I Met Irvin Kershner Tonight

by Lukas Kendall

The only reason the above title is so snooty and lame is because this way when this column is archived, people will see "I Met Irvin Kershner Tonight" and go to it because it sounds interesting.

I was at a cocktail party tonight (I'm writing this late Wed.) put on by the Flanders International Film Festival, which has a lot of film music programming, and takes place in Ghent, Belgium in October. It was a very nice cocktail party and had a variety of cool celebrities, which is, after all, why I loved to Los Angeles. However, I do NOT actually have a physical, pen-and-paper list of celebrities I have met which I add to, like Jeff Bond.

Irvin Kershner has directed some cool movies, most notably a little picture called The Empire Strikes Back. When I was introduced to him, he said, "Lukas... I know some Lucases." (This joke does not look good in writing because our names are spelled differently.)

Let me cut to the chase. As folks know, I wrote liner notes for the 4CD box set of Star Wars Trilogy music in 1993, and we've had a ton of coverage over the years of the Star Wars scores in Film Score Monthly. The Empire Strikes Back is one of my all-time favorite scores, but there's around 15-20 min. which John Williams wrote for the picture which was not used in it. I've always wondered what exactly happened to cause this music to be left out, and actually asked Williams when I was lucky enough to interview him for the Raiders of the Lost Ark expanded CD a few years ago. Williams didn't remember and just said it was part of the normal process of working on a movie, that some music goes unused--although compared to Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost, Return of the Jedi and many others this was an extreme case.

So I try not to bother people with lame nerd questions like this at mellow functions, but I asked Mr. Kershner's permission to ask one totally lame-ass nerd question and he said sure. So I asked why a lot of the music Williams wrote for Empire, particularly at the opening of the movie, was unused. Well, there were no good stories. He said that during the dubbing of the movie he remembered that they just kept pulling out music because there was "so much music." He also said that spotting the movie (which is when the composer and director--and probably in this case George Lucas--decide where the music will go) was funny on Empire because they did it "in reverse." When they started spotting the picture, they kept on going, "Well, the music should start here... and be here... and here... and keep going here..." until they threw in the towel and started looking for places where they specifically wanted silence. And then later, during dubbing, as mentioned before, they pulled out some cues which they realized they didn't need.

While I am on this subject, would all of you like to know why The Empire Strikes Back is so cool compared to Return of the Jedi? Besides the obvious (better script), here is the behind-the-scenes look at why Empire is better. Most of this comes from a great new book called Empire Building which is all about how Lucas built his franchise.

When George Lucas went to make The Empire Strikes Back, he was under an enormous amount of pressure--people didn't think he could capture the magic of Star Wars again. But more than that, Lucas took a huge risk, financing the movie largely with his own money, banking that this could fund what ultimately became his Lucasfilm "empire." Star Wars was made with 20th Century Fox's money, and Fox owned the picture outright, but Empire was different--Lucas had retained sequel rights from the first movie (at the time sequel rights weren't worth much) and was determined to be the one who profited from the second installment. That could only happen if he made it with his own money, so he did.

So George is putting up a lot of money, and unlike Star Wars he decides not to direct this one (he hated directing). For the first time hires a director: Irvin Kershner, who at the time was coming off of films like Return of a Man Called Horse and The Eyes of Laura Mars. Kershner and Lucas's longtime producer, Gary Kurtz (the guy in photos with the Amish beard), basically shoot the movie in England while Lucas oversees and executive produces from San Francisco (this is from memory, I might have the facts a bit off). Kershner goes over budget and schedule, due to all the problems in such a pioneering effects movie, and to my eyes, he does something miraculous: actually directs the movie. I mean, I love watching The Empire Strikes Back because there are so many nuances to the characters, even (maybe especially) the non-human ones--these actually seem like real people. It's also framed well and has a lot of interesting shots full of depth and color and shading.

Empire Strikes Back is also a dark film and reportedly when Lucas got the footage back he was appalled at what Kershner and Kurtz had done to his creation--he likes things fast, clear and crisp, the way the original Star Wars moves at a brisk pace. Not having seen the rough cut I don't know what it was like, but I'm assuming Kershner and Kurtz put it together it at a more naturalistic and dare I say "slow" pace.

Eventually, what happened was that Lucas and Kershner together made a movie that incorporated Lucas's taste for fast-moving plot points (after he took control of it) and Kershner's gift with actors. And that is why Empire is so great. By the way, here are two '80s fantasy movies Gary Kurtz produced which in some ways have the "look" of The Empire Strikes Back, without the mythical and bang-bang editing touch of George Lucas: The Dark Crystal and Return to Oz.

The fallout? Empire became a huge success and in retrospect is considered the richest and most ambitious of the Trilogy. Lucas never used Kurtz again and hired a puppet producer, Howard Kazanjian, and a puppet director, the late Richard Marquand, for Return of the Jedi, a movie which to my eyes features Lucas's penchant for happy endings and unambiguous solutions unchecked by anyone who would say "no" to him. He also had Jedi's location footage done in the United States (as opposed to Tunisia for Star Wars or Norway for Empire), closer to home. So that is why Empire is so cool compared to Return of the Jedi.

Well, this column has a lot to do with film music. Hey, here's one last great story from Empire Building (get this book, it's great): at the Empire wrap party--the conclusion of a tense, difficult shoot, with American and British sensibilities clashing--the crew got a gift for Gary Kurtz. He unwrapped the elaborate box and pulled out... a moustache to go with his Amish beard. As I recall from the book, it didn't go over too well.

Be here tomorrow for something relevant in This News Friday, but I hope you have enjoyed this column. Send your befuddled comments to: MailBag@filmscoremonthly.com