That old coot, Quint, had the chance to pull up next to Vader when he was here in Austin. They talked for a fly's time about women, water and work. We skipped the women and the water part to concentrate on the work. Quint decided to be modest when sending in his report and didn't talk about his own film work, instead deferring to David Prowse, who is of course Darth Vader. Quint in the real world in a mild mannered reporter, who dreams of wearing a life vest in the Pacific with his best friend at his side bobbing in a murky red spot of water. Thus the name Quint. He interviewed Prowse for his weekly metropolitan newspaper, but due to editorial hierarchy his piece was riddled. So it is that he turned to AICN to place his work, his craft. (Right about now, Quint's head is about as big his 31" sparkling DVD playing Surround Sound blaring Boob Tube) So enough of me, here is Quint and David Prowse...
The Interview
What would you do if you were the most feared bad guy in the universe? Why, sign autographs, of course. Dave Prowse was made famous by his role as Darth Vader in the Star Wars films, even though you never once saw his face or heard his voice. Having appeared in numerous films prior to his famous role as the Dark Lord of the Sith, including, but not limited to, A Clockwork Orange and three Hammer Films horror movies, Prowse proves he's not just a guy who can walk around in a heavy, uncomfortable, but cool looking suit.
Nowadays, Prowse spends most of his time traveling around the world with various Sci-Fi and Star Wars conventions and heading his gym, Dave Prowse's All Star Gym, in London. He recently went through Austin as part of a Sci-Fi convention, where he signed autographs and talked on panel discussions with other Star Wars characters, such as Kenny Baker (R2-D2), Jeremy Bullock (Boba Fett) and Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca).
The following is an interview between Quint and Prowse.
Special note to AICN readers: Most of the cool Star Wars stuff is towards the end, but if you want to read a little backround on the man that is the Dark Lord of the Sith, then I suggest you read the entire article. This interview originally ran in The Lone Star Dispatch, but AICN readers get the `Director's Cut' if you will of the interview. It is in it's entirety. Enjoy.
QUINT: WOULD YOU TELL ME A LITTLE ABOUT YOUR GYM IN LONDON?
DAVE PROWSE: Well, I've been established 28 years, I'm probably one of the oldest established gyms in London. It's primarily a weight training gymnasium. I'm on five floors. I have a heavy gymnasium in the basement, all men's facilities and reception are on the ground floor, we have a cardiovascular fitness gymnasium on the first floor, the all the lady's facilities are on the second floor, and we have an aerobics studio on the top.
I've had an awfully lot of famous people training here. From Arnold Schwarzenegger to Stephanie Powers to Vennesa Redgrave, you know, lots of famous film people.
QUINT: I ALSO READ THAT YOU TRAINED CHRISTOPHER REEVE FOR THE SUPERMAN ROLE.
DP: That's right. I got the job of looking after him and putting some weight on him because he was too skinny when they cast him for the part. He weighed about 175 pounds at 6 foot 5. I put about 40 pounds on him in six weeks. He was on a very, very specialized training program and a very, very specialized dietary program.
QUINT: YOU ALSO RUN A CHARITY. CAN YOU TELL ME A LITTLE ABOUT THAT?
DP: An arthritis charity, Dave Prowse's Force Against Arthritis. I've been doing that for the last six years, ever since I suddenly discovered I had it myself and I became associated with the national institutions over here. One is called The Mineral Hospital in Bath and also the Institute of Orthopedics Oswestry Street and they are the national Orthopedics center and we've been collecting money to build a new arthritis research center there. In fact, we've raised somewhere around $5 million. They actually built the institute last April. We opened in April.
QUINT: PREVIOUS TO ALL THIS, YOU WERE A FAMOUS BODY BUILDER.
DP: I was one of the top twenty in Great Britain. I got invited to enter the Mr. Universe contest in 1960. After that, I decided I didn't want to carry on with body building as such any more. I still wanted to train, but I didn't want to compete. I was getting quite strong, so I took up competitive weight lifting. In 1961 I got third place in the British Olympic Weight Lifting Championships. Then in 1962 I won the championships and became the British heavy weight weight lifting champion. In `63 I won it again and in `64 I won it again, then I retired because I didn't get selected to go to Tokyo for the Olympic Games.
QUINT: NOW GETTING ON TO YOUR SECOND JOB, WHEN DID YOU START GETTING INTO THE CONVENTIONS?
DP: Well, only because of Star Wars. Simply because of Star Wars. I became the cult figure of the movie as it were. I was more popular than Luke Skywalker! I started to get asked to do personal appearances and do autograph sessions at conventions. It just kind of snowballed and snowballed and snowballed over the years.
I started off with one or two a year and then it gradually started to increase. It went quiet after Return of the Jedi in 1983. I didn't do much from late `83 to about 1992. All of a sudden in 1993 it started getting busy again and `94 was busier still and `95 was better and it's just going on. Last year I went to America quite a few times. I'd do in- store signings, I'd do personal appearances, conventions, the whole works.
It was all the result of Star Wars, of course, although I'd been in Dr. Who, so I've been in Dr. Who conventions as well. I'd also been in Space 1999 and also I'd done the (Hammer) horror films as well. So, I'd go to Horror conventions and multi-media conventions, Dr. Who conventions.
QUINT: WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE PART ABOUT THE CONVENTIONS?
DP: Well, I just like meeting the fans. I enjoy the one-to-one contact that you have with the fans. It's nice to talk to people who basically idolized you for 20 years. It's very, very flattering to meet all these people who've seen the films hundreds and hundreds of times and think you're the greatest thing ever.
When I do the conventions, I make a point to try to meet with people and chat with people and have photographs taken. I never object to anybody taking my photograph and if they want to come in and have their photograph taken with me, then they're more than welcome. That, to me, is the nice thing about it. Of course, it gets you traveling around the world, which is nice.
QUINT: WHAT DON'T YOU LIKE ABOUT THE CONVENTIONS?
DP: Well, the occasional nerd ... and the convention organizers are a funny bunch, to be perfectly honest. Some of them are very, very nice and some of them are not the nicest of people, as it were. Some are quite nice. Something about convention organizers: they really go out of their way to get you there, but once they've gotten you there, they don't want to know you. You're left to your own devices. You have to find your way back to the airport, things like that. It's quite strange.
QUINT: HAVE YOU HAD ANY ÒCRAZY FANÓ EXPERIENCES?
DP: Yeah, all sorts of things. I had a guy that came up to me and asked me to sign his leg. I found he had a big tattoo of Darth Vader on his leg and he asked me if I'd sign above it, so I signed Dave Prowse is Darth Vader. Then he said, "Thank you very much. I've got to go away now and get it tattooed." He was going to get my signature tattooed on his leg.
At another convention a girl came up to me and said, "I don't have anything for you to sign. How about signing my breast for me?" She pulled up her shirt and I said, "This is the nicest thing I've signed all day." You get a little bit of that, but not much.
QUINT: SINCE WE'RE ON THE SUBJECT OF SIGNING, WHAT'S THE MOST COMMON THING THAT PEOPLE HAVE BROUGHT TO YOU TO SIGN?
DP: Probably the Darth Vader figure. You know, the Kenner toys. They're the most popular. But I sign everything, from calenders to books to records. The talking bank is quite a popular thing at the moment as well.
The amount of pictures that you sell (to be signed) is infinitesimal compared to the number of autographs that you sign. You sign miles more.
QUINT: WHAT ARE SOME OF YOUR PET PEEVES AT CONVENTIONS?
DP: I'm pretty easy going. I get along alright with everybody. The only thing is that if I'm traveling miles and miles and miles to come to Austin or to Texas to do a show, I just like to be treated properly. Things like, they had problems this time with the hotel in Austin. They put us in a hotel where there was no meal service, there was no restaurant, no bar service, we had to make our own beds. That to me is terrible. When things go wrong like that. That really gets on my nose.
QUINT: IF YOU COULD PICK YOUR FAVORITE STAR WARS CHARACTER, BESIDES YOURSELF, WHO WOULD IT BE?
DP: Han Solo. He's just a likable rogue.
QUINT: WHO IS A BETTER LIGHTSABER DUELIST, ALEC GUINNESS OR MARK HAMILL?
DP: Mark, by all means. Mark is much more athletic and younger. I mean Alec was good. He learned what he had to do. If you compare the duels, you'll see that the lightsaber duel between Mark Hamill and myself is much more complicated. When you now look back at the Star Wars lightsaber duel between Obi-Wan Kenobi and myself, it was relatively simple. I look at it now and think how simple the moves were when you compare it with the moves on Empire and even on Return of the Jedi.
QUINT: NOW YOU HAVE HAD SOME BAD EXPERIENCES ON THE SETS OF THE STAR WARS MOVIES, CAN YOU SHARE SOME?
DP: There were a couple, a couple of major ones. Just things like they gave me false dialogue so I didn't know that I was Luke Skywalker's father. I thought that was a bit off. They over-dubbed my voice without telling me, on the first one. Things like that. Killing me off without confiding in me. I think that was a bit off, but it was the prerogative of the film company. You're just one of the hired hands, as it were.
Even Sir Alec Guinness, he hated his involvement in Star Wars because he had no control over his part. He said that Star Wars was a director's media and no matter what he did, as far as his role was concerned, Lucas could chop it and change it around exactly how he wanted it.
QUINT: DO YOU LIKE YOUR THEME MUSIC (VADER'S MARCH BY JOHN WILLIAMS)?
DP: Yes, very much. John Williams did some super stuff. I like the Star Wars theme and Vader's March. They're by far the best.
QUINT: WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE ATTITUDE OF ACTORS LIKE HARRISON FORD OR ALEC GUINNESS WHO TOTALLY BLOW OFF THEIR ROLES IN STAR WARS?
DP: Well, when I worked with them, they were all very, very nice. I heard now that Harrison is difficult to work with. That he demands scripts, control of the film while he gets all the dialogue right and makes sure it's right for him and so on and so forth.
I think it's wrong that stars get themselves in this position in which they want control over everything that goes on. If somebody comes up to you with a script and says that this is the film we want to do and you employ script writers and script editors to do everything, you don't expect an actor to sit down and say that this is crap, we can't do it. I can't say these lines like this and so on. I think that's all wrong. You're paid to do a job and you get in a do it.
QUINT: YOU'VE DONE SO MANY THINGS, FROM PLAYING FRANKENSTEIN IN HAMMER FILMS TO A BODY GUARD IN A CLOCKWORK ORANGE AND BEING FAMOUS AS BEING THE BADDEST BAD GUY IN THE UNIVERSE, WHAT CHARACTER OR FILM ARE YOU MOST PROUD OF?
DP: I think Darth Vader is probably one of the best parts I've ever done, but probably the one that gave me the most satisfaction was playing the monster in Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell. I felt I really did a good job on that.
I did three Hammer films. I did The Horror of Frankenstein and I followed that with Vampire Circus and then Monster From Hell. I felt that Monster From Hell, for me, was a really good acting role.
I've also done some television as well. I did a lovely television series that was probably the best thing I've ever done, which was a television series over here called The Rose Medallion. It was like a gangster type series in which I had the co-lead in it. The lead was a kind of seedy, run-down private detective and I was his cousin and we went through all three episodes of this thing together, searching for buried treasure and stuff. I was in all three episodes. It was a wonderful part for me.
QUINT: WHICH OF THE TRILOGY DID YOU ENJOY WORKING ON THE MOST?
DP: I enjoyed the second one best. I liked Empire. I think it was mainly because we had an interesting director, Irvin Kershner, who took a lot of care and attention with the actors. You didn't get that with Lucas and you didn't get that with Richard Marquand.
I thought it was a much more adult movie as well. I would say that Empire is the adult Star Wars. Although everybody enjoyed Star Wars, I think most adults enjoyed Empire more, whereas I think Return of the Jedi was very much a merchandising exercise. I didn't like that film at all. And, of course, they killed me off, which I didn't like either.
