RogueLeader said:
Maybe I am a bit too harsh on the “George” revisionism claim regarding Rinzler, but apparently that modified “midichlorian” quote is around page 398 of the Making of Star Wars book.
I’ll have to check my copy.
Yeah, actually I think what you said is exactly on point. Rinzler mentions in that interview that he had actually finished the manuscript, and that there really wasn’t anything “juicy” in it per se. He said he felt if it was ever released, fans would probably be disappointed. But he thinks the reason it was cancelled was because Lucasfilm didn’t want to bring back up certain things from production, things that the public already knows, like Lucas saying they didn’t use his treatments, Brad Bird being in talks to direct early on, Harrison Ford’s injury (which Rinzler describes as “Harrison almost dying”). Like you said, it might be a long time before we get any official Behind the Scenes book outside of the Art of books, I would say at the earliest 10 years from now, if not longer.
I imagine yeah that the main reason it was canned is that right now LFL and Disney seem to try to be very tight lipped about a lot of behind the scenes things, even ones that aren’t necessarily negative. I feel like if we did get a making of after TFA, it probably wouldn’t have been much more in depth than the doc we got on the blu-ray.
On the other hand some of that secrecy is probably coming from JJ/Bad Robot, as that’s their MO. Rian seems to be a lot more open with the process, especially with hiring a documentary filmmaker to be on set 24/7. Ultimately what we got on the TLJ blu-ray is a lot more honest about the process of making that film, though in fairness LFL was probably okay with that because TLJ is easily the smoothest production there has ever been for a SW film, and really the only person who might not like what’s in the doc is Rian himself (what with the discussions of people disagreeing with his approach), but I think he figured fans would be mature enough to understand what was going on (little did he know…).
That’s why I think it would be really interesting for a fan-made book were to be made that would compile as much known information regarding the development as possible. Sources like books, interviews, blogs, behind the scenes videos, etc. But something in the vein of Secret History might be the only “making of” book we might get for a very long time.
I’d be leery of a fan made book right now just because there’s so little information out there that a lot of it is misinformation. Secret History, just like Rinzler’s books, had the benefit of years of hindsight and also a lot of different sources to pull from, including the original scripts and treatments (none of which have been made available for the Disney films).