CineSecrets.com
Star Wars memoirs
from someone who was actually there!
Nick Maley’s
As I told you before, there were 6 of us in "the Old Schoolroom" at Elstree Studios creating creatures for the Mos Eisley Cantina while Stu, (Freeborn), our boss was building Chewie across the room. Graham, (Stu's son), and I were foaming and baking the latex skins in ovens to one side of the room and the air was filled with the aroma of baked ammonia.
It was into this environment that Greedo was born. In the script he was not described in any detail and in fact the crew modeled creatures not knowing how they would be used or what characters they would eventually portray. Because we only had 10 weeks to fill the cantina with as many aliens as possible, any old masks used for previous jobs that were available in Stuart's storeroom were brought into play. They were altered in any way possible to make them different from any previous appearances, and then added to the cast of available finished
Greedo - the alien makeover...
6/30/09
masks. One of these was a smooth skinned, blue, pouty, alien made for a "Bird's Eye" green pea commercial. To make it radically different, Graham modeled a pair of antenna like extensions for the head that bent forward and opened out like the cowl ventilators sometimes used on sailboats. I remember asking him if they were extra ears or some form of radar detector. "Who cares?" he asked. Little did he know the hours of discussion his creation would inspire. At the same time, he modeled a slab covered in wart like bumps and long finger extensions with suckers on the end.
Several of these creatures were assembled by myself, Stu's wife Kay and Sylvia Croft. I applied HUNDREDS of the warts to the heads. I could see them in my dreams.
The finger extensions were applied to regular washing up gloves by Kay and Sylvia. but the hands were very cumbersome as the wobbly digits got tangled in each other much of the time. You can see how twisted they are in the photo ABOVE TOP.
Finally, huge eyes were added to the former Bird's Eye star and the color was changed to green to transform the original mask into an entirely new character... Greedo.
Periodically George would come into the workshop and look at what we were doing. The weirder stuff he selected to be featured characters. Greedo the alien makeover is now a part of movie history.
Several of these aliens were featured in the scene where Han met Jabba which was cut from the original version of the movie and later added to the Special Edition with a digital Jabba.
