So now its over, who's looking forward to Lucas's "personal" movies?

I think thats from March actually. Its about Red Tails--the "work" he's done is script conferencing or something, so even that project is still ephemeral. Its legit, but its been around for a while.

Actually, I probably should have highlighted this earlier but I just never got around to it:

New interview with Lucas about his "personal" films.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/movies/29itzk.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2#

Of course he does the same old song and dance. But I think to me this interview hints that this is all just smoke and mirrors and that he might never actually go through with it. Like most instances it seems, Coppola actually did what Lucas has been claiming to want to do for the last thirty-five years--he took his savings, made a really personal, uncommercial film for himself, had total control over it, released it in about six theaters (literally), it made no money (about $250,000). And no doubt Coppola is proud of himself, as he should be--Youth Without Youth is a remarkable little film and deserves the accolades its gotten. When the interviewer brings this to Lucas attention, Lucas' response is pessimistically: "Did you see it?? Mr. Lucas asked rhetorically. ?Uh, no. Did you even know it came out??
This comes after pages of talk about the new CG Clone War series and its lucrative Toys R US deals and primetime network slot. What the hell happened to making a personal film for himself that no one wants to see and fails at the box office? The ones he claims even a few paragraphs before that: "Maybe it ends up in a festival somewhere,? he said. ?Maybe it ends up in half a dozen theaters around the country for a couple weeks.?

To me this all just seems very hypocritical. He said after ROTS he was going to do these films. But then he just made some idiotic Star Wars kids cartoon. And then Indy IV. And then another Star Wars series (around 2010). And maybe if he's lucky a World War II fighter pilot movie. And probably another Star Wars SE around the same time. It seems that by the time Lucas can actually make these he'll be 70, and Lucas doesn't strike me as a guy who would want to direct movies after 70, he seems to be more interested in making money off of these huge mainstream titles.

 

^^^
There has been talk of "Red Tails" since before "Revenge of the Sith" came out and Indy 4 has been talked about since the late 90's. From what I've seen Lucas doesn't really have a lot to do with "The Clone Wars". He just kinda works with them a little on the story.

The thing is: Coppola doesn't run a multi-billion dollar industry like Lucas. Lucas has many employees to think about. The man is obviously driven by a sense of duty to his fellow man or else he wouldn't have philanthropic endeavors like Edutopia. Before the PT was completed, Lucas said he was doing "Red Tails" and "Indy 4" and one got made and the other is being made so I'm not really understanding your stance on this. But we'll just have to wait and see. I sure wouldn't bet against a guy who has made all the movies he set out to make. Just look at "Radioland Murders". If I'm not mistaken, that thing was on the shelf for almost 20 years before it was made.

But what can I say, I would rather watch "Red Tails" than an art house movie because I would love to see some P51 Mustangs, Supermarine Spitfires and the Bf 109 in some European air battles done with the latest CGI. Ooo, a cameo by a Me 262. That would be way cool.

Coppola just got a head start on Lucas by a few years but remember Coppola is five years older. Making these personal movies is like Coppola's retirement. Instead of playing golf, he's making movies. Maybe Lucas isn't ready for retirement.
You know, I never really got the whole Coppola thing anyway. I thought "No Country for Old Men" was better than "Apocalypse Now" for the whole journey-into-the-heart-of-darkness thing. Maybe I'll give "Rumble Fish" another try.

 

He has a multi-million dollar vineyard which he owns and which is his primary source of income, with many employees. Lucas doesn't actually run anything, he stepped down as CEO years and years ago, he just goes to a meeting once a day and signs some papers--he literally does not do business work, and most of the "approvals" actually come from other people above Lucas, the people that actually run the company and make the business decisions. Lucas was semi-retired before the PT, and now he's mostly-retired. Its not like he's that busy. If Lucas wanted to he could make room for a personal film, so the fact that they are unmade is not due to time, and its definitely not due to funds.

Indeed, Lucas has frequently been generous with his wealth. But what BILLION-dollar company doesn't do this? You'd have to be a monster not to give some of it away. In fact, for tax purposes you do have to, Lucasfilm has annually made charitable donations to various venues and there's no reason to believe its not due to the standard business practice that any billion-dollar empire run by top businessmen like Lucasfilm is. Not to take away from anything. And even Coppola has been very, very generous with money when he had it.

No, Coppola did it now because this is his first opportunity--he literally did not have the money at any time prior. He is not a multi-billionaire, and he is not a multi-millionaire. He was in financial dire straits in the early 1990's, then Dracula and Godfather III made him some cash so he wisely invested in a vineyard and slowly he has accumulated a few million dollars in personal funds over the years, which he finally had enough of in the last few years to do this film. Otherwise he would have been doing it all along--he WAS doing it all along, the only reason he stopped was because One From the Heart made him bankrupt and he never recovered until now. I don't know how many of these he can make--basically Youth Without Youth was money spent, not invested, so it'll probably take him a few years to save up again.

 

You never got the Godfather, either?

 

Personally, I find Godfather a little overrated as well. Godfather II on the other hand...

 

Well, I don't dispute that Part II is the true masterpiece... just out of curiosity, in what year did you first watch The Godfather?

 

2001

I recognize its importance as a monumental step in the early American New Wave/New Hollywood movement and what its repercussions were, I just don't particularly enjoy it as much as some people. I don't think its just because its been ripped off so much though, because a lot of people find it "unoriginal" or whatever because its become a genre unto itself, its more the way the story itself unfolded, as Coppola himself said the film is "just a bunch of old men sitting around in dark rooms, talking." I'm not a big mafia guy though, I think thats why Goodfellas and Godfather II are my favorites in the genre, they're the least "mafia" based I guess is the way to put it. I think Godfather II feels a bit more personal to me, that whole Conversation-Godfather II-Apocalypse Now trio that Coppola did from 1975-78 is as good as I've seen the medium ever get.

 

Well, obviously at its most superficial level the Godfather movies are about mobsters. But it's much deeper than that - go past the superficial reading of these movies and it's ultimately about capitalism and its effect on family unity. Looking at them from that point of view, the 2 movies are a remarkable indictment of American capitalism in the 20th century. I don't know to what extent it may have been obvious when the 1st one came out, but it's very clear by the 2nd movie that Coppola was able to develop a theme (family triumphing together in Vito's early days) and an opposing countertheme (a family torn apart by capitalism after Michael became head of the family). The way Part II is edited together makes it a masterful analysis of the conflicting ways in which families are pulled together, and also pulled apart, because of capitalism in America.

The key line in Part II is a mournful Michael telling his mother, "Tempi cambi" ("times change").

 

Here is an article I read a while back where the writer claims that Coppola says he can keep making films like "Youth Without Youth" indefinitely:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/12/10/DDD3TQA5I.DTL

But anyway what Coppola is doing is just what he always wanted to do back in the day.

 

Indefinitely? Well, no disrespect to Coppola here, but I'll believe it when I see it.

 

True, maybe he has more money than he lets on. I think, though, that what he is implying is that his vineyard is a steady cash cow and at some point in the near future he will be able to make another film on his own pocketbook. I don't think he could just start shooting tommorrow though, at least not without compromising his finances to the point where he might not be able to make another film afterwards. It takes a while to do a script and put a film together though, so I'm sure that if he went into development tommorrow he would be doing okay by the time it actually came to go to camera. Actually, Youth Without Youth was a much more elaborate film than I had anticipated it would be. I guess he saved a bundle shooting in Europe with non-union crews, god knows if the film was a studio production it would be at least $30 million.

 

I just posted it because I thought you would be interested in it. I don't know what the guy is going to do.

I've had "Youth Without Youth" in my Netflix queue since before Netflix had it in stock but it's low priority.

I'm checking out "Appocalypse Now Redux" this weekend. I never watched this new version.

When are they ever going to put "Johnny Guitar" on DVD? It's an outrage.

 

I think Paramount owns the rights to Johnny Guitar and they're not in a hurry to release a DVD, apparently. You could get it as an imported DVD, but only if you have a multi-region DVD player.

 

I don't have a multi-regional DVD player. Well I got the ones where you can change the regional code 4 times.

 

Has it received much in the way of accolades? I checked Metacritic, and it accrued a score of 43, which is pretty dreary. Even Lucas's most maligned film, TPM, managed to break into the 50's.

http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/youthwithoutyouth

 

I don't think it has really received many accolades, at least not that I am aware of. Truth be told -- and I say this as a major Coppola fan -- the movie is a bit difficult... that doesn't necessarily make it a bad movie, but I do think you have to be in the right mood to watch it or it's just going to seem incredibly boring. There is a lot of philosophizing in the movie, that imho doesn't necessarily translate so well to the medium. But if you really do get into it, you can probably find a lot of interesting things there. I just definitely wouldn't recommend it to anyone who prefers the simplicity of mainstream cinema.

 

This Lucas interview, which was on the force.net front page, discusses a lot of things we talk about in this forum. The Tuskegee Airmen movie, the future direction of Indiana Jones, and yes, believe it or not, he's STILL talking about making those "personal, esoteric" films!

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/article4386319.ece

Question:

Did the guy who wrote the article do a good job of making it clear that Lucas's financial "devastation" in the mid-eighties was due to his divorce from Marcia which cost him a hundred million dollars? I got it, because I was already aware of it, but I thought it was sloppy writing and a bit confusing.

 

WHOA!

that's quite an article, I didn't realize Lucas had had so many challenges

 

Maybe this is hopelessly naive, but I'm actually encouraged by the fact that he's still talking about these 'esoteric' films. It sounded in that interview as though the hold-up is Red Tails, which is taking a while to get together and which he seems intent on doing first.

 

You may be right. That makes sense. And Lucas is still only in his 60s and he's talking about making small films. Clint Eastwood is in his 70s and has made a couple of big studio features.

 

I think that in some ways, Lucas has continued to be "experimental" to this day... watch the makings of for the prequels. Frequently, the designs and choices of the films were all of his experiments and desires to play with technology shoe horned into the story. Episode 1 tinkered with splicing multiple takes of the same scene together, compositing the different actor's performances into one shot. Jar Jar was his attempt at "the first CG character". Episode 2 used extensive green/blue screen. They shot Kamino on blue screen, and the factory scene with Padme was done with a blue conveyor belt and blue boxed pneumatics in an afternoon of pick-up shots. Greivous was his second attempt at Jar Jar's imperfect execution. Often times he played with designs, looking for visually interesting "looks"... 'wedging-out' the Jedi Starfighters, for instance.

Lucas may be running his cash cow, but he's certainly still experimenting. ILM constantly gets to break new ground working on other movies (gee... paid to play? Sure!) and there's nothing to say George doesn't privately work on experimental films... dun dun DUNNNNN...

-TJ