Some fun and weird anecdotes in this long interview with Ron Howard (including him rejecting Warhol's offer to paint him). I haven't watched Willow since I was a child:
There’s a monster in Willow called the Eborsisk — after critics Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel — and one of the main bad guys is called General Kael, after Pauline Kael. How has your relationship to criticism changed over the years?
The Eborsisk and Kael! They were more Lucas’s idea. But I was upset at that time with Siskel and Ebert. They’d given Night Shift and Splash two thumbs-down. George was upset with Pauline Kael. So we got giddy with the idea of poking a little fun at the critics. Later, I got to know Siskel and Ebert both and liked them.
The Eborsisk toy is pretty great--are they wearing newsboy hats?