Brian Jay Jones's Blog, page 9
November 2, 2017
Olkoon voima kanssasi.
The Finnish version of George Lucas is now available . . . in Finland, at least.
And yes, the books is finished. Don’t start.
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October 25, 2017
George Lucas is coming in paperback…
October 23, 2017
Über George Lucas mit Geek! reden (and now in English, too!)
[image error]German friends and fans: the latest issue of the German pop culture magazine Geek! features not only a terrific photo of Mark Hamill on the cover and lots of cool articles on All Things The Last Jedi, but you’ll also get a three-page interview with me talking about George Lucas and the cultural significance of Star Wars.
For those of you who won’t be getting to Germany any time soon — and who may not understand German — journalist Christian Endres, who conducted the interview, was kind enough to permit me to post our conversation in its entirety — and in English — here on the blog.
Hello Brian! Have you ever met a person who didn’t know Star Wars?
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I don’t know that I’ve met anyone who doesn’t know what Star Wars is, but I have met several people who’ve never seen it. These generally tend to be people who were in their 30s when the movie first came out in 1977, didn’t get swept up in the zeitgeist, and then just never got around to seeing it. But Star Wars still creeps into their references, whether they know it or not – just like people say, “Rosebud” without ever seeing Citizen Kane, these folks will still say things like, “There is no try,” or “May the Force be with you.” Star Wars is truly in us all.
Would you call Star Wars the greatest myth of our age? And does this make George Lucas the greatest fairy-tale-storyteller of modern time?
I think it’s definitely right up there, though it’s in good company with things like Lord of the Rings and perhaps Star Trek and the DC Comic/Marvel universe. These are all mythologies with gigantic canvases, enormous numbers of characters, and sprawling story arcs. George Lucas—consistent with his driving need to control his creative destiny—is the one who single-handedly created, scripted, wrote the story, or set the ground rules of the Star Wars mythology. If that doesn’t make him singlehandedly the greatest mythmaker of all time, he’s definitely in the running.
Lucasfilm and Disney are often said to be a legal watchdog monster, a real beast in protecting their properties. Did this make you hesitate writing your book? Did you ever fear you might get into some sort of legal trouble?
It never worried me for a moment, because I felt pretty certain that I was going to do the work to make sure I got things right, and thus they’d have no cause to saber-rattle me. Throughout the writing of the book, I had no involvement from Disney or Lucasfilm — or from Lucas himself, for that matter. This book was an incredibly deep-drill archival project, using sources available to anyone who knows how to look — which is the real trick, I suppose. I interviewed people, certainly, but for the most part, I relied on newspapers, magazines, books, DVD commentaries, documentaries . . . you name it, I probably had my hands on it. Everything you read in the book is soundly researched and carefully attributed or sourced -– there are no ‘anonymous sources’ in my book. I think the fact that both Lucasfilm and Disney left me alone after the book came out means I got it right.
You never met George Lucas. Do you think this ultimately helped your biography? Did it give you a broader, more nuanced look at the man?
I think not having Lucas’s involvement made it a much better book, and let me tell you why.
First, there was a concern that had Lucas participated, he might have wanted to control the content of the biography – to ensure the story got told the way he wanted it told. That would mean ceding editorial control over to Lucas, which is something he doesn’t like doing with his movies, so why would I want to do it with the book?
Second, when you have your subject reporting the events of their life back to you forty or fifty years after the events occurred, a few things can happen. Memories fade, details get dropped – but we also like to make ourselves the heroes of our own stories, explaining away mistakes, downplaying the contributions of others, or making happy accidents seem intentional. I think relying on the contemporary accounts of incidents as best I could – rather than on recounted stories — makes the book that much more exciting.
If you talk with Lucas today, for example, he’ll tell you he always knew he had a huge hit on his hands with Star Wars, and that Fox would rue the day it didn’t’ give him the money he wanted to finish it the way he wanted to. But that’s not what really happened. It’s much more exciting as a reader to read Lucas’s comments from a small magazine interview he did in 1976 when he doesn’t know what’s going to happen with this movie of his, and he’s angry at Fox for its lack of faith, but he’s fretting that his movie isn’t going to make a dime. As a reader, we know what’s going to happen with Star Wars. We know Lucas has the biggest hit ever on his hands. George Lucas knows this in 2017, but he doesn’t in 1976. It’s more exciting to let 1976 Lucas tell the story.
You have lots of lively quotes and dialogues in your book. Was this important for you in your efforts to “tell the story”?
Absolutely. I think great biography can, and should, read like a novel. They’re doing two different things, of course, but just like with a novel, I think biography readers like to be involved with characters, and they’re interested in good dialogue, which can also really convey what a character is really thinking. They like to hear the main character speaking to them, and hearing others talking about the main character behind their back.
Now, I could step in and tell you what’s happening — and I do that from time to time — but that becomes more of a user’s manual, not a biography. I want the reader to be listening to my subject – the ‘main character’ – and I want them to pay attention to the way that character and others around him speak. I want them to hear those voices. By choosing our quotes carefully, biographers can let their subjects – and those around them – tell the story in a much more interesting and dramatic manner.
I like the writing tone of your biography a lot. Do you have any prominent journalistic or biographical paragons or influences?
Thanks, I appreciate that. In biography, I love Robert Caro. He’s the Elvis of Biography, breaking the ground and changing the way we research and write. While The Power Broker seems to get all the glory, as a former political staffer myself, I’m more inclined to admire his ongoing multi-volume biography of President Lyndon Johnson. Caro really knows how to use his sources to bring voices into his books. And he’s absolutely committed to a sense of place, to understanding how our surroundings—our home, our workplace, our neighborhood—shape our subject and their stories.
And oddly, perhaps, if there’s another writer I could point to who really influenced me, who made me think, hey, I want to do it like that, it would be the brilliant comic book writer and novelist Alan Moore. Moore understands the power of language and word choices to convey a mood, and the inherent drama in a short sentence. He really knows how to segue between sections and wow does he know how to craft an ending. Moore is the one who inspires me to try to end each of my chapters on cliffhangers, if I can—or, at least, with a dramatic quote or statement.
Was there a publication/source for your research where you needed to be a real Indiana Jones to get that piece, because it was so rare, so hard to find?
I really wanted to read the local newspaper George Lucas and his parents would have read while he was growing up – in this case, The Modesto Bee. Finding it online was a bit of a challenge – and even when I could find it, every issue wasn’t available, so I relied on several librarians in Modesto to e-mail me some scans! Librarians are the best.
Anyway, one of the reasons I wanted to read his newspaper was so I could double-check a story Lucas has told forever, regarding the origins of both Star Wars and Indiana Jones. Lucas has always said he could only get one TV station in Modesto, and that he watched old movie serials on a TV show called Adventure Theater – movie serials like Flash Gordon that inspired Star Wars and Don Winslow in the Navy that inspired Indiana Jones. Reading through The Modesto Bee, I discovered that they actually had five TV stations available, and that there was no such thing as Adventure Theater. I’m sure Lucas did see the old serials on TV in Modesto, but those details he provided – about TV stations and TV shows – didn’t check out. Lucas was instead creating his own version of the story. And that’s why I love reading the local newspapers!
What was the strangest item you discovered in your research?
I don’t know how strange it is necessarily, but I think it’s indicative of the nerdy bits of research trivia that really excites biographers. I really wanted a feel for the kinds of courses offered at the University of Southern California when Lucas was a student there in the mid-1960s. It was information that wasn’t going to go into the book, but it’s all part of that effort to try to get a handle on your subject’s environment. I ended up reaching out to the archivist at the University of Southern California, who mailed me the complete course offering handbook. So if you want to know what classes you could take in film school at USC in the 1960s, I can probably tell you!
Are the Internet and online information more of a curse or a blessing for a task like yours?
The blessing of the web is that you can access lots of different archives without having to actually physically go there—though in many cases, you might have to pay for that access. You can get old newspapers by subscribing to various online services, or, for example, you can read any issue of Newsweek, The New Yorker, or The New York Times online if you have a subscription – but you do get the immediate access to the information, any time you want, and that always makes things handy.
You can also use the web to try to track down sources, using LinkedIn, Facebook or even public Twitter feeds to reach out to potential sources, even if all you’re doing is asking a question of someone with a particular expertise.
The real curse of the web, however, is that it can sometimes be information overload – and you can’t always trust that information. You’ll see people telling the same stories over and over again, or websites reporting stories second, third, or fourth-hand. As a biographer, you ask yourself, Okay, where did they get that story? Sometimes you find the original story and can verify it; other times, you find out it’s completely made up or misreported. So, you have to always be skeptical of what you’re reading online. Track it back to its original source if you possibly can. If you can’t, beware – or better yet, don’t use it.
What were the best, the most surprising, and the worst experiences while working on the book?
I love writing about the creative process—from the spark of the idea to the execution, even how you raise the money for it. I love sitting in the corner, so to speak, listening to the conversations, the doubt, the trial and error, the improvising that goes on. So, to me, one of the best parts was making that deep dive into the creation and making of Star Wars — the original, 1977 film that meant so much to people my age. I was nine when the movie came out, so I was his target audience, and getting to submerge myself entirely in the making of that film, even when it was just one dashed-off line in Lucas’s notebook, was a thrill.
The most surprising thing came out of putting his story together, looking for patterns, and discovering just how reckless he could be with his money. While Lucas was raised by a conservative businessman father who told him to never run a deficit, Lucas, when it comes to making his movies, is constantly risking everything. He takes all of his money from American Graffiti and dumps it entirely into developing Star Wars, draining all his capital on this project no one understands. Then, when Star Wars hits, he invests everything he has in The Empire Strikes Back—and, more importantly, in building Skywalker Ranch. If Empire fails, he tells director Irvin Kershner, he’s gonna lose everything. No pressure, right? And then, in the late 1990s, as he’s developing the prequels and digital technology, he dumps $100 million of his own money again! And then he has the gall to constantly lecture Francis Ford Coppola about being careless with money! As Spielberg rightly said, “George has a bank called Star Wars. Francis doesn’t.”
The worst or maybe most disappointing experience was getting within a hair’s breadth of interviewing Harrison Ford and Steven Spielberg, and then at the very last moment having them refuse to speak with me because “George isn’t on board.” I was so close!
When did you know that you had struck the balance between Lucas and Star Wars? I mean, there’s the danger that you end up talking more about Star Wars than about George Lucas — or THX 1138 or American Graffiti or any other project!
Star Wars is the pivotal project in Lucas’s life, not just film-wise, but career-wise. So, you’ve got to spend quite a bit of time on it – all roads lead to and from there, and it’s the project he can’t escape from, no matter how much he might try. It’s a constant presence in his story. When it comes to Lucas, balancing those two narratives – the personal life and the professional one – is something of a parlor trick because for much of his life, his professional life was his personal life, to the point that it cost him his first marriage.
Did writing this book change your view of – and your connection to – Star Wars?
I think it made me appreciate even more how lucky we are to have it in the first place! We forget that Star Wars was mostly an independent film; its development, including its special effects, came out of George Lucas’s pocket, courtesy of American Graffiti money. But the studio had little faith in it, Lucas had to cut corners and discard plotlines, characters and locations in the name of fiscal expedience – and the film actually just got better and better for it. It really was the Little Film That Could, and it succeeded because of Lucas’s dogged determination to control as much of his own work as he could, and get as much of his own vision up there on screen. That it succeeded so spectacularly is testimony to his stubbornness and absolute commitment to his creative vision.
If you could meet George Lucas face to face and ask him only one question, after all your occupation with his life and work – what would that question be?
“Are you happy?” I don’t just mean satisfied; I mean “Are you content and at peace with your place in the universe?” For his entire life, he’s always been railing against The System, fighting for creative independence, and now at age 73, he’s won the game on his own terms, sold the company, and retired with his wife and new daughter. He’s brought so much joy to billions with his work, and he deserves to be happy and content. I hope he is.
September 24, 2017
It’s Jim Henson Day!
Okay, maybe it’s really not Jim Henson Day — but it’s Jim’s 81st birthday, so over on Twitter I suggested we make #JimHensonDay a thing. And really, when the President of the United States is tweeting like a lunatic, all but taunting another country into nuclear war, I figure now is as good a day as any to remind ourselves that there are still a lot of good people and good things going on in the universe — and that Jim, his life, and work remain an inspiration for fun, creativity, and basic decency.
Here’s the string of Twitter posts I put up this morning. Feel free to comment on what Jim and his work mean to you in the comments — or join the conversation on Twitter on the hashtag #JimHensonDay.
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Go out and do something silly today. Jim would approve. Heck, he’d encourage it.
September 15, 2017
Project Lorax: The Research Zone
Over the past week, I’ve been on the road doing research on Dr. Seuss, a road trip that took me from Fredericksburg up to Hanover, New Hampshire — where young Theodor (Ted) Geisel attended Dartmouth from 1921 to 1925 — then down the Connecticut River to Springfield, Massachusetts, where the future Dr. Seuss was born and raised. And yeah, there’s even a real Mulberry Street here, though contrary to rumor, Ted didn’t live on it.
My first stop, then, was Dartmouth, where I hoped to have a peek at the papers of Ted Geisel (Dartmouth class of ’25) held at the Rauner Library, housed in the Webster Building, right on the edge of the historic Dartmouth Green. For two-and-a-half days, I worked with a very helpful (and patient) group of librarians and archivists, who brought me one rolling cart after another loaded up with archival boxes.
[image error]Some were full of press clippings — and believe me, Dr. Seuss generated a LOT of press in his lifetime — while others contained correspondence or photos or even his high school and college transcripts. Another contained a much worked-over mock-up of The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins, with Ted’s careful notes about color use, margin heights, even changes to the copyright page. There were back issues of Judge magazine, where Ted submitted cartoons back in the late 1920s, pages of art drawn for Dartmouth fundraisers, and a large envelope — think four feet long by two feet wide — containing advertising work and a large black and white drawing of a Seussian Noah’s Ark on white cardboard.
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And of course, I always love to go through correspondence — and the Dartmouth collection didn’t disappoint, with folders full of letters Ted wrote to college friends reporting on trips in Europe, commenting on his mother-in-law, or pitching projects to editors at various magazines. Letters are one of my favorite parts of research, as it’s just you and your subject together, listening as they speak candidly in their own voices, make inside jokes or — in those really wonderful moments — nervously reference projects they’re pitching, wondering if anything will come of them.
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And to think that I saw Mulberry Street.
After wrapping up my time in Hanover, I drove 90 minutes south to Springfield, where Ted was born in 1904. Springfield is rightly very proud of its most famous son (and that’s saying something, as the town actually has quite a few famous sons and daughters), and it shows: all the signage for the Springfield Museums prominently features Seuss characters, and the complex itself centers on a fun sculpture garden featuring Horton, the Lorax, Thidwick, Sam-I-Am, and — sitting in front, with one foot up on a drawing table — Ted himself, being given a coy hat tip by the Cat in the Hat.
[image error]I spent several days in the Springfield City Library, rolling one wheel of microfiche after another onto the viewer as I read through issues of the The Springfield Republican and The Springfield Union from the early 1900s. While inconvenient compared to modern online archives, there’s still something wonderful about the old-school experience of working with microfiche, from sorting through the huge drawers of film boxes (you can see them in the background in the photo at left) to that satisfying thwack-thwack-thwack sound the film makes as it rapidly spools back onto the feed reel. The only real drawback — and this is purely personal — is that staring at the screen for hours on end as the film goes whizzing by in blur always makes me feel slightly seasick. Agh.
From here, I burrowed into the archives in the basement of the History Museum, going through various Geisel/Seuss histories and family trees. When I was done, I had the happy experience of touring The Amazing World of Dr. Seuss, the latest addition to the city’s cluster of permanent museums.
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[image error]I also had the pleasure of talking with museum administrators and staff, who helpfully arranged for me to walk through Ted’s childhood home (shown at right), still standing on Fairfield (not Mulberry) Street, and still looking — at least structurally — much as it did when Ted and his family lived there more than a generation ago.
All in all, it was a terrific trip up to Dr. Seuss territory. His legacy is in good hands in Hanover and Springfield, and I so appreciate everyone letting me be a small part of it.
July 11, 2017
Project Lorax: An Update
It’s been several months now since I unveiled the subject of my current project, Dr. Seuss. Since that time, papers have been signed and we’ve made things officially official (the formal announcement should be arriving any day now), and I’m very excited about spending the next year not only with my subject, but with my editor, John Parsley, who I worked with on George Lucas. It’s doubly thrilling, in fact, because I was able to follow him from the offices of the fine folks at Little, Brown (where we worked on George Lucas) over to Dutton, where John now serves as Editor-in-Chief. It’s a good place to be; Dr. Seuss was a staple at Random House (which now owns Dutton) for nearly his entire career (it’s where he also established Beginner Books), so it seems only fitting to be working on his biography under the larger roof of Penguin Random House. I’m delighted to be there.
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My colorful bookshelf.
I’ve started my research–but first thing’s first: I had to stock up my library shelves with All Things Seuss. Mostly, I ordered books in large bunches from Amazon and other booksellers, which really threw off the way Amazon generates its recommendations. “BASED ON YOUR ORDER HISTORY,” it tells me, “YOU MAY LIKE GO, DOG, GO!” Which, I suppose, is certainly true.
But not everything Seuss wrote or drew is in print and easily available; I had to scour eBay, for instance, for The Seven Lady Godivas (a book Seuss called his “greatest failure . . . it was all full of naked women, and I can’t draw convincing naked women”). eBay was also my go-to to procure copies of two small humor books Seuss illustrated (but didn’t write) back in the early 1930s called Boners (by Those Who Pulled Them!), and its sequel titled (wait for it . . . ), More Boners. I know, I know . . . the jokes just write themselves.
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Get your mind outta the gutter. I know it’s hard. (That’s what she said.)
My next task was to start gathering and reading as many existing books on Seuss as I could find . . . and really, there aren’t many (some terrific analyses of his work, but only one real bio, dating to 1995). Beyond that, one of my first big dives was into newspaper and magazines archives — mainly just New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, as well as some selected magazines like Saturday Evening Post and Life — for contemporary accounts, interviews, reviews, cartoons . . . pretty much anything I can find. Even in a limited scope like this, archival research is one of my favorite parts of the project.
Then, as I always do — because I’m terribly analog — I print everything out, three-hole punch it, and file it (for the most part) chronologically in binders. Naturally, new binders get added as things proceed, and I have to change some of them out with larger versions as I stuff them full. But this is how I start developing one of my most crucial documents: a timeline of the entire life that I can refer to as I write, and make sure everything is in order.
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The first binders. Titles change and binders expand as the research proceeds, but — for me, at least — it’s a good way to keep everything organized.
At the moment, I’m deep into research on the years from 1922, when Seuss* entered Dartmouth, to the end of World War II, when he returned to the United States determined to write books that mattered.
When I’m done here, I’ll work my way backwards to his childhood, which will be the perfect excuse to head for Springfield, Massachusetts, where I can walk the streets Seuss walked as a boy, scour the local archives, and visit the newly-opened Dr. Seuss Museum.
* Yeah, I know his real name is Ted Geisel. For the moment, I’m simply referring to him by his pen name.
May 24, 2017
“The Word ‘No’ Isn’t In His Vocabulary”: An Interview, Part III
This is the final part of an extended interview with Polish media on George Lucas and Star Wars. The first part is here and the second is here.
I’m very curious about his relationship with Steven Spielberg. Can there be a situation that Spielberg jokes about Lucas not having an Oscar for directing a movie?
[image error]Lucas and Spielberg have one of those wonderful fraternal relationships where, as brothers do, they both admire and compete with each other. Would Spielberg ever make such a joke to Lucas? I don’t think so – that one might be a little raw; you can see it in Lucas’s face when Charlie Rose mistakenly says that Lucas has won an Oscar, and Lucas says with a slight grimace, “No, I’m too popular for that…”
Now, Spielberg has joked about Lucas and all his talk about going back and doing the kind or small, arty films he used to do in college. “We’re still waiting, George!” he says.
Of course everyone want to know about Lucas and Star Wars, but he also created great stories for Willow and the Indiana Jones movies. Sometimes people forget that he did that–they only remember the directors. Why is that? Do you agree that those movies are crucial to understand Lucas as a storyteller?
[image error]Do people forget that Lucas was involved with those movies? Maybe for Willow, though I think people now remember it more as a George Lucas film than Ron Howard one! I think the point, anyway, is that Lucas had a great knack for story concept – or, at least, how that story should look at 20,000 feet. In the best instances – Star Wars, Raiders – it then took some really great writers (Willard Huyck, Gloria Katz, Lawrence Kasdan) to pull the final story and script together. The main ideas – the characters, the concepts – behind Willow and at least some of the Indiana Jones movies are really good ones, but the execution can be tricky. With Raiders, I think, it’s done about as well as it has ever been – that’s one where Lucas is content to light fuse and stand back and let Spielberg put Kasdan’s script to work.
I think the Indiana Jones films and Willow do help one to understand Lucas as a storyteller, ecause both of them are him using everything that’s important to him as a storyteller and mythmaker, whether it’s old Saturday morning serials and comic books or fairy tales and the Bible. But it’s not what Lucas has, necessarily, but how he uses it. The Indiana Jones movies made a lot of those old tropes look new and exciting. With Willow, it’s slightly different – it’s an intentional and obvious nod to Lucas’s love of fairy tales, to the point where one critic called him “the Great Regurgitator.” But I think Lucas was right about Willow, though at the wrong time. It’s got a bigger following today than it did back when it was made and, I think, has aged pretty well.
I often read very different views about Lucas opinion about Expanded Universe, especially books. Did he ever read any Star Wars books? Do you know something about that?
I can’t answer that with authority. If I had to guess, I’d say I’m fairly certain he’s read the Timothy Zahn novels, and he loves comics enough that I’m willing to bet he’s gotten his hands on a lot of what Dark Horse has put out. At the beginning, Lucas had firm ground rules for the Expanded Universe: no killing characters off characters he hadn’t killed himself, no bringing back any who were already dead, and no mucking about in Episode I-III territory. Those rules became fungible as time went on – hence the death of Chewbacca – and Lucas eventually felt the need to ‘catalog’ what, exactly, would be considered canon and what would be considered expanded universe. Which shouldn’t be at all surprising, given his constant need to control his own universe.
Star Wars without George Lucas in now a reality. Do you think that he really will ever let go of his “baby” emotionally and will never try to do something with Disney maybe? Probably they would let him if he asks and it will be good idea.
I think Lucas’s relationship with his franchise will always be complicated. There’s good reason he compared the entire experience to divorce, as his own divorce was one of the most painful times in his personal life. I think he’ll let go of Star Wars as much as any of us let go of our own children, which is how he regards the franchise: we watch them grow up and go off into the world to do their own thing, and sometimes they make decisions we don’t necessarily agree with – they marry someone we don’t like, or they live too far away – but we still love them anyway, even if we can no longer tell them what to do. Will Lucas ever really return to a Star Wars film? I don’t think so. They paid him very well to hand over the keys to the car. While they’ll let him sit in the back seat – the films still bear the Lucasfilm, Ltd. Imprint – I don’t think they’ll let him drive it again.
Your book about George Lucas is in bookstores only few days before new Star Wars movie and Christmas. It’s like perfect timing. How you would recommend your book to Polish readers? Why they should check it out?
First, it’s always fun to read about Star Wars – and I think this book will give you a better understanding of the kind of blood and sweat that Lucas put into getting the first Star Wars made and marketed. It really is a David and Goliath story, with Lucas using sheer force of will to get a movie on screen that very few people understood or believed in. More than that, however, it’s the story of the birth of modern cinema. All those things about film that we take for granted these days – sequels, action figures, great previews, waiting in line, soundtracks, eagerly anticipating the release date, great sound, convincing special effects – George Lucas either did it first, or laid the foundation for others. His contributions to film, I think, can’t be understated. He’s so much bigger than Star Wars (which is already pretty big!), and I think this book will give you a better understanding of his accomplishments beyond the galaxy far, far away. And it might also remind you of how much you love some of his other smaller projects, like American Graffiti, Willow, Tucker, or even Captain Eo.
[image error]Finally, it’s ultimately a great story about being absolutely true to yourself and committed one thousand percent to your own vision. Lucas constantly invested his own money in his company and in his films, even as his accountants fretted. Lucas was and is absolutely committed to getting the vision of the artist up on the screen in its purest form, and has worked his entire career to give them the tools to do that, whether it’s developing the gold-standard in special effects with ILM, creating groundbreaking digital technology (part of which became Pixar), or encouraging theaters to install earth-rumbling sound systems – like THX – to ensure a movie sounded in the theater the way it did in the editing room. The word ‘no’ isn’t in his vocabulary. If you’re a creative person – or a businessperson! — looking for a bit of inspiration, I think you’ll find that in George Lucas’s story as well.
Last final question… so “Rogue One” is new Star Wars movies with real connection to the first one George Lucas directed. What are your expectations as a viewer and a person who know so much about Lucas work with previous movies?
Star Wars is one of the real gifts Lucas has given us culturally – and it’s due in no small part to the fact that he’s given us a great big universe, with almost infinite places to play, and infinite stories to tell. I think there are plenty of talented people and talented storytellers we can hand the franchise to, who will manage it wonderfully. It’s easy to be cynical about Disney, but I think Disney really does ‘get it.’ I think they’ll take great care of the franchise. I think the story being told in Rogue One is an exciting one – and when I first heard that it was the story being told, it was one of those head-slapping moments where you think, ‘Of COURSE! What a great idea!’ And after seeing the movie, I can see why Lucas gave it his approval. It’s full of all sorts of affectionate little nods to his ideas and concepts – the Whills, Kiber crystals – while still taking the franchise in an exciting direction. I’ve got great hopes for Star Wars in Disney’s care, so don’t blow it! To quote Han Solo: “Great kid! Don’t get cocky!”
May 14, 2017
May the Fourteenth Be With You…
Happy Birthday to George Lucas, who turns 73 years old today. We raise our cups of blue milk to you, sir.
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May 5, 2017
“He Isn’t Inclined to Worry About Your Emotional Well-Being”: An Interview, Part II
Part II of the interview I did back in December with Polish media (Part I is here.)
After all those years you can say something new about George Lucas? Was there any new topic you discovered during your research that maybe surprised you?
Well, again, I think part of what’s new here is simply the fact that his story has never really been told in a comprehensive manner before. We read about Star Wars, or Indiana Jones or even the godawful Star Wars Holiday Special and we think, aha! There is George Lucas. He’s the Star Wars guy, or the Indiana Jones guy. But he’s so much more than that. He’s an extraordinarily good businessman, even as, at times, he’s extraordinarily reckless with his own money. He’s constantly pitching projects – and, to my surprise, constantly running up against opposition, even with a project as terrific as Raiders of the Lost Ark. He’s generous, loyal to his friends, and stubborn as hell. He considers himself ‘the little guy’ even as he’s building a gigantic do-it-all-himself film empire. He’s really a wonderfully complex guy who has made some really astonishing contributions to culture and film – and that, I think, is something readers may not truly appreciate until they get everything in context.
I often read comments from journalists and normal viewers that prequel trilogy would be better if Lucas would oversee everything like with Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. What are your thoughts about that? Do you think that being director, screenwriter and overseeing everything was too much for him?
Back in the 1980s, it was definitely too much for him. He stopped directing right after Star Wars, for example, because it actually took a physical toll on his health. He had little patience with actors, and the daily grind of being on-set really kind of annoyed him. He was much better suited to producing, where he could still oversee and control everything without having to actually run the set – though with Empire and Jedi, he still practically parked himself on the shoulders of his hand-picked directors anyway. Lucas can really never not be involved.
Maybe that was the part of a problem with prequel trilogy. Lucas always has bold ideas but he thinks too much about technology and special effects and not about plot, actor’s performances and dialogues. What do you think about that?
That’s probably true to some extent – but the prequel trilogy likely wouldn’t have been made at all without Lucas at the helm. For him, it had become personal – not just Star Wars, but digital filmmaking. Lucas really wanted to make certain the prequels were done right – or, at least, as close to his vision for them as possible. The only way to do that, really, was to control as much of the process as possible, from production and design all the way down to the actual directing of the film. I don’t think Lucas would have been ready to relinquish control of those gigantic films.
What do you think about Lucas relationship with Star Wars fans? Some see him as god other as a devil so probably it is difficult for him.
Lucas’s relationship with Star Wars fans is like a writer’s relationship with reviewers. We pretend we don’t care what they say, and then we still read every word. Lucas, to his credit, has always made the kind of movies he wants to make, critics and fans be damned. I think the fan nit-picking did bother him enough that he scaled back whatever plans he might have had for Jar Jar Binks – that character was an absolute and unexpected disaster for him – but other than that, I think hearing the fans complain was just like listening to Ned Tanen at Universal all those years ago trying to tell him what was wrong with American Graffiti and then arbitrarily editing four minutes out of it. To Lucas, what do the suits know about filmmaking? And I think he’d say the same about fans: what do they know about filmmaking? He’ll make the film he wants and isn’t inclined to worry about your emotional well-being!
His curse, of course, is that he’s created this wonderful mythology that we all feel we own a piece of. We all feel entitled to Star Wars, we all have opinions, sometimes strong opinions, on Star Wars. When we hear Lucas liked Rogue One, for instance, half the fans think, “Great! They must have gotten it right!” while the other half think, “Rats, it must really suck.” It’s a love/hate relationship, and one that Lucas and his fans will wrestle with in perpetuity.
Would you say that Lucas passion for cars and motor racing influenced some set pieces in Star Wars or his other movies?
Absolutely. Lucas is fascinated by man’s relationship with machines – it informs his work all the way back to college in films like THX-1138 4EB or 1:42:08, which features race car driver Allen Grant putting a racecar through its paces. His own experiences as a gear head and a cruiser in high school are up there on the screen in full force in American Graffiti. And in Star Wars, his ships tend to move and dive and scream by like cars at a race track. Heck, the podracing scene in Episode I is practically the drag race in American Graffiti! Even a ship like the Millennium Falcon is really just a spaceship hotrod, souped up for speed and with a lot of special modifications that the driver made himself. Even Darth Vader himself is a man struggling with machine – “he’s more machine than man now” Obi-Wan tells Luke.
Lucas was criticized for directing quality of prequel trilogy but he was great with smaller movies like “THX” and “American Graffiti”. What do you think? Why there is so huge difference?
Lucas had a great, big story to tell with the prequel trilogy – and I think, partly, the story got away from him. But more than anything else, I think Lucas was really excited about finally playing in a completely digital universe. For the first time, he had the technology behind him to put practically anything up on the screen, and he was determined to use as much of it as he could, opening up new worlds and cities, and creating wild new characters that could only exist in the computer. Lucas, I think, really loves the world building – his first drafts of Star Wars, for example, get somewhat bogged down in it as well, but the costs of putting those enormous worlds on screen were too cost-restrictive in 1977. Lucas had to scale everything back. He didn’t have to do that in 1999, or 2003 or 2005. It’s all there on screen, for better or worse.
Do you know how George Lucas feels about being remembered only as Star Wars creator?
I think he’s accepted that the first line of his obituary will always read “Star Wars creator George Lucas…” But really, I don’t think he’ll ‘only’ be remembered for creating Star Wars. I think – I hope – he’ll be remembered as an innovator in filmmaking, as one of the Founding Fathers of digital cinema. Lucas also changed the way we as fans relate to films and filmmakers. Lucas turned film-going into a true experience, from being excited about these little two-minute sneak previews, to waiting in line for hours or days or weeks, to watching a great movie with great sound in theater with a spectacular sound system, then buying all sorts of great merchandise afterwards. Directors are rock stars now – we look for “A Tim Burton Film” or “A Film By the Coen Brothers.” George Lucas did that.
Up next in the final part of the interview: Willow! The Expanded Universe! Rogue One!
May 3, 2017
The Picture That Worked
[image error]Forty years ago this week — Sunday, May 1, 1977, to be specific — George Lucas screened the premiere of Star Wars at the Northpoint Theater in San Francisco , the very same theater where he’d triumphantly (though not perfectly) debuted American Graffiti in 1973. Lucas was bracing for the worst; previous showings of the film, even as a work-in-progress, had been met with indifference, confusion, and sometimes anger, even from some of his closest friends (“What’s all this Force shit?” Brian DePalma had thundered at Lucas after a private showing in February).
Just before the showing at the Northpoint, in fact, Lucas had pulled aside film editor Paul Hirsch — one of three editors on the film, a talented trio which also included Lucas’s wife, Marcia — and warned him that they’d likely be asked by 20th Century Fox to recut the entire film. Marcia, however, had given Lucas a gauge for the film’s success in its current state: “If the audience doesn’t cheer when Han Solo comes in at the last second in the Millennium Falcon to help Luke when he’s being chased by Vader,” she told him, “the picture doesn’t work.” As the lights went down, Lucas locked eyes momentarily with Alan Ladd, the one producer at Fox who had believed in him and whose reputation was as wrapped up in Star Wars as Lucas’s own. The picture had to work.
It did.
The moment the enormous Star Destroyer rumbled overhead in the now-famous opening shot, the theater went mad with excitement — concept artist Ralph McQuarrie, in attendance that day, remembered lots of “hollering and cheering.” And sure enough, the place exploded with cheers and applause at this moment:
The applause didn’t end with the film. “It kept going on, it wasn’t stopping,” recalled Alan Ladd, “and I just never had experienced that kind of reaction to any movie ever.” Outside the theater, Lucas’s father, George Lucas Sr. (like Professor Henry Jones, Lucas, too, was a junior) was beaming as he shook hands with everyone who passed by. “Thank you,” he said proudly, “thank you very much for helping out George!”
As the crowd filtered out, editor Paul Hirsch sidled up to Lucas, trying to determine Lucas’s own reaction to the audience response.
“Well,” Lucas told Hirsch wryly, “I guess we won’t have to change anything after all.”
