Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. I had a Ghostbusters moment recently, but instead of being asked if I was a God I was asked if I wanted to talk to Mark Hamill. I listened to my inner Winston Zeddemore and said an immediate “YES!”
Hamill was promoting a show he's spearheading called Pop Culture Quest, which is all about Hamill delving into the world of collecting, meeting obsessive collectors and seeing the stuff they've gathered over the years.
It was made clear up front no Star Wars talk was allowed, but knowing Hamill's enthusiasm I had a feeling I wouldn't need to be the one to bring it up. Sure enough, he references his Star Wars work a couple times and I didn't even need to piss off any publicists! Win-win!
Below we chatted about the psychology of collecting, how that instinct is kind of a universal commonality between all people and touched upon his collection (comic books), my collection (original pop culture art), the new video game from Wing Commander's Chris Roberts, the awesomeness of puppetry (yes, Frank Oz is mentioned) and just how much of a badass Sam Fuller was.
The cool thing about Pop Culture Quest is it's a show that's running online, so you don't have to just read about us talking about the show, you can actually watch the first episode right now! Check out the episode and then read a rather geeky conversation between me and Mr. Mark Hamill.
Pretty cool, huh? Here's the chat. Enjoy! I know I did!
Mark Hamill: Hi, Eric. It's Mark.
Quint: Hey, Mark. How's it going, man?
Mark Hamill: Good. Hey, what's the 512 area code? Where are you?
Quint: That's Austin, Texas.
Mark Hamill: Okay. The blueberry in the tomato soup of Texas.
Quint: That's right, although the coast is getting bluer every election, too. It won't be long before we're a swing state.
Mark Hamill: I saw that. The bottom coast is ultra blue. I have relatives in Austin. My brother lives there, my sister and my brother-in-law and my nephews. I've been there. Actually, Richard Garriott's computer game company used to be down there. When I was doing Wing Commander I went down there a couple of times.
Quint: Yeah, that's right. I remember they even held a big premiere of the movie version down here.
Mark Hamill: That's right. I did a voice for that movie. I did a computer voice. Talk about all these things coming back that you never thought you'd return to, I just got together with Chris Roberts. It's not really a sequel to Wing Commander because he doesn't own the rights to it, but for all intents and purposes that's what it is.
Quint: A sequel in spirit.
Mark Hamill: Yes, exactly. You're not going to believe the way technology has advanced. We were talking about raising money over the internet, you know like a Kickstarter kind of thing, and I didn't know what number to expect. Over a hundred million dollars this guy raised, which just goes to show you the kind of passion these fans have for Chris and his game. It's called Star Citizen. Gary Oldman's in it, Gillian Anderson, Jack Huston... it's a great cast. Ben Mendelsohn, me! (laughs) Yeah, it's called Star Citizen: Squadron 42 and it comes out next year.
Quint: Is that just for PC or all consoles, do you know?
Mark Hamill: I think it's going to be all different platforms and online, too. It's awesome. I'm telling you, you can get into a spaceship and fly to all these different planets. What blew my mind was how technology has advanced since whenever I did (Wing Commander) in the '90s. It's just beyond recognition in terms of what they're able to do now. They're great fun to do. It was great fun working with them again.
This is happening so much. I never expected to go back to Star Wars, I never expected to go back to The Flash and I never expected to go back to The Joker and all of those things happened in the last few years.
Quint: Now the idea for your show, Pop Culture Quest, is pretty great. I mean, everybody's got something they collect. Everybody's obsessed over something, whether it's baseball statistics or cars or comic books. Everybody is a geek about something, so this show will appeal to just about everybody.
Mark Hamill: The fact is, and you just mentioned it, you find out “Oh, you collect belt buckles? Just belt buckles? How did this start?” The stories behind how their obsessions got started and the collectors themselves are sometimes more fascinating than the items. A lot of the time I was guilty about saying “Wait a minute, why are we doing a show about shoes?” for instance and then you meet the guy and you see the shoes and you hear the stories behind the shoes and you totally relate to this guy. Even though you don't collect shoes yourself he has the same instincts that you have.
The quest is the most important part. To me, it's the thrill of the hunt. In the old days you had to go to the garage sales and rummage sales and flea markets. Now you can just go online and google whatever you want. It's a different way of collecting, but it's about the legendary item you're looking for. I'd always pick a really obscure comic book that I'd never seen. I'd say “I want to get Adventure #210, it's the first appearance of Krytpo.” It might be 2, 3, 5, 7 years but eventually you find it and wow! It's the thrill of the hunt.
I'm interested in what other people collect and it was a way to extend my collecting without acquiring physical items. I mean, I'm chock-a-block now. I have no more room for my stuff. This gives me carte blanche to get into your house, into your basement, doodle around and find out what you collect. That's the really exciting part to me.
Quint: The fringe benefit of doing this is you're actually adding onto your collection! I mean, you got Jim Lee to draw you a Joker!
Mark Hamill: (Laughs) I know! I do! Listen, I felt terrible because I'm not trying to use the show to get these things! That's not my idea at all. Somebody on our staff said that Jim wanted me to leave an answering machine message as The Joker. I've done that before. I did it for Mike Carlin back in the DC offices in New York. I wrote the introduction to a collection of Ra's Al Ghul stories and when I was over at the offices one day, Mike Carlin asked me if I could do his answering machine message, which I did.
Mind you, I've been doing this voice since, what? '92? It's been over 20 years. A couple of months later one of the guys came to one of the shows I was doing, came backstage and I was like “How did the voicemail work out?” They said, “Well, it lasted about 10 days.” I said, “Oh, people got sick of it?” They said, “No, what was happening was people were calling just hear the message and hanging up.” (laughs) It was counter-productive so they had to get rid of it.
But yeah, I never expected to get something like that. I'm looking at it as I'm speaking to you. I loved watching him drawing it in real time because you don't know where he's going with it at first. He's got this little rag and he's smudging the ink around. What an artist. It's just breathtaking and to be able to look over his shoulder like that, that's certainly a highlight for me. And when you get down in (DC's) vault? Forget about it! This show could be an hour and a half just about the vault.
That's my only regret, that you have to make it so brief because the format is such that you can't really lavish the time. I said at the beginning the less me the better. The more items that we can get, the more stories about collecting, the more people we can get... I'd be happy if you never saw me and I was just doing voiceover if we could show more stuff.
That's one of the reasons I wanted to have the Pop character. I wanted to have somebody to talk to. One of the guys said “Okay, we get a 22 year old blonde babe...” I said, “That's basic. We're not doing this for FX.” First of all, I don't think Marilou (his wife) would be very happy about that. Number 2, it's distracting. I wanted somebody who's like a real kid, a super enthusiastic fan, who is naïve, but over the top in his enthusiasm.
I also wanted another character, a super cynical dealer character, who doesn't care about the items at all. He'd be really knowledgable about all the items, but is solely in it for the profit. Let's call him Culture Vulture. He'd be like the Comic Book Guy on The Simpsons. “Worst. Episode. Ever.” Everybody knows these dealers who can be such cranky people and I thought that'd be interesting to feel the yin-yang, the light and the dark.
They said “Budget-wise you can only have one character.” I have a lot of crazy ideas. For a long time I wanted animation in the show. They said no. It was too expensive, there was too much lead time, blah-blah-blah. I thought, “Well, what do I like besides cartoons?” Well, I love puppets. Even though I never refer to him as a puppet because to me he's very, very real. He's what I call a rescue kid from the neighborhood.
They had lots of jokes about how “I have no feet” or “I have a hand up my rear” and all that. I said, “No, no, no. Take all that out! Don't ever refer to him in any way as a puppet. He's a person!”
You gotta sell it. Frank Oz, who was very generous and I think he's such a genius at what he does, always said “If you didn't believe in Yoda then nobody would believe in Yoda.” I said, “Frank, that's very kind of you to say, but Yoda is so real it's not hard to forget that he's a puppet.” A sophisticated puppet, but a puppet nonetheless. It's his artistry that puts it over the top.
We were so lucky. I bumped into Dan Milano one time and I'm a huge Warren the Ape fan. You know, Greg the Bunny and all of them. His parodies on IFC were beyond great. We became friends and I was keeping my fingers crossed that he'd be available because he's so busy, he's working on a show on Nickelodeon, but we were really lucky to have him.
Quint: Well, my collection is very small because I write on the internet for a living, so I don't have a whole lot of expendable money, but I do collect original pop culture art. Pulp covers, movie poster art, comic art, that kind of thing. If you get desperate for material my door's always open.
Mark Hamill: That's a really rarified, specialized collection because any original art is obviously not mass-produced and is never meant to be. That's really smart. It's very specialized. You're not getting pieces on a weekly or even monthly basis. You might go for months and months and finally find something you really want, but once you get it that's it. It's a unique piece. I really understand that frame of mind.
Quint: Movie poster art is my primary focus. I only have three pieces, but they're good pieces. The pride of my collection is painted by Tom Jung, who did the original Star Wars poster.
Mark Hamill: The Hildebrandt one?
Quint: The Hildebrandts did a version of this same image, with Luke holding the saber up and Leia at his feet. That's the one Jung did.
Mark Hamill: Okay. You have that piece?!? Wow!
Quint: No, I wish! Dude, if I had that original painting I could retire. No, I have another poster art piece he did for a Burt Reynolds movie called White Lightning.
Mark Hamill: I remember White Lightning.
Quint: I also have an unused poster art concept for the Walter Matthau movie HOPSCOTCH that's just gorgeous, done with colored pencils.
Mark Hamill: Wow. See, already I'm thinking now we have to do original art as a future episode. That's the thing, there's so much out there and we've only just scratched the surface. As I look over the list of the 10 episodes we did I say, “How did we miss board games? How did we miss lunch boxes? How did we miss cereal boxes or Beatles memorabilia?” The sky's the limit and what's brilliant is usually if people are collectors they want to show you what they have.
Quint: That's a big part of it, for sure. I have that White Lightning piece in a big, beautiful museum quality frame hung up in the living room so it's one of the first things you see when you walk through the door. You won't have any shortage of material. From a selfish level I really wish you all the success in the world with the show because I want to see what's out there!
Mark Hamill: See, just that. What you said there, that's the show. It's the story behind why you decided on that particular deal and what interests you. To me that's more compelling than just the items themselves, the story of the people behind them.
Quint: That's why I think your show works, at least in the two episodes I've seen so far. So unless you crap the bed with the rest of the season you've got a loyal watcher in me.
Mark Hamill: (laughs) Well, fingers crossed.
Quint: Okay, man. I'll let you go since I'm sure you still have a ton of people waiting to talk to you today, but I promised myself if I ever got to corner you I'd ask you for some Sam Fuller stories...
Mark Hamill: Oh, Sam Fuller! Yeah, that's for another day because I'm telling you he was one of the all-time greats. What a thrill it was to work with somebody that lived that story. I learned more about World War II working with Sam Fuller and Lee Marvin than I ever learned from school.
At first I thought, “I don't want to go over to Israel and recreate World War II with a bunch of young actors! I'm going to do Equus on stage in San Francisco.” I decided I at least owed Sam the respect he deserves and go over and tell him why I'm not going to do this movie. I went over there and his magnetism and his charisma... he took over and just started telling me the story and I thought, “I just said I'm not doing this movie!” But he's selling me this, with all the sound effects (makes machine gun sounds) and I realize after listening for 20 minutes “Oh my God, I just got drafted. There's no way I can't do this movie because he's one of a kind. Once he's gone that whole generation of filmmakers is probably out of my reach.” That was the best decision I ever made.
I was scared to work with Lee. I loved him as an actor, but I thought he might be a total jerk. The opposite was true. He's one of the most generous, funny, compelling actors. I learned so much from him. He was such a fantastic actor. We were friends with his wife and his family. All those people from The Big Red One, Bobby Di Cicco, Kelly Ward, Bobby Carradine, we're still in touch. That was one of the magical experiences of my life. I can't praise (Fuller) enough. He was an amazing guy. One of these days I'll give you a whole interview about Sam.
Quint: I'd love to take you up on that. Thanks for your time, man. I appreciate it.
Mark Hamill: Thank you, Eric. I appreciate your interest!
Fingers crossed I can nail him down on that follow up chat about the late, great Samuel Fuller. Thanks for reading along and make sure to keep up with Pop Culture Quest on the internets! I know I will be.
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
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