George Lucas
George Lucas
George Walton Lucas, Jr.is an American filmmaker and entrepreneur. He is best known as the creator of the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises, as well as the founder of Lucasfilm and Industrial Light & Magic. He was the Chairman and Chief Executive Officerof Lucasfilm, before selling it to The Walt Disney Company in 2012...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth14 May 1944
CityModesto, CA
CountryUnited States of America
There wasn't anything in my life that was going to stop me from making movies.
I've had much more down in my life than I've had up. And much more struggle. First of all, when I went into the film school everybody said, "What are you doing? This is a complete dead-end for a career."
You can't put a title card at the head of the movie and say, "Well, we really had a bad problem. You know, the actor got sick and it rained this day and we had a hurricane."
After you've done the first feature, then you have heck of a difficult time getting your second film off the ground. They look at your first film and they say, "Oh well, we don't want you anymore."
I came from a very avant-garde documentary kind of film making world. I like cinema verité, documentaries. I liked non-story, non-character tone poems. And that's the film making that I was interested in.
It took me three, four years, to get from my first film to my second film, banging on doors, trying to get people to give me a chance. Writing, struggling, with no money in the bank, working as an editor on the side. Working as a cameraman on the side. Getting little jobs, eking out a living. Trying to stay alive, and pushing a script that nobody wanted.
I haven't met anybody who hasn't been able to describe years and years and years of very, very difficult struggle through the whole process of achieving anything whatsoever. And there's no way to sort of get around that.
Anybody that makes films knows the film is never finished. It's abandoned or it's ripped out of your hands, and it's thrown into the marketplace, never finished. It's a very rare experience where you find a filmmaker who says, "That's exactly what I wanted. I got everything I needed. I made it just perfect. I'm going to put it out there."
Most artists, most painters, even composers would want to come back and redo their work. They've got a new perspective on it, they've got more resources, they have better technology, and they can fix or finish the things that were never done.
I'm the one who has to have everybody throw rocks at me all the time, so at least if they're going to throw rocks at me, they're going to throw rocks at me for something I love rather than something I think is not very good, or at least something I think is not finished.
The thing about science-fiction fans and "Star Wars" fans is they're very independent-thinking people. They all think outside the box, but they all have very strong ideas about what should happen, and they think it should be their way. Which is fine, except I'm making the movies, so I should have it my way.
That had always been my purpose: to get people back in touch with what makes us so valuable as a human race.
We seemed to be drifting as a society - losing touch with the basic concepts of right and wrong.
I was a terrible student in high school and the thing that the auto accident did - and it happened just as I graduated, so I was at this sort of crossroads - but it made me apply myself more, because I realized more than anything else what a thin thread we hang on in life, and I really wanted to make something out of my life.