{"id":644,"date":"2016-05-16T13:57:04","date_gmt":"2016-05-16T13:57:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dimmerlightstudios.com\/blog\/?p=644"},"modified":"2016-05-16T14:01:30","modified_gmt":"2016-05-16T14:01:30","slug":"the-force-is-back-george-talks-to-vanity-fair-just-before-the-release-of-the-phantom-menace-in-february-1999","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dimmerlightstudios.com\/blog\/the-force-is-back-george-talks-to-vanity-fair-just-before-the-release-of-the-phantom-menace-in-february-1999\/","title":{"rendered":"The Force Is Back – George talks to Vanity Fair just before the release of The Phantom Menace in FEBRUARY 1999"},"content":{"rendered":"

I know I know but I love\u00a0The Phantom Menace and despite everyone’s very reasonable objections I will probably see it a few more dozen times and will continue to see it after that well into my 80’s, and I couldn’t care less if George borrowed his themes from the Bible, from the Martians, from Etruscans, from\u00a0his\u00a0home town in Modesto or just plain made stuff up to cover up bad acting in between sketchily put together scenes with bad CG. Because artists are put on this earth to steal and forge new memories, new meanings and new myths from the old ones. This is how Picasso made up brand new form of art – he stole everything\u00a0african art had going\u00a0for them in terms of weird eyes and noses, longish proportions and fat vanishing fingers.<\/p>\n

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http:\/\/www.vanityfair.com\/news\/1999\/02\/star-wars<\/a><\/p>\n

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Heady and overwrought sentiments to apply to a science-fiction serial, perhaps, but for a considerable chunk of the American population Star Wars<\/em> is no mere science-fiction serial. In fact, there\u2019s always been something rather flawed and off-key about the traditional adult take on Star Wars<\/em>, which is that the existing trilogy is not so much an original work as a teched-up assemblage of references: to Flash Gordon, Akira Kurosawa, John Ford,Metropolis<\/em>, J. R. R. Tolkien, Greek mythology, King Arthur, Triumph of the Will<\/em>, etc. For those of us who were kids when the first three movies came out\u2014those of us who, presumably, made the trilogy the huge, hulking cultural milestone it is\u2014Star Wars<\/em> was wholly, mind-blowingly original. We weren\u2019t hip to the Hidden Fortress<\/em> borrowings or the supposed whiz-bang retro-camp elements that Lucas had worked in; not for us the high-Cahiers<\/em> musings of Pauline Kael, who wrote, \u201cLucas has got the tone of bad movies down pat: you never catch the actors deliberately acting badly, they just seem to be bad actors, on contract to Monogram or Republic.\u201d We simply bought the myth\u2014Lucas, that presumptuous geek auteur<\/em>, had succeeded in his \u201cconscious attempt at creating new myths\u201d for children.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I know I know but I love\u00a0The Phantom Menace and despite everyone’s very reasonable objections I will probably see it a few more dozen times and will continue to see it after that well into my 80’s, and I couldn’t care less if George borrowed his themes from the Bible, from the Martians, from Etruscans, from\u00a0his\u00a0home town in Modesto or… Read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[107,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-image","hentry","category-george-lucas","category-star-wars","post_format-post-format-image","xfolkentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dimmerlightstudios.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644"}],"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=644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dimmerlightstudios.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dimmerlightstudios.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dimmerlightstudios.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dimmerlightstudios.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}