- Time
- Post link
This was all typed by hand looking at a scan of the newspaper. Stuck to the same format as much as possible. Enjoy!
8 Pt II—Sat., Dec. 10. 1977 Los Angeles Times
Lucas: Feet on Ground, Head in the Stars
BY LEE GRANT
Times Staff Writer
George Lucas, the force behind “Star Wars,” returned to
USC Thursday, his alma mater, and told cinema students
that he has retired from directing: “Now I can go back to
what I want to do,” he said.
What Lucas wants to do is “experimental, abstract kinds
of things, working with pure film. I just wonder if you can
get the same reactions from an audience using images,
sounds and no plot as you can with strong characters.”
But, he said, “to make a living” there will also be super-
vision of planned sequels to “Star Wars” and “American
Graffiti.” And he apparently is still helping friend Francis
Coppola with editing “Apocalypse Now.”
Lucas, 33, who graduated from USC in 1968, showed an
hour of segments from his student work (including “THX
1138” that was later turned into a commercial film) and his
features. That evening he did the same for the University
Associates, an alumni and fund-rasising group whose cur-
rent project focuses on the division of cinema, school of
performing arts.
He is softspoken, reserved, publicity shy. A reporter was
invited, then uninvited. “I don’t want,” said Lucas, “to turn
this into a media event.” He told the students, “I really
don’t have anything to say to you.”
His movie, however, has been awesomé, indeed. “Star
Wars” recently passed “Jaws”—directed by Steven Spiel-
berg. Lucas’ friend—as the top money maker in domestic
motion picture history.
Financial success or not, the film, said Lucas, "fell way
short of my expectations. It was big and cumbersome to
make. We had to deal so much with the inadequacies of
other.
“It was shot in England, Tunisia and Guatemala. We did
special effects in Los Angeles. I’m based in San Francisco.
There were more than 1,000 people who worked on the
film. I feel good having gotten 25% of what I wanted up
there.”
“American Graffiti,” he said, which was also a major fi-
nancial success, succeeded much more in capturing the vi-
sion that he had for it. “We shot in 28 days,” said Lucas,
"difficult night shooting and we had no money. It came out
about 50% of what I wanted it to be.
"‘Graffiti’ was easier because I had lived that life. In
‘Star Wars,’ I was dealing with dreams and fantasy and
science fiction. It fell short of what I wanted for it. I ex-
pected more out of ‘Star Wars’ than was humanly possible.
I had this dream and it’s only a shadow of what I dreamt.
“‘Star Wars,’ was a very long, painful thing to go
through. I had no other life for two years. It was big and I
wanted to slay the dragon before it slayed me.”
Its success and the resulting cultlike aura that has
grown around the film is “a little unbelievable,” said Lu-
cas. "I don’t feel it. I just feel like a film student who’s had
a success.
Directing, for the most part, he said, is “difficult, intense
and miserable. It’s where the dreams you had are turned to
reality. Then comes writing (he finished the ‘American
Graffiti’ screenplay in three weeks; ‘Star Wars’ took two
years) because you sit there by yourself. It’s internal pain
as opposed to the external of directing.”
What he likes best is the editing process. “It’s the most
fun,” he said, “the place where you fix your mistakes. At
heart, I’m an editor.”
Lucas’ film inspirations “come from life,” he said,
“things I’m attracted’ to like radio, cars, speed, anthropolo-
gy, records. I’m interested in how the culture relates to
machinery. That shows up in my films. I want to know
why man lives the way he does.”
“Star Wars,” he said, is "essentially a mythological fairy
tale, a children’s fantasy like Grimm. It’s similar to those
classic stories you’d tell around a campfire.
"Some of it came out of my mythology studies. I felt that
we didn’t have any now and needed a new mythology.
“‘Star Wars,’ you could say, is an outer space ‘Gunga
Din’ or ‘Treasure Island.’”
Other Lucas observations:
—“As a writer. I sit at my desk every day from 9 to 5. I
sit there and wait for the mail to come.”
—“A positive view has a stronger impact in bringing
across what you want to say. I turned from pessimistic in
‘THX 1138’ to optimistic in ‘American Graffiti.’”
—“Francis Coppola told me, ‘Listen, kid, if you’re ever
going to be anything in this business, you’ve got to learn
what Hollywood wants.’ I’ve learned it and now I can go
back to doing something else.”
—On Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”:
“It turned out real well. I liked it.”
