Chewbacca

 

Chewbacca

 

I once had to drop off a human friend of mine who just so happened to stay in South-Central Los Angeles at the time. Yeah the area was a little worn but there's a lot of heart and soul here as well. After dropping my buddy off around the Florence and Western intersection I noticed that I had been driving on a flat tire. Its definitely not out of the ordinary when you weigh over five tons.. believe me. You might think that this was a bad time to get a flat being in the area I was in but au contaire my friend, this is the best place to get a flat tire. Mexican tire shops are in abundance around these parts and I'd definitely be screwed if I caught a flat in Century City or Beverly Hills. The locals there would probably call the Department of Animal Control or the LA Zoo and have me detained and shipped back to the Congo. 

So I slowly pull into this used tire shop on Western in-between Manchester and Florence and a hombre pops up, inspects my damaged goods, and says I need a simple patch job. Perfect, I get it patched up in a jiffy for only ten bucks at that! Out of the blue a late model four door Benz sedan pulls up and I kid you not, out jumps the one and only, seven foot tall CHEWBACCA from the Star Wars fame! Holy Shit!

Now erase Star Wars from your memory for one second here ladies and gentleman. First of all he speaks perfect-fluent-high brow English. I know this because he greeted one of the tire shop employees with a, "What's up Hector, how you doin' brother!". All that grunting and shit that he's know for was just the character he played and nothing more. It was also shocking to see him wearing a blazer, slacks, Italian Loafers, and glasses that suspended rather low on the tip of his nose. See people don't know this but Chewie isn't a Wookie. He's actually the great-great-great-great-great grandson of Sasquatch.

He was friendly too and didn't seem bitter and sour like most former stars who haven't worked in a while or at all. It was refreshing indeed. He popped his trunk and pulled out a spare and told Hector it needed a new valve stem. Hector jumped on it immediately. Chewie greeted me with a, "How you doin' big fella". I quickly shook his paw and told him how he was an inspiration to us all.. and that Star Wars would be nothing to this very day without his grand contribution to the series. I had to add that extra little bit at the end. You could tell he was a good guy with a good heart.

He said it was a nice run and basically it was just one era of his life. The role doesn't define him, it was simply a job that had a paycheck attached to it. I soon found out he actually owned that tire particular tire shop I was at and he has two other shops as well.. One in Hawthorne and another in Gardena as well as five coin operated car washes scattered throughout the county. So yeah he's doing rather well for himself despite not being on the big screen in decades(The Chewbacca in the prequels were CGI). You know he had to give me a few tid-bits from the Trilogy. He told me.. and this is from his own mouth: 

-Harrison Ford couldn't really fly the Millennium Falcon, Billy Dee Williams was the better pilot by far.

-He unknowingly drove Carrie Fisher to a dope house to buy coke in between shoots on the 'Empire Strikes Back' Hoth scenes. How she found a coke spot by the ice glacier in Norway is still a mystery to him.

-C3PO was a gay(we all knew this)

-Alec Guinness constantly joked off camera that his light saber was the same size of his cock.

-Darth Vader argued constantly with George Lucas over the script. He said Luke Skywalker should've died in 'A New Hope'(the first Star Wars film).. and was pissed that he never got to shoot lightning bolts from his hands.

-Everyone almost walked off the set in 'Return Of The Jedi' in protest of the Ewoks. Chewie said he even strangled a couple of Ewoks to death off camera in between takes in the Redwood National Forest. They hated them that much.

-There's a hidden footage stored in a vault somewhere at Lucas' Ranch of Jabba The Hut fingering Princess Leia

-Yoda can drink a case of beer in like twenty minutes flat. And he would toke reefer in his trailer at the end of every shoot.

-When he first saw Jar Jar Binks on screen and Samuel Jackson as a Jedi Master he knew that George Lucas was done and Star Wars was now a shitty franchise.




..... Chewie literally went on and on. I could go on with these forever because I talked to him for like a hour and a half. He's doing good though and that was really good to see. Also on another note, the apple doesn't fall to far from the tree as his son is the star of all those Jack Link's Beef Jerky commercials! The linage continues my friends. May the force be with you Chewie.. and your son too!




Hollywood Elephant