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Never meet your heroes. That's what they tell you. And that's what was repeating in my head as I drove to meet my Star Wars hero: Luke Skywalker. Or, rather, the man who played my hero on screen: Mark Hamill.
I should back up. Most authors seem to have one or two real strengths. Beautiful prose, an ear for dialogue, razor-sharp plotting. Alas, I've got none of those. The biggest weapon in my not-very-heavy arsenal is an ability to remember and recall my childhood—how I thought, imagined, daydreamed—and turn those recollections into stories.
I was a geek. My childhood afternoons and weekends were never spent at soccer practice. I never joined Boy Scouts, never cleaned a littered stream. My time was spent on the couch, watching movies. And those movies inspired daydreams.
A childhood obsessed with Star Wars
I can transport myself back to that time, now. Age 9. In the living room. Star Wars—all three VHS tapes rewatched and rewound so many times that the ribbons were ready to snap—would have been playing on our 18-inch TV/VHS combo set.
I acted out the drama on-screen, then expanded, changed, and restaged the action. My daydreamed adventures becoming play. On that tiny TV, Luke lifts his lightsaber. On the living room couch, I lift a whiffle ball bat. Luke's lightsaber powers up. So does my bat. His lightsaber swooshes and clashes. My bat hacks at a blanket. He ducks and sidesteps. I spring off a pillow. There's more swooshing and clashing on the screen. And more bouncing on the old couch in the TV room. The galaxy is saved. So is our suburban home. In a grand ceremony, the ragtag rebels are given awards, officially made heroes. I gaze out at the living room, imagining my classmates gazing at me with that same awe.
Star Wars consumed me. I hijacked the family video camera. I dragged my little sister— along with every willing cousin and neighbor—into many lousy homemade movies. When I showed those movies to my parents, I saw a Hollywood production, despite the wiffle ball bat, our backyard, and a Darth Vader with the pre-adolescent voice of my little cousin. At the end of every homemade movie, I of course stood triumphant, looking like Luke after saving the galaxy.
My favorite moment in any movie, ever, is not a particularly original or unique one: Luke Skywalker, stuck on his nowhere desert planet, staring out at the twin setting suns. He wants to leave home. He wants to explore the galaxy and go on great adventures.
That image, the feeling it conjured, wormed its way into my head and just grew and grew. I had a wonderful childhood growing up in a mostly wonderful suburb. But, like Luke, like a million kids who watched that scene, I wanted adventure.
At some point, I realized the odds of leaving my hometown to join a space rebellion were pretty minimal. But maybe I could tell stories like those. Maybe I could make that stuff. The daydreaming shifted a bit. I was still staring out at those twin suns—but now imagining myself being pulled into a big, wide world of backlots, camera rigs, and costumed actors rushing in and out of trailers. Making my Star Wars.
Film school and dreaming of Hollywood
That movie, that daydreaming—it's what propelled me onward to college, to study film. But I was lousy at most every part of film school. Shyness and social anxiety prevented me from getting classmates to hand over their weekend to help me film whatever project was due next. But writing? I could do that all by myself. And who better to write my Star Wars then me?
After college, I took production assistant jobs on movies and TV series in New York City: The Sopranos, Fear Factor, Little Manhattan, The Interpreter. I figured working on movies was a surefire path to writing the things.
I had that all wrong. It was 18-hour days, six days a week, far removed from the creative folks and creative forces behind those stories. And that kind of schedule didn't leave much time for writing.
So, I took an internship at Penguin Books. Two weeks later, the woman I was interning for quit, and I was offered her job. One of many moments when I saw how important luck and good timing are to any sort of success.
My book publishing job paid the rent, just barely, and I attempted screenplays during nights and weekends. That childhood dream was still pushing me. And, lucky me, I ended up actually getting paid to write. But not screenplays. Instead, to my surprise, books. Small stuff—activity books, sticker books, trivia books—but it was progress.
And then I had the idea for my Star Wars. Not a movie, but a book. For kids. A big end-of-the-world adventure full of monsters and creatures and a found family that teams up to save the day from the forces of evil. The idea arrived just when illustrated novels were becoming the hot thing in book publishing—again, luck and good timing—meaning I could fill my book with big, epic drawings that would make the thing feel like a movie.
Creating my own Star Wars
After three years of writing and rewriting, The Last Kids on Earth hit bookstores in 2015. And kids seemed to like it. I got to write another one. And then another one. And then it became a New York Times bestselling series, which drew a little attention to it.
The Last Kids on Earth was optioned and eventually made its way to Netflix. The series would kick-off with a 66-minute movie special in 2019. And, to my total surprise and delight, everyone wanted me involved. I was a producer on a team of great producers and a writer in a roomful of great writers. I was on a team. We were making a movie. And a TV show. My head was spinning, and it hasn't really stopped spinning since.
We started talking about the voice actors we'd need to bring the books' characters to life, and it hit me. This was a moment! This was my chance!
Mark Hamill!
There was a role that was perfect: Bardle, a wise monster who wields magic and swings a pretty rad saber. He's gruff and strict, but funny. At first you think he's a villain, then it's revealed he's a good guy. The voice acting had to capture all that.
Yep, I thought to myself, Mark Hamill. Definitely.
The series' showrunner, Scott D. Peterson, also saw the moment. He was just as excited about the possibility of casting Mark Hamill I was. And that made it even more special; for the first time in my life, I was working with people who were driven by those same inspirations, those same childhood daydreams, those same first loves.
It took 35 years, but I'd found my people. My little band of rebels. Then it hit me. I'd never truly understood why I found that scene—Luke staring out at the twin suns—so damn stirring. It wasn't just about wanting to trade an ordinary life for one of swashbuckling adventure. It was more than that. It was about finding the people that you make a life with. Luke saves the galaxy, yeah, but he does it with a cast and crew of new friends with a shared goal. Everything had lined up to create this moment where all these things might come full circle, back to my living room, those VHS tapes, the wild swings of my wiffleball bat.
Would meeting Mark Hamill ruin Star Wars?
Scott and I recorded a desperate video appeal to Mark Hamill: please, please, please voice this character. Our video—along with personalized copies of the first few Last Kids on Earth books—were sent to Mark's agent. Two weeks later, napping in a hotel bed, my phone vibrated. A text from our show's executive producer, Matthew Berkowitz.
"The Millennium Falcon has landed."
Mark Hamill had agreed to voice Bardle. I called my parents. I called my sister. I called childhood friends with who I spent countless hours watching and talking Star Wars.
I couldn't believe it. I wondered if I was in a coma and impossible child fantasies were being played out. This wasn't supposed to happen! The outlandish things you want do with your life when you're a kid, you don't expect them to become reality.
But they were. Everything was perfect. Until, a new writer friend—one who'd been through this stuff before—said something that knocked me on my butt. "You know, there's always the chance... Mark Hamill could be a jerk."
That had never even crossed my mind. But it was possible, I supposed. All I knew was the hero I saw on screen.
"I'm only telling you," this friend said, "because you don't have to be there. You don't have to be at the recording session."
I nodded. And I understood. If I went and Mark Hamill was a jerk? That would be bad. That would ruin Star Wars for me. And I don't mean ruin it in that way people say, "Oh, my childhood is ruined!" after the prequel, sequel, or remake of whatever they first loved arrives and inevitably disappoints. The thing that had inspired me and kept pushing me—it would be forever damaged.
I made up my mind. I wouldn't go. It was too big a risk.The original Star Wars was the closest thing I had to religion. For so long, it had been a guidepost, a North star, helping me to make sense of what I wanted.
Living my dream, at last
The morning before the voice record, I was in a hotel room, up as the sun was coming up. I stared out the window. In that moment, I felt a little like Luke, with the goal and destination close to completed.
I went to the recording session.
Mark Hamill was not a jerk. Not even a little bit.
When he arrived, I was kindly given the chance to retrieve him from the waiting area. It was the sort of job I used to do when I was a production assistant. But now I was doing it for something of mine.
After we met, it took me about 10 minutes to work up the nerve to tell Mark I was actually the author of the book series. And that I'd co-written the script he'd be reading. He graciously thanked me for sending signed copies of The Last Kids on Earth. Then said, "I wish I had books like these when I was a kid. Maybe I would've been a reader."
I jotted his words on a scrap of paper, because I didn't want to forget them. Ever. I managed to squeak out a mumbled thanks.
Then, Mark stepped into the cavernous recording booth, put on his headphones, and began to read. My words!
Those after school afternoons came rushing back. That worn VHS tape, that old sofa, the wiffle ball bat, the backyard videos. Me, in a mirror, repeating Mark's lines from Star Wars. And now he was reading lines I'd written.
I fought the urge to snap photos or get a quick video to send to my childhood Star Wars buddies. I wanted to be there, present, in the moment.
"Max?"
It was Mark. Asking me a question. I can't remember it exactly, but it was something like, "How would you like me to read this line, Max? Is it more a question or a statement? Is it to be said with authority or warning or both?"
Mark Hamill was asking for my advice on a line reading. That moment still doesn't feel real. I had daydreamed of hanging out with Luke Skywalker, working together to save the day. And here I was with Mark Hamill, working together to get a line just right.
The hero of The Last Kids on Earth series is Jack Sullivan. Jack is me, pretty much: his narrative voice is mine, faintly disguised and presented without my most annoying flaws. Yet he's still dorky, a day dreamer, a kid inspired by comic books and monster movies, and of course, Star Wars. Jack, like me as a kid, is a wannabe Luke.
As the recording continued, Mark read a line I wrote, which has Bardle calling Jack, a "feeble minded fool." Which feels about accurate. But I'm forever grateful that my mind was sturdy enough, that one time, to risk disappointment and see a childhood dream to the finish line.
Max Brallier is the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling author of more than thirty books for children and adults. Max lives in New York City with his wife and daughter. His latest novel, The Last Kids on Earth and the Forbidden Fortress is available now.
All views expressed in this article are the author's own.
