Source: Star Wars Celebration | Posted By: Dan Geer
It was Day 2, and I was extremely excited for the day. Essentially, it was Mark Hamill day for me. I had originally planned on attending “The Sounds of Star Wars” Panel at 10:30 AM with the legendary Ben Burtt, but I ended up walking to the wrong stage. However, it ended up working out for me though, because the stage I walked to was going to have the Mark Hamill panel at 2:30, and the line was just starting to form. Needless to say, I claimed my place in line.
After four hours of waiting in line (believe me, this is not the longest line I waited in), we were in. This was quite an awesome panel session. Mark Hamill came out, and told the audience that he wanted to try and talk about things that fans maybe haven’t heard before in other press interviews and whatnot. At least for me, he did not disappoint.
He discussed at great length such things like doing his own stunts in the films whenever they’d let him (he said the only thing he didn’t do on Star Wars was the diving board flip in Return of the Jedi), and even his experience filming The Empire Strikes Back alongside the set of The Shining at Elstree Studios and meeting Scatman Crothers (Hamill was very willing to do voice impressions during the panel, by the way, and did a wicked Scatman impression).
The highlight for me and my dad, however, was when he talked about growing up with Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine and loving the old Universal Monster films and how they, as well as Hammer Horor films, were a huge inspiration to him. I grew up on a steady dose of Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney Jr., and love all the classic horror films Hamill talked about, so I gave a nice cheer when he referenced these classic films.
Overall, Mark Hamill seems to be a very cordial person in real life. He is very funny to listen to (especially when he referred to Yoda as simply “Alec Guiness as a toad”), and just seems to be genuinely interested in the fan community. I could literally listen to him for hours on end and be totally entertained.
But that was not the end of Hamill for me. Next up was actually getting a professional photograph taken with me and Mark Hamill himself. I had to rush out of his panel session and run across the Orange County Convention Center really quickly to the Autograph Hall to get in line. When it was finally my turn to meet Hamill in person, I was surprisingly not as starstruck as I thought I’d be, but still very excited. Me and my dad briefly told him that we were fans of Famous Monsters and also the films of stop-motion master Ray Harryhausen. His response was simply a nice “oooh yeah,” and then he shook my hand.
Unfortunately, I was unable to get his autograph until the next day, since autograph tickets for him were numbered and the line would not get to my ticket number until then. So I rushed over to get the autograph of Lucasfilm sound guru Ben Burtt. My meeting with him was very brief, but he was a super nice guy and very polite. I literally got to shake the hand of the man who created the sounds of the lightsaber, R2-D2 etc. It was truly an honor.
My day ended a little abruptly, however, as I was waiting in line to get Ashley Eckstein‘s autograph, and the line got capped off just a couple people in front of us. It wasn’t a huge deal, since she was still signing the next day, but we had been waiting in line for probably a couple of hours. At least I got to talk to some people in line about PCM, so that was good!
In the end, it was a very rewarding day. Check out StarWars.com‘s Celebration V video of Day 2 by clicking here!
Next: Star Wars Celebration V Blog – Day 3
