Amph Can these Hollywood careers be saved? Sarah Jessica Parker

Lindsay Lohan

Career high point: "Mean Girls"

Career low point: Take your pick. We'll just go with "I Know Who Killed Me."

How to fix it: Step one: Obey the law, regularly. As if you were a normal person. Step two: Remind directors and audiences that the precious talent behind "Freaky Friday" and "The Parent Trap" and "Mean Girls" hasn't vanished. Posing for Playboy? Not a good career move. Convincing Lorne Michaels to let you host "Saturday Night Live"? Brilliant. Go to NYC and be the most professional, eager-to-please host they've EVER had. Show a Melissa McCarthy-esque willingness to laugh at yourself and do anything for a punchline. Get people saying, "Wow. She's not bad." And then repeat that level of professionalism in selling yourself to the best directors in town and making it clear that you're willing to do anything to appear in a mainstream film with a legitimate script and, preferably, a legitimate director. It may not be easy, but we'd much rather celebrate a Lindsay Lohan comeback than have her as a sad cautionary tale.

- Daniel Fienberg


I think this one is beyond help.

 

I'd be inclined to rate her career low point as "getting arrested and serving jail-time".

Such a waste.

 

Mmm, wasn't she in the Prairie Home Companion movie, too? Or is that another of the Britney-Christina-Jessica types?

 

As long as sleazy, skanky, drug-addicted prostitutes are in high demand along
east Hollywood and Santa Monica Boulevards, Lindsay Lohan will always have
career opportunities in Hollywood.

 

Nope and she never had much of a career to begin with. She has no real acting chops and has lost the appeal of being a child actor.

 

I'm torn, because she did, at one point, have such a promising career. If she were able to truly stay clean, and turn her life around and get her career back on track, then yes, I'd be happy to see that. But she's had chance after chance after chance and with the exception (for now) of this last one, she's blown them all back in everybody's faces, that part of me is just waiting for her to become another statistic and member of the 27 club. I hope it's the former rather than the latter.

 

George Lucas

Career high point: The original "Star Wars" trilogy

Career low point: The prequel "Star Wars" trilogy

"How to fix it: When people talk about how "Star Wars" is broken beyond repair, it's apparent they aren't people who watch the "Clone Wars" animated series, which is doing the exact kind of storytelling on a regular basis that fans claim they wanted. And why? Because it's a playground that Lucas set up that he lets other writers and directors explore, and they grew up loving the "Star Wars" iconography. Lucas has told the story he wanted to tell, and in two quick steps, he could silence the whiners forever. All he needs to do is release a pristine Blu-ray of the untouched theatrical versions of the original trilogy, and then greenlight a new ongoing series of movies that he produces but allows other people to write and direct, set in the larger "Star Wars" world without any obligation to the Skywalker family saga. His talk of personal experimental films is fine for the soul, but if he wants to turn around the noise-making that he complains about every time he's interviewed, letting loose his most significant property is the way to make it happen."

- Drew McWeeney

 

As bad as the PT was, the low point was clearly Howard the Duck.

My answer would no, though, regardless. The PT made painfully obvious his weaknesses as both a screen-writer and director. Unfortunately for George, I don't think his ego will let him just develop and produce movies while letting more competent hands do the writing and directing.

 

I don't agree with that at all - I've always thought the prequels were just fine. I'm not saying they are perfect, because very few films in this world can be considered "perfect", but nonetheless it's pretty good stuff for what it's aiming at.

So George Lucas's career, imho, doesn't need to be saved. After all, he's already the world's most successful independent filmmaker, and now that he can pretty much just ease his way into retirement, there's no particular reason to think he should care what his critics have to say.

When all is said and done, Lucas will be remembered as having had one of the most extraordinarily successful careers of any director. His influence over so many areas - including sound, editing, computer animation - will be remembered for decades to come.

 

I reject the opinion that the phenomenally successful career of a multi-billionaire filmmaker/businessman needs to be "saved".

 

Enough of this total horse ***.

I've worked with George for a long, long time, and his 'career' isn't in any 'danger' whatsoever, unless ignorant
jackass clowns like Drew McWeeney consider George's current construction of one of the largest soundstage/production
facilities in the world (outside of Hollywood) the signal of a failed man.

By the way, Drew, love the name.

McWeeney.

 

This. George Lucas is a legend in his own time.....

 

It isn't so much his career that needs to be saved as his image. Lucas just seems incredibly out of touch with the people who made his career what it was. I think he solves this by re-releasing the theatrical cuts of the original trilogy on the big screen and on blu-ray

 

I think it's very clear that not all SW fans feel that way. He's an artist, and he has the right to make changes to his movies. I may not always like the changes he makes, but I still respect the very principle that artists should be able to tinker with their works if they're not happy with how they turned out when they were first made public.

Oddly enough, CW and even the prequels seem to be very well liked by a lot of young kids who have started watching only in the last few years. I think Lucas's legacy will definitely outlive his vocal detractors, because the SW universe will live on for generations to come.

 

Talking about "saving" his "career" isn't really the right formulation for someone like George Lucas, who has all the monetary success and popular recognition he could ask for, and who completely controls his own career through his ability to self-finance and self-distribute pretty much anything he really wants to. The only thing he needs to be saved from is himself, at this point. The question is whether or not Lucas will ever be able to recapture the grasp of storytelling that made him a success, or whether he'll continue in a downward spiral of obsessively crapping all over his prior successes. He needs to leave Star Wars alone and start trying to tell some original stories. He needs to find whatever brought us American Graffiti and THX-1138 again, and stop this OCD fixation on tinkering and re-tinkering with his previous work.

 

Bla bl blah b-blurgghh. Lucas "needs" to do this, he "needs" to do that. I think George Lucas "needs" to tell you what you "need" to do to fix your life/career/image. He's in a better position to be handing out life advice, IMO.

 

I think his storytelling abilities were actually much greater by the time he made the prequels than they were during the OT. The prequels work on a number of levels, so that different viewers may be able to grasp different layers of the material, in a way that simply wasn't the case at all with the original films.

This right here shows your complete lack of objectivity. Some of us *like* the fact that he's re-releasing the SW movies with 3-D conversions, and some of us also enjoy the CW series.

As for some original stories, earlier this year Lucasfilm released a little film called "Red Tails", a project that Lucas had long wanted to bring to the screen. Even if he didn't direct the movie, it was his company that got the film financed and released.

 

I wanted to see "Red Tails" and it hardly seemed to get released at all--I don't think it opened here.

 

Probably will be out on video by May or June. Hopefully, there will be an audio commentary by Lucas and the crew!!

 

Well it is a visually stunning movie so the DVD/Blue ray should be great... the rest didn't click with me, but others I talked to like it so as usual to each his own. I will own it on DVD as I love visuals of WWII aircraft, or any military aircraft.

 

George Lucas is always going to have a career. His "career" doesn't need to be saved. What needs to be saved is his talent, which he does have. Get outside the echo chamber is something he should probably do and take criticism seriously is another thing. He might make another legitimate artwork if he does those things. I don't know that he gives a crap about making a great work of art, to be frank, but I know I wish he would. I could use another movie like the original Star Wars or American Graffiti. He has talent and he was once capable of making movies that were so vibrant and arresting that they were just instantly part of the film canon; he could be capable of doing that again, I think, if he'd surround himself with some true thinkers, instead of a bunch of yes-men, and then actually listen to their advice. This has nothing to do with his career; his career is fine. But his movies aren't; they could be 'great,' but they're not even 'fine.' And I wish someone could bring a little salvation to that, no matter about his career.

Yes, I really, really loathed TPM, only liked about a quarter of AotC and thought RotS was solid everywhere except where it counted. But, yes, as has already been said: Howard the Duck would be the low point, not the PT. I mean, for God's sake. Jake Lloyd couldn't act and Jar Jar was annoying; but let's be realistic: nobody had sex with a duck, so that's still a win.

 

Well...good point.

 

if he'd surround himself with some true thinkers, instead of a bunch of yes-men

What exactly is a "true thinker" and who specifically are the people he is going to hire who have
enough stature in the film industry to tell him what he should do?

 

Someone should reanimate Irvin Kershner and David Tomblin, and kidnap Gary Kurtz.

 

Gary Kurtz? Name ONE filmmaking success Gary Kurtz has enjoyed since he left Lucasfilm THIRTY TWO YEARS AGO.
Kurtz hasn't produced a critically acclaimed film, he hasn't had a financially successful film. He hasn't worked with
A-List actors. Kurtz has been off the Hollywood radar of successful producers for decades.

He's been so successful he had to declare BANKRUPTCY.

Gary's been reduced to being a guest at weekend retreats for Star Wars fans where he shows
pictures he took on the set of Star Wars in 1976 and 1979. Come on.

From what I've seen Kurtz is a gentleman, a nice guy and a capable line producer of movies. But a key creative
force or influence? That's absurd.

If Kurtz hasn't been able to maintain a successful producing career for over three decades, where is the evidence
he has some magical insight that would benefit Lucas? Why doesn't he sprinkle some of the magic dust on himself?