Whose arm? — Page 2

You forget that films are not only shot out of sequence but as in S.W. the live action was shot in the U.K. and the effects and many of the inserts were shot in L.A.. The cantina was shot in the U.K. and the characters in the black and white photo are in England. The color photo of Jim Nelson ( BUCK KNIFE NELSON) with the knife was just after I set up the shot with the head. At the time I did not see the footage that comes before the severed arm, just some production stills of walrus man and the guy with the bad complexion from the waist up, and no hands. Thing happen real fast on films , and you are on to something else. Imagine the cost of having the bad complexion guy get on his makeup months later and molding his arm and head and then sending it to L.A.. S.W. took 10.5 mil. to make not 100 mil.. I was just sent the box with the arm and hand and be ready for G. Kurtz to show up. All the parts were already in L.A.. By the way many of the inserts for the cantina were shot in L.A. . All the close ups, the band, and Han in the corner table. That hand was already in L.A. at Rick Baker's. It shows up I think on what we called the wolfman. The Kurosawa connection is right on.

I never saw the flipper you mention except a week ago on this site.

My real first name is Lorne. I thought I was being clever.  

Lost cut flipper:

via: http://www.starwarz.com/tbone/index.php?categoryid=9&p2_articleid=342

Hi Lorne!

I can't believe you joined the site! Stick around!

Some interesting answers there Lorne, which helps to make sense of things better.  Welcome aboard!

Although I've come across these 'behind-the-scenes' shots of 'Walrus' guy and 'Freaky nose' before, I've only just realised that there are actually 2 blasters shown in them!  Can't believe I never picked up on that properly before.

To be honest, I'm glad that the production went with the 'Wolfman' hand for my initial viewing of the movie, as the 'flipper' may have come over as looking a little ridiculous to me when it came to 'holding' the blaster that lay beside it.  The initial 'push' on Luke by the 'Walrus' guy goes by pretty quickly, and no-one would have really picked up on the fact that it was a different hand at the time.  Only in subsequent re-watches would anyone notice.  And although the actual footage used doesn't seem to show a clear shot of 'Walrus' guy holding a blaster before Obi-wan swipes, I'm pleased to see that it seems like he *did*, after all! 

I could never understand why the 'wrong person's arm was used when I rewatched the movie over the years, but at least these photos help make sense of it better now, considering they *both* were about to use a blaster, it seems!

However, I'll always prefer adywan's 'Revisited' version now, since that's the only arm we actually see raising a blaster in the movie.

Nice to see that alternate 'cantina bar' footage again, doubleofive - I always wished that the neat wide shot of the interior at the beginning of the clip where Obi-wan enters, had been used, as well as the shot of the 'giant fly-headed'(!) alien, and when the Sandtroopers actually enter the premises.  I always liked those ones.

elvin peterson said:

You forget that films are not only shot out of sequence but as in S.W. the live action was shot in the U.K. and the effects and many of the inserts were shot in L.A.. The cantina was shot in the U.K. and the characters in the black and white photo are in England. The color photo of Jim Nelson ( BUCK KNIFE NELSON) with the knife was just after I set up the shot with the head. At the time I did not see the footage that comes before the severed arm, just some production stills of walrus man and the guy with the bad complexion from the waist up, and no hands. Thing happen real fast on films , and you are on to something else. Imagine the cost of having the bad complexion guy get on his makeup months later and molding his arm and head and then sending it to L.A.. S.W. took 10.5 mil. to make not 100 mil.. I was just sent the box with the arm and hand and be ready for G. Kurtz to show up. All the parts were already in L.A.. By the way many of the inserts for the cantina were shot in L.A. . All the close ups, the band, and Han in the corner table. That hand was already in L.A. at Rick Baker's. It shows up I think on what we called the wolfman. The Kurosawa connection is right on.

I never saw the flipper you mention except a week ago on this site.

My real first name is Lorne. I thought I was being clever.  

Welcome on board, sir ! I just want to tell you that I LOVE your book (Sculpting a galaxy)

Asaki said:

When you think about it, the "wolfman" hand is wrong in more than one way.

It's his left arm that got severed, but that's a right hand, isn't it?

Nicely noticed!  According to those behind-the-scenes shots, it's the left arm that got chopped, but in the movie we see a right ('Wolfman') hand attached.

Ah well, at least we didn't end up seeing any shots of the 'Walrus' guy's body with his left arm lopped off, or things would have ended up *really* confusing!

Welcome Mr Peterson

J 

elvin peterson said:Several days before we were to do the insert Gary brought the sleeve with him but not the correct hand . I dressed it with raspberry yogurt and red food coloring put it on a white plastic light diffuser and poured on sand.

I love the scotchtape-y, handmade nature of that early work. Viva Van Nuys! (I drive by that old building often and it makes me happy even though the area is  pretty drab and a little skanky)

Haha Lorne Peterson, nice. Peter Mayhew used to post at TF.N but I don't know if he does anymore.

It looks like this is what happened:

-In the script, the assailants are very exotically-described aliens, one being some rodent and another guy having a million eyes. It also describes the rodent being split in half down the middle, in addition to the severed arm, which it doesn't state who it belongs to.

-This was changed for the film because they probably couldn't afford such elaborate designs with the money they had to work with. I think a lot of the cantina costumes were recycled from other films and from pieces left laying around, especially in the original UK shoot (which is why so many inserts were done in pick-ups using much better costumes--most of the more memorable cantina monsters and aliens, featured in close-ups, came from this shoot). So they found an alien costume--one of the better ones from the UK shoot--that looked like a walrus and decided the guy with all the dialogue would just be a human with some prosthetics on his face, who would simply keel over. The walrus guy they decided is the one with his arm being lopped off, which they filmed in an insert, with a flipper.

-In editing, they probably thought either the flipper looked too silly and rubbery, or that it couldn't possibly hold and operate a pistol, or both, and so when it was decided to do cantina reshoots in LA that was a shot they wanted to redo, as it was pretty simple. This meant finding an alternate arm with a different, non-flipper design. The whole thing was supposed to be quick, almost impressionistic in the editing, so any mismatch is forgiveable--you can only really see the original flipper in wideshots if you freeze-frame, which wasn't possible at the time the film was made.

-Gary Kurtz selected the wolfman hand from the Rick Baker collection they used, probably because it was the best sculpt. They needed a hand, and it had to look alien and not just a normal hand. Apparently they had the entire costume there and tried to film a decapitation too, more in line with the graphic description in the script, but it was judged as too harsh, so you just had the wolf hand in the film.

-Flash forward 30 years and fans armed with VHS, Laserdisc, DVD and Blu-rays are freeze-framing through the sequence and noticing the reshoot/originalshoot discrepancy.