Hi all, I thought you’d all find this interesting:
Gary Kurtz:
“When we made Star Wars, Vader and Anakin were two separate people. The idea that Vader was Luke’s father didn’t exist. I remember Lucas talked about Anakin having killed Vader and then taking his identity, but that was dropped early on. The whole twist in Empire was new and unexpected.”Star Wars Insider #138, 2011
So @Barfolomew and @Channel72 were basically right. The paradigm of the Brackett draft of ESB was factually correct as it goes, but also wasn’t telling the whole story: Lucas indeed had an earlier version of the twist when they were making the first film, no less, but it was ultimately dropped. Lucas then came up with the ‘Vader killed Luke’s father’ story for the final script (the Revised fourth draft), and this is what went into film. This notion was still in place
when they started work on Empire. When it came to the second draft (by Lucas alone), Lucas re-worked his earlier dropped idea, and merged the Vader and Annikin(Anakin)Luke’s father characters, and the rest is history.
Just for the record…
Unfortunately the above quote found online by TS (via a ‘google search’) does NOT exist in ‘Star Wars Insider #138, 2011’.
Both TS and myself have had a thorough look through Issue #138 of SW Insider (which is actually the issue for January 2013 - and NOT 2011) - and there is no quote or mention of Gary Kurtz in that issue.
I’ve had a look through adjoining issues, the 2011 issues - other publications similar to SW Insider at the time, also online in general - and cannot find such a quote from Gary Kurtz. TS has also searched for the quote and cannot find a source for it either.
It does NOT look like the quote is actually from Gary Kurtz - or exists outside of what TS found in that google search.
If anyone does know of this quote - and where is originates from - please post it up in here. Thanks, as always. 👍
After a fair bit of searching for this elusive quote attributed to Gary Kurtz I can only conclude it is indeed a fake.
Kurtz made no such statement - certainly not in ‘Star Wars Insider #138, 2011’ - with people now seemingly trying to invent or misattribute online quotes for Gary Kurtz to try and re-write film history.
With much egg on my face if it the supposed quote from Gary Kurtz does turn up eventually somewhere else. 😉