{"id":2474,"date":"2019-09-22T07:38:01","date_gmt":"2019-09-22T07:38:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dimmerlightstudios.com\/blog\/?p=2474"},"modified":"2019-09-22T09:55:43","modified_gmt":"2019-09-22T09:55:43","slug":"how-star-wars-almost-didnt-happen-nobodys-ever-going-to-let-anybody-just-make-a-movie-you-have-to-go-out-and-do-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dimmerlightstudios.com\/blog\/how-star-wars-almost-didnt-happen-nobodys-ever-going-to-let-anybody-just-make-a-movie-you-have-to-go-out-and-do-it\/","title":{"rendered":"How Star Wars Almost Didn\u2019t Happen &#8220;Nobody\u2019s ever going to let anybody just make a movie. You have to go out and do it!&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>No one is ever going to let you do anything. Don&#8217;t ask.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/dimmerlightstudios.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/original-star-wars-poster.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-2477\" src=\"https:\/\/dimmerlightstudios.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/original-star-wars-poster-671x1024.jpg\" alt=\"original-star-wars-poster\" width=\"671\" height=\"1024\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dimmerlightstudios.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/original-star-wars-poster-671x1024.jpg 671w, https:\/\/dimmerlightstudios.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/original-star-wars-poster-197x300.jpg 197w, https:\/\/dimmerlightstudios.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/original-star-wars-poster.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 671px) 100vw, 671px\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/consequenceofsound.net\/2017\/05\/how-star-wars-almost-didnt-happen\/\">https:\/\/consequenceofsound.net\/2017\/05\/how-star-wars-almost-didnt-happen\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>.<em>&#8230;&#8230;..<\/em><br \/>\n<em> Lucas especially clashed with the film\u2019s cinematographer, Gilbert Taylor (Dr. Strangelove, The Omen), who thought the movie was a joke, and George wanted him fired, but Lucas\u2019 longtime producer, Gary Kurtz, didn\u2019t want to let him go because he was afraid the entire camera crew would leave with him.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>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\u2019t 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.)<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>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, \u201cOkay, these are World War II fighters, but you\u2019re supposed to think they\u2019re spaceships!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cThis was not a successful screening,\u201d Cocks recalled. \u201cIt 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!\u201d Yet the next day DePalma and Cocks helped Lucas rewrite the prolog at the beginning of the film. Cocks told him, \u201cGeorge, you gotta make people understand that this is a fairy tale.\u201d (A source close to Lucas would also claim that Cocks came up with the legendary tagline, \u201cA long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away,\u201d but Cocks doesn\u2019t recall this.)<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> &#8230;&#8230;&#8230;<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Lucas felt Spielberg\u2019s sci-fi epic,\u00a0Close Encounters, which was shooting at the same time as\u00a0Star Wars, would be a much bigger hit, and he felt terribly dejected that so little on\u00a0Star Wars\u00a0was going his way. In fact, the whole\u00a0Star Wars\u00a0experience was so demoralizing for Lucas, he swore he\u2019d never direct again, and he didn\u2019t for 20 years.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>also amazing article on the Star Wars posters, so much loving nostalgia.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/filmschoolrejects.com\/star-wars-the-posters-14ad09654325\/\">https:\/\/filmschoolrejects.com\/star-wars-the-posters-14ad09654325\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p class=\"excerpt\">No one is ever going to let you do anything. Don&#8217;t ask. &nbsp; https:\/\/consequenceofsound.net\/2017\/05\/how-star-wars-almost-didnt-happen\/ .&#8230;&#8230;.. Lucas especially clashed with the film\u2019s cinematographer, Gilbert Taylor (Dr. Strangelove, The Omen), who thought the movie was a joke, and George wanted him fired, but Lucas\u2019 longtime producer, Gary Kurtz, didn\u2019t want to let him go because he was afraid the entire camera crew&hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/dimmerlightstudios.com\/blog\/how-star-wars-almost-didnt-happen-nobodys-ever-going-to-let-anybody-just-make-a-movie-you-have-to-go-out-and-do-it\/\">Read more &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[107,135,138,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-image","hentry","category-george-lucas","category-great-stories","category-making-of-star-wars","category-star-wars","post_format-post-format-image","xfolkentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dimmerlightstudios.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2474"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dimmerlightstudios.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dimmerlightstudios.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dimmerlightstudios.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dimmerlightstudios.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dimmerlightstudios.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2474\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dimmerlightstudios.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dimmerlightstudios.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dimmerlightstudios.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}