As 2016 takes away another beloved star from us, it just feels like they’re salting the wounds. We haven’t recovered from the George Michael punch, 2016 has added to its list Carrie Fisher. The amazing actress who played Princess Leia and redefined bikini fashion back in the day.
As the character from Star Wars marks her life forever, for many fans she will always be Leia. She owes, in a way, an eternal debt to the movie saga. As she said in 2005 in a Life Achievement Award, that George Lucas received from the American Film Institue.
Bittersweet thanks.
As Fisher passed away the entire internet has focused on her. Talking out of the dusty shelves anything that has to do with her, and that includes her speech at the AFI award of 2005 that George Lucas received. In which Fisher not only says how Lucas changed cinema but her life, in a very ironical way.
The humor is with her.
Fisher thanked Lucas for creating the story, creatures, and more that make Star Wars and letting her form part of it. She stated that being part of such an iconic part of pop culture had a price. Something that she decided to rub on Lucas’ face with her characteristical sense of humor.
The dark side.
Fisher’s good sense of humor was well known. But she let it all out on that award ceremony as she blamed Lucas for ruining her life and calling him a sadist. As she thanked him, in an ironical way, for turning her, Mrs. Solo, into an “alcoholic,” the obvious questions about the hit of Star Wars, forcing her to wear a golden bikini and chained her to a giant slug, and giving her enough “fan mail and even a small merry band of stalkers,” to keep her, along co-stars Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford, entertained for the rest of their “unnatural lives.
Commercial classic.
Also, Fisher jokes about how the character of Leia, as pretty much everything on the Star Wars franchise, was turned into a product. As it was a bit of a trauma for her. Particularly the Pez dispenser that her daughter used to eat candy out of her throat. And finally, she recriminated that in the new movies Padme wears a bra, something that she wasn’t allowed to. All done in a very loving, yet bitter way. As most of the times, jokes tell the truth.