Re: [scifinoir2] A Conversation with George Lucas
Foulness hath issued from your mouth, sir. That name is an abomination in my household. Said Kakese Dibinga [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:Tuesday, Mar. 14, 2006 A Conversation with George Lucas TIME's Film Critic Richard Corliss talks with Lucas about his âretirementâ and the future of digital filmmaking By RICHARD CORLISS Movie history can be divided, without much forcing of the issue, into two eras: before Star Wars and after. The landscape before the first Star Wars film, in 1977, was a very different terrain. The best Hollywood directors, freed from censorship and the nagging sense that they were cranking out movies while their European brethren were hand-crafting films, had begun to forge a distinctive adult American cinema. Few thought in terms of box office megamillions. The idea was to earn enough to entice someone into financing your next picture. (Jean-Luc Godard had done this successfully in France in the 60s; Robert Altman adopted that model for his pioneering 70s works.) Most films by the most gifted Americans were present-day dramas that picked at some social scab until, in the last reel, it burst. In the larger marketplace, the most popular films were the ones that were made for everyone, and that everyone wanted to see once: you, your kids, your mom. Thatâs the broad, if thin, constituency that made blockbusters out of The Love Bug, Airport, The Poseidon Adventure, The Godfather, The Stingâand Jaws, by Lucasâ contemporary Steven Spielberg. The majority of these pictures made their money slowly, playing first runs, then gradually reaching the smaller towns and theaters; the theatrical life of one of these crowd-pleasers might be a full year. There were genre movies, of course, but not many science-fiction films. Those were kidsâ stuff; movies of the 70s were for adults. Besides, special effects werenât sophisticated enough to open viewersâ eyes to the fantasy worlds its makers might be dreaming. Even Jaws, which broke a few rules by opening in a thousand or so theaters, and by reviving the monster-from-the-deep subgenre of Atomic Age s-f, was bound to rely for its special effects on a hydraulically operated shark that kept short-circuiting off the coast of Martha's Vineyard waters. Star Wars changed everything. It quickly became the top-grossing movie in the 65-year history of feature films (replacing The Sound of Music, if you need evidence of how much things had changed). With its then-wizardly special effects, and the cheerleading use to which they were put, it cued a revival of the s-f genre, which had been a B-movie fad in the 50s. Back then, the kids who gorged on s-f were a Saturday matinee minority. Star Wars arrived just as teen culture was taking over movies. Lucasâ film proved that a movie could be a smash by creating a textural density that lured a part of the audience back through the wickets a dozen times. This wasnât your uncleâs, and auntâs, hit movie; but if they didnât get it, who cared? The kids (mostly boys) were pouring all their disposable income into return visits. Thus Star Wars became the first cult-movie megahit. and the first live-action movie to franchise its popularity into merchandising at a level that equaled, and then surpassed, the Disney cartoon features. (That revenue, not Lucas' share of the film's take, was what made him a billionaire.) and the first Hollywood epic, at least so far as I know, that was conceived as a trilogyâproof of Lucasâ capacious vision and audacious entrepreneurial reach. AND, as Lucas mentioned in an interview I had with him two weeks ago in preparation for this weekâs TIME story on the future of movies, Star Wars was one of the hits whose profits, shared by the theater owners, financed the multiplexing of America. The light-saber epic changed Lucas too. A graduate of the USC film school who also felt a kinship with Bruce Conner, Scott Bartlett and other members of San Franciscoâs vital avant-garde scene, he had made two features before Star Wars. In 1971 he hatched the stainless-steel-cool, THX138 âa project received by its sponsors at Warner Bros. with so much bafflement and meddling that it stirred in Lucas a resolve to be a truly independent filmmaker. In 1973 he moved to the middle with American Graffiti, a feel-good blast of instant-nostalgia (it re-imagined a California car culture only a decade in the past). The two works were, respectively, boldly European-ish and familiarly humanist. They hardly hinted at the Empire Lucas would create on film, or the empire he would build in Marin County. Out of Star Wars came Industrial Light Magic (ILM), his computerized effects company, and THX, the advanced sound system for theaters, and a little studio, specializing in digital animation, that became Pixar. (Lucas sold that one to fellow visionary capitalist Steve Jobs.) The filmâs triumph also allowed him to become his
[scifinoir2] A Conversation with George Lucas
Tuesday, Mar. 14, 2006 A Conversation with George Lucas TIME's Film Critic Richard Corliss talks with Lucas about his âretirementâ and the future of digital filmmaking By RICHARD CORLISS Movie history can be divided, without much forcing of the issue, into two eras: before Star Wars and after. The landscape before the first Star Wars film, in 1977, was a very different terrain. The best Hollywood directors, freed from censorship and the nagging sense that they were cranking out movies while their European brethren were hand-crafting films, had begun to forge a distinctive adult American cinema. Few thought in terms of box office megamillions. The idea was to earn enough to entice someone into financing your next picture. (Jean-Luc Godard had done this successfully in France in the 60s; Robert Altman adopted that model for his pioneering 70s works.) Most films by the most gifted Americans were present-day dramas that picked at some social scab until, in the last reel, it burst. In the larger marketplace, the most popular films were the ones that were made for everyone, and that everyone wanted to see once: you, your kids, your mom. Thatâs the broad, if thin, constituency that made blockbusters out of The Love Bug, Airport, The Poseidon Adventure, The Godfather, The Stingâand Jaws, by Lucasâ contemporary Steven Spielberg. The majority of these pictures made their money slowly, playing first runs, then gradually reaching the smaller towns and theaters; the theatrical life of one of these crowd-pleasers might be a full year. There were genre movies, of course, but not many science-fiction films. Those were kidsâ stuff; movies of the 70s were for adults. Besides, special effects werenât sophisticated enough to open viewersâ eyes to the fantasy worlds its makers might be dreaming. Even Jaws, which broke a few rules by opening in a thousand or so theaters, and by reviving the monster-from-the-deep subgenre of Atomic Age s-f, was bound to rely for its special effects on a hydraulically operated shark that kept short-circuiting off the coast of Martha's Vineyard waters. Star Wars changed everything. It quickly became the top-grossing movie in the 65-year history of feature films (replacing The Sound of Music, if you need evidence of how much things had changed). With its then-wizardly special effects, and the cheerleading use to which they were put, it cued a revival of the s-f genre, which had been a B-movie fad in the 50s. Back then, the kids who gorged on s-f were a Saturday matinee minority. Star Wars arrived just as teen culture was taking over movies. Lucasâ film proved that a movie could be a smash by creating a textural density that lured a part of the audience back through the wickets a dozen times. This wasnât your uncleâs, and auntâs, hit movie; but if they didnât get it, who cared? The kids (mostly boys) were pouring all their disposable income into return visits. Thus Star Wars became the first cult-movie megahit. and the first live-action movie to franchise its popularity into merchandising at a level that equaled, and then surpassed, the Disney cartoon features. (That revenue, not Lucas' share of the film's take, was what made him a billionaire.) and the first Hollywood epic, at least so far as I know, that was conceived as a trilogyâproof of Lucasâ capacious vision and audacious entrepreneurial reach. AND, as Lucas mentioned in an interview I had with him two weeks ago in preparation for this weekâs TIME story on the future of movies, Star Wars was one of the hits whose profits, shared by the theater owners, financed the multiplexing of America. The light-saber epic changed Lucas too. A graduate of the USC film school who also felt a kinship with Bruce Conner, Scott Bartlett and other members of San Franciscoâs vital avant-garde scene, he had made two features before Star Wars. In 1971 he hatched the stainless-steel-cool, THX138 âa project received by its sponsors at Warner Bros. with so much bafflement and meddling that it stirred in Lucas a resolve to be a truly independent filmmaker. In 1973 he moved to the middle with American Graffiti, a feel-good blast of instant-nostalgia (it re-imagined a California car culture only a decade in the past). The two works were, respectively, boldly European-ish and familiarly humanist. They hardly hinted at the Empire Lucas would create on film, or the empire he would build in Marin County. Out of Star Wars came Industrial Light Magic (ILM), his computerized effects company, and THX, the advanced sound system for theaters, and a little studio, specializing in digital animation, that became Pixar. (Lucas sold that one to fellow visionary capitalist Steve Jobs.) The filmâs triumph also allowed him to become his own mogul, essentially renting later episodes to 20th Century Fox, rather than working for hire. Most surprising, perhaps, was
