Halb Mensch. Halb Ding.
I don’t know that George Lucas is actually a ‘very reasonable person’, but this is funny nonetheless:
Says Lucas of his problems with Universal: “I’m a very reasonable person. Ask me to cut tits for a GP rating and I’ll do it. But they wanted to take ‘graffiti’ out of the title — they thought people would think the movie was about feet.” #
The creation of Star Wars is comprehensive mythology onto itself, populated by rarely documented anecdotes, the likes of “the Millennium Falcon was inspired by a hamburger, with the outrigger cockpit being an olive off to the side” (1) or “My original inspiration for Chewbacca was my dog Indiana.” (2), compelling enough to be repeated until they’re so prevalent that they must be true, and are accepted even by hardcore fans and Lucasfilm itself. Unfortunately sometimes they’re embellished truths or half-truths, sometimes entirely false and in pretty much all cases oversimplifying a truly interesting, and luckily exceptionally well documented creative process.
And that’s what this is about; the creative process. Cultural touchstones like Star Wars might seem to have sprung fully formed from the minds of their lauded creators, but as in all creative endeavors, movie making, web design or this very post, nothing could be further from the truth. Creation is a process, and strangely, by looking at how everyone’s favorite plushy first-mate sprang into existence, we can learn a lot about any collaborative creative endeavor.
Unfortunately, perhaps because of the verisimilitude of the disciplines needed to make a film like Star Wars come together, the making-of narrative is surprisingly fragmented and often incomplete. A quick look at the bibliography needed to put together this post should give a good idea of just how fragmented. And once you’re down the rabbit hole, you quickly learn that nothing found there can be taken at face value. Quotes, drawings, photos and diagrams lack sources, are undated, some old, some new, some so distorted as to be pure fiction and most of it entirely out of context.
But while the official sources are often great, compiling from many different sources to dispel myths about Boba Fett’s ship, Slave 1 or tell in staggering detail the creation of the film from beginning till end as in the case of books like ‘The Making of Star Wars’, there are still plenty of dim, and in some cases even seemingly purposefully blacked out areas in the development of Star Wars. Just ask Michael Kaminski!
The story of how Chewbacca came to be is one of those. A fascinating look at what happens in the space between idea, page and screen.
Continue reading ‘George Lucas Stole Chewbacca, But It’s Okay’
A couple of years ago two guys from Io went to visit Skywalker Ranch as guests of Matthew Wood. I convinced them to let me post this video of theirs, from the visit:
Which of course goes hand in hand with our visit last year.
Update: As fate would have it, Philip Bloom just posted a new video from the countryside around the ranch:
I always feel obliged to link to Michael Kaminski’s articles on Star Wars because a) he has no RSS feed and b) because they’re so freakin’ good! This time he’s written an article I’ve personally wanted to read for a long time, which pulls together everything available about Marcia Lucas (which is at the same time more than I’ve found in the past, and less than one would think was available). Insightful and heartbreaking.
We visited the Ranch during our three-week US roadtrip a few months ago, and I’ve been longing to go back ever since. Nestled in the hills a 40-minute drive north of San Francisco, hidden from view of the road and comprising all the land around it, as far as you can see, and about ten times more, Skywalker Ranch is without a doubt the geek haven.
Woke up to this scoop:
Hi Michael,
Thought you might want the first notice – because of your posting, i’ve received a fair amount of email, and i’ve decided to post my book for FREE on my blog…Its more important to me that the story of Lucasfilm be shared and circulated than for me to profit directly. So if you wanted to add that to your blog – you’d be the first!
Thanks for your kind words and support.
Michael (Rubin)
I don’t know what you’re still doing here, when you should be over there, downloading the hell out of that thing! It’s gorgeous; the full 518-page book, complete with photosRare photos I might add, plugged in many cases straight out of the Lucasfilm vault or even personal collections from the people who were there., index and whatever else you’ll find in the printed version, covering everything from Lucas’ earliest years up through the creation of ILM and its struggle to put Star Wars up on the silver screen, down through Coppola’s experiements with mobile film making, the creation of Pixar, non-linear editing, digital sound editing, the creation of the Games Group and much much more. It is in actual fact, a book about the creation of modern filmmaking (and to some extent games even) as we know it. Don’t let the technical foundation scare you off though; it’s not only accessible, but centered on the people, not the tech. It was easily one of the most enjoyable reads I’ve had in years.
As he does, I obviously suggest you just go ahead and buy the real thing, should you like what you see.
PS: In case you missed it yesterday, Michael Rubin appeared on Pirillo back when he was promoting the book. There’s also an interview up over at Unidentified Sound Object.
Update: Downloads have passed 10.000, and Michael has posted a breakdown of where the traffic has come from so far. There’s also a FAQ.
Though it doesn’t quite beat a certain 125-page story conference transcript, I’ve managed to get my hands on what I think can rightfully be called a Lucas-rarity. It’s been referenced in a couple of books on Lucas1, but isn’t to my knowledge generally available, though it should hold the interest of anyone interested in THX 1138, American Zoetrope, Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas and filmmaking in general in the late 60’s and early 70’s.
Allow me to first give it some context (or skip to goods):
Continue reading ‘George Lucas: Maker of Films (1971)’
This is too good to leave on my shared Google reader items. Somehow, through some obscure channel, obtained from the final resting place of some Sumerian God by the man in the hat himself, a full 125-page story conference transcript between Lucas, Spielberg and Kasdan from Raiders of the Lost Ark has surfaced as a PDF. Get it while it’s hot!
It is really quite a miracle that Francis Ford Coppola managed to sneak THX 1138 into the seven-picture deal with Warner Brothers that launched American Zoetrope (a deal that also included Apocalypse Now and The Conversation). Even if the screenplay is slightly less abstract and dense than the film, it isn’t exactly light reading.
I love books. And I amass books. So much so, that between the two of us — Rikke and I — there is no doubt who is in charge of the appropriation and storage of dead trees, which might not have been so paradoxical, had Rikke not been a librarian…
The week before last, when Rikke and I were doing what we do best — namely nothing — I read, in-amongst several other books, the 1983 George Lucas biography by Dale Pollock, Skywalking: The Life and Films of George Lucas.
Now, I wouldn’t say that I’m obsessive compulsive about Star Wars, or George Lucas for that matter — others would; I don’t flatter myself that way — but I’m certainly a fan above the ordinary, having read several biographies, not to mention a whole heap of other books related either directly to Star Wars or the industries that sprung up in its wake. So, I’ve been around the block on this… Once or twice.
I accidentally slipped into a Star Wars hole about a month or two back, which turned out to be not so much a hole, but more of an entirely undiscovered cave system (which caused me to also purchase a few items for my Star Wars ‘library’).
Really, I blame those pesky bastards over at originaltrilogy.com, for always working on stuff that isn’t simply interesting in that nerdy ‘I’m I’m 30-years-old and I’m a Star Wars nerd’ kind of way, but also on a larger more serious film historic scale.
I chickened out.
It’s three days to Fade In and I dang-diddly chickened out.
I admit it. I’m not ready to wrangle Cheap Cyborg. Shit, I’m not even sure I can write a 100 pages of anything in a month, let alone an ambitious, if messy and unfocused science fiction epic…
Especially a messy and unfocused science fiction epic.
And just as everything was going so well.
Though it isn’t bad, it isn’t Drew’s best work either; nonetheless, here is the new Indy poster:
It’s Star Wars week. I’m damn busy, but I’ll do my best to work up to the 30th anniversary of Star Wars on May 25th. For now, here’s Lucas in Love, for those of you who have still to catch it.
PS: Wired has a flickr group where you can add Star Wars-centric photos, which will be used on friday at Wired’s celebration of the anniversary.
Well, it would seem so (man, am I a Star Wars whore!).
While Lucas is readying the new “Clone Wars” animated series, he told Friedman that he will make two more live-action films based in the “Star Wars” universe as well.“But they won’t have members of the Skywalker family as characters,” he said. “They will be other people of that milieu.”
The two extra films will also be made for TV and probably be an hour long each. But, like “Clone Wars,” Lucas doesn’t know where on TV they will land. “#”:http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=20297
And of course, he thinks Spider-Man 3 is silly, which it is :)
I don’t know when this is from, the 80’s or 90’s I think, but holy damn is it weird!
My sincerest apologies for the lateness of my review, I know I promised you this well over a week ago. Hopefully, once you’ve made your way through this (or skipped over the 700 paragraphs and read the end), you’ll understand why it took so long to finish.
Quite honestly, I would have loved to have written something much longer and more in-depth, detailing all of the Star Wars mythos, in as well as around the movies; I’ll leave that for a later day.
There’s a new trailer out for the DVD and limited theatrical re-release of THX 1138. If you haven’t seen THX, you should definitly give it a go. It is distinctively different from Lucas’s other endeavours (such as ehm, the ‘new’ Star Wars…); being more of an honest and rather sophisticated science fiction film.
Here’s a direct link to the trailer, saving you the hassle of a mystery-meat flash site.