Movie of the Week: I Am Your Father

Alexa:  I consider myself a Star Wars fan (though not to the same extent as my fellow IBA writers), but I must admit I knew nothing about David Prowse prior to watching the documentary I Am Your Father. When I think Darth Vader, I think James Earl Jones. Prowse is an interesting character, and it was intriguing to view the original Star Wars trilogy through the lens of someone who was so central to the action but whose face was never shown onscreen. That said, I found much of the documentary’s narrative off-putting due in large part to one of the filmmakers, Marcos Cabotá. Typically, I find the most effective documentaries are the ones that let the subjects tell the story. But Cabotá makes himself a part of the story here, serving as a frequent talking head and detracting from the insights of those who were actually present during filming. I Am Your Father is a one-sided approach to Prowse’s story – Cabotá makes it clear he thinks Prowse was the victim of a grave injustice by being denied the chance to be Darth Vader’s face (Sebastian Shaw was cast solely for the climactic unmasking scene in Return of the Jedi). A substantial portion of the film is Cabotá’s attempt to remedy this by re-shooting that iconic scene with Prowse. Lucasfilm denies permission, the filmmakers shoot it anyway, and then we don’t even get to see it even though it dominated so much screen time. I got the sense there is more to the bad blood between Prowse and Lucasfilm than I Am Your Father chooses to portray, though I agree the producers should have been up front with Prowse about Shaw’s casting, and banning Prowse from official Star Wars conventions feels like overkill. But ultimately the effectiveness of Prowse’s story is diluted in I Am Your Father thanks to Cabotá’s self-important approach.

Joel: Of the three of us, I am probably the most “target audience” for this movie. I’m the type of person who will re-buy the entire Star Wars saga every time there is a new DVD or Blu Ray edition because “this one has a new three minute feature on how the joins in the C-3PO costume worked” or something like that. And this documentary promised to be a big deal. It’s no secret that Prowse isn’t on good terms with Lucasfilm and this was a chance to get to hear about his experience with the original trilogy and his thoughts on the franchise as a whole. And there is some of that present in the movie, but it’s a woefully small portion. Unfortunately, those interesting parts are few and far between with the bulk of the movie focusing on director Marcos Cabotá’s desire to reshoot the final scene of return of the Jedi.

A movie that’s supposed to be about the man behind the mask instead ends up focusing entirely too much on the director Cabotá. He’s one of the most frequent talking heads in the movie, and his segments rarely add much value to the movie as a whole. In fact there are several shots of an interview with Prowse himself that are for some unexplainable reason set up as a two person shot to include Cabotá in the frame as well. The movie makes a very big deal about this reshoot as well setting it up as a major injustice that they are going to great lengths to correct, though the only action taken ends up being a single phone call.

We get a little bit of information about Prowse no longer being a guest at official Lucasfilm events, though no new information on the subject is revealed, and a quick google of the controversy, reveals that the film takes a very simple, watered down version of what seems to be a much more complicated situation.

All in all, there’s probably enough footage in the movie that could be re-edited into an interesting half hour DVD special feature about Prowse and the character of Vader. I’m glad I got to see those talking head interviews, but the documentary as a whole left a lot to be desired.

Chris: Count this as one of those documentaries where it would’ve been nice to get the full other side of the story because all of the producers that were interviewed in this documentary passed the buck onto George Lucas. And all of that is fine because those were George’s movies so these are questions only George can answer. However, the unfortunate thing for this documentary is that George declined any involvement and those questions were left unanswered. I agree with Alexa that there was too much focus on Cabota’s dream project only for it to be nixed because (surprise, surprise) Lucasfilm and Disney are protective over their footage as they should be because this wasn’t parody, this was literally reshooting a scene. I rarely like documentaries that have the director features themselves in the film because it skews the focus of the film and doesn’t come off in the best light. Cabota spent a large chunk of this film focused on something with zero payoff and wasn’t able to deliver on a documentary that told the whole story. There’s a real chance that Prowse is taking this whole thing too personally or ignored the fact that he was only going to be used to fill in the Darth Vader costume or perhaps he actually was led to believe his voice was going to be used and would be there for the unmasking scene. Perhaps he’s playing the victim or perhaps he actually was victimized in this situation but we won’t find out in this documentary because there’s only so much that can be told from one side. I feel like there are more factors that went into the casting decisions than the film leads the audience to believe. I will say that it is strange that if this blacklist from Lucasfilm is personal, then how come the hatchet hasn’t already been buried now that the studio has been sold to Disney, leading to Lucas having zero authority over Lucasfilm these days. That’s the question I kept asking myself while watching this and that seems to be the biggest glaring example of their being more to this situation than what was told to us in I Am Your Father.