Terry McGovern The Voice of Ratts Tyerell / Bozzie Baranta

Mr. McGovern's influence on the "Star Wars" saga extends well beyond his recent performances as pod racers Ratts Tyerell and Bozzie Baranata. His relationship with the films goes back to Episode IV - A New Hope, and although he calls his involvement "miniscule", his voice is well-known to the many fans of the film. He played "mostly stormtroopers in the battle scenes", says Mr. McGovern - here is a sampling of his memorable work: "In the film, by luck, my voice is paired with Obi-Wan Kenobi himself, Alec Guinness. That's me asking to take a closer look at C-3P0 and R2-D2 outside the cantina. Obi-Wan slips a quick mind-lock on me and intones, 'These aren't the droids you're looking for.' My sandtrooper's brainwashed reaction, 'These aren't the droids we're looking for.' Today's translation, 'Duh!' As Obi-Wan pointed out, 'The force can have a strong influence on the weak-minded.'" "A moving and poignant aside to Darth Vader in the opening battle scene": The Death Star plans are not in the main computer "Then, as the stormtroopers searched for our heroes, there was my memorable rendering of, 'All right. Check this side of the street. If the door's locked, move on to the next one.'" "And who will ever forget, as the Millenium Falcon prepared to escape, the haughty machismo of 'Stop that ship. Blast them!'. Profound stuff." One more notable contribution that Mr. McGovern made to the "Star Wars" films was the inadvertent naming of one of its most beloved characters: Chewbacca the Wookiee. Although there are various versions of this story, here is Mr. McGovern's version in his own words: "In an 1977 interview in Rolling Stone magazine, George said, 'Terry McGovern is a bay area actor, who was doing some voice work on THX. One day he showed up late for a recording session. His excuse was, "I had an accident. I ran over my pet wookey."' My recollection is that I had been late because it was a Saturday session, and I was serving my monthly weekend in the Army Reserves in the Presidio. I haad cut out of the meeting and driven to the recording session with my best friend, Bill Wookey. Whatever excuse I came up with for George, "'Wookey' stuck with me", he said in the interview. "When it came time to name that character, that name just popped into my head." "Giving the giant Chewbacca the surname Wookey (sp) certainly affected the life of my friend, I can promise you. For a while it was a minor annoyance for his sons at school, but I think over the years, the whole family has grown fond of the association. Coincidentally, Bill Wookey is well over six feet tall, has a thick mane of reddish hair and a full beard. No, he does not a have wet nose and he seldom growls. Most important, he is still my best friend."

On recording dialogue for "Star Wars": "Adding voices to an already completed film is called ADR--automatic dialogue replacement--and is sometimes called 'looping'. It's normally a complicated process, taking several hours in a sound studio, being 'beeped' into a scene and cued to speak. It's usually precision work. But for our work on Star Wars, myself and a handful of other Bay Area actors, did our ADR work in George (Lucas)' San Anselmo home just north of San Francisco, in his small private screening room, delivering our lines almost randomly into a portable Nagra tape recorder. Although principal photography had been completed, the only video reference George had to show us was a little piece of the trailer--the Death Star exploding. That and George's direction was all we had to go on." "As he did on THX (THX 1138), George handed out pieces of scripts from his space opera with the exploding death star and asked us to take turns reading various lines, mostly of stormtroopers in the battle scenes. We were in his screening room in his San Anselmo house, lounging around on these leather ottomans. Sound genius Ben Burtt was holding a Nagra tape recorder in his lap. (I understand it's still in use today.)" "There were several other voices that were added that day, including some general 'walla' in the cantina scene. 'Walla' stands for the unintelligible hub-bub or walla-walla sound of background conversation." Time spent in the studio: "Probably three hours total of post production time" (Star Wars) Other actors considered for the role: Unknown Other Star Wars characters played: Stormtroopers, cantina "walla" (background conversations), Bozzie Baranta, Ratts Tyerell Other actors who voiced Stormtroopers in "Star Wars": Jerry Walters Scott Beach Morgan Upton Source: Terry McGovern

Links: "A page dedicated to a Phantom Menace pod racer seen screaming for a split second as he crashed into a stalagmite"

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