Category: George

George Lucas speaking

How Star Wars Almost Didn’t Happen “Nobody’s ever going to let anybody just make a movie. You have to go out and do it!”

George, Great Stories, Making of Star Wars, Star Wars

No one is ever going to let you do anything. Don’t ask.

 
original-star-wars-poster
https://consequenceofsound.net/2017/05/how-star-wars-almost-didnt-happen/

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Lucas especially clashed with the film’s cinematographer, Gilbert Taylor (Dr. Strangelove, The Omen), who thought the movie was a joke, and George wanted him fired, but Lucas’ longtime producer, Gary Kurtz, didn’t want to let him go because he was afraid the entire camera crew would leave with him.

Even with an army of great FX artists working on Star Wars, like John Dykstra (Battlestar Galactica) and Dennis Muren (E.T., Terminator 2), Lucas still couldn’t get what he saw in his head and told people he was only getting 40% of his vision. (Lucas had wanted Douglas Trumbull, the FX wizard behind 2001 and Silent Running, to do Star Wars, but he turned it down.)

Then try to imagine showing Star Wars to the Fox executives with less than half the FX finished. Jay Cocks, who was at the screening, recalled the rough cut had temporary footage from World War II movies, and Lucas tried to explain, “Okay, these are World War II fighters, but you’re supposed to think they’re spaceships!”

“This was not a successful screening,” Cocks recalled. “It was a real challenge to the viewer. Two people liked it: Me and Steven Spielberg. Brian DePalma kept giving George terrible grief about the tractor beam!” Yet the next day DePalma and Cocks helped Lucas rewrite the prolog at the beginning of the film. Cocks told him, “George, you gotta make people understand that this is a fairy tale.” (A source close to Lucas would also claim that Cocks came up with the legendary tagline, “A long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away,” but Cocks doesn’t recall this.)

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Lucas felt Spielberg’s sci-fi epic, Close Encounters, which was shooting at the same time as Star Wars, would be a much bigger hit, and he felt terribly dejected that so little on Star Wars was going his way. In fact, the whole Star Wars experience was so demoralizing for Lucas, he swore he’d never direct again, and he didn’t for 20 years.

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also amazing article on the Star Wars posters, so much loving nostalgia.

https://filmschoolrejects.com/star-wars-the-posters-14ad09654325/

The Man who literally built Star Wars, and the Light Saber

Film, George, Making of Star Wars, R2-D2, Star Wars, The Lucasfilm Files

 

 

The Man Who Literally Built ‘Star Wars’
Set decorator Roger Christian tells us what it was like making George Lucas’s dreams out of scrap metal in this esquire article.

https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/a28570/star-wars-roger-christian/

 

How an Antique Camera Flash Became the Most Iconic Star Wars Prop

https://petapixel.com/2017/02/14/antique-camera-flash-became-iconic-star-wars-prop/

 

 

Due in part to Star Wars‘ minuscule budget, Christian had to scour antique dealers and thrift shops for prop ideas, and that shop in London is where he found a 1940s Graflex camera with a 3-cell flash gun attached. The flash gun, with only minor modifications, would become Luke’s iconic lightsaber:

 

 

 

lightsaber_2

Alec Guinness famously disliked Star Wars script. I don’t blame him but George is at number 16 on the best screenwriters list and I am not surprised. After all I am a full grown adult living in a fantasy world of secondhand, childish banalities

*Seriously, Film, George, Great Stories, Making of Star Wars, Star Wars, The Lucasfilm Files

The 100 Best Screenwriters of All Time – and George is at number 16.

http://www.vulture.com/2017/10/100-greatest-screenwriters-of-all-time-ranked.html

 

 

and a lot of people complain about George and maybe his story had the wrong words but its heart was in the right place. Just like words in real life – sometimes we are awkward, and wrong.

sorry stole the below story from here
http://www.pajiba.com/seriously_random_lists/7-actors-who-hated-their-actually-pretty-good-movies.php

Alec Guinness
Guinness’ hatred of Star Wars is legendary. In a letter written to a friend before he accepted the role, he noted that he might say yes if the money was right, though he also called it “fairy-tale rubbish” that “could be interesting perhaps.” In another letter written during production, he expressed dismay over the script (“new rubbish dialogue reaches me every other day on wadges of pink paper”) and complisulted Harrison Ford, whom he called “a rangy, languid young man who is probably intelligent and amusing. But Oh God, God, they [Ford and Mark Hamill] make me feel ninety—and treat me as if I was 106.” In a diary entry from 1976, he says that “apart from the money, which would get me comfortably through the year, I regret having embarked on the film. I like them all well enough, but it’s not an acting job, the dialogue, which is lamentable, keeps being changed and only slightly improved, and I find myself old and out of touch with the young.”

In his memoir A Positively Final Appearance, he said he “shrivel[ls] inside each time [Star Wars] is mentioned.” He also told the story of how he made a 12-year-old fan cry when he asked whether, in exchange for an autograph, he would promise to never watch Star Wars again. Guinness recalls: “His mother drew himself up to an immense height. ‘What a dreadful thing to say to a child!’ she barked, and dragged the poor kid away. Maybe she was right but I just hope the lad, now in his thirties, is not living in a fantasy world of secondhand, childish banalities.”

 

If you are curious about the letter from the set – read below.

The letter etc:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/12193178/Alec-Guinness-thought-Star-Wars-dialogue-was-rubbish-Letters-Live-reveals.html

The Empire Strikes Back making of documentary narrated by Mark Hamill. It doesn’t get better than this, I am a total sucker for this man’s voice, we love that he stayed with the franchise

Film, George, Making of Star Wars, Mark Hamill

Our lives are also true adventures and we should never forget to dream and to have our own special spaceship adventures, daily.

“SP FX: The Empire Strikes Back” was a television documentary special which originally aired on CBS on September 22, 1980 in the United States.

Happy Anniversary Star Wars! The most beautiful dreams of my childhood became true as one nice day in San Francisco i accepted Lucasfilm’s offer to work on their Star Wars franchise

George, The Lucasfilm Files

My Lucasfilm Offer Letter from a Galaxy Far Far Away – Happy Anniversary Star Wars! It was a great day in my life as, you know, little girls dream of dolls, I dreamt of spaceships and aliens. I was a natural fit.

Thank you, George!! Hope you live long and happy without your great Star Wars baby. I am sure you miss it as I do but we, through Star Wars, found our true selves. But as the only girl Environment Artist your confidence in me to give me literally hundred thousand dollars to do what I loved grew me a pair of wings and that really helped me become who I am.

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My Lucasfilm Offer Letter from a Galaxy Far Far Away
My Lucasfilm Offer Letter from a Galaxy Far Far Away