Once in a while you have a chance to talk to someone involved with STAR WARS and you get a feeling of sincerity and honestly. There's no ego at work, and you can have a normal conversation as if you're talking to a good friend. That's the kind of person Toby Philpott is. Toby was one of the puppeteers who literally lived inside of Jabba the Hutt back in 1982 for a few weeks. His job was to control some of Jabba's head and left arm. Mike Edmonds, David Barclay, and John Coppinger (who was outside the costume, remotely controlling the eyes) rounded out the gang whose job was to make the audience believe that this slug of a creature was real. The eclectic group pulled off the task with great success, I might add.

Toby Philpott started out in the 1970's as a street performer, fringe theater performer, and circus performer doing everything from acrobatics to fire eating to juggling to magic to unicycling and more. He moved on to film work through his contacts in the entertainment industry and worked on such great films as The Dark Crystal, The Company of Wolves, Labyrinth, Little Shop of Horrors, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, and of course Return of the Jedi. He currently lives a peaceful life in England, working for his local library in the IT department and attends the occasional Sci-Fi convention as a guest when time permits, signing autographs and meeting numerous fans of the films he's worked on.

As I said before, Toby is one hell of a nice guy and really went out of his way to make this interview special and fun for the fans. He had to dig deep into the memory archives for some of these answers but he came through with some great little anecdotes. I want to take time out before we start to give a big "thank you" to Toby for allowing me to bombard him with these questions he's most likely answered a hundred times. It's sometimes more fun talking to the people behind the scenes of the films than the actual stars, and Toby definitely is a testament to that. So thanks again, Toby. Now, here's Part 1 of my interview with Toby Philpott. Enjoy.

T'bone: It's my understanding that you came to work on Return of the Jedi through your work on The Dark Crystal. Tell me a little bit about that transition.

Toby Philpott: I got the Dark Crystal job after studying on an intensive mime course, which I enjoyed a lot. At one point some film producers came scouting for Quest for Fire, and picked me and Bim Mason out of the students, as possible Neanderthals (was that a compliment?) --but (and this is how films work) the project changed producers and some French guys eventually got the job I believe.

Still, it had opened my eyes to the possibilities of breaking away from my lowlife street performer background, so when my mime coach, Desmond Jones, recommended I go to the audition for Dark Crystal, I took his word for it. It was a fairly grueling selection process, but once I got the job and started training I learned a lot (getting puppet classes from the creators of Kermit and Miss Piggy?)

The whole experience on Dark Crystal made me feel relaxed and confident in the film environment, and ROTJ was being developed in the same studio. It was the builders and sculptors and designers who first were employed (of course), and they probably leaked the rumours of possible work to the performers. Dark Crystal was my first film, so I wasn’t ambitious enough to go looking for the follow-up job. I got lucky, however, and I eventually got called in to partner Dave Barclay inside Jabba.

T: Was Jabba the biggest puppet you've ever had to work with?

TP: I guess you could say that. Both the Garthim and the Mystics were one-person puppets. Jabba contained three main performers, and a couple of others outside with radio controls. The biggest puppet I ever saw (and contributed to) was probably Audrey II in Little Shop of Horrors – especially the final evolution of the plant, the big one (cut from the final movie) on which I just operated a tentacle I think.

T: How does one share a puppet with other people? How do you all coordinate your moves?

TP: We all had the "Henson training" so we all had experience of cooperating to create a single creature. Dave Barclay was chief puppeteer (and the original live voice). He and I had to work very closely together. In training, I even got him juggling using my left hand and his right hand – just for practice. We would also get someone we trusted as an outside eye. John Coppinger, who built Jabba, was outside operating the eyes by radio control, so he would give us feedback about what was effective and expressive. We’d then switch off our mikes and discuss it inside. Mike Edmonds had to improvise tail moves to go with the mood of the shot.

T: Mike Edmonds is a great guy and known for being a funnyman. How did you two get on?

TP: I love working with Mike. Filming can be very tiring, and people who keep your spirits up are gold dust. We got on great. He’s a real professional, too. I don’t remember any one particular gag (I was always too busy laughing) but at the end of a long day we would sometimes go to the bar in the studio. During Ewok shooting Mike would be there with about 40 other little people. I’d be the tallest in the bar, and the odd one out. It was a pretty crazy bar! I guess it was something like it must have been on Wizard of Oz with all the Munchkins (hard partying dwarfs and midgets!)

T: Did you do anything besides operate Jabba on the film?

TP: No! This was a full time job – we were the central character on the set, and didn’t need any distractions. Occasionally, of course, we would wander about and play with some of the other puppeteers and mimes, because we had all worked together on Dark Crystal, so we may have contributed a little to rehearsal feedback (watching Tim Rose working on Max Rebo’s Band for instance).

T: Have you seen the Jabba in Episode I? It's quite different from the Special Edition Jabba, but much closer to the Jedi version.

TP: I didn’t enjoy the Jabba from the Special Edition. I thought the rendering and the sculpt just didn’t match up to the magnificent monster I had worked with, but I have to say that they got pretty close with Episode I.

I don’t want to take away from the work of the CGI guys there – it was very convincing, but I still have to place that within the "hyper-reality" look of the new episodes. Jabba's new style matches that very closely, but to eyes like mine that grew up with earlier film, the highly finished surface of the new films still looks like computer simulation.

You have to understand that I am older and have never really played computer games much, so that "slick look" appears rather cartoon-like to me. Having said that, I am not sure that the rubber Jabba didn't look corny to modern eyes, in that context.

We move on, and we can celebrate the old achievements (just as we do in sports and arts and science) and still be happy to be moving on to new possibilities.

T: Were there any scenes in particular that you remember filming but never ended up in the movie when it was released?

TP: I am very pleased to say that most of what we shot is in the movie. This is quite something, because George Lucas shoots a lot, and then savagely cuts it tight (I know the actors find that hard sometimes). I have never measured our screen time, but it is a substantial contribution to the first half of the movie.

There were outtakes of course! Getting that slippery rubber frog into the mouth was fairly hilarious. It started with a live frog (with his keeper) in the tank, and the frog didn’t like it so it would leap OUT of the glass bowl and create havoc hopping around the set (it was BIG). Once we had gotten that in the can, we moved on to the rubber frog. I hate to disillusion anyone – but at least no animals were injured in the making of this movie.

I had to grab it with my left hand in the three-finger grip (imagine the Vulcan "live long and prosper" finger shape) through fat rubber gloves, and then stuff it into the mouth, which I could only just reach. As I was bringing it to the mouth I was tilting the head with my right hand, then had to quickly switch, as Dave chewed, to sliding my right hand into the tongue to lick the lips. Dave had to open the mouth at the right time, and I had to get the frog right inside. So far, so good. Now they add the slime around the mouth, and by the third take the frog is really slippery so when they hand it to me and it squirts out of my grasp, and leaps across the set, all the panic starts again (and this isn’t even the live frog!)

In one unused take the legs were left sticking out and Dave started chewing and I carried on poking the wriggling legs in, and we heard the groan and the shout of "CUT!" as it was considered too gross (how can Jabba be too gross?). At least our stuff was mostly done via close-ups, so when they shouted "Cut!" we usually hadn’t upset too many other performers.

I generally had a lot of fun with the tongue job (Sorry about that!). After Han was released from the carbonite and Leia was brought over to us in the alcove, Jabba was supposed to leer. We tried different tongue moves but we hadn’t found the one that worked. We started setting up for a take and Richard Marquand spoke to me quietly on the headphones, asking if I could reach the tongue right over to lick Leia’s face. I was horrified, being asked to do an unrehearsed move in a live take, but director’s rule, right? I guess he was trying to get a really squeamish reaction from Carrie Fisher and the gunk on that tongue WAS pretty horrible.

Well, I thought she would duck back, but she wasn’t warned, of course. We go for the take, and I can’t really see what I am doing on our little monitor (no depth of field) so I stretch the tongue out as far as I can, and try to "lick" upwards. There are muffled gasps, and laughter, and "Cut!"

I didn’t quite know what happened. Richard sounded delighted on the headphones, but said we would go again, and could I ease back on the tongue. Only afterwards did I hear that I had apparently stuck that disgusting gloopy tongue right in Carrie Fisher’s ear! Yuk, and I am still apologizing, if she ever hears about this.

T: Did Jabba stay together well? Did he ever break or not work right?

TP: They did a fabulous job on the build. I don’t remember any serious problems that we hadn’t "debugged" during rehearsals. There may have been occasional problems with the radio controls for the eyes and grimaces. I remember on Dark Crystal that sometimes the radio controls would go crazy when minicabs went past using their radios! Suddenly, a character’s eyes would spin crazily and we would have to change channels!

T: Tell us a little something about that choking scene? Looks like Carrie got her revenge for you sticking your tongue in her ear!

TP: Well, of course the outdoor shots for the barge were shot in another country and they didn’t need us there. We shot our scenes on the set at Elstree which was quite small. When other actors were doing their scenes no one was encouraged to stand and watch. The whole set was pretty secretive – most things were on a kind of "need to know" basis.

The strangling is pretty effective and once Carrie knew she couldn’t hurt us in there, she really went for it. Inside we thrashed around and went crazy, with hand, tongue, jaw, eyes and everything. It was the last thing we shot, so if Jabba got trashed it wouldn’t matter too much. Here you can see why I prefer live action to CGI. I don’t think you could have gotten that passionate conviction from Carrie Fisher with blue screen. I don’t think I am alone in that – people really cheered when Leia won and Jabba died when I saw it in the cinema.

T: Whatever became of poor Jabba after that?

TP: I am sad to say that Jabba ended up in a shed, and then got dumped. If I’d have known, I would have asked for his left arm. I’d give my right arm to still have Jabba’s left arm.

T: I've spoken to other actors about Richard Marquand and the general impression is quite mixed. How did you feel about him as a director and leader? Was he friendly? Approachable?

TP: We mostly spoke to him via headphones and mikes, so we were insulated from any tensions that may have been occurring on the set. He played the game with us (talking to Jabba, and not to us as individuals – so we could practice by improvising) - he gave us good feedback, and extracted a convincing performance from us. What more could you ask of a director?

T: Was George Lucas on the set the whole time or did he just come around from time to time?

TP: Well, again, he was certainly there quite often, but our insulation meant we didn’t pick up the ripple on the set that happens when important people arrive. This relates to the previous question. It can’t have been easy for Richard Marquand to be taking over the reins from George, and yet still having him around to make suggestions. I don’t know much about how easy their relationship was.

T: Tell me about some of the other puppeteers on the set like Tim Rose and John Coppinger.

TP: I knew those two (and many others) from Dark Crystal. Tim was a puppeteer and John a builder, but on Dark Crystal everyone chipped in to work on everything. Tim was a great help when I was working on handheld puppets (to do crowd scenes), and was later (of course) Salacious Crumb, so we improvised with him quite a lot, and asked him for feedback on the performance. I don’t think I met John a lot on Dark Crystal (we worked on different teams) but I liked him, and empathized with his quiet temperament, so I was very pleased to find him on the Jabba team.

T: While on the set, did you realize just how big the Star Wars phenomenon was and did it affect your work?

TP: Well, I had some idea at the time, of course, because the first two movies had been huge. Because of being in the studio environment, however, it didn’t seem quite so big. You get blasé when you are working inside the business (friends, of course, were very impressed). You can’t get too overawed, or you get nervous, so you just go in and do it as a job.

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