See J.W. Rinzler’s conversation with Rick Worley for more details.
Great interview, thanks for sharing.
George had nearly all of The Empire Strikes Back written before Lawerence Kasdan polished it up. See J.W.
Well that was already known and Rinzler discussed it in detail in his book. Even Kasdan basically confirmed that by saying: “The structure of the story was all there–it was the skeleton for a movie. What was needed was the flesh and the muscle.”
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: George is good when it comes to writing a general story outline, but horrible when it comes to dialogue and character arcs. Kasdan came on and was the guy who really fleshed out the dialogue and characters, as he did with Jedi. Had Lucas gotten Kasdan or someone who was half decent at writing dialouge for the Prequels they would’ve atleast been slightly more enjoyable.
Since Lucas’ draft had around 130 typed pages, I would argue that it was far beyond a general story outline, but it defined the details of individual scenes already. Nevertheless, I definitely agree that Kasdan is a great dialogue writer and made a great contribution. There is a noticeable style difference between ANH on one hand, and ESB and ROTJ on the other. I guess that might be one of the reasons why I have always liked ESB and ROTJ slightly more than ANH.