CT How much of a hand did Marcia Lucas have on the OT - especially ANH?

This was what I saw in a debate on Lucas's writing:

Lucas worked with his wife on the first film, and by "worked with", I mean that she took a first cut of a film that a lot of test audiences were referring to with terms like "plodding", "slow" and "ungainly" and completely re-cut the film largely on her own and edited the film into the Star Wars we know, pioneering a lot of the fast, visceral editing that has since become a staple of action-movie language as she did so.


How accurate would you say it is?

 

Completely and utterly inaccurate. As far as the editing was concerned, Marcia Lucas was one part of the final editing team of three people, along with Richard Chew and Paul Hirsch, who had equal roles in the editing of the film, with, I believe, Richard Chew officially being the senior editor. All three were involved up until to the release and received Academy Awards for their work (as opposed to John Jympson, who edited the notorious 'Lost Cut' in 1976 and left the production).

The above quote appears to be an ill-informed reference to the Jympson cut, aka the 'Lost Cut', which was simply an assembly cut, and also ignores the fact that Marcia Lucas was one of three final editors on SW. GL himself was just as involved with editing process as well, FWIW.

However, being GL's wife, Marcia Lucas did contribute to the writing and production of the film with her own opinions along the way, just as GL's friends did, including the likes of Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg and Brian De Palma (it's not much of a stretch to suggest that her suggestions would have had more impact). It was also her idea to have the final scene between Indy and Marion in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Different issue.

 

This is one of those persistent fan myths that just won't die. I can't tell you how many times I've been in Star Wars discussions on the Internet and seen references to George Lucas's disastrous first cut which Marcia Lucas heroically clutched from the jaws of mediocrity and managed to singlehandedly transform into an Oscar-winning film.

It's actually a bit insulting to Marcia, as if her contributions have to be wildly exaggerated in order for them to mean anything. She was an important part of what made Star Wars great, and we don't have to tear down George Lucas--or anyone else--in order to acknowledge that fact.

 

Here's an example of how Marcia helped in the story process, but not in the way that we think.

Was the studio upset when you told them Kenobi would die?

"Everybody was upset. I was struggling with the problem that I had this sort of climactic scene that had no climax about two-thirds of the way through the film. I had another problem in the fact that there was no real threat in the Death Star. The villains were like tenpins; you get into a gunfight with them and they just get knocked over. As I originally wrote it, Ben Kenobi and Vader had a sword fight and Ben hits a door and the door slams closed and they all run away and Vader is left standing there with egg oil his face. This was dumb; they run into the Death Star and they sort of take over everything and they run back. It totally diminished any impact the Death Star had."

It was like the old Bob Steele westerns where they all had about fifty shots in their six-shooters.

"Right, but those kind of things dissipate without having a lot of real cruel torture scenes and real unpleasant scenes with the bad guys in order to create them as being bad or make them a threat. I was walking that thin line between making something that I thought was vaguely a nonviolent kind of movie but at the same time I was having all the fun of people getting shot. And I was very careful that most of the people that are shot in the film were the monsters or those storm-troopers in armored suits. Anyway, I was rewriting, I was struggling with that plot problem when my wife suggested that I kill off Ben, which she thought was a pretty outrageous idea, and I said, 'Well, that is an interesting idea, and I had been thinking about it.' Her first idea was to have Threepio get shot, and I said impossible because I wanted to start and end the film with the robots, I wanted the film to really be about the robots and have the theme be framework for the rest of the movie. But then the more I thought about Ben getting killed the more I liked the idea because, one, it made the threat of Vader greater and that tied in with The Force and the fact that he could use the dark side. Both Alec Guinness and I came up with the thing of having Ben go on afterward as part of The Force. There was a thematic idea that was even stronger about The Force in the earliest scripts. It was really about The Force, a Castaneda Tales of Power thing."

--George Lucas, Rolling Stone interview; 1977.

So what they did was they would talk and she'd offer up an idea and if he liked it, then he went with it. If he didn't, then he'd find something else to say. The people that tear down George Lucas in favor of his wife are those who were not happy with ROTJ. The SE's and the PT brought out hundreds more, but it started with ROTJ. The point where people were disappointed and misinformation spread about how much of an influence she had, as well as Kurtz and exaggerate it. Not that long ago, it was proven on this very forum that people would rather believe Kurtz's later point of view, rather than what he really said on the matter.

 

Others have already clarified ML's involvement with proper fact-checking and direct quotes. But to emphasize for a moment on the following:

This is by far the most erroneous and downright disingenuous aspect of the claim, and one does not require documented facts of the production or first-hand testimony of those involved to know better. Rather, the counter-evidence is in the pudding: THX 1138. The very mindset to motion, speed, graphic matching and overall editorial tempo seen in both American Graffiti and Star Wars (along with the five subsequent installments to the latter) is blatantly on screen in Lucas' first feature length science fiction film, inherent in its audiovisual presentation, as edited hands on by Lucas himself, in joint with Murch's sound designing. Even his earlier experimental shorts bear the same sensibility.

So, in short, nonsense.

 

Not just that, but Spielberg himself said that it was Lucas who came up with the final edit for the finale of "Raiders Of The Lost Ark", as he was able to tighten up the unveiling of the Ark and the resulting destruction to the Nazis and Belloq. But then, I suppose he was lying to.

 

I was a little suspicious of the claim even at the time - good to hear how unfounded it is.

 

According to the Making of Star Wars, Marcia edited the final assault on the Death Star and the early Tatooine scenes with Luke and Biggs that were cut.

 

Pretty much this, along with Gary Kurtz.

I wonder if this was brought about because Cracked.com recently posted an article about women who were cut from pop culture history for being too important, and guess who is on the list? But to be fair, Cracked has pretty much taken a "Star Wars has sucked since ROTJ and George Lucas was never the genius everybody thought he was" party line in their writing, along with a side order of "The SW Expanded Universe sucks rotten eggs", so they'll print anything following that line of thought.

 

So what's the story behind the (supposed) disagreement over who was the primary cutter? Official sources seem to say it was Richard Chew, as Darth_Nub notes, but the Secret History of Star Wars guy seems to think it was Marcia Lucas. Given that it was obviously a collaborative effort, this seems to me like the kind of thing that would be hard to pin down definitively, especially since Marcia apparently wasn't even there full-time towards the end.

Obviously the official Lucasfilm account may be biased, given that Marcia was the ex-wife of the then-CEO. But at the same time, the Secret History of Star Wars guy seems to be leaning a little hard on some sort of persecution narrative regarding Marcia, which seems a little unfair to me given that no one can really know the full story behind the divorce and her subsequent treatment by George.

 

I don't know much about Marcia helping with the shooting and editing, I'm sure she was as big of a part as any spouse would be to a creative visionary. She probably heard him rant about his ideas concerning SW for hours on end, and she probably bounced ideas back and forth with him.

I remember hearing a rumour that she was a big inspiration to Han and Leia though, that he based alot of their romance and banter on his own conversations with his wife (I doubt he was even half as slick as Han, though,) and that's why Anakin and Padme's romance is so... bland, and tragic as it was way after the divorce.

 

There's no disagreement. As Darth_Nub explained, Richard Chew, Richard Hirsch, Marcia Lucas (uncredited) and George Lucas (uncredited) all worked together on the editing, the first two being the "official" editors who edited most of the material (Marcia edited the final battle and the Tatooine scenes that were cut, and then she left, and George edited the dogfight between the Falcon and the TIE fighters).

 

Marcia wasn't uncredited. George was, though. Which makes it kind of ridiculous when people trumpet the fact that he's never won an Oscar. It would appear he lost out based mainly on a technicality.

 

There also seems to be a bit of a misunderstanding regarding the actual job of whomever the credited editor. Keep in mind that, for the most part, editors are simply the hands-on technicians who facilitate the director's vision. The actual editing process is a long and arduous one (arguably more so back in the pre-Avid days). Working the equipment itself requires not only the proper artisan skill but the time allotted exclusively to the process as well, which is specifically where the "editor" comes in. They're tech-specialists. The better the editor, the the better he or she can manage the technology with speed, efficiency and overall savvy. A good editor is also receptive, and can therefore keenly translate what the director wants into both shot-flow and larger narrative pacing results.

With the more auteur type creative authors, the editing of a movie is a sit-down collaboration where the editor operates as the director hovers and informs; one helming the editing bay with the other observing from a couch is a typical description of the daily labor. When a director and editor have substantial experience together, in turn is there often a shorthand between the two, with the latter able to cut accurately from notes, storyboards, general outlines or intermittent discussion with the former. But unless the director himself is more of a pawn or journeyman amidst some larger producer/studio oversight, this notion that they simply walk away for the duration to let another determine the movie's final editorial shape is simply not a reality.

To boot, Lucas has claimed on more than one occasion just how much he prefers the editing process more than any other aspect of the production. I'm sure multiple people were involved in the cutting-and-splicing mechanics and overall workprint development of A New Hope, each contributing their talent and input to help make comprehensive Lucas' vision and to help Lucas himself better comprehend the tangible results of what he wanted. But there is little to no doubt that Lucas was not the primary conceptualist and intuitive guide throughout the whole enterprise.

 

Eh, I meant was.

Look, I'm not perfect, okay?! I mean, sure, most of the time I am. Most of the time I'm so perfect that I drive around all day in a 1981 Lotus Essex Turbo:

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But even the great "I" am prone to the occasional typo. So every one of you can just stop judging me. Got it? Thanks.

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The director of a film almost always has a hand in the editing process, even if it's just a first cut - to say that GL was somehow unfairly 'uncredited' as an editor on SW would be pushing things way too far, despite the fact that he was, no doubt, far more involved in the process than most directors. He was credited as writer and director - some participation in the editing is simply assumed, and there's no reason to attribute an actual credit alongside the others.
Besides, when you see a film with a credit reading, "Produced, written, directed, photographed and edited by so and so", it comes across as thoroughly egotistical. Stanley Kubrick was across virtually every single aspect of the films he made - but he was smart enough not to offload his ego onto the credits, it would have made a bad impression. Leave such self-indulgent nonsense for first-timers who've got next to no chance of ever making anything else.

There's a massive amount of overlap when it comes to the various roles in the making of a film - actors can be heavily involved in the writing process, directors and producers can find themselves spending months involved writing the screenplay, then later editing the film. Such contributions usually aren't acknowledged on-screen for various reasons (unions and guilds can play a part), but that's just how it works. Warren Beatty's notorious for demanding full writing credits for any involvement at all on a screenplay (a few suggestions here and there, a bit of improvised dialogue), and it just creates bad blood in the long run.

 

I agree that there was nothing unfair about him going uncredited. That's just the way it works.

But I do think it's unfair to disparage him for not winning an Oscar, or imply that he's probably jealous of his ex-wife, as so many people often do. Because that doesn't jibe with the reality that he was basically just as much a part of the editing team as the people who officially won.

Again, I'm not saying it's unfair that he didn't get an Oscar along with the rest of them. But people shouldn't take that fact and use it to imply things that are contrary to reality, is all.

 

Anyone who disparages GL for not ever winning an Oscar is just being petty - IMHO, the club of master directors who never scored one for their role is a far more prestigious place to be. Alfred Hitchcock, David Lynch, Stanley Kubrick, Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa et al.

A few have received Oscars in other categories - Welles got a co-screenwriting award for Citizen Kane, Kubrick bizarrely got one for the special effects on 2001, Kurosawa received a token Lifetime Achievement nod, but all too often the great directors have lost out on the Best Director Oscar for their best work to much lesser competitors, then get a consolation Oscar years later (prime example being Martin Scorsese). Did I mention that Alfred Hitchcock never received an Academy Award?

GL ditched the Director's Guild over their petty gripe over the positioning of Irvin Kershner's credit on ESB - I doubt he cares much about the Academy's opinion of his films, either. I certainly don't, given the number of moronic choices they've made over the years.