Heilemann

There's no need for a new trilogy, is there? Star Wars is well represented in games and animated series; so why would he want to go back into the ring?

More importantly, who wants him to?

What bothers me so much about this in particular, is that it would take next to nothing to keep an old blog alive. So it's not an official part of starwars.com anymore; that doesn't mean that permalinks and their content need to disappear.

starwars.com has a tendency to dump their old content with each redesign, making a lot of fantastic old articles unavailable (like The Last Correllian Shipyard). Not that I should be surprised at this disregard for archiving great content (hardy har), but I was wondering if anyone has been archiving these things? I have a couple of articles stashed away, but it breaks my heart to see the few good things to appear on starwars.com simply vanish into a void because the people running the thing either don't care, or are technically incompetent.

I really wish I could find a first-hand source on Lucas and Frazetta.

You sir are my hero today, thanks :)

Yeah, I've been trying to figure out what print it is, but I can't make it out.

I have this crazy theory that I want to run by some like-minded individuals. Tag, you're it.

This is George Lucas and Frank Frazetta. Notice Lucas's sweater.

There are a bunch of photos of Lucas in that sweater around the time of the Star Wars pre-/production, here's one:

So. When exactly did Lucas visit Frazetta? Before or after Star Wars came out?

If before, was he trying to recruit him for the film? Or maybe for a poster? The Style A poster is certainly reminiscient of Frazetta's iconic poses after all.

It's kind of a longshot, but there's something plausible about it in my mind, even though I've never heard it talked about before.

Differ how? Skywalking doesn't seem to indicate a year. In either case, I'd trust Skywalking.

There was an article on starwars.com about the comic book, but it disappeared in one of the thoughtless redesigns. I'll see if I can find it again when I got a few minutes.

The Kirby connection is one of the things I'm researching; it's interesting, but it isn't as obvious as some people would like to make it out. Nonetheless, there definitely seems to be something there.

This is great stuff, thanks for finding it!

Great stuff! Thanks!

Still wish I could figure out exactly when Lucas came onboard. Probably after Graffiti...

Yeah I saw that one.

There's surprisingly little information about that place, and as far as I can tell, no photos of it.

Lucas was a silent partner of the Supersnipe Comic Art Emporium in 1977 (source: Rolling Stone interview, 1977). But when did he get into it, and when did he get out of it? I can't seem to find any information on it anywhere.

Is this available anywhere in a less fragmented version?

IT IS. NOT. A CHRISTMAS. SPECIAL. :)

Released prior to thanksgiving, it is a 'holiday' special.

Why didn't we think of that before? That's GENIUS!

It's a holiday special, not a christmas special. It was broadcast on November 17th; so if anything, it was a thanksgiving special.

SilverWook said:

Was also interesting to hear Ralph McQuarrie talk about the SF novel cover George brought him to use as an inspiration for Chewie. Probably the one in my avatar.

 

You didn't read my article?

http://binarybonsai.com/2010/09/18/george-lucas-stole-chewbacca-but-its-okay/

In that case, you're going to love this bit:

The Ewoks were portrayed by little people wearing five-piece suits with full head masks, elements of which had been cast in the plasterer's shop. "I was second unit director for six weeks, and they put me on the Ewok village, which I started during the end party," says [Roger] Christian. "And George fell in love with these things, the Ewoks. And the more I shot what he wanted, the more he kept saying, 'Oh, have the babies dancing, and do this and do that.' We spent ten days shooting the Ewoks dancing and falling and doing acrobatics

That's a strange interpretation, if you ask me.

I can't remember having read anything quite as honest on Marquand's role on Jedi, as this, from page 187 in Blueprints, or did I miss something?:

The other new kid on the block was higher up the pecking order, director Richard Marquand, whom Lucas hired to complete the trilogy. Lucas was determined not to experience the gut-wrenching experiences of the first two *Star Wars* films: *Jedi* was going to come in on schedule and on budget, as *Raiders* had. To that end, he replaced Kurtz with producer Howard Kazanjian and promoted Robert Watts to producer; the latter would deal primarily with work in England, and the former would take care of production in the United Sates, were filming would also take place this time around.

In retrospect, it's easy to see that Marquand was the odd man out; nearly everyone else working on the film at that level as an old hand. Early on, because he was under tremendous pressure to move quickly, it was clear that Marguand's dailies were not looking as good as those of *Empire*. Marquand and his DP, Alan Hume, came mainly from television and were lighting *Jedi* equivalently in order to stay on the hectic schedule.

"Richard was more conventional, a charming man, very thorough, and he worked closely with George," says Reynolds. "He was very easy to work with, but a little bit more predictable. I do believe he was a bit intimidated by George, because *Star Wars* and *Empire* were such a huge thing by then."

"George got a little bit worried about the way Richard Marquand was directing it," says Roger Christian, who was brought in unofficially as second unit director. "That was what Robert Watts explained to me, who said, 'Can you come up now and take over second unit? But I can't give you credit, because we promise it to Dave Tomblin.' And I said, 'It doesn't matter to me. I'll help George do anything.' We're family, really. That's how I regarded it. So I arrived–I'll never forget this–I arrived and George said, 'Can you take over?' And Robert said, 'We're under horrendous scheduling problems here. I have to get off these stages and move on, so come with me."

Looking forward to it.

You have a tremendous ability to never actually reply to what other people write. But then, maybe it's simply my personal issues running wild again...

JasonN said:

twooffour said:

http://redlettermedia.com/half-in-the-bag/the-people-vs-george-lucas-and-star-wars-discussion/

Scene of the guys comparing cover art for the video releases, one guy holds up the DVD cover art for Star Wars:
"George let one of his daughters play with Photoshop."
"Awwww."

Damn, I laughed hard for a few minutes at that one. :D

 

It really is tremendous how bad the covers have gotten over the years. It's been a general trend in films in general, much lamented by, by none other than Drew Struzan himself in The Movie Posters of Drew Struzan (worth your money), in which he talks about how the studios generally screwed him over several times and have now all but given up anything but the floating heads photo collage approach.

To Lucas's credit, he did hire Struzan for the SE posters and the Prequels, but the mind boggles at why LFL would release the covers they have been releasing over the years when they have some of the best artwork ever created for film, period.

Not to mention the blu-ray art... Ugh.