lystn

My guest today is Ahmed Best. Ahmed is a talented actor, musician, director, and producer. Most people know him as the actor who played Jar Jar Binks in the Star Wars prequels. Whether you like that character or not, there are a lot of things about this especially in 2020- that many people just don’t always consider. Ahmed was the first actor in a big budget movie to do motion-capture. Jar Jar Binks was a technical achievement never before seen in a movie until The Phantom Menace. For as common as motion capture is today in modern special effects, Jar Jar was the first of its kind. He’s helped pioneer it and it was his physical acting besides his voice which made that character come to life. I met Ahmed in 2006 when he and I were both in a touring configuration of Screaming Headless Torsos. We did some cool shows in Mexico City and a European Tour and we’ve been buddies ever since. We chatted a couple weeks back and we talk about all kind of things including: the different ways he likes to stay creative, what this shutdown has been like for him, we even touch on the complexity of being Jar Jar, We talk about the state of special effects in 1999 and the impact of motion capture, his one man show where he talks about that time period, and much more. Here’s our conversation.