MFHSolo chimes in with a report from Cannes. As he was a participant in the festival's Student Intern Program run by The American Pavilion (Ampav), he had the opportunity to attend a seminar conduced by Michael Wiese, the producer of Hardware Wars.

MFHSolo writes...

Everybody around me was clueless as to who he (Michael Wiese) was, but not me. I own the video as do many other Star Wars devotees. Mr. Wiese talked to us about how to make it in Hollywood and how to be smart in the industry. One of the stories he related to us was a scheme he came up with to get Francis Ford Coppola to read his script. He paid Coppola's gardener to put a jack in the box under his bedsheets with a monkey that jumped out with the script in its hand! Needless to say, Coppola never responded but Wiese later found out that Coppola considers it the weirdest stunt ever pulled on him.

Wiese went on to talk about Hardware Wars for a bit. He talked about his collaboration with Ernie Fosselius as a positive experience and how brilliant Ernie was at satire. Wiese also discussed the excitement when Lucas allowed Hardware Wars to play in front of The Empire Strikes Back.

After the seminar, I was fortunate enough to get about fifteen minutes of one on one discussion with Wiese on the film. I asked him about Ernie Fosselius and he told me that after Hardware Wars, Ernie worked with Lucasfilm for a time. Apparently, Ernie's voice can be heard in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom as the Chinese pilots are planning to abandon the plane over India. He is the pilot's voice, I think. Wiese told me that Ernie is no longer in the industry. He then went on to relate a funny story about an idea that he had to get George Lucas to read a script soon after Hardware Wars. He was going to get a gardener to launch a capsule of some sort over the estate wall into Lucas' backyard with a parachute attached. The plan never came to fruition unfortunately, maybe due to the Coppola incident. He didn't go into details.

Wiese also told me that they had had bigger plans for the Special Edition of Hardware Wars. While Ernie Fosselius had nothing to do with the project, Wiese and his company screened the new version of the film for Lucas in the hopes that ol' George would allow it to be screened in front of Star Wars: Special Edition! Lucas didn't take, obviously.

Finally, I asked him if we would ever see a DVD of Hardware Wars and he told me that he has already made an attempt and that the distributor told him that there isn't enough material to warrant an exclusive disc. In other words, the film is too short. Hopefully, this will mean that Wiese will dig up outtakes and a ton of extras or something to get Hardware Wars on DVD sometime in the future.

Thanks for the report!