Geek Trivia: These aren't the stars you're looking for

by Jay Garmon | May 22, 2007 12:00:00 AM

Tags: Star Wars, George Lucas, Jay Garmon, Geek Trivia Newsletter

Takeaway: Which famous horror film shared casting sessions with Star Wars?

An entire generation once proclaimed, "Never trust anyone over 30." That means that starting this week, you can stop trusting Star Wars. (That's if Episode I didn't already make this clear to you.)

On May 25, 1977, the original cinematic Star Wars debuted on a paltry 32 movie screens -- playing the part of the upstart rebel -- and proceeded to redefine science fiction, special effects, blockbuster filmmaking, and Hollywood itself. Now Star Wars is the establishment against which upstarts rebel -- with its characters, dialogue, settings, music, and tropes inseparably bound into contemporary culture.

The funny thing is, it was almost completely different -- not just the success story, but Star Wars itself.

While Star Wars is the second-most successful film ever made -- establishment credentials if ever there were such -- George Lucas revised his Star Wars script and the story radically and repeatedly, changing the aforementioned characters, dialogue, settings, and plot on fundamental levels several times before reaching the finished product we all know so well. (Of course, finished is a relative term, given Lucas' penchant for revisionist re-releases.)

A prime example is the Millennium Falcon, revised into its present form after the construction of a completely different scale model. And that's just one potential difference that could have diverted Star Wars from its place in history. In fact, there are several more:

Young, plucky Luke Skywalker began as grizzled, inveterate General Luke Skywalker and/or chubby, immature Luke Starkiller.
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away was originally the distant future of the 33rd century.
The spaceport of Mos Eisley on the planet Tatooine was originally the spaceport Gordon (as in Flash) on the planet Aquilae.
The Force and its Dark Side were originally the Ashla and the Bogan, respectively.
Han Solo, rather than captain of the Millennium Falcon, was originally a cabin boy for the pirate captain Oxus.

Lucas eventually arrived at the script that laid out the movie that made history, but that's only the tip of the what-might-have-been iceberg when it comes to Star Wars. A host of well-known Hollywood actors almost received the roles famously filled by Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford, and Alec Guinness in Star Wars.

The casting misses were nearer than most might suspect. To save money and time, Lucas shared auditions with another director working on a classic horror movie, and members of its famous cast almost got parts in Star Wars instead.

WHICH FAMOUS HORROR FILM SHARED CASTING SESSIONS WITH STAR WARS?

What famous 1970s horror film boasted cast members who almost landed roles in Star Wars since George Lucas shared audition sessions with the fright fest's director?

Carrie, director Brian De Palma's 1976 big-screen adaptation of the Stephen King novel of the same name, is the unofficial sister movie to Star Wars. De Palma and Lucas were film school friends and used the joint casting sessions to save money and time (which Lucas in particular was short of) for both movies.

The most well-documented cast flip-flop to come of the shared auditions involved the female leads: Carrie White and Princess Leia Organa. Reputedly, Sissy Spacek and Carrie Fisher almost took each other's roles, with Spacek playing the rebellious senator from Alderaan and Fisher torturing her high school classmates with telekinetic powers.

Fisher beat out not just Spacek for the role of Leia but several other Hollywood actresses, including Terri Nunn (who went on to front the '80s band Berlin), Cindy Williams (who went on to star in Laverne & Shirley), and Jodie Foster (Taxi Driver, The Accused, Silence of the Lambs, three Oscars, etc.).

Leia wasn't the only near-change to come of the shared casting sessions. Almost as famous, William Katt (who would go on to play the lead in the TV series The Greatest American Hero) very nearly won the role of Luke Skywalker over Mark Hamill, but instead he became bullying jock Tommy Ross at Carrie's Bates High School.

Still, for Star Wars fans, there is no greater "What If?" game than that involving the roster of actors who almost became Han Solo. George Lucas initially refused to cast Harrison Ford, with whom the director had worked on American Graffiti. (Lucas feared the reappearance of Ford would confuse audiences.)

Instead, Ford became a reader for Solo's part in shared scenes with other auditioning actors, while the likes of Nick Nolte, Burt Reynolds, Kurt Russell, Christopher Walken, and Billy Dee Williams all tried out for Han Solo. (Yes, Lando almost played Han.)

Despite the fact that he wasn't up for the part, Ford still gave the best reading for Han Solo and meshed best with Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher, leading to Lucas agreeing to cast him. The rest, as they say, is Star Wars history -- and, of course, Geek Trivia.

Get ready for the Geekend

The Trivia Geek's blog has been reborn as the Geekend, an online archive of all things obscure, obtuse, and irrelevant -- unless you're a hardcore geek with a penchant for science fiction, technology, and snark. Get a daily dose of subcultural illumination by joining the seven-day Geekend.

In the spirit of seasonality, this week the Geekend has a TechRepublic Star Wars retrospective, complete with blast-from-the-past Geek Trivia regarding the world's most successful science-fantasy franchise -- take a gander.

The Quibble of the Week

If you uncover a questionable fact or debatable aspect of this week's Geek Trivia, just post it in the discussion area of the article. Every week, yours truly will choose the best post from the assembled masses and discuss it in a future edition of Geek Trivia.

This week's quibble comes from the May 9 edition of Geek Trivia, "Lapping the competition." TechRepublic member Exit104 spotted a technical mischaracterization in my description of some vintage laptop specifications.

"'Standard with a 48-KB hard drive' -- looking at the specs of the [Gavilan SC], I see that it had plug-in RAM modules and the floppy drive but no hard disk. 48 KB seems very small even for the time, and I am unsure if MFM hard disk drives in a form factor and power consumption range that would allow for battery use existed at that time."

Member CHyche tracked down my mistake -- complete with sources.

"I thought the same thing. A 48-KB hard drive was less storage than the floppy had. I looked on Wikipedia, and it states it was a 48-KB ROM that the OS was loaded to."

Thanks for clearing that up, kids, and keep those quibbles coming!

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The Trivia Geek, also known as Jay Garmon, is a former advertising copywriter and Web developer who's duped TechRepublic into underwriting his affinity for movies, sci-fi, comic books, technology, and all things geekish or subcultural.

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