The Blue Milk Tasted Terrible, And Other Fascinating “Star Wars” Stories I Learned From Set Designer Roger Christian

So I went down to the camera shop where we got everything in London, and having got those, I said to the manager, “I gotta make this weapon. It’s a kind of science fiction weapon,” and he said, “Well, we’ve got some torches.” I said, “No, no, no torches.” The special effects boys had made some, and they looked terrible and were rejected by George. 

The shop rented out Graflex cameras, which were the cameras that the press used from the ’40s on. They had a huge quantity of them to rent to period films. The manager said, “Under those shelves, there’s a load of boxes. Go pick one out and have a look; see if you can find anything.” So it was the first box, literally, and I pulled out this box and opened the lid. There was tissue paper, and inside were three of the Graflex handles. It was the Holy Grail moment for me; it was beyond what I could imagine. There was this beautiful silver handle that looked like a lightsaber, at least what I thought it should look like, and it had a red button, and it had the weight and the shape. So I grabbed all three and raced to my office.