The 10 best Star Wars-themed Saturday Night Live skits
By Dean Mott
20th Anniversary DVD Screen Tests
Jan. 11, 1997
Say what you will about Kevin Spacey (and there have been many horrible accusations about him in recent years), but “SNL” struck comedy gold in 1997 with its Spacey-led “20th anniversary DVD Star Wars screen tests” featuring mock auditions of Christopher Walken, Walter Matthau, Jack Lemmon, Richard Dreyfuss (Darrell Hammond), Burt Reynolds (Norm MacDonald) and Barbra Streisand (Ana Gasteyer).
Walken was, in fact, considered for the role of Han Solo, as was Kurt Russell. But Harrison Ford — who read the script during other actors’ screen tests — ended up getting the part instead.
Spacey’s Walken “screen test” hilariously shows the actor, in Walken’s cadence, explaining finishing the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs.
Dreyfuss, meanwhile, is seen as an especially cattish C3PO.
“Damn you! I told you I didn’t want to wear the damn mask!” he says.
“I don’t need this! I was in Jaws, OK?”
And then there’s the disinterested Reynolds, reading for … Darth Vader? MacDonald plays the Smokey and the Bandit star with cool indifference, adjusting his sharp suit and black gloves while loudly chewing gum and wearing a bolo tie.
“Burt, you’re supposed to strangle the guy now,” says an off-screen Will Ferrell.
“Oh what, like go over there and choke him?” Reynolds responds.
“No, you kind of twist your fingers at him.”
“Ah … I don’t get it.”
“See, you have this mystical power.”
“Let me ask you a question: what kind of car does this guy drive?”
Gasteyer rounds out the clip, playing Streisand as the high-strung, hands waving Princess Leia you didn’t know you needed.