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.”