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Canoe Jam: Movie Magic Transforms Actor Warwick Davis |
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Saturday, April 10, 1999
Ewok on the wild sideDavis starred as furry Star Wars character
By STEVE TILLEY -- Express Writer
In this job I've been privileged to interview a lot of celebs. I've locked eyes with
Drew Barrymore, beheld Jennifer Love Hewitt's splendiferous chest, and sat next to Cameron Diaz as she arched her back and stretched. I think I've talked to men at some point too, though I can't actually recall who.
But only once in a while does it sort of hit me that the human beings
I meet are part of something so ingrained in the public's mind and heart that it's hard
to separate them from the larger picture, the same way it's hard to pick a dead fly out
of your glass of milk. Only nicer.
Like with Warwick Davis. He's probably best remembered as the title character i
n the 1988 Ron Howard-George Lucas fantasy flick Willow, which also starred Val Kilmer.
(Davis was the shorter of the two.)
But he also had a key role as Wicket W. Warwick, the spunky Ewok in Return of
the Jedi, that movie you watched, slack-mouthed, as a kid, knowing that the final chapter
in the Star Wars saga was spilling across the screen.
By "you" I mean "me," of course. For all I know you were in the womb, jail or
Guatemala in 1983. Or possibly all three, if your mom was an imprisoned revolutionary who was
very friendly with the head guard.
Davis and Anthony Daniels, the hilariously witty British actor who played C-3P0,
dropped by Edmonton's food bank yesterday to help promote this weekend's Skywalk Star Wars
convention at the Shaw Conference Centre. (The food bank is the official charity - bring a can
of something yummy to donate if you come down.)
As a reporter, you approach people like this with a certain amount of apprehension,
knowing that they've been harassed by drooling fans for a couple of decades and are probably
a little weary of questions like, "So, did it get hot inside the costume?" To which they
would probably like to answer, "Well, Steve, I was in a frickin' forest in California wearing
a suit of fur. What do YOU think?" (That's a simulated answer. Davis tolerated this question
without so much as an eye-roll, as did Daniels - who endured both Tunisia and Death Valley
in the metallic C-3P0 costume.)
Plus they're visiting Edmonton at its absolute ugliest, the time between snow
and greenery when everything is as brown as Bantha droppings and colder than a Wampa's heart. (Note to self: Be sure to throw in a few more geeky Star Wars terms. You don't sound quite goofy enough.)
But Davis seems genuinely happy to be here - it's the U.K. native's first
visit to Canada, something he's always wanted to do - and his enthusiasm and affection for
the Star Wars movies is contagious. Like a virus, only nicer.
Davis was only 11 when he made Return of the Jedi, answering a casting call
for actors under four feet in height (he was two-feet-11 at the time.) Wicket the Ewok
became the source of much adoration among moms, grannies and little kids, and much loathing
among Star Wars fans who wondered why the hell director George Lucas had populated the
final movie in the trilogy with spear-carrying teddy bears.
"I know there are hardcore fans who don't like the Ewoks," said Davis.
"What he (Lucas) was trying to say was this diminutive, primitive race could overthrow a technologically advanced race."
Sort of like Vietnam, as Fish Griwkowsky points out.
As the new Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace was being cast, Davis
called up Lucas and asked him if there was a part he could play. May I say: Must be NICE!
"Hi, George? Got a part for me in your new flick? Yeah, the one that's expected to be the
biggest movie of all time and make enough money to construct a working Death Star. Yes?
Cool. Seeya on the set."
Except that if Davis called me up and asked to borrow $10,000 or something,
I'd probably say, "Sure! Just let me nip down to the bank with my gun." He's that friendly,
open and decent. Or a really good actor.
In The Phantom Menace, Davis plays Wald, a six-year-old Rodian. That's the
alien race that the bounty hunter Greedo from Star Wars belonged to. You remember Greedo,
don't you? The guy who Han Solo shot and killed in the cantina. Or, if you've seen the
Special Edition of Star Wars, the guy Han Solo shot and killed after Greedo shot at him
first, point blank, and completely missed, because Gornar KNOWS we can't have Solo gunning
down some alien freak in cold blood, even when said alien has explicitly stated that Solo
was going to be leaving the cantina in several small pieces.
No no, that didn't fit in with the worldview of Lucas, so the scene was
"corrected" in the re-release to have Greedo shooting first and Solo somehow reacting
in a fraction of a second and blowing Greedo away with the gun he was holding under the
table. Which he didn't plan to use unless things got out of hand, of course. Yes, much better.
And what, you might ask, does this rant have to do with Davis? Good point.
Move along, move along ...
Davis has also appeared in the four Leprechaun movies, the cult horror-comedy
franchise. Even if you haven't seen them, you may remember Wayne scaring Garth in Wayne's
World by pretending to be the demonic elf from the Emerald Isle. It scared me, anyway.
Davis doesn't bring Leprechaun up, so I'm sure as heck not about to. I don't
offer certain tidbits about my own career in conversation, like being on stage in a Dolly
Parton wig with a stuffed animal up my shirt to simulate Dolly's even-more-splendiferous
chest, lip-synching to Nine to Five.
He does seem pumped about The Phantom Menace, though, and not just from the
"I'm-in-it-so-I'd-better-say-nice-things" standpoint.
"My impression of the film is that this is going to change the way people watch
films," said Davis, adding it's the kind of movie that, cliche as it may sound, the whole
family can enjoy together.
Uh oh ... that's sort of what somebody might say about, for instance, a movie
full of Ewoks, isn't it?
Only nicer, of course.
