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Join: August 25th 2004 12:31 pm
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Here's a nice bit from yesterday's New York Times:
The New York Times
June 3, 2007
Television
Even Wookiees Need a Good Belly Laugh
By DAVE ITZKOFF
SOMETIMES, after a long day of working with Wookiees, Ewoks, Jedi knights and Mandalorian bounty hunters, even the employees of Lucasfilm need a break. And when they get distracted, like anyone else stuck in an office, they surf the Web.
Their own particular fetish is videos, and among their favorites — no surprise — has a “Star Wars” theme. It is an animated short from “Robot Chicken,” the series created by Seth Green and Matthew Senreich for the Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim programming block. In it the evil emperor Palpatine receives a weepy phone call from Darth Vader after the Death Star is destroyed. Only the emperor’s (heavily bleeped) portion of the conversation is audible as he learns that his battle station has been blown up by a band of meddlesome teenagers. (“That thing wasn’t even fully paid off yet,” he grouses. “Do you have any idea what this is going to do to my credit?”)
The clip proved so popular that it eventually reached the inbox of Mr. Lucas himself. And despite his history of quashing unauthorized “Star Wars” parodies, he gave his blessing to “Robot Chicken: Star Wars,” a half-hour special set entirely in the science-fiction universe of “Star Wars” that will premiere on June 17.
“I honestly have no idea why they’re letting us do this,” Mr. Green said in a recent interview. “It’s one of those things where we didn’t ask a lot of questions.” He and Mr. Senreich proposed the episode to Lucasfilm executives in May 2006, but they have been paying satirical homage to the “Star Wars” franchise almost from the moment “Robot Chicken” made its debut in 2005.
“It was an adventure story that unified kids and adults alike,” said Mr. Green, who was just 3 years old when the original “Star Wars” opened in 1977. “Not only that — because of all the promotional tie-ins, its complete saturation of the marketplace with toys and bed sheets and lunchboxes and stationery, everybody had something ‘Star Wars’ at the time.”
The relentless merchandising of “Star Wars” has been a fertile source of comedy for “Robot Chicken,” whose stop-motion puppets are designed to evoke vintage action figures and playthings of decades past. And the geeky obsessives who make and watch “Robot Chicken” know the “Star Wars” movies so intimately that they can find humor in the saga’s most obscure moments and personalities.
“There’s only a handful of those films” about which “you can write jokes based on people’s knowledge of the delivery of a single line,” said Seth MacFarlane, the creator of the animated sitcom “Family Guy,” who frequently lends his voice to “Robot Chicken” characters.
Once they were given permission to use the full spectrum of “Star Wars” characters, vehicles, sound effects and music, the “Robot Chicken” crew found itself deliriously overwhelmed.
“The first ideas we were coming up with were really pedestrian stuff,” said Breckin Meyer, an actor who writes and performs voices for the show. “O.K., Chewbacca getting walked like a dog by Han Solo. R2-D2 and C-3P0, are they a couple? It was all about getting rid of that stuff and going deeper.” Instead the writing staff devised skits that played upon fans’ encyclopedic knowledge of the movies: What is the true nature of Han Solo’s rivalry with the mercenary Boba Fett? Might the Tosche Station, where Luke says he goes to pick up power converters, really be an interstellar strip club? And just who the heck is Ponda Baba?
“I definitely had to go back to the archives for that one,” said Tom Warner, the senior director of marketing at Lucasfilm, who vetted the “Robot Chicken: Star Wars” script. “I was like, I think I know who they’re talking about, but I’d better check.” (The correct answer: a walrus-like creature who loses his arm to Ben Kenobi’s light saber. Of course.)
Though Lucasfilm executives read and gave notes on the script, Mr. Warner said they tried not to exert too much influence on the final results. “It’s not Lucasfilm putting out the show, it’s Cartoon Network,” he said. “There is still going to be that ‘Robot Chicken’ sense of humor in this, and we didn’t want them to lose that.”
One short scene depicting a post-coital moment between Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia — implying that the two characters have already discovered that they are brother and sister — seemed to test the limits of that artistic freedom. But Lucasfilm ultimately allowed “Robot Chicken” to keep it in the show. “It’s a parody, and that allows them to have fun with it,” Mr. Warner said with a sigh. “If we were producing this, I would definitely pause at that.”
Over the years Mr. Lucas has earned a reputation for stifling projects that, in his estimation, cast the “Star Wars” franchise in an unflattering light. He will not allow “The Star Wars Holiday Special,” a campy live-action show that appeared once on CBS in 1978 and never again, to be rebroadcast or released in any form. (“Nor should he,” Mr. MacFarlane said. “It’s interminable. The first half-hour is in Wookiee.”)
Yet there are more recent, encouraging signs that Mr. Lucas has developed a sense of humor about his movies. In addition to the “Robot Chicken” special he has given a thumbs-up to an episode of “Family Guy,” scheduled for next season, that parodies the original “Star Wars” film. And Mr. Lucas even provided his own voice for a “Robot Chicken” segment that imagines him meeting some overzealous fans at a “Star Wars” convention. “He’s accepted the fact that ‘Star Wars’ belongs to the people,” said Mr. Green, who directed Mr. Lucas’s recording sessions for the show. “He’s having fun with it, he laughs at himself. It doesn’t sacrifice the brand’s ability to be taken seriously to point out the inherent silliness in it.”
Mr. Lucas benefits from these tributes. They keep his films relevant to a new generation of viewers, and they might even lay the groundwork for future “Star Wars” television series, should he follow through on his longstanding vow to bring the franchise to the small screen. The producers of “Robot Chicken” recognize their role in these transactions. “We’re a cog in their machine,” Mr. Senreich said. “But at the same time they’ve been nothing but respectful to us.”
Their relationship with Lucasfilm has yielded additional perks. This winter the entire cast and crew of the show were invited to screen “Robot Chicken: Star Wars” for studio’s assembled staff at the Skywalker Ranch in Marin County. There, they were feted with drinks and a buffet dinner, shown a restored print of “The Empire Strikes Back” and sent home with an arsenal of replica light sabers. (“When our plane landed,” Mr. Green said, “the flight attendant was like, ‘Welcome to Los Angeles — and may the force be with you.’ ”)
And they hope that “Robot Chicken: Star Wars” will pave the way for more authorized parodies of fantasy franchises on their show, as well as future collaborations with Mr. Lucas. Douglas Goldstein, a “Robot Chicken” head writer, recalled that at the Skywalker Ranch: “George said casually, ‘Oh, we’ve got to do this again.’ As far as I’m concerned that’s an iron-clad contract.”
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