God bless Harrison Ford. I'm serious. Because he is not serious about much, even with that dry deadpan tone making every word sound like gospel. Still, now that Star Wars' nine-film Skywalker Saga is complete, and the cast and crew and fans are looking back with fond memories, you might expect Ford to share something ... different ... about his experience playing Han Solo. Then again, it's Harrison Ford -- who can't tell carbonite from kryptonite and gives zero f*cks about it -- so you might not.
I was still caught off guard by Harrison Ford's answer when asked for his favorite behind-the-scenes memory from Star Wars. This is it:
The complete and utter disdain that our very experienced British crew felt for what we were doing. They couldn't figure it out. Guy running around in a dog suit and a princess and some guys in tight pants. They couldn't figure out what we were doing, so they laughed at us constantly, thought we were ridiculous. And we were, but we made a movie that people really enjoyed seeing.
I just love that THAT is what came to Harrison Ford's mind first as his favorite behind-the-scenes memory from Star Wars. Disdain. That's what Ford told BuzzFeed Celeb while stroking a puppy to promote his new movie The Call Of The Wild. It sounds like he shared a favorite memory from the first 1977 Star Wars movie itself -- as opposed to all three original trilogy movies or the sequel films -- since that's back when no one knew the Star Wars galaxy was operational and would blow up the blockbuster world forever.
Not too long ago, Mark Hamill tweeted a behind-the-scenes clip from the first Star Wars movie, showing him laughing with Harrison Ford as they tried to film a scene. Peter Mayhew was next to them in the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon as Chewbacca, and Sir Alec Guinness was behind them as Obi-Wan Kenobi. Hamill praised Guinness' patience for putting up with himself and Harrison.
It does sound like Sir Alec was part of the "very experienced British crew" that had no idea what in the world they were doing there. But then Star Wars because the biggest movie in the world, and the franchise is still going strong with The Mandalorian and even an Obi-Wan Kenobi series coming to Disney+.
During the same BuzzFeed chat, Harrison Ford played innocent when asked if he took any Star Wars props from set:
Steal props? No, I wouldn't do that. I took away memories.
Here's what he said when asked about his favorite off-screen memory of Carrie Fisher:
Carrie was a lot of fun she was really smart, she was really funny. She was a good person. A lot of memories of Carrie.
Harrison Ford has talked about Star Wars movies for decades now, and I'm sure he's keeping his true precious memories private. He has a lot of personal memories of Carrie Fisher, but that doesn't mean we get to hear them. (We already read a few from her perspective in her book.)
But still, we're only a couple of months out from Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, which means the entire Saga is over and it's a good time to look back. Episode IX saw a return of Harrison Ford's Han Solo for one big scene -- because J.J. Abrams told him to show up for it. Do Ford's feelings go any deeper than that? He's always lived lightly in this cinematic world.
I'm fond of Joonas Suotamo's anecdote about working with Harrison Ford in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Chewie was supposed to look back and yell something to Finn, and Suotamo asked J.J. Abrams what his motivation was for doing that. Harrison Ford then quipped, "It's for the money, stupid."
Hey, it's a job. Most people work for money. I love Harrison Ford's cut-through-the-bullshit perspective and I only wish he would share his wisdom in a coffee table book -- and then use his past carpenter skills to build me the coffee table to put it on. But I bet he'd have complete and utter disdain for that idea.
