Mark Hamill had warned the producers of “The Life of Chuck” that he probably wouldn’t be very good on the promotional trail.
“Because how do you describe the indescribable?” he said about the feel-good apocalyptic fantasy — slated for re-release this fall, and one of his two recent movies based on Stephen King works — in which he plays a hard-drinking grandfather who finds beauty in math.
It’s a far cry from the dystopian “The Long Walk,” which opened in theaters Friday, with Hamill as the brutal overseer of a government-sponsored competition in which teenage boys must keep up a three-miles-an-hour pace to stay alive.
“The premise was so off-putting that I thought, ‘Jesus, I don’t know if I could even see this movie, much less be in it,’” he said. But after reading King’s novel, he decided that “the real heart and soul of the piece is the young men and their experience going through this — the triumphs, the tragedies, the alliances.”
And come Christmastime, Hamill — forever Luke Skywalker to a legion of “Star Wars” fans — will voice the villainous Flying Dutchman in “The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants.”
“If I do my job correctly, every child in America will hate my guts,” he said rather gleefully in a video call from Los Angeles before talking about his “Car 54” fandom and why he never saw the Beatles in concert.
These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
Comic Strips
Even before I could read, I would rush to the front door to get the newspaper, especially on Sunday when they had the color section. “The Little King” was a silent strip. Nancy and Sluggo had pretty simple words. Eventually, “Peanuts” became my favorite strip. I partially learned to read because I was so enamored.
‘Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color’
Walt Disney would pull back the curtain and show you how movies were made on this show. When they signed a contract with RCA to sell color TVs, which of course we didn’t have, we kept begging my father, “Please, we want a color TV.” He goes: “It’s a fad. It’s not going to last. It’s terrible. Do you want to see a color TV where the grass is yellow and the sky’s orange?” “Yes, yes! Yellow grass and orange sky!”
My Dogs
Dogs are just perpetual loyalty and devotion and love. We don’t deserve them.
The Food That Built America
My daughter introduced me to this History Channel series. Why would I be interested in breakfast cereals? And then you see the story of Kellogg’s vs. C.W. Post.
Rag & Bone
I have a fashion sense, but I don’t have the tenacity to do the work of seeing what’s out there. Once I found them, I said, “Oh, this solves everything.” They dress me, and I love their clothes.
‘Car 54, Where Are You?’
Nat Hiken is one of my idols. He’s a comedic genius. He created the Sergeant Bilko show for Phil Silvers. It’s just breathtaking how brilliant that show is. Then he goes on to create “Car 54, Where Are You?” High-energy farce set in a police station. I remember I came home from school and my older sister Terry goes, “‘Car 54’ got canceled.” I was 9. I cried.
The Beatles
“I Want to Hold Your Hand” comes out and it just rocks my world. We saw “A Hard Day’s Night” in the theater, and the girls were screaming. That’s why, when my mom said, “You can have the album or you can see them in concert,” I said, “Well, the album is forever and the girls will ruin the concert with their screaming.” To my regret, I never saw them live.
My Family
Not only the family that I have — my three children, my granddaughter, my wife, my dogs — but my family growing up. I’m the middle of seven children, and we’re all so different. Family makes everything relatable. You’re not doing it just for yourself.
Modern Technology
People don’t even know what Encyclopaedia Britannica is anymore. Before you could Google, that’s pretty much all you had. And libraries. When I discovered microfiche, I’d look up whatever movie or Broadway show that I wanted to learn more about. Now everything’s online. My wife once asked me, “If you had a time machine, what would you use it for?” I said, “I’d go back and see the Marx Brothers on Broadway.”
The Neighborhood Academic Initiative
It’s a contract with students who have no money for education. They go to school on Saturday and they have various benchmarks that they have to pass, but their success rate is like 99 percent. And if you complete the program, then you get college tuition. Their whole lives have been transformed because the key to success in many cases is in education.
The post Mark Hamill Blames Himself for Missing the Beatles Live appeared first on New York Times.
