Anthony Forrest’s Blog

How did you get the part of Fixer and how did you feel when those scenes were edited out of the film? Did you know before the film came out that it was going to happen?

George Lucas was in London casting when I was called in to meet him by the casting agent Irene Lamb. We met a few times at Twentith Century Fox’s offices in Soho Square and then my agent got the offer.

No, I had no idea the scenes had been cut until I saw the film at a crew and cast screening in London. Sure, I was disappointed, I’m human, I have my in securities. Actors can be insecure at the best of times, especially when its a major studio film. I look at this way, a motion picture goes through three stages. Script, shooting, and editing. Each stage having a separate life of its own. A character can go from important to nothing at any of those stages. Its the small roles that are the hardest, you’re a sound bite hoping to leave an impression. I suppose the irony is, those edited scenes with the success of the film have become of interest to a lot of hardcore Star Wars fans.

The original shooting screenplay was 142 pages. No matter how you look at it, something had to go. Editing film myself, I think George was right. Leaving those scenes in would have slowed up the film and being able to get into the meat of the story. Now that people know the film and whole story so well, it might be interesting some day to include the scenes as a Director’s alternative cut.

I was recently at a special screening of Star War IV(A New Hope) at the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts, that was attended by George, Gary Kurtz, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and a lot of the brilliant film and post-production team. After seeing the film, it was interesting to hear George as the true artist say, he still saw things in the film he’d liked to fix. You can keep polishing a film forever. At some point you just have to say. “That’s my baby and its OK for it to have a life of its own, Daddy’s done everything he can.”