Don’t forget when he ranted to his own fans in 2011, “Grow up. These are my movies, not yours.” In response to polite questions about the prospect of releasing remastered editions of the unaltered OT. That was a far more revealing and candid answer than the PR spiel of Jim Ward in 2004 that, “this is about art and filmmaking.”*
The geeks eventually got their face time with Lucas and I want to stress how respectful these guys were, and that they paid a lot of money for face time with Lucas. This was not a surprise interaction; Lucas came to this event knowing he’d be expected to mingle with the peons. I don’t advocate bugging celebrities in their daily lives, but this was a professional event designed to encourage these interactions. The guys were not out of bounds. They started by telling Lucas that they loved him/the movies/grew up watching them. Then they very politely asked why he wouldn’t make the original versions of the movies available on DVD/Blu-Ray. They stressed that they don’t mind the retroactive edits (doubtful, but they were being nice), they just wanted good digital copies of the original cuts, too. Lucas’s response? An eyeroll and a huffy, “Grow up. These are my movies, not yours.”
*Referenced here in a very good article from 2004 on Lucas’ refusal to make the original versions available on DVD: http://www.filmbuffonline.com/FBOLNewsreel/wordpress/2004/07/19/george-lucas-and-the-not-so-special-editions/