“He just took a saw to it”: Harrison Ford tried to trash a movie set in a fit of rage
His background as a carpenter has become integral to the legend of Harrison Ford, and he almost put those skills to good use in the worst way possible when he descended into madness.
Everyone knows that the struggling actor supplemented his income with carpentry when he was trying to break into the industry, and it’s something he’s maintained as a pastime in the decades since, so he’s one of the last actors you’d want to find wielding a saw in a fit of rage.
Ford would be even more dangerous because he knew how to use it, and he’d make light work of anything that got in his way. Unfortunately, what got in his way was a set on an expensive production that became the biggest movie of all time, but when the red mist descended, he was a man on a mission.
While it’s not true that the star loathes Star Wars, it is true that he didn’t have the greatest of times shooting the original trilogy. What he definitely hates is being asked questions about it half a century later, but when you’re Han Solo, that’s part of the gig, and he’ll never be able to outrun a galaxy far, far away, no matter how hard he tries.
However, when he lost his shit shooting the first instalment, he didn’t even try to run away; instead, he attempted to saw it in half, with Mark Hamill being dispatched to try and talk his co-star down from a ledge before he did irreparable damage to a set that a lot of people had worked very hard to build.
“You heard about Harrison taking a saw to the Millennium Falcon because he got so mad?” Hamill queried. “People were coming up to me going, ‘You’ve gotta stop Harrison, he’s sawing up the Falcon!’ It was made of wood and he just took a saw to it. I love Harrison.”
Sadly, Hamill didn’t reveal what exactly tipped the legend so far over the edge that the only reasonable course of action was to pick up a saw, dust off those carpentry skills, and go to town on Han Solo’s signature spacecraft, but given that he’s always respected and admired the professionals around him, it must have been something serious for him to try and reduce it to nothing but splinters and sawdust.
Maybe there was a hint of karma in the air 30 years later when Ford suffered a serious injury on the set of The Force Awakens after the door to the Millennium Falcon fell on him, leaving him with a broken leg after almost being crushed by hydraulics. After all, he’d tried to destroy a very similar set the first time around, and everyone knows that the Force works in mysterious ways.
You can only imagine how the crew member who left the saw lying around felt when they discovered that it had been weaponized by one of Star Wars‘ leads, and if he’d followed through on his threat to saw the absolute fuck out of the Millennium Falcon, you’d imagine not a single scene would be shot unless it was checked and double-checked that all tools had been placed under lock and key, and well out of Ford’s reach.
