Best Films to come out of LFL limited The Empire Strikes Back and Raiders of the Lost Ark neither of which Lucas directed. Empire directed by Kershner, Raiders by Spielberg.
Best Screenplays to come of of Lucasfilm Raiders and Empire written by Lawrence Kasden and not George Lucas.
There was a book that came out that said Lucas gave Marquand a hard time on return on the jedi and was a total a-hole and a backseat director, much like i picture him on crystal skull.
One of the most famous stories is how Lucas took empire away from kersh and recut it as told in once upon a galaxy, and it was a total mess, and hackwork.
If i was a filmaker he is the last person on earth i would want to work with collaboratively. The word must have gotten around hollywood since none of the non union directors would touch return of the jedi except for Marquand.
Lynch turned it down probably because he heard the horror stories of what was done to Kershner. Also no wonder nobody wanted to direct any of the prequels, everyone George asked turned him down.
A good deal of the humanity of his films came from Marcia Lucas. The best parts of star wars and American Graffiti came from Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz.
You know what is funny is i remember reading an old book and it described Lucas as a cold tecnobrat, technocrat would have suited him better and been scarily prophetic over the 90% cgi films with a lack of humanity in the characters and so on.
This book was written before Lucas expressed a philosophy of special effects in the documentary from star wars to jedi that made common sense. But Lucas now is on the other side of what he said back then.
If he stuck with his less is more philosophy, characters before effects, the universe once used simplicity maybe the prequels and indy IV would have not suffered this mentality of the carriage before the horse.
He also should have stuck to the idea of handing the other star wars movies over to other writers and directors.
I have come to believe the greatness of the first star wars came out of true collaboration between many artists and a great deal of adversity. Had Lucas an unlimited budget and cgi in 1977 what we would have got would be crap like Episode 1. The film would have bombed and today nobody would Know who George Lucas is besides the success of American Graffiti as small footnote in American culture.