First Assistant Director David Tomblin spend most of his days off and lunch breaks during the filming of "Return of the Jedi" (or 'Revenge of the Jedi' or 'Blue Harvest', if you will) on his own little 24 minute project, "Return of the Ewok". Eleven year old Warwick Davis inspired this fictional account of him landing the part of Wicket W. Warrick (omiting the fact that he was only picked from being a background character because Kenny Baker got ill). It features most of the film's stars (except Kenny) in costume, plus Roy Kinnear, and some sequences from the Battle of Endor filmed from a different angle (with Tomblin's personal 16mm camera).
In the film, young Warwick is looking for a job. After trying his tiny hands at weightlifting in David Prowse's London Gym and goalkeeping for his favorite soccer team, Chelsea, he passes a Cinema playing "The Empire Strikes Back". He can actually see the film being projected from outside the theater, and Mark Hamill back out of the theater 'for a breather'. Now Warwick decides to go into acting himself and finds a talent agent (an uncredited Kinnear) who offers him the part of 'Ewok' and sends him off to Elstree.
Dressed up in fur, 'Ewok' knocks on Harrison Ford's dressing room, who in turn asks Mark and Carrie (wearing the famous metal bikini) what an Ewok is. They tell him to join the creatures at Jabba's palace. There he finds David Tomblin choreographing a dance number, featuring two women only glimpsed amongst the crowd in the final film (one in a red catsuit and the other wearing a white wig with blue streaks). They move to the original version of Lapti Nek sung by Joseph Williams of Toto (and I always thought Lucas was kidding when he said that scene was always supposed to be longer).
Warwick stumbles onto the Death Star set where Boba Fett takes a shot at him (this is the only part of the film available on DVD, if you know where to find your Easter Eggs) and Darth Vader sitting on the Emperors' throne. Finally co-producer Robert Watts leads Willow-to-be towards Yoda, who issues the Youngling with a galactic passport to Endor (or to be more precise, California) He arrives just in time to find the other Ewoks and join in the battle. Warwick says goodbye to the Star Warriors on the spot where they took their promotional group shots and walks off to his parents, who also happen to be on Endor apparently.
For many years this elaborate Home Movie remained just that, with the only VHS copy thought to belong to the Warwick family. Now known as The Leprechaun, Davis finally screened it at the first Star Wars Celebration (Denver, 1999), and subsequently has taken it with him around the world on conventions (I saw it at the Dutch Starcon on October 23, 1999). After Celebration II, a four minute edit was made available for Hyperspace subscribers on Starwars.com in may 2005. Soon after wards it won the Pioneer Award in the Official Star Wars Fan Film Awards, and of course bootleg copies have surfaced on the Internet. However, nobody knows what happened to the original 16 mm print, because everybody seems to have lost contact with David Tomblin. There is also a rumor that a 'sequel' was shot during production of the first Ewok movie, Caravan of Courage.
MCT:January 31, 2007
