PT Does the "Secret History of SW" paint an accurate picture of the making of the PT?

I know this book is old, but I just recently got around to reading the whole thing. What do you guys think about the way it portrays the making of the prequels?

Is it accurate or does the author cherry pick quotes to help his case?

Did Lucas really intend to have Palpy be Anakin's "father" at one point? Is Episode Three really "80 percent" of the prequel story as the author claims?

 

Well from the excerpts that I've read, the author is quite biased, imo. I think the author purposely went with a singular "one-way interpretation" of many quotes, which doesn't do them justice.

About your two questions:

Did Lucas really intend to have Palpy be Anakin's "father" at one point?
In an early rough draft for ROTS, Palpatine claims he "created" Anakin: I arranged for your conception. I used the power of the Force to will the midichlorians to start the cell division that created you. However, we don't know how serious of an option it was for Lucas. After anything, it could just as well have been nothing more than "reminder of an idea" for himself. An idea (manipulating midis, creating life, saving life etc.) that he planned to intergrate into a more advanced version of the script a lot more subtly.

Is Episode Three really "80 percent" of the prequel story as the author claims?
It isn't. One only has to watch the films in order to see. What's meant with the 80% is that his "notes" from 70s went 80% into ROTS, which is only logical because his notes weren't that detailed. It was like "Luke's father was a Jedi along Obi-Wan. Darth Vader was once a Jedi, then turned and killed a lot of them. Luke's mother met his father, they made a baby. The Emperor accumulated power and ultimately turned a democracy into the Empire". 80% of that extremely rough "idea" is Episode III (with Anakin and Padmé meeting and a few other things being Episode II and I). That said, of course, the "story" for Episode III is the "pay off" that needed to be set up in II and I, which is something Lucas hadn't planned in detail back then. So obviously, he came up with a lot of new stuff during the 90s and 00s.
Episode III being "80% if the prequel story" is nonsense. Episode III being "80% of Lucas's original notes" would probably be accurate.

 

The quote about ROTS being 80% of the story is from GL himself in Entertainment Weekly, not a claim of the author of TSHOSW, although he said it was 60%:

I'd agree with that, too - before he started to hammer out the story in the early 1990s, all we were aware of was Anakin's turn and the fall of the Republic, although there were probably a good few details we didn't know about back then.
We really don't know just how much GL actually developed the PT storyline beyond what was revealed in the OT and the bits & pieces from interviews and novelisations - which was more like 90% ROTS.

 

As to Anakin and Palpatine, Lucas did write and film that scene in 2003.



What ultimately happened was that he showed the rough cut to his friends in late 03, early 04 and they told him that he should change parts of Act II to make Anakin's turn happen differently. In doing so, Lucas changed his mind about what Palpatine says to Anakin.

"There is a hint in the movie that there was a Sith Lord who had the power to create life. But it's left unsaid: Is Anakin a product of a super-Sith who influenced the Midichlorians to create him, or is he simply created by the Midichlorians to bring forth a prophecy, or was he created by the Force through the Midichlorians? It's left up to the audience to decide. How he was born ultimately has no relationship to how he dies, because in the end, the prophecy is true: Balance comes back to the Force."

--George Lucas, Rolling Stone Magazine, 2005.

The Jedi Master is winning when Anakin arrives, but Palpatine, as the scene has been rethought, now seizes the occasion to exaggerate his weakness.

--The Making Of Revenge Of The Sith; Page 204

"(Palpatine is now laying down) But this part where he pretends to lose his power and become weak is something that I added later. Cause this moved the point where Anakin turned to this moment right here."

--George Lucas, ROTS DVD Commentary.

"Okay, well this sequence always started out with Mace uh overpowering Palpatine and then Palpatine using his powers to try to destroy Mace and Mace deflecting his rays with his Lightsaber. It always was that Anakin cut the Lightsaber out of his hand. But this part where he pretends to lose his power and be weak was something that I added later cause this is it moved the point where Anakin turns down to this moment right here and you can see that he’s now that its very clear that he’s, he wants him to go on trial so he can pump him for information about how to get these powers."

--George Lucas, ROTS DVD Commentary.

"It made a lot more sense to have him stay loyal to the Jedi which meant later on in this scene with the fight with Mace, we re-did that scene and at first there wasn’t the part where the Emperor gives up, he goes - “You got me! You got me!”. It was basically the scene without that where it gets more intense and Anakin finally breaks down and saves him, but it didn’t have the same feeling as that pause in there where you think…and it makes the emperor a lot more slimy, it's really fun. it’s a dramatic thing to deal with."

--George Lucas, ROTS DVD Commentary.

 

I too have read this book recently. I will confess that I could not put it down.
The only thing I found contradictive in his own work was just how close to Campbell GL really was prior to the completion of the OT. Supposedly he only becomes a disciple of his 'hero's journey' after the OT is complete, yet a quote from Marcia Lucas in the books states Campbell's "Hero of a Thousand Faces" is sitting on GL's desk as he writes ROJ. The Campbell issue is a lot bigger for other fans than it is for me, though; I just picked up on that as I read it.
All in all, I thought he portrayed the making of the prequels in a pretty positive light, yet honest light. When I started reading this, I seriously thought this is going to be another People vs George. I was very wrong. He is far more interested in deconstructing the myths about how Star Wars came to be.

 

darth-sinister , Wow, I had no idea the scene originally played out that way. Such a good change. Having Anakin just bust in and cut Mace's hand off would have been ridiculous. The way it plays in the final film makes you hope, for just a moment, that Anakin will actually make the right decision. Plus, like GL said, it just highlights how despicable and deceptive Palpatine really is.

 

I think it's about as accurate as it can be. The author did incredible research for the book. The notes in the back are prodigious.

I would say that he is biased but not quite biased compared to others. I think the author overall actually did a good job of looking at it from as unbiased a view as he could. Outside of the book in his other works he is not so but for the book which I have read several times he is quite good at balance overall though like many has some fixation on Marcia Lucas "saving" this and that with nothing really to back it up. She "saved" Raiders because they forget to include Marion at the end. OK fine but that sort of thing happens all the time in films. You put it together see what is missing and go back to get it.

The new Chris Taylor book How Star Wars Conquered The Universe. That is is horribly biased. He comes off as yet another sad fan who thinks the original trilogy is perfect in every way and the methods that made them were perfect in every way and that doing Star Wars movies any other way is wrong. He at least mentions the other side of the argument but which side he comes down on is not in doubt.

Of course ROTS is 80% of the prequel story. The prequel story which were background notes created from the notes of pre-story for the first film then the new notes that were created for the second film when Anakin and Vader were merged into one.

The point is that the wife and mother was just that. She didn't even have a name. In terms of the movies it's a massive part of the prequel story which for I and II is mostly new. The problem is using Lucas' calculations is that he doesn't really admit to lots of things because it really doesn't at all matter to 99.99% of people. For years he talked about splitting the larger script into 3 etc etc. It's like calling the Death Star in ANH filler or ESB filler because the actual original story ended on a forest planet with natives helping to fight the Empire.

 

Thanks for the responses everyone, very interesting.

 

Yep. Anakin is told by Palpatine that he is Sidious and that he was the one who created him. Anakin makes his choice to stay. Obi-wan, meanwhile, learns who Sidious is when he watches him appear as a hologram to inform the Separatist Council that they're going to Mustafar, rather than have Grievous be the one who break the news. Obi-wan recognizes him and holds off on his attack, instead contacting Mace and having him patch him through to Yoda. When the Jedi Posse attempt to arrest Palpatine, Mace orders Anakin to step back, but he doesn't and Palpatine uses Anakin's Lightsaber to fight the Jedi. You can see elements of this in the final film, as if you look closely, you can see that it is Anakin's saber rather than Palpatine's own saber. The fight goes the same way it does in the final film, but lacks all the dialogue and drama. Most of Act II had to be changed as the original version had Anakin being made a Master and still not satisfied with his lot in life and that his motives for turning is more power and ambition, than for personal need.

 

My two cents:

"The Secret History" is an impressive assemblage of sources and quotes, with a lot of time spent stitching them all together, and it gives a solid overview of the making of the existing saga. It's an excellent reference guide.

The Achilles heel of the book, in my opinion, is that it's obsessively centered on proving a particular thesis, coming across as somewhat insular and metallic, and even willfully ignorant, lacking aesthetic probity.

It's a fine book to consult if you want a general synopsis of "how" the main storyline of the series was put together, and some of the challenges faced along the way, though.

 

I would take the "Secret History of Star Wars" with an enormous grain of salt... actually more like enormous sandbags of salt, enough sandbags to fill a big rig. The problem is the book has essentially one main thesis... "George Lucas is a liar and I'm going to prove it to you." The core problem with the book is it assemble a bunch of quotes and:

a) largely takes them out of context (see the piece on his web site about Lucas and his statements before Congress about film preservation. He takes Lucas own words and spins them mightily to assert that Lucas is a hypocrit)

b) engages in a lot of partial quoting. In other words he gives you half the quote because if he gave you the entirety it would hurt his argument

Finally, he assembles a lot of interviews from former employees (i.e., fired), and other people who might have a bit of an ax to grind against Lucas. Gary Kurtz is one of the main offenders. I have a lot of problems with Kurtz because frankly he's a bit of a liar, or at least stretches the truth to an enormous degree. One of the things Star Wars fans need to divorce themselves from is this notion that Kurtz and Lucas we best buds, and independent filmmakers taking on the system; that's wrong. Kurtz and Lucas were business associates, nothing more. And when that relationship became strained over the budget of TESB, Kurtz was fired. It was not over petty jealousy, it was not over creative differences. Gary Kurtz was fired because Lucas, who wanted to self finance TESB and retain more control over the picture had to approach Fox to secure loans for the movie (giving up profits) because the movie was over budget and behind schedule. Kurtz simply failed at his job and was fired and replaced by a producer Lucas could trust.

Kurtz, for decades, has spun this yarn that somehow he was a co-creator of Star Wars, and deserves much of the praise for ANH and TESB. Unfortunately he's had a ready audience of OT-only fans who have concluded that Lucas jumped the shark and Kurtz must have reigned him in. Yeah, that would be neat if it were all true, but it's not. All people have to do is look at Kurtz and Lucas' track record after their "divorce" to reveal the truth:

Post Empire Kurtz has two major studio films to his name, The Dark Crystal, and Return to Oz. Interestingly in both cases the studio wanted Kurtz fired because both films were wildly over budget and behind schedule, and The Dark Crystal ended the friendship between Kurtz and Jim Henson because Kurtz kept trying to insert himself into the creative process, and the Dark Crystal was Henson's baby. Now to show you what kind of an a-hole Lucas is, Lucas went to Disney and lobbied to studio to keep both his friend Walter Murch as director AND Kurtz as Executive Producer despite Disney wanting to fire Kurtz on the spot. Lucas supervised the end of the production and gave the studio some of his own money as insurance... boy that Lucas sure in a jerk.

Post Oz, no one in the studio would touch Kurtz with a 30 foot electric cattle prod because the man simple could not keep big budget movies under control... just look at the list: Star Wars, Empire, Dark Crystal, Return to Oz. And I'm sure that had to grind his gears because after all he was the line producer on two of the most successful films of all time. Meanwhile Lucas continued to churn out hit after hit and successfully grew a company he had envisioned when Kurtz was still a part of the team.

So lets establish a couple of things here, Lucas and Kurtz were not best buds. If you look at Lucas, like most people, he has friends, and he has business partners/co-workers. Walter Murch, Brian de Palma, John Milius, Francis Coppola are all friends. In fact Lucas' friends have been friends for decades, he clearly values friendships. Heck the evidence that Lucas and Kurtz were never buddies can be found in Francis Ford Coppola. Coppola and Lucas had an enormous and public falling out, mainly based on Coppola's resentment of Lucas' success (Coppola said as much), but that relationship was patched up long ago and they remain close friends to this day. Kurtz was never in that inner circle; he was a guy hired to do a job. Heck Lucas even attempted to "bury the hatchet" years ago and invited him to his AFI Awards dinner, and involved him in a number of Star Wars anniversary projects, even while Kurtz was bad mouthing him on the convention circuit... Man that Lucas is a Class-A jerk.

Now Kurtz is out there spinning more fiction:

1) Like "Fox wasn't worried about Star Wars' budget." Seriously??? What planet is he from? This is the same studio that was pinching pennies and barely spending money on their final movie in one of their tentpole franchises, "Planet of the Apes." They spent a whopping grand total of $1.7 million on Battle for the Planet of the Apes (quit a bit of that on promotion, the actual production budget was closer to $1 million and it shows), does Kurtz seriously expect people to believe that Fox was not concerned when the budget moved from $7.5 million to $10.5 million, especially when few on the board believed in, or understood the project? That's simply fantasy.

2) He also stated that Lucas basically wanted to "remote control" Kershner during Empire. Yeah, the first person I'd think of to remote control as a director would be MY FORMER TEACHER... yeah, that's going to happen. I can pretty much guarantee if I asked my former Filmmaking 202 teacher to shut up and direct the movie I hired them for the way I want it, he would tell me to pound sand. Irvin Kershner had a 20 year track record going into this film; the last person you would hire if you want to "remote control" a director is someone with a fairly long resume. You would select an up and coming direct. No, J.W. Rinzler's "Making of Empire" makes it clear why Lucas became involved in the production... cost overruns and budget delays. Lucas hired Kershner because he trusted him, and he fully expected he would be able to sit back in California and focus on post production and editing. Kurtz' failures as a producer forced Lucas to come to London to get Empire back on track.

3) Lucas never was influenced by Joseph Campbell. How the hell would Kurtz know? He wouldn't he's just talking out of his butt. Lucas never states that Star Wars was entirely based on Campbell's work, what he has always contended was that Star Wars, like other myths, follows certain patterns which was a central thesis of Campbell's. Lucas makes it very clear in the process of working on the early drafts of Star Wars that he started to do more research and came across Campbell:

"...that's when I started doing more strenuous research on fairy tales, folklore, and mythology, and I started reading Joe's books. Before that I hadn't read any of Joe's books. It was very eerie because in reading The Hero with a Thousand Faces I began to realize that my first draft of Star Wars was following classic motifs, so I modified my next draft according to what I'd been learning about classical motifs and made it a little bit more consistent."

That seems fairly reasonable, and I doubt Kurtz would have any knowledge if that were the case. Given that Marcia Lucas confirms that during the writing process of Jedi Lucas has Campbell's books on his shelf, it's pretty reasonable to assume he was using them as a guide. I'm really not sure what Kurtz is trying to insinuate here, and it's fairly silly. It's patently obvious to anyone with half a brain that Lucas was influenced by multiple sources when it came to Star Wars. All one has to do is look at the motifs and themes running through the OT, the PT and TCW to see that.

I'm surprised Kurtz has the time to keep leveling these sorts of claims at Lucas given he's in the middle of production of Gangster Kittens right now.


Yancy

 

Excellent post Gallandro, pretty much exactly what I was looking for.

 

would I be right in thinking our very own TFNer Zombie wrote this book?

if so...ask him

 

Hasn't posted here in upwards of 4 years when he was shilling his book.

 

Well done, Gallandro!

I could never be bothered to read Zombie's book since most of his posts back in the day rubbed me the wrong way. The anti-Lucas agenda was written all over it.

 

This puts it far more strongly than I dared to. The book, I think, has some worth, but is extremely biased and disappointingly superficial on various levels. You're really right about the skewing, though -- particularly on the statements Lucas made before Congress on film preservation.

Zombie/Kaminski was always posting to lay into the prequel trilogy and its fans back in the day. That should have been enough of a guide to know what to expect from a book or any website ostensibly attempting to provide an "objective" historical breakdown of the saga, its development, and its ultimate worth.

This is the same guy who proudly proclaimed "Attack Of The Clones" to be one of the worst films ever made, then wrote an article on his website -- one of many designed to support his book -- which began in the following snobbish, almost thuggish, manner (exact quote):

"This article may be a bit controversial for those who really love the prequels due to the critical nature of it. If you are the type of person who does not cringe at the romantic dialog in Attack of the Clones , you might want to stop reading--or better yet, raise your standards."

See for yourself: https://web.archive.org/web/20071020185234/http://secrethistoryofstarwars.com/natureofthebeast1.html

It was later modified and that paragraph was deleted.

In the same month, he also made a personal attack on George Lucas when he appeared on Conan O'Brien, claiming to be "distraught" that Lucas was apparently "drugged out" and acting "weird" -- based on nothing more than his own warped impressions of the man. The bit that gets me is that the word "distraught" feigns sympathy for Lucas; despite all the tearing down of his art and reputation that Kaminski himself dedicated much of his time and energy to engaging in.

Nonetheless, some effort did go into putting that book together, and it's still a decent tool in some regards (it's a useful corpus of quotes at least) .......... but it wasn't exactly written with the clearest of reasoning or the best of motives. And it remains a frustratingly anemic accounting of the prequel trilogy's charms and beauties at absolute best.

Unfortunately, I was rather naive in 2007 -- and I can't claim to be much improved, sadly -- and did step in to defend the author originally. In fact, I remember publicly vacillating a few times, and only fully withdrew my support a year or two later. I loved the idea of the book, and wanted to give it the best possible chance, which blinded me to one or two realities. Shame it took me so long to wake up to zombie and his mendacious ways.

 

I will say, as far as a resource of collected interviews, there was plenty of work done on Zombie's part, and that is certainly commendable. But if you are going to read Secret History (which I've done, own both the original and revised edition), you have to be aware of the author's bias and point of view.

By the time I read Secret History it was patently clear the author had an enormous axe to grind, and an animus toward Lucas which bordered on hate. When you view it from that context it is fairly easy to pick up on the "cherry picked" quotes, the wild assumptions, and the use of unverified
rumor as fact.

I can't recommend the book if you are looking for a real examination of Lucas' creative process during the creation of the Saga, but there is some worthwhile information contained in the pages. Unfortunately what value there is in the book is lost in the author's blatant efforts to massage information to line up with his central thesis that "Lucas is a lying sellout who ruined the Saga, destroying the childhood of millions kids across the planet."


Yancy

 

True story: one time I discovered him flaming me on originaltrilogy.com, a site I'm not even registered on. He was asking whether someone on there was my brother, as an intended insult.

 

Ya...

This all sort of sums it up.

In a way, though, while the book or its author might have sought to poison the well, it's all been for naught.

The prequel trilogy remains very popular (in my personal experience at least -- I have Facebook friends I didn't know were even into Star Wars who like the films) and there is still heated discussion about them occurring online. And now we have a sequel trilogy in the works.

Whatever the book set out to do, and whatever aspersions, however subtle, it attempted to cast at Lucas, his art, and his fans, they have all endured, and the Star Wars party continues unabated. I think that that says a lot about the impact and appeal of all six films and the artistry and legacy of George Lucas.

Well, indeed. Numerous attacks have been made at other sites about people that post on this one. It really is a case of sour grapes and not being able to let go -- paralleled in the antics and disingenuous rhetoric of people who won't move on from films they claim to hate.

 

I had an argument with a guy over on another board, a couple of years back about the films and zombie's book got brought up. That guy was in the same boat as zombie, believing what was written there and not the larger context of everything. Some people just can't get over how the franchise went in a different direction from what they felt it was going to be.

 

Many interesting points I didn't know about. I wasn't here for the author's days posting here and as I said obviously he is rather biased against Lucas outside of the book in the extreme. Certainly things are in there as well but for me who didn't know that before reading the book I didn't really get that much. I think it becomes clearer when you know that after.

I don't know about the Lucas is a liar thing. My impression is that and he states as much that it's reasonable that Lucas isn't going to make detailed breakdowns of his whole creative process but simplify it for the interview sound bite. IIRC he talks about how he wish Lucas had done this because it really is incredibly clever as to how he was constanly reworking everything after it was done.

Now he does accuse Lucas of using the idea that he has the whole story worked out already and so if anything is "wrong" then he can't do anything about it because the story is the story. Well the author knows that isn't the case but accuses Lucas of using it that way.

Interesting because when I first read it a couple of years ago I really didn't get that impression. If anything I thought he thought Lucas was really clever. The more I learned about the author outside of that I started to pick a few things up but still not to that level.

Very interesting.

I don't cringe at all at the AOTC romantic dialogue. I think it's exactly what it should be for what it wants to do. It's just as "cringe-worthy" as the ESB material which is to say it does what it needs to do for that story.

Well they didn't meet until after ROTJ was completed. No one said he didn't read the book. Lucas read lots of books that influenced him besides all the visual material. He said that after he had been working on it for a time he realized that he was unintentionally following the classic hero's journey compared to his earlier drafts and then went back and checked off on that to line it up.

He also really got into Campbell after because he was such a good lecturer which energized him far more than simply reading his book. The influence that Campbell had on how the prequels worked was far, far greater than the slim influence it had on the OT.

If he hadn't gotten into Campbell the way he did then the PT probably would have been a lot different since it really was in many ways Lucas merging his own story which had become the modern myth with the classic myths of the past.

 

I think that that is, indeed, the fundamental problem. Some people -- many people -- have a deep aversion to change; some then cloak that aversion in a layer of sophistry which can include skillful circumlocution and elaborate redirection. It then becomes trivial, and perhaps even necessary, to latch onto palliatives, like the RedLetterMedia videos and zombie's book: dense manifestos that have a strong air of authoritativeness about them based on their imposing length and voluminous source-mining.

One has to be careful of a certain casuistry to anti-prequel tracts and any prolonged thesis which attempts to subtly discredit something. The architects of such material can have a persuasive, artful manner, endlessly dressing their obloquy up in bright garments which distract and beguile, thus concealing their true motives. Nonetheless, they always leave a few clues lying about. In zombie's case, the foreword of his book ends with a dedication to the original film and its loyal fans -- a striking choice given the supposedly objective and ecumenical spirit and focus of the book.

 

Well, indeed. Numerous attacks have been made at other sites about people that post on this one.
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and evidently this thread is in danger of doing the same,

saying stuff like "I was flamed by the guy on yada yada" isn't really the point of this thread is it? but the relevance of the book in the wider picture of the making of Star Wars.
Zombie isn't here to defend himself,

on that note I have never read the book, nor really been interested in the whole Lucas Vs Kurtz thing or "whose baby is Star Wars really?" but I did see the book listed on Amazon, and if I remember rightly got some good reviews

 

I was disappointed that the "secret history" revolved around that crazy old thing known as the writing process. I was expecting unicorns or crashed flying saucers or something.