| Return of the Jedi Endor Bunker | |
| In the summer of 2003 I was put in touch with a gentleman living in Oregon who I was told had worked on the film Return of the Jedi back in 1982. As we came to find out, most of the locals employed on this production were out of work at this time (some were hired from the unemployment office), many from the dying timber industry.
I eventually got in touch with one of the crew members of about 20 people that were in charge of maintaining the landscape on Jedi. It turned out that this guy was also on the crew that was cleaning up the set after production wrapped, and had been hauling everything to the local dump. While working on the cleanup he decided that the flat fiberglass panels from the side of the bunker would make a good fence. So he took five of them home, nailed them into a 2x4 frame, and then stayed there as the fence dividing his house from his neighbors for the next twenty-one years. The image above is of me standing in front of his fence in August 2003. The panels are a very distinct style that was originally seen in some of the sets in ANH. The ones on the front corners of the bunker are angled, but the ones from the side, which are buried into the hillside, are straight. These are from the sides. Last summer Gus Lopez and I ventured back down to Oregon and picked up the panels in an SUV, after paying for the gentleman to have a new fence constructed. I then had two of them shipped back to myself in Maryland (across the country!), and Gus has the other three proudly displayed in his basement. I'll be putting one of my two up for sale, watch the Marketplace...
Panels loaded into the SUV.
Gus with the panels, in front of his garage in Seattle...
Three panels lined up....note the diagonal paint. The set was built and then the hill built up around it, to seem like it was built into the hill. And then painted after that I suppose.
Me again!
And finally, the bunker as seen in Return of the Jedi. Note how the bunker is built into the ground and the slanted pieces for the front portion of the bunker. |
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| Description by: | Brandon Alinger |
| Photo: | Brandon Alinger |
| From the collection of: | Gus Lopez, Brandon Alinger |
| Country: | United States |
| Film: | Return of the Jedi |
| Licensee: | Lucasfilm, Ltd. |
| Year: | 1983 |
| Category: | Movie Production Pieces / Props |
