Saga Lucas Quotes and Interviews about the starwars saga.

Prologue

"Once, under the wise rule of the Senate and the protection of the Jedi Knights, the Republic throve and grew. But as often happens when wealth and power pass beyond the admirable and attain the awesome, then appear those evil ones who have greed to match.
So it was with the Republic at its height. Like the greatest of trees, able to withstand any external attack, the Republic was rotted from within though the danger was not visible from outside.
Aided and abetted by restless, power-hungry individuals within the government, and the massive organs of commerce, the ambitious Senator Palpatine caused himself to be elected President of the Republic. He promised to unite the disaffected among the people and to restore the remembered glory of the Republic.
Once secure in office he declared himself Emperor, shutting himself away from the populace. Soon he was controlled by the very assistants and boot-lickers he had appointed to high office, and the cries of the people for justice did not reach his ears.
Having exterminated through treachery and deception the Jedi Knights, guardians of justice in the galaxy, the Imperial governors and bureaucrats prepared to institute a reign of terror among the disheartened worlds of the galaxy. Many used the imperial forces and the name of the increasingly isolated Emperor to further their own personal ambitions.
But a small number of systems rebelled at these new outrages. Declaring themselves opposed to the New Order they began the great battle to restore the Republic?"

From The First Saga
Journal of the Whills


according to rebelscum, lucas provided this. hope we can post writings from lucas in this quotes and interviews thread.

It did say "for three long years".

i didn't see it say that in the shatterpoint book. does it really say 'for three long years'?

Yes, it does. People have claimed it because it's true.

From a post by Vortigern99:

George Lucas: "You focus on the human story first, and then you begin to create this world that everybody inhabits, and playing with the lowest person in that hierarchy, I created droids. And that is really how they came about. I was looking for the lowest person on the pecking order, basically like the farmers in Hidden Fortress were."



George Lucas: ... "I liked Flash Gordon as a kid, the Republic serials. It was the only sort of action-adventure thing I came across as a kid that I could remember. So I got interested in that. I went and actually talked to the people that owned the rights to it. They said they weren't interested. And I thought, I don't really need Flash Gordon to do what I want to do. I can create my own situation. So I just started from scratch. I went around a lot of different ways before I would my way to where I finally ended up."


From a site:

The Star Wars saga has always been steeped in mythology and Jungian archetypes. What sort of mythological territory will the Clone Wars TV series and the proposed live-action Star Wars series deal with?

Lucas: The mythological arc of the saga doesn't really continue into these other things, because that is a story. It has a beginning, a middle and an end. It's a story of one man's struggle against evil and the redemption by his son and that sort of thing.

This is ... more episodic. It's more like Indiana Jones, actually. ... You have themes and things that still go through it, and there are things like that, but [myth is not] not what it's based on. This is bigger, and we get to more places. And the fun thing about animation, especially, and The Clone Wars in particular, is that we're allowed to go and do stories about clones, get to know them, and find out what they do for recreation, and what Jabba the Hutt's family is all about, and, you know, do all kinds of things that don't have anything to do with the main character. The [live-action Star Wars] series itself, the epic, is basically about one man, so it's very, very narrow, and you pass through a lot of things and you look at "What's that over there?" but you never got to look at it. So this allows us to go and look at all of that stuff. Which means we're not encumbered by this mythological uberstory of the psychological underpinnings of why somebody turns to be a bad person.


Why an animated movie now, and also, can you talk a little bit about the stylized look of the characters themselves, and why you chose to go with the stylized characters as opposed to making them look realistic?

Lucas: Photorealistic is what live-action movies are. Animation is an art. ... This is an art-philosophical discussion. You either like photorealistic art, you know, that looks exactly like a photograph, and you like to hang that in the museum of modern art, or you like something that actually tries to find the truth behind the realism. And, to me, animation is an art. It's all about design. It's all about style. It's not about making it look photo-real. ...

When we did Revenge of the Sith, I lamented the fact that ... I had to jump over the Clone Wars. And I jumped over the Clone Wars because it had nothing to do with Anakin Skywalker. You know, I mean, he's just another player. ... We had a very narrow focus on talking about him personally, and I said, "Too bad we couldn't do that, because ... it's like World War II. It's a huge canvas there to be mined." ...

We decided we would do a little five-minute animation series for Cartoon Network, using anime and manga and those kinds of ideas that I've always wanted to work in. And we hired a really great director, Genndy [Tartakovsky], to do it for us. But that sort of got me going to say, you know, "We could do a ... regular TV show, a big one. A half-an-hour show, and it could really be great, and we could use all the new techniques we've developed in CG animation and that sort of thing." And I said, "When I finish Star Wars, I'm going to go and start this. And I'm going to do it." And so that's basically what

?When the Jedi tried to restore order, Darth Vader was still one of the Jedi. What he would do is catch the Jedi off-guard and, using his knowledge of the Force, he would kill the Jedi without them realizing what was happening. They trusted him and they didn't realize he was the murderer who was decimating their ranks.

I find this particularly interesting. Maybe we could see something like this in the live action series of the future.

Vader's already an obvious Sith by that point, though.

You're right. My mistake.

Exclusive: A Rare Sit-Down with Mr. George Lucas
Source: Edward Douglas
March 17, 2008


George Lucas is clearly one of the few filmmakers who needs very little to no introduction. To some, he's revered as a God, and maybe rightfully so, because let's face it, few of us would be such big movie fans if not for the "Star Wars" saga and its geek-level of fandom has spilled over into other realms while growing by leaps and bounds due to the internet. If not for the work done by Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) to bring Mr. Lucas' vision to life in the six "Star Wars" movies, filmmakers like Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson would never had been able to bring their own creatures and characters to the screen in such a realistic manner. There would never have been movies like Robert Rodriguez's Sin City and Zack Snyder's 300 if not for the way Mr. Lucas pioneered the use of computer-generated background environments for films made on green screen.

Yes, a world without George Lucas and "Star Wars" would be a grey and dismal place for fans of science fiction, action and effects movies, because over thirty years after the big screen debut of the first Star Wars, the characters and worlds created by Lucas continue to find new and younger fans, all of whom will be happy to see him continuing the "Star Wars" saga using the latest technology for many years to come? only this time, on television.

Mere weeks after the announcement that Warner Bros. would be releasing the feature film Star Wars: The Clone Wars in theaters this summer, Mr. Lucas was on hand in Las Vegas at the annual ShoWest Convention to present an extended clip from the movie at the studio's "The Big Picture" presentation. The feature film and animated series fill the gaps between Episodes II and III, but it will also be the first "Star Wars" movie to appear on the big screen in three years. While the feature film looks to be very much in line with the recent movies, the animated series promises to introduce new characters we haven't seen in the previous films and cartoons with stories that will be short episodic mini-movies.

Flanked by six Clone Troopers from the 501st Legion, Lucas introduced the extended clip, which begins with two Jedi carriers departing from a larger Republic starship. Inside one of them, Anakin briefs his young liege Ahsoka on the upcoming battle, telling his young apprentice to stay close because it isn't practice although she's very cocky and self-assured, snapping back that she'll try not get him killed. The battle scene is quite impressive as we get to see Ahsoka in action against a large armored vehicle that's able to climb up a vertical cliff-face, followed by a scene of Count Dooku relaying his plans to his own dark apprentice Asajj Ventress via the normal Jedi hologram communication, their plans interrupted by the entrance of Ben Kenobi, leading to a short lightsaber fight between them, Ventress disarming Kenobi with her advantage of two lightsabers to his one. The animation looked somewhat primitive compared to what else is out there with the characters not being as detailed as some might like, but the battle sequences are still very exciting and impressive.

ComingSoon.net had the rare opportunity to talk to Mr. Lucas briefly before the presentation and then we had more time to sit down with him in a more casual atmosphere afterwards. While there are millions if not billions of bigger "Star Wars" fans, being one of the few online writers who was actually old enough to have seen the original Star Wars when it first played in theaters in the '70s, it was nice to finally meet and talk to such an influential filmmaker.

ComingSoon.net: How much overlap will there be between Genndy's "Clone Wars" animated series and the new feature film and television series?
George Lucas: Well, the Genndy show was an experiment that we did with Cartoon Network that was 5 minutes each, they went sort of where commercials normally go, and it was an experiment, not only in doing five-minute shows, but it was an experiment in trying to translate

The numbers are just apostrophes. I don't knowe what happened>




A Conversation with George Lucas
By RICHARD CORLISS Tuesday, Mar. 14, 2006


Movie history can be divided, without much forcing of the issue, into two eras: before Star Wars and after. The landscape before the first Star Wars film, in 1977, was a very different terrain. The best Hollywood directors, freed from censorship and the nagging sense that they were cranking out movies while their European brethren were hand-crafting films, had begun to forge a distinctive adult American cinema. Few thought in terms of box office megamillions. The idea was to earn enough to entice someone into financing your next picture. (Jean-Luc Godard had done this successfully in France in the 60s; Robert Altman adopted that model for his pioneering 70s works.) Most films by the most gifted Americans were present-day dramas that picked at some social scab until, in the last reel, it burst.

In the larger marketplace, the most popular films were the ones that were made for everyone, and that everyone wanted to see once: you, your kids, your mom. That�s the broad, if thin, constituency that made blockbusters out of The Love Bug, Airport, The Poseidon Adventure, The Godfather, The Sting?and Jaws, by Lucas� contemporary Steven Spielberg. The majority of these pictures made their money slowly, playing first runs, then gradually reaching the smaller towns and theaters; the theatrical life of one of these crowd-pleasers might be a full year. There were genre movies, of course, but not many science-fiction films. Those were kids� stuff; movies of the 70s were for adults. Besides, special effects weren�t sophisticated enough to open viewers� eyes to the fantasy worlds its makers might be dreaming. Even Jaws, which broke a few rules by opening in a thousand or so theaters, and by reviving the monster-from-the-deep subgenre of Atomic Age s-f, was bound to rely for its special effects on a hydraulically operated shark that kept short-circuiting off the coast of Martha's Vineyard waters.

Star Wars changed everything. It quickly became the top-grossing movie in the 65-year history of feature films (replacing The Sound of Music, if you need evidence of how much things had changed). With its then-wizardly special effects, and the cheerleading use to which they were put, it cued a revival of the s-f genre, which had been a B-movie fad in the 50s. Back then, the kids who gorged on s-f were a Saturday matinee minority. Star Wars arrived just as teen culture was taking over movies. Lucas� film proved that a movie could be a smash by creating a textural density that lured a part of the audience back through the wickets a dozen times. This wasn�t your uncle�s, and aunt�s, hit movie; but if they didn�t get it, who cared? The kids (mostly boys) were pouring all their disposable income into return visits. Thus Star Wars became the first cult-movie megahit.
and the first live-action movie to franchise its popularity into merchandising at a level that equaled, and then surpassed, the Disney cartoon features. (That revenue, not Lucas� share of the film�s take, was what made him a billionaire.) and the first Hollywood epic, at least so far as I know, that was conceived as a trilogy?proof of Lucas� capacious vision and audacious entrepreneurial reach. AND, as Lucas mentioned in an interview I had with him two weeks ago in preparation for this week�s TIME story on the future of movies, Star Wars was one of the hits whose profits, shared by the theater owners, financed the multiplexing of America.

The light-saber epic changed Lucas too. A graduate of the USC film school who also felt a kinship with Bruce Conner, Scott Bartlett and other members of San Francisco�s vital avant-garde scene, he had made two features before Star Wars. In 1971 he hatched the stainless-steel-cool, THX138 ?a project received by its sponsors at Warner Bros. with so much bafflement and meddling that it sti

Great thread! Thanks for psting all this stuff, Keeper.

You're welcome Vortigern

unlocked and bumped

It's been long since i posted here, i don't think i've posted this though....



In Part 1 of TV Guide executive editor Steve Sonsky's in-depth Q&A with George Lucas, the discussion encompassed the Starz documentary Fog City Mavericks (premiering Monday, Sept. 24, at 9 pm/ET), Lucas' advice for aspiring filmmakers and why Sean Connery turning down Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull might be a good thing. Here in Part 2, the conversation turns to Lucas' pair of TV-bound Star Wars projects, the power of the Internet and the television series he was distraught to see go off the air.

TV Guide: Can we talk about the two Star Wars television series you're working on...?
George Lucas: There's Clone Wars, and we're in the middle of that.

TV Guide: Tell us about it.
Lucas: Well it's basically like Star Wars [in that it] takes place between, obviously, [the films] Episode II [Attack of the Clones] and Episode III [Revenge of the Sith], but it's the same kind of action. Unfortunately, it doesn't fall into the realm of what animation [typically] is, which is either adult, kind of off-color humor or kiddie stuff. This is, like Star Wars, sort of in between those two things. It's a lot of battle stuff, and it's obviously the Clone Wars, so it's a war picture. So it's kind of a PG-13 animated TV series, which is something that has never been done before and obviously doesn't fit in any of the conventional slots that these things fall into. In that, it's very different, and I think it's very exciting. It's got a very, very sophisticated look to it. It's very much like the features. We're still trying to figure out how to put it on the air.

TV Guide: And you're going to do a hundred episodes?
Lucas: We're going to do a hundred episodes. I think we're on [No.] 40 right now. We'll probably end up with 50 to 60 episodes before we start to put it on the air. We'd like to put it on next fall, in about a year from now, but we'll see what happens.

TV Guide: Where do you see it living? How do you see this playing? Obviously it doesn't sound like a Saturday morning cartoon.
Lucas: Right now, we don't know. It's out there to people, and people are talking about it, but so far, everybody's got the same conundrums ? "How do we program it? Where does it live? Where can we put something like this?" You know, it has to go after 9 o'clock and it can't be on a kiddie channel.

TV Guide: So you see it on a more mainstream channel or the Sci Fi Channel or something like that?
Lucas: Well, it's one of those things. Television is sort of bifurcated up into small niches and unless you fit in one of those niches, no one knows what to do with you. And, of course, I'm always outside the box, so it's like, "Uh-oh, we don't have a box for you." [Laughs] But it's Star Wars and it's really good, so I'm sure somehow or another, people will also start thinking outside the box and it will find its home.

TV Guide: What about your Star Wars live-action series for TV?
Lucas: Yes, I'm working on that. We're just going to start writing it in about a month from now, start doing scripts for it.

TV Guide: And where will that live in the Star Wars continuum relative to Clone Wars and relative to the films?
Lucas: Well, Clone Wars has got all the characters in it ? Yoda and Anakin and Obi Wan and the Emperor and all that ? so it's basically the movie. The live-action [series] is not the movie. It's the Star Wars universe, but it's characters from the saga who were [previously] minor, and it follows their stories. It's set between [movie episodes] III and IV, when the Empire has taken over. It's like Episode IV in that the Emperor and Darth Vader are heard about ? people talk about them ? but you never see them because it doesn't take place where they actually are. There are storm troopers and all that, but there are no Jedis. It's different, but I think it's very exciting because I get to explore a part of that universe that I haven't been able to explore. Once you have a saga, it's got a lot of requirements because it's abou

not starwars but interesting nevertheles....




George Lucas is feeling good about television. In his life post-Star Wars franchise, the legendary writer, director, producer, special-effects czar and mega-mogul is still embracing his legacy ? the far-far-away galaxy he created for six films that changed the cinematic universe and became a part of world pop culture. But now a new medium will bear the message. In a conversation with TV Guide executive editor Steve Sonsky that began with a discussion of Fog City Mavericks, a Starz documentary (premiering Monday, Sept. 24, at 9 pm/ET) about the history of San Francisco-based filmmakers like himself, Francis Ford Coppola and Clint Eastwood, Lucas also held forth on the status of his two forthcoming television series that will expand the Star Wars saga, his own TV-watching habits, the Internet culture, and why it turned out OK that Sean Connery wouldn't reprise his role as Harrison Ford's dad in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, scheduled for release next May. Here is Part 1 of that conversation.

TV Guide: So, Fog City Mavericks ? a wonderful couple of hours. It was great fun to watch.
George Lucas: I'm a firm believer in regional cinema, cinema that's not made by people who live in Hollywood but who live in [places] like Austin or New York City or Chicago, Baltimore, San Francisco. There are several little film communities that exist outside the main center, Hollywood, and who take their ideas from different places and do different kinds of things and have more of a creative say in what they do. This film is about San Francisco. I hope, at some point, somebody makes one about New York and Austin and all of the other places.

TV Guide: It seems almost as much an homage to San Francisco as it does to all of you, the filmmakers. It paints a great portrait of the city as an incubator for artistic individuality.
Lucas: Well, yeah, the thing most people don't understand is that San Francisco has a long tradition of making films, not just having films shot here but actually [hosting] an indigenous film industry. It's very, very small, but the people who live and work here have a different outlook and get their ideas from different sources, and [so] the films come out differently. I think [Mavericks] clarifies that some of the more successful films that have come out of Hollywood actually haven't been made in Hollywood.

TV Guide: What do you think it is about San Francisco that makes that happen? There's a fun quote in the film from [Toy Story director] John Lasseter ? who says it's the great food, it's the great wine ? but, more seriously, there's also a lot of discussion obviously of the spirit of independence and the nonconformist ethic of San Francisco.
Lucas: Well, yeah. We're free of the institution, the institutionalized creative system, which means that we've been able to do things pretty much on our own without much interference. And even when things do get assigned to us, we still have a very independent way of looking at things. Everyone here kind of thinks outside the box, and Hollywood is the box.

TV Guide: Could you ever do good work in Los Angeles ? or do you think it's just not your nature?
Lucas: It's not my nature. I've never worked down there, and I don't see any reason why I ever would.

TV Guide: So what lessons would you impart to young artists trying to fight authority?
Lucas: Well, it's not a matter of fighting authority. It's a matter of realizing that you don't have to go to Hollywood to make movies. A lot of independent filmmakers around this country make movies in their hometowns. You know, there's like a thousand independent films made every year. Not that many of them make it into the mainstream, and what [Mavericks] is about is the ones that do. This is about how even the most mainstream of movies can be made outside the system. And, for a lot of the independent filmmakers who are working outside the system and working all around the country, I think the message of the [documentary] is to stay there. If you beco

TV Guide: Do you still have that feeling at this point in your life?

Lucas: I still feel very lucky about what happened and grateful that I managed to survive and have a life after that. And so I try to make the most of every day, and I have ever since then. I was basically putzing around, not doing anything. It sort of said, "Hey, wake up and make something out of your life because it may be over before you think."

TV Guide: More amazing serendipity in the history of San Francisco filmmakers: If THX 1138 [Lucas' ambitious 1971 box-office failure, which nearly bankrupted his friend and producer Francis Coppola's American Zoetrope studio] was a hit, Coppola might not have made The Godfather.

Lucas: [Laughs] Possibly, yeah. You know, you sort of have to look at opportunities and sometimes things come along and you sort of, even though you want to reject them outright, you have to look at the other side of it. Fortunately, in terms of The Godfather, Francis would never have done that just for the money, no matter what. He had to find something that he loved about it. He had to find the hook that would get him into it, to say, "How can I make this mine? I know something about Italians, I know something about the Mafia and I know something about family" ? and those are things that really interested him. And so he turned it into his movie. And you know, it's different than the book, and obviously he had to fight very hard against the system to do that. Fortunately, he managed to survive and overcome all of the influences. That was literally going to be a very cheap gangster movie starring Kirk Douglas, and he made it something extraordinary.

TV Guide: Do you ever see you and Francis working together again?

Lucas: You never know. We're all kind of loose. We help each other out, basically. And you know, we obviously are friends and communicate with each other. So there's no formal reality to all of it. It's just basically what happens when people are friends and hang out together.

TV Guide: Speaking of friends working together... you and Steven Spielberg ? how's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull going?

Lucas: Very well. Very well indeed.

TV Guide: Were you disappointed about Sean Connery not coming out of retirement to play Indy's father?

Lucas: No, in the end, it turned out better. In the beginning, he was just in a little bit of it, and I think with the strength of Sean Connery, people would've wanted him to go all the way through the whole thing, and the story really didn't work that way. And so I think there would've been some disappointment that [his character] dropped out partway through the movie. By having somebody else fill that role, you lose him without any regret, so to speak, even though we got a great actor to play the part. And I mean, he's not his father, so it's much easier....

TV Guide: You mean [the other actor] is not playing Indy's father?

Lucas: That's right. It's just a completely different character, so you're not invested in him in any way. The fact that that character, after the first part of the movie, isn't needed doesn't become a problem. Whereas I think with the scene we had, where [Indy] says goodbye to his dad, everybody was, "Wait a minute! Isn't he coming back?" So in the end, I think it turned out for the best. Sean just retired and he wants to stay retired, and I understand that. [Laughs] I think he just said, "Look, I've done it, I've done it." He was very tempted, you know, and we talked for a long time. But in the end, he just said, "Eh, I'm playing golf."

TV Guide: Anything about the film that's been out there, wrong Internet buzz, that you want to correct?

Lucas: Well, I don't really read the Internet buzz.

TV Guide: Probably healthy.

Lucas: Yeah, I don't get involved in all that. A film is what it is. And you know, I think it's turned out well. It's very funny, it's very exciting, and it's everything that the other ones were. I can't wait to see it! [Laughs]

This thread is amazing! I've spent about the last three hours reading it.
It's just so interesting to read about what George Lucas thinks about everything.
In particular, I liked this quote:
"Right or wrong this is my movie, this is my decision, and this is my creative vision, and if people don't like it, they don't have to see it."
--George Lucas

Now I didn't like a few things that he's said and those things are the opposite of that quote. In some instances he gives into what everyone's saying, (ex: he says AOTC dialog was corney)which isn't really like him. He has confidence in his movies and that's very important.

All in all, there were a few things I didn't like, but I still completely respect him and laugh at his corney jokes.

thank you MasterJane, I appreciate it alot...it's been so long since i created this thread...

i ran a search for your signature quote but couldn't confirm it, could you tell me it's source please?





George Lucas was the first Hollywood filmmaker to credit Campbell's influence. Lucas stated following the release of the first Star Wars film in 1977 that its story was shaped, in part, by ideas described in The Hero with a Thousand Faces and other works of Campbell's. The linkage between Star Wars and Campbell was further reinforced when later reprints of Campbell's book used the image of Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker on the cover.[24] Lucas discusses this influence at great length in the authorized biography of Joseph Campbell, A Fire in the Mind:


I [Lucas] came to the conclusion after American Graffiti that what's valuable for me is to set standards, not to show people the world the way it is...around the period of this realization...it came to me that there really was no modern use of mythology...The Western was possibly the last generically American fairy tale, telling us about our values. And once the Western disappeared, nothing has ever taken its place. In literature we were going off into science fiction...so 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 [of Star Wars] according to what I'd been learning about classical motifs and made it a little bit more consistent...I went on to read 'The Masks of God' and many other books.

From this thread in this forum:

http://boards.theforce.net/the_star_wars_saga/b10456/30565196/p1/?42


"There are essentially nine films in a series of three trilogies. The first trilogy is about the young Ben Kenobi and the early life of Luke's father when Luke was a little boy. This trilogy takes place some twenty years before the second trilogy which includes Star Wars and Empire. About a year or two passes between each story of the trilogy and about twenty years pass between the trilogies. The entire saga spans about fifty-five years... I won't say who survives and who doesn't, but if we are ever able to link togther all three, you'd find the story progresses in a very logical fashion."

- George Lucas to Alan Arnold, 1979, Once Upon A Galaxy

The last three episodes involve the rebuilding of the Republic.
Only two of the main characters will appear in all nine films, & they are the robots, Artoo-Detoo & Threepio. Says Lucas: "In effect, the story will be told through their eyes."

- Time Magazine, May 1980

"There are six hours of events before Star Wars, & in those six hours the 'Other' becomes apparent, & after the third film the 'Other' becomes apparent quite a bit."

- George Lucas to Rolling Stone, June 1980

The sequels, the three films that would follow Jedi, are considerably vaguer. Their main theme will be the necessity for moral choices & the wisdom needed to distinguish right from wrong.

- Time Magazine, May 1983

But he has only a vague notion of what will happen in the three films of the sequel? In the sequel Luke would be a sixty-year-old Jedi knight. Han Solo and Leia would be together? The sequel focuses mainly on Luke, and Lucas says Mark Hamill will have first crack at the part if he is old enough. "If the first trilogy is social and political and talks about how society evolves," Lucas says, "Star Wars is more about personal growth and self realization, and the third deals with moral and philosophical problems... The sequel is about Jedi knighthood, justice, confrontation, and passing on what you have learned."

- George Lucas to Denise Worrell, 1983, ICONS: Intimate Portraits

Well...and 30 years later, lol... it didn't quite come out that way.

Unlocked and upped this thread.

wow even though i do have mixed feelings about george, i really think these interviews are very cool. i'm almost done with the first post and this quote really stuck in my head.

"
If I got a job, I would help somebody else get a job. If somebody got more successful than me, it was partly my success.
My success wasn't based on how I could push down everyone around me. My success was based on how much I could push everybody up. And eventually their success was the same way. And in the process they pushed me up, and I pushed them up, and we kept doing that, and we still do that.


Even though we all have, in essence, competing companies, if my friends succeed, then everybody succeeds. So that's the key to it, to have everybody succeed, not to gloat over somebody else's failure.

lots of information, and thanks for unlocking this thread

This is an amazing thread. I hope we see more old threads like this get unlocked!

I think it is important for a lot of fans to look back on these things lucas is saying and remember what an amazing human being he truly is.

Also I think looking back on all his PT quotes from back in the 99-2005 days can be an eye opening experience to many.

I consider this a rather sad interview, it contains only fragments of information related to the saga, but it shows that Lucas was very much aware and saddened by not just negative reviews but also hate-comments by fans on the internet etc....

George Lucas Is Ready to Roll the Credits

By BRYAN CURTIS
Published: January 17, 2012

This was a new feeling for George Lucas. He made a movie about a plucky band of freedom fighters who battle an evil empire ? a movie loaded with special effects like no one had seen before. Then he showed it to executives from all the Hollywood studios. And every one of them said, ?Nope.?

One studio?s executives didn?t even show up for the screening. ?Isn?t this their job?? Lucas says, astonished. ?Isn?t their job at least to see movies? It?s not like some Sundance kid coming in there and saying, ?I?ve got this little movie ? would you see it?? If Steven (Spielberg) or I or Jim Cameron or Bob Zemeckis comes in there, and they say, ?We don?t even want to bother to see it. . . .? ?

Lucas sighs. It?s true that the movie, ?Red Tails,? is a biopic about the Tuskegee Airmen rather than a space opera starring the Skywalker clan. But the snub implied that Lucas?s pop-culture collateral ? six ?Star Wars? movies, four ?Indiana Jones? movies, the effects shop Industrial Light and Magic and toy licenses that were selling (at least) four different light sabers this Christmas ? was basically worthless. When ?Red Tails? opens in theaters on Jan. 20, it will be because Lucas paid for everything, including the prints.

Lucas, who is 67 and still in possession of the full pompadour, told me his story of rejection on a cold December morning at Skywalker Ranch, in Marin County, Calif. He was sitting on a maroon sofa in the animation studios, wearing his standard billionaire-casual outfit ? a flannel shirt with rolled-up sleeves, jeans and Nikes ? while Padmé Amidala, the heroine of the ?Star Wars? prequels, peeked down from two paintings arranged on either side of his head.
?I?m retiring,? Lucas said. ?I?m moving away from the business, from the company, from all this kind of stuff.?
He was careful to leave himself an out clause for a fifth ?Indiana Jones? film. But otherwise, ?Red Tails? will be the last blockbuster Lucas makes. ?Once this is finished, he?s done everything he?s ever wanted to do,? says Rick McCallum, who has been producing Lucas?s films for more than 20 years. ?He will have completed his task as a man and a filmmaker.?
Lucas has decided to devote the rest of his life to what cineastes in the 1970s used to call personal films. They?ll be small in scope, esoteric in subject and screened mostly in art houses. They?ll be like the experimental movies Lucas made in the 1960s, around the time he was at U.S.C. film school, when he recorded clouds moving over the desert and made a movie based on an E. E. Cummings poem. During that period, Lucas assumed he would spend his career on the fringes. Then ?Star Wars? happened ? and though Lucas often mused about it, he never committed himself to the uncommercial world until now.
Sitting in a sun-drenched office, his voice boyish, Lucas talked about himself as if he were a character in one of his movies. He?s at the end of an epic saga; he?s embracing a new destiny (?Make the art films, George?); he?s battling former acolytes who have become his sworn enemies; and George Lucas is ? no kidding ? in love. Before he takes his digital camera with him into obscurity, though, Lucas has one last mission. He wants to prove that with ?Red Tails,? he can still make the kind of movie everyone in the world will want to see.
THE LAST BLOCKBUSTER
A little more than a week before our meeting at the ranch, Lucas stood in front of the screen in a packed theater in Times Square. An army of African-American power brokers looked down upon him from stadium seating. Richard Parsons was there. Spike Lee. David Dinkins. Al Sharpton. Desirée Rogers, the former White House social secretary. Lee Daniels, the director of ?Precious.?
Lucas was sporting his traditional uniform of jeans and