1 00:00:14,932 --> 00:00:16,601 (CHILDREN CHATTERING) 2 00:00:16,684 --> 00:00:20,480 GEORGE: I grew up on a farm in Modesto. 3 00:00:26,360 --> 00:00:30,907 Like most kids that grew up in the Valley, I had a strong interest in cruising. 4 00:00:34,410 --> 00:00:38,456 I wandered around and spent most of my youth roaming the streets of the town. 5 00:00:38,831 --> 00:00:39,832 (LAUGHTER) 6 00:00:40,917 --> 00:00:45,088 Following the path that I was on, I was sort of flunking out of high school. 7 00:00:45,421 --> 00:00:47,090 My mother kept worrying about me. 8 00:00:47,673 --> 00:00:49,634 "He's not going to amount to anything." 9 00:00:50,176 --> 00:00:52,553 My father kept saying, "He's a late bloomer. 10 00:00:52,887 --> 00:00:55,598 "Don't worry about it. He's a late bloomer." (CHUCKLES) 11 00:00:56,349 --> 00:00:59,352 Driving cars, going fast. I really liked that. 12 00:00:59,936 --> 00:01:01,354 I liked the sensation of it. 13 00:01:02,980 --> 00:01:05,691 I wanted to be a car mechanic, I wanted to race cars. 14 00:01:06,984 --> 00:01:10,404 At the time, in high school, I had a very little car, 15 00:01:10,488 --> 00:01:12,824 it was, you know, that big, and I was 16 00:01:12,907 --> 00:01:15,827 turning into my driveway, it was a country road, 17 00:01:16,661 --> 00:01:20,581 and uh, there was this guy. 18 00:01:21,582 --> 00:01:23,668 So he was going about 90 miles an hour. 19 00:01:23,876 --> 00:01:25,086 I didn't see him coming. 20 00:01:25,419 --> 00:01:26,879 I hear a horn honk... 21 00:01:26,963 --> 00:01:28,673 -(HORN HONKING) -(VEHICLE CRASHES) 22 00:01:29,382 --> 00:01:30,383 ...and then I'm gone. 23 00:01:32,135 --> 00:01:33,261 They hit me broadside. 24 00:01:33,886 --> 00:01:37,056 My car rolled about seven or eight times, wrapped around a tree. 25 00:01:37,765 --> 00:01:39,892 And when I woke up, the first thing I heard 26 00:01:39,976 --> 00:01:43,646 the nurse saying, "Don't worry, you have all your arms and legs." 27 00:01:44,939 --> 00:01:46,315 I said, "What do you mean?" 28 00:01:49,569 --> 00:01:51,821 Everybody kept saying, "You should be dead." 29 00:01:57,535 --> 00:02:02,707 That's when I decided that, you know, maybe there's a reason I'm here. 30 00:02:03,583 --> 00:02:05,585 (THEME MUSIC PLAYING) 31 00:02:54,383 --> 00:02:56,761 GEORGE: My father wanted me to go into the stationery business 32 00:02:56,844 --> 00:02:58,554 and run an office equipment store. 33 00:02:59,347 --> 00:03:03,392 They built it up for me to take over, and I said, "I don't want that." 34 00:03:04,310 --> 00:03:07,313 I'll never work at a job where I have to do the same thing 35 00:03:07,396 --> 00:03:08,898 over and over again every day. 36 00:03:09,440 --> 00:03:12,360 It was probably the biggest disagreement we ever got into. 37 00:03:12,443 --> 00:03:15,780 I said, "Well, I'll just go to school. I mean, I'll go to college." 38 00:03:15,863 --> 00:03:17,949 You know, this is during the Vietnam War. 39 00:03:18,991 --> 00:03:21,744 The only thing I could get into was the junior college. 40 00:03:23,120 --> 00:03:25,748 I took lots of classes in the social sciences, 41 00:03:26,040 --> 00:03:29,669 psychology and anthropology, and I got really hooked on it. 42 00:03:29,752 --> 00:03:31,712 I said, "This is great. I love this." 43 00:03:31,796 --> 00:03:35,258 And one of the books I had to read was The Hero with a Thousand Faces. 44 00:03:36,050 --> 00:03:40,096 And I got very intrigued with the idea of how you build a society. 45 00:03:40,972 --> 00:03:44,850 It was all done by stories, mythologies, heroes. 46 00:03:48,396 --> 00:03:49,397 (BIRD SCREECHING) 47 00:03:49,480 --> 00:03:54,610 It really wasn't until my junior year of college that I discovered film. 48 00:03:56,821 --> 00:03:58,072 Ended up at USC. 49 00:04:00,616 --> 00:04:03,911 Suddenly I was seeing all kinds of films that I'd never seen before. 50 00:04:04,662 --> 00:04:07,081 Complete eye-opener. It was just a whole new world. 51 00:04:08,082 --> 00:04:11,252 It's one of those things you eat, sleep and drink movies, 52 00:04:11,335 --> 00:04:12,962 and you love every second of it. 53 00:04:15,298 --> 00:04:18,926 I instantly knew that this was for me, that this was it. 54 00:04:20,594 --> 00:04:22,054 I didn't know what a filmmaker was. 55 00:04:22,138 --> 00:04:24,515 I didn't know what a producer was or a director or anything. 56 00:04:24,598 --> 00:04:30,688 All I knew was that I wanted to make film and whatever that entails. 57 00:04:32,106 --> 00:04:35,526 First semester there, and I started making student films. 58 00:04:36,319 --> 00:04:38,404 Took the Cinema department by storm. 59 00:04:40,740 --> 00:04:46,203 We met in the '60s when he premiered THX 1138, 60 00:04:46,287 --> 00:04:48,748 his short film, during a film festival. 61 00:04:48,998 --> 00:04:50,416 George won first prize. 62 00:04:50,499 --> 00:04:56,547 THX 1138 4EB. This is Authority. You will stop where you are. 63 00:04:57,465 --> 00:05:00,468 I basically said, "I'll never make a movie that good." 64 00:05:02,053 --> 00:05:05,806 One of the things that really bonded us was we made movies for the audience, 65 00:05:06,223 --> 00:05:08,351 even more than making movies for ourselves. 66 00:05:09,560 --> 00:05:11,562 GEORGE: All of my friends, 67 00:05:11,645 --> 00:05:13,564 they were all people who loved movies. 68 00:05:13,647 --> 00:05:15,649 None of them were interested in making money. 69 00:05:15,733 --> 00:05:17,860 They were just interested in making movies. 70 00:05:21,072 --> 00:05:24,950 MAN: Lucas is out of school now, working with Francis Ford Coppola, 71 00:05:25,201 --> 00:05:28,621 himself, a recent graduate of the film school at UCLA. 72 00:05:29,205 --> 00:05:31,624 Coppola is directing The Rain People, 73 00:05:31,707 --> 00:05:34,001 his third professional film for Warner Bros., 74 00:05:34,627 --> 00:05:37,671 and Lucas is making a movie of him making a movie. 75 00:05:39,382 --> 00:05:41,050 The idea is you got to really... 76 00:05:41,133 --> 00:05:43,302 You've got to really want to do something 77 00:05:43,386 --> 00:05:45,763 and then nothing can stop you, I believe. 78 00:05:46,305 --> 00:05:49,767 Would you tell us something about your young assistant, George Lucas? 79 00:05:49,850 --> 00:05:52,728 Well, he's not my assistant, actually, he's an associate. 80 00:05:52,812 --> 00:05:54,980 -MAN: Okay. -George won an award to come to 81 00:05:55,064 --> 00:05:57,483 Warner Bros. and observe a film being made there. 82 00:05:57,566 --> 00:06:00,611 So we were making Finian's Rainbow, and I see this skinny kid with a beard 83 00:06:00,694 --> 00:06:02,405 and always looking. I said, "Who's that?" 84 00:06:02,488 --> 00:06:04,490 And he said, "He's observing you." 85 00:06:04,573 --> 00:06:05,741 GEORGE: On Finian's Rainbow, 86 00:06:05,825 --> 00:06:08,869 we were the only two people on the set under 50 years old, 87 00:06:09,954 --> 00:06:12,206 and the only two that had gone to film school. 88 00:06:12,289 --> 00:06:13,332 We had an affinity. 89 00:06:13,749 --> 00:06:16,585 We were young and very much against the establishment. 90 00:06:17,837 --> 00:06:21,424 And so in '69, we went to San Francisco. 91 00:06:22,091 --> 00:06:24,844 Both Francis and I said, "This is where we should be." 92 00:06:29,181 --> 00:06:31,934 Not too many lobbies that have a friendly pool table right here. 93 00:06:32,017 --> 00:06:34,562 That's true. We hope that at 3:00 in the morning, 94 00:06:34,687 --> 00:06:37,857 that will be a comfort and an aid when we're working on a film 95 00:06:37,940 --> 00:06:39,733 in the other room. This is the main... 96 00:06:39,817 --> 00:06:42,695 GEORGE: We bought mixing equipment and editing equipment. 97 00:06:44,238 --> 00:06:46,449 We were building a little studio there. 98 00:06:47,408 --> 00:06:49,201 We would do everything ourselves. 99 00:06:50,953 --> 00:06:54,165 I got to take one of my student films and turn it into a feature. 100 00:06:58,836 --> 00:07:00,796 MAN: One Coppola production was filmed 101 00:07:00,921 --> 00:07:03,632 in a garage at the San Francisco International Airport. 102 00:07:04,133 --> 00:07:09,388 A science fiction story written and directed by George Lucas, who is 25. 103 00:07:09,472 --> 00:07:12,141 Lucas and his wife are editing the film themselves. 104 00:07:12,224 --> 00:07:15,478 Although Warner Bros. agreed to finance and release it, 105 00:07:15,561 --> 00:07:18,105 Lucas retained complete creative control. 106 00:07:19,565 --> 00:07:21,692 In terms of my film, have complete freedom 107 00:07:21,775 --> 00:07:23,360 to say whatever I want to say. 108 00:07:23,569 --> 00:07:26,071 Right, wrong or indifferent. At least I can say it. 109 00:07:27,114 --> 00:07:32,161 MAN ON P.A.: THX is pronounced incurable and shall be held in detention. 110 00:07:32,244 --> 00:07:35,873 With Warner Bros., they didn't come up here and look at what I was doing, 111 00:07:35,956 --> 00:07:38,459 and I don't know whether they even read the script. 112 00:07:38,542 --> 00:07:41,629 We finally showed him the cut, and they were like, "Oh, my God, what is this?" 113 00:07:41,712 --> 00:07:42,713 (ELECTRONIC HUMMING) 114 00:07:44,715 --> 00:07:46,884 MAN ON P.A.: Evacuate. All magna personnel... 115 00:07:46,967 --> 00:07:48,469 GEORGE: The board didn't like it. 116 00:07:48,677 --> 00:07:52,223 And they chopped it up. They ended up cutting out five minutes 117 00:07:52,306 --> 00:07:54,225 and some of it was really good stuff. 118 00:07:55,184 --> 00:07:57,102 There's nothing worse than the frustration 119 00:07:57,186 --> 00:07:59,813 of having somebody who doesn't get what you're doing 120 00:07:59,897 --> 00:08:01,815 trying to turn it into something else. 121 00:08:02,858 --> 00:08:05,194 And as a result of our disagreements 122 00:08:05,277 --> 00:08:10,449 with Warner Bros. over the final cut of THX, 123 00:08:10,533 --> 00:08:14,578 we ended up losing a lot of our projects that we were gonna be doing for them. 124 00:08:16,080 --> 00:08:20,709 The company we had built together, American Zoetrope, went bankrupt. 125 00:08:20,793 --> 00:08:22,962 So Francis went off and did The Godfather. 126 00:08:24,380 --> 00:08:25,381 He told me, he said, 127 00:08:25,464 --> 00:08:29,385 "Enough of this artsy fartsy, science fiction, strange movies. 128 00:08:29,468 --> 00:08:30,886 "I want you to do a comedy. 129 00:08:31,428 --> 00:08:33,138 "Prove to me you can do a comedy." 130 00:08:34,014 --> 00:08:37,893 (ROCK 'N' ROLL MUSIC PLAYING) 131 00:08:41,105 --> 00:08:45,067 The first time that I met George was an audition for a movie that he had 132 00:08:45,150 --> 00:08:47,611 with an indecipherable title, American Graffiti. 133 00:08:47,695 --> 00:08:49,321 I had to look up the word "graffiti," 134 00:08:49,446 --> 00:08:54,618 because I didn't know what it was, and there were things about George 135 00:08:54,868 --> 00:08:57,162 that I found mystifying as an actor. 136 00:08:57,246 --> 00:08:59,582 He doesn't really do actor speak. 137 00:08:59,748 --> 00:09:01,542 He's a little cryptic. 138 00:09:01,917 --> 00:09:05,462 He talks about an atmosphere, a world. 139 00:09:06,505 --> 00:09:10,968 And I remember it took six auditions over a period of about six months 140 00:09:11,093 --> 00:09:13,637 for all of us to wind up being chosen. 141 00:09:17,516 --> 00:09:19,393 I joked with him about that at one point. 142 00:09:19,476 --> 00:09:22,813 He said, "Yeah, well, it took me that long to pick the cars, too." 143 00:09:26,358 --> 00:09:30,112 I was fascinated when we were shooting American Graffiti 144 00:09:30,237 --> 00:09:34,950 by the freedom he gave the actors, but also by the world creation of it. 145 00:09:35,117 --> 00:09:38,162 And I wouldn't have known to use that term then. 146 00:09:42,124 --> 00:09:44,501 The cars were as important to him. 147 00:09:45,210 --> 00:09:47,296 A lot of it's from my own experience. 148 00:09:48,130 --> 00:09:50,549 At the time, cruising was gone, 149 00:09:50,758 --> 00:09:54,470 and I really felt compelled to sort of document the intimate nature 150 00:09:54,553 --> 00:09:56,722 of man's relationship to machine. 151 00:09:57,222 --> 00:10:00,559 Cruising was a uniquely American mating ritual. 152 00:10:00,643 --> 00:10:03,354 (ROCK 'N' ROLL SONG PLAYING) 153 00:10:04,897 --> 00:10:07,358 (INAUDIBLE CONVERSATION) 154 00:10:08,901 --> 00:10:09,902 What did you say? 155 00:10:09,985 --> 00:10:11,195 Wait. What did you say? 156 00:10:11,278 --> 00:10:12,321 What did you say? 157 00:10:13,364 --> 00:10:16,241 RON: On some kind of subliminal level, 158 00:10:17,951 --> 00:10:19,787 it obviously clicked with audiences. 159 00:10:23,624 --> 00:10:25,834 GEORGE: It was a big moment for me because I really did sit down and told myself, 160 00:10:25,918 --> 00:10:27,336 "Okay, now I am a director. 161 00:10:27,419 --> 00:10:30,047 "Now I know I can be creative in a way that I enjoy." 162 00:10:32,633 --> 00:10:35,636 RON: One day we had been standing around Mel's Diner, 163 00:10:36,178 --> 00:10:39,264 and I said to George, "What do you think you want to do next?" 164 00:10:39,598 --> 00:10:41,809 And he said, "Well, I like science fiction. 165 00:10:42,518 --> 00:10:44,353 "The advances that Kubrick made, 166 00:10:45,646 --> 00:10:48,440 "I want to apply that to Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon 167 00:10:48,607 --> 00:10:50,901 "kinds of movies, like a movie serial. 168 00:10:51,985 --> 00:10:55,406 "Combine that with 2001 special effects, 169 00:10:56,156 --> 00:10:58,534 "but the ships go real fast." 170 00:10:58,617 --> 00:10:59,660 (CHUCKLES) 171 00:10:59,743 --> 00:11:01,578 And that's kind of all he said. 172 00:11:01,704 --> 00:11:02,955 That was about all I had. 173 00:11:04,164 --> 00:11:06,166 I was just searching for a story, 174 00:11:06,750 --> 00:11:09,336 and then I thought "mythology." 175 00:11:09,420 --> 00:11:10,754 (THUNDER CRASHING) 176 00:11:10,838 --> 00:11:14,925 The idea that a society creates heroes that they can admire. 177 00:11:16,093 --> 00:11:20,973 But I could see it as a mechanism, a universal reality. 178 00:11:24,518 --> 00:11:27,855 So I said I want to do one of those, only a modern version of that. 179 00:11:27,938 --> 00:11:30,065 Well, first I had to do a story treatment. 180 00:11:32,693 --> 00:11:35,279 I am not the greatest writer in the world. 181 00:11:37,948 --> 00:11:40,701 I'd taken a proposal to a couple of studios, 182 00:11:40,826 --> 00:11:43,537 and they had turned it down, completely confused by it. 183 00:11:44,204 --> 00:11:46,081 Robots and Wookiees. 184 00:11:46,707 --> 00:11:50,127 They couldn't read it and say, "I understand what this is all about." 185 00:11:50,210 --> 00:11:53,922 Science fiction was not something that did well at the box office. 186 00:11:54,423 --> 00:11:56,842 On top of that, it was aimed at young people 187 00:11:56,925 --> 00:11:59,470 and most of the studios said, "Look, Disney does that. 188 00:11:59,553 --> 00:12:01,138 "The rest of us can't do that." 189 00:12:01,221 --> 00:12:03,056 (YOUNG GEORGE SPEAKING) 190 00:12:16,278 --> 00:12:18,238 I knew I was going to have to sell it. 191 00:12:19,072 --> 00:12:20,783 A picture is worth a thousand words. 192 00:12:23,869 --> 00:12:28,540 I hired an illustrator, Ralph McQuarrie, to draw the characters that I had done. 193 00:12:35,422 --> 00:12:37,216 When he showed me those paintings, I said, 194 00:12:37,299 --> 00:12:39,009 "That's exactly what I want. 195 00:12:39,092 --> 00:12:40,636 "I've got 100 ideas here. 196 00:12:40,719 --> 00:12:42,846 "Do this scene. Do this scene, do this scene." 197 00:12:50,187 --> 00:12:53,315 The paintings inspired me to keep writing the script, 198 00:12:53,440 --> 00:12:55,609 (CHUCKLES) and that's how I got through it. 199 00:12:55,692 --> 00:12:57,736 The picture was going to be 200 00:12:57,820 --> 00:13:03,325 a wonderful visual experience as much as being a story. 201 00:13:03,575 --> 00:13:05,953 It was going to be like a roller-coaster ride. 202 00:13:07,746 --> 00:13:10,541 Full of things that would make the audience go, "Wow." 203 00:13:10,624 --> 00:13:12,543 (CHUCKLES) "Oh!" 204 00:13:12,793 --> 00:13:17,297 At the same time, the new Fox Studio executive, Alan Ladd, Jr. 205 00:13:17,714 --> 00:13:19,508 saw American Graffiti and loved it. 206 00:13:20,384 --> 00:13:22,386 (ALAN SPEAKING OVER RECORDING) 207 00:13:27,307 --> 00:13:30,394 GEORGE: I showed him the drawings and he said, "Wow, what's it about?" 208 00:13:30,477 --> 00:13:34,731 I said, "Well, that's kind of a space opera, old-fashioned feel about it, 209 00:13:35,399 --> 00:13:38,193 "and there's a giant dog that flies with the hero, 210 00:13:38,277 --> 00:13:40,988 "and it's very hard to get what this is." 211 00:13:42,281 --> 00:13:44,283 (ALAN SPEAKING OVER RECORDING) 212 00:13:56,670 --> 00:13:59,965 GEORGE: We had a special effects budget on that movie of $2 million, 213 00:14:01,008 --> 00:14:02,843 which now won't even buy you a shot. 214 00:14:03,176 --> 00:14:04,511 (LAUGHS) 215 00:14:04,970 --> 00:14:08,348 In the beginning, Fox was not very... Who were financing the film, 216 00:14:08,432 --> 00:14:11,518 weren't very interested in building a new special effects company 217 00:14:11,602 --> 00:14:14,605 that would just be specifically for making Star Wars. 218 00:14:15,480 --> 00:14:18,942 So setting up ILM, I spent about half a million dollars. 219 00:14:19,818 --> 00:14:22,613 Paying for it myself out of American Graffiti money. 220 00:14:26,700 --> 00:14:28,911 And that's one of those things, if you get one guy 221 00:14:28,994 --> 00:14:30,078 who's really good, 222 00:14:32,247 --> 00:14:34,291 he'll bring all the other people with him. 223 00:14:37,753 --> 00:14:39,504 It was an organism 224 00:14:40,797 --> 00:14:42,007 that grew. 225 00:14:43,634 --> 00:14:46,845 We were thinking of names, and most of the names were really bad. 226 00:14:46,929 --> 00:14:49,932 But I thought, well, we were in a warehouse, 227 00:14:50,015 --> 00:14:54,519 so it was very industrial, and we were using magic and light to create things. 228 00:14:55,270 --> 00:14:56,772 It just popped into my head. 229 00:14:56,855 --> 00:14:59,483 I said, "I'm going to call it Industrial Light and Magic." 230 00:14:59,608 --> 00:15:00,651 ILM. 231 00:15:03,362 --> 00:15:06,323 And I was going off to England, Tunisia to shoot the film. 232 00:15:06,740 --> 00:15:08,408 -(CLAPPERBOARD CLACKS) -GEORGE: Action! 233 00:15:09,743 --> 00:15:11,703 I've got to rest before I fall apart. 234 00:15:11,787 --> 00:15:13,372 My joints are almost frozen. 235 00:15:17,000 --> 00:15:19,419 GEORGE: I was in such bad shape when I was in Tunisia. 236 00:15:20,629 --> 00:15:21,838 Everything went wrong. 237 00:15:22,047 --> 00:15:25,676 The whole set blew down overnight and we had to shoot the next day. 238 00:15:25,801 --> 00:15:27,010 We had nothing, no sets. 239 00:15:27,094 --> 00:15:28,929 It was just one thing after another. 240 00:15:31,431 --> 00:15:33,892 (ALAN SPEAKING) 241 00:15:41,024 --> 00:15:43,902 People ask me, "Well, what's the secret of making movies?" 242 00:15:44,653 --> 00:15:45,779 I said, "Persistence." 243 00:15:46,989 --> 00:15:49,116 That's the only way you can describe it. 244 00:15:49,408 --> 00:15:53,203 And if you give up or you, you know, falter, you can't do it. 245 00:15:53,870 --> 00:15:57,290 You've got to be persistent under impossible conditions. 246 00:15:58,709 --> 00:16:02,129 So I got on the airplane to fly home, first place I went was ILM. 247 00:16:10,554 --> 00:16:14,641 When I came back, we had less than a year left to do the special effects. 248 00:16:15,100 --> 00:16:16,685 They'd spent a million dollars 249 00:16:17,144 --> 00:16:22,899 and they had... I don't know, three shots. 250 00:16:23,650 --> 00:16:24,818 George was very angry. 251 00:16:24,901 --> 00:16:29,031 You know, you could feel it in the room, even if he wasn't necessarily in the room. 252 00:16:29,990 --> 00:16:32,409 I know he was unhappy, but I don't know whether 253 00:16:32,492 --> 00:16:35,162 he was unhappy with me or the situation. 254 00:16:35,579 --> 00:16:37,998 The studio was breathing down his neck. 255 00:16:38,081 --> 00:16:39,833 I don't think he was feeling well. 256 00:16:40,083 --> 00:16:44,087 One day, I needed to go to editorial and grab some piece of film for something, 257 00:16:44,171 --> 00:16:47,674 and you had to go through the screening room to get to editorial. 258 00:16:47,758 --> 00:16:51,928 Ran up full of energy, went flying into the screening room. 259 00:16:52,512 --> 00:16:56,767 George and Dykstra were in a heated argument, yelling, 260 00:16:56,850 --> 00:16:58,935 and I just ran right in the middle of it. 261 00:17:00,228 --> 00:17:02,355 I don't even know what it was about. 262 00:17:02,689 --> 00:17:04,399 (YOUNG GEORGE SPEAKING) 263 00:17:15,911 --> 00:17:19,539 We were buried doing the work of building the equipment 264 00:17:19,623 --> 00:17:22,334 and the miniatures 18 hours a day. 265 00:17:24,169 --> 00:17:28,632 So, that we hadn't succeeded getting it all done 266 00:17:28,715 --> 00:17:33,553 and executing the shots was the least of my worries at that time. 267 00:17:34,096 --> 00:17:37,182 Ended up on my way home, flying from LA to San Francisco, 268 00:17:37,265 --> 00:17:39,184 thinking, "Oh, my God, this isn't going to work. 269 00:17:39,392 --> 00:17:42,104 "This is a mess and you'll never get to work again." 270 00:17:42,187 --> 00:17:44,773 And I was having severe chest pains. 271 00:17:44,898 --> 00:17:49,027 They took me to the hospital because they thought I might be having a heart attack. 272 00:17:49,111 --> 00:17:51,321 They said, "Have you been under a lot of pressure?" 273 00:17:51,404 --> 00:17:54,407 I said, "Yeah." (CHUCKLES) They said, "Well, it's probably that. 274 00:17:54,491 --> 00:17:56,576 "Take some aspirins, call us in the morning." 275 00:17:56,660 --> 00:17:58,203 Because it wasn't a heart attack. 276 00:17:58,286 --> 00:18:00,455 It turned out to be angina or something. 277 00:18:00,622 --> 00:18:02,791 But of course, everybody else was panicked. 278 00:18:02,958 --> 00:18:05,794 What if I died? People don't even know what the movie is. 279 00:18:10,132 --> 00:18:12,175 Yeah, it was in a million little pieces. 280 00:18:13,051 --> 00:18:14,886 Nobody knew what I was really doing. 281 00:18:15,095 --> 00:18:16,847 I was the fourth editor hired. 282 00:18:17,514 --> 00:18:20,976 So a lot of work had already been done in the editing process 283 00:18:21,059 --> 00:18:26,148 by the time I arrived on the scene, and I was deeply impressed with the whole thing. 284 00:18:26,523 --> 00:18:30,110 But almost every cut had to be altered somehow. 285 00:18:30,193 --> 00:18:32,487 I got up my nerve and I said, "Listen, George, 286 00:18:32,571 --> 00:18:34,573 "there's something I really need to tell you. 287 00:18:34,656 --> 00:18:37,159 "I've never worked on anything this big before." 288 00:18:37,242 --> 00:18:39,411 He said, "Don't worry about it. Nobody has." 289 00:18:39,494 --> 00:18:40,495 (CHUCKLES) 290 00:18:41,496 --> 00:18:43,790 LUKE: I have a very bad feeling about this. 291 00:18:43,874 --> 00:18:46,251 -BEN: Turn the ship around. -Yeah, I think you're right. 292 00:18:46,334 --> 00:18:48,420 Full reverse. Chewie, lock in the auxiliary power. 293 00:18:48,545 --> 00:18:51,214 PAUL: I was very frustrated editing without effects. 294 00:18:51,423 --> 00:18:52,841 What did I get myself into? 295 00:18:52,924 --> 00:18:54,551 How am I ever going to get this done? 296 00:18:54,634 --> 00:18:58,180 George, at a certain point, decided that he wanted to get the opinion 297 00:18:58,263 --> 00:19:02,642 of some of his colleagues, Brian De Palma and Martin Scorsese, 298 00:19:02,851 --> 00:19:04,728 and Steven Spielberg. 299 00:19:05,687 --> 00:19:08,231 I saw Star Wars for the first time in rough cut. 300 00:19:09,191 --> 00:19:12,861 Well, there we are, Mos Eisley Spaceport. 301 00:19:14,112 --> 00:19:18,575 You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. 302 00:19:19,201 --> 00:19:24,956 The film was, uh... To say it was not finished is a kindness. 303 00:19:25,332 --> 00:19:26,499 -(SCREAMS) -(GUNSHOT) 304 00:19:26,583 --> 00:19:27,667 (PRINCESS LEIA SCREAMS) 305 00:19:27,751 --> 00:19:28,877 Get back to the ship! 306 00:19:28,960 --> 00:19:30,545 LUKE: Where are you going? Come back! 307 00:19:30,629 --> 00:19:32,505 STEVEN: He didn't have the effects yet. 308 00:19:32,881 --> 00:19:34,466 Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. 309 00:19:34,966 --> 00:19:35,967 You're my only hope. 310 00:19:36,676 --> 00:19:39,346 There was a great deal of debate about context 311 00:19:39,554 --> 00:19:42,307 because there are only a couple effects shots in there. 312 00:19:42,515 --> 00:19:43,516 Where are we? 313 00:19:43,683 --> 00:19:44,768 Who are we? 314 00:19:44,851 --> 00:19:45,936 Who are they? 315 00:19:46,519 --> 00:19:47,771 Do we need they? 316 00:19:48,772 --> 00:19:52,692 What is this menagerie of imagination, 317 00:19:52,776 --> 00:19:56,947 George, that you've invited us to see and tear apart? 318 00:19:57,030 --> 00:19:59,991 Even I, who worked on the film, 319 00:20:00,075 --> 00:20:01,785 could barely follow the story. 320 00:20:01,868 --> 00:20:05,038 It was much rougher than rough cuts usually are. 321 00:20:06,831 --> 00:20:09,125 STEVEN: Half the film was just literally like 322 00:20:09,209 --> 00:20:13,380 watching a documentary from World War II because that's all George had. 323 00:20:13,463 --> 00:20:15,048 RED LEADER: This is it! 324 00:20:15,131 --> 00:20:16,925 We should be able to see it by now. 325 00:20:18,635 --> 00:20:20,595 Keep your eyes open for those fighters. 326 00:20:22,347 --> 00:20:24,724 Me and Alan Ladd, Jr., the head of Fox, 327 00:20:24,849 --> 00:20:27,769 we were probably the only people in that room that loved the movie 328 00:20:27,852 --> 00:20:29,479 in the condition it was in. 329 00:20:29,646 --> 00:20:33,817 But when R2 and C-3PO escape 330 00:20:34,526 --> 00:20:38,488 and their vehicle purges, and you see it leaving 331 00:20:38,613 --> 00:20:41,866 the docking platform and it goes into space, 332 00:20:42,575 --> 00:20:47,330 that shot alone should have told all of us what that movie was going to be 333 00:20:47,414 --> 00:20:51,626 with ILM's help. But it wasn't there yet in the rough cut. 334 00:20:52,335 --> 00:20:53,920 When I said there were no other 335 00:20:54,004 --> 00:20:56,298 special effects houses, visual effects houses, 336 00:20:56,381 --> 00:20:59,551 there were not in the world, the whole world, there weren't any. 337 00:21:00,260 --> 00:21:01,594 So I didn't have a choice. 338 00:21:02,595 --> 00:21:05,098 I was on the bucking bronco and I had to go. 339 00:21:06,599 --> 00:21:10,353 JOHN: It really became a thing where we simply got on with it. 340 00:21:11,855 --> 00:21:13,231 For him, 341 00:21:13,356 --> 00:21:17,110 it was more a matter of resignation than a decision 342 00:21:17,277 --> 00:21:19,612 that the process was going to work. 343 00:21:19,821 --> 00:21:23,533 RICHARD: Every time we shot a scene using motion control, 344 00:21:23,658 --> 00:21:27,454 with a pan and the tilt and a boom and the track and all those things. 345 00:21:27,871 --> 00:21:31,082 So it was so arduous to do a shot. 346 00:21:32,375 --> 00:21:37,839 And we realized that we had so many thousand elements that we had to shoot. 347 00:21:37,922 --> 00:21:41,009 There wasn't enough hours in a day for me to shoot everything. 348 00:21:41,801 --> 00:21:43,845 And so Ken is shooting the cannons. 349 00:21:44,262 --> 00:21:47,223 Dennis is shooting X-wing shots. 350 00:21:47,807 --> 00:21:50,268 And then I'd ram the camera into the model, 351 00:21:50,352 --> 00:21:52,979 and they'd have to come out and fix it, you know? 352 00:21:53,104 --> 00:21:55,940 (CHUCKLING) I mean, this was not a perfect world, right? 353 00:21:56,524 --> 00:21:58,735 Dealing with all these pieces of film. 354 00:21:59,986 --> 00:22:02,947 It was like photo masochism. 355 00:22:06,868 --> 00:22:08,745 I was actually really frankly worried 356 00:22:08,828 --> 00:22:11,873 about how we were going to keep track of all this. 357 00:22:12,916 --> 00:22:14,501 With a sophisticated prototype, 358 00:22:14,626 --> 00:22:18,963 there's always problems, but for George, it was impenetrable. 359 00:22:20,090 --> 00:22:22,050 GEORGE: We had all this very exotic equipment. 360 00:22:22,133 --> 00:22:24,803 We were doing things that nobody'd ever done before. 361 00:22:25,178 --> 00:22:28,681 John Dykstra was crucial in designing and making it work. 362 00:22:29,641 --> 00:22:32,310 But we were running out of time, running out of money. 363 00:22:32,394 --> 00:22:34,270 I said, "I don't care if you put it on a stick 364 00:22:34,354 --> 00:22:37,148 "and just shoot it going through the dark. Put in a few stars. 365 00:22:37,232 --> 00:22:38,942 "We got to get this thing done." 366 00:22:39,025 --> 00:22:41,903 Several people were sent in to try and make us 367 00:22:41,986 --> 00:22:43,947 more efficient and more structured. 368 00:22:45,532 --> 00:22:46,533 George Mather. 369 00:22:46,616 --> 00:22:50,036 He'd made a real effort to bring some organization. 370 00:22:50,453 --> 00:22:55,041 He did what he could, and we grudgingly agreed to some of it. 371 00:22:55,208 --> 00:22:59,337 But I think Rose really was the one that put it all together. 372 00:23:01,548 --> 00:23:03,842 ROSE: When I arrived for my interview, 373 00:23:04,342 --> 00:23:06,177 it was a pretty... 374 00:23:06,261 --> 00:23:10,140 I don't want to use the word (BLEEP) looking place. 375 00:23:10,223 --> 00:23:12,267 They did not have nice furniture. 376 00:23:12,600 --> 00:23:14,227 It just looked like a dump. 377 00:23:14,561 --> 00:23:17,063 Let's face it. There was a guy sitting next to me, 378 00:23:17,147 --> 00:23:20,233 like, a runner, with his feet up, and I was asking the receptionist, 379 00:23:20,316 --> 00:23:22,360 "How's it working here? Is George Lucas nice? 380 00:23:22,444 --> 00:23:24,946 "Tell me about this film. It's a sci-fi film," 381 00:23:25,029 --> 00:23:27,073 and she seemed really uptight. 382 00:23:27,365 --> 00:23:30,994 And then Dykstra opens the door and says, "Come on in for the interview." 383 00:23:32,120 --> 00:23:34,956 And this young man gets up and walks in with me. 384 00:23:35,790 --> 00:23:38,251 Well, of course, that young man was George Lucas. 385 00:23:38,334 --> 00:23:40,837 He turned to me and asked two questions. 386 00:23:41,087 --> 00:23:42,255 Do you take shorthand? 387 00:23:42,672 --> 00:23:43,965 And can you start Monday? 388 00:23:44,632 --> 00:23:47,927 I had seen American Graffiti, so I was already sold. 389 00:23:48,470 --> 00:23:51,181 Okay. Whatever this guy wants to do, I'm on board. 390 00:23:51,890 --> 00:23:57,312 And George had just returned from England, so mostly he was up north editing. 391 00:23:57,770 --> 00:23:59,439 He would show up two days a week, 392 00:23:59,522 --> 00:24:02,275 and my job was to follow him around and make notes. 393 00:24:02,484 --> 00:24:04,819 Someone had to accompany him everywhere 394 00:24:04,903 --> 00:24:08,948 and keep track of everything he said to every department. 395 00:24:09,866 --> 00:24:12,577 But most of the time I was following Dykstra around. 396 00:24:12,660 --> 00:24:13,661 (INAUDIBLE) 397 00:24:14,329 --> 00:24:17,749 ROSE: He's just such an engaging, charismatic person. 398 00:24:18,625 --> 00:24:20,710 He'd be so loose. He'd be so funny. 399 00:24:21,544 --> 00:24:25,048 Then when George got there, it was all business, 400 00:24:25,507 --> 00:24:27,967 and I sensed a coolness between them. 401 00:24:30,261 --> 00:24:32,764 There was nobody organizing it. 402 00:24:32,889 --> 00:24:35,808 I don't know how they managed to decide what to shoot when. 403 00:24:37,018 --> 00:24:39,187 We needed to get an adult in the room 404 00:24:39,312 --> 00:24:42,190 to say, "Look, this is what needs to happen." 405 00:24:43,399 --> 00:24:47,779 ROSE: George Mather really brought order that gave George Lucas 406 00:24:47,862 --> 00:24:49,656 tremendous confidence. 407 00:24:49,781 --> 00:24:53,576 Mather and I listed every single element that needed to be done. 408 00:24:53,660 --> 00:24:54,953 It got on the calendar, 409 00:24:55,286 --> 00:24:57,664 and it just started flowing very smoothly. 410 00:24:58,748 --> 00:25:01,626 We had a big book of the storyboards, 411 00:25:01,876 --> 00:25:04,837 and every day I would type up the notes from dailies 412 00:25:04,921 --> 00:25:06,798 and he would cut them out in little strips, 413 00:25:06,965 --> 00:25:09,300 and paste them into this book. 414 00:25:10,802 --> 00:25:16,599 RICHARD: Once the system was complete, I brought George down a few times 415 00:25:16,933 --> 00:25:21,646 to step him through the process, and I said, "Okay, let's start with this shot. 416 00:25:22,230 --> 00:25:24,440 "There's two or three elements in the shot." 417 00:25:27,235 --> 00:25:29,153 Okay, I would shoot the first element, 418 00:25:29,237 --> 00:25:31,447 have that developed in about 10 minutes, 419 00:25:31,614 --> 00:25:32,865 put it on the Moviola, 420 00:25:32,949 --> 00:25:35,952 and I'd say, "You like this move, George, or you want to modify it?" 421 00:25:36,035 --> 00:25:38,246 And he says, "You know, maybe we can have it 422 00:25:38,329 --> 00:25:40,582 "do a little bit more of this or something," 423 00:25:40,665 --> 00:25:41,958 and I would shoot another one. 424 00:25:42,041 --> 00:25:43,668 He says, "Yeah, I like that now." 425 00:25:44,210 --> 00:25:48,339 It's like, "Okay, let's do the next model, and then put the two together." 426 00:25:48,881 --> 00:25:51,968 George now could see the two elements that I just shot. 427 00:25:53,094 --> 00:25:55,054 So I did that a few times for him. 428 00:25:55,138 --> 00:25:57,265 We schooled him, in a sense. 429 00:25:59,434 --> 00:26:02,937 JOHN: He saw the work we were doing could be successful 430 00:26:03,062 --> 00:26:07,275 because the product was significantly more interesting, 431 00:26:07,734 --> 00:26:09,861 and more evocative than it would have been 432 00:26:09,944 --> 00:26:13,823 if we'd settled for the cheap and cheerful approach. 433 00:26:13,948 --> 00:26:16,909 DENNIS: But there were a lot of the shots that could have been done 434 00:26:16,993 --> 00:26:19,662 with older processes, old techniques. 435 00:26:20,121 --> 00:26:23,708 But what John had come up with was an elegance. 436 00:26:24,375 --> 00:26:26,127 Once you bought into that thing, 437 00:26:26,210 --> 00:26:29,172 you had a system that could do any type of shot you wanted. 438 00:26:30,757 --> 00:26:32,508 For all of us, it was an education, 439 00:26:32,592 --> 00:26:36,262 both in managing to pull the technology together 440 00:26:36,346 --> 00:26:38,681 as well as to understand George's vision. 441 00:26:38,765 --> 00:26:39,766 (INAUDIBLE) 442 00:26:40,433 --> 00:26:44,270 RICHARD: For each shot, storyboards would give us the gist of the idea, 443 00:26:45,063 --> 00:26:50,443 and then I would interpret the storyboard to figure out what to shoot first. 444 00:26:51,319 --> 00:26:56,532 Something that really made me quake in my shoes was the opening shot. 445 00:26:58,493 --> 00:27:03,706 Because if the opening shot didn't grab the audience and convince them 446 00:27:03,790 --> 00:27:06,459 that they gotta watch this movie, we were in trouble. 447 00:27:08,378 --> 00:27:13,299 JOHN: The best effect is one that has subliminal cues like scale 448 00:27:13,424 --> 00:27:17,470 and focus to make this stuff indistinguishable from reality. 449 00:27:17,845 --> 00:27:20,098 RICHARD: And George would come down and he would say, 450 00:27:20,181 --> 00:27:22,725 "I want the Star Destroyer to look enormous. 451 00:27:23,434 --> 00:27:26,979 "We can build this model on the wall and have ladders 452 00:27:27,105 --> 00:27:29,023 "and, you know, other things that give scale," 453 00:27:29,148 --> 00:27:33,403 and I would say, "George, we already have a Star Destroyer 454 00:27:33,903 --> 00:27:35,029 "that's this long." 455 00:27:36,155 --> 00:27:37,323 "I want to do a test. 456 00:27:37,865 --> 00:27:41,160 "Put your best guys on detailing the bottom of this thing 457 00:27:41,244 --> 00:27:42,954 "and really making it tricked out, 458 00:27:43,746 --> 00:27:46,040 "and then make me a Rebel blockade runner 459 00:27:46,124 --> 00:27:50,294 "that's about the size of a cigarette, and I'll put that on a wire 460 00:27:50,378 --> 00:27:52,338 "sticking out of the front of the ship, 461 00:27:53,005 --> 00:27:56,259 "and we can try to create a bigger scale." 462 00:27:57,343 --> 00:28:02,056 It was very important to be able to get the camera very close to the models, 463 00:28:02,432 --> 00:28:05,059 and the camera is going to be hanging from the boom. 464 00:28:05,143 --> 00:28:07,812 So I flip a Star Destroyer and got it level, 465 00:28:07,895 --> 00:28:11,941 so the lens was basically 1/32 of an inch off the model 466 00:28:12,024 --> 00:28:14,569 and it was actually scraping it at a couple points. 467 00:28:15,361 --> 00:28:17,530 Basically, I shot it upside down. 468 00:28:23,536 --> 00:28:26,539 And the next day at dailies, everybody's aghast. 469 00:28:27,915 --> 00:28:28,958 It's like... 470 00:28:30,084 --> 00:28:32,086 (DRAMATIC SCORE MUSIC PLAYING) 471 00:28:38,426 --> 00:28:41,179 JOHN: The feeling that you got in that opening shot 472 00:28:41,262 --> 00:28:43,389 when the Star Destroyer comes overhead 473 00:28:46,058 --> 00:28:49,520 was precisely what George wanted. 474 00:28:52,648 --> 00:28:55,526 And here's one of the keys that makes it work. 475 00:28:55,860 --> 00:28:59,906 The entire ship is in focus, from the closest thing to the camera 476 00:28:59,989 --> 00:29:01,866 to the furthest thing from the camera. 477 00:29:01,949 --> 00:29:05,495 It's a really critical component to establishing scale. 478 00:29:08,831 --> 00:29:12,627 And the model had little doors and windows. 479 00:29:12,710 --> 00:29:17,173 Human scale things that tell you how big it is, right? 480 00:29:17,632 --> 00:29:22,512 So it's those kind of subliminal clues and an understanding of how to use them 481 00:29:22,678 --> 00:29:27,350 that makes it artistry, as opposed to simple mechanics. 482 00:29:27,433 --> 00:29:29,435 (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) 483 00:29:37,068 --> 00:29:38,402 I mean, it's a mystery. 484 00:29:38,486 --> 00:29:39,862 It's like magic, really. 485 00:29:41,322 --> 00:29:44,408 We're creating magic through this very lugubrious process. 486 00:29:44,492 --> 00:29:46,494 (FUNKY MUSIC PLAYING) 487 00:29:52,917 --> 00:29:55,628 Such a creative group spirit emerged. 488 00:29:55,920 --> 00:30:00,967 Collaborative problem solving, on every crew in every department. 489 00:30:01,050 --> 00:30:04,470 We knew we had to help each other. We had to be supportive of each other 490 00:30:04,554 --> 00:30:06,138 in order to get the work done. 491 00:30:07,098 --> 00:30:09,642 HARRISON: It's about making the movie, 492 00:30:09,725 --> 00:30:14,522 telling the story, and don't let your ego get in the way. 493 00:30:16,023 --> 00:30:19,068 RICHARD: A lot of problems got solved at the coffee machine. 494 00:30:19,151 --> 00:30:21,946 People would walk up, they got some problem and they talk to you, 495 00:30:22,029 --> 00:30:23,155 "Can you help me with it?" 496 00:30:23,239 --> 00:30:24,448 We were a family. 497 00:30:25,992 --> 00:30:29,203 ROSE: I just really liked that George would 498 00:30:29,287 --> 00:30:31,622 stay late and help me on mundane tasks. 499 00:30:31,873 --> 00:30:34,709 Would be 9:00 at night, and we'd be stamping storyboards. 500 00:30:38,004 --> 00:30:40,131 JOE: Some of the times that he was happiest 501 00:30:40,214 --> 00:30:43,926 is when he would go into the model shop and glue parts on a spaceship. 502 00:30:44,802 --> 00:30:46,178 He really loved to do that. 503 00:30:47,555 --> 00:30:51,225 DENNIS: We were behind, so it just took a long time to do that many shots. 504 00:30:51,309 --> 00:30:53,311 He was great at compromising, you know. 505 00:30:53,394 --> 00:30:55,062 "We can reuse this shot over here. 506 00:30:55,146 --> 00:30:56,939 "We can flip this shot backwards 507 00:30:57,023 --> 00:30:59,525 "and it'll look like it's going the other direction." 508 00:30:59,609 --> 00:31:01,235 We started making quantum leaps. 509 00:31:01,736 --> 00:31:02,820 Things accelerated. 510 00:31:07,742 --> 00:31:09,869 ROSE: I mean, there were some rough spots. 511 00:31:10,703 --> 00:31:13,331 To work in visual effects, you have to be crazy. 512 00:31:13,748 --> 00:31:15,625 You have to be a little bit nuts. 513 00:31:15,708 --> 00:31:18,711 (MUSIC CONTINUES) 514 00:31:30,848 --> 00:31:33,768 JOE: But since we didn't know what it was going to become, 515 00:31:33,893 --> 00:31:37,772 there was nothing sacred and just build it and get it in front of the camera. 516 00:31:44,403 --> 00:31:46,614 LORNE: It was fun all the time. 517 00:31:47,782 --> 00:31:49,659 When it was grueling, it was fun. 518 00:31:51,285 --> 00:31:53,454 JOE: The star field was hollow on the inside. 519 00:31:53,537 --> 00:31:55,498 You could get in there and sleep comfortably. 520 00:31:55,581 --> 00:31:59,001 One day somebody said, "Hey, don't leave the pillow against the light. 521 00:31:59,085 --> 00:32:00,252 "These things get hot." 522 00:32:00,336 --> 00:32:02,004 It was madness. It was madness. 523 00:32:03,172 --> 00:32:07,468 ROSE: We had a lot of parties, and I'd mix punches and throw dry ice in it, 524 00:32:07,551 --> 00:32:10,763 and they'd gurgle and bubble till I learned that that was poison, 525 00:32:10,888 --> 00:32:13,015 that you really can't put dry ice in. (LAUGHING) 526 00:32:13,099 --> 00:32:14,350 Oops! 527 00:32:15,935 --> 00:32:18,688 As George used to say, "Give them enough pizza and beer, 528 00:32:18,771 --> 00:32:19,814 "they'll do anything." 529 00:32:19,897 --> 00:32:20,940 (LAUGHS) 530 00:32:22,358 --> 00:32:25,319 It was like a fraternity house. 531 00:32:26,821 --> 00:32:28,990 ROSE: The studio called us the Country Club. 532 00:32:30,574 --> 00:32:33,494 Yes, we were in the hot tub, and yes, we waterslided, 533 00:32:33,577 --> 00:32:35,079 and yes, we were immature. 534 00:32:37,081 --> 00:32:40,876 But nobody worked harder, nobody stayed later. 535 00:32:43,004 --> 00:32:44,797 We were breaking new ground. 536 00:32:51,512 --> 00:32:55,641 It really was a lot of fun until it got toward the end. 537 00:32:55,725 --> 00:32:57,560 You know, the crunch was on. 538 00:33:00,312 --> 00:33:03,691 KEN: We were beating ourselves up to get the movie done in time. 539 00:33:05,109 --> 00:33:07,611 The premiere is coming up, people are freaking out. 540 00:33:07,737 --> 00:33:09,405 Sound department wants your work now, 541 00:33:09,488 --> 00:33:12,199 because they have to put their sound in, oh, my God. 542 00:33:12,283 --> 00:33:15,703 Joe was redesigning the storyboards and giving us different shots. 543 00:33:16,704 --> 00:33:19,457 We were shooting like crazy and falling over each other. 544 00:33:20,166 --> 00:33:21,292 Ken! 545 00:33:21,375 --> 00:33:23,294 Just trying to get the work done. 546 00:33:24,336 --> 00:33:27,840 Getting the models and lighting and shooting those as fast as we could. 547 00:33:30,968 --> 00:33:34,388 It was a mission of faith. 548 00:33:35,723 --> 00:33:38,726 Because nobody knew whether we were going to make it or not. 549 00:33:39,643 --> 00:33:41,145 Everybody was very hopeful. 550 00:33:42,605 --> 00:33:44,940 But I was under an enormous amount of pressure. 551 00:33:45,191 --> 00:33:47,651 The crew was under an enormous amount of pressure. 552 00:33:48,527 --> 00:33:50,529 When we were walking through the stages, 553 00:33:50,613 --> 00:33:52,948 he was kind of frustrated, like things were not 554 00:33:53,032 --> 00:33:54,950 coming together the way he would like. 555 00:33:55,493 --> 00:33:57,912 He was disappointed in some of the shots. 556 00:33:58,954 --> 00:34:02,041 Not everybody's work was given approval. 557 00:34:03,000 --> 00:34:04,960 You know, he was, 558 00:34:05,044 --> 00:34:10,049 I wouldn't say hypercritical, but... It's his movie. 559 00:34:10,549 --> 00:34:12,718 It's... He's going to take the blame. 560 00:34:13,260 --> 00:34:14,762 I'm a perfectionist. 561 00:34:16,097 --> 00:34:19,975 And if it's not right, I get really upset inside. 562 00:34:20,309 --> 00:34:22,311 Sometimes outside, but mostly inside. 563 00:34:22,394 --> 00:34:23,938 -MAN: Okay. -(SIGHS) Okay. 564 00:34:24,021 --> 00:34:25,189 (CLEARS THROAT) 565 00:34:25,481 --> 00:34:28,400 PAUL: You know, my impression of George was that 566 00:34:28,484 --> 00:34:32,321 he was the combination of extremely imaginative 567 00:34:32,404 --> 00:34:34,448 and extremely practical. 568 00:34:34,949 --> 00:34:38,285 And usually you find people who are one or the other, but not both. 569 00:34:38,786 --> 00:34:40,454 GEORGE: I've learned to live with the fact 570 00:34:40,538 --> 00:34:42,790 that everything can't be the way you want it to be. 571 00:34:42,873 --> 00:34:45,709 You have to sort of do the best you can and move forward. 572 00:34:46,710 --> 00:34:49,421 PAUL: George had always been unhappy with the creatures 573 00:34:49,505 --> 00:34:52,424 that they had given him for the cantina sequence. 574 00:34:53,425 --> 00:34:56,053 So, reshoots were planned. 575 00:34:57,263 --> 00:35:00,975 GEORGE: We had shot the cantina scene in England 576 00:35:01,767 --> 00:35:03,769 and I wanted it to be crowded with aliens. 577 00:35:04,019 --> 00:35:06,021 They gave me some, but it wasn't enough. 578 00:35:06,272 --> 00:35:09,692 I think it was a budgetary problem. There just wasn't that much money, 579 00:35:09,775 --> 00:35:12,736 so it looked to me like what they had done in England 580 00:35:12,820 --> 00:35:14,446 was go to a costume department, 581 00:35:14,530 --> 00:35:17,449 got a bunch of Beatrix Potter-type things. 582 00:35:18,993 --> 00:35:21,745 GEORGE: We shot everything we could, but then I said, 583 00:35:21,829 --> 00:35:24,665 "Well, I'll just pick them up when I get home." 584 00:35:25,541 --> 00:35:27,543 George hired me and Jon Berg 585 00:35:27,626 --> 00:35:30,421 and a couple of out-of-work stop-motion animators, 586 00:35:30,504 --> 00:35:31,505 and his direction was, 587 00:35:31,589 --> 00:35:34,675 "Make me as many space aliens as you can in six weeks." 588 00:35:40,723 --> 00:35:44,059 GEORGE: They drew drawings and I picked another 12 monsters. 589 00:35:45,060 --> 00:35:46,562 PHIL: Ron Cobb did some designs, 590 00:35:46,645 --> 00:35:49,690 and we would sculpt and fabricate his designs. 591 00:35:54,111 --> 00:35:57,615 And then went over to a little stage on La Brea Avenue. 592 00:35:59,950 --> 00:36:02,453 And George put us in our own masks. 593 00:36:04,788 --> 00:36:11,503 And costume department would dress us up and that's kind of how that was done. 594 00:36:11,587 --> 00:36:13,589 (ALIENS SPEAKING INDISTINCTLY) 595 00:36:16,383 --> 00:36:19,762 GEORGE: Phil Tippett and Jon Berg, I liked them. 596 00:36:20,429 --> 00:36:21,555 They were a good team. 597 00:36:21,931 --> 00:36:23,098 We became friends. 598 00:36:23,182 --> 00:36:24,266 (ALIENS PLAYING JAZZ) 599 00:36:24,350 --> 00:36:27,770 George would come in once a week to check out our progress, 600 00:36:28,103 --> 00:36:31,982 and one time he was looking around and he saw on the shelf 601 00:36:32,650 --> 00:36:36,111 a stop-motion character that I had made when I was like, 20. 602 00:36:36,904 --> 00:36:41,617 He said, "Oh, so you guys do stop-motion animation, huh?" 603 00:36:44,286 --> 00:36:47,331 He showed us the chess set, and the assembly 604 00:36:47,414 --> 00:36:50,459 that he had without any characters in it. 605 00:36:51,293 --> 00:36:53,295 MAN: 330. Take two. 606 00:36:53,462 --> 00:36:56,423 PHIL: George was initially going to have the chess set 607 00:36:57,216 --> 00:37:02,763 just be people in masks shot against blue screen... 608 00:37:02,888 --> 00:37:05,057 (DRAMATIC SCORE MUSIC PLAYING) 609 00:37:05,140 --> 00:37:07,017 ...but Future World had just come out, 610 00:37:09,228 --> 00:37:13,232 and there was a scene there with actors on a chessboard. 611 00:37:13,315 --> 00:37:14,984 My knight to your pawn. 612 00:37:17,319 --> 00:37:19,405 George felt kind of scooped in a way. 613 00:37:19,488 --> 00:37:22,157 You know, it was like his thing would not be original. 614 00:37:22,241 --> 00:37:26,370 And so if he did it stop motion, it would have its own thing. 615 00:37:27,079 --> 00:37:29,164 So he said to me and Jon Berg, 616 00:37:29,248 --> 00:37:34,044 "Can you make 10 stop-motion aliens in two weeks?" 617 00:37:34,128 --> 00:37:35,754 I said, "That's why we're here." 618 00:37:36,130 --> 00:37:39,258 GEORGE: The one advantage we have at ILM is we got guys, 619 00:37:39,883 --> 00:37:43,470 you know, off the street, which meant they could do anything. 620 00:37:43,929 --> 00:37:47,266 PHIL: Right at the end of the schedule, right at the end of the schedule. 621 00:37:47,474 --> 00:37:52,604 And so when Jon Berg and I went in to make a deal with George for it, 622 00:37:52,688 --> 00:37:56,608 Dykstra had this big round table, and George sat at one end 623 00:37:56,692 --> 00:38:00,321 and Dykstra had a replica old Western .44. 624 00:38:00,571 --> 00:38:03,407 And while we were negotiating talking about our rates, 625 00:38:03,490 --> 00:38:07,494 he would just like, spin the chamber. 626 00:38:07,578 --> 00:38:09,163 He had no idea that he was doing it, 627 00:38:09,246 --> 00:38:12,875 but we were sitting there going like, "Uh, is that too much? 628 00:38:12,958 --> 00:38:14,001 (LAUGHS) 629 00:38:14,418 --> 00:38:15,586 "We'll do it for free." 630 00:38:17,755 --> 00:38:22,009 We had a cardboard box with all these little characters in it. 631 00:38:22,468 --> 00:38:25,679 Took them to the set and asked George what he wanted, 632 00:38:25,763 --> 00:38:27,097 and he goes like, "I don't know. 633 00:38:27,181 --> 00:38:30,684 "How about this little yellow guy jumps out and the green guy picks him up 634 00:38:30,768 --> 00:38:33,354 "and throws him down, and everybody else is watching." 635 00:38:33,479 --> 00:38:36,398 And we're like, "Okay. You got it." (CHUCKLES) 636 00:38:39,401 --> 00:38:42,363 We would shoot in the evenings, I think over three nights. 637 00:38:45,699 --> 00:38:48,035 And it's just kids playing with toys, you know. 638 00:38:51,872 --> 00:38:54,249 GEORGE: That was the only stop-motion work we had. 639 00:38:54,917 --> 00:38:56,877 We were all happy with the results. 640 00:38:58,712 --> 00:39:00,214 Now be careful, R2. 641 00:39:00,297 --> 00:39:01,507 (R2-D2 MUMBLING) 642 00:39:01,590 --> 00:39:02,591 (CHITTERING) 643 00:39:06,053 --> 00:39:07,096 (GROWLS) 644 00:39:07,179 --> 00:39:09,973 He made a fair move. Screaming about it can't help you. 645 00:39:10,140 --> 00:39:12,601 Let him have it. It's not wise to upset a Wookiee. 646 00:39:13,310 --> 00:39:14,311 (GRUNTS) 647 00:39:15,312 --> 00:39:19,733 JOE: George was very generous with giving creative freedom to people, 648 00:39:19,817 --> 00:39:22,403 and he would be very patient. If you had a question, 649 00:39:22,486 --> 00:39:25,322 it didn't make sense to you, he would explain, you know, 650 00:39:25,406 --> 00:39:27,866 why this is what I want to do. 651 00:39:29,076 --> 00:39:32,663 When he came by, I got as much of his time as I could. 652 00:39:34,665 --> 00:39:36,959 I remember him sitting at the drawing table 653 00:39:37,042 --> 00:39:39,545 and drawing the sequence at the end of the film, 654 00:39:39,962 --> 00:39:41,547 the attack on the Death Star. 655 00:39:43,257 --> 00:39:44,800 George is not an artist. 656 00:39:44,883 --> 00:39:47,719 He can put lines on paper, but he's not an artist. 657 00:39:48,053 --> 00:39:52,683 And I was really amazed at his ability to convey the idea 658 00:39:53,434 --> 00:39:57,604 in very crude visuals of what this attack was gonna look like. 659 00:39:57,688 --> 00:40:00,357 The end battle was of particular importance to George 660 00:40:00,441 --> 00:40:03,861 because the studio was threatening to eliminate it. 661 00:40:04,486 --> 00:40:07,114 They had concerns about cost overruns, 662 00:40:07,197 --> 00:40:09,700 and they thought, "Hey, they get to the Death Star, 663 00:40:09,783 --> 00:40:12,661 "they rescue the princess. That's it. Story's over." 664 00:40:12,744 --> 00:40:15,372 But George was determined to have this end battle. 665 00:40:17,583 --> 00:40:19,042 GEORGE: Movies are kinetic. 666 00:40:19,126 --> 00:40:20,127 It's about movement. 667 00:40:20,627 --> 00:40:23,630 Forget the actors. Forget the story. It's all about movement. 668 00:40:23,714 --> 00:40:27,676 The chase. The chases were the beginning form of cinema. 669 00:40:29,386 --> 00:40:32,389 Chase, like anything else in a movie, it has to be built. 670 00:40:33,348 --> 00:40:35,684 You got a beginning, a middle and an end, 671 00:40:35,767 --> 00:40:37,769 and you have several incidents in there. 672 00:40:38,687 --> 00:40:41,982 JOHN: At the end of the film, the idea was to create 673 00:40:42,065 --> 00:40:45,569 a realistic-looking space dogfight. 674 00:40:46,028 --> 00:40:49,781 They were attacking an invulnerable fortress, 675 00:40:49,865 --> 00:40:53,243 the Death Star, and Luke's prowess as a pilot 676 00:40:53,410 --> 00:40:56,830 allows them to succeed in destroying this behemoth. 677 00:40:58,081 --> 00:41:01,210 The reason the Death Star had trenches in it 678 00:41:01,710 --> 00:41:05,589 is because it was the only way we could achieve a sense of speed. 679 00:41:09,593 --> 00:41:16,517 We had ridden motorcycles down gullies out in the desert and noticed 680 00:41:16,600 --> 00:41:19,770 that when you were in the gullies, you're traveling by things. 681 00:41:20,103 --> 00:41:21,480 They seemed really fast. 682 00:41:23,357 --> 00:41:24,942 YOUNG JOHN: George wanted a city look, 683 00:41:25,025 --> 00:41:29,363 like flying down the center of Manhattan high speed in some kind of a ship. 684 00:41:29,446 --> 00:41:31,073 But the scale would be much larger. 685 00:41:31,156 --> 00:41:34,201 Something that's supposed to look like you've traveled 40 miles 686 00:41:34,284 --> 00:41:36,161 is going to have to be a mile a foot. 687 00:41:36,787 --> 00:41:37,913 That's no mean feat. 688 00:41:39,164 --> 00:41:42,501 That meant an incredible amount of detail on each surface piece. 689 00:41:46,547 --> 00:41:48,090 LORNE: The Death Star surface, 690 00:41:48,173 --> 00:41:51,385 it was the very first project I was hired to do for two months. 691 00:41:52,010 --> 00:41:54,930 And it didn't take me very long to realize 692 00:41:55,013 --> 00:41:57,849 why all the other model makers didn't want to do it. 693 00:41:58,100 --> 00:41:59,226 They got burnt out. 694 00:41:59,935 --> 00:42:03,438 You basically spent the day on your knees with big foam pads 695 00:42:03,647 --> 00:42:07,859 and crawled around on the surface that was about 15 feet by 40 feet. 696 00:42:08,569 --> 00:42:13,907 JOE: We built six molds for this gigantic Death Star surface. 697 00:42:14,783 --> 00:42:17,119 We had to be able to cut them up and move them, 698 00:42:17,202 --> 00:42:18,829 put them in different positions. 699 00:42:18,912 --> 00:42:21,790 So you wouldn't recognize that it was a lot of repetition. 700 00:42:23,667 --> 00:42:26,295 YOUNG JOHN: It's pretty astronomical, the number of combinations 701 00:42:26,378 --> 00:42:28,255 that we had available to us. 702 00:42:29,506 --> 00:42:31,508 JOE: At the end of the model, 703 00:42:31,592 --> 00:42:34,011 we had to show that it goes on and on and on. 704 00:42:34,094 --> 00:42:37,389 So we photographed a section of the Death Star trench 705 00:42:37,472 --> 00:42:39,308 and glued it to a piece of Masonite. 706 00:42:40,475 --> 00:42:41,935 I painted the detail on it. 707 00:42:50,694 --> 00:42:52,654 LORNE: Just to make it seem more alive, 708 00:42:52,738 --> 00:42:54,489 thousands of these little windows 709 00:42:55,073 --> 00:42:58,201 had to be put everywhere with retro reflective tape 710 00:42:58,327 --> 00:43:00,996 made out of glass beads that reflect back the light. 711 00:43:01,913 --> 00:43:03,874 But there were tens of thousands. 712 00:43:04,374 --> 00:43:06,585 That was my job to do that, 713 00:43:06,710 --> 00:43:08,420 (MIMICS RAPID MOVEMENT) you know? 714 00:43:08,503 --> 00:43:12,841 There was a moment when Marcia Lucas, George Lucas's wife at the time, 715 00:43:13,467 --> 00:43:15,636 came down and looked at the Death Star. 716 00:43:15,969 --> 00:43:18,430 She got the camera, looked at it, we lit it up, 717 00:43:19,222 --> 00:43:23,518 and she said, "Hmm, the windows have to be a smaller scale." 718 00:43:24,227 --> 00:43:25,228 (LAUGHS) 719 00:43:25,687 --> 00:43:31,026 It's like, oh, my God, they had to be half as big. 720 00:43:36,156 --> 00:43:37,991 DODONNA: The approach will not be easy. 721 00:43:38,075 --> 00:43:40,952 You're required to maneuver straight down this trench, 722 00:43:41,036 --> 00:43:43,205 and skim the surface to this point. 723 00:43:44,373 --> 00:43:47,167 The target area is only two meters wide. 724 00:43:47,250 --> 00:43:50,837 It's a small thermal exhaust port right below the main port. 725 00:43:52,756 --> 00:43:55,717 KEN: When it came time to shoot the trench, 726 00:43:55,801 --> 00:43:58,762 George is talking us through and there he goes. 727 00:43:59,471 --> 00:44:01,431 It looks like he's not seeing anything 728 00:44:01,848 --> 00:44:06,144 'cause he's so in his head, but you can see in his eyes 729 00:44:06,228 --> 00:44:08,230 what he already sees as the finished product. 730 00:44:08,397 --> 00:44:09,523 We're right in there. 731 00:44:09,606 --> 00:44:12,609 We're loving this story and he's got us all excited about it. 732 00:44:13,110 --> 00:44:15,904 "That's the scene. Go do it, guys," and off we go. 733 00:44:17,572 --> 00:44:19,282 Look at the size of that thing. 734 00:44:42,514 --> 00:44:43,557 This is it. 735 00:44:52,816 --> 00:44:54,609 (ELECTRONIC BEEPS) 736 00:44:56,778 --> 00:44:58,196 It's away! 737 00:44:59,614 --> 00:45:02,826 JOHN: We figured out that we had to be traveling 20 miles an hour 738 00:45:02,909 --> 00:45:05,203 as we went by the Death Star model. 739 00:45:06,496 --> 00:45:11,084 We put it flat in the parking lot, and the only way we could get the camera 740 00:45:11,168 --> 00:45:14,713 to a high enough speed would be with a motorized vehicle. 741 00:45:14,796 --> 00:45:15,881 (ENGINE STARTS) 742 00:45:15,964 --> 00:45:19,134 Guerilla filmmaking, put the camera in the back of the truck. 743 00:45:19,718 --> 00:45:20,969 Richard climbed up there, 744 00:45:21,052 --> 00:45:23,305 we drove by the model and set off the charges. 745 00:45:32,898 --> 00:45:34,691 RED NINE: It's a hit! RED LEADER: Negative. 746 00:45:34,816 --> 00:45:36,026 It didn't go in. 747 00:45:36,151 --> 00:45:37,944 (OVER RADIO) Just impacted on the surface. 748 00:45:38,653 --> 00:45:39,863 There weren't any rules. 749 00:45:40,197 --> 00:45:43,700 It was like whatever worked, we'll make it somehow function 750 00:45:43,784 --> 00:45:45,660 and we'll come out with this great thing. 751 00:45:45,744 --> 00:45:48,121 R2, that stabilizer's broken loose again. 752 00:45:48,205 --> 00:45:50,207 See if you can't lock it down. 753 00:45:52,000 --> 00:45:54,753 An impossible schedule, an impossible budget, 754 00:45:54,836 --> 00:45:57,464 trying to do things that have never been done before. 755 00:45:59,758 --> 00:46:01,301 We were the Rebel Alliance. 756 00:46:01,384 --> 00:46:02,385 (CHEERING) 757 00:46:04,054 --> 00:46:05,138 Look out! 758 00:46:11,394 --> 00:46:14,481 You're all clear, kid. Now, let's blow this thing and go home. 759 00:46:15,106 --> 00:46:16,358 (LASERS FIRING) 760 00:46:17,108 --> 00:46:18,276 (INHALES) 761 00:46:34,209 --> 00:46:35,919 Everybody came through in the end. 762 00:46:36,336 --> 00:46:37,337 (LAUGHTER) 763 00:46:38,255 --> 00:46:39,631 -Hey! -Hey! 764 00:46:39,714 --> 00:46:40,715 I knew you'd come back. 765 00:46:40,799 --> 00:46:42,676 Finished the movie. Yay! 766 00:46:42,884 --> 00:46:45,011 I couldn't believe it, really. 767 00:46:46,721 --> 00:46:49,724 And on the last night, ILM was having its wrap party. 768 00:46:50,392 --> 00:46:53,228 So everybody around us was whooping it up. 769 00:46:54,271 --> 00:46:56,648 And a bunch of the guys who were smarter than me 770 00:46:56,731 --> 00:46:58,567 took out 20th Century stock. 771 00:46:58,650 --> 00:47:00,652 We didn't know what we were working on. 772 00:47:00,777 --> 00:47:05,657 I mean, it was really just a job, five or six days a week. 773 00:47:06,283 --> 00:47:09,744 We didn't really know until the movie came out. 774 00:47:12,581 --> 00:47:13,790 GEORGE: And we were mixing, 775 00:47:13,999 --> 00:47:16,459 we were mixing up until the day it was released. 776 00:47:17,002 --> 00:47:19,462 And when we finished, we went to Hamburger Hamlet 777 00:47:19,546 --> 00:47:22,924 on Hollywood Boulevard, right across from Grauman's Chinese Theater. 778 00:47:23,133 --> 00:47:25,719 And they say, "Boy, something's going on out there. 779 00:47:25,927 --> 00:47:27,804 "It must be a premiere or something." 780 00:47:27,888 --> 00:47:31,850 And it wasn't until we walked outside that we could see that it was Star Wars. 781 00:47:34,436 --> 00:47:36,771 It was like a mob. They closed the street off. 782 00:47:36,855 --> 00:47:38,857 (STAR WARS THEME MUSIC PLAYING) 783 00:47:55,957 --> 00:47:57,042 This is it, boys. 784 00:47:57,751 --> 00:48:03,340 Seeing the final assembled product, on a giant screen with the sound, 785 00:48:03,882 --> 00:48:05,425 I went, "Wow." 786 00:48:07,969 --> 00:48:12,557 You see the joy that the people who worked on it had in doing it. 787 00:48:13,892 --> 00:48:16,061 We were little over the top with some stuff, 788 00:48:16,144 --> 00:48:19,230 and we got to get away with it because it was a first. 789 00:48:21,191 --> 00:48:26,112 We were invited to the premiere and everybody was like... (FLAPS LIPS) 790 00:48:26,196 --> 00:48:27,197 You know. 791 00:48:27,906 --> 00:48:29,491 My parents loved it. 792 00:48:30,700 --> 00:48:33,328 The lighthearted touch was so appealing. 793 00:48:37,332 --> 00:48:40,043 They were lucky to have us for the visual effects group 794 00:48:40,126 --> 00:48:43,088 because I don't think there was anybody else in the business 795 00:48:43,171 --> 00:48:44,673 that could have done what we did. 796 00:48:44,756 --> 00:48:45,757 (AUDIENCE CHEERING) 797 00:48:47,008 --> 00:48:48,051 Thank you. 798 00:48:48,718 --> 00:48:52,847 All those guys, every one of them, did yeoman work. 799 00:48:54,265 --> 00:48:55,392 Everybody pitched in. 800 00:48:55,725 --> 00:48:58,436 Everybody helped each other, and I appreciated it. 801 00:48:59,187 --> 00:49:04,359 But at the same time, Star Wars was under duress for the whole production. 802 00:49:04,985 --> 00:49:07,821 Scheduling, money, sets. 803 00:49:11,741 --> 00:49:13,243 I wanted to get it my way, 804 00:49:13,326 --> 00:49:15,745 and I didn't have the time or the money to do it. 805 00:49:16,997 --> 00:49:22,794 He always said things like, "If I could wave my magic wand, 806 00:49:23,294 --> 00:49:28,133 "I would put electrodes in my head and have the movie made right there." 807 00:49:30,468 --> 00:49:33,763 RON: He used to say that he only got about 25% 808 00:49:33,847 --> 00:49:36,891 of what he had in his mind on screen with Star Wars, 809 00:49:37,017 --> 00:49:41,312 which, you know, of course, was shocking as hell to me 810 00:49:41,396 --> 00:49:45,066 because it looked like 100% to me, but not George. 811 00:49:45,817 --> 00:49:47,402 He could see through the magic. 812 00:49:49,696 --> 00:49:51,573 GEORGE: I can see all the scotch tape 813 00:49:51,656 --> 00:49:54,117 and the rubber bands that are holding it together. 814 00:49:56,119 --> 00:49:57,704 But that's how movies get made. 815 00:49:57,787 --> 00:49:59,122 They don't get made right, 816 00:49:59,205 --> 00:50:02,876 they get made the best possible way under the circumstances. 817 00:50:05,670 --> 00:50:09,591 I thought, "I'm sure we can figure out a better way to do this." 818 00:50:10,884 --> 00:50:12,761 Maybe I better figure out what it is.