of the
soundstages at Elstree, so we
needed the stage that Kubrick
was using, but he was shooting
way over schedule—more than
four months over—and he
just carried on. When Kubrick
was shooting, he was very
single-minded. He shot and
shot on that set for another
three weeks. I saw him in the
commissary and said, ‘Stanley,
I’ve got to have that stage. I’m
way behind on building our
sets.’ He said, ‘I’ll be fi nished
over the weekend and then
you can have your stage.’”Because of the nature of the
story, Kurtz also wanted The Empire
Strikes Back to have a different
look and feel to that established
by A New Hope’s director of
photography, Gil Taylor. “I looked
at the work of fi ve cameramen,”
Kurtz recalled, “and eventually met
with Peter Suschitzky.” Suschitzky,
whose biggest credit at that point
had been The Rocky Horror Picture
Show (1975), was seen by some as
an odd choice, but Kurtz had been
convinced by his style. “I talked
with Peter about what we were
looking for, and how he worked. He
used a lot of soft light and bounce
light, and I thought that would give
us a non-Hollywood look.”
Soundstage Stress
Working with a new director,
albeit one as experienced as
Irvin Kershner, also brought a
few problems. “Kersh could be
somewhat maddening sometimes,”
Kurtz admitted. “I would set out a
schedule, I would work with him on
the schedule of how much time he
had to shoot this, this, and this...
and then he would change his
mind,” Kurtz laughed.
“You could make the argument
that in a popular series, it doesn’t
have to be a great movie, but when
you’re in the midst of making
it, you want it to be the best it
can possibly be. You can’t get
into the Kubrick mindset, where
everything has to be perfect. That’s
impossible—Kubrick was the only
guy who could really get away
with that.”
Kurtz knew this fi rsthand, as
the legendary director of The
Shining (1980), A Clockwork
Orange (1971) and 2001: A Space
Odyssey (1968) was instrumental
in delaying the fi lming of The
Empire Strikes Back. “Kubrick was
making The Shining at Elstree
01 Gary Kurtz
(left) with
(clockwise)
Carrie Fisher,
Mark Hamill,
Harrison
Ford, and
director Irvin
Kershner.
02 Kurtz
directed
second unit
photography
with the
wampa.
03 The final
scene shot
for Empire
involved
cutting open
a tauntaun.
04 Kurtz (right)
with Mark
Hamill and
Carrie Fisher.01