Originally posted by: darkhelmetIf you look at his filmography as a screenplay writer on IMDB.com, the ratio of story writing to script writing is substantially higher. He isn't credited with screenplay at all for ESB and only as co-writer for ROTJ, though the stories for both are his. I believe Lucas can have great ideas for stories as evidenced by the great adventures of the Original Trilogy and by those of the Indiana Jones films as well, but as a script writer, his dialogue is always pretty wooden. THX1138 owes more of its emotional effect to the lack of dialogue than it does to its presence.
I'd definitely like to know what was going on in Lucas's world for the PT that hindered him from getting great script input from others. Aside from that, I think his filmography shows that his skills as a script writer were not necessarily substantial to begin with, and any decrease in his writing skills would go far to explain the PT scripts.
Yeah, you are on the right track i think. His stengths are in storytelling, editing and visuals, but he lacks in character and emotion, which is what his collaborators provide. Huyck and Katz wrote most of the dialog for Graffiti while Lucas wrote the scenes and the general tone of the film, and the result is a remarkable convincing portrayal of the 1962 cruising era (combined with a terrific cast made it even more compelling).
What was the difference for the PT? Well, all of his circle of friends have basically drifted apart. When he wrote Star Wars he would share all the drafts with his filmmaking friends such as Coppola, Milius, DePalma (who actually re-wrote ANH's opening crawl), Ritchie, Kaufman and of course his brilliant wife Marcia who is one of the unsung heroes of the American New Wave IMO. He took all of their comments and criticism and reshaped the story based on their input. Then he had Katz and Huyck do a rewrite of the dialog, and of course he had a fantastic editing team that made the most out of the material he shot (which included his wife, who won an oscar for the film--the only oscar the Lucases ever had). ESB and ROTJ had similar circumstances, although he was more secluded from his original friends. But he still had conferences with Kershner, Kurtz and Kasdan and of course Kasdan rewrote the final drafts of the film (and then you have some better directing to boot). True ROTJ is a little weak but that really has to do with the fact that story-wise they wrote themselves into a corner with a lot of it. Anyway, by the time he got to the PT he basically just wrote it all himself. Even in 1983 there was an interview where he basically says that the story is in his head so much that he doubted anyone could get it out just the way he wanted it. Frank Darabont was approached in 1993 to be a co-writer but the need for him never arose--because Lucas basically kept on writing on his own. He did it all by himself, and thats why the critical hand of a co-writer is sorely missed.
Maybe your script is a more comprehensive one (definitely likely), but the one I was pulling the 13 page script info from did actually say in its introduction that 13 pages at one point did take him a year to write.
The book is wrong. Theres so much misinformation about the early drafts of Star Wars. By his own admission he began it in January of 1973, just as he finished the editing of American Graffiti, and by May he had a 13 page adaptation of Kurosawa's Hidden Fortress that he called The Star Wars. He basically started over and wrote a new full-length script that was about 140 pages or so and was completed in May 1974, one year later.
Thank you for clearing up the script writing percentage for me. I guess I've been just so disappointed with Lucas's latest efforts, I was hoping the answer was as easy him having had a huge amount of help on the script. I'm tossing out my unused crazy pill prescription as we speak.
Would be interesting to know how much difference those script changes made. Is the pre-Huyk/Katz-influenced script out on the Bendu site? (I'm at work and need to get off the forum soon.)
Thanks for all the info zombie84!
