"The very first day out in the desert, I thought there was going to be Hollywood-style trailers, and there was a boy-scout tent." recalls Daniels. "I stood there and put on my underclothes and then had six people attack me with various bits of the costume and two hours later, I was in pain!"
It took two hours to fit Daniels into the very first Threepio costume, a process that now, by Episode III, has finally been perfected to just a matter of minutes. "Somebody switched on the light and C-3PO's eyes lit up and then they pulled back the curtains of the tent and I stepped forward into the rising sun," continues Daniels. "The sun was just coming up over the dunes, and just hit my costume. Around me, all the crew -- Americans, Europeans and the local Tunisian people -- just stopped work and gazed. It was his greatest moment, but from then on we had to start filming and was all a bit down hill from then on!"
What coaxed Daniels into the uncomfortable golden suit was the poignant strength of a concept painting by Ralph McQuarrie, depicting the lonely droid standing in the sprawling desert. Daniels says he felt a kinship with the droid, particularly when it came time to shoot the desert sequences.
"You have to realize that the cameras were about a mile away and Artoo was empty and being pulled along by someone with a wire. The wind was blowing. It was cold. I'm all alone. I can see people at the camera, and they're going to wave at me when they're ready. I'm looking around, and there, very, very close to me, is a Tunisian desert person -- a real one, not someone George had made up. With a face like a million old leather handbags all sewn together, he was looking at me in this strange way."
Daniels likens the experience to the classic scene in E.T. The Extra Terrestrial when young Drew Barrymore sees the alien for the first time. "It was the same. We both went, 'AHHH!' I looked at the camera and I looked back and he'd gone. He absolutely melted back into the sands. That was a very bizarre experience. He's in some village now saying, 'And then there was the day when I saw the gold god...'"