The Great Jawa Village Conspiracy Theory

Posted on October 25, 2007

The Great Jawa Village Conspiracy Theory is gaining steam. Hal Wamsley claims he played the Chief jawa in Star Wars: A New Hope movie and saw an entire jawa village set that was created in the California desert.

He worked on the Death Valley set of the film with the second photography unit, but was never formally credited on the film, although he is listed in the IMDB database. And LucasFilm won't say he wasn't in the film. But they do deny that there was ever a Jawa village set built in the California desert.

A report in Crave Online says Wamsley claims that many scenes that were shot with the late Jack Purvis as Chief Jawa had to be reshot in Death Valley. Wamsley says he got the role through a client of his mother, who was an Avon Lady. He says Jawa scenes were shot in Death Valley and that they were out there for a total of ten days with a weekend break in between. Wamsley says there was a near two-story mock-up of a Jawa sandcrawler. He also says there was a jawa swap meet which was left out of the final footage.

Crave writes that Lucasfilm's Steven Sansweet says in the August 2002 issue of Cinefantastique that there were no jawa sets built in Death Valley. Sansweet says, "there was no jawa village scene shot in Death Valley."

It's all very mysterious. We don't know quite what to think.

Image: Lucasfilm

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