Force Material: A Star Wars Podcast

Madness! Madness! We're revisiting one of the all-time great war films for clues about The Last Jedi and making our final predictions in this week's episode of the Force Material podcast!
This episode will be our last before The Last Jedi premieres and renders all of our idle speculation moot, so first up this week, we're putting it all on the table and making our final Episode VIII predictions.

Who are Rey's parents? Is she just a random, or is the Force strong with her family?

Is Snoke just a bloke, or is he actually a classic character back from the dead?

How will it all end? What will the state of the galaxy look like heading into Episode IX?

Bookmark this episode so you can see just how wrong all our guesses turn out to be when the film opens next week!

Then, in our feature presentation, we're going back to director Rian Johnson's film camp to watch another of the films he made his cast and crew watch before they began shooting The Last Jedi.

Directed by David Lean, The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) tells the story of a British officer and POW, Lieutenant Colonel Nicholson (played by Old Ben Kenobi himself, Sir Alec Guinness), who forms an unlikely working relationship with his Japanese captor, Colonel Saito (played by the utterly fascinating Sessue Hayakwawa).

We're breaking down how Kwai relates to the other films in Johnson's program, and which recurring themes and scenarios pop up again here.

And, mostly, we're just marveling at how bloody brilliant this 60-year-old film continues to be - especially that electrifying finale.

His art hangs in the home of George Lucas himself – and this week, artist Mark Raats joins us to talk about his decades-long career painting pieces for Lucasfilm and Disney.

Mark has created, among his other beautiful completely hand-drawn and painted pieces, a 2008 teaser poster for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, a 30th anniversary poster for Return of the Jedi and a 40th for A New Hope, the cinema poster for the 2012 IMAX release of Raiders of the Lost Ark and, recently, some very special pieces for the release of Solo: A Star Wars Story and The Rise of Skywalker.

The Johannesburg-born artist joins us from his base in Perth, Australia to discuss his work, including:

• His Sunday newspaper comic strip influences
• How he found out George Lucas was trying to hunt down and acquire his artwork
• Some Star Wars movie poster 'hand model' secrets
• A brush with death on Skywalker Ranch
• And much more!

Force Material is a podcast exploring the secrets and source material of Star Wars with hosts Rohan Williams and Baz McAlister. Listen and subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, Stitcher, PlayerFM and Castro; stay in touch with us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram; and support the show by browsing our range of shirts, hoodies, kids apparel, mugs and more at TeePublic.

The authors of Star Wars Art: Ralph McQuarrie join us to pay tribute to cinema’s most beloved and influential concept artist.
David Mandel is an Emmy– and Writers Guild Award–winning writer and producer who first made his mark on pop culture as a writer for Saturday Night Live (1992-95) and Seinfeld, where he wrote the all-time classic ‘Bizarro Jerry’ episode. He served as a writer and producer on Curb Your Enthusiasm, before becoming the executive producer and showrunner of HBO's Veep. He’s also a serious collector of film props, production art and original comic art.
Brandon Alinger is the author of Star Wars Costumes: The Original Trilogy, and was a research assistant for the great JW Rinzler on The Making of Return of the Jedi. He’s also the chief operations officer of the Los Angeles branch of Prop Store, a company specialising in film props and costumes.
Wade Lageose is a graphic designer and artist whose clients have included the likes of Lucasfilm and Walt Disney. He first met Ralph McQuarrie in 1997, and enjoyed 15 years of friendship with the great man before McQuarrie passed away in 2012.
David, Brandon and Wade join us to discuss a range of topics, including:

• The unmade film that brought George Lucas and Ralph McQuarrie together
• McQuarrie's commitment to concepts that 'work'
• The unused McQuarrie designs that have resurfaced in the Disney era, and the ones that haven't
• How McQuarrie felt about the fame that came with Star Wars
• How McQuarrie's life experiences informed his work
• Why McQuarrie walked away from Star Wars
• What McQuarrie thought of the prequels
• The process of creating Star Wars Art: Ralph McQuarrie
• The most impressive McQuarrie pieces in David, Brandon and Wade's collections

David, Brandon and Wade are the authors of Star Wars Art: Ralph McQuarrie, a two-volume set published by Abrams Books in 2016.
Force Material is a podcast exploring the secrets and source material of Star Wars with hosts Rohan Williams and Baz McAlister. Listen and subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, Stitcher, PlayerFM and Castro; stay in touch with us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram; and support the show by browsing our range of shirts, hoodies, kids apparel, mugs and more at TeePublic.

The Oscar winner behind Star Wars' most iconic weapons and sets joins us to talk about making cinema history and getting his hands dirty with George Lucas.
As the Academy Award-winning Set Decorator of Star Wars, Christian helped turn George Lucas' dreams into reality, and defined the grimy 'used future' aesthetic that made the galaxy far, far away feel so authentic.
Christian went on to earn another Oscar nomination as the Art Director of Alien, before directing the second unit on Return of the Jedi and The Phantom Menace and carving out a career as a director in his own right.
The industry legend joins us to talk about:

• Making the first lightsaber
• Building Han Solo's blaster
• Giving Chewbacca his bowcaster
• Bringing the Millennium Falcon's cockpit to life
• Taste-testing Blue Milk
• Shovelling salt and supergluing props with George Lucas
• Woodworking with Harrison Ford
• Directing the cult classic Black Angel and the notoriously ill-fated Battlefield Earth
• His upcoming Star Wars documentary, Galaxy Built on Hope
• And much more!

For more of Roger Christian's incredible life story, you can read his memoir, Cinema Alchemist.
Force Material is a podcast exploring the secrets and source material of Star Wars with hosts Rohan Williams and Baz McAlister. Listen and subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, Stitcher, PlayerFM and Castro; stay in touch with us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram; and support the show by browsing our range of shirts, hoodies, kids apparel, mugs and more at TeePublic.

Oscar-winning editor Paul Hirsch shares his memories of working on Star Wars , The Empire Strikes Back , the films of Brian De Palma and more!
Film editor Paul Hirsch won an Oscar for his work on Star Wars alongside Richard Chew and Marcia Lucas, and was the sole editor of The Empire Strikes Back.
Hirsch has also edited 11 Brian De Palma films – including Carrie, Phantom of the Paradise, Blow Out and Mission: Impossible – as well as classics like Footloose, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Falling Down, Ray, Source Code, Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol and many more over the course of a career that has spanned five decades and counting.
This week, Hirsch joins us to discuss his autobiography, A Long Time Ago in a Cutting Room Far, Far Away, in a wide-ranging conversation that covers:

• Cutting his teeth on Brian De Palma's early films
• Working for George Lucas, a director with an editor's sensibility
• The sequence you won't believe the studio wanted to cut from Star Wars
• How wipe transitions became a Star Wars tradition
• What really happened at the infamous early screening of Star Wars for Brian De Palma, Steven Spielberg and co
• Paul's thoughts on the sequel trilogy and The Mandalorian
• And much more!

A Long Time Ago in a Cutting Room Far, Far Away is available now through Chicago Review Press.

Force Material is a podcast exploring the secrets and source material of Star Wars with hosts Rohan Williams and Baz McAlister. Listen and subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, Stitcher, PlayerFM and Castro; stay in touch with us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram; and support the show by browsing our range of shirts, hoodies, kids apparel, mugs and more at TeePublic.