Monday, February 3, 2014

Case Study No. 1215: Toby Philpott

EasyWork.asf
4:26
I have two computers and a phone for my day's work in a back office of the library - and when there's no crisis I can sometimes put on some music and just groove away with my pro-active projects.

It's not all bad!
Tags: EasyWork
Added: 3 years ago
From: bogusmagus
Views: 28

[footage consists of Toby Philpott (grey hair in a ponytail, blue sleeveless shirt, grey pants) sitting at his computer desk and working while Eric Clapton's "It's Easy" plays in the background]

---

From express.co.uk:

Star Wars baddy Jabba the Hut working in Welsh library
STAR Wars villain Jabba the Hutt has a new job - working as a librarian in Wales.
Published: Thu, October 24, 2013

The movie puppeteer who operated alien villain Jabba in Return of the Jedi has given up a life of intergalactic crime to start a new life in the hushed corridors of a library.

Toby Philpott, 67, climbed inside Jabba the Hutt to work his left arm, head and slimy flicking tongue in the sci-fi classic.

But 30 years after working on the third Star Wars film, he is leading computer courses in Cardiff Central Library.

Toby said: "It feels like I almost lead a double life.

"The Star Wars films have a following like no other in history - so I do get a lot of contact from fans and asked to speak at conventions.

"I can go shopping and no-one ever recognises me as Jabba - which is good thing.

"But people who find out love talking about it - it's not that I mind talking about it at all.

"It just seems amazing that people are so fascinated by what appears to me to have simply been six weeks' work out of a long, long career."

Toby's career has taken him from street-performing in Mexico to working as a clown in London and becoming a puppeteer for Muppets creator Jim Henson.

It was while working for Henson that he landed the role of operating Jabba the Hutt - described as an "loathsome slug of an intergalactic gangster operating on the outer rim territories".

Father-of-two and grandfather Toby said: "It took a team of four of us to operate Jabba - he wasn't so much a costume as a wendy house you had to climb into.

"I was sitting down with my left arm in his, and my right swivelling his neck and tongue.

"As the left hand I got to eat frogs, hit people, smoke a hookah.

"David Barclay worked the right side, Mike Edmonds was inside his tail, and someone else had to control the eyes from outside.

"The challenge was working together so Jabba looked like one sentient creature, and not four guys in a tent.

"So we'd get George Lucas to address Jabba rather than us individually which did freak him out a bit at first."

But with the end of the 1980s came the end of the good times as puppets started to be replaced by computer-generated graphics - and productions moved increasingly to the US.

Toby said: "I never really wanted to chase the work to America. I enjoyed it but it was just a phase of my life.

"In the mid 1990s I was scratching a living as a circus trainer, so I took a temporary job with the library just to eat.

"Then it got made permanent and I just drifted away from performing." Now he works for Cardiff council helping deliver computer training to the community.

Toby said: "Many people ask me why I started working here and all I can say is why not?

"Finding Jabba the Hutt working in a library is no more unusual than most of my life has been."

No comments:

Post a Comment