1 00:00:16,641 --> 00:00:20,437 <i>I grew up on a farm in Modesto.</i> 2 00:00:26,317 --> 00:00:30,864 <i>Like most kids that grew up in the Valley, I had a strong interest in cruising.</i> 3 00:00:34,367 --> 00:00:38,413 <i>I wandered around and spent most of my youth roaming the streets of the town.</i> 4 00:00:40,874 --> 00:00:45,045 <i>Following the path that I was on, I was sort of flunking out of high school.</i> 5 00:00:45,378 --> 00:00:47,047 My mother kept worrying about me. 6 00:00:47,630 --> 00:00:49,591 <i>"He's not going to amount to anything."</i> 7 00:00:50,133 --> 00:00:52,510 <i>My father kept saying, "He's a late bloomer.</i> 8 00:00:52,844 --> 00:00:55,555 "Don't worry about it. He's a late bloomer." 9 00:00:56,306 --> 00:00:59,309 <i>Driving cars, going fast. I really liked that.</i> 10 00:00:59,893 --> 00:01:01,311 <i>I liked the sensation of it.</i> 11 00:01:02,937 --> 00:01:05,648 <i>I wanted to be a car mechanic, I wanted to race cars.</i> 12 00:01:06,941 --> 00:01:10,361 At the time, in high school, I had a very little car, 13 00:01:10,445 --> 00:01:12,781 it was, you know, that big, and I was 14 00:01:12,864 --> 00:01:15,784 <i>turning into my driveway, it was a country road,</i> 15 00:01:16,618 --> 00:01:20,538 and uh, there was this guy. 16 00:01:21,539 --> 00:01:23,625 So he was going about 90 miles an hour. 17 00:01:23,833 --> 00:01:25,043 I didn't see him coming. 18 00:01:25,376 --> 00:01:26,836 <i>I hear a horn honk</i> 19 00:01:29,339 --> 00:01:30,340 <i>And then I'm gone.</i> 20 00:01:32,092 --> 00:01:33,218 <i>They hit me broadside.</i> 21 00:01:33,843 --> 00:01:37,013 <i>My car rolled about seven or eight times, wrapped around a tree.</i> 22 00:01:37,722 --> 00:01:39,849 And when I woke up, the first thing I heard 23 00:01:39,933 --> 00:01:43,603 the nurse saying, "Don't worry, you have all your arms and legs." 24 00:01:44,896 --> 00:01:46,272 I said, "What do you mean?" 25 00:01:49,526 --> 00:01:51,778 <i>Everybody kept saying, "You should be dead."</i> 26 00:01:57,492 --> 00:02:02,664 That's when I decided that, you know, maybe there's a reason I'm here. 27 00:02:54,340 --> 00:02:56,777 <i>My father wanted me to go into the stationery business</i> 28 00:02:56,801 --> 00:02:58,511 <i>and run an office equipment store.</i> 29 00:02:59,304 --> 00:03:03,349 <i>They built it up for me to take over, and I said, "I don't want that."</i> 30 00:03:04,267 --> 00:03:07,270 <i>I'll never work at a job where I have to do the same thing</i> 31 00:03:07,353 --> 00:03:08,855 <i>over and over again every day.</i> 32 00:03:09,397 --> 00:03:12,317 <i>It was probably the biggest disagreement we ever got into.</i> 33 00:03:12,400 --> 00:03:15,737 I said, "Well, I'll just go to school. I mean, I'll go to college." 34 00:03:15,820 --> 00:03:17,906 You know, this is during the Vietnam War. 35 00:03:18,948 --> 00:03:21,701 <i>The only thing I could get into was the junior college.</i> 36 00:03:23,077 --> 00:03:25,705 <i>I took lots of classes in the social sciences,</i> 37 00:03:25,997 --> 00:03:29,626 psychology and anthropology, and I got really hooked on it. 38 00:03:29,709 --> 00:03:31,669 I said, "This is great. I love this." 39 00:03:31,753 --> 00:03:35,215 <i>And one of the books I had to read</i> <i>was</i> The Hero with a Thousand Faces. 40 00:03:36,007 --> 00:03:40,053 And I got very intrigued with the idea of how you build a society. 41 00:03:40,929 --> 00:03:44,807 <i>It was all done by stories, mythologies, heroes.</i> 42 00:03:49,437 --> 00:03:54,567 <i>It really wasn't until my junior year of college that I discovered film.</i> 43 00:03:56,778 --> 00:03:58,029 <i>Ended up at USC.</i> 44 00:04:00,573 --> 00:04:03,868 <i>Suddenly I was seeing all kinds of films that I'd never seen before.</i> 45 00:04:04,619 --> 00:04:07,038 <i>Complete eye-opener. It was just a whole new world.</i> 46 00:04:08,039 --> 00:04:11,209 <i>It's one of those things you eat, sleep and drink movies,</i> 47 00:04:11,292 --> 00:04:12,919 <i>and you love every second of it.</i> 48 00:04:15,255 --> 00:04:18,883 <i>I instantly knew that this was for me, that this was it.</i> 49 00:04:20,551 --> 00:04:22,011 I didn't know what a filmmaker was. 50 00:04:22,095 --> 00:04:24,472 I didn't know what a producer was or a director or anything. 51 00:04:24,555 --> 00:04:30,645 All I knew was that I wanted to make film and whatever that entails. 52 00:04:32,063 --> 00:04:35,483 <i>First semester there, and I started making student films.</i> 53 00:04:36,276 --> 00:04:38,361 <i>Took the Cinema department by storm.</i> 54 00:04:40,697 --> 00:04:46,160 We met in the '60s when he premiered <i>THX 1138,</i> 55 00:04:46,244 --> 00:04:48,705 his short film, during a film festival. 56 00:04:48,955 --> 00:04:50,373 <i>George won first prize.</i> 57 00:04:50,456 --> 00:04:56,504 <i>THX 11384EB. This is Authority. You will stop where you are.</i> 58 00:04:57,422 --> 00:05:00,425 I basically said, "I'll never make a movie that good." 59 00:05:02,010 --> 00:05:05,763 One of the things that really bonded us was we made movies for the audience, 60 00:05:06,180 --> 00:05:08,308 even more than making movies for ourselves. 61 00:05:09,517 --> 00:05:11,519 <i>All of my friends,</i> 62 00:05:11,602 --> 00:05:13,521 <i>they were all people who loved movies.</i> 63 00:05:13,604 --> 00:05:15,606 None of them were interested in making money. 64 00:05:15,690 --> 00:05:17,817 They were just interested in making movies. 65 00:05:21,029 --> 00:05:24,907 <i>Lucas is out of school now, working with Francis Ford Coppola,</i> 66 00:05:25,158 --> 00:05:28,578 <i>himself, a recent graduate of the film school at UCLA.</i> 67 00:05:29,162 --> 00:05:31,581 <i>Coppola is directing</i> The Rain People, 68 00:05:31,664 --> 00:05:33,958 <i>his third professional film for Warner Bros.,</i> 69 00:05:34,584 --> 00:05:37,628 <i>and Lucas is making a movie of him making a movie.</i> 70 00:05:39,339 --> 00:05:41,007 The idea is you got to really... 71 00:05:41,090 --> 00:05:43,259 You've got to really want to do something 72 00:05:43,343 --> 00:05:45,720 and then nothing can stop you, I believe. 73 00:05:46,262 --> 00:05:49,724 Would you tell us something about your young assistant, George Lucas? 74 00:05:49,807 --> 00:05:52,685 Well, he's not my assistant, actually, he's an associate. 75 00:05:52,769 --> 00:05:54,937 - Okay. - George won an award to come to 76 00:05:55,021 --> 00:05:57,440 Warner Bros. And observe a film being made there. 77 00:05:57,523 --> 00:06:00,568 <i>So we were making</i> Finian's Rainbow, <i>and I see this skinny kid with a beard</i> 78 00:06:00,651 --> 00:06:02,362 <i>and always looking. I said, "Who's that?"</i> 79 00:06:02,445 --> 00:06:04,447 <i>And he said, "He's observing you."</i> 80 00:06:04,530 --> 00:06:05,698 <i>On</i> Finian's Rainbow, 81 00:06:05,782 --> 00:06:08,826 <i>we were the only two people on the set under 50 years old,</i> 82 00:06:09,911 --> 00:06:12,163 and the only two that had gone to film school. 83 00:06:12,246 --> 00:06:13,289 <i>We had an affinity.</i> 84 00:06:13,706 --> 00:06:16,542 <i>We were young and very much against the establishment.</i> 85 00:06:17,794 --> 00:06:21,381 <i>And so in '69, we went to San Francisco.</i> 86 00:06:22,048 --> 00:06:24,801 Both Francis and I said, "This is where we should be." 87 00:06:29,138 --> 00:06:31,891 Not too many lobbies that have a friendly pool table right here. 88 00:06:31,974 --> 00:06:34,519 That's true. We hope that at 3:00 in the morning, 89 00:06:34,644 --> 00:06:37,814 that will be a comfort and an aid when we're working on a film 90 00:06:37,897 --> 00:06:39,690 in the other room. This is the main... 91 00:06:39,774 --> 00:06:42,652 <i>We bought mixing equipment and editing equipment.</i> 92 00:06:44,195 --> 00:06:46,406 <i>We were building a little studio there.</i> 93 00:06:47,365 --> 00:06:49,158 <i>We would do everything ourselves.</i> 94 00:06:50,910 --> 00:06:54,122 <i>I got to take one of my student films and turn it into a feature.</i> 95 00:06:58,793 --> 00:07:00,753 <i>One Coppola production was filmed</i> 96 00:07:00,878 --> 00:07:03,589 <i>in a garage at the San Francisco International Airport.</i> 97 00:07:04,090 --> 00:07:09,345 <i>A science fiction story written and directed by George Lucas, who is 25.</i> 98 00:07:09,429 --> 00:07:12,098 <i>Lucas and his wife are editing the film themselves.</i> 99 00:07:12,181 --> 00:07:15,435 <i>Although Warner Bros. Agreed to finance and release it,</i> 100 00:07:15,518 --> 00:07:18,062 <i>Lucas retained complete creative control.</i> 101 00:07:19,522 --> 00:07:21,649 In terms of my film, have complete freedom 102 00:07:21,732 --> 00:07:23,317 to say whatever I want to say. 103 00:07:23,526 --> 00:07:26,028 <i>Right, wrong or indifferent. At least I can say it.</i> 104 00:07:27,071 --> 00:07:32,118 <i>THX is pronounced incurable and shall be held in detention.</i> 105 00:07:32,201 --> 00:07:35,830 <i>With Warner Bros., they didn't come up here and look at what I was doing,</i> 106 00:07:35,913 --> 00:07:38,416 <i>and I don't know whether they even read the script.</i> 107 00:07:38,499 --> 00:07:41,586 We finally showed him the cut, and they were like, "Oh, my God, what is this?" 108 00:07:44,672 --> 00:07:46,841 <i>Evacuate. All magna personnel...</i> 109 00:07:46,924 --> 00:07:48,426 <i>The board didn't like it.</i> 110 00:07:48,634 --> 00:07:52,180 And they chopped it up. They ended up cutting out five minutes 111 00:07:52,263 --> 00:07:54,182 and some of it was really good stuff. 112 00:07:55,141 --> 00:07:57,059 <i>There's nothing worse than the frustration</i> 113 00:07:57,143 --> 00:07:59,770 <i>of having somebody who doesn't get what you're doing</i> 114 00:07:59,854 --> 00:08:01,772 <i>trying to turn it into something else.</i> 115 00:08:02,815 --> 00:08:05,151 And as a result of our disagreements 116 00:08:05,234 --> 00:08:10,406 with Warner Bros. Over the final cut of <i>THX,</i> 117 00:08:10,490 --> 00:08:14,535 we ended up losing a lot of our projects that we were gonna be doing for them. 118 00:08:16,037 --> 00:08:20,666 <i>The company we had built together, American Zoetrope, went bankrupt.</i> 119 00:08:20,750 --> 00:08:22,919 <i>So Francis went off and did</i> The Godfather. 120 00:08:24,337 --> 00:08:25,338 <i>He told me, he said,</i> 121 00:08:25,421 --> 00:08:29,342 <i>"Enough of this artsy fartsy, science fiction, strange movies."</i> 122 00:08:29,425 --> 00:08:30,843 "I want you to do a comedy." 123 00:08:31,385 --> 00:08:33,095 "Prove to me you can do a comedy." 124 00:08:41,062 --> 00:08:45,024 The first time that I met George was an audition for a movie that he had 125 00:08:45,107 --> 00:08:47,568 with an indecipherable title, <i>American Graffiti.</i> 126 00:08:47,652 --> 00:08:49,278 I had to look up the word "graffiti," 127 00:08:49,403 --> 00:08:54,575 <i>because I didn't know what it was, and there were things about George</i> 128 00:08:54,825 --> 00:08:57,119 that I found mystifying as an actor. 129 00:08:57,203 --> 00:08:59,539 <i>He doesn't really do actor speak.</i> 130 00:08:59,705 --> 00:09:01,499 <i>He's a little cryptic.</i> 131 00:09:01,874 --> 00:09:05,419 <i>He talks about an atmosphere, a world.</i> 132 00:09:06,462 --> 00:09:10,925 And I remember it took six auditions over a period of about six months 133 00:09:11,050 --> 00:09:13,594 <i>for all of us to wind up being chosen.</i> 134 00:09:17,473 --> 00:09:19,350 I joked with him about that at one point. 135 00:09:19,433 --> 00:09:22,770 He said, "Yeah, well, it took me that long to pick the cars, too." 136 00:09:26,315 --> 00:09:30,069 I was fascinated when we were shooting <i>American Graffiti</i> 137 00:09:30,194 --> 00:09:34,907 by the freedom he gave the actors, but also by the world creation of it. 138 00:09:35,074 --> 00:09:38,119 <i>And I wouldn't have known to use that term then.</i> 139 00:09:42,081 --> 00:09:44,458 The cars were as important to him. 140 00:09:45,167 --> 00:09:47,253 A lot of it's from my own experience. 141 00:09:48,087 --> 00:09:50,506 <i>At the time, cruising was gone,</i> 142 00:09:50,715 --> 00:09:54,427 <i>and I really felt compelled to sort of document the intimate nature</i> 143 00:09:54,510 --> 00:09:56,679 <i>of man's relationship to machine.</i> 144 00:09:57,179 --> 00:10:00,516 <i>Cruising was a uniquely American mating ritual.</i> 145 00:10:08,858 --> 00:10:09,859 What did you say? 146 00:10:09,942 --> 00:10:11,152 Wait. What did you say? 147 00:10:11,235 --> 00:10:12,278 What did you say? 148 00:10:13,321 --> 00:10:16,198 <i>On some kind of subliminal level,</i> 149 00:10:17,908 --> 00:10:19,744 <i>it obviously clicked with audiences.</i> 150 00:10:23,581 --> 00:10:25,851 <i>It was a big moment for me because I really did sit down and told myself,</i> 151 00:10:25,875 --> 00:10:27,293 <i>"Okay, now I am a director."</i> 152 00:10:27,376 --> 00:10:30,004 <i>"Now I know I can be creative in a way that I enjoy."</i> 153 00:10:32,590 --> 00:10:35,593 <i>One day we had been standing around Mel's Diner,</i> 154 00:10:36,135 --> 00:10:39,221 and I said to George, "What do you think you want to do next?" 155 00:10:39,555 --> 00:10:41,766 <i>And he said, "Well, I like science fiction.</i> 156 00:10:42,475 --> 00:10:44,310 <i>"The advances that Kubrick made,</i> 157 00:10:45,603 --> 00:10:48,397 <i>"I want to apply that</i> <i>to</i> Buck Rogers <i>or</i> Flash Gordon 158 00:10:48,564 --> 00:10:50,858 "kinds of movies, like a movie serial. 159 00:10:51,942 --> 00:10:55,363 <i>"Combine that with</i> 2001 <i>special effects,</i> 160 00:10:56,113 --> 00:10:58,491 "but the ships go real fast." 161 00:10:59,700 --> 00:11:01,535 And that's kind of all he said. 162 00:11:01,661 --> 00:11:02,912 That was about all I had. 163 00:11:04,121 --> 00:11:06,123 <i>I was just searching for a story,</i> 164 00:11:06,707 --> 00:11:09,293 <i>and then I thought "mythology."</i> 165 00:11:10,795 --> 00:11:14,882 <i>The idea that a society creates heroes that they can admire.</i> 166 00:11:16,050 --> 00:11:20,930 But I could see it as a mechanism, a universal reality. 167 00:11:24,475 --> 00:11:27,812 So I said I want to do one of those, only a modern version of that. 168 00:11:27,895 --> 00:11:30,022 Well, first I had to do a story treatment. 169 00:11:32,650 --> 00:11:35,236 <i>I am not the greatest writer in the world.</i> 170 00:11:37,905 --> 00:11:40,658 <i>I'd taken a proposal to a couple of studios,</i> 171 00:11:40,783 --> 00:11:43,494 <i>and they had turned it down, completely confused by it.</i> 172 00:11:44,161 --> 00:11:46,038 <i>Robots and Wookiees.</i> 173 00:11:46,664 --> 00:11:50,084 <i>They couldn't read it and say, "I understand what this is all about."</i> 174 00:11:50,167 --> 00:11:53,879 <i>Science fiction was not something that did well at the box office.</i> 175 00:11:54,380 --> 00:11:56,799 <i>On top of that, it was aimed at young people</i> 176 00:11:56,882 --> 00:11:59,427 <i>and most of the studios said, "Look, Disney does that.</i>" 177 00:11:59,510 --> 00:12:01,095 <i>"The rest of us can't do that."</i> 178 00:12:16,235 --> 00:12:18,195 <i>I knew I was going to have to sell it.</i> 179 00:12:19,029 --> 00:12:20,740 A picture is worth a thousand words. 180 00:12:23,826 --> 00:12:28,497 I hired an illustrator, Ralph McQuarrie, to draw the characters that I had done. 181 00:12:35,379 --> 00:12:37,173 <i>When he showed me those paintings, I said,</i> 182 00:12:37,256 --> 00:12:38,966 "That's exactly what I want." 183 00:12:39,049 --> 00:12:40,593 "I've got 100 ideas here." 184 00:12:40,676 --> 00:12:42,803 "Do this scene. Do this scene, do this scene." 185 00:12:50,144 --> 00:12:53,272 The paintings inspired me to keep writing the script, 186 00:12:53,397 --> 00:12:55,566 and that's how I got through it. 187 00:12:55,649 --> 00:12:57,693 The picture was going to be 188 00:12:57,777 --> 00:13:03,282 a wonderful visual experience as much as being a story. 189 00:13:03,532 --> 00:13:05,910 <i>It was going to be like a roller-coaster ride.</i> 190 00:13:07,703 --> 00:13:10,498 Full of things that would make the audience go, "Wow." 191 00:13:10,581 --> 00:13:12,500 "Oh!" 192 00:13:12,750 --> 00:13:17,254 At the same time, the new Fox Studio executive, Alan Ladd, Jr. 193 00:13:17,671 --> 00:13:19,465 <i>Saw</i> American Graffiti <i>and loved it.</i> 194 00:13:27,264 --> 00:13:30,351 <i>I showed him the drawings and he said, "Wow, what's it about?"</i> 195 00:13:30,434 --> 00:13:34,688 I said, "Well, that's kind of a space opera, old-fashioned feel about it", 196 00:13:35,356 --> 00:13:38,150 <i>"and there's a giant dog that flies with the hero,"</i> 197 00:13:38,234 --> 00:13:40,945 "and it's very hard to get what this is." 198 00:13:56,627 --> 00:13:59,922 <i>We had a special effects budget on that movie of $2 million,</i> 199 00:14:00,965 --> 00:14:02,800 which now won't even buy you a shot. 200 00:14:04,927 --> 00:14:08,305 In the beginning, Fox was not very... Who were financing the film, 201 00:14:08,389 --> 00:14:11,475 weren't very interested in building a new special effects company 202 00:14:11,559 --> 00:14:14,562 <i>that would just be specifically</i> <i>for making</i> Star Wars. 203 00:14:15,437 --> 00:14:18,899 So setting up ILM, I spent about half a million dollars. 204 00:14:19,775 --> 00:14:22,570 <i>Paying for it myself</i> <i>out of</i> American Graffiti <i>money.</i> 205 00:14:26,657 --> 00:14:28,868 And that's one of those things, if you get one guy 206 00:14:28,951 --> 00:14:30,035 <i>who's really good,</i> 207 00:14:32,204 --> 00:14:34,248 he'll bring all the other people with him. 208 00:14:37,710 --> 00:14:39,461 <i>It was an organism</i> 209 00:14:40,754 --> 00:14:41,964 <i>that grew.</i> 210 00:14:43,591 --> 00:14:46,802 We were thinking of names, and most of the names were really bad. 211 00:14:46,886 --> 00:14:49,889 <i>But I thought, well, we were in a warehouse,</i> 212 00:14:49,972 --> 00:14:54,476 <i>so it was very industrial, and we were using magic and light to create things.</i> 213 00:14:55,227 --> 00:14:56,729 It just popped into my head. 214 00:14:56,812 --> 00:14:59,440 I said, "I'm going to call it Industrial Light and Magic." 215 00:15:03,319 --> 00:15:06,280 And I was going off to England, Tunisia to shoot the film. 216 00:15:06,697 --> 00:15:08,365 Action! 217 00:15:09,700 --> 00:15:11,660 I've got to rest before I fall apart. 218 00:15:11,744 --> 00:15:13,329 My joints are almost frozen. 219 00:15:16,957 --> 00:15:19,376 <i>I was in such bad shape when I was in Tunisia.</i> 220 00:15:20,586 --> 00:15:21,795 <i>Everything went wrong.</i> 221 00:15:22,004 --> 00:15:25,633 The whole set blew down overnight and we had to shoot the next day. 222 00:15:25,758 --> 00:15:26,967 <i>We had nothing, no sets.</i> 223 00:15:27,051 --> 00:15:28,886 <i>It was just one thing after another.</i> 224 00:15:40,981 --> 00:15:43,859 People ask me, "Well, what's the secret of making movies?" 225 00:15:44,610 --> 00:15:45,736 I said, "Persistence." 226 00:15:46,946 --> 00:15:49,073 That's the only way you can describe it. 227 00:15:49,365 --> 00:15:53,160 And if you give up or you, you know, falter, you can't do it. 228 00:15:53,827 --> 00:15:57,247 <i>You've got to be persistent under impossible conditions.</i> 229 00:15:58,666 --> 00:16:02,086 So I got on the airplane to fly home, first place I went was ILM. 230 00:16:10,511 --> 00:16:14,598 <i>When I came back, we had less than a year left to do the special effects.</i> 231 00:16:15,057 --> 00:16:16,642 <i>They'd spent a million dollars</i> 232 00:16:17,101 --> 00:16:22,856 and they had... I don't know, three shots. 233 00:16:23,607 --> 00:16:24,775 George was very angry. 234 00:16:24,858 --> 00:16:28,988 You know, you could feel it in the room, even if he wasn't necessarily in the room. 235 00:16:29,947 --> 00:16:32,366 I know he was unhappy, but I don't know whether 236 00:16:32,449 --> 00:16:35,119 he was unhappy with me or the situation. 237 00:16:35,536 --> 00:16:37,955 The studio was breathing down his neck. 238 00:16:38,038 --> 00:16:39,790 I don't think he was feeling well. 239 00:16:40,040 --> 00:16:44,044 One day, I needed to go to editorial and grab some piece of film for something, 240 00:16:44,128 --> 00:16:47,631 and you had to go through the screening room to get to editorial. 241 00:16:47,715 --> 00:16:51,885 Ran up full of energy, went flying into the screening room. 242 00:16:52,469 --> 00:16:56,724 <i>George and Dykstra were in a heated argument, yelling,</i> 243 00:16:56,807 --> 00:16:58,892 <i>and I just ran right in the middle of it.</i> 244 00:17:00,185 --> 00:17:02,312 I don't even know what it was about. 245 00:17:15,868 --> 00:17:19,496 We were buried doing the work of building the equipment 246 00:17:19,580 --> 00:17:22,291 and the miniatures 18 hours a day. 247 00:17:24,126 --> 00:17:28,589 So, that we hadn't succeeded getting it all done 248 00:17:28,672 --> 00:17:33,510 and executing the shots was the least of my worries at that time. 249 00:17:34,053 --> 00:17:37,139 Ended up on my way home, flying from LA to San Francisco, 250 00:17:37,222 --> 00:17:39,182 <i>"thinking," Oh, my God, this isn't going to work.</i> 251 00:17:39,349 --> 00:17:42,061 "This is a mess and you'll never get to work again." 252 00:17:42,144 --> 00:17:44,730 And I was having severe chest pains. 253 00:17:44,855 --> 00:17:48,984 They took me to the hospital because they thought I might be having a heart attack. 254 00:17:49,068 --> 00:17:51,278 <i>They said, "Have you been under a lot of pressure?"</i> 255 00:17:51,361 --> 00:17:54,364 I said, "Yeah." They said, "Well, it's probably that. 256 00:17:54,448 --> 00:17:56,533 "Take some aspirins, call us in the morning." 257 00:17:56,617 --> 00:17:58,160 Because it wasn't a heart attack. 258 00:17:58,243 --> 00:18:00,412 <i>It turned out to be angina or something.</i> 259 00:18:00,579 --> 00:18:02,748 But of course, everybody else was panicked. 260 00:18:02,915 --> 00:18:05,751 What if I died? People don't even know what the movie is. 261 00:18:10,089 --> 00:18:12,132 <i>Yeah, it was in a million little pieces.</i> 262 00:18:13,008 --> 00:18:14,843 Nobody knew what I was really doing. 263 00:18:15,052 --> 00:18:16,804 I was the fourth editor hired. 264 00:18:17,471 --> 00:18:20,933 So a lot of work had already been done in the editing process 265 00:18:21,016 --> 00:18:26,105 <i>by the time I arrived on the scene, and I was deeply impressed with the whole thing.</i> 266 00:18:26,480 --> 00:18:30,067 <i>But almost every cut had to be altered somehow.</i> 267 00:18:30,150 --> 00:18:32,444 I got up my nerve and I said, "Listen, George," 268 00:18:32,528 --> 00:18:34,530 "there's something I really need to tell you." 269 00:18:34,613 --> 00:18:37,116 "I've never worked on anything this big before." 270 00:18:37,199 --> 00:18:39,368 He said, "Don't worry about it. Nobody has." 271 00:18:41,453 --> 00:18:43,747 I have a very bad feeling about this. 272 00:18:43,831 --> 00:18:46,208 - Turn the ship around. - Yeah, I think you're right. 273 00:18:46,291 --> 00:18:48,377 Full reverse. Chewie, lock in the auxiliary power. 274 00:18:48,502 --> 00:18:51,171 <i>I was very frustrated editing without effects.</i> 275 00:18:51,380 --> 00:18:52,798 <i>What did I get myself into?</i> 276 00:18:52,881 --> 00:18:54,508 <i>How am I ever going to get this done?</i> 277 00:18:54,591 --> 00:18:58,137 George, at a certain point, decided that he wanted to get the opinion 278 00:18:58,220 --> 00:19:02,599 of some of his colleagues, Brian De Palma and Martin Scorsese, 279 00:19:02,808 --> 00:19:04,685 <i>and Steven Spielberg.</i> 280 00:19:05,644 --> 00:19:08,188 I saw <i>Star Wars</i> for the first time in rough cut. 281 00:19:09,148 --> 00:19:12,818 Well, there we are, Mos Eisley Spaceport. 282 00:19:14,069 --> 00:19:18,532 You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. 283 00:19:19,158 --> 00:19:24,913 The film was, uh... To say it was not finished is a kindness. 284 00:19:27,708 --> 00:19:28,834 Get back to the ship! 285 00:19:28,917 --> 00:19:30,502 Where are you going? Come back! 286 00:19:30,586 --> 00:19:32,462 <i>He didn't have the effects yet.</i> 287 00:19:32,838 --> 00:19:34,423 Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. 288 00:19:34,923 --> 00:19:35,924 You're my only hope. 289 00:19:36,633 --> 00:19:39,303 There was a great deal of debate about context 290 00:19:39,511 --> 00:19:42,264 <i>because there are only a couple effects shots in there.</i> 291 00:19:42,472 --> 00:19:43,473 Where are we? 292 00:19:43,640 --> 00:19:44,725 Who are we? 293 00:19:44,808 --> 00:19:45,893 Who are they? 294 00:19:46,476 --> 00:19:47,728 <i>Do we need they?</i> 295 00:19:48,729 --> 00:19:52,649 What is this menagerie of imagination, 296 00:19:52,733 --> 00:19:56,904 George, that you've invited us to see and tear apart? 297 00:19:56,987 --> 00:19:59,948 Even I, who worked on the film, 298 00:20:00,032 --> 00:20:01,742 could barely follow the story. 299 00:20:01,825 --> 00:20:04,995 It was much rougher than rough cuts usually are. 300 00:20:06,788 --> 00:20:09,082 <i>Half the film was just literally like</i> 301 00:20:09,166 --> 00:20:13,337 watching a documentary from World War II because that's all George had. 302 00:20:13,420 --> 00:20:15,005 This is it! 303 00:20:15,088 --> 00:20:16,882 We should be able to see it by now. 304 00:20:18,592 --> 00:20:20,552 Keep your eyes open for those fighters. 305 00:20:22,304 --> 00:20:24,681 Me and Alan Ladd, Jr., the head of Fox, 306 00:20:24,806 --> 00:20:27,726 we were probably the only people in that room that loved the movie 307 00:20:27,809 --> 00:20:29,436 in the condition it was in. 308 00:20:29,603 --> 00:20:33,774 <i>But when R2 and C-3PO escape</i> 309 00:20:34,483 --> 00:20:38,445 and their vehicle purges, and you see it leaving 310 00:20:38,570 --> 00:20:41,823 <i>the docking platform and it goes into space,</i> 311 00:20:42,532 --> 00:20:47,287 that shot alone should have told all of us what that movie was going to be 312 00:20:47,371 --> 00:20:51,583 with ILM's help. But it wasn't there yet in the rough cut. 313 00:20:52,292 --> 00:20:53,877 When I said there were no other 314 00:20:53,961 --> 00:20:56,255 special effects houses, visual effects houses, 315 00:20:56,338 --> 00:20:59,508 there were not in the world, the whole world, there weren't any. 316 00:21:00,217 --> 00:21:01,551 So I didn't have a choice. 317 00:21:02,552 --> 00:21:05,055 I was on the bucking bronco and I had to go. 318 00:21:06,556 --> 00:21:10,310 <i>It really became a thing where we simply got on with it.</i> 319 00:21:11,812 --> 00:21:13,188 <i>For him,</i> 320 00:21:13,313 --> 00:21:17,067 <i>it was more a matter of resignation than a decision</i> 321 00:21:17,234 --> 00:21:19,569 <i>that the process was going to work.</i> 322 00:21:19,778 --> 00:21:23,490 <i>Every time we shot a scene using motion control,</i> 323 00:21:23,615 --> 00:21:27,411 with a pan and the tilt and a boom and the track and all those things. 324 00:21:27,828 --> 00:21:31,039 So it was so arduous to do a shot. 325 00:21:32,332 --> 00:21:37,796 And we realized that we had so many thousand elements that we had to shoot. 326 00:21:37,879 --> 00:21:40,966 <i>There wasn't enough hours in a day for me to shoot everything.</i> 327 00:21:41,758 --> 00:21:43,802 <i>And so Ken is shooting the cannons.</i> 328 00:21:44,219 --> 00:21:47,180 <i>Dennis is shooting X-wing shots.</i> 329 00:21:47,764 --> 00:21:50,225 <i>And then I'd ram the camera into the model,</i> 330 00:21:50,309 --> 00:21:52,936 <i>and they'd have to come out and fix it, you know?</i> 331 00:21:53,061 --> 00:21:55,897 I mean, this was not a perfect world, right? 332 00:21:56,481 --> 00:21:58,692 <i>Dealing with all these pieces of film.</i> 333 00:21:59,943 --> 00:22:02,904 It was like photo masochism. 334 00:22:06,825 --> 00:22:08,702 <i>I was actually really frankly worried</i> 335 00:22:08,785 --> 00:22:11,830 about how we were going to keep track of all this. 336 00:22:12,873 --> 00:22:14,458 With a sophisticated prototype, 337 00:22:14,583 --> 00:22:18,920 there's always problems, but for George, it was impenetrable. 338 00:22:20,047 --> 00:22:22,007 <i>We had all this very exotic equipment.</i> 339 00:22:22,090 --> 00:22:24,760 <i>We were doing things that nobody'd ever done before.</i> 340 00:22:25,135 --> 00:22:28,638 <i>John Dykstra was crucial in designing and making it work.</i> 341 00:22:29,598 --> 00:22:32,267 But we were running out of time, running out of money. 342 00:22:32,351 --> 00:22:34,227 I said, "I don't care if you put it on a stick" 343 00:22:34,311 --> 00:22:37,105 "and just shoot it going through the dark. Put in a few stars." 344 00:22:37,189 --> 00:22:38,899 "We got to get this thing done." 345 00:22:38,982 --> 00:22:41,860 Several people were sent in to try and make us 346 00:22:41,943 --> 00:22:43,904 more efficient and more structured. 347 00:22:45,489 --> 00:22:46,490 <i>George Mather.</i> 348 00:22:46,573 --> 00:22:49,993 <i>He'd made a real effort to bring some organization.</i> 349 00:22:50,410 --> 00:22:54,998 <i>He did what he could, and we grudgingly agreed to some of it.</i> 350 00:22:55,165 --> 00:22:59,294 But I think Rose really was the one that put it all together. 351 00:23:01,505 --> 00:23:03,799 <i>When I arrived for my interview,</i> 352 00:23:04,299 --> 00:23:06,134 it was a pretty... 353 00:23:06,218 --> 00:23:10,097 I don't want to use the word looking place. 354 00:23:10,180 --> 00:23:12,224 <i>They did not have nice furniture.</i> 355 00:23:12,557 --> 00:23:14,184 It just looked like a dump. 356 00:23:14,518 --> 00:23:17,020 Let's face it. There was a guy sitting next to me, 357 00:23:17,104 --> 00:23:20,190 like, a runner, with his feet up, and I was asking the receptionist, 358 00:23:20,273 --> 00:23:22,317 <i>"How's it working here? Is George Lucas nice?"</i> 359 00:23:22,401 --> 00:23:24,903 "Tell me about this film. It's a sci-fi film," 360 00:23:24,986 --> 00:23:27,030 and she seemed really uptight. 361 00:23:27,322 --> 00:23:30,951 And then Dykstra opens the door and says, "Come on in for the interview." 362 00:23:32,077 --> 00:23:34,913 And this young man gets up and walks in with me. 363 00:23:35,747 --> 00:23:38,208 <i>Well, of course, that young man was George Lucas.</i> 364 00:23:38,291 --> 00:23:40,794 <i>He turned to me and asked two questions.</i> 365 00:23:41,044 --> 00:23:42,212 Do you take shorthand? 366 00:23:42,629 --> 00:23:43,922 <i>And can you start Monday?</i> 367 00:23:44,589 --> 00:23:47,884 <i>I had seen</i> American Graffiti, <i>so I was already sold.</i> 368 00:23:48,427 --> 00:23:51,138 Okay. Whatever this guy wants to do, I'm on board. 369 00:23:51,847 --> 00:23:57,269 <i>And George had just returned from England, so mostly he was up north editing.</i> 370 00:23:57,727 --> 00:23:59,396 <i>He would show up two days a week,</i> 371 00:23:59,479 --> 00:24:02,232 <i>and my job was to follow him around and make notes.</i> 372 00:24:02,441 --> 00:24:04,776 <i>Someone had to accompany him everywhere</i> 373 00:24:04,860 --> 00:24:08,905 <i>and keep track of everything he said to every department.</i> 374 00:24:09,823 --> 00:24:12,534 But most of the time I was following Dykstra around. 375 00:24:14,286 --> 00:24:17,706 <i>He's just such an engaging, charismatic person.</i> 376 00:24:18,582 --> 00:24:20,667 <i>He'd be so loose. He'd be so funny.</i> 377 00:24:21,501 --> 00:24:25,005 Then when George got there, it was all business, 378 00:24:25,464 --> 00:24:27,924 <i>and I sensed a coolness between them.</i> 379 00:24:30,218 --> 00:24:32,721 <i>There was nobody organizing it.</i> 380 00:24:32,846 --> 00:24:35,765 <i>I don't know how they managed to decide what to shoot when.</i> 381 00:24:36,975 --> 00:24:39,144 We needed to get an adult in the room 382 00:24:39,269 --> 00:24:42,147 to say, "Look, this is what needs to happen." 383 00:24:43,356 --> 00:24:47,736 <i>George Mather really brought order that gave George Lucas</i> 384 00:24:47,819 --> 00:24:49,613 <i>tremendous confidence.</i> 385 00:24:49,738 --> 00:24:53,533 <i>Mather and I listed every single element that needed to be done.</i> 386 00:24:53,617 --> 00:24:54,910 <i>It got on the calendar,</i> 387 00:24:55,243 --> 00:24:57,621 and it just started flowing very smoothly. 388 00:24:58,705 --> 00:25:01,583 <i>We had a big book of the storyboards,</i> 389 00:25:01,833 --> 00:25:04,794 and every day I would type up the notes from dailies 390 00:25:04,878 --> 00:25:06,755 and he would cut them out in little strips, 391 00:25:06,922 --> 00:25:09,257 <i>and paste them into this book.</i> 392 00:25:10,759 --> 00:25:16,556 <i>Once the system was complete, I brought George down a few times</i> 393 00:25:16,890 --> 00:25:21,603 to step him through the process, and I said, "Okay, let's start with this shot." 394 00:25:22,187 --> 00:25:24,397 <i>"There's two or three elements in the shot."</i> 395 00:25:27,192 --> 00:25:29,110 <i>Okay, I would shoot the first element,</i> 396 00:25:29,194 --> 00:25:31,404 <i>have that developed in about 10 minutes,</i> 397 00:25:31,571 --> 00:25:32,822 <i>put it on the Moviola,</i> 398 00:25:32,906 --> 00:25:35,909 <i>and I'd say, "You like this move, George, or you want to modify it?"</i> 399 00:25:35,992 --> 00:25:38,203 And he says, "You know, maybe we can have it" 400 00:25:38,286 --> 00:25:40,539 "do a little bit more of this or something," 401 00:25:40,622 --> 00:25:41,915 <i>and I would shoot another one.</i> 402 00:25:41,998 --> 00:25:43,625 <i>He says, "Yeah, I like that now."</i> 403 00:25:44,167 --> 00:25:48,296 It's like, "Okay, let's do the next model, and then put the two together." 404 00:25:48,838 --> 00:25:51,925 George now could see the two elements that I just shot. 405 00:25:53,051 --> 00:25:55,011 <i>So I did that a few times for him.</i> 406 00:25:55,095 --> 00:25:57,222 We schooled him, in a sense. 407 00:25:59,391 --> 00:26:02,894 <i>He saw the work we were doing could be successful</i> 408 00:26:03,019 --> 00:26:07,232 because the product was significantly more interesting, 409 00:26:07,691 --> 00:26:09,818 and more evocative than it would have been 410 00:26:09,901 --> 00:26:13,780 if we'd settled for the cheap and cheerful approach. 411 00:26:13,905 --> 00:26:16,866 <i>But there were a lot of the shots that could have been done</i> 412 00:26:16,950 --> 00:26:19,619 with older processes, old techniques. 413 00:26:20,078 --> 00:26:23,665 <i>But what John had come up with was an elegance.</i> 414 00:26:24,332 --> 00:26:26,084 Once you bought into that thing, 415 00:26:26,167 --> 00:26:29,129 you had a system that could do any type of shot you wanted. 416 00:26:30,714 --> 00:26:32,465 <i>For all of us, it was an education,</i> 417 00:26:32,549 --> 00:26:36,219 <i>both in managing to pull the technology together</i> 418 00:26:36,303 --> 00:26:38,638 <i>as well as to understand George's vision.</i> 419 00:26:40,390 --> 00:26:44,227 <i>For each shot, storyboards would give us the gist of the idea,</i> 420 00:26:45,020 --> 00:26:50,400 and then I would interpret the storyboard to figure out what to shoot first. 421 00:26:51,276 --> 00:26:56,489 Something that really made me quake in my shoes was the opening shot. 422 00:26:58,450 --> 00:27:03,663 Because if the opening shot didn't grab the audience and convince them 423 00:27:03,747 --> 00:27:06,416 that they gotta watch this movie, we were in trouble. 424 00:27:08,335 --> 00:27:13,256 <i>The best effect is one that has subliminal cues like scale</i> 425 00:27:13,381 --> 00:27:17,427 and focus to make this stuff indistinguishable from reality. 426 00:27:17,802 --> 00:27:20,055 <i>And George would come down and he would say,</i> 427 00:27:20,138 --> 00:27:22,682 <i>"I want the</i> Star Destroyer <i>to look enormous.</i> 428 00:27:23,391 --> 00:27:26,936 "We can build this model on the wall and have ladders" 429 00:27:27,062 --> 00:27:28,980 <i>"and, you know, other things that give scale,"</i> 430 00:27:29,105 --> 00:27:33,360 and I would say, "George, we already have a <i>Star Destroyer</i>" 431 00:27:33,860 --> 00:27:34,986 "that's this long." 432 00:27:36,112 --> 00:27:37,280 <i>"I want to do a test.</i> 433 00:27:37,822 --> 00:27:41,117 <i>"Put your best guys on detailing the bottom of this thing</i> 434 00:27:41,201 --> 00:27:42,911 <i>"and really making it tricked out,</i> 435 00:27:43,703 --> 00:27:45,997 "and then make me a Rebel blockade runner" 436 00:27:46,081 --> 00:27:50,251 "that's about the size of a cigarette, and I'll put that on a wire" 437 00:27:50,335 --> 00:27:52,295 <i>"sticking out of the front of the ship,"</i> 438 00:27:52,962 --> 00:27:56,216 <i>"and we can try to create a bigger scale."</i> 439 00:27:57,300 --> 00:28:02,013 <i>It was very important to be able to get the camera very close to the models,</i> 440 00:28:02,389 --> 00:28:05,016 <i>and the camera is going to be hanging from the boom.</i> 441 00:28:05,100 --> 00:28:07,769 <i>So I flip a</i> Star Destroyer <i>and got it level,</i> 442 00:28:07,852 --> 00:28:11,898 <i>so the lens was basically 1/32 of an inch off the model</i> 443 00:28:11,981 --> 00:28:14,526 <i>and it was actually scraping it at a couple points.</i> 444 00:28:15,318 --> 00:28:17,487 <i>Basically, I shot it upside down.</i> 445 00:28:23,493 --> 00:28:26,496 <i>And the next day at dailies, everybody's aghast.</i> 446 00:28:27,872 --> 00:28:28,915 It's like... 447 00:28:38,383 --> 00:28:41,136 <i>The feeling that you got in that opening shot</i> 448 00:28:41,219 --> 00:28:43,346 <i>when the</i> Star Destroyer <i>comes overhead</i> 449 00:28:46,015 --> 00:28:49,477 <i>was precisely what George wanted.</i> 450 00:28:52,605 --> 00:28:55,483 And here's one of the keys that makes it work. 451 00:28:55,817 --> 00:28:59,863 The entire ship is in focus, from the closest thing to the camera 452 00:28:59,946 --> 00:29:01,823 <i>to the furthest thing from the camera.</i> 453 00:29:01,906 --> 00:29:05,452 It's a really critical component to establishing scale. 454 00:29:08,788 --> 00:29:12,584 And the model had little doors and windows. 455 00:29:12,667 --> 00:29:17,130 Human scale things that tell you how big it is, right? 456 00:29:17,589 --> 00:29:22,469 So it's those kind of subliminal clues and an understanding of how to use them 457 00:29:22,635 --> 00:29:27,307 that makes it artistry, as opposed to simple mechanics. 458 00:29:37,025 --> 00:29:38,359 I mean, it's a mystery. 459 00:29:38,443 --> 00:29:39,819 It's like magic, really. 460 00:29:41,279 --> 00:29:44,365 <i>We're creating magic through this very lugubrious process.</i> 461 00:29:52,874 --> 00:29:55,585 Such a creative group spirit emerged. 462 00:29:55,877 --> 00:30:00,924 <i>Collaborative problem solving, on every crew in every department.</i> 463 00:30:01,007 --> 00:30:04,427 We knew we had to help each other. We had to be supportive of each other 464 00:30:04,511 --> 00:30:06,095 in order to get the work done. 465 00:30:07,055 --> 00:30:09,599 <i>It's about making the movie,</i> 466 00:30:09,682 --> 00:30:14,479 telling the story, and don't let your ego get in the way. 467 00:30:15,980 --> 00:30:19,025 <i>A lot of problems got solved at the coffee machine.</i> 468 00:30:19,108 --> 00:30:21,903 People would walk up, they got some problem and they talk to you, 469 00:30:21,986 --> 00:30:23,112 "Can you help me with it?" 470 00:30:23,196 --> 00:30:24,405 <i>We were a family.</i> 471 00:30:25,949 --> 00:30:29,160 <i>I just really liked that George would</i> 472 00:30:29,244 --> 00:30:31,579 <i>stay late and help me on mundane tasks.</i> 473 00:30:31,830 --> 00:30:34,666 Would be 9:00 at night, and we'd be stamping storyboards. 474 00:30:37,961 --> 00:30:40,088 <i>Some of the times that he was happiest</i> 475 00:30:40,171 --> 00:30:43,883 <i>is when he would go into the model shop and glue parts on a spaceship.</i> 476 00:30:44,759 --> 00:30:46,135 He really loved to do that. 477 00:30:47,512 --> 00:30:51,182 <i>We were behind, so it just took a long time to do that many shots.</i> 478 00:30:51,266 --> 00:30:53,268 He was great at compromising, you know. 479 00:30:53,351 --> 00:30:55,019 "We can reuse this shot over here." 480 00:30:55,103 --> 00:30:56,896 "We can flip this shot backwards" 481 00:30:56,980 --> 00:30:59,482 <i>"and it'll look like it's going the other direction."</i> 482 00:30:59,566 --> 00:31:01,192 We started making quantum leaps. 483 00:31:01,693 --> 00:31:02,777 <i>Things accelerated.</i> 484 00:31:07,699 --> 00:31:09,826 <i>I mean, there were some rough spots.</i> 485 00:31:10,660 --> 00:31:13,288 To work in visual effects, you have to be crazy. 486 00:31:13,705 --> 00:31:15,582 <i>You have to be a little bit nuts.</i> 487 00:31:30,805 --> 00:31:33,725 <i>But since we didn't know what it was going to become,</i> 488 00:31:33,850 --> 00:31:37,729 there was nothing sacred and just build it and get it in front of the camera. 489 00:31:44,360 --> 00:31:46,571 <i>It was fun all the time.</i> 490 00:31:47,739 --> 00:31:49,616 <i>When it was grueling, it was fun.</i> 491 00:31:51,242 --> 00:31:53,411 <i>The star field was hollow on the inside.</i> 492 00:31:53,494 --> 00:31:55,455 <i>You could get in there and sleep comfortably.</i> 493 00:31:55,538 --> 00:31:58,958 <i>"One day somebody said," Hey, don't leave the pillow against the light.</i> 494 00:31:59,042 --> 00:32:00,209 "These things get hot." 495 00:32:00,293 --> 00:32:01,961 It was madness. It was madness. 496 00:32:03,129 --> 00:32:07,425 <i>We had a lot of parties, and I'd mix punches and throw dry ice in it,</i> 497 00:32:07,508 --> 00:32:10,720 and they'd gurgle and bubble till I learned that that was poison, 498 00:32:10,845 --> 00:32:12,972 that you really can't put dry ice in. 499 00:32:13,056 --> 00:32:14,307 Oops! 500 00:32:15,892 --> 00:32:18,645 As George used to say, "Give them enough pizza and beer," 501 00:32:18,728 --> 00:32:19,771 "they'll do anything." 502 00:32:22,315 --> 00:32:25,276 It was like a fraternity house. 503 00:32:26,778 --> 00:32:28,947 <i>The studio called us the Country Club.</i> 504 00:32:30,531 --> 00:32:33,451 <i>Yes, we were in the hot tub, and yes, we waterslided,</i> 505 00:32:33,534 --> 00:32:35,036 <i>and yes, we were immature.</i> 506 00:32:37,038 --> 00:32:40,833 <i>But nobody worked harder, nobody stayed later.</i> 507 00:32:42,961 --> 00:32:44,754 <i>We were breaking new ground.</i> 508 00:32:51,469 --> 00:32:55,598 It really was a lot of fun until it got toward the end. 509 00:32:55,682 --> 00:32:57,517 You know, the crunch was on. 510 00:33:00,269 --> 00:33:03,648 <i>We were beating ourselves up to get the movie done in time.</i> 511 00:33:05,066 --> 00:33:07,568 The premiere is coming up, people are freaking out. 512 00:33:07,694 --> 00:33:09,362 Sound department wants your work now, 513 00:33:09,445 --> 00:33:12,156 because they have to put their sound in, oh, my God. 514 00:33:12,240 --> 00:33:15,660 <i>Joe was redesigning the storyboards and giving us different shots.</i> 515 00:33:16,661 --> 00:33:19,414 We were shooting like crazy and falling over each other. 516 00:33:20,123 --> 00:33:21,249 Ken! 517 00:33:21,332 --> 00:33:23,251 Just trying to get the work done. 518 00:33:24,293 --> 00:33:27,797 <i>Getting the models and lighting and shooting those as fast as we could.</i> 519 00:33:30,925 --> 00:33:34,345 It was a mission of faith. 520 00:33:35,680 --> 00:33:38,683 <i>Because nobody knew whether we were going to make it or not.</i> 521 00:33:39,600 --> 00:33:41,102 <i>Everybody was very hopeful.</i> 522 00:33:42,562 --> 00:33:44,897 But I was under an enormous amount of pressure. 523 00:33:45,148 --> 00:33:47,608 The crew was under an enormous amount of pressure. 524 00:33:48,484 --> 00:33:50,486 When we were walking through the stages, 525 00:33:50,570 --> 00:33:52,905 <i>he was kind of frustrated, like things were not</i> 526 00:33:52,989 --> 00:33:54,907 <i>coming together the way he would like.</i> 527 00:33:55,450 --> 00:33:57,869 <i>He was disappointed in some of the shots.</i> 528 00:33:58,911 --> 00:34:01,998 Not everybody's work was given approval. 529 00:34:02,957 --> 00:34:04,917 You know, he was, 530 00:34:05,001 --> 00:34:10,006 I wouldn't say hypercritical, but... It's his movie. 531 00:34:10,506 --> 00:34:12,675 It's... He's going to take the blame. 532 00:34:13,217 --> 00:34:14,719 I'm a perfectionist. 533 00:34:16,054 --> 00:34:19,932 And if it's not right, I get really upset inside. 534 00:34:20,266 --> 00:34:22,268 <i>Sometimes outside, but mostly inside.</i> 535 00:34:22,351 --> 00:34:23,895 - Okay. - Okay. 536 00:34:25,438 --> 00:34:28,357 <i>You know, my impression of George was that</i> 537 00:34:28,441 --> 00:34:32,278 he was the combination of extremely imaginative 538 00:34:32,361 --> 00:34:34,405 and extremely practical. 539 00:34:34,906 --> 00:34:38,242 <i>And usually you find people who are one or the other, but not both.</i> 540 00:34:38,743 --> 00:34:40,423 <i>I've learned to live with the fact</i> 541 00:34:40,495 --> 00:34:42,747 that everything can't be the way you want it to be. 542 00:34:42,830 --> 00:34:45,666 You have to sort of do the best you can and move forward. 543 00:34:46,667 --> 00:34:49,378 <i>George had always been unhappy with the creatures</i> 544 00:34:49,462 --> 00:34:52,381 <i>that they had given him for the cant in a sequence.</i> 545 00:34:53,382 --> 00:34:56,010 So, reshoots were planned. 546 00:34:57,220 --> 00:35:00,932 <i>We had shot the cant in a scene in England</i> 547 00:35:01,724 --> 00:35:03,726 and I wanted it to be crowded with aliens. 548 00:35:03,976 --> 00:35:05,978 <i>They gave me some, but it wasn't enough.</i> 549 00:35:06,229 --> 00:35:09,649 I think it was a budgetary problem. There just wasn't that much money, 550 00:35:09,732 --> 00:35:12,693 so it looked to me like what they had done in England 551 00:35:12,777 --> 00:35:14,403 <i>was go to a costume department,</i> 552 00:35:14,487 --> 00:35:17,406 <i>got a bunch of Beatrix Potter-type things.</i> 553 00:35:18,950 --> 00:35:21,702 <i>We shot everything we could, but then I said,</i> 554 00:35:21,786 --> 00:35:24,622 "Well, I'll just pick them up when I get home." 555 00:35:25,498 --> 00:35:27,500 <i>George hired me and Jon Berg</i> 556 00:35:27,583 --> 00:35:30,378 <i>and a couple of out-of-work stop-motion animators,</i> 557 00:35:30,461 --> 00:35:31,462 <i>and his direction was,</i> 558 00:35:31,546 --> 00:35:34,632 "Make me as many space aliens as you can in six weeks." 559 00:35:40,680 --> 00:35:44,016 <i>They drew drawings and I picked another 12 monsters.</i> 560 00:35:45,017 --> 00:35:46,519 <i>Ron Cobb did some designs,</i> 561 00:35:46,602 --> 00:35:49,647 <i>and we would sculpt and fabricate his designs.</i> 562 00:35:54,068 --> 00:35:57,572 <i>And then went over to a little stage on La Brea Avenue.</i> 563 00:35:59,907 --> 00:36:02,410 <i>And George put us in our own masks.</i> 564 00:36:04,745 --> 00:36:11,460 <i>And costume department would dress us up and that's kind of how that was done.</i> 565 00:36:16,340 --> 00:36:19,719 <i>Phil Tippett and Jon Berg, I liked them.</i> 566 00:36:20,386 --> 00:36:21,512 <i>They were a good team.</i> 567 00:36:21,888 --> 00:36:23,055 <i>We became friends.</i> 568 00:36:24,307 --> 00:36:27,727 George would come in once a week to check out our progress, 569 00:36:28,060 --> 00:36:31,939 <i>and one time he was looking around and he saw on the shelf</i> 570 00:36:32,607 --> 00:36:36,068 <i>a stop-motion character that I had made when I was like, 20.</i> 571 00:36:36,861 --> 00:36:41,574 He said, "Oh, so you guys do stop-motion animation, huh?" 572 00:36:44,243 --> 00:36:47,288 <i>He showed us the chess set, and the assembly</i> 573 00:36:47,371 --> 00:36:50,416 <i>that he had without any characters in it.</i> 574 00:36:51,250 --> 00:36:53,252 330. Take two. 575 00:36:53,419 --> 00:36:56,380 <i>George was initially going to have the chess set</i> 576 00:36:57,173 --> 00:37:02,720 just be people in masks shot against blue screen... 577 00:37:05,097 --> 00:37:06,974 <i>But</i> Future World <i>had just come out,</i> 578 00:37:09,185 --> 00:37:13,189 <i>and there was a scene there with actors on a chessboard.</i> 579 00:37:13,272 --> 00:37:14,941 My knight to your pawn. 580 00:37:17,276 --> 00:37:19,362 George felt kind of scooped in a way. 581 00:37:19,445 --> 00:37:22,114 You know, it was like his thing would not be original. 582 00:37:22,198 --> 00:37:26,327 And so if he did it stop motion, it would have its own thing. 583 00:37:27,036 --> 00:37:29,121 <i>So he said to me and Jon Berg,</i> 584 00:37:29,205 --> 00:37:34,001 "Can you make 10 stop-motion aliens in two weeks?" 585 00:37:34,085 --> 00:37:35,711 <i>I said, "That's why we're here."</i> 586 00:37:36,087 --> 00:37:39,215 <i>The one advantage we have at ILM is we got guys,</i> 587 00:37:39,840 --> 00:37:43,427 you know, off the street, which meant they could do anything. 588 00:37:43,886 --> 00:37:47,223 <i>Right at the end of the schedule, right at the end of the schedule.</i> 589 00:37:47,431 --> 00:37:52,561 <i>And so when Jon Berg and I went in to make a deal with George for it,</i> 590 00:37:52,645 --> 00:37:56,565 Dykstra had this big round table, and George sat at one end 591 00:37:56,649 --> 00:38:00,278 <i>and Dykstra had a replica old Western .44.</i> 592 00:38:00,528 --> 00:38:03,364 And while we were negotiating talking about our rates, 593 00:38:03,447 --> 00:38:07,451 he would just like, spin the chamber. 594 00:38:07,535 --> 00:38:09,120 He had no idea that he was doing it, 595 00:38:09,203 --> 00:38:12,832 but we were sitting there going like, "Uh, is that too much?" 596 00:38:14,375 --> 00:38:15,543 "We'll do it for free." 597 00:38:17,712 --> 00:38:21,966 <i>We had a cardboard box with all these little characters in it.</i> 598 00:38:22,425 --> 00:38:25,636 <i>Took them to the set and asked George what he wanted,</i> 599 00:38:25,720 --> 00:38:27,054 and he goes like, "I don't know." 600 00:38:27,138 --> 00:38:30,641 "How about this little yellow guy jumps out and the green guy picks him up" 601 00:38:30,725 --> 00:38:33,311 "and throws him down, and everybody else is watching." 602 00:38:33,436 --> 00:38:36,355 And we're like, "Okay. You got it." 603 00:38:39,358 --> 00:38:42,320 <i>We would shoot in the evenings, I think over three nights.</i> 604 00:38:45,656 --> 00:38:47,992 <i>And it's just kids playing with toys, you know.</i> 605 00:38:51,829 --> 00:38:54,206 <i>That was the only stop-motion work we had.</i> 606 00:38:54,874 --> 00:38:56,834 <i>We were all happy with the results.</i> 607 00:38:58,669 --> 00:39:00,171 Now be careful, R2. 608 00:39:07,136 --> 00:39:09,930 He made a fair move. Screaming about it can't help you. 609 00:39:10,097 --> 00:39:12,558 Let him have it. It's not wise to upset a Wookiee. 610 00:39:15,269 --> 00:39:19,690 <i>George was very generous with giving creative freedom to people,</i> 611 00:39:19,774 --> 00:39:22,360 and he would be very patient. If you had a question, 612 00:39:22,443 --> 00:39:25,279 it didn't make sense to you, he would explain, you know, 613 00:39:25,363 --> 00:39:27,823 why this is what I want to do. 614 00:39:29,033 --> 00:39:32,620 <i>When he came by, I got as much of his time as I could.</i> 615 00:39:34,622 --> 00:39:36,916 <i>I remember him sitting at the drawing table</i> 616 00:39:36,999 --> 00:39:39,502 <i>and drawing the sequence at the end of the film,</i> 617 00:39:39,919 --> 00:39:41,504 the attack on the <i>Death Star.</i> 618 00:39:43,214 --> 00:39:44,757 <i>George is not an artist.</i> 619 00:39:44,840 --> 00:39:47,676 <i>He can put lines on paper, but he's not an artist.</i> 620 00:39:48,010 --> 00:39:52,640 <i>And I was really amazed at his ability to convey the idea</i> 621 00:39:53,391 --> 00:39:57,561 in very crude visuals of what this attack was gonna look like. 622 00:39:57,645 --> 00:40:00,314 The end battle was of particular importance to George 623 00:40:00,398 --> 00:40:03,818 because the studio was threatening to eliminate it. 624 00:40:04,443 --> 00:40:07,071 <i>They had concerns about cost overruns,</i> 625 00:40:07,154 --> 00:40:09,657 <i>and they thought,</i> <i>"Hey, they get to the</i> Death <i>Star,</i> 626 00:40:09,740 --> 00:40:12,618 "they rescue the princess. That's it. Story's over." 627 00:40:12,701 --> 00:40:15,329 <i>But George was determined to have this end battle.</i> 628 00:40:17,540 --> 00:40:18,999 <i>Movies are kinetic.</i> 629 00:40:19,083 --> 00:40:20,084 It's about movement. 630 00:40:20,584 --> 00:40:23,587 Forget the actors. Forget the story. It's all about movement. 631 00:40:23,671 --> 00:40:27,633 <i>The chase. The chases were the beginning form of cinema.</i> 632 00:40:29,343 --> 00:40:32,346 Chase, like anything else in a movie, it has to be built. 633 00:40:33,305 --> 00:40:35,641 <i>You got a beginning, a middle and an end,</i> 634 00:40:35,724 --> 00:40:37,726 and you have several incidents in there. 635 00:40:38,644 --> 00:40:41,939 <i>At the end of the film, the idea was to create</i> 636 00:40:42,022 --> 00:40:45,526 <i>a realistic-looking space dogfight.</i> 637 00:40:45,985 --> 00:40:49,738 <i>They were attacking an invulnerable fortress,</i> 638 00:40:49,822 --> 00:40:53,200 <i>the</i> Death Star, <i>and Luke's prowess as a pilot</i> 639 00:40:53,367 --> 00:40:56,787 <i>allows them to succeed in destroying this behemoth.</i> 640 00:40:58,038 --> 00:41:01,167 <i>The reason the</i> Death Star <i>had trenches in it</i> 641 00:41:01,667 --> 00:41:05,546 <i>is because it was the only way we could achieve a sense of speed.</i> 642 00:41:09,550 --> 00:41:16,474 We had ridden motorcycles down gullies out in the desert and noticed 643 00:41:16,557 --> 00:41:19,727 that when you were in the gullies, you're traveling by things. 644 00:41:20,060 --> 00:41:21,437 <i>They seemed really fast.</i> 645 00:41:23,314 --> 00:41:24,899 <i>George wanted a city look,</i> 646 00:41:24,982 --> 00:41:29,320 <i>like flying down the center of Manhattan high speed in some kind of a ship.</i> 647 00:41:29,403 --> 00:41:31,030 <i>But the scale would be much larger.</i> 648 00:41:31,113 --> 00:41:34,158 <i>Something that's supposed to look like you've traveled 40 miles</i> 649 00:41:34,241 --> 00:41:36,118 <i>is going to have to be a mile a foot.</i> 650 00:41:36,744 --> 00:41:37,870 <i>That's no mean feat.</i> 651 00:41:39,121 --> 00:41:42,458 <i>That meant an incredible amount of detail on each surface piece.</i> 652 00:41:46,504 --> 00:41:48,047 <i>The Death Star surface,</i> 653 00:41:48,130 --> 00:41:51,342 <i>it was the very first project I was hired to do for two months.</i> 654 00:41:51,967 --> 00:41:54,887 And it didn't take me very long to realize 655 00:41:54,970 --> 00:41:57,806 why all the other model makers didn't want to do it. 656 00:41:58,057 --> 00:41:59,183 <i>They got burnt out.</i> 657 00:41:59,892 --> 00:42:03,395 <i>You basically spent the day on your knees with big foam pads</i> 658 00:42:03,604 --> 00:42:07,816 and crawled around on the surface that was about 15 feet by 40 feet. 659 00:42:08,526 --> 00:42:13,864 <i>We built six molds</i> <i>for this gigantic</i> Death Star <i>surface.</i> 660 00:42:14,740 --> 00:42:17,076 We had to be able to cut them up and move them, 661 00:42:17,159 --> 00:42:18,786 put them in different positions. 662 00:42:18,869 --> 00:42:21,747 <i>So you wouldn't recognize that it was a lot of repetition.</i> 663 00:42:23,624 --> 00:42:26,252 <i>It's pretty astronomical, the number of combinations</i> 664 00:42:26,335 --> 00:42:28,212 <i>that we had available to us.</i> 665 00:42:29,463 --> 00:42:31,465 <i>At the end of the model,</i> 666 00:42:31,549 --> 00:42:33,968 <i>we had to show that it goes on and on and on.</i> 667 00:42:34,051 --> 00:42:37,346 <i>So we photographed a section of the Death Star trench</i> 668 00:42:37,429 --> 00:42:39,265 <i>and glued it to a piece of Masonite.</i> 669 00:42:40,432 --> 00:42:41,892 <i>I painted the detail on it.</i> 670 00:42:50,651 --> 00:42:52,611 <i>Just to make it seem more alive,</i> 671 00:42:52,695 --> 00:42:54,446 <i>thousands of these little windows</i> 672 00:42:55,030 --> 00:42:58,158 had to be put everywhere with retro reflective tape 673 00:42:58,284 --> 00:43:00,953 <i>made out of glass beads that reflect back the light.</i> 674 00:43:01,870 --> 00:43:03,831 <i>But there were tens of thousands.</i> 675 00:43:04,331 --> 00:43:06,542 <i>That was my job to do that,</i> 676 00:43:06,667 --> 00:43:08,377 you know? 677 00:43:08,460 --> 00:43:12,798 There was a moment when Marcia Lucas, George Lucas's wife at the time, 678 00:43:13,424 --> 00:43:15,593 <i>came down and looked at the</i> Death Star. 679 00:43:15,926 --> 00:43:18,387 She got the camera, looked at it, we lit it up, 680 00:43:19,179 --> 00:43:23,475 and she said, "Hmm, the windows have to be a smaller scale." 681 00:43:25,644 --> 00:43:30,983 It's like, oh, my God, they had to be half as big. 682 00:43:36,113 --> 00:43:37,948 <i>The approach will not be easy.</i> 683 00:43:38,032 --> 00:43:40,909 You're required to maneuver straight down this trench, 684 00:43:40,993 --> 00:43:43,162 and skim the surface to this point. 685 00:43:44,330 --> 00:43:47,124 The target area is only two meters wide. 686 00:43:47,207 --> 00:43:50,794 It's a small thermal exhaust port right below the main port. 687 00:43:52,713 --> 00:43:55,674 <i>When it came time to shoot the trench,</i> 688 00:43:55,758 --> 00:43:58,719 <i>George is talking us through and there he goes.</i> 689 00:43:59,428 --> 00:44:01,388 <i>It looks like he's not seeing anything</i> 690 00:44:01,805 --> 00:44:06,101 <i>'cause he's so in his head, but you can see in his eyes</i> 691 00:44:06,185 --> 00:44:08,187 what he already sees as the finished product. 692 00:44:08,354 --> 00:44:09,480 We're right in there. 693 00:44:09,563 --> 00:44:12,566 We're loving this story and he's got us all excited about it. 694 00:44:13,067 --> 00:44:15,861 "That's the scene. Go do it, guys," and off we go. 695 00:44:17,529 --> 00:44:19,239 Look at the size of that thing. 696 00:44:42,471 --> 00:44:43,514 This is it. 697 00:44:56,735 --> 00:44:58,153 It's away! 698 00:44:59,571 --> 00:45:02,783 <i>We figured out that we had to be traveling 20 miles an hour</i> 699 00:45:02,866 --> 00:45:05,160 as we went by the <i>Death Star</i> model. 700 00:45:06,453 --> 00:45:11,041 We put it flat in the parking lot, and the only way we could get the camera 701 00:45:11,125 --> 00:45:14,670 to a high enough speed would be with a motorized vehicle. 702 00:45:15,921 --> 00:45:19,091 <i>Guerilla film making, put the camera in the back of the truck.</i> 703 00:45:19,675 --> 00:45:20,926 <i>Richard climbed up there,</i> 704 00:45:21,009 --> 00:45:23,262 <i>we drove by the model and set off the charges.</i> 705 00:45:32,855 --> 00:45:34,648 <i>- It's a hit!</i> - Negative. 706 00:45:34,773 --> 00:45:35,983 It didn't go in. 707 00:45:36,108 --> 00:45:37,901 <i>Just impacted on the surface.</i> 708 00:45:38,610 --> 00:45:39,820 There weren't any rules. 709 00:45:40,154 --> 00:45:43,657 It was like whatever worked, we'll make it somehow function 710 00:45:43,741 --> 00:45:45,617 and we'll come out with this great thing. 711 00:45:45,701 --> 00:45:48,078 R2, that stabilizer's broken loose again. 712 00:45:48,162 --> 00:45:50,164 <i>See if you can't lock it down.</i> 713 00:45:51,957 --> 00:45:54,710 An impossible schedule, an impossible budget, 714 00:45:54,793 --> 00:45:57,421 trying to do things that have never been done before. 715 00:45:59,715 --> 00:46:01,258 We were the Rebel Alliance. 716 00:46:04,011 --> 00:46:05,095 <i>Look out!</i> 717 00:46:11,351 --> 00:46:14,438 You're all clear, kid. Now, let's blow this thing and go home. 718 00:46:34,166 --> 00:46:35,876 Everybody came through in the end. 719 00:46:38,212 --> 00:46:39,588 - Hey! - Hey! 720 00:46:39,671 --> 00:46:40,672 I knew you'd come back. 721 00:46:40,756 --> 00:46:42,633 Finished the movie. Yay! 722 00:46:42,841 --> 00:46:44,968 I couldn't believe it, really. 723 00:46:46,678 --> 00:46:49,681 And on the last night, ILM was having its wrap party. 724 00:46:50,349 --> 00:46:53,185 So everybody around us was whooping it up. 725 00:46:54,228 --> 00:46:56,605 And a bunch of the guys who were smarter than me 726 00:46:56,688 --> 00:46:58,524 took out 20th Century stock. 727 00:46:58,607 --> 00:47:00,609 We didn't know what we were working on. 728 00:47:00,734 --> 00:47:05,614 I mean, it was really just a job, five or six days a week. 729 00:47:06,240 --> 00:47:09,701 <i>We didn't really know until the movie came out.</i> 730 00:47:12,538 --> 00:47:13,747 <i>And we were mixing,</i> 731 00:47:13,956 --> 00:47:16,416 we were mixing up until the day it was released. 732 00:47:16,959 --> 00:47:19,419 <i>And when we finished, we went to Hamburger Hamlet</i> 733 00:47:19,503 --> 00:47:22,881 on Hollywood Boulevard, right across from Grauman's Chinese Theater. 734 00:47:23,090 --> 00:47:25,676 And they say, "Boy, something's going on out there." 735 00:47:25,884 --> 00:47:27,761 <i>"It must be a premiere or something."</i> 736 00:47:27,845 --> 00:47:31,807 <i>And it wasn't until we walked outside</i> <i>that we could see that it was</i> Star <i>Wars.</i> 737 00:47:34,393 --> 00:47:36,728 It was like a mob. They closed the street off. 738 00:47:55,914 --> 00:47:56,999 This is it, boys. 739 00:47:57,708 --> 00:48:03,297 Seeing the final assembled product, on a giant screen with the sound, 740 00:48:03,839 --> 00:48:05,382 I went, "Wow." 741 00:48:07,926 --> 00:48:12,514 You see the joy that the people who worked on it had in doing it. 742 00:48:13,849 --> 00:48:16,018 <i>We were little over the top with some stuff,</i> 743 00:48:16,101 --> 00:48:19,187 and we got to get away with it because it was a first. 744 00:48:21,148 --> 00:48:26,069 We were invited to the premiere and everybody was like... 745 00:48:26,153 --> 00:48:27,154 You know. 746 00:48:27,863 --> 00:48:29,448 My parents loved it. 747 00:48:30,657 --> 00:48:33,285 <i>The lighthearted touch was so appealing.</i> 748 00:48:37,289 --> 00:48:40,000 They were lucky to have us for the visual effects group 749 00:48:40,083 --> 00:48:43,045 because I don't think there was anybody else in the business 750 00:48:43,128 --> 00:48:44,630 that could have done what we did. 751 00:48:46,965 --> 00:48:48,008 Thank you. 752 00:48:48,675 --> 00:48:52,804 All those guys, every one of them, did yeoman work. 753 00:48:54,222 --> 00:48:55,349 <i>Everybody pitched in.</i> 754 00:48:55,682 --> 00:48:58,393 Everybody helped each other, and I appreciated it. 755 00:48:59,144 --> 00:49:04,316 But at the same time, <i>Star Wars</i> was under duress for the whole production. 756 00:49:04,942 --> 00:49:07,778 Scheduling, money, sets. 757 00:49:11,698 --> 00:49:13,200 <i>I wanted to get it my way,</i> 758 00:49:13,283 --> 00:49:15,702 and I didn't have the time or the money to do it. 759 00:49:16,954 --> 00:49:22,751 He always said things like, "If I could wave my magic wand,". 760 00:49:23,251 --> 00:49:28,090 "I would put electrodes in my head and have the movie made right there." 761 00:49:30,425 --> 00:49:33,720 <i>He used to say that he only got about 25%</i> 762 00:49:33,804 --> 00:49:36,848 of what he had in his mind on screen with <i>Star Wars,</i> 763 00:49:36,974 --> 00:49:41,269 which, you know, of course, was shocking as hell to me 764 00:49:41,353 --> 00:49:45,023 because it looked like 100% to me, but not George. 765 00:49:45,774 --> 00:49:47,359 <i>He could see through the magic.</i> 766 00:49:49,653 --> 00:49:51,530 <i>I can see all the scotch tape</i> 767 00:49:51,613 --> 00:49:54,074 <i>and the rubber bands that are holding it together.</i> 768 00:49:56,076 --> 00:49:57,661 <i>But that's how movies get made.</i> 769 00:49:57,744 --> 00:49:59,079 They don't get made right, 770 00:49:59,162 --> 00:50:02,833 they get made the best possible way under the circumstances. 771 00:50:05,627 --> 00:50:09,548 <i>I thought, "I'm sure we can figure out a better way to do this."</i> 772 00:50:10,841 --> 00:50:12,718 Maybe I better figure out what it is.