ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Has Spielberg changed at all as a director?
HARRISON FORD: Nothing else has ever been as much fun for me as working with him, because he's both very clear about what he wants and very collaborative about how we get there. It's not a free-for-all. It's very focused. That's the way I like to work, anyway.
Way back on the first movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Steven storyboarded a lot of stuff, partly to help the schedule. Does he still do that?
Steven does something I've rarely seen. He'll walk onto a set he has not seen before. I mean he's seen sketches, he may even have seen a model. He may have thought about it a great deal. But he prefers to walk onto it sort of cold. And very quickly he'll sort out a way of staging the action, along with [cinematographer] Janusz [Kaminski]. His skills are so refined that he's not fearful about the process. It's a comfortable process. On a set, he's home. And so it's comfortable to be there with him.
George talks about how he only turned to you to play Indy after Tom Selleck fell out of Raiders — he was obligated to do Magnum P.I. instead. And Lucas has said a lot of factors went into your not being first choice. Among other things, there was concern the public wouldn't accept ''that Han Solo guy'' as a new character, and also an assumption that you'd never agree to making all the sequels, because you gave Lucas such a hard time about that on Star Wars.
I didn't sign a contract for the Star Wars films [beyond the first one]. I refused to sign the sequel deal. Which is why we [Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, and I] aren't all living on roots and berries in the jungle somewhere. Because we had a favored-nations clause, the three actors. Which meant that whatever one got paid, all got paid. But when Indiana Jones came along, after reading the first one, and knowing that they had an ambition to do more, I was willing. And I was in a better negotiating position than I had been on Star Wars, for sure. I thought that the character was interesting enough to be able to develop further. I didn't feel there was as much interest in the character of Han Solo.
Why?
I did urge George to kill the character, because I thought that would be his best utility. To die, and give the story some resonance. I call it some bottom. He's got no mama, got no papa — out there all by himself. He's a piece you can move around, or get rid of. You don't need him for the rest of the story. That's what I thought. But I couldn't get George to go along with that. He didn't want to stop making the toys.
Well, why let a little thing like death stop that? You could have the Han Solo Funeral Playset.
[Laughs] Yeah. Right. You could bury his little ass. Woulda been good. Woulda been a seller.
NEXT PAGE: What's one reason that Sean Connery didn't return as Indy's father? ''I said no, no no no. I'm old enough to play my own father in this one. Sean's only 12 years older than I am.''
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