For god’s sake, don’t let him see Avatar!
Star Wars’ success is the worst thing that ever happened to Lucas.
Marcia Lucas leaving him was the worst thing that ever happened to Lucas. By many accounts it was her input as an editor and confidante that made the original trilogy as good as it was. Spielberg and Coppola received input from her on their films at the time, too. There are those who say that if you’re a fan of the original Star Wars films, you’re actually a fan of Marcia Lucas.
That’s really interesting. I’ve never heard that before. I always attributed the goodness of the original trilogy to Lucas being the idea man, while the writers and directors were the sculptors that molded those raw ideas into something great. I find it to be really interesting that his wife was a big part of that.
The first Lucas-cut of Star Wars was atrocious. I was surprised they included bits of it on one of those behind the scenes DVDs. The 3 editors with Marcia Lucas at the helm really made the movie pop from the bare bits it was. One example, I think the Sand Person raising his stick was actually one movement that was duplicated to make it longer. They also cut out a lot of the terrible lines and acting. Well the most that they could.
He had a baaaaaaad feeling about that.
If something was horribly wrong with anything during the making of Star Wars, and it needed to be changed and only Lucas could okay it but he refused, you brought the issue to Marcia and she would argue with him (full on screaming matches on occasion) until he finally backed down and conceded.
Supposedly Copolla showed her an early cut of The Godfather, as well, and she had a lot of input on what ended up as the final cut. One of the people who worked with the Copolla/Spielberg/Lucas cadre at the time said that they’d show stuff to Marcia and she’d look at it and say “Do this there, move this here” and suddenly problem areas in the film would just work. I believe a prequel trilogy with Marcia Lucas’ input would have been a very, very different one.
Much of this is mentioned/rehashed in The Secret History of Star Wars, which I highly recommend.
Just as an aside, I’ve never considered what they do with the Bond films to be a “reboot.” I’ve always assumed that both the name “James Bond” and the designation “007” are used by MI-6 as identifiers for whomever they currently have acting as their fixer/assassin in that role. As each Bond retires or dies, they just slot another in. The movies have more than once referred to other “00” designatees, other fixer/assassins I would assume.
Seems to be a common historical theme. ;) Still, it makes me wonder why she didn’t do more in film. Probably too many bad memories from George.
Thanks George!
Yeah, what happened to Marcia Lucas? What did she end up doing?
That’s a good question. The last movie work she did was editing Return of the Jedi. I have no solid info, but the divorce was notoriously acrimonious. Gotta wonder if Lucas, at the height of his power, sort of had a “if you work with Marcia you don’t work with me” unspoken rule in place that made people shun the talented editor in favor of the new master of blockbuster film cash-money who was also best friends with Steven “everything I touch except 1941 is gold” Spielberg.
Then again, they met in film school and worked their way up through the indie film world together for 15 years. Most likely she just identified film with George to such a degree that she left it entirely, as you say.
I think Lawrence Kasdan deserves much of the credit for the greatness of Empire Strikes Back, and the better parts of Return of the Jedi (his script was also Ewok-less).
Are a rollicking sex drive and love for martinis standard-issue then?
Its part of the cover.
I saw a documentary on TV recently that sort of shed a lot of light on stuff I had wondered about…
Like why Lucas went with Kirshner for Empire Strikes Back… turns out that in his revolt from the studio system he was too busy setting up and running LucasFilm to direct the sequel.
Then he got into a hellacious rift with the director’s guild over the placement of the director’s credits after the movie and not before it, so he bolted. And because of that, he couldn’t get his buddy Spielberg to direct Jedi because Stevie was still with the guild. So he had to turn to Marquand.
I can’t imagine what Jedi would have been like had David Lynch not turned them down.
Hell of a lot more dead Ewoks.
Certainly true. According to Kasdan, he got the job rewriting Empire’s screenplay when he went up to the Ranch to turn in his draft of Raiders. He handed the script to Lucas and Lucas said “I need a shooting script for Empire in two weeks, can you do it?” Kasdan said, “But you haven’t even read Raiders. What if you hate it?” Lucas replied, “Well, start on it today and I’ll read this tonight and if I hate it I’ll call you tomorrow.”
Lucas didn’t hate Raiders, so Kasdan continued to bang out what became the shooting script of ESB.
All I know is she has a building named after her at USC’s film school.
Lucas didn’t hate Raiders, so Kasdan continued to bang out what became the shooting script of ESB.
Hmm interesting. Did Kasdan write Raiders first, despite it coming out a year later than ESB? I know the famed Lucas/Spielberg story conference about Raiders happened in 77 or 78.
Leigh Brackett also worked on the ESB script, as I recall.
Yeah, that’s what I thought until I thought about it a second and realized Ford probably wouldn’t be in one of those.