Ford Fridays

start your weekend with a sense of rugged adventure

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Harrison attended the Star Wars Celebration for the first time this year and joined the 40th Anniversary Panel. Billie Lourd gave a touching tribute to her mom, the late Carrie Fisher, and stood in for her in this “original trio” reunion photo.

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As a man, I feel Irish. As an actor, I feel Jewish.

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A pair of legends.

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Is that aircraft meant to be underneath me?

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Has a woman ever made you cry?

Fuck yes. They make me cry in movies. They make me cry when I’m worried about them. They make me cry when I’ve hurt them. They make me cry just for the hell of it sometimes. 

-From a 12/18/15 interview with Elle

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The focus and the concentration and the attention to detail that flying takes is a kind of meditation. I find it restful and engaging, and other things slip away.

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Would you tell me about a woman who’s intimidated you? 

Oh, you mean Sigourney Weaver?

- From an interview conducted by Mickey Rapkin in Elle magazine, December 18, 2015

Photo is from Working Girl, 1988. dir. Mike Nichols. 

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Apologies for the unexpected hiatus. I have been mourning the untimely loss of Carrie Fisher. This is the third Friday on this site she’s managed to steal the spotlight from Ford, which says plenty about who she was. 

For his part, Harrison said in a statement released on 12/27: 

Carrie was one-of-a-kind…brilliant, original. Funny and emotionally fearless. She lived her life, bravely…My thoughts are with her daughter Billie, her mother Debbie, her brother Todd, and her many friends. We will all miss her.

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On December 8th, the USC Shoah Foundation’s 2016 Ambassadors for Humanity Gala honored filmmaker George Lucas and his wife, Mellody Hobson, for their humanitarian efforts. It was a veritable Star Wars/Indiana Jones reunion, with Steven Spielberg, JJ Abrams, and of course, the star of those franchises, Harrison Ford, in attendance. Within his speech honoring his longtime collaborator, Harrison Ford had this to say: 

We’re living in a world where the definition of freedom will often find its expression in targeting others. Freedom is not the right to do what we want, when we want, say what we want. In fact freedom is not a right. It’s a personal responsibility, a responsibility to choose what is right and refuse what is wrong. 

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It’s important not to base your ambition on anybody else’s history, but to figure out how best to use your own particular personality and understanding of yourself to help tell other peoples’ stories. 

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On 11/30, Harrison Ford was inducted into the California Hall of Fame . He was a member of the “10th class” of honorees, which also included George Takei, Isabel Allende, Maria Shriver, and Tony Gwynn. 

He had jokes for Governor Jerry Brown, who presented the award:

“I was not born here, but unlike some people I’ve paid a lot of taxes here,” Ford said, before turning to Brown. “And they’ve mostly been well spent. Thank you.”

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“I’m like old shoes. I’ve never been hip. I think the reason I’m still here is that I was never enough in fashion that I had to be replaced by something new.”

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In keeping with the “news” of the week: Carrie Fisher explicitly confirms her on-set affair with Harrison Ford in her forthcoming book, The Princess Diarist, out on November 22nd. She still writes the absolute best descriptions of him:

“I looked over at Harrison. A hero’s face -- a few strands of hair fell over his noble, slightly furrowed brow. How could you ask such a shining specimen of a man to be satisfied with the likes of me? I was so inexperienced, but I trusted something about him. He was kind.” - Carrie Fisher

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“‘May the Force be with you’ is charming but it’s not important. What’s important is that you become the Force - for yourself and perhaps for other people.”

(Photo is from Air Force One, 1997)

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“Tennyson (that can’t be right) Ford — Ellison (? – No!*) — well, a rangy, languid young man who is probably intelligent and amusing.” -Excerpt from a letter Alec Guinness wrote to a friend while working on Star Wars. He later notes he means Harrison Ford. 

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“If I were a serious person, I’d probably have a real job.” 

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Today marks Carrie Fisher’s 60th birthday. Her importance in Harrison’s life, or at the very least, his career, is significant, so I dub today Ford/Fisher Friday in celebration of this milestone.

“There’s something that’s permanent about the way that we handle each other.” -Carrie Fisher in Rolling Stone Magazine, December 2015.