How Star Wars Conquered the Universe Quotes

“If she says “I love you,” and I say “I know,” that’s beautiful and acceptable and funny.”
― Chris Taylor, How Star Wars Conquered the Universe: The Past, Present, and Future of a Multibillion Dollar Franchise

“The story Lucas labored over for years was in many senses a product of its time and the eras that had preceded it, but the dream he captured on celluloid turned out to be utterly malleable and exportable. Star Wars might just have the power to make Diné cool again. But isn’t this just a form of American cultural imperialism, in which Native people are surrendering to the forces of Hollywood? Wheeler has two words for that notion: “C’mon, dude.” Star Wars is not Hollywood.”
― Chris Taylor, How Star Wars Conquered the Universe: The Past, Present, and Future of a Multibillion Dollar Franchise

“Here’s something I learned along the way. Happiness is pleasure, and happiness is joy. It could be either one. Pleasure is short lived. It lasts an hour, a minute a month, and it peaks very high. It’s like drugs, like anything—whether you’re shopping, engaged in any pleasure, it all has the same quality to it. Joy doesn’t go as high as pleasure, but it stays with you. It’s something you can recall. Pleasure you can’t. So the joy will last a lot longer. People who get the pleasure say, “Oh, if I can just get richer, I can get more cars. . . .” You will never relive the moment you got your first car. That’s the highest peak. . . .                Pleasure’s fun, but just accept the fact that it’s here and gone. Joy lasts forever. Pleasure’s purely self-centered. It’s all about your pleasure. It’s about you. A selfish, self-centered emotion created by a selfish moment for you.                Joy is compassion. Joy is giving yourself to something else, or somebody else. It is much more powerful than pleasure. If you get hung up on pleasure, you’re doomed. If you pursue joy you’ll find everlasting happiness.”
― Chris Taylor, How Star Wars Conquered the Universe: The Past, Present, and Future of a Multibillion Dollar Franchise

“Swing those lightsabers, boys.”
― Chris Taylor, How Star Wars Conquered the Universe: The Past, Present, and Future of a Multibillion Dollar Franchise

“In space, everyone can hear you go pew pew.”
― Chris Taylor, How Star Wars Conquered the Universe: The Past, Present, and Future of a Multibillion Dollar Franchise

“To make Star Wars, you’ve got to hate Star Wars”—this is a maxim I’ve heard from more than one veteran of Lucasfilm’s design department. What they mean is that if you’re too reverential about what came before, you’re doomed. You’ve got to be rebellious and questing. The franchise must constantly renew itself by pulling incongruous items out of a grab bag of outside influences, as Lucas himself did from the start. Likewise, fandom must constantly renew itself with new generations of viewers brought in by the prequels, by more recent additions to the canon like The Clone Wars and Rebels animated TV shows—and, soon enough, by the sequels to the first two trilogies.”
― Chris Taylor, How Star Wars Conquered the Universe: The Past, Present, and Future of a Multibillion Dollar Franchise

“By 1985, there were more Star Wars figures on the planet than US citizens.”
― Chris Taylor, How Star Wars Conquered the Universe: The Past, Present, and Future of a Multibillion Dollar Franchise

“The comments section on the Marginal Revolution blog post about the Death Star calculation is a case in point. Here, even now, sober economists hash out questions about the variables: Whether to factor in the slave labor of Wookiees (which was partly responsible for its construction, according to the novel Death Star). Or whether you could fund the whole thing from taxes on the population of Coruscant (which is said to have a trillion inhabitants, thus funding the Death Star at a cost of roughly $8,000 per person). Or whether a quality assurance engineer should have nixed a thermal exhaust port two meters wide that led directly to the main reactor shaft, and what effect this oversight might have had on the Empire’s chances of getting an insurance policy on its second Death Star.”
― Chris Taylor, How Star Wars Conquered the Universe: The Past, Present, and Future of a Multibillion Dollar Franchise

“Then Darth Vader emerged,” Fierlinger recalled, three and a half decades and dozens of viewings of Star Wars later. “I simultaneously shat my pants and got a boner.”
― Chris Taylor, How Star Wars Conquered the Universe: The Past, Present, and Future of a Multibillion Dollar Franchise

“Fisher called the cast “trick talking-meat.” She and Ford smoked pot during the shoot, until it became clear that Ford’s weed was too strong for Fisher. They had a clandestine affair after Ford surprised her by hiding in her closet naked but for a tie.”
― Chris Taylor, How Star Wars Conquered the Universe: The Past, Present, and Future of a Multibillion Dollar Franchise

“Thus far Lucas had spent $473,000 of his own money on The Star Wars. He knew this dessert would take far more ingredients than could be bought for $8.3 million. That was a fairly low figure; the average studio comedy at the time, with no special effects, cost around $20 million. How on Earth could Lucas realize his vision on that budget?”
― Chris Taylor, How Star Wars Conquered the Universe: The Past, Present, and Future of a Multibillion Dollar Franchise

“Here we reach a favorite assertion of film nerds: Did you know Star Wars was based on Hidden Fortress? Except no, it really wasn’t.”
― Chris Taylor, How Star Wars Conquered the Universe: The Past, Present, and Future of a Multibillion Dollar Franchise

“Lucas was eager to get his ideas on the screen but desperate to outsource the scripting part. Coppola, however, insisted: a director had to learn how to write. Lucas showed him a draft. “You’re right,” Coppola said, horrified. “You can’t write.”
― Chris Taylor, How Star Wars Conquered the Universe: The Past, Present, and Future of a Multibillion Dollar Franchise