I know that what you’re really excited about is finding out which one I like better, Rock Band 2 or Guitar Hero World Tour. (It’s Rock Band 2.)
But as it happens I got an early copy of Carrie Fisher’s memoir Wishful Drinking, which is coming out in early December, and it’s actually pretty entertaining — it’s very sort of wry and self-knowing. And in between a chapter about her famous mom (Debbie Reynolds) and one about her famous ex-husband (Paul Simon) there’s the obligatory stuff that we all want to hear, about what it was like to play Princess Leia.
Some of this stuff is already in the public domain. Maybe all of it is, and I just hadn’t heard about it. I did know the one about how the only directions George Lucas ever gave on set were “faster” and “more intense.” And the one about how he made Fisher tape her boobs down with gaffer tape. And I probably could have inferred the one about how she was afraid Leia’s weird hairstyle made her face look fat.
But I didn’t know the story about how when they were filming the scene in the trash compactor, the beast that lived in there was called a Dianoga, and “in between takes of Mark simulating the strangulation, he would pick up a little piece of rubber trash and start singing (to the tune of ‘Chattanooga Choo-Choo’), ‘Pardon me, George, could this be Dianoga poo-poo?’ (Okay, I guess you had to be there.)”
Now I know. Now we all know.