George Lucas has built up a lot of mythology around Star Wars. Not in the series proper, but stories and myths around the creation of it. A lot of it isn't true, and one particular story has been stuck in my brain.
"Harrison Ford was a carpenter on/near the set when George Lucas saw him and cast him as Han Solo".
The idea is that Harrison Ford just happened to be lucky and he made the best of a rare opportunity. The actual story is not nearly as neat and tidy as this.
Harrison Ford was already an actor, having been in The Conversation and American Graffiti. The former was nominated for 3 oscars (won 0, but it was up against The Godfather Part II so it had no chance) and the latter was directed by... George Lucas.
Fred Roos was assisting with casting and had also worked with Harrison Ford before. He told George that Harrison Ford would be great for Han Solo but George didn't want to reuse actors from American Graffiti. Fred knew he did carpentry work when he wasn't acting so he arranged for Harrison Ford to have a job doing carpentry for Francis Ford Coppola's office. It just so happened that the casting for Star Wars was down the hall from there.
And then while casting was happening, Fred saw his friend Harrison Ford and told George it would be a good idea to have him read opposite the potential actors.
And then Fred talked about how great this Harrison Ford guy was and maybe he should be Han Solo after all.
This isn't a story about how Harrison Ford became lucky. This is the story of how Fred Roos cleverly got the casting he wanted.
All movies are collaborative efforts, and the idea that one person has a vision that must be executed perfectly is basically a myth. Even Ingmar Bergman, the Swedish director that makes black and white art films, has said in interviews that he basically could never tell Max Von Sydow to do anything and the The Seventh Seal was a collaborative effort. In some cases it's just two people butting heads until one prevails. Hitchcock didn't want any music during the shower scene in Psycho but Bernard Herrmann added it anyways. Hitchcock just had to admit he was right and basically doubled his salary.
I just don't want people to think this story is about hating George Lucas. He's got faults but I think people have retroactively decided that the film had to be saved by other people and that just isn't true. He is guilty of doing lots of weird stuff like claiming that he wrote 9 stories and started with the 4th one (A New Hope didn't have the Part IV until after the original run) or re-editing the film to have Greedo shoot first and claiming it was always supposed to be like that, but he knew how to direct a movie.
