Starlog 31 Page 14

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Blacksburg Sun April 29, 1979

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From Once Upon a Galaxy: A Journal of the Making of Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back by Alan Arnold, a Del Rey Book First Edition September 1980

Tuesday May 22 (1979)

The Star Wars stage began its movie life today. The set that has been built on it depicts the huge hangar on Hoth. On this set are arranged the Rebel fleet of snowspeeders and the huge, full-scale Falcon. All the principals and hundreds of extras were on call today, and the two film units combined to work simultaneously.

“Completing the soundstage is the culmination of seven months of planning, building, and set preparation,” said Kurtz. “And the result will be a permanent facility for filmmakers in England.”

True, but nobody came to the opening. There had been talk of a press reception. Fox suggested asking Prince Charles. We thought of having R2-D2 open the mighty scenery doors by remote control. But nothing came of these suggestions. It was thought more prudent to get on with the work, bearing in mind we are behind schedule.

But there was a visitor nonetheless – eighteen-old Matthew Pack (Note: they spelled my last name wrong) from Chester, Virginia, who had won a Star Wars Fan Club competition. His prize of a trip to London coincided with the stage’s opening day and he was overjoyed.

Kersh was impressed, too. This stage is the largest interior he has ever worked on. “Of course, I’ve worked on bigger sets built on location, but this is by far the biggest interior,” he told me. “You might say that it’s reversing the trend in recent years of filmmakers going on location to achieve bigness. But outer space is colossal and where can you go to film that? You have to build to show the bigness of space.and that’s what we have done.

But it’s a pity, I feel, that we didn’t open the stage with a fanfare. A movie stage, like a theater, is consecrated to make-believe. Who knows what shadow worlds will have brief lives on it over the years to come? Palaces and spacecraft, streets where no one lives, ships that sail no oceans, and jungles where birds don’t fly – all may have their day in this cavern of entertainment. But nobody except that boy from Virginia will remember the thrill of the first day.

From The Making of The Empire Strikes Back by J.W. Rinzler, LucasBooks First Edition November 2010

Because production was so far behind, plans to celebrate the stage’s opening - a press reception attended by Prince Charles, and so on - were dropped. One visitor did show up, however: 18-year-old Matthew Pak from Chester, Virginia, who had won a Star Wars Fan Club drawing competition. Another visitor was Charles Champlin from the Los Angeles Times, who wrote that the new structure was second in size only to the James Bond Stage at Shepperton: “Amid the busy jumble, crowning a slight rise of land like a dark castle, stands a huge and brand-new sound stage.”