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Star Wars On Trial - book and project

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sounds like an interesting project:

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for you, french speaking members i recomand you another book: “George Lucas, l’homme derriere le mythe” (Lucas, the man behind the myth) from Rafik Djoumi (former redactor from the famous french magazine MadMovies) a very interesting book about the “real” lucas and how his relationships (both profesional and personal) influenced his work and his behavior, it also restablish the truth were the Lucas-propaganda prints the “legend”

interview with the autor (french)

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God damn. Why can't we have anything cool like that in English. I'm too damn lazy to learn french to read that thing. Babelfish is good, but can only do so much.

Any word if and when this book will be translated?
"I am altering the movies. Pray I don't alter them any further." -Darth Lucas
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From one bearded guy to another ...
I am fluent in over six million forms of procrastination.
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here's the translation of the interview:

Who hides behind the creator of mythical Star Wars? Regarded in turn the "symbol of a cinema aggressively commercial" or as a "artist in phase with the public internationnal", vilified by the enormous community of fans to have dared to improve her works, George Lucas intrigues rightly. Of the man finally, we do not know large thing. As if a voluntarily maintained opacity surrounded its history, opening that and there by the only official documents. It is through this not very common course that Rafik Djoumi, permanent writer with Cadrage and director of collection to the Editions Atlas, decided to take us along. Its first work reconsiders questions left between brackets and tries to include/understand finally how the young person studying USC, which was identified in the Seventies with a hero named Luke Skywalker, could become 30 years later, the actor of a gigantic named machine Black Star.

Corinne Vuillaume: Why write this book?

Rafik Djoumi: It is an order at the beginning. My colleague Marc Godin (author of Gore, autopsy of a cinema and recent work on Emmanuelle) slipped my name with Anne Bottela, the coordinator leading of Absolum, whereas it sought an author "fixed" about George Lucas. Initially, I failed to refuse. Indeed, in 2002, I had written a criticism of Star Wars Episode II who tried to explain, in my opinion, the recent artistic rout of the saga while going up in the past of George Lucas, to question the disappearance of his more important collaborators. The article me was worth an avalanche of protests and insults, which continue still today. Even if, with title personal, I were satisfied to have obliged certain fans to question History (in particular about the producer Gary Kurtz whose name had completely disappeared from the consciences), I had some to endorse also a little enough the costume of the "bad lot which says evil of George Lucas", under pretext of not conform me to the official speech. Paradoxically, if paradox there is, this article despite everything more informative than polemic also was worth me several proposals to write and speak about Star Wars. For the anecdote, I even found myself to make a conference for a large chain of shops, at the time of the exit in DVD of the trilogy known as "of origin", where I explained to the customers why it was not to better buy this DVD! The people who called upon me were even charmed by the this conference holding altogether not very commercial. Always it is that after reflexion, I said myself that a book on George Lucas would enable me to leave the duality "opportunist genius infaillible/tâcheron" (which summarizes the guéguerre that pro and Wars anti-Star deliver themselves) to develop calmly, using arguments and of information, the portrait of a character whom one generally refuses to consider in all his complexity, from where the title with double direction: The Man behind the myth.

CV: To which it is intended?

RD: Mainly with the amateurs of cinema. I believe that the career of Lucas is sufficiently important to interest even those which do not appreciate its films, insofar as revolved around him of the important actors of the History of the cinema of the years 60-70. I also tried to avoid the too thorough scholarship or excessive popularization. The book badly does not contain handing-over in context, historical asides, definitions, figures which give to the reader tools for better evaluating a time and a career on which one said many silly things (bus not! Lucas and Spielberg did not kill the Hollywood cinema, they even partly saved it) Enfin, while choosing to grant a great place to the human reports/ratios, while describing best than I could the process of creation and the pain of this childbirth, I could note that the book interested even those which do not feel inevitably concerned by the 7th Art and its mechanisms.

CV: In what is it different from the other books written on George Lucas?

RD: Many works stick to the information published in official documents; what is not very judicious. The thick official biography, published in France last May, is in my eyes a catalogue impressing of lies by omission (in my opinion, plus the fact of Lucas itself that of the author of the book). When, on such a thick work devoted to a scenario writer, one writes only two unhappy lines on a woman who shared fifteen years of her life, which assembled its films, which read again its scripts, which advised it, supported, sometimes even saved, me I say that there is a large deficit of information. As a whole, far too many works devoted to the subject also refuse to be made the echo of polemic which exist indeed in the circles of film enthusiasts and geeks. The fact that three of the most popular films of all times virtually disappeared from the surface of the sphere, and owe their survival only to "pirates", is a polemical case. The fact that a scenario writer way his films re-installed by the public which it claims to aim is a polemical case. The fact that the contemporary independent cinema looks at Star Wars with contempt, whereas this film initiated the tools and the structure of financing of this same independent cinema, is a polemical case. A book on the subject must speak about it.

CV: How did you collect this information?

RD: I arose a quantity of dusty documents collected before 1983, that is to say before Lucasfilm does not start to revise partially certain aspects of the History. The work of Dale Pollock, George Lucas, the man who made the Star Wars, helped me much over the first years. That more recent of Gary Jenkis, Empire Building, is a gold mine for all that touches with the financial aspect (and also with the polemical aspect relating to Gary Kurtz). I was surprised to find, in old interviews, practically all the anecdotes of the book New Hollywood, which I believed being of the anecdotes collected by the author himself. Lastly, in 2004, I had been likely to meet Gary Kurtz. Although maintenance was done under high monitoring of delegated of Lucasfilm, it gave me serious tracks for my later research. The remainder was done by connections, by confronting various memories and documents, sometimes even of the sources which one could believe except subject (of the books on the sound, the business, the policy). The editor pointed out to me that the pages of bibliography of my book were well provided, but in truth I did not have the place all to put. My principal regret is to have missed Irvin Kershner at the time of its last passage in France. And I alas had neither time nor the means of offering a voyage to me to the United States to clear up with him certain points.

CV: What always intrigues you at the Lucas man?

RD: The nature of the talent, and the way with which this one émancipe or autodétruit. I have the same report/ratio with respect to George Lucas as with respect to Ridley Scott or Tim Burton. They are artists whom I formerly admired at the most point. When, in my eyes, I see them falling, until becoming the negation of what they were, I question myself. I try to include/understand what, in their private or professional life, allowed this radical change. At Scott, I ended up finding reasons professional, at Burton of the psychoanalytical reasons. George Lucas, belongs to him straightforwardly to the figure shakespearienne, so much the question of the capacity and control plays a dominating part at the same time in its emancipation and its imprisonment. I do not say that this book is a remake of Scarface, but some share the reader will see that what tarnishes today the image of Lucas is also what enabled him to shine formerly. Its guardian angels and its demons are made same substance.

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sorry if the translation is not accurate, babelfish seems to have problems with some french words or expressions....

here's a little help:

"opportunist genius infaillible/tâcheron" : infailable genius/ opportunist lousy director

guéguerre : little war

émancipe or autodétruit: free themselves or self destruct

figure shakespearienne :shakespearian figure

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Originally posted by: Invader Jenny
God damn. Why can't we have anything cool like that in English. I'm too damn lazy to learn french to read that thing. Babelfish is good, but can only do so much.

Any word if and when this book will be translated?



i doubt there will be any translation of this book ,but i will be happy to resume it or answer your questions.