Making of Empire Strikes Back pushed back to October. — Page 2

none said:

There's some answers to that question in the comments of the article.

Doh!  F11, of course!  Thanks none!

I can't wait for this book.

Has anyone read Star Wars Year by Year? I picked it up last week and am really enjoying it.

xhonzi said:

I made a jokey post about it, but no I haven't read it yet.

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Star-Wars-Year-By-Year/topic/11800/

 That was a good one!

Apparently some copies have gone out already.  Amazon UK has shipped them.

Easterhay said:

JW Rinzler is a great writer but this book has got some living up to do.  Alan Arnold's long out-of-print Once Upon A Galaxy: A Journal Of The Making Of The Empire Strikes Back (which has uncontestable proof that yes, Star Wars was always intended to be a nine-part saga and a hilarious on-set sequence involving the shoot in the carbon freezing chamber where David Prowse, with hysterically bad timing, tries to get Irving Kershner to read his book on fitness whilst Kersh is trying to juggle about eight balls at once.  Prowse is lucky he didn't end up in the carbon freeze himself that day.) has always been, for me, the definitive insight into the making of this film.

It's evidence that Star Wars at one point after the first film was going to be a nine part saga.

Bingowings wrote:

It's evidence that Star Wars was at one point after the first film was going to be a nine part saga.

And according to a 77-78 Kenner promotional video and Bantha Tracks (Issue 02 pg 4) the old fan magazine the saga was 12 films... at one point.  Awhile ago Empire Magazine (think it was them) did a fold out where they tracked all the quotes of how long the saga was to be.  For me it's just 7.5 half movies.  They had something different.

(Bantha Track pdfs: http://www.artoosnews.com/banthatracks/" target="_blank" title="web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.artoosnews.com/banthatracks/">http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.artoosnews.com/banthatracks/ )

(most from an active site: http://www.jeditemplearchives.com/specialreports/banthatracks/ )

Easterhay said:

JW Rinzler is a great writer but this book has got some living up to do.  Alan Arnold's long out-of-print Once Upon A Galaxy: A Journal Of The Making Of The Empire Strikes Back (which has uncontestable proof that yes, Star Wars was always intended to be a nine-part saga and a hilarious on-set sequence involving the shoot in the carbon freezing chamber where David Prowse, with hysterically bad timing, tries to get Irving Kershner to read his book on fitness whilst Kersh is trying to juggle about eight balls at once.  Prowse is lucky he didn't end up in the carbon freeze himself that day.) has always been, for me, the definitive insight into the making of this film.

Agreed. I picked that book up many years ago, and it's always been one of the best Making of books out there.

none said:

Bingowings wrote:

It's evidence that Star Wars was at one point after the first film was going to be a nine part saga.

And according to a 77-78 Kenner promotional video and Bantha Tracks (Issue 02 pg 4) the old fan magazine the saga was 12 films... at one point. 

 It's so odd that Lucas, rather than being glad he made one of the best films of all time, immediatly started spinning yarns like that.

Not "It would be cool to make 12 (or 9 or 6) films"

but

"I have this master plan already mapped out."  Which is so demonstrably false.

TheBoost wrote:

"It would be cool to make 12 (or 9 or 6) films"

This is part of the split between Lucas and Gary Kurtz.  When it was 12 (1977-1978), the idea was to have different directors take a spin through the SW universe.  When working out ESB and the Revelation (1978-1979), that's when things became 9.  Kurtz spoke at CV how when he was around, the third movie would have ended with Luke walking off into the sun to search for the Other.  During RotJ (1981+) that's when 6 settled in, as everyone got tired of working on these projects, so Lucas tied up all the loose ends and converted it into Anakin's story.  Once all that was in place, that's when the master plan stuff started coming out, it's an easy way to give the phenomenon a mystic; via a master plan.

and at any moment, a new logic can be applied and everything before can be re-written.  either when he's ready to hand off the reigns to someone else, or as he goes senile, that's when things will get interesting.

feel free to speculate how to go about this. 

*EDIT* Makes sense that the Holiday Special might have been the deciding factor which convinced Lucas to stop allowing others work in the SW universe.  But each step along the way Lucas clamps down a bit more.

Conversely, an example of loosening up would be Genndy Tartakovsky's Clone Wars cartoon.

none said:

*EDIT* Makes sense that the Holiday Special might have been the deciding factor which convinced Lucas to stop allowing others work in the SW universe.  But each step along the way Lucas clamps down a bit more.

Which is why watching the Holiday Special now is so much more enjoyable knowing Lucas hates it so much :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fpu4kopxmGY&feature=player_embedded#!

Promo Video

No, no, the II was just to throw people off the master plan!

So...Dennis Muren talking about the importance of the history of this movie and the old methods and knowledge, it's like LFL is just making fun of us at this point.

This got a mention on thedigitalbits.