Yes. The film is a success and I think the sequels will be a success. I want to be able to have a store where I can sell all the great things that I want. I’m also a diabetic and can’t eat sugar and I want to have a little store that sells good hamburgers and sugarless ice cream because all the people who can’t eat sugar deserve it. You need the time just to be able to retire and do those things, and you need to have an income…
George Lucas, in an interview with The Rolling Stone, August 1977.
Does anybody know if he ever got around to opening that restaurant?
[George Lucas] has a binder, like this green, literally like an old style trapper keeper. And in it, it has like his name written in the front of it, just like you would write in school. But this is the original binder that he notated “The Star Wars.” And in it are of his handwritten notes that go back to like 1976, ‘75, and you see these names written down, and you see like Tatooine written down and Macey Windus in there, like all these different character names and stuff.
And he’ll open it up and be like ‘well, we need a character name’ and he’ll go through and he has a whole bunch of pages of planets and names. So he’s still sourcing from a lot of original material for what we do in “Clone Wars” the same way he did in the prequels and the original trilogy.
He pulls out old style Ralph McQuarrie, Joe Johnston, John Mollo designs and we put them in the show, and again, he’s such a key cohesive part of what makes this feel more like Star Wars. Cause we never set out to make our version of it. We’re like, ‘George, we just wanna continue what you were doing and try to make it great.’
Dave Filoni, talking about working on The Clone Wars with George Lucas at Celebration VI {source}
One thing everyone forgets about Revenge of the Sith (which I suppose is fair enough, it was ten years ago) is how political and mildly controversial it was at the time.
When
reviews started coming out for it they all highlighted the point. The Washington Post called the movie “a blistering critique of the war
in Iraq“, the New York Times reported that “Mr. Lucas is clearly jabbing
his light saber in the direction of some real-world political leaders”,
and Slant Magazine called it “an anti-Bush diatribe”. Even Hayden Christensen jumped in there and said the film was “absolutely” a shot at Bush and other US presidents, and George Lucas took some time out during the press tour to explain his thoughts on US foreign policy.
Some people went as far as to recommend a boycott. (It didn’t work, obviously) To this day
I’ve heard people say that Anakin’s line “If you’re not with me, you’re
my enemy” is lifted direct from a Bush speech – it’s not, but it’s very very close. People went wild about it.
ROTS was absolutely a movie of its time, and that time’s gone now, and time hasn’t exactly been kind to the movie either. But it seemed quite important way back then, and it’s definitely as, well, as angry as a Star Wars film ever got.
I remember I first saw it in New York at the Ziegfeld, and there were gasps at the shots of smoke rising from the towers of the Jedi Temple, and Padmes line “you can see the smoke from here”, both very 9/11. It definitely helped put into focus a lot of what I think the movie is really about in the short term political sense– not Iraq necessarily, but the larger war on terror abroad and at home, with all thr talk of emergency powers and imperial declarations of security feeling more and more on the nose after the swift passage of the Patriot Act. The position that Anakin is put into by Palpatine and the Jedi alike is very apt for an age of surveillance and interdepartmental feuding– he’s basically an FBI profiler asked to spy on his people by the head of the CIA, while also being asked to spy on the CIA chief by the FBI.
I remember walking out of the theater in Westchester later in overhearing an angry woman who was also walking out of the theater, who was pissed that “he had to make them wear American unifoms”. I couldn’t understand what she meant at first, but I realized she must’ve meant the clone troopers that Yoda decapitates as they’re about to kill him on Kashyyk, as they’re wearing jungle camouflage armor. To think that a small detail like that could get under someone’s skin and offend them on that personal a level! That’s a type of filmmaking we won’t see again in Star Wars, and are only maybe barely seeing in blockbusters anymore thanks to it being commercially viable in the Captain America films. Sorta.
The Star Wars community on Tumblr has been super amazing these past couple of weeks, welcoming the new actors/characters to the Star Wars family while at the same time going back and appreciating the old cast from the Original Trilogy and the Prequels.. But there’s one thing I’ve noticed that’s been quite absent from my dash and that’s some George Lucas appreciation. I’d like to see a bit more love on my dash, he may be a bit of a divisive figure for some, but he’s also been involved in many things that were a part of your childhood outside of Star Wars and is a great philanthropist too. I’d like to make this an appreciation post.
George Lucas founded Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) a motion picture visual effects company in May 1975. It, is a division of the film production company, Lucasfilm, which Lucas founded, and was created when Lucas began production of the film Star Wars. [More here]
In 2005, Lucas gave US$1 million to help build the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial on the National Mall in Washington D.C. to commemorate American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. [X]
The animation studio Pixar was founded as the Graphix Group, one third of the Computer Division of Lucasfilm. Pixar’s early computer graphics research resulted in groundbreaking effects in films such as Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Young Sherlock Holmes, and the group was purchased in 1986 by Steve Jobs shortly after he left Apple Computer.
Lucas founded the George Lucas Educational Foundation and the website Edutopia to reform and improve K-12 education. The foundation emphasizes hands-on, project-based learning over plodding devotion to standardized tests and traditional textbooks. It highlights innovative teaching efforts that are already working in classrooms. [X]
Photoshop was first used at the Industrial Light & Magic as an image-processing program. Photoshop was created by ILM Visual Effects Supervisor John Knoll and his brother Thomas as a summer project. It was used on The Abyss. The Knoll brothers sold the program to Adobe shortly before the film’s release.
On September 19, 2006, USC announced that Lucas had donated $175–180 million to his alma mater to expand the film school. It is the largest single donation to USC and the largest gift to a film school anywhere. [X]
LucasArts Entertainment Company, LLC is an American video game publisher and licensor.
It was founded in May 1982 by George Lucas as Lucasfilm Games, the video game development group of his film company, Lucasfilm.
Remember this? The sound equipped system, THX Ltd, was founded by Lucas and Tomlinson Holman. The company was formerly owned by Lucasfilm, and contains equipment for stereo, digital, and theatrical sound for films, and music. THX was named after Holman, with the “X” standing for “crossover” as well as in homage to Lucas’s first film, THX 1138.
The George Lucas Family Foundation announced Tuesday, $10 million of its 2006 pledge will go toward financial support for African American and Hispanic students at the USC School of Cinematic Arts. [X]
