Let's step back to some time not too long after May 25, 1977

May 18, 2022 4:05 PM

Mike Douglass interviews Carrie, Mark, and Harrison [14m] sometime soon after the 1977 release of their film. The interview weird and young and charming. Everyone seems overwhelmed, and everyone is still having to explain the movie when they talk about it.
posted by hippybear (24 comments total)

It's a time of curious innocence with Douglas saying he's never seen anything like this with the stars of the movie turning up on magazine covers. I was a kid when the movie came out so I was not really too attuned to pop culture, but yeah, this is my impression. Five years earlier The Godfather was a massive hit, but it sure wasn't an all-encompassing cultural avalanche like Star Wars became.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 4:31 PM on May 18, 2022 [3 favorites]

I just skimmed so I may have missed but does Mark ever say (or can you make it out) who it is on the button he's wearing?
posted by stevil at 4:35 PM on May 18, 2022

Also, I like that the other guest is Richard Thomas, who in three years would be playing a farmboy from a backwater world who has a gift for piloting in Roger Corman's Battle Beyond the Stars. Say what you will about all it lifts from Star Wars, at least BBtS had a notably buxom spaceship that had no precedent to be found in the older film.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 4:49 PM on May 18, 2022 [4 favorites]

who it is on the button he's wearing?

It kinnnnd of looks like Howard the Duck.

And then I found this twitter chat from Hamill that kinnnnd of backs that up?
posted by JoeZydeco at 5:07 PM on May 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

Ms Fisher refers to the Falcon as "Harrison's space plane".
posted by sammyo at 5:51 PM on May 18, 2022 [5 favorites]

I love the way they all dance around the plot. Like, they worked to not spoil anything for folks who hadn't seen the film yet. And they didn't play any clips from the film either. Kind of refreshing and oddly...innocent.
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 6:04 PM on May 18, 2022 [3 favorites]

(DERAIL ALERT: If you're into connections, Hamill wearing Howard the Duck merchandise is a pretty interesting thing. George Lucas picked up a copy of comic book #1 during post-production of Star Wars and toyed with the idea of making Howard into a movie. The project bounced around for nearly a decade and was finally released in 1986...and then bombed. Lucas was so far in the hole (especially after completing construction of the Skywalker Ranch complex) that he needed cash, fast. Steve Jobs offered to buy Lucasfilm's fledgling computer graphics department for a nice price and bail Lucas out. So now we have a line from a duck to Pixar.)
posted by JoeZydeco at 6:38 PM on May 18, 2022 [21 favorites]

JoeZydeco: that's a series of Connections that would make James Burke proud!
posted by hippybear at 6:59 PM on May 18, 2022 [10 favorites]

It kinnnnd of looks like Howard the Duck.

Marvel ran a "Howard for President" campaign to promote the book in 1976, so the timing would be right, but the official buttons it sold don't match Hamill's. Maybe a custom one?

Steve Gerber, who created HTD, was easily Marvel's weirdest and most interesting writer at the time. The book under him was a relatively sophisticated one with a real Underground Comics sensibility about it and a measure of social/political satire worked in to the plots. Gerber wound up suing Marvel over Howard's ownership - a battle dramatised in his fund-raising Destroyer Duck series with the equally pissed-off Jack Kirby - but eventually settled out of court.
posted by Paul Slade at 7:06 PM on May 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

Hamill wearing Howard the Duck merchandise is a pretty interesting thing. George Lucas picked up a copy of comic book #1 during post-production of Star Wars

I guess my question is... what is the connection with Hamill and the pin and Lucas even having heard about HTD? I know Hamill had been a bit entwined with voice talent work before Star Wars, so did he introduce George to Howard?
posted by hippybear at 8:07 PM on May 18, 2022

One interesting point was when Mark Hamill mentioned the other three actors. Does anyone know about who they were?
posted by coberh at 9:54 PM on May 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

My ex-wife and I saw it at a really good theater, we had no idea what it was before seeing it, totally blown away by how cool it was, and how much fun it was. What a great movie it was, and is.

And those stars on the screen were just the best, it was so easy to love them and we sure did. Carrie Fisher, I kept looking to her eyes in this interview, a huge life ahead of her and she so innocent, such a pretty kid.

Thx for posting this, really fun to step 45 years back in time.
posted by dancestoblue at 10:35 PM on May 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

Lucas even having heard about HTD?

The Marvel campaign I mentioned above gave Howard a lot of mainstream press coverage, so Lucas or Hamill may have found out about him there. A search for the term "Howard the Duck" on Newspapers.com turns up 121 results from papers all over America - and that's in 1976 alone.

Alternatively, perhaps Lucas was simply a comics reader?
posted by Paul Slade at 1:10 AM on May 19, 2022

Does anyone know about who they were?

This account includes notable rejected players like Jodie Foster, Kurt Russell, Amy Irving, Nick Nolte and William Katt, but apparently the other finalist trio was Will Seltzer as Luke, Christopher Walken as Han Solo and Terri Nunn as Princess Leia.
posted by BlackPebble at 5:03 AM on May 19, 2022

I guess my question is... what is the connection with Hamill and the pin and Lucas even having heard about HTD?

This was my source, and the interesting quote was from Willard Hyuck:

"Gloria (Katz) and I used to have lunch with George while he was doing post-production on Star Wars at a deli in the Valley, and next door happened to be a comic book store. One day we were going to be late, so he went over bought the first issue of Howard the Duck. We had never heard of it, but he showed it to us and said, “You know, this would make a great movie.”

Sure, it's all tenuous. I'd really like to think at some point in time later Lucas showed HTD to Mark and got him into it as well. But as others said above Howard was in the media in 1976 with a faux presidential campaign and etc so maybe it's just coincidence.

But to think that maybe Hamill turned Lucas on to HTD, and that series of events led up to a Marvel roller coaster at DisneyWorld and Apple being a $2 trillion dollar corporation, kind of makes me chuckle.
posted by JoeZydeco at 7:22 AM on May 19, 2022

Man, male hosts sure acted differently to young female guests back then.
posted by gottabefunky at 9:16 AM on May 19, 2022 [3 favorites]

. . . Christopher Walken as Han Solo . . .

Please stop reminding me how inferior this timeline is.
posted by The Bellman at 9:48 AM on May 19, 2022 [2 favorites]

One day we were going to be late, so he went over bought the first issue of Howard the Duck.

There's long been speculation that he may have picked up a few issues of Jack Kirby's early seventies New Gods series too.
posted by Paul Slade at 9:56 AM on May 19, 2022 [1 favorite]

It kinnnnd of looks like Howard the Duck.

Marvel ran a "Howard for President" campaign to promote the book in 1976

There's one hell of an issue of "What If...?" in there somewhere.
posted by gtrwolf at 1:07 PM on May 19, 2022

notably buxom spaceship

Buxom or ballsy?
posted by kirkaracha at 2:49 PM on May 19, 2022 [1 favorite]

Man, male hosts sure acted differently to young female guests back then.


I got those creepy vibes at first as well. Also introducing Carrie using her parents, then making the comment about not having to identify as your parents' child was rather.. awkward.
posted by thoughtful_jester at 4:05 PM on May 19, 2022 [2 favorites]

I am an admirer of Mark Hamill. He's just the best. Sure, you could just retire on Star Wars money, But he hung in there. He continues to act and he's pretty amazing.
posted by SPrintF at 6:36 PM on May 19, 2022 [1 favorite]

I am an admirer of Mark Hamill. He's just the best. Sure, you could just retire on Star Wars money, But he hung in there. He continues to act and he's pretty amazing.

Arguably, his Batman: The Animated Series Joker is the best rendering of the character.
posted by mikelieman at 8:43 PM on May 19, 2022 [1 favorite]

The Mike Douglass Show was my afterschool childhood. Dark blue-wood panelled living room with decorative brass plates hung on it, a horn of plenty pattern couch, rust-orange shag carpet and my mom chain smoking enough to cause a cloud layer that hung just above your head when seated. I did not see Star Wars until it was out for a long time and when my brothers and I finally talked my Dad into taking us he went with us and fell asleep in less than twenty minutes.

Mike Douglass, at the time, was a conduit to what seemed liked completely other world's that I had no other access to. I wouldn't be surprised if my mom seeing these interviews was the reason I got to see the movie in the theater.
posted by srboisvert at 10:39 AM on May 20, 2022 [1 favorite]