zombie84 said:

xhonzi:
Name one other thing that's in the same ballpark as good as ESB that Kersh had ANYTHING to do with. If he'd made 10 awesome movies, and then one stinker, then I would be dropping the "as good as your last" argument. I was more making a "if he was able to wrest ESB from Lucas and actually make it a good movie, he should also have a deep history of other awesome work" but I've never seen it.

I would ask anyone who says this to name any other film they've seen of Kersh's other than Robocop 2 and Never Say Never Again (which is actually quite decent).

-Raid on Entebbe

-Flim Flam Man

-Return of a Man Called Horse

-Hoodlum Priest

-The Luck of Ginger Coffey

All terrific, terrific films. Kersh was a great director, but had one mainstream film that was taken out of his control (Eyes of Laura Mars) and chose one poor film that everybody saw (Robocop 2). His career after ESB was poor, I suppose, but one of the films was decent IMO so it's really only one true stinker with his name on it.

Yes, all classic films irreversibly engraved on all of our minds. An average of about 6.5 on imdb (for what that's worth). The highest was a couple of 6.9s, the lowest in the 5's.

I'm sorry, but I don't think your argument did much for me. A couple films I've never heard of and several I know of while I haven't seen (scene?) them. And then the two I have seen... and they are 'meh'.

My point is not that he's not a decent director. My point isn't that he didn't do a fantastic job with ESB. My point is that there's a lot of credit to go around in ESB, and I think so many of us are so disgruntled with GL, that we'll put all of the credit at Kersh's feet instead of spreading it around where it's due like SilverWook pointed out.

Lol at the featured comment on Hoodlum Priest:

imdb guy:
Irv Kerschner, who was George Lucas' teacher at USC and later directed one of his pupil's Star Trek features, made this glossy well-meaning melodrama released by United Artists in 1961.

zombie84:
And yes, I think he would have made AOTC a great film. The actors look bored in George's versions because George is a boring director who doesn't know how to communicate or inspire his actors. They wouldn't be bored with Kersh and he might have even inspired them to invest in the film itself.

From what I know- only based on behind the scenes of ESB- Kersh really was an actor's director. I do think you're correct when you say he probably would have pulled incredibly better performances from his actors. And I don't think he would have let a lot of the stale dialogue stay in the picture. Both of those things would have improved AotC.

Would they improve it enough? I don't know.