SF Signal: Star Wars Screen Tests

Star Wars Screen Tests

I stumbled upon this Panopticist post of Robby Benson's Star Wars audition (he reads for the part of Luke along with a mostly off-camera Harrison Ford). This led me to the YouTube profile of its source, Ghyslain. (Not the Star-Wars-Kid Ghyslain, although that would somehow be poetic, wouldn't it?) Gyslain has collected a series of Star Wars audition videos.

His notes say there is 90 minutes of footage that features folks like Kurt Russell, William Katt, Fredric Forrest, Andrew Stevens, Charles Martin Smith, Amy Irving, and several others. So far you can see: Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Lisa Eilbacher (from Beverly Hills Cop reading for Princess Leia). Here's another one with someone reading for Leia I don't recognize and does not identify herself in the video.

A post about Star Wars auditions wouldn't be complete without including this Saturday Night Live skit (which we've posted before) showing Christopher Walken (awesomely impersonated by Kevin Spacey) reading for Han Solo, Richard Dreyfuss (Daryl Hammond) reading for C3PO and Walter Matthau (Spacey again) reading for Obi Wan. What we didn't post about before was another SNL skit in the series shows Burt Reynolds (played by Morm McDonald) trying out for Darth Vader, Barbara Streisand (Ana Gasteyer) reading for Princess Leia and Jack Lemmon (Spacey again) as Chewbacca.