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I’ve been dipping in and out of Alan Arnold’s ‘Once Upon a Galaxy’ book again recently, and thought this was worth sharing:
Once Upon A Galaxy: A Journal of The Making of The Empire Strikes Back
Alan Arnold. Sphere Books Ltd 1980
pages 172-183
Thursday July 19 [1979]
When someone tells you he has put everything he owns into an enterprise and that if it doesn’t succeed he’ll be millions of dollars in debt, what are you to say? When he adds: " I’m willing to take that risk because I started with nothing." all you can feel is humility, which is what I felt when George Lucas talked to me today.
In a world that pays mainly lip service to principles, when politicians are so partisan and the language convoluted (priests now talk of “do-gooding” with disdain), it is refreshing to sense integrity in the air again - and talk with a man who puts his money where his dreams lie. I was looking forward to my interview with him.
George Lucas: This is my third trip to London for Empire. I see the dailies in the United State on videotape, and I’m constantly talking to Kersh and Gary over the phone.
The first thing I do when I arrive here is catch up on the cut film. Because of the time pressure, my main concern as this point is to work on the second cut while the editor works on the first cut. That way, when we’ve finished we can be six weeks ahead of ourselves.
Kersh is worrying primarily about the specific moment or scene he has to deal with, and what I’m constantly keeping my eye on is the whole picture and how it’s all fitting together. But one of my primary concerns is special effects, because that part is the trickiest. That’s where I think my experience on the first film will be of most use. It’s the area, in addition to the editing, where I can contribute most effectively
Alan Arnold: Did the sets, when you saw them, relate satisfactorily to what you’d conceived of as a writer?
GL: Some did, some didn’t. Ralph McQuarrie, Joe Johnston, and I worked on the designs and the paintings of the sets and then turned them over to Kersh, Gary and Norman Reynolds. When I was over here on the first two trips, I sort of monitored the sets and put in my two cents worth, but the designers went off on their own interpretations. The designs are fairly close to my conception, but there are differences, some of which are improvements.
AA: It must be a curious experience for a writer to see what he has written translated from words into an actual physical state.
GL: It’s a very interesting experience. This is only the second of my pictures that I haven’t directed [More American Graffiti (1979) was the first]. It has been a unique experience to write down something the way I thought it should be, explain to the director how it was supposed to be done, describe the ambience, and then have it come out completely different from the way I’d thought of. It’s and interesting experience, and I can now see why screenwriters go crazy.
AA: What causes these differences in interpretation?
GL: It’s caused by the fact that no two people are the same, and no two people see with the same eyes. I can know exactly how something should be, but somebody else will have a completely different point of view. It’s like describing an accident after if happens. Five people can see the same accident, but each will describe it a different way. Similarly, the nuances in a script, no matter how articulate it is, can go in so many directions.
AA: Surely, as a writer, the translation to film cannot always come up to your expectations.
GL: Well, sometimes. But that happened more on the first film than on this one. With Empire, since I am a step away from it, I didn’t expect as much, yet it’s turning out much more like I imagine than did the first one. I had much higher expectations of the first film, and we were working under much greater duress.
I think Kershner is feeling similar to the way I felt on the first film; he feels that it’s not coming up to his expectations. When you’re on the set, trying to get things to happen each day, while everything’s falling apart around you - the robot won’t move or some technical thing malfunctions - then you’re compromising day by day and dying a thousands deaths.
On this picture I haven’t seen all the suffering, I’ve just looked at the film and said “Oh, that’s turned out great” or “That scene could have been a little better,” but I wasn’t there watching Kersh suffer, struggling to get it better.
AA: It must be a relief to have a quality craftsman at work, though.
GL: These films are incredibly difficult to make. Normally, a director is concerned mainly with character and with telling a story. In the Star Wars films that is important, but equally important are all the details. They’re like little time bombs all over the set, thousands of them, and if you don’t catch one it could do you in. When the shot moves around and there’s some little thing that isn’t right, it could take the audience completely out of the movie. In a normal film there isn’t that thin edge. Reality, the reality of the world we know, is a tangible presence in most films. The viewer is there, it’s real. But in a film like this, where we’re creating a world that doesn’t exist, it’s very easy to puncture a viewer’s sense of reality by a missing or wrong detail.
AA: It must be easier now for you to know your way around the worlds you created.
GL: Yes, it was harder on the first film. I didn’t quite know the world that was being created. It was very hazy to start with, but as it became clearer, ore concrete, I had a stronger base of reality to work with. But now I know what Luke Skywalker looks like; I know how lightsabers work; I know what Darth Vader’s appearance should be. On the first film I didn’t really know all these things. Should Luke be a young intellectual or just a crazy kid? Should Darth Vader be big and tall? How does Han Solo react to danger? That sort of thing. Those decisions, and hundreds more, were made before and during the first picture.
AA: Therefore, perhaps, this film should have been simpler to make than the first.
GL: I don’t think you can use the word simpler. These films are exceptionally complicated. In terms of the script, the magnitude of the two pictures is fairly similar. There are a few more set on this one but not that many more. The locations are about the same in terms of the amount of time spent on them and the proportion of the film they’ll fill in screen time. No, the advantage this film has over the first relates to the fact that the crew knows what kind of film we are making, as well as the fact that a lot of them worked on the first film. They know more what to expect, how to do things, whereas on the first film we were experimenting all the time.
AA: Then why has Empire taken longer to make?
GL: People work in different ways. That has a lot to do with it. In order to finish shooting in seventeen weeks - which is what it took to shoot Star Wars - you have to push very hard. Sometimes that is very difficult, and it depends on who is doing the pushing. Somebody’s got to do it.
AA: I said to Kersh the other day that he’s a director who changes his mind at the last moment.
GL: That takes up time.
AA: But I don’t think he’s notoriously equivocal, do you?
GL: No, we hired him because his reputation is one of him being a fast director. And a very good one. I just don’t think he’s come up against anything quite so complicated before. You reach a point where it’s so big that it’s very hard to keep hold of.
AA: So you felt the need to make this one bigger and better than the first.
GL: I don’t think we’re trying to make it bigger. We’re obviously trying to make everything better. I think we’re just trying to make it as good as the first one. If we can get that far, I’ll be happy.
AA: Does the fact that you’re not directing have its satisfactions, or do you sometimes wish you were?
GL: Generally, I enjoy not directing. It’s a great relief and a lot of pressure off me. That is the good side. I’m not nearly as emotionally distressed as I’d be if I were directing. Once in a while, when I’m on the set, I get a little restless as if I were directing, wishing I could go in there and get it done. I like what Kersh is doing creatively. I don’t have a strong feeling of wishing it were being done another way (well perhaps once in a while), and I much prefer that somebody else do the work.
AA: If you were directing do you think you could speed up the process?
GL: I think I could
AA: Do your new business interests conflict with creative matters?
GL: I don’t know whether they conflict. To operate a large corporation I’ve moved into the business world, which is a new experience and one I’m learning from and enjoy. I get another perspective, and although there are worries I didn’t have before, they don’t conflict with other things.
AA: Do the worlds and the characters take you over and begin to write themselves?
GL Yes. The first script was just murder to write, just awful. It took me two years. Most of it was simply finding my way through that world. Now I’m much more immersed in the world. When I did the story for the second film, it was easier because it’s really part of the Star Wars story. The first script was really one of six original stories I had written in the form of two trilogies.
After the success of Star Wars I added another trilogy. So now there are nine stories. The original two trilogies were conceived of as six films of which the first film was number four.
AA: So the stories became easier to write.
GL: Yes, the stories became easier. The problem was coming up with the scenes and making the scenes work. Sometimes what I had in mind in the story didn’t always work dramatically. That’s were the real struggle come. I hired Leigh Brackett to write the screenplay, but tragically she died right after completing the first draft. Faced with the situation that somebody had to step in and do a rewrite, I was forced to write the second draft of this screenplay. But I found it much easier that I’d expected, almost enjoyable. It still took me three months to do, but that’s a lot different from two years. I also had the advantage of Larry Kasdan coming in later to do a rewrite and fix it up.
AA: Among the new creations in the movie is one of the oddest the saga has yet introduced - Yoda. What are your feelings about him?
GL: He’s been a great concern right from the beginning. I started designing Yoda with Joe and Ralph. We worked for about four months before coming up with a design we liked. You can see the progression of Joe’s drawings to Ralph’s paintings, see the character’s look improving, acquiring more personality, until, I think, Yoda is now how we want him to be.
AA: Well, we’ll meet him soon when we begin to shoot on the swamp planet of Dagobah. Are you going to use that set for the next movie, too?
GL: Dagobah does appear in the next film. What we’d hoped to do was shoot the set now, having built it, to save having to build it up again. But time has gotten so tight we really can’t do that now. We’re just going to have to wait and rebuild the set for the next picture.
AA: Does that worry you?
GL: Well, yes. I’m faced with a situation where everything I own, everything I ever earned, is wrapped up in this picture. If it isn’t a success not only could I lose everything, but I could also end up millions of dollars in debt which would be very difficult to get out from under. It would probably take me the rest of my life to get back even again. That worries me. Everybody says “Oh, don’t worry, the film will be a huge success” and I’m sure it will be, but if it is just one of those mildly successful film sequels, I’d lose everything. It has to be the biggest grossing sequel of all time for me to break even.
AA: You’ve always acted on that kind of faith, haven’t you?
GL: Well, most of this filmmaking effort is so I can create a dream, a dream I’ve had for a long time, which is to build a research retreat for film. The amount of money needed to develop a facility like that is so enormous that the money I have doesn’t amount to anything. You need millions and millions of dollars to build such an operation. The only way I can do it is to create a company that will generate profits.
There’s a world of difference between the money making abilities of corporations and those of individuals. For an individual to make two or three million dollars is a big deal. He’d feel very wealthy and secure. But most corporations have to make thirty or forty million dollars a year in order to feel secure. No matter how much money I make individually, I don’t think I’d ever have enough to compete on a corporate level. To take care of just the overhead of a company, to pay all the employees every year, costs several million dollars. I couldn’t direct enough films fast enough to pay all those people. So I had to develop a company.
AA: Although you’ve diversified, the Star Wars films are at the heart of it all
GL: Yes, they are the core, which is why I have to concentrate on them. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life making Star Wars pictures, but I do want to get them set up so that they’ll operate properly without having to get completely involved in all of them. They’ve got to be self generating to support the facility.
AA: So it’s vital that Empire be successful.
GL: It’s important that this film have the quality of the first one so it doesn’t look as though we are skimping, which is what a good many sequels have done. I want people to realize we put the highest quality in every picture, that the quality’s not going to drop. That’s the challenge.
AA: Escalation of cost seems to be a disease in moviemaking on this scale.
GL: The problem is that pictures of this kind are very difficult to make. I can’t stress that enough. The number of people involved, the amount of materials involved, the decision-making that costs money every day - all these are horrendous compared with a normal movie. It’s logistically and technically so complicated that if you don’t know what you’re doing you can get into trouble very quickly. Fortunately on the special-effects side, which is where Star Trek and Black Hole got into trouble, we’re very secure. At ILM I have extremely good people working for me. They know exactly what I want, and they do a terrific job. I have control over the special effects, so I feel confident that we’re not going to be in any trouble there. The only problem I have now is the speed of production. That’s the only thing that’s costing us any more money. Otherwise everything is going along very well.
AA: What has been you’re reaction to the many imitations of Star Wars?
GL: It was to be expected. I don’t mind imitation. It is a form of flattery, but I do object to outright copying that tries to convince the public that this or that is part of the Star Wars saga. I think that is very, very wrong. There’s a line between just doing something similar, and doing something that is trying to copy directly.
AA: Do you find that there is always a conflict between cost and quality in filmmaking?
GL: Yes, and I feel the quality of the film we’re making now is as good as the first film. The issue is always one of time and money. On Star Wars I had a tendency to use only what I needed, and since nobody realised the movies potential, they only gave me what I needed. Now the expectations are higher. So when Kersh asks for something, he gets a little more than he asks for, and it’s that little more that translate into millions of dollars.
AA: Can you put a stop to it?
GL: It’s not something you can stop. I’m sort of half-businessman, half-filmmaker right now and I get very concerned, even more than Gary, because as executive producer I’m paying for it. The director worries about making the movie and doesn’t have to care about any of the other things. Well, I care very strongly. Unless you’ve got somebody at the helm on a day-to-day level trying to cut everything down, it just doesn’t happen. Gary is trying but, ultimately, Kersh is the one in the driver’s seat, and he just isn’t of the same school as I am. It’s understandable. Most directors aren’t. They’re concerned about making movies, not about saving money. They just want to do the best job they possibly can and make the film as good as possible - which is what they’re paid to do.
AA: It’s why you must at moments feel you want to get in there and direct the picture yourself.
GL: There’s not much I can do. I can help Kersh when he lays out a scene, which is the same sort of thing Gary’s been trying to do. I think Kersh is doing a great job. I had a time problem on the first film, too. It took seventeen weeks and we had been scheduled for thirteen which admittedly was impossible. But I’m used to making films in a much shorter time. American Graffiti was made in twenty eight days. I’m not used to everything going as slowly as it does. It has a tendency to drive me crazy, although not as much on this picture as on the first, despite the fact I have infinitely more at stake in this one.
AA: Time is money in any situation, but in the film business it’s such big money.
GL: Most directors can make a technically good movie if they have enough time and money. There is a theory that monkeys could be Picassos given enough paint and allowed to go with it long enough. They’d duplicate all Western art. In movies give someone $150 million and fifty years to make a film, and the odds are good that they’ll make a professional movie. The real challenge is to do it for a minimum amount of money in a reasonable amount of time. When I look at films I can tell one that cost $30 million, but if you can make a film that looks as good but only cost $15 million, then you’ve accomplished something.
AA: Francis Ford Coppolla was indulged on Apocalypse Now wasn’t he?
GL: He indulged himself. I was going to make that picture for $2 million; he made it for over $30 million. It could have been done in a year; he took four. Apocalypse cost so much money, much more than the picture we’re doing now, that it simply doesn’t make economic sense. And I worry about breaking even! Our chances are ten times better than his. If I were Francis, I’d be extremely worried.
AA: You’re saying that talent shouldn’t be pampered in this way.
GL: I believe in discipline. I believe you must learn your craft. The craft of filmmaking is very difficult, very technical, and very involved. I become impatient with people who aren’t the best craftsman, who don’t know their job, who aren’t really on top of things. I appreciate professionalism. I feel strongly that it’s the absolute foundation of directing. In whatever kind of film you’re talking about there is the content, the art, and the craft. The craft is getting your work done on time every day, getting all the stuff you need, overcoming the adversities. It’s like being a gladiator and having to go into the ring each day. You have no idea whether you’re going to go up against three men, one giant man, or two lions. Everyday there are impossible problems. And one of the first things you learn at film school is that there are no rules. Filmmaking is making the impossible happen every day, and there are no excuses.
AA: You continue to suggest a division within yourself, between the artist and the practical man, the craftsman and the dreamer.
GL: Yes, I have two sides, one creative and one practical, but I separate them. I accept and enjoy my practical side. It doesn’t get in the way of the creativity; it is a part of it.
People have said my films have no content, but the truth is they have much more content than most critics realize. People usually don’t look beyond the surface of pure entertainment. For a film to be thought of as having content, it must have spelled out in bold letter, “Look at the content.”
AA: Putting yourself at risk financially may be a good creative discipline.
GL: My nature is to do everything myself. I like to be the editor, the cameraman, the art director, and so on. Inside, I’m simply a craftsman and if I weren’t a filmmaker I’d probably be a painter or a cabinetmaker.
AA: I’ve thought of you as a toymaker, if not a puppeteer.
GL: I remember George Cukor saying to me once, “you refer to yourself as a filmmaker. I’m a director. A filmmaker is like being a toymaker.” I replied that a director sounds like somebody who runs a business. I’d rather be a toymaker.
My inclination is to make my own films. At first I was able to do that. I made films using very small crews. If something went wrong in the art department, I would just go fix it myself. On Star Wars I couldn’t do that. I tried to be in complete control, but it almost killed me. It was just too difficult and I was miserable because I agonized over things not turning out my way. But I had to step back. If I were ever going to create on that scale again, I told myself, I would have to do it through others. That isn’t easy.
AA: Do you ever wish you’d let it stop at Star Wars?
GL: At first I was contemplating selling the whole thing to Fox to do whatever they wanted with it. I’d just take my percentage and go home and never think about Star Wars again. But the truth of it is I got captivated by the thing. It’s in me now. And I can’t help but get excited when something isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. I can see that world. I know the way the characters live and breathe. In a way they have taken over.
AA: So you decide to continue the saga.
GL: When I was in film school, I was into very abstract kind of filmmaking. I want to get back to it. Which brings me again to the research center. That is really the core of my drive to make this work. Movies cost a lot of money. You can’t just go out and make them, no matter how rich you are. You have to devise a mechanism, a funding machine that will allow you to make movies. Nobody has been able to accomplish this very well except by means of government subsidies. In the U.S. there are few subsidies. Not even the studios have the money to finance films without concern for their commerciality. So, I learned the system and I beat it. Now I want to use it to make the kind of films I’m interested in, regardless of their commerciality.
