Oscar Isaac reads out Sir Alec Guinness' mocking letters about Star Wars' 'rubbish dialogue'
Even though he received an Oscar nomination for his role as Obi Wan Kenobi in George Lucas' Star Wars back in 1977, late actor Sir Alec Guinness didn't exactly have a ball on the set of the iconic film according to some of his personal letters that have recently emerged.
Oscar Isaac, star of latest instalment in the franchise The Force Awakens, read out Guinness' notes at the Letters Live charity event in London on 13 March.
In the personal letters, Guinness vented to his friend, theatre director Anne Kauffman, whilst shooting A New Hope, that he wasn't having the best time on the set of the 1977 original movie and that he wasn't a fan of the film's "rubbish" scripts either.
"Can't say I'm enjoying the film – new rubbish dialogue reaches me every other day on wadges of pink paper – and none of it makes my character clear or even bearable," the actor stated of his experience. "I just think, thankfully, of the lovely bread (money), which will help me keep going until next April even if Yahoo collapses in a week." Yahoo was a play that Guinness was set to do in London at the time.
It's been clear in the past, from things that other actors have said, that writer-director Lucas ended up making up much of the Star Wars plot as he went along, which is likely what lead to the new script pages coming so often.
"I must off to studio and work with a dwarf (very sweet – and he has to wash in a bidet)," Guinness continues. "And your fellow countrymen Mark Hamill and Tennyson (that can't be right) Ford – Ellison (? – No!*) – well, a rangy, languid young man who is probably intelligent and amusing. But Oh, God, God, they make me feel ninety – and treat me as if I was 106."
The asterisk in the quote leads to a postscript where Guinness finally gets his co-star's name right and asks "Harrison Ford – ever heard of him?". This was arguably the very last time anyone could refer to Hollywood superstar Ford as being unknown.
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