In this episode, we take an unparalleled look into the revolutionary career of Roger Christian set decorator, the legendary prop master who invented the “used future aesthetic” that defined modern science fiction film. Christian, a true Cinema Alchemist, recounts his journey from a difficult, unsupportive English upbringing to pioneering the visual language of blockbusters like George Lucas’s Star Wars: A New Hope and Ridley Scott’s Alien. This is the definitive story. His ingenuity and commitment to low-budget practical effects changed cinema history. His singular vision redefined the genre. Celebrate retro classics with listen to us if you want to live—a tribute to the creators who shaped sci-fi’s golden age
Roger Christian Set Decorator: From Rebel to Design Pioneer
Roger Christian’s career path was highly unconventional. He “hated” school and rebelled against his parents’ demands. His true calling sparked while watching Dr. Zhivago, where he had an “out of body experience” in the cinema. This intense reaction immediately set his direction. Later, he stumbled onto a James Bond set at Pinewood Studios. Consequently, he began an apprenticeship under John Box, the Oscar-winning designer of Lawrence of Arabia. Box taught him to master aging sets and props. Christian immediately applied this skill, spending weeks aging his first prop: Fagin’s box. Following this success, his career quickly accelerated. He became set decorator on Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), managing all props and weapons himself. This resourcefulness became his signature method and helped establish Roger Christian set decorator as a film design pioneer.
Inventing the Used Future Aesthetic in Star Wars
In the mid-1970s, science fiction movies were largely forgotten. George Lucas arrived in Britain to film Star Wars with a minimal budget. Therefore, Lucas demanded a radical aesthetic shift—a “spaghetti Western in space” with a “greasy and dripping oil” look. This vision rejected the plastic sets of earlier sci-fi.
Christian was one of the earliest hires and crucial in creating the used future aesthetic. Initially, the art department budget was only $200,000. Thus, Roger Christian set decorator relied entirely on resourceful filmmaking techniques. He made the Millennium Falcon prop look like “junk,” covering sets with crashed airplane parts and scrap. The physical R2-D2 prop came from a scrap yard, built with wood and Dakota plane reading lights. Moreover, the classic lightsaber hilt design cost “nothing”—he made it from a 1940s camera flash handle. In the end, the small team’s commitment to Lucas’s vision succeeded. This visual style, led by Roger Christian set decorator, profoundly redefined the blockbuster.
Alien Set Decoration: Mastery of Claustrophobic Design
Star Wars’ massive success led directly to Ridley Scott’s Alien. Scott hired Roger Christian set decorator immediately to build the Nostromo. Scott wanted a real, claustrophobic “space truck.” Christian used the same scrap-metal methodology for Alien, buying full Rolls Royce jet engines for only 50 pounds, breaking them down, and using the metal to line corridor walls. This created a terrifying, industrial atmosphere. Even after the studio cut $600,000 from the budget, Christian and his team secretly built complex sets anyway. His unwavering commitment defined the film’s look and cemented his legacy as a master of world-building.
Full Transcript Outline (Quick Jumps)
08:48 Crafting the Film: The Role of the Set Decorator
14:28 Star Wars: The Birth of a Legend
24:42 The Hero’s Journey: Mythology in Star Wars
31:38 The Impact of Star Wars on Generations
39:32 Alien: A New Frontier in Sci-Fi
48:46 The Iconic Lightsaber: A Legacy of Design
59:57 Friendship and Legacy with George Lucas
01:04:53 Scottish Roots and Filmmaking Journey
01:09:01 The Art of Set Design and Construction
FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Callum (00:01.022)
And hello everyone, welcome back to OH!CAST, your island gateway to all things geek. I’m your host tonight, Callum, and joining me again, we’ve, she hasn’t run away from the last show, Rhiannon, how are you doing?
I’m so excited about this evening.
Wait. Tonight’s a very special guest and our first for-rocast, our very first Oscar winner to ever appear on the show. So a great honour there. A well-known name in the film and geek industry.
right, sorry, I’m repeating somewhere. That’s it, sorry, I muted that. That’s my fault. I’ve messed up the intro there, but that could be edited. So, our special guest tonight, well-known legend in the film industry, our first ever Oscar winner to appear on OH!CAST, responsible for the lightsaber R2D2.
working some of the iconic films of our generation. So can you please welcome to the show, Roger Cushing, how are you doing? Pleasure to have you.
Roger (01:05.582)
I am good, thank you. Good to be with you.
It’s fantastic. We’re so honored to have you. Like all things, we’ll just start at the beginning. So how did you get started in this whole film business? And did you have the film bug from an early age?
No, I didn’t. didn’t know what I wanted to do. I was in school hating it. At that time in England, we were beaten and punished for doing anything outside the normal. That was the old British way. And no, came about like I got into art school. I drove to London with a friend of mine and we saw Dr. Zhivago in the big cinema. First time I’d ever been in a a London cinema like that.
And I literally had an out of body experience in there. was so overwhelmed by what I was seeing. And I’d had it as a child. I’d left my body and come back in. It happened again. So it marked the moment very heavily. And we also saw later on after that, Lord Lelouch’s Man and a Woman and had a huge argument, all of us outside, because I was saying, this is like amazing cinema. This is a new revolution. Everything.
They were saying, no, it’s like advertising and everything. So it kind of sparked my interest in movies. And then by accident, we’d run out of money. had, my parents weren’t supporting me going to art school. They gave me strict instructions like those days to be a priest, an architect or a doctor. And I would have none of it. And I got into art school in Reading in England and then…
Roger (02:50.05)
got into Maidenhead Art School. And while I was at the Reading, I’d run out of money, obviously, I was living at home, but no one was speaking to me because I’d left what was gonna be a kind of proper career, they thought. And I was putting up marquees all over the Southwest of England, huge students, we were employed every summer. And I saw a prison campaign.
built in the forest. And being inquisitive, I went over and asked what was going on. And they said, we’re building it for a film. And I said, but it looks so real. And they said, yeah, we know we have a homeless guy come past every day and give us sandwiches. And it happened to be Pinewood Studios through the forest. So I went, I couldn’t get in, of course, I found a hole under the fence, got under the fence. the
For some reason the doors were open to the main studio and they were filming a James Bond film and just seeing the lights and everything that was going on, I thought, wow, this is actually a job. That’s incredible. And hundreds of letters.
That is an incredible story. That couldn’t write itself, could it? That’s amazing.
It’s destiny really, because then I wrote hundreds of letters and then was told, well, only one producer ever answered and said, as you’ve done art school, you better get into architecture school because that’s what you’ll be required. Go into the art department. That’ll get you in. I don’t know how in a year I got another A level and got into Cambridge School, Oxford School of Architecture. Got my diploma for intermediate, the principal who I
Callum (04:22.734)
Yeah.
Roger (04:36.77)
became very good friends with said, you should go now and do what you really want to do because you’ll be bored stiff the next two years. And I went and unpacked dresses and finally got an invite to Elstree Studios to meet an art director called Charlie Bishop. And I went with my folder, all my stuff. He looked at it all and he said, listen, I’m doing a TV show called Department S. I would take you on immediately, but we’re just closing. We’re finishing. I’ve set you up in an appointment.
down at Shepparton, can you go?” And I said, yeah, of course. I arrived in Shepparton and who did I meet? John Box, who designed Lawrence of Arabia.
And he opened all my folder and said, listen, if you’re willing to make the tea, that’s a job. I’ll take you up.
It makes such a difference, it? I mean, personally, from my own experience, I find your story absolutely incredible. I also went to do set design when I was younger and had a very similar experience where it was like, I decided at like 12, but that’s what I wanted to do. And someone was like, okay, if you’re willing to literally rock up and make the tea, I was like, I will, I will make the tea. I will, I will become the tea. And it’s just like, it’s a nice way of getting like, you know, it’s just proven that you kind of coming in and you’re going to do.
the groundwork and get to know everyone and kind of just become a part of it.
Roger (05:58.946)
British film industry workers drink tea. mean, this is more than a job. But he he folded up my folder, John box. And at the end of he said, I’m going to tell you what the film industry is about. He said, you’re standing in a desert. There’s an airplane next to you. got a bottle of green ink in your pocket. The director and producer arrive and they say this is perfect. But can you have it read by tomorrow?
He said, you either do it or talk your way out of it or suggest an alternative on the spot. And that kind of provided me for my entire career with the logical about how the film industry works. But it was a film called Oliver and the sets on Oliver, the musical, if you ever see it, are extraordinary. The canals, everything. And I was kind of at odds with everybody because they were all in suits and ties. And I come from art school.
hair down here in Cuban boots. And I was in the art cinemas every weekend in London, just watching every foreign movie I could get my hands on, particularly Kurosawa. And he was my mentor. And I was always told, stop watching all that arty stuff. This is a career, you know. And John Box mentored me. He really kind of…
fathered me actually through everything and I would escape and go and look at the sets because I wanted to see what how it was and I was immediately told get back in the office you’re not allowed out and Third time strike out you’ll be fired but I would have none of it and I learned everything from John box that throughout my entire career team to this day he was a master of aging sets and finally
when they all knew I could draw and I could do all of this stuff, John gave me a prop. He gave me a box and said, could you make Fagin’s box? And this is the first prop I ever made. And I thought, well, I have to make this look really old. So it took me weeks. I was at home burning it with torches and I was aging it with boot polish and getting it down. And I wanted it to be indistinguishable. And that’s probably where this career.
Roger (08:16.302)
And then I had to, I just was so bored with this tea making and coffee endless all day long. So I started to make worse and worse tea, having shored up my position, they knew I could draw. I watched them grimace when I…
Just there rubbing your hands together like, yeah, taste that ancient tea.
I got promoted and I drew up one of the canals. That was my first set I ever did. I drew up a canal and I aged it all down and made it look like an old Victorian canal. That’s where it really started. I leapfrogged. I had an offer to go to Rediffusion Television, which I was told, that’s the death of your career. You’ll never work because in those days TV was…
Yeah, was a graveyard. Basically a graveyard, yeah.
But, you know, I joined this amazing period TV series being done with the art director and I was with him down at Item Moat in Kent. And he said, I got to go back and design the sets and get them built. Can you take over? just so I, you know, I was plunged right then into dealing with the director and getting everything right. So again, these are amazing experiences that I.
Roger (09:39.566)
took the risk on and then the first art director I saw, Charlie Bishop, was starting Randall and Hopkirk to Cease. So he invited me to go on that and I was on the drawing board to start with and he saw how bored I was and I drew up a set that was for a crazed artist and…
at exactly the same time I’d heard the set decorator, the schedules were punishing. He unfortunately had a mental breakdown and they didn’t think he was coming out. I got called down to the set that I’d drawn up and I thought, I’m going to get fired because they can’t shoot it. And the director said, this is the best set we’ve ever had. And they said, would you like to be the set decorator? And that was it. I leapfrogged my career by
20 years of sitting on a drawing board trying to mope my way up. And that’s really how it came about in a short version.
If I can just cut in there, this is when I’ve told my friends we were speaking to you this week, the main question they really wanted to, and I’m myself a re-analyst, can you tell us what exactly a set decorator does?
Well, when I was doing it, I was alone on this department and the decorator handles all of the… The designer would build a set, he’d design it and build it. We had to put everything that went into that set. So you’re like an interior decorator. Same for locations. We handled all the weapons. We handled all the props, every single prop in a set.
Roger (11:26.306)
Vehicles. I mean we handled the whole lot I actually met Christopher Nolan here in Toronto when he was here with them Dunkirk and he’s big Star Wars fan He looked at me and he said you did it all on your own. I don’t know how you did it He said everything’s divided up one man does One man does one man does You know tables and chairs they they break it all up I was on my own
one man does guns
Roger (11:57.25)
That’s really how it was, and I prefer it that way than being broken up.
And so with that, how did you get the job in Star Wars and how did that, and just like from the start, did you know this was something special or did it become more apparent the more you got to work with George?
Well, two things. One, you know, I analyze this for my books in a while, is that the Britain at the time in the seventies, American culture was in the toilet. mean, no one respected anything America in Britain. They had a very arrogant kind of self opinionated attitude to everything. British was best. Science fiction, I read a lot because I really liked some of these writers, you know.
and I include June here and Tolkien and Arthur C. Clarke, all of these, I read a lot. you know, I would mention it at a dinner party and I was told, oh, it’s not Shakespeare, is it? You know, that supercilious attitude that would put me down for doing it. So I was very versed in science fiction and but not in cinema. I never I never liked any science fiction movie that
that was made except for a little tiny movie Sean Luke Goddard made called Alphaville in the streets of Paris. And I was asked to join John Barry, the designer in Mexico on a massive movie called Lucky Lady. It was huge. And we were transforming kind of old Mexican buildings into rum running or set period film.
Roger (13:40.982)
Lucky Lady was written by Gloria and Willard Hyke who wrote American Graffiti and they were great friends of George and they were writing some of the dialogue uncredited for Star Wars with him and the the
When George, what happened at the time, was no, there was no, but there was no box office for science fiction movies. They were dead in the cinema. So each of the studios were also losing their audience. Each studio took on a young director. Universal took young Steven Spielberg, MGM took Francis Coppola, each one. So Alan Ladd,
liked George Lucas and graffiti took George on who walked in with his worst nightmare children’s fiction which nobody everybody turned down in Hollywood and so Alan Ladd gave it to the board he didn’t want to do it they estimated the film would make 12 million dollars and in those days they would divide that by three and that they said to George if you make your movie for
$4 million, we’ll make it. Well, the budget was eight for America. We were half the price in Britain at the time because of exchange rates and no one was working. And we had studios available which weren’t in Hollywood. So they suggested they go fly down to Mexico to Wymus and meet John Barry and myself who were doing exactly what he was talking about. George arrived. I was…
making a salt factory and shoveling salt and we’d make an old buildings look like the factory building for the movie. And George arrived and he actually picked up a shovel and was shoveling salt with me to talk with me. That’s George, I mean, that’s how he is. And he said, well, look, I’m trying to make the science fiction film. So I was brutally honest. said, you know, I really never connected.
Roger (15:56.622)
to any of the science fiction. And the latest one was Flash Gordon. It’s a particular taste, but I don’t like it. It’s very over-designed and plastic and not real. And the words he said to me, didn’t have to say anymore. He said, well, I’m trying to make a spaghetti western in space. that, know, every Sergio Leone movie is…
script is taken from all the samurai movies of Kurosawa that exactly the same plots. And so I knew exactly what he was talking about. And I said to him, you know, for me, like a spaceship is not these modern greasy, it’s greasy and in a garage and dripping oil, and it’s very real. So I only found out then in August when I actually read the script, I described the Millennium Falcon perfectly. You know, in the script, it says it’s a piece of junk.
And so I got hired. I was the third person hired on Star Wars with John Barry. And we arrived in England with no money and there was no budget and Fox wouldn’t commit to it. so, and I really liked George and part of, you know, my work as a director in particular is you have to use your instinct about people. And I immediately connected with George.
and he wasn’t a man of many words, but we didn’t have to say anything. We had the same language. And so we arrived in England with no money. George had enough money owed from American Graffiti. And we set up a tiny studios, Lee Studios in London, and there was only John Barry, myself and an art director and George and Gary. we were there for four months. The film wasn’t greenlit. And at that time, this is where the birth of Star Wars came, because when we…
read the script and I immediately said, we can’t do this. It’s impossible. I think I had $200,000, which in those days was nothing. But I love the script because I’m very embedded already in the hero’s journey and science fiction and mythology. And I knew what it was. And George had made THX, which I really liked. And so I was determined, I’m going to make this and John Barry the same.
Roger (18:22.414)
We just said, we’re going to do this. And, um, the first thing that we read were the storytellers was R2D2 and C3PO. And we could make C3PO because they made Metropolis. They made Maria the golden robot. She, she could only take three steps, but we knew with the right actor, we could remake that. There was absolutely no way to make, um, R2D2 because we measured off
But…
Roger (18:52.15)
Ralph McQuarrie’s painting of him and he had to be four feet high and the radio control was very primitive in those days. There was no other way to do it. I suggested because I really liked Dr. Who and the Daleks, if we could find a small person, we could build it round and George cast Kenny Baker. And, you know, we asked Robert Watts, who was the production coordinator, said, we need to buy some wood. He said, there’s no money, Roger. I can’t give you anything. So
I got a friend of mine, Bill Harmon, was the carpenter for Monty Python. Well, you know, holy grail, they couldn’t even afford horses. used coconut shells to bang together. So Bill has a huge sense of humor. So he came on board with us and he had wood at home in the garage and he boarded all in and we built a wooden R2D2 base based on getting his legs through into the two-legged version.
And then he said, I can’t, I can’t afford to make a top ranch. So I went to the scrap yard in the lighting company next door and found, and I measured out a laptop that fitted perfectly. So we hollered that out, stuck it on the top. I grabbed a load of old bits of scrap from a local place called trading post, grabbed a handful and put in the reading lights from a Dakota. That’s still there. If you look at R2D2.
And Bill said, little hands on the front, can’t make those rods. He sent me home with a pen knife and a bit of balsa. Yeah. if this is how star Wars was actually made and then we got him to walk eventually, which meant the film triggered because we could actually do it because they were the storytellers, you know? And, at the same time,
is the mother of invention.
Roger (20:47.03)
You know, my pet peeve with the science fiction movies was weapons. So I knew the gun hire facility in London very well. I knew the owners and I went and said, listen, I got to do this. I don’t have any money, but he sat me up with a desk and I thought the blasters for the stormtroopers. I love a sterling sub machine gun and I thought I could use this just as it is, but I better change it. So I got some tea strips, stuck it around the barrel.
dug through their boxes and found these sites that would go on the top. And I stuck all this with super groups to show George. And then I thought, well, he keeps saying Han Solo is a cowboy in space. I found a Mauser, which is a wooden stock, beautiful weapon. And again, I stuck stuff on it and made another of my phone calls to John Barry and said, I think you better. And he didn’t know what I was doing. I hadn’t told anyone. I said, you better bring George here.
because again, this is the moment again where I’ll be fired or I’m on the right track. And then George came, just smiled and loved them. And he stayed with me and he got covered in super glue. We made Princess Leia’s gun together. That’s how Star Wars came about and how I then didn’t ever have, George never had to say to me, can you make this? How do you make this? What can you do? I just continued because once they triggered the budget,
We were only moved into EMI Studios on January the 6th and we were shooting in March. mean, for a movie this size, it was insane. We were working like I was working seven days a week, all hours of the day and night. The attitude, which is now much more known of the crew thought it was a pile of crap. All of them, no one understood it.
George to this day, there’s an interview with Christopher Nolan on YouTube quite recently and George on that says, know, Christopher, there were only five people stood actually by me to get Star Wars made. And I was one of those. And I think this whole attitude, why I talk about it, where I came from meant I’m just going to stick against everybody and stick with George.
Roger (23:10.178)
The first day in EMI studios, they said, get all the stuff you’ve done so far and we’ll get all the crew down and have a look and show us what you’ve done. Well, all of my weapons were laid out, everything, and these were some machine guns that could work. could fire them, which would do what no other science fiction gun had done. You got to blast out the barrel and a bit of smoke and the…
So.
Roger (23:38.21)
first AD came the head on floor of the props, all of these people, he actually picked up the sterling and threw it at me and said, this is crap. You know, we’re doing a science fiction movie for a major Hollywood director and they went off to get me fired. My career has been with these moments, my career. And
I was asked recently, what did you say? And I said, I didn’t give a monkeys. I was with George and I was going to get this done. And the crew hated me. I don’t care. And they did. The DP was awful to everybody, even us, the art department would never look at drawings, would go on every set, said he couldn’t bite it. And was so rude to George on the first morning of shooting in Tunisia that Gary Kurtz was the intermediary between them.
It’s beyond belief though, because you just think like what’s that person got going on that they’re just so against that intuitive, creative spark that is so clearly happening between a group of people, maybe it was jealousy. But you know what mean, to see that kind of…
No, I think he’d become old and crusty. I, you know, he’d done he he did the Beatles film help. He did Polanski’s early movies. I mean, I thought great. He did Doctor Strangelove. He’s do it. But he did say himself that when he first met George Lucas, took him to dinner and sorry, lunch and lunch was next to the studio in EMI. It was a it was a Chinese restaurant that had a two and six pence.
special at lunch and I think he was affronted by that that he wasn’t at a table with wine and he He mentioned this after as an interview, you they didn’t even drink wine They looked at me because I ordered one and he said I don’t understand why they hired me because I never liked science fiction I have nothing to do with it George hired him because and he said this to me
Roger (25:36.726)
And I understood it. making a documentary. I’m not making a science fiction film. He hired him because he didn’t want a science fiction look. He wanted a Western cowboy look. And the DP was kind of against that all the time. And I think he probably didn’t like the way that Sergio Leone had made the Westerns. They weren’t classically made. it, yeah, I know. this, it was a group of like,
really interesting.
Roger (26:06.658)
five cinema revolution.
But it’s just like, you know, that kind of like the room where it happens. It just reminded me of that song in Hamilton. I know that’s a complete segue, but it’s like it’s the room where it happened. Like how, how did fate align that like all of you were there in that one time and place? Like that is incredible. Yeah, absolutely.
It’s destiny. was and George has a unique ability. If you look across the board, hired Joe Johnson. He hired who really with Richard Edlund and John Dykstra, they were beach bums. mean, Joe Johnson took the job. He was a surfer because he needed some money that didn’t care what it was. And they found out he could make models and he could draw storyboards. And he’s had a legendary career, same as all of them.
They were all fledgling people, even the poster designers. the unsung genius of Star Wars, Ralph McQuarrie, the artist who painted six paintings while George was writing the script. And he worked for Boeing. He was drawing jet engines and things. So George had a unique ability.
And he says it himself, I hired people who had enough experience to do the job, but not enough experience. Yeah. Yeah. So we were young enough and all like students to go ahead and get this thing made. And I’m so glad we did.
Rhiannon (27:24.782)
I’m not doing that.
Rhiannon (27:40.078)
was the recipe that shaped the world, quite frankly.
Yes, it’s changed the world, this film.
I just want to go back to the R2-D2 build. Did you also build it with in mind of how the personality of R2-D2 was going to come across that in your mind when you were designing it, or just the practicality of getting a little person in?
No, was definitely, because as I said, I loved Kurosawa and he’s based on, I don’t know if you know, the entire plot of Star Wars is based on Hidden Fortress and the two squabbling peasants. So he was the little squabbling peasants and C-3PO is the tall one. And the plot of that film exactly is this plot of Star Wars.
So we knew that he had this kind of personality and also it shone through in Ralph Macquarie’s painting, you the two of them. You could see it. So that was all there. We knew how important this character was. yeah, it was. And there’s still a note from the old Monty Python note paper that Bill Harmon wrote, no silver paint. John Barry and I were up in the offices.
Roger (28:55.39)
and we’d heard Bill had got a can of silver paint. This was a no-no because everybody in the early days wanted to do science fiction, you’d spray it silver, you know? And we went rushing down and said, Bill, no silver paint, you’re not allowed to do that. No, he’s not going to be like that. So yes, it was on purpose, yes.
So it sounds like, did George give you quite a bit of freedom in the things you built for him? Totally.
It was… I never ever, you know, I had to put everything together and then I was sent to Tunisia. Once I got everything worked out that I knew we’d need, I was sent to Tunisia with Les Dillis, the art director, to look after the shoot, which is where we started. And…
I mean things like John Barry called me and Les in the office about four weeks before we left and said, listen, R2D2 is not going to work. This radio control, whatever John Steele said, it’s never going to work. So build a lightweight one out of fiberglass, put it on the truck, don’t tell anybody. Only Gary Kurtz knew. And the first morning, the first shoot was the buying the robots with Uncle Owen.
And R2D was the first shot, R2D2, and he crashed over, fell down, knocked another robot over. John Steers, who used the excuse in London that it was the taxis upset his radio control, ran in front of the crew and said, it’s the blooming taxis. mean, was, Tozer was about six miles away and that through the desert, you know, there was, there was a few donkey carts and it was a very sleepy little place.
Roger (30:52.834)
Gary Kurtz said, get yours out, please. And we got it out. And from that moment on, every shot of R2D2 in two-legged mode, we put down a flat board, put sand on the front, and pulled them along with fishing wire.
Yeah. Amazing.
whatever he had to do to get it done really.
Yeah, yeah. So you can imagine, I mean, all of this going on, the DP on the first shot asked George what he was doing because he was looking through the viewfinder lining a shot up and he said, what are you doing? And he said, I’m lining the shot up. He said, you don’t do that. Go and do your job. You talk to the actors. I set up the shots. And George is an independent filmmaker. See, that’s where it started. So you can imagine the crew throughout this whole shoot were
and you know the C-3PO, the first time he ever put on that full costume was standing ready for the shot and the leg shattered and had to be quickly stuck with gold tape and it was kind of string and ceiling wax really, we got it in Britain but it was that kind of way of
Roger (32:08.994)
getting everything done that we
There was no sort of micromanagement, was kind of like he trusted you to be able to come up and adapt with those problems as they were, you know what mean, it just sounds like you had a really good understanding of each other’s skillset.
He trusted after seeing the weapons and seeing our conversations and at night sometimes we’d get a 16-mil projector and we watched silent running, we watched different movies. We were friends and so he just trusted that I would bring everything and John Barry the same. John was a massive help to George, huge and I can’t remember, no there was nothing ever.
I I wrote Cinema Alchemist, know, my book, because everyone said I’m the only one, unfortunately, who knows how we put it all together next to George and I put this whole look of the film together. And I think it tells you it was republished this year and George kindly wrote the forward for me, which he never does anything on Star Wars anymore. this kind of it’s this book Cinema Alchemist.
and it’s just one little thing he said I could tell you about the day that Roger showed me a flash handle from a 40s camera and suggested it would work as a lightsaber hilt it was an inspired idea that cost nothing that’s the kind of thing I really enjoy it was probably one of 20 inspired ideas that Roger brought to me that day so that kind of sums it up that’s from George
Rhiannon (33:41.144)
That’s just what a nice thing to say,
It’s very touching because in 10 years he doesn’t do anything. They asked me for a forward and knowing that George wouldn’t do it, but I thought, you know what, I’ve never asked George for anything like this. So I did.
very beautiful as well, absolute credit to yourself and your creative genius as well.
Yeah. And it’s also he stood up for him in critical situations and his unwavering support made a difference. That’s why Roger is more than a respected colleague. He’s a trusted friend. And I think that, you know, and I’ve never denigrated Star Wars and I stand by it. I’m doing what I can with this book. I’ve just finished the documentary on it and I’m doing what I can because this film has changed the world.
really is, without doubt.
Roger (34:35.21)
And, you know, it’s nothing against religions, but they’re not connecting anymore. You don’t preach a Buddhist philosophy as you tell stories and you get the ideas across. And George, think, gave the world something to believe in, which has the right values, especially for children. He made every film for 12 year olds. So that’s, I believe in that. you know, very strong.
into contact, like sort of I came into contact with Star Wars around that age. I mean this has spanned generations of people. And to the point where on the last census I will say I put Jedi. You know, because that’s like that was something that was shown to be like by my grandparents. You know what mean? Like it’s something that is like it has that community, has that timeless messages about connection and place and you can, you just automatically feel like you’re there.
Well there you go.
Rhiannon (35:29.216)
It’s not, it doesn’t age like in the same way because of the amount of effort, like, you know, you’re talking about all these like hands on sort of the props, everything is you’re there, you’re in it. And it’s, it’s beautiful.
Yes, well that’s that, you know, I had to go on the road because the publishers don’t publicize anything anymore unless you’re JK Rowling. so I’ve been for the last year going to fan events all over the place. And every single one, I don’t think there’s one person in the hundreds and hundreds I’ve met who haven’t said to me, Star Wars changed my life.
I take this very seriously with all of them because these are and Star Wars itself, we are all Luke Skywalker. That hero’s journey is everybody. It doesn’t matter if you’re male, female, whatever you are. That journey is all of us. And those trigger moments help you to find yourself, which is the classic hero’s journey. And George buried those. You know, he was mentored by Joseph Campbell, who spent his life as a mythologist. And he
He mentored George into how to connect the certain points of the hero’s journey into the story. So it’s very important. And I get so many families coming to visit. And I always tell them, you’re proof of what George wanted. He wanted a film for families.
Yeah. And it’s kind of interesting, you’re saying that you worked on the film Universal for Families and then after that was the film that universally terrified everyone. And it’s also, it’s used tech but in such a different world, it’s a dirty down-throating world, we’re talking about Ridley Scott’s Alien. So I’m very curious, like
Rhiannon (36:57.742)
Absolutely.
So yeah.
Callum (37:23.272)
difference between working with Ridley compared to George and yeah I’ve always been curious both incredible visionaries in different ways.
Yeah, it came about, you know, I was designing Life of Brian with Terry Gilliam and a few weeks before they Ridley, I knew Ridley and his brother, he used to art direct commercials for them. so Lord Delphon, who financed Life of Brian, read the script and said he canceled it on the spot and said, it’s blasphemy and he cannot be doing this. I went up to London that day because they wanted to talk to me because they were determined to make it.
and asked how I could stay involved. And Ridley called that same day. He called the office there because there were no cell phones in those days and said, get your backside down to Shepperton, Roger. I need you here. he’d hired Michael Seymour, who was he’d done movies, never a science fiction movie. And he used to do all of Ridley’s commercials for him. And so he he’d built the
Nostromo and Ridley wanted that claustrophobia. They opened up the stages in Shepparton and built it over two stages as a ship that you went in one end and you had to come out the other end. He’d hired some kid who said he could do what I did, know he’d buy a few jet engines and make all the interiors. And of course it was floundering. And the set decorator, an old friend of mine, got Oscars for these wonderful…
period films that were made at that time who had no idea what to do. And I went down and I knew Ridley and I knew his vision. I loved Jewelist. And walking into an office with six original gigas around the wall, and they helped me read the script and I read it in 90 minutes. So I just went through it and said, are you on? I said, of course I’m on.
Roger (39:30.44)
Ridley then, well it actually sums it up, I was working across the studios to go and meet Michael Seymour, I knew him but never worked with him, and the set decorator Ian Whitaker ran up to me and hugged me and said, please what do I do with all this scrap, I don’t know what to do with it. And so Ridley had to do a screen test for Sigourney Weaver because he was adamant she was right for the role and the studio of course wanted a star in that role to help.
And this, like Star Wars where there was little faith in this one, there was faith because Star Wars had made so much money, but this was the first R-rated science fiction movie and they didn’t think it was going to work.
Roger (40:20.782)
They never believed it. That’s Julius. Ridley said could I build him, but ostensibly he just had to say to me I want a space truck. I want a truck like an army truck in space. And again, I know the language, what he wanted. I wasn’t going to build a truck. I was going to build what I, you know,
When we did the Millennium Falcon, and because I couldn’t afford any dressing, we couldn’t make anything in the studios, none of it. I got crashed airplane parts or broken scrap and found mountains of it that no one wanted. And I could buy like jet air. They were the full Rolls Royce Doherty engine sitting in the rain in scrap yards. And I think I don’t spend, think…
50 pounds on buying truckloads of it. So I knew what to do and quite literally on, you know, the Millennium Falcon, I was crossing my fingers. I’d said to everyone, this would work. I didn’t know. I mean, none of this stuff had ever been done before. Adaptive weapons, anything like that. So I got, I said, the only thing I need is the props who I trained to break down all of these bits of scrap and pieces of engines.
into its original parts and I used those to put in the walls. So they hired the three of them, they came across and we built a piece of the corridor for Ridley for the screen test. It’s on YouTube, actually you can see it. And that’s where they just went, that’s it. And I had to go to work and build the whole interior.
Roger (42:14.67)
No, oil and dust increase. The bridge drove me nuts. Just this set was so complicated in the time and the money that we had. You know, the disbelief by the studios, I think about two months before shooting, they cut 600,000 out of the budget. There were no stars. The only place to take that is the art department. went out. The actually the beautiful
onion arising when they wake up that was gone that’s it we did it in secret we had a spanish art director i brought in we didn’t tell peter biel the head of fox and nick older the special effects had some pistons left over he had those canopies that were jet engine canopies we built it in secret
Stealth. We were determined.
And the big pilot set, which gave scale to this whole thing, you know, and the history and everything, that was gone. And then the only way that got saved is by building the center part of the pilot on a round table, turntable, and we could only build half of the wall behind it. So Ridley turned it around for the reverses. that, you know, this was going on throughout that film as well.
It’s absolutely amazing to hear that these absolute icon moments of cinema were just like, yeah, I’ll just scrap that out, or weren’t taken, or you’re having to stealth construct and build these in your own time to get them in, because you know the impact that it will have.
Roger (43:38.476)
They were very low budget.
Roger (44:01.804)
That’s why I wrote this book and that’s why, because nowadays kids, we’re in fourth generation of Star Wars and Alien now too. And they see huge Hollywood movies. Well, this started with a rag-tag group of revolutionaries, including George. He says on the blurb, a crazy young filmmaker with a crazy idea came to London and Roger had enough crazy ideas to help me do it.
So I think it’s again, it’s like it’s more of a mentoring, you know, the last line in my book says, don’t let anyone tell you you can’t, you can. I put it simply for people. And I think that’s, you know, these are all things why I’m now out on the road. now it’s just fledgling, starting a proper YouTube account and doing everything now to put all this out, because unfortunately, I am the only person who knows how we did it. That’s why.
I was forced to write the book because it’s a legacy that will have got, lost and including alien how we that.
Yeah.
Rhiannon (45:06.798)
Speaking from a perspective of somebody who went to university and did set design and construction and things like that, it’s so interesting to hear you talk about this and literally the absolute, again, the iconic, the father of these things that then when it’s been…
it’s been changed and changed and changed. like, now you kind of go, you kind of have to learn it in this prescript way and you have to do these things and you have to, and it’s kind of almost gone bad. And you’re like, when this is where this came from, like how, how has that, how has that been so misconstrued again, like out into this sort of like, that there’s a certain way to do it all. And you go like, but it’s, it’s about that.
And I took, know, as a set decorator, didn’t just go, okay, we need this set. we need like the lightsabers, for instance. I analyzed who the characters were, who would be holding them, which is why I made a very different one for Obi-Wan Kenobi and a very different one for Darth Vader with his look clinical and like the Death Star. And Obi-Wan’s had to look like an old desert mystic.
And I grew up with King Arthur, I knew all of these stories. So I think there was a lot more to it. And we didn’t have to talk much about it, but George knew all of that and Ridley as well. There was an immense amount of trust in me from both these people. And in fact, I…
There was a job no one wanted on movies, which is standby art director. You’re by the director and you have to make sure everything’s right and get everything done. And it’s a panic job and everything. I was lucky in that we, the fact that Nostromo was completely built before we started shooting, all the interiors were done because Ridley wanted to run around with the camera and do those opening shots and build up the claustrophobia and everything.
Roger (47:06.22)
So I then said, listen, I want to go standby. So I wanted to be a, I wanted to be a movie director myself. So to be next to Ridley, that was the best thing for me. that, you know, again, this movie, no one knew how to do it. When the ship wakes up the helmet visor, there’s a reflection of the computer waking up. No one knew how to do it. And I,
He’s like, you can’t…
Roger (47:34.402)
done some art installations early on, 8 mil, and we projected things with little projectors. So I said, I think this might work. I got the production to get me some readouts and they put it on 16 mil film before we started shooting, right a few days before. So I said, Ridley, get your camera set up. We got the helmet up in front of the bridge. And I said, you turn over, I’m going to…
hold the projector and move it around and move the focus and when it looks right, just shoot it. That’s what’s in the movie. And then Ridley said, in the first few days we were shooting on the bridge first. I loved how the kind of papers blowing like air conditionings to show the ship still alive. I got under the desk, grabbed the hairdryer from the hairdresser, got under and it was all wooden.
That’s amazing.
Rhiannon (48:28.206)
Thank
I was in pain. I got under there and said turn over and when it looks right tell me and I’ll hold it.
It’s all done like that. But I love it. I had such a great time doing it. I never questioned any of this stuff. It’s like, that’s not my job. I don’t do that.
You were in there getting absolutely hands on and it has that then as a result the organic like that kind of like just authenticity which you can’t get otherwise it’s not possible.
No, it’s not true. It’s true and it bleeds through onto the screen.
Callum (49:09.794)
to the audience. Yeah because with Alien you also got how involved were you with probably one of the most iconic scenes in history the chest buster with Johnny I mean did you again did you know that was going to have such an impact on a long lasting legacy when when it was described to you where you just what on earth is this
Yeah, yeah, I mean this was something that, you know, if we could put it off and we had to build the tabletop so that John Hurt had to sit in a chair underneath and we had to have a false chest and underneath Roger Deakin with all the mechanism to bring the facehugger out and
So then to make it look real, I actually sent my guy down to the Abattoir. There was one in Shepperton Studios nearby and I dressed in all of that awful stuff in there. I tell you, it stunk. This was hot these days in London on the studios. of course, being Britain, there’s no air conditioning. And then, you know, again, being a director who wasn’t saying, it again, do it again, get it right, it’s…
Not a smidge.
Roger (50:27.22)
made that sequence iconic because the first push through and all the actors, you have to remember, they came on set and there’s the whole crew dressed in plastic, cameras dressed in black. No one knew what was coming. They didn’t know what it was. And when he pushed it through, it didn’t break through the T-shirt. And so it pushed up.
and went red stained and that was it. So then we had to reset. They sent all the actors away. And then the costume designer got a razor blade and got the T-shirt very fragile. And so it built in stages, but using all those shots, in fact, made it much more iconic. See, a traditional Hollywood director would have said, that didn’t work. Cut. Do it again. Get it right. No. It was a really built it up like that.
Yeah. And I’ve just got to… And I’ve heard this online and can you confirm, is it true, Veronica Cartwright, she got the bulk of her blood in her face and her reaction was genuine? Like she was genuinely horrified when…
those reactions it’s true.
Roger (51:38.51)
Yeah, Ridley admits it now. underneath then the special effects and he’s a genius. Nicola who did took this over and was doing it. And he quietly said, listen, put some more blood in there and squirt one of them right. So that she got, yeah, she dropped down in the set. And that’s all, you know, I mean, in the end, that’s acting.
See ya.
whether you like it or not, those are reactions of what you always look for as a director. They were true. The shock was absolutely real. And we knew then this was gonna cause havoc in cinema.
she was alright.
She complained about all of them, but in the end…
Rhiannon (52:29.614)
At least
Yeah, well now she realizes, you know, how iconic that scene is. It is listed as one of the most iconic scenes in the history of cinema and she was a major part of it really. So yeah, in the end they accept it.
And just one more on Alien, like how much did you work alongside Giger and just what was he like to work with?
Well, Giga hated movies, you he’s such a purist. He didn’t want to ever come. He didn’t want anything to do with it. He decided to come. Maria, his Italian girlfriend, who’s the opposite of him, she came with him. And what happened was when he saw what we were building and doing, he was so amazed that he decided to stay. So…
I was the one as the set decorator, that was my job. went down, well I was art director but I was in charge of the whole look of the film on that one. I went down to see him, I said, HR, what do you want? And he said, I want bones. And as a set decorator, I knew where
Rhiannon (53:44.75)
Back to the abattoir.
No, no, you have to have scientific bones because you can get anthrax from live bones and stuff. So I knew where to get them. So I got him a truckload of bones that were safe. And we built him a little out of movie set pieces. We built him a little shed in the middle of the studio. so he wanted clay and I got him all the right stuff. And what he did was sculpt each of the
the sets, the landscapes in miniature using the bones and clay. And then he airbrushed the colors on it. It was amazing. Oh, I had lunch with him every day. He was part of our crew. know, we were in shepherd and pub. I was the one because I was always the one chatting and he’d look at the menu and say, what is this spotted stick? It’s a pudding with currants in it.
HR and the other one that got him was Pigs in a blanket, I don’t understand because they’d use all those names, you know
And I also heard a rumor when he was in the pub, he liked to just go up to the piano and start playing jazz.
Roger (55:03.214)
I never had that with him. We never had time. I don’t know when that must have been afterwards, but we were in like in order back to the set again. were it was I I had I had a new girlfriend at the time the only time I could see her was she would come to Shepherd on a Sunday and have a quick picnic out on the On the lawns outside the old house with us. That was it. I Would get home late at night and I’d fall asleep eating every night. It was exhausting
Yeah.
Callum (55:30.936)
Yeah.
Ridley came in one day and he had a marks across his forehead and I said, are you okay? What happened? he said, oh, yeah. No, had a, he was on his third Rolls Royce by then because he was the biggest, he was the biggest advertising director in the world. And he said, I’m relying on it driving home. I fall asleep and I bang my head on the steering wheel.
sleep at the table.
Rhiannon (55:59.502)
Yes.
I’m so tired.
I’m glad he made it back in.
Yeah. We’re just coming up.
Yeah.
Roger (56:11.598)
There’s a lot of stories. All these stories are in cinema alchemists. There’s so many.
We’ve just got a few questions that came in. We’ve got one or two questions that came in there. So, Graus is asking just what was your favorite proper costume that you built?
the lightsaber, Luke’s first one ever that I built and they call me the father of lightsaber. Now I’m told it’s the most iconic prop in the history of cinema, which I probably made for $15. I just, you know, this is where, when I read Laser Sword in the script, it immediately came back to me of.
Looks like.
Roger (56:54.33)
What do you remember about King Arthur? It’s in Excalibur, the power of the sword. And I knew if I could get this right, this would be the iconic kind of vision of Star Wars. But there was nothing like it. Every other film I’d ever done, you go and I go to museums and look and get books and look at, you know, we didn’t Google or any of that stuff in those days. You had to go to a library and look or art galleries. There was nothing.
ever and even Ralph McQuarrie, the only image was in Darth Vader’s hand in a corridor and you could just see the ends, that was it. So I had to use all of my kind of instinctive imagination to think what would this be like? You know, and I go back to Kurosawa’s samurai swords and the swords in history, everything.
I couldn’t design it. And again, we had no money. I couldn’t make anything in the studios. When I first realized if I use junk and broken cameras to make things and broken washing machines, anything, I had to find things that I thought instinctively would do. And the day I found those three Graflex handles in Brunning’s, the photography shop, again, it’s another thing.
FATE! Absolutely
pick them up and it’s if anybody like me looks at them you don’t know what it is it’s a beautiful object with a red button you don’t know why it’s there and I thought wow this is it this is a lightsaber I better change it a bit so you know it’s that this thing here I got I got the fire to put me some t-strips so I make a handle out of it and by luck I didn’t like this clip
Callum (58:38.926)
you
Roger (58:48.78)
And I broke down an old calculator because I would unscrew things and see what was inside. I could find anything and that fitted in here. And that’s it. That’s what George talks about when I came across and said, I think I found the lightsaber. And I think it’s still my favorite. My second is R2D2.
That’s a close second.
Yeah, it’s very cool.
He’s the children’s favourite everywhere and he’s such a wonderful personality.
Callum (59:22.178)
Yeah. And I was also going to point out the other thing with the lightsaber, that’s like three departments coming together to create it. Because it’s what you did, what Industrial Light and Magic did, and then Ben Burt, and it all combined into that. I mean, how did it feel when you actually saw that come together for the first time?
Yeah, that was, you know, there was no way to do the blabe. You have to remember this. And again, at one of our meetings, we would meet in my office in EMI studios every morning at seven in the morning because I had a little fridge. I had some tea bags and some milk and everyone get a cup of tea in my office, which there wasn’t an open anywhere. And I also had McVitie’s chocolate biscuits.
You didn’t stray too far from the tea thing then. You definitely hone that skill.
Well, was the only time we could meet in the morning. We were so busy, John and I and Les, that we were sometimes like ships in the night. know, we were just getting done what we had to do. They were talking about this and I said, you know, I used to do art installations. Another thing I did was we front projection paint and painted it and I got it to glow. So they said, we’re going to try that.
So there was a meeting, it’s down in the archives, there was a meeting in the special effects department. Of course, the DP turned up and said, no, you’re not doing that, you’ll ruin my set lighting. And George overruled him and said, go and do it, Roger. And we got a stick and I made several of these graphics handles and the second one, the special effects drilled it out, put a little motor in there so it would vibrate and turn at the same time.
Roger (01:01:11.552)
And it worked. We actually got a glow out of it, which enabled the fledgling ILM at that time. The only way they could do it was with… They had to animate each frame by hand. It’s called rotoscoping. And so that… And I have to say, know, Ikri, and I talked this out in the book, and I had Ben Burt…
described for me in the documentary it’s called the technique of sound because Ben Burt it was exactly the same he was a student at UCLA he worked the projectors there which had a wheel he used to do that part-time too he got paid for that so he’d make a bit of money and the wheel he used to change the speed of it by putting his hand on
Yep.
Roger (01:02:08.462)
playing around and because he loved the sound of it see Ben Burt like any other sound designer would have gone off got some primitive synth in those days they weren’t many but the synthesizer he would have made spacey sounds what did Ben do he went to the zoo he recorded walruses and lions and bears he recorded so in his little apartment he had a cathode-ray television
and the microphone when he walked across shorted out anyone would have said get rid of that he said that’s an interesting
Let’s do that again.
And the projector hum is what made the lightsaber. And he’s an equal part of this weapon becoming so iconic that sound is equal to the look of it. So, you know, when I saw it on screen, I just thought, yes, yeah.
Oh, we’ve done it.
Rhiannon (01:03:02.702)
We’ve done that. Amazing. I tell you, this cinema alchemist book, I’m going to be clinging to every word. I’m here trying not to order a copy whilst we’re talking right now.
It’s just one kind of follow up to that. Do you go to conventions yourself? Are you invited? And so what do you make of when people show you their own home-built lightsabers? Are you like, wow, it’s sick. I wish I could have thought of that. Have any just really blown you
just think, yeah, well nowadays, you know, we’ve just launched my original one with Theory Saviors who are the number one. He’s become a partner because he’s the true Star Wars fan. He and Sam Witner, the two who know everything about Star Wars. I think Nier is the voice of all the fans in the world. And it’s something I discovered when I was
I’ve actually got the next book I’m just doing the final editing is called The Origin of the Lightsaber and I go into the whole thing about Japanese swords and how everything is made and the histories and all of this. What to me is I just think it’s wonderful that instead of just going to a shop and buying a toy, fans all over the world go out, they find what I
used. They try to buy original parts that are too expensive, well they can’t find them, but they’re making their own stuff. They’re all doing things, talent, that they never knew they would have without this. And this is unique, there’s no other film is doing this. So I think it’s wonderful. And now, you know, the lightsabers, like the one I did with Nia, there’s my original lightsaber with blades that light up. You can fight with them, they don’t break. It’s got sounds and lights and
Roger (01:05:05.122)
They’re working lightsabers. It’s My I got an 11 year old. He’s wrong. It’s full of these things now. All the time. Fights.
you
Because that’s interesting because our convention this year in Stornoway, that’s one of the things the activities on the day is build your own lightsaber. that’s the influence on display right there. The legacy.
It’s fantastic, I love it. As I said, it’s given people an incentive to do something and they may never have known they had that ability. And it’s also a connection. Having your own version of this is a connection into the Star Wars world and that’s very important too.
Yeah.
Callum (01:05:49.142)
There’s one last question that came in there from Retro Gamer. He just simply asked, have you ever gone to Skywalker Ranch?
Yeah, lot. Yeah, yeah, I was. I was there when George bought the land. And they arranged a picnic. And I was doing Phantom Menace. I was directing second unit, so they had me at the picnic there and it was just fields then there was nothing else there. And that’s when David West Reynolds was a young kid who was a Star Wars fan who
went on his own, he was an archeologist, and went and found in Tunisia all the locations. see, at the end of this film, the other thing you have to remember, everything was done. No one thought this film would ever come out. When Rick McCollum began as producer, they had to go back and shoot in Tunisia. There was no records anywhere of where we shot. Nobody knew. And he remembered this kid.
David phoning in asking about the locations and David on his own money went with a little crew to Tunisia and using archaeological techniques he matched up every single shot in the film to the location the camera angles everything and Rick McCullum flew him to Tunis to meet the designer and the DP and again it was the same situation there were these hardened industry
professionals, you know, this young kid going, well, this is where you shoot. First day they treated me like a little student idiot. the end of that day.
Rhiannon (01:07:33.814)
We’re like, please tell us more.
And at the end of that, Rick McCollum said, David, come to the ranch, just come and see us. And he said, I’m an archaeologist. What am I going to do? He said, just come and hang out, please. So he did. They made him the head of literature. And David wrote the, because he knew so much about everything, he wrote the Star Wars dictionaries, which are the first.
Yeah.
details of all the props, the sets, everything. And he wrote about six books there. He went through the archives, went through everywhere. And John Barry, my name, would never mention because no one knew what we did. There were no records anymore. And all the ILM stuff is recorded because that was where George was and heavily involved. So.
Get in there.
Roger (01:08:28.862)
I was at this picnic field, this is answer your questions, a long story. This kid runs down to me and says, you’re Roger? And I said, yes. And he said, I’ve got to ask you some questions. And it became a very, very, very strong friendship between us. And so he’s the one who forced me to write this book. And in fact, he’s put the second I had him do a second forward, which is all about the about how I came up and did everything.
Great.
Callum (01:08:52.238)
Thank
Roger (01:08:59.528)
And so it kind of led to, and I’ve been many times, I’m one of the very few people still friends with George, I go and…
You have to understand George, you he walked away, obviously, and we know why he wanted to build the museum and everything. And George has to hide because it’s the way he is. And when I was walking across the stage with him, the last time I went, my wife was heavily pregnant and we were just walking. And he said, you know, I stopped directing for 20 years. And I said, I know George and I know how bad time you had on the first one and how awful it was. And we both had
babies on set on that first film, his first child and mine. And he said, you know, in the end, my family is more important to me than Star Wars. And so Marsha had left him. So he brought all the three kids up himself as a mother and father. And that’s George, you know. And in fact, the last lunch I had with him because he had a new baby and mine was pregnant.
We talked about nappies and he said, know, now you don’t have to stick your finger in and see if they pee. Now you’ve got a red stripe and it’ll turn yellow. So I think that shows that why he says that’s friendship and everything. And that’s George, you know, he’s, he’s an absolute genius. We know all of it. Everything I’ve done is George. It all came out of his mind, his studies, his
It just sounds like you were both perfect. But each of those catalysts, each of those support, each of those hype man. And you need that kind of trust. it just sounds like it’s perfect.
Roger (01:10:48.714)
something like this under that pressure you know they flew in the DP the special effects head the editor who said he couldn’t cut this film together and he didn’t know what he was doing they actually got down and add over to England towards the end of the shoot to fire George off his own movie and Alan Ladd stuck by George when when he asked George what he was intending with the editing and George told him I’ve never touched
anything of this editor and it’s not classically done. I’m doing it like a spaghetti western. I’m doing it different techniques and everything. This is what I’m going to do. And he trusted George, thank goodness.
Well, on behalf of every single one of us, thank you for trusting each other every step of the way because as we keep, you know, keep circling back, but it really didn’t just change cinema, it changed the world and it changed people’s lives.
Yeah, and as far as this question with Skywalk, you know, I’ve been there a lot and I’ve stayed there. when I made Black Angel, the negative got lost and it got restored years later, the negative got found. And so I then was able to use the Skywalker, which is the number one sound facility in the world for movies. They kindly redid the…
sound for me and the last time I was there. And honestly, when you go there, see, George didn’t build a factory and all of this to get to the sound studio, which is the number one in the world. You walk up a gravel path under vines where there’s vines growing that you go, they go and pick and make grapes out of the New England house, which is the home of Skywalker. George designed even the hinges, even the door knobs, every single piece of that George designed himself.
Roger (01:12:42.102)
He created an artificial lake, there’s organic gardens. It’s amazing what he did. And in fact, he revived all the local crafts that were dying out because it was made. Tiffany lamps are there everywhere. It’s beautiful. The screening room and the library, you just want to go and live in.
All right.
Rhiannon (01:13:01.55)
I feel like I do, yeah, that sounds amazing.
Yeah, it’s beautiful. that, yeah, that further answers his question. If anyone could ever go, then they’ll see.
Yeah, okay with that we’ve kind of slightly run over but I don’t think anyone’s objecting to that.
I could listen to you talk about this. Literally all year.
Yeah.
Callum (01:13:24.334)
lot of stories. yeah, Roger, if people want to find you, reach out to you. I know you’ve mentioned your book so you can do a plug here for it.
Yeah, it’s on Amazon, one. So and there are all the stories. And I said, I wrote it as a mentorship. It’s not like, look what I did. How great was I? It’s all done practical and how I made Alien and how I made Black Angel because I made that in Scotland. I made the first two movies in Scotland. It’s like a huge kind of connection. And the first one, I’d never seen Scotland before put on cinema ever.
Yeah.
Callum (01:13:52.29)
Scott.
Roger (01:14:04.042)
And so I went trying to be Kurosawa with wide-angle lens and no money and created, I think, the first time anyone had ever seen that stunning beauty of Scotland.
We are spoiled. It’s true.
And the second film, Dollar Bottom, which the negative is actually missing. I’ve just found some old D1 and D2 masters of it. It won the Academy Award in 82 for best dramatic short film. So, and it’s all Scottish actors. So I have a huge affinity. They’re always asking me, can’t I go and make, because I’m doing the feature of Black Angel. Can’t I go back and shoot it there? But it depends on cost.
Yes.
Rhiannon (01:14:46.764)
as all these things do.
budgets but yeah so Galaxy built on hope which is the documentary which is hugely expanded it’s two hour twenty fan special of everything in the book and that at some point I’ll get out I take a few copies that I’ve got to to some of the fans
Alright.
Roger (01:15:11.118)
shows and sell a few there that’s all I can do at the moment but I eventually will get this out into a streamer somewhere in episodes but it’s you know the legacies I had to do it and they can find me anyway through that on Instagram is the easiest way it’s Roger Christian on Instagram or Facebook and I am starting now because I realize you know like with Theory Savers I have to now and this is
can’t wait.
Roger (01:15:40.96)
everyone’s encouraging me to do it now to get all of this properly managed and put up into all the stories and everything to be told. And everyone wants me to say it.
Roger (01:15:56.046)
So I will and hopefully I’ll get back to…
Well that leads into the question we ask of all our guests. Would you consider coming up to our humble little convention if you had the chance?
Yeah, It would be. I mean, when when when Black Angel Negative was missing. George’s copy, the print had gone missing off the ranch. They found they looked for two years, couldn’t find it. Mine got destroyed when I was making Nostradamus. I was directing in Fara off Romania and the effects company went bankrupt and everything got binned. So there were no copies and it got found in cinema Alchemist.
We would love to host you.
Roger (01:16:38.09)
and young guy, Guy Veal, who saw Star Wars when he was five years old. His dad took him to see Empire and it burnt into his soul, this short film. And he didn’t know if it was real or not. And he’d always had dreams about it and everything. And then he found out it was real and he came to Mill Valley. We had a special screening. He lives in Glasgow now. He came and said, look, I’ve got an offer.
Glasgow Film Festival would like to show the short, now it’s restored and if you’re willing to come with me in the car and we’ll stay in little hotels, we’re going to go around the four cities and have a kind of reunion. It was a hundred seat cinema in Glasgow and it became 400, they sold so many seats they had to put it in the big cinema.
And when we were nearest to where we shot Eileen Donankasso, the three kids I’d hired to be plague victims, all turned out. BBC online did an article on it and it went viral online in a week. 500,000.
That’s so cool.
Roger (01:18:03.714)
views in a week and then it went to two million and so that’s why I’m the period feature of it now, trying to after many years of trying independently and so it kind of Scotland and I have a huge ability
We can’t wait to see you back.
It’s only, I think it’s only grown with this podcast, the affinity we have for you.
100%.
Well it’s fun, know, I like doing these and it’s good.
Callum (01:18:34.958)
It’s been an honor to have you and I think we’ve only scratched, I think we’ve only scratched the surface and we might ask you on again in the future for the next book. I think there’s so much more I think the people listening will want to know as well.
There’s a lot of stories. Yeah, and it’s important. It’s very important. This is unique in the history of cinema for now and forever. It’ll never happen again. The circumstances. Somehow George got it made. Yeah, they did. No question.
stars align.
Callum (01:19:10.542)
Yeah, so big thank you everyone to Roger. Thank you to my co-host Rhiannon for coming along. It’s been great having you again. Thanks everyone for listening and we’ll speak to you again all very soon. Good night everyone.
Thanks. Nice to meet you.
Roger (01:19:25.58)
Okay, send me a link when you’ve done it.
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