USAFF Interview: Candy Clark on AMERICAN GRAFFITI, THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH and more

USAFF Interview: Candy Clark on AMERICAN GRAFFITI, THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH and more

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This Friday at the USA Film Festival in Dallas, actress Candy Clark will be attending a special FREE 7:00pm showing of the sci-fi classic THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH, in which she co-starred with David Bowie.

She attended high school in Fort Worth, not often making it to the Dallas side of the Metroplex, but she still considers this area a sort of homecoming.  When asked if there were any places she would make sure to hit upon returning to these parts, Candy noted she was “…probably gonna have some barbeque!”  And yes, she has some favorite places for that.  I had the pleasure of chatting with her about some of her past work, and about her being a special guest of this year’s USAFF.  You can listen to the entire interview by clicking here, or right-click and save the MP3.

I started our conversation by bringing up her work on the classic George Lucas film AMERICAN GRAFFITI.  I had heard from some of the STAR WARS actors I know that George was always very particular about sticking to the script, not leaving much room for improvisation – though Harrison Ford famously improvised some of his dialogue in those movies more than a few times.  When asking Candy about whether or not Lucas was that particular on her film, she made it clear improvising wasn’t even thought about at that time.  “I stuck to the script, I don’t know about the other actors.  Charles Martin Smith and I stuck to the script.  The script was really good, there was no reason not to stick to it, unless you were too lazy to memorize your lines.  They had this man named Gino Havens who was running the lines with us before we went to set.”

“It was low budget and there was no time to be wasted, making a bunch of mistakes.  If you didn’t get it right within one or two takes he was just accepting it as it was and moving forward.  We didn’t have a lot of time to fiddle around with the actors… if you didn’t get it right we were moving on!”

When asking about her memories of the shoot, she stated “It was very cold in Petaluma where we shot.  That was unexpected.  Up in the bay area, it’s really chilly at night.  It was very long hours, no place to sit.  It was really low budget.  Including the music the whole thing cost $850,000, he got all those songs for $40,000” also adding “You could probably spend $850,000 on just the music alone today.”

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We also cleared up a long-running rumor that in fact was not true.  It’s been said that Candy once read for the role of Princess Leia in STAR WARS.  Her response?  “No, I never did!  Totally false.  Never read for it.  I called George and I asked him can I try out for that, and he said ‘Well we’re just not gonna have any Graffiti people in the movie’, and then he goes and hires Harrison.  But he told me up front… you know… he told me no.”

When discussing THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH, in which she co-starred with David Bowie, she noted that she wasn’t what you would consider a fan of him at that time.  “I was familiar but not very familiar, I didn’t go to his concerts or anything” and adding “I wasn’t a real fan or his music or anything at the time, and that turned out to be a really good thing, because after we did the film I went to a concert and I became a fan.  So I probably would have been impossible to work with if I had been a fan, you know what I mean?  I would have been all goo-goo ga-ga and intimidated, so it’s a good thing I wasn’t a fan.”

She also praised Bowie for his work ethic on the production.  “He was totally prepared, whenever we weren’t shooting a scene we’d be running lines for the next scene.  There was a lot of dialogue and it was really, really good dialogue, you didn’t want to change it.  In between takes when they were setting up lighting and stuff… it was a long process and there was a lot of down time, so we would be working on the next scene.  And it turned out to be really good that he was a musician, and he liked to rehearse.  Most musicians, when they go to a new city, they go to the arena and do the show, you know rehearse it.  So that turned out to be a really good thing, because the easiest and quickest way for me to learn lines was to say them out loud with the other actor, and hear the other line.  He was a really good working partner that way, really great.”

It’s also been noted that Candy spent a total of 96 and 1/2 hours in the make up chair during the shoot.  She confirmed it and added a note to the legacy, saying “I did.  That was just getting it put on, I didn’t add the time taking it off.”

We also discussed that Bowie so loves the film he’s now behind a New York stage production based on it called LAZARUS, which you can read more about here.  You can listen to the entire interview by clicking here, or right-click and save the MP3.  But more importantly, if you live in Dallas, stop by the Angelika Theater in Mockingbird Station on Friday at 7:00pm for the FREE screening of THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH, where Candy Clark will be there in person doing a Q&A afterward.  If you’ve never seen this film before, or just never seen it on a big screen, this is an experience not to miss.

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About the Author

Born and raised in Dallas, Mark has been a movie critic since 1994, with reviews featured in print, radio and National TV. In 2001 he started the Entertainment section of the Herorealm website, where he contributed film reviews and celebrity interviews until 2004. After three years of service there, he started Bigfanboy.com, which has become one of the Dallas film community's leading information websites. Bigfanboy hosts several movie screenings in the Texas area, and works closely with film and TV studios and promotional partners to host exciting events and contests. The site also features a variety of rare celebrity and filmmaker interviews, and Bigfanboy.com regularly covers the film festival circuit as well. In addition to Hollywood reporting, Mark has worked for many years as an advertising and sci-fi/comic book artist. Clients have included Lucasfilm Ltd., Topps Trading Cards, The Dallas Mavericks and The Dallas Stars. From 2002 until 2015 he managed the Dallas Comic Con, Sci-Fi Expo and Fan Days events in the DFW area. He currently catalogs rare comic books and movie memorabilia for Heritage Auctions, and runs the Dallas Comic Show conventions, but remains an avid moviegoer and cinema buff.