lucasdroid said:

Man, George was really best when he choose awesome talent. He's good at that. Copolla is wrong. George isn't a good filmmaker but he's good at recognizing talent. And Kershner was the man. I need to go find all of his films now and watch them.

You will probably be disappointed. I saw most of his major films and they range from very poor to average at the best. In Empire he was basically a hired actor-director and he was provided with great material (script, art design, concept ideas etc. all of which basically directed by Lucas) and a very good team to work with.

I wouldn't call him too talented either. You may be unaware but a huge amount of time had to be spent on principal production of ESB (6 months, twice as much as on either SW or ROTJ) partly to his inability. A competent director should be able to make the scenes work in a few takes by working things out in his head and rely a proper direction to the actors. Having available countless takes, good script and competent team... you can pick a random guy from a street and the film will be eventually made well.

It is easy to make fun of the apparent Lucas' "3 takes per scenes" approach in SW. But that is how the films have to be made under tight time and money restriction. And such conditions call for a talented director with ability to make scenes work in a few takes (btw I am not saying Lucas is good on-set director). I am sure every director would like unlimited time but that is very rarely allowed (Kubrick is one such example).

I kinda feel sorry for Kurtz. He was either to allow taking a take after take and get good scenes and allow the film to go over-schedule and over-budget; or force Kershner to work in a timely fashion and probably get bad scenes. Fortunately for the sake of film, he chose the former and unfortunately got fired for a consequent budget increase.