New Lucas interview 2: 'Insists Unaltered Versions Of The OT Will Never Be Released' — Page 2

Mocata said:

They have claimed a stop motion creature would replace the actor in 1977, but Phil Tippet didn’t get instruction on designing Jabba as a ‘Sidney Greenstreet’ type character until later…

Yeah , and there’s something suspect about the whole narrative . In the 1983 Documentary , From Star Wars to Jedi The Making A Saga , they go over it and show a part of the scene as originally shot with Decan Mullholland and then show a storyboard of what the intended creature effect of Jabba was supposedly going to look like , superimposed over the human figure on the storyboard . Giving the impression that it was an archival piece of artwork from the time of the shooting of the original film , except if you look closely , you can see what appears to be Salacious Crumb on the ground next to Jabba ! The little guy was never talked about , seen ,or mentioned until 1983.

screams in the void said:

Mocata said:

They have claimed a stop motion creature would replace the actor in 1977, but Phil Tippet didn’t get instruction on designing Jabba as a ‘Sidney Greenstreet’ type character until later…

Yeah , and there’s something suspect about the whole narrative . In the 1983 Documentary , From Star Wars to Jedi The Making A Saga , they go over it and show a part of the scene as originally shot with Decan Mullholland and then show a storyboard of what the intended creature effect of Jabba was supposedly going to look like , superimposed over the human figure on the storyboard . Giving the impression that it was an archival piece of artwork from the time of the shooting of the original film , except if you look closely , you can see what appears to be Salacious Crumb on the ground next to Jabba ! The little guy was never talked about , seen ,or mentioned until 1983.

Yeah, the whole thing stinks of another George retcon and him trying to alter history yet again.

The “Category No. 9 • Jabba originally was a human; from planning to filming…” of the George Lucas: Star Wars Creator, Unreliable Narrator & Time Travelling Revisionist thread really lays it all out quite well. With quotes from the people involved at the time, the guy who thought up and designed Salacious Crumb in 1981/82, the drawings, George’s changing to the scripts after the fact to insert a description of Jabba later being a “slug like creature”, and about that 1983 Documentary.

Thamks BoShhek , I’ll give that section another read !

Mocata said:

The restoration has already been done… by the hobbyists and fans.

Library of Congress was never given an original negative, it was the Special Edition right?

a bit late, but no. They only ever later received 35mm-prints to maintain copyright (which you can schedule to watch there) so in an ironic way, George didn’t want these films to be available, but he also didn’t want to stop owning them.

JadedSkywalker said:

YAREL_RGP said:

JadedSkywalker said:

I think still having to argue with people over why the original should be on Blu-Ray and 4K and Han why Han shooting second is stupid, 20 years after we signed a petition to the get the original released just to get Lynn Hale’s spiel, kind of makes me think it’s a lost cause.

I have 4K77 and I’m reasonably happy with it.

It won’t be lost because the British Film Archive and Library of Congress have the original. Its just not available to the general public. Unless you have out of print DVD, VHS or laserdisc. Yeah none of those is theatrically accurate but whatever.

Does that mean that the original negatives are archived in a place where they are available for scanning at any time today? From what source do you get this information? It is really very interesting

Not negatives no, but LOC do have 35mm prints they have scanned and archived. I’m almost 100% certain BFI has done the same. But I don’t have some inside knowledge.

Lucasfilm has the negatives, and it is true that the O-neg is conformed to the 1997 edit. But they saved all the trims. What is lost is the original color reversal negative, all the wipes and dissolves. Anyone who says they can’t do a restoration is being foolish. It’s not about the money, it’s not about can it be done. It is all about George, he hates the original and does not want it restored.

This has never been confirmed, some say that George tossed those trimmings. Why would he keep them?

That guy with no name said:

JadedSkywalker said:

YAREL_RGP said:

JadedSkywalker said:

I think still having to argue with people over why the original should be on Blu-Ray and 4K and Han why Han shooting second is stupid, 20 years after we signed a petition to the get the original released just to get Lynn Hale’s spiel, kind of makes me think it’s a lost cause.

I have 4K77 and I’m reasonably happy with it.

It won’t be lost because the British Film Archive and Library of Congress have the original. Its just not available to the general public. Unless you have out of print DVD, VHS or laserdisc. Yeah none of those is theatrically accurate but whatever.

Does that mean that the original negatives are archived in a place where they are available for scanning at any time today? From what source do you get this information? It is really very interesting

Not negatives no, but LOC do have 35mm prints they have scanned and archived. I’m almost 100% certain BFI has done the same. But I don’t have some inside knowledge.

Lucasfilm has the negatives, and it is true that the O-neg is conformed to the 1997 edit. But they saved all the trims. What is lost is the original color reversal negative, all the wipes and dissolves. Anyone who says they can’t do a restoration is being foolish. It’s not about the money, it’s not about can it be done. It is all about George, he hates the original and does not want it restored.

This has never been confirmed, some say that George tossed those trimmings. Why would he keep them?

It has indeed been confirmed, mate. Back in 2017…
 

‘20th Century Fox’s Senior Vice President of Library and Technical Services, Shawn Belston, confirmed that all of the “trims” removed from the original cut negative (in the mid-1990s, to create the SEs) still exist as well.’

 
^ Source here: http://thedigitalbits.com/columns/my-two-cents/022417-0100 (screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/kjtbx74.png)

(there are probably other sources for Belston’s quotes from the time - and probably appears in a thread somewhere on here…)

Also worth a read…

From 2010 (though always worth a visit): http://fd.noneinc.com/savestarwarscom/savestarwars.info/filmpreservation.html

2011 for TSHoSW book: http://fd.noneinc.com/secrethistoryofstarwarscom/secrethistoryofstarwars.com/savingstarwars.html

From 2020 (from doubleofive; who also knows his stuff): https://starwarsviscomp.wordpress.com/2020/08/21/what-we-want
 

oojason said:

That guy with no name said:

JadedSkywalker said:

YAREL_RGP said:

JadedSkywalker said:

I think still having to argue with people over why the original should be on Blu-Ray and 4K and Han why Han shooting second is stupid, 20 years after we signed a petition to the get the original released just to get Lynn Hale’s spiel, kind of makes me think it’s a lost cause.

I have 4K77 and I’m reasonably happy with it.

It won’t be lost because the British Film Archive and Library of Congress have the original. Its just not available to the general public. Unless you have out of print DVD, VHS or laserdisc. Yeah none of those is theatrically accurate but whatever.

Does that mean that the original negatives are archived in a place where they are available for scanning at any time today? From what source do you get this information? It is really very interesting

Not negatives no, but LOC do have 35mm prints they have scanned and archived. I’m almost 100% certain BFI has done the same. But I don’t have some inside knowledge.

Lucasfilm has the negatives, and it is true that the O-neg is conformed to the 1997 edit. But they saved all the trims. What is lost is the original color reversal negative, all the wipes and dissolves. Anyone who says they can’t do a restoration is being foolish. It’s not about the money, it’s not about can it be done. It is all about George, he hates the original and does not want it restored.

This has never been confirmed, some say that George tossed those trimmings. Why would he keep them?

It has indeed been confirmed, mate. Back in 2017…
 

‘20th Century Fox’s Senior Vice President of Library and Technical Services, Shawn Belston, confirmed that all of the “trims” removed from the original cut negative (in the mid-1990s, to create the SEs) still exist as well.’

 
^ Source here: http://thedigitalbits.com/columns/my-two-cents/022417-0100 (screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/kjtbx74.png)

(there are probably other sources for Belston’s quotes from the time - and probably appears in a thread somewhere on here…)

 

Also worth a read…

From 2010 (though always worth a visit): http://fd.noneinc.com/savestarwarscom/savestarwars.info/filmpreservation.html

2011 for TSHoSW book: http://fd.noneinc.com/secrethistoryofstarwarscom/secrethistoryofstarwars.com/savingstarwars.html

From 2020 (from doubleofive; who also knows his stuff): https://starwarsviscomp.wordpress.com/2020/08/21/what-we-want
 

 

Oh wow. I’ve been doing a lot of research the past two years writing a script for a video essay, this is the first time I’ve seen confirmation! thanks oojason! This and your other “unreliable narrator” thread have been very helpful to me. I’ll make sure to correctcmy script. thanks again.

Connor MacLeod said:

I think George is out of his mind and the quote from American Cinematographer illustrates how self centered he is and how much he is blinded to reality. He expected the theatrical cuts to fade away. But then relented and released the theatrical cuts on DVD with the GOUT. Therefore the theatrical cuts are NEVER going to disappear because releasing the GOUT was an act that brought the theatrical cuts into digital format to live forever on the net and to be used as a source for fan edits to cut with the special editions, at least until 4K77 came along. My point is that George really thought “no one” would ever see the theatrical cuts again and it would “fade away” but at the same time, he is the reason why they won’t fade away! He’s nuts. And contradicts himself. The theatrical cuts will NEVER be forgotten both because he refuses to release it in HD AND because he released the GOUT which paved the way for Harmy, which in turn paved the way for 4K77. I really think George lost his marbles back in 97.

I agree with you on most of that, but I’d argue George lost his marbles before 1997. Howard the Duck, anyone?

But yeah, I’m glad Harmy and 4K77 exist. I don’t understand why George is so stubborn about it. I get that sometimes a project doesn’t go your way and you look back on it and see all the problems (I know that I cringe sometimes when I watch some of my old videos), but that doesn’t mean you should just try to delete it from existence and redo it. Especially when it’s something as groundbreaking as Star Wars. You’d think he’d be more appreciative that people loved them so much in spite of what he sees as their perceived “flaws.”