I had an email waiting this morning from my buddy Mike — who, incidentally, was up way too late last night — containing a pretty entertaining link that I thought I’d share with my Loyal Readers. It’s a cache of behind-the-scenes photos from the filming of Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back.

You may have seen some of these before; that infamous shot of Chewie getting fresh is here, as is one of the “glamour-girl” publicity stills of Carrie Fisher from the first movie. Some of the other photos on the linked page appear to be simply alternates of better-known images, or outtakes from the same sessions. (Compare this one, for example, to the more-familiar picture that appears on trading cards, posters, and the magnet I’ve got on my fridge door.) However, there are several photos in this collection that are new to me, as unlikely as that sounds. After all these years of being a stark-raving fanboy and collector of crap, I thought I’d seen pretty much every frame of film that was ever shot in connection with these movies. Being proven wrong is curiously satisfying.

I’m especially fond of the pics where people are just horsing around on the set, like the one above in which Mark Hamill appears to be about two seconds from getting an elbow in the ribs. I like seeing just how damn young our heroes really were, as well as the suggestion that making the original trilogy was a fun experience for them. I think it’s both telling and sad that you don’t see images like this from the making of the prequel trilogy. At least, I haven’t seen any…