Chewbacca looks back: Part 1

Featuring guest blogger Chewbacca

The 70s were out of sight. When Star Wars exploded, it was like I was sitting in the Millennium Falcon as it blasted into hyperdrive. One minute I’m just another struggling actor serving fat slobs fried hash and pancakes at an IHOP in Van Nuys. The next moment—WHOOSH!— I’m moving so goddamn fast the whole universe turns into a freakin’ blur.

Dude, I won’t lie to you: the “blur” started a few years before Star Wars. Kashyyyk was certainly a nice enough planet to grow up on— about as comforting and stifling as a womb—but if I ever see another freakin’ Wroshyr tree I think I’m going to puke.

Even a few light years away, I knew that fantastic sun-drenched, Bikini-drenched, dope-drenched L.A. was where it was at. In the 70s’, L.A. was cosmically famous.

I landed in L.A. in 1974 and found myself living in a pink stucco house up in Laurel Canyon. Lived with a bunch of wanna-be actors and musicians, who spent most of their time getting treated for crabs and staying up all drinking tequila and snorting some of Central America’s finest hand-crafted exports. Like I said, “WHOOSH!”

I absolutely loved living in Laurel Canyon. Down the street, Joni Mitchell owned a gigantic furry dog—it looked a bit like the The Shaggy DA— and she used ask me to walk him when she was out of town. Frank Zappa would laugh when we passed his house—he lived in a log cabin that had once been owned by silent movie star Tom Mix. Staring first at the dog’s shaggy face and then at mine, he’d yell: “Hey, Chewie, are you taking your brother for a walk?”

At that moment, Laurel Canyon felt like it was at the intersection of all of the creative vibes in the cosmos. (That’s right, I just said the word “vibes” and “cosmos.” Back then we actually used groovy words like that. WHOOSH!)

Unlike my roommates, I didn’t come L.A. to get famous. My roommate Randy did. Back then if the adjectives “chiseled” and “good looks” ever came even remotely within proximity of your name, you moved to L.A. It was practically the law. In Randy’s case, it was as if the state of Rhode Island collectively said, “Randy, you’re just too darn good-looking to live here so we all chipped in to buy you this bus ticket to California.”

When I met him, Randy was a struggling actor with a predilection for seducing rich middle-aged women at the Polo Lounge. Class act, that guy. Last I heard he was selling real estate in Escondido.

Before I get into how I got the part of Star Wars, I just want to say that LSD was never my drug of choice. Weed and blow seemed more “natural,” to me—as if you could buy it in bulk at the health food store. Acid seemed a little harsh and industrial to me. My coworker at IHOP, another struggling actor, had an insider's Hollywood euphemism for LSD: "Special effects." To me it was like fiddling with your concsiousness with a pneumatic drill.

The night before my audition, however, I was given two tabs of acid by a coworker at IHOP. I was facing three days off work and was already restless. So on the day of the Star Wars audition, I had dropped the two tabs and sat on the sofa in the living room trying to figure out the chord changes to “Moonshadow” on the guitar, waiting for it to kick in.

Randy would get up around noon, invariably hung over, light up a joint, and read through casting calls on a hammock we put up in the living room. On this day, August 5th, 1975, Randy yelled to me. “Check this out, man. This is far out!”

I wasn’t quite at WHOOSH, but the edges of shapes were starting to take on a certain wavy iridescence.

Randy continued. “Listen to this casting call: ‘Hairy male Wookiee for supporting role in sci-fi film. Minimum 8 foot tall. Must be shaggy and must have piercing yelp’.” He attempted to jolt upright, swinging awkwardly in the hammock, the bogarted joint dangling from his lip. “Dude, the audition is today at 2:00pm!” I looked at my wristwatch, which was starting to warp and drift in and out of my field of view.

“Um, Randy. That sounds cool and all, but I don’t think an audition is a good idea. For one thing, I’m not in the Screen Actor’s Union…”

“Who gives a sh—

“And I just dropped two hits of acid.”

“Oh,” he said. "Oh, right."

But after reflecting for a moment, he said: “But who cares about that? This could change your entire life! Let’s go!”

To be continued...