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If all goes according to plan, Jacques Demy’s “Model Shop” will make Harrison Ford a movie star — or, at least, it will land him his first lead role. Columbia Pictures had no faith in the unknown Ford, so they insisted on Gary Lockwood, who had just finished playing Frank Poole in Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Opera.” Needing to earn a living to support his young family, Ford became a carpenter.
Being a carpenter in Hollywood brought Ford into the homes of several famous actors (eg Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne). Producer Fred Roos, a Francis Ford Coppola associate, was particularly taken with Ford, and introduced him to Coppola’s friend and filmmaking protégé George Lucas. This charming, ruggedly handsome handyman can bring Bob Falfa, the street racing rival of Paul Le Mat’s John Milner, to life in “American Graffiti.”
Ford delivered, but, in doing so, caused more than a little confusion behind the scenes.
Harrison is the hellion
At 30 years old, Ford was an elder statesman on the set of “American Graffiti.” An experienced director might look to someone of Ford’s stature to keep the kids in line while shooting a risky movie at the studio, but, according to Brad Duke’s “Harrison Ford: The Films,” the future that megastar is an incorrigible instigator.
Although Ford called himself the “unofficial den daddy” of the shoot, he couldn’t contain the cast’s worst impulses, which were largely fueled by the Holiday Inn that served as their holding cell while they waited to be called to the set. Every Ford:
“It was fun. It was like a party, but not a Hollywood party. It was a real low-budget movie, even for those days. I only got a couple hundred dollars a week. There were no dressing rooms. The actors sat down. in the same trailer as costumes.”
Harrison scored the Howard Johnson upgrade
To let off steam, the actors ran to the top of the Holiday Inn sign. There’s nothing naughty there, right? Well, they also tend to pee in hotel ice machines. According to Duke’s book, Ford claims not to have participated in this activity, but Lucas remembers the actor returning beers to his character’s 1955 Chevy, which he would then race up and down the strip (the local threatened police to impound his car). Not that great.
Eventually, Ford’s wild behavior, which also entailed throwing a co-star off a balcony and into the shallow end of a hotel pool (leaving the young star with a noticeable scratch on his forehead), was kicked out of the Holiday Inn. He ended up at a Howard Johnson’s, which, to me, was quite the upgrade if only because their restaurants made killer cheeseburgers and chocolate shakes.
In retrospect, Ford has no regrets. “I was a bit of a carouser in those days,” he says. “And I was with other hell raisers. If I was with priests, I would have behaved differently.” He did, however, learn an important lesson: if you want to put you in a production at Howard Johnson’s, throw Richard Dreyfuss in a swimming pool.
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