September 29, 2025 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, when the first Star Wars movie was released in 1977, many expected it to fail. The production was plagued with setbacks, and even George Lucas doubted it would connect with audiences. Instead, A New Hope became a cultural landmark, launching one of the most successful franchises in movie history. Author Chris Taylor shares how a film that nearly collapsed turned into a global phenomenon.
Support the show (https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate)
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people, and.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
We love to hear your stories.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Send them to our American Stories dot Com our listeners stories. Well,
there's some of our favorites. George Lucas is best known
for creating both Star Wars and Indiana Jones, two iconic
American film franchises that shaped our childhoods or our children's childhoods.
But before he brought us to a galaxy far far away,
(00:41):
Lucas made two other, often forgotten movies. His first film,
THHX one one three eight was produced by friend and
Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola, but despite the talent behind
it was anything but a box office success. His second film,
American Graffiti, was a surprise success and led to the
(01:02):
opportunity to begin his third film, Star Wars. Today, Robbie
brings us Chris Taylor, author of How Star Wars Conquered
the Universe, the past, present, and future of a multi
billion dollar franchise.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
You know, Marsha Lucas once said that I think that
damn movie was running through the reels in George's head
like the day I met him. A lot of people
say this that he was sketching out visions of Star Troopers,
you know, in his notebooks instead of going to parties
while he was at USC Like he was still a nerd,
(01:40):
and his nerdery was very much attached to Flash Gordon,
which was, you know, a serial that he saw on
TV growing up in the fifties. The idea of a
non static space battle was something that intrigued him for
(02:02):
many years. Because, of course, you watch Star Trek, the
original series in the late sixties, and you see a
lot of spaceships just sort of hanging out there. You know,
it looks weird now because George Lucas change all of
that with the special effects that we see in Star
Wars of spaceships that could do dogfights, right, you know,
World War two movies. He had another influence. But bring
(02:24):
it back, always bring it back to Flash Gordon and
that idea of Saturday morning serials and science fiction or
rather space fantasy that was easy to consume, accessible, didn't
matter which episode you were jumping in on. You know,
you can talk about the catalyst for this and that.
(02:45):
Gary Kurtz, the producer of Star Wars, talked a lot
about this kind of moment in the early seventies. They've
just done THHX one one three eight. It's kind of
a mess. Warner Brothers doesn't like it. You know, there's
a lot of indication that he was thinking about Americ
Graffiti and his untitled Space Opera as a package. They're
(03:05):
looking at what's playing at the movies decide that there's
nothing that either of them would really like to see
because they're kind of both you know, nerds in the
sense they they start talking about Flash Gordon, about the
joys of seeing Flash Gordon when they were young, and
how there isn't any version of any movie like that.
So so of course Lucas first wants to go and
(03:27):
get the rights to actual Flash Gordon itself. That doesn't
pan out. Dino de Laurentis kind of beat him to
the punch. But this is actually a liberating moment for
Lucas because he realized that he doesn't need Flash Card,
you know, he's able to let go of that legacy
and start creating his own Space opera. And it starts off,
(03:50):
you know, not where you would expect. It was like, hey,
he's Han Solo, here's Luke Skywalker his you know that
the names do enter it fairly early on, but he
starts with Mace Windy, and a character, of course becomes
Mace Windu played by Samuel L. Jackson in the prequels,
and he writes a page and a half of treatment.
The Star Wars might be in his mind at this point,
(04:11):
but it's it's just this really weird, convoluted stuff. He
doesn't even like it. He puts it down, puts his
pen down halfway through, and it takes him a while
to come back to it. But he's sort of constantly
making lists of names that sound cool. You know, Han
Solo is on that one, possibly from the Solo Cups.
(04:32):
You know, all of the names have kind of this
legacy to them, right. It's R two D two comes
from Real two dialogue too in American graffiti. That is
actually a true story, not a Star Wars legend. You know,
he's always listening. He always has his ear open for
things that sound cool, sound science fiction y, you know,
and he files away the fact that he and his
(04:53):
wife drive with their dog and in the front seat
of their car they're Alaska, big Alaskan husky, you know,
sitting there in the front seat called Indiana by the way,
you know, give rise to two films in many ways.
But you know, that idea of the dog being the
co pilot, you know, came from something in his own life.
(05:14):
So that's sort of the real beginnings of Song Wars
is a real movie. And then it is greatly helped
by the fact that he basically becomes a millionaire after
American Graffiti, and you know, is kind of thinking about
what he wants to do next, and he realizes that,
you know, with all those profits, the unexpected flood of
(05:38):
profits that he makes, he can actually take his time
and make this science fiction space opera space fantasy movie
that he has been dreaming about for years. And the
vast majority of time is just spent trying to create
a draft of this movie where anyone can understand what
the hell he's talking about, because he is not, as
(06:03):
he has proved with his previous two movies, he's not
normally the best kind of scripted in the world. He's
always needed someone to come in and kind of work
on his own scripts. And it's just basically along with
him going through every studio in Hollywood, every one of
the majors and they're all kind of refusing. It's not
a great thing. It's hard to pitch science fiction movies
(06:24):
at this time in history. We do have to remember
that George met Ralph mcquarie, the artist, which would turn
out to be that the only way Star Wars got
made was because of Ralph McQuary's paintings. Because again, nobody
knew what he was talking about. This allowed him to visualize.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
It, and with that visualization him one studio at alone, Executive.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Fox, and of course Alan ladd Junior is the only
one who wants to take a bet. Laddie, as he
was known, had seen American graffiti. He didn't really understand
what Lucas was trying to I'm about Star Wars, but
as he told me, he said, I believed in his brain.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
But getting a studio to agree to make his film
was just the first of many uphill battles Lucas would
have to face.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
And you're listening to author Chris Taylor tell us the
story of how Star Wars conquered the universe. When we
come back, more of this remarkable story of imagination, of entrepreneurship,
and so much more, the story of Star Wars. Here
on our American Stories. Lie Hibibe here the host of
our American Stories. Every day on this show, we're bringing
(07:36):
inspiring stories from across this great country, stories from our
big cities and small towns. But we truly can't do
the show without you. Our stories are free to listen to,
but they're not free to make. If you love what
you hear, go to Ouramerican Stories dot com and click
the donate button. Give a little, give a lot. Go
to Ouramericanstories dot com and give. And we're back with
(08:10):
our American Stories and Chris Taylor telling us the story
of George Lucas and the creation of Star Wars. Before
the break, we just heard how Lucas had shopped Star
Wars around Hollywood, facing rejection after rejection. Twentieth Century Fox
executive Alan ladd Junior or Laddie, was the only one
(08:30):
who thought Lucas was worth taking a chance on.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Back to Chris, a budget hadn't even been set. He
had to spend his own money. Kind of a nutty
way to make a film when you look back on it,
But you got the sense that he knows he's sitting
on something big. He doesn't know how big. At some
point in the process. He suggests that it could be
(08:54):
as big as a Disney movie, the average Disney movie.
It could make like twelve months million dollars, which is
roughly kind of what he is expecting the budget to be.
It is roughly what the budget ends up being, which
is an overshoot, which is more than Fox A lotted
him supposed to be eight million. You know, he ends
up spending close to twelve. But yeah, he thinks he's
(09:18):
basically just going to make his money back because that
was the thing with science fiction movies in this day
and age, small budgets because the stuff was just for
kids and there wasn't that much money there, and you didn't,
you know, no point in spending big on it, and
kids won't notice the difference anyway, if it's good or bad,
if the special effects are good or bad. You know,
two thousand and one didn't make its money back until
nineteen seventy five, which is crazy if we think of
(09:41):
that now, like it's a stone cold classic. Why did
people not go see it? They just didn't, And it
wasn't until actually, you know, saw war was was sitting
in limbo waiting for its budget to appear. That two
thousand and one gets re released and finally, you know,
makes a profit. So that's all Lucas is expecting. Just
like George, you would know, I dear what you're sitting on.
(10:01):
But yeah, he's he's a terrible scriptwriter. It takes him
four drafts to get close, and even then he has
to draft in will Audhuck and Gloria Katz to do
a rewrite of It's been estimated roughly a third of
the dialogue in the original Star Wars is theirs.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
Despite the progress being made on the script, twentieth Century
Fox wasn't making things easy for Lucas. They froze all
spending in mid October of nineteen seventy five, depending a
board meeting on December thirteenth, with filming scheduled to start
only a few months later in March of seventy six.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Fox is really dragging its heels that there's no budget
in sight. It really does take until that nineteen seventy
five meeting. After two thousand and one has been a
success and after the Fox board has seen the Macquarie paintings,
they can finally visualize what this thing is supposed to be.
Because without that meeting, without them deciding that budget, it
(11:00):
never would have been made. I mean it was barely
made as it was. It really is resources stretched the
absolute limit, right, George seems to be in the seventies.
He seems to spend a lot of time around the
(11:21):
dying parts of the industry, like the internship that he
had at Warner Brothers that got him to meet Copla
in the first place. Only reason they met Copla is
because he was supposed to work in the animation department
and Warner Brothers and they just closed it. He sees
that the animation industry is moribund, he sees that the
special effects industry is morribund, so kind of has no
(11:44):
choice but to start his own. And it's sort of weird. Again,
I think this is something that we have a hard
time grasping in the twenty first century, because there's obviously
so much work for special effects houses that in this
day and age that it can support of vast global industry.
But yeah, you know what, you just created one of
(12:04):
the most legendary special effects houses because nobody else had
well yeah, and he kind of had the money to
do it. Again, this is why the American graffiti money
was so important, because he could never have just gone
cap in hand to Fox and said, oh yeah, by
the way, on top of the budget for this film,
I also need to start a special effects house. Can
(12:25):
you make me spot me some cash for that? No,
so yeah, Industrial Light Magic started in a warehouse and
Van Nuys these ideas are cameras, computer control cameras. That's
really the secret source of ILM. But also it takes
so long to get off the ground that it almost
(12:46):
gives Georgia heart attack that they're working so slowly that
they've only got one shot done by the time George
comes back from principal photography in London. So yeah, so
you know, but that's kind of a sign of the
fact that I Lamb had to reinvent everything from the
ground up. That's why there was only one special effects
(13:09):
shot in the can is because there's so much work
on the technical side to be done. No Lucas is
casting throughout seventy five with Brian Depalmer working on Carry
at the same time. Luke Skywalker like it doesn't there
are many other options, but it kind of Mark Hamill
(13:29):
kind of kind of wins that one pretty easily. Carrie
Fisher almost didn't get it because she was in acting
school in London at the time. Her mother, Debbie Reynolds,
packs her off to London. She goes off to learn
proper pronunciation on things, which is why if you watch
Star Wars she seems to have half of a British
accent for like half the movie. That's why she was
(13:51):
in London repeating things like I've got to have a
proper copper coffee pot. But yeah, she just comes in.
And it was actually the Bruce, the casting guy on Godfather,
who tells he's sort of an unofficial casting executive for
Star Wars, kind of unpaid, just because he, you know,
(14:12):
knows George well through Copler. The most interesting piece of casting,
and one that's there's thrown up a lot of legends
over the years, is that of Han Solo. You know,
we know that there are many other actors who could
have done it, but also we hear that, and this
is true, George did not want to cast Harrison Ford
because he had been in American Graffiti. Because the thing
(14:34):
that George was terrified of critics saying when Star Wars
comes out is, oh, it's just American graffiti in space.
So I think as a director you're always terrified that
your last movie is going to influence the perception of
your current one. So he you know, he was a
jobbing actor. He was also a carpenter. And the myth
has grown up that Fred Ruce, casting director, was so
(14:56):
certain that Harrison Ford was right for the Han solo
role that he brought Harrison Ford in to do some
carpentry on a door in his Cursing studio to kind
of throw Harrison Ford in his path. And I sat
down with fredrus in person, I was like, is this
really the case? And he kind of sheepishly admitted that
(15:18):
the legend, as good as it sounds, is not true
and that in fact, he just actually needed a door
and Harrison Ford was the only carpenter he knew, so
he just brought him in to make that door. Anyway,
So it wasn't It was inspired in retrospect, like a
(15:39):
lot of the Stole Wars' stories, and a lot of
it was just more haphazard than you think, and sometimes
a carpenter making a door is just a carpenter making
a door.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
Unfortunately, even though the cast was in place, that didn't
mean that everything would go smoothly from there. Quite the opposite.
They had location shoots to film in Africa and filming
at a studio in London, which did anything but inspire
confidence Lucas.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
The shooting in Tunisia itself is an absolute nightmare. You
get this part of the world that's not supposed to
have any storms have its biggest storm for forty years.
A lot of the equipment is destroyed. The first air
shooting goes terribly. The droids, especially, are all over the place.
This is kind of a thing throughout the filming of
(16:25):
Star Wars that R two dto didn't function. And if
you pause every scene in Star Wars where R two
D two is rolling forward and just kind of look
at the trajectory of where he's going, it's almost always
into a wall. And then you imagine those scenes on
tato Wine aka Tunisia, you know, supposed to have gone
a lot more differently and look a lot more impressive
(16:48):
than it did. Again, we have this sort of happy
accident of the fact that the Tunisia shoot went so badly.
The desert scenes had to be so straight down that
it kind of ended up looking accidentally like a Western
and that you know, people saw that, Oh, oh, john Ford,
(17:10):
you know that really, But no, he was not as much.
This was not as much of a Western homage as
we imagine. It was just he didn't have the budget
to throw in all of the creatures and all of
the stuff that it was in his imagination. How much
of a mess the script is in Luke's name, I
mean Luke's name in the script as far as they
are concerned while they're in Tunisia is Luke Starkler.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
And you're listening to Chris Taylor, author of How Star
Wars Conquered the Universe, tell a heck of a tale
about perseverance, about accidents.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
George Lucas was crazy.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
He took his own money from American graffiti and started
a special effects company. The story of Star Wars, how
it almost never happened, and how it came to be
here on our American Stories, And we're back with our
(18:09):
American Stories and author Chris Taylor, who was telling us
the story of how the original Star Wars came to be.
George Lucas was actually reworking the script as they were
filming in Africa. That was still shooting to be done
in England. But Lucas wasn't exactly hopeful. However, not all
was lost. Much of the Western feel in Star Wars
(18:30):
was due to production impairments a happy accident. Back to
Chris Taylor with the story of Star Wars, so.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
It's a mess, it's a love of the place. The
script is being revised at the last minute, and then
when he gets to London it turns out to be
not best than Junisi in a lot of ways in
terms of his inability to communicate with the crew, and
the London crew especially really just not happy with this weird,
(19:02):
shy glasses wearing, big bearded, big headed interloper guy who
can't even you know, kind of mumbles at you and
like they're like, who is this dude, And they're just
kind of making jokes about him and about the movie
the whole time. You know, the the the the studio
has been cleaned, which is exactly what what Lucas didn't want,
(19:27):
you know, the deaf style. We think of it. Oh,
it was supposed to be gleaming and bright, and no
it wasn't. You know, George had this idea that that
tune is he actually really helped him with with all
of the the dirt and muck that that Gore and everything.
The idea of the used universe is really big one
in George's head, and so you know, things get a
(19:49):
bit scuffed up, things get a bit used. You have
this sense of almost every object in Star Wars that
it has been used before. It's a bit and that's
what helps us believe it. Right, So you look around
the room you're in, it's kind of maybe it's a
bit mismatched. The things you brought on this date, things
you brought on that date. That's a bit scuffed. That's
(20:09):
got dust on it, right, And we never seen that
in science fiction before, but not on the Death Star
because the crew in the UK have cleaned the set
and would clean the set every day. Like he's like, no,
this is not what I want. But of course it
kind of works. It's beautiful for the reflections and like
Vader's helmet, like again, not meant to be. The case
(20:30):
turns out brilliantly. But yeah, George had a terrible time
in London, a terrible time with the crew, a terrible
time with Gilbert Taylor, you know, as the award winning
cinematographer who kind of was as dismissive as the crew
of George's shortcomings, especially when George kind of got on
the wrong side of him by like looking through the
(20:51):
camera right doing the stuff that a cinematographer is supposed
to do. Because George had done that previously on both
of his previous movies THHX one, three eight and American
Graffiti had been small, they'd been low budget. This is
his first time on anything like a Hollywood epic, and
here he comes face to face with with Gil Taylor.
You know, he's worked with Cubrick, he's worked with Hitchcock,
(21:12):
he's worked with Polanski, and he's kind of, you know,
telling George, no, you don't look through the camera, Suddin,
that's my job. So George is in a funk the
whole time. You know, Gary Kurtz is having to try
to negotiate with the crew to get them to take
this seriously. It is the hottest summer on record, The
(21:35):
summer of nineteen seventy six in the UK still famous
even now, Still seventy six is known as one of
the biggest, hottest, nastiest, sweatiest you know gave Rice the
famous Sun tabloid headline few water Scorcher in that summer.
That was the summer of seventy six, and that's when
Star was being filmed, and it's just so much of
(21:58):
a mess, and they don't have like a lot of
the students aren't ready, and just a lot of stuff
happening all over the place that just makes it feel
like a mess. They get around the end of shooting,
Fox won't give them any more budget, and they still
have to film all of the scenes on the ten
to four, you know, which is the ship at the
very start of Star Wars. This is the one that
(22:19):
famously gets shot at by this Star Destroyer passing overhead,
and it's the one that three po and AR two
on Darth Vader and Vases, et cetera. All of those
scenes of those those rebels sort of lining up in
front of the door, they're famous scene producing the tension
of like Darth Vader's going to walk through this dorm.
We know that, Like they don't say a word, but
(22:40):
really really great masterclass in building up tension in the
first few minutes of a movie. And it really was
just filmed at the last minute, you know, and the
last day with a second unit. I think Gary Kurtz
wants to direct the second unit, you know, and they're
just they're shuttling back and forth, they're trying to get
all the scenes filmed. You would never get it today
(23:03):
looking at that at that scene that it was just
such on a shoe string on the last day, kind
of thrown together kind of thing. But it works. And
they were just so lucky in the in that sense,
and then the things that they were able to do.
The resources of the original Star Wars were just stretched
gossamer thin. You know, everything was like on the on
(23:24):
the point of breaking. And you can see how if
you're coming back from that shoot and you're going to
I believe it was Alabama, where Steven Spielberg was filming
Close Encounters at that time, you would think this is
such a mess, Like ILM, I started this special effects house.
(23:45):
They've only got one shot in the can. That's what
he discovers, by the way, when he comes back from
Spielberg's shoot from Close Encounters, he goes back, he checks
in on ILM and the van Neys warehouse. That's just like, hey,
we've only got one shot, but we've figured out a
lot of stuff. You want to see. The shot looks
a lot like two thousand and one. That's it. That's
(24:07):
all I've had for my months and months of investment
and my own money into this with the special effects
that are either going to save or damn this film. Yeah,
so he sees that, and he flies back to San
Francisco from you know, down in La Finally he's heading
back home, and almost straight from the plane, he starts
(24:30):
feeling like he's going to have a heart attack, has
to check himself into hospital instead of going home in
the marine, and turns out it's no, it's not a
heart attack. But he's also told he's having an incredible
amount of anxiety, a lot of stress, and he should
probably go take some rest. I just kind of good advice,
but yeah, George's kind of put through the ringer. This
(24:54):
also explains why while he and Spielberg are together on
the set of Close Encounters, they swap points. I think
it's two points each in so Spielberg gets two percent
of the profits of Star Wars, Lucas gets two percents
of the profits of Close Encounters. Not an unusual thing
to do, but also an indication of each of them
(25:15):
thought that the other ones was going to be the
better movie. And you can see George thinking, well after
that mess of a shoot with my special effects house
is just nowhere in this process. Obviously, I'm going to
win that bet. Obviously I'm gonna sol was gonna be
a disaster. It's gonna be you know, my name is
gonna be mud in Hollywood. But that's fine because I'll
(25:35):
just make my personal films and I'll have my two
percent of close encounters to keep me going.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
And Lucas seemed justified in his feeling when the movie's
release is pushed from Christmas of nineteen seventy six to
the summer of nineteen seventy seven.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
And the novelization still does come out in the fall
of seventy six, which is just bizarre looking back on
it to us these days, like, oh we the whole
story of Star Wars was out there like for months
before the movie hit theaters. Really weird. So you know
that the release date slips not unusual, but it slips
because the special effects is so far behind schedule, and
(26:14):
they're so far behind schedule that George when he screens
his rough cut of Star Wars for his friends, including
that screening where Brian de Palmer tore him to pieces,
he's screening a shot with kind of temporary placeholder special effects,
which is basically he's using especially for the death Star
sequence at the end, he's using a lot of shots
(26:37):
from World War II movies.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
And what a story we're being told by Chris Taylor,
how Star Wars Conquered the Universe. My goodness, all of
those early scenes done at the last minute, on the
last dime, and it just shows you that, indeed, Benjamin
Franklin's quote, necessity the mother of invention. My goodness, it's
the mother, the father, the grandmother, and the grandfather here.
(27:05):
It indeed drives the film. It was a hot mess,
and maybe indeed that's why this worked. When we come
back more with author Chris Taylor, the story of how
Star Wars came to be and almost didn't hear on
our American stories, and we're back with our American stories
(27:40):
and our last segment on the making of the original
Star Wars. Chris Taylor, author of How Star Wars Conquered
the Universe, was just sharing how Star Wars release was
pushed back from December of seventy six to the summer
of seventy seven due to delays in the special effects.
Lucas had even gone to the hospital for what he
(28:00):
felt was a heart attack brought on by extreme stress.
Things were not looking good for Lucas and his passion
project Star Wars.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
That the release date slips not unusual, but it slips
because the special effects is so far behind schedule, and
they're so far behind schedule that George when he screens
his rough cut of Star Wars for his friends, including
that that screening where Brian de Palmer tore him to pieces,
he's screening a shot with kind of temporary placeholder special effects,
(28:39):
which is basically he's using especially for the Death Star
sequence at the end, he's using a lot of shots
from World War two movies to illustrate, like, oh, you know,
the attack of the Death Star is going to happen here,
you know, cut to spitfire from World War Two, you know,
downing a couple of German measiousness, just that the explosion
of the Death Star, Like when they filmed that on set,
(29:02):
it was just a guy holding a piece of paper
and going bang, you know. But yeah, so so all
of that is waiting until right in the last minute.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
You know.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
This is part of the reason why George and Marsha
are just kind of Sleepless and Dazed on the day
Star Wars release, because they're still working, they're still tweaking it,
they're still changing it. They you know, obviously, again this
is the looping of the dialogue. Is an area where
you see a lot more happy accidents, like the casting
(29:38):
of James L. Jones as the voice of Darth Vader.
You know, he wasn't paid that much money. It was
just a couple of days work. Because, by the way,
Darth Vader, George didn't think he was a very scary villain.
He's only on the screen for ten minutes in the
original Star Wars. He didn't seem scary until you add
the sound effect, and until you add James darl Jones's
(29:59):
voice and ben Bert breathing through a scuba mask. You know,
that's what really sells Darth Vader, you know, what comes together.
But he's worried that Darth Vader isn't going to be
seen as that big of a villain. He almost wants
to kill him off. So you know, a lot of
this stuff doesn't come through at the last minute. Obviously,
(30:20):
James L. Jones was a great get. Really really makes
the film.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
Part of George Lucas's pessimistic outlook on Star Wars certainly
stemmed from the numerous delays in production, and another part
came from his perfectionism and the idea that this movie
would never live up to his expectations, a feeling he
still has to this day.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Yeah, George was definitely heads down in the studio in
those final days working on the audio, and I believe
what Lucas is doing. On May the twenty fifth, nineteen
seventy seven, the day that Star Wars is released, by
the way, a Wednesday, kind of weird to us this
day and age Wednesday before Memorial Day weekend, Like what
are you even doing releasing it? Then? It's just bizarre,
(31:06):
Like kids aren't off school, this is supposed to be
a movie for kids. What are you even doing? You know?
Just kind of a sign that Fox wasn't even thinking
about that sort of thing. It was actually trying to
get theaters to take a movie called The Other Side
of Midnight, which we don't even remember today, was a
gritty seventies drama by saying well, you have to take
(31:27):
Star Wars if you want the Other Side of Midnight.
And it wasn't until you know, a month or so
after Star Wars comes out, they flip it. They're like, oh, no,
you had to take the other side of Midnight if
you want Star Wars. So they're just not thinking about
it just gets released, and I think George isn't thinking
about either, because there was no premiere party. So he's sleepless,
Marshals sleepless, and supposedly they go to Hamburger Art, which
(31:52):
was a restaurant that is on Hollywood Boulevard. It was
on Hollywood Boulevard, right opposite Man's Chinese Theater. But I
guess he didn't realize which thirty two theaters it was
being released in around the country, and the one of
them was right here. I can believe that he would
sit in there for Hamburger, which is his favorite food,
(32:13):
with Marsha and just sort of kind of get over
that kind of sleeplessness, you know, that kind of where
you've pulled in all night and nothing seems real, and
then you look at the window and you see, oh,
my movie's playing over that, this movie that I'm still fixing.
That's weird. He's playing over there, and there seems to
be a line. But yeah, we should remember that he
(32:36):
my favorite story about this about where his head was
is the fact that he calls George Lucas calls up
Mark Hamill on the day on May twenty fifth, and
he says, high KD. You famous yet, So he's obviously
aware that it's kind of it's doing okay, at least
at this one theater. Little remembered fact it wasn't actually
(33:01):
Star Wars that was the most popular movie of that week.
It wasn't top of the box office. It was Smoky
in the Bandit and that was simply due to the
fact that it was on more screens. I mean, Jaws
I Believe, which was the best selling movie up until
that point, opened in over one hundred and you know
(33:23):
it was kind of a hit from the beginning. Thirty
two is like, that's just such a sign of defeat
and failure to open your movie on just thirty two screens,
even forty would have been in a sign of defeat
and a sign that not only if Fox didn't believe it,
but the movie has themselves didn't believe in it. But
(33:46):
then that too kind of turns out to work in
Lucas's favor because it means that there are lines if
you got supplme demand matched perfectly. No lines. But the
interesting thing about Star Wars is a very early on
becomes famous for being famous, and it becomes famous for
having its lines, and journalists kind of latch onto that.
(34:10):
Like there's no mention of the lines on in the
first aid reports, mention that it's done pretty well, like
you know, variety is a garg at. It's perse green average,
which is part of the reason why you see eight
other theaters by the end of the week going oh yeah, actually,
I'll take that, you know, and it kind of kind
of snowballs from there. But part of the reason that
(34:30):
it's snowballing is because everywhere it goes it has lines,
and because the lines become famous for being lines, Star
Wars becomes famous for being a thing that people will
wait in long lines to see. And I mean, I
always go back to the San Francisco Chronicles report, which
I believe that was the first report on the line,
and the movie theater owner is just aghast. And the
(34:52):
kind of people who are waiting these lines, like you know,
the long hairs, the acid freaks, the stoners, the you
know that people playing chess in line, but also like
people with different ages. It's not one particular age group,
it's not just limited to kids. So the lines are
sort of this great physical example of how it is
not just for children. It's not just your average science
(35:16):
fiction flick. We can go too far in saying, oh,
it wasn't going to be a hit, or it wasn't
supposed to be a hit, but we can definitely say
that it became a phenomenon because of the sublime amount problem,
because of the lines. Then it starts to open up
in other countries because, of course, you know, America is
(35:39):
the global center of culture, and you know, you hear
about American movies. Certainly growing up in the UK, you
would hear about American movies long before you would see them.
That was definitely the case with Star Wars. That my
first encounter with Star Wars was on the back of
a box of cereal when I was about four years old.
It's just it starts people start to realize that it
(36:01):
is just so rewatchable, and we think of that as
sort of being a normal thing now like that. Of course,
that's what that's what directors are going for. They want
to make a movie that you'll want to rewatch, and
you know, Lucas was the first to do that. It's
just so compelling. The story is so compelling that just
(36:22):
taps into something deep and primal in our brains. Just
probably a good point too. I'll just throw in the
you know, the legend being that George Lucas based it
on the hero with a thousand faces, right, Joseph Campbell
and all of that kind of you know, archetypal hero narrative.
(36:43):
You know, in these days, Star Wars is used as
a great example of that. But you know, in terms
of Lucas thinking that he had produced this hero's narrative
that audiences were just going to fall for. No, he
had no idea, he had no idea what he was
what he was doing, And to quote Charlie Livencott is
talkeeting director, he was just foughting around.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
And a terrific job on the production and storytelling by
Robbie Davis and a special thanks to Chris Taylor, how
Star Wars Conquered the Universe and go to bookstores, go
to Amazon however you get your books by it if
you're a Star Wars fan, by two. And if you're
not a Star Wars fan, watch the movie again. Give
it another shot, and my goodness, happy accidents.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
None bigger than.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
The voice of James Earl Jones as Darth Vader. No
one saw the scenes as scary until well, you add
the soundtrack, You add Jones's voice and that eerie breathing sound.
Think about that premiere night, What is Lucas doing grabbing
a burger after tweaking a film he was sure wasn't going.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
To do well?
Speaker 1 (37:54):
And then those lines the story of how Star Wars
conquered the universe. Here on our American stories.
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people, and.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
We love to hear your stories.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Send them to our American Stories dot Com our listeners stories. Well,
there's some of our favorites. George Lucas is best known
for creating both Star Wars and Indiana Jones, two iconic
American film franchises that shaped our childhoods or our children's childhoods.
But before he brought us to a galaxy far far away,
(00:41):
Lucas made two other, often forgotten movies. His first film,
THHX one one three eight was produced by friend and
Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola, but despite the talent behind
it was anything but a box office success. His second film,
American Graffiti, was a surprise success and led to the
(01:02):
opportunity to begin his third film, Star Wars. Today, Robbie
brings us Chris Taylor, author of How Star Wars Conquered
the Universe, the past, present, and future of a multi
billion dollar franchise.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
You know, Marsha Lucas once said that I think that
damn movie was running through the reels in George's head
like the day I met him. A lot of people
say this that he was sketching out visions of Star Troopers,
you know, in his notebooks instead of going to parties
while he was at USC Like he was still a nerd,
(01:40):
and his nerdery was very much attached to Flash Gordon,
which was, you know, a serial that he saw on
TV growing up in the fifties. The idea of a
non static space battle was something that intrigued him for
(02:02):
many years. Because, of course, you watch Star Trek, the
original series in the late sixties, and you see a
lot of spaceships just sort of hanging out there. You know,
it looks weird now because George Lucas change all of
that with the special effects that we see in Star
Wars of spaceships that could do dogfights, right, you know,
World War two movies. He had another influence. But bring
(02:24):
it back, always bring it back to Flash Gordon and
that idea of Saturday morning serials and science fiction or
rather space fantasy that was easy to consume, accessible, didn't
matter which episode you were jumping in on. You know,
you can talk about the catalyst for this and that.
(02:45):
Gary Kurtz, the producer of Star Wars, talked a lot
about this kind of moment in the early seventies. They've
just done THHX one one three eight. It's kind of
a mess. Warner Brothers doesn't like it. You know, there's
a lot of indication that he was thinking about Americ
Graffiti and his untitled Space Opera as a package. They're
(03:05):
looking at what's playing at the movies decide that there's
nothing that either of them would really like to see
because they're kind of both you know, nerds in the
sense they they start talking about Flash Gordon, about the
joys of seeing Flash Gordon when they were young, and
how there isn't any version of any movie like that.
So so of course Lucas first wants to go and
(03:27):
get the rights to actual Flash Gordon itself. That doesn't
pan out. Dino de Laurentis kind of beat him to
the punch. But this is actually a liberating moment for
Lucas because he realized that he doesn't need Flash Card,
you know, he's able to let go of that legacy
and start creating his own Space opera. And it starts off,
(03:50):
you know, not where you would expect. It was like, hey,
he's Han Solo, here's Luke Skywalker his you know that
the names do enter it fairly early on, but he
starts with Mace Windy, and a character, of course becomes
Mace Windu played by Samuel L. Jackson in the prequels,
and he writes a page and a half of treatment.
The Star Wars might be in his mind at this point,
(04:11):
but it's it's just this really weird, convoluted stuff. He
doesn't even like it. He puts it down, puts his
pen down halfway through, and it takes him a while
to come back to it. But he's sort of constantly
making lists of names that sound cool. You know, Han
Solo is on that one, possibly from the Solo Cups.
(04:32):
You know, all of the names have kind of this
legacy to them, right. It's R two D two comes
from Real two dialogue too in American graffiti. That is
actually a true story, not a Star Wars legend. You know,
he's always listening. He always has his ear open for
things that sound cool, sound science fiction y, you know,
and he files away the fact that he and his
(04:53):
wife drive with their dog and in the front seat
of their car they're Alaska, big Alaskan husky, you know,
sitting there in the front seat called Indiana by the way,
you know, give rise to two films in many ways.
But you know, that idea of the dog being the
co pilot, you know, came from something in his own life.
(05:14):
So that's sort of the real beginnings of Song Wars
is a real movie. And then it is greatly helped
by the fact that he basically becomes a millionaire after
American Graffiti, and you know, is kind of thinking about
what he wants to do next, and he realizes that,
you know, with all those profits, the unexpected flood of
(05:38):
profits that he makes, he can actually take his time
and make this science fiction space opera space fantasy movie
that he has been dreaming about for years. And the
vast majority of time is just spent trying to create
a draft of this movie where anyone can understand what
the hell he's talking about, because he is not, as
(06:03):
he has proved with his previous two movies, he's not
normally the best kind of scripted in the world. He's
always needed someone to come in and kind of work
on his own scripts. And it's just basically along with
him going through every studio in Hollywood, every one of
the majors and they're all kind of refusing. It's not
a great thing. It's hard to pitch science fiction movies
(06:24):
at this time in history. We do have to remember
that George met Ralph mcquarie, the artist, which would turn
out to be that the only way Star Wars got
made was because of Ralph McQuary's paintings. Because again, nobody
knew what he was talking about. This allowed him to visualize.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
It, and with that visualization him one studio at alone, Executive.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Fox, and of course Alan ladd Junior is the only
one who wants to take a bet. Laddie, as he
was known, had seen American graffiti. He didn't really understand
what Lucas was trying to I'm about Star Wars, but
as he told me, he said, I believed in his brain.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
But getting a studio to agree to make his film
was just the first of many uphill battles Lucas would
have to face.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
And you're listening to author Chris Taylor tell us the
story of how Star Wars conquered the universe. When we
come back, more of this remarkable story of imagination, of entrepreneurship,
and so much more, the story of Star Wars. Here
on our American Stories. Lie Hibibe here the host of
our American Stories. Every day on this show, we're bringing
(07:36):
inspiring stories from across this great country, stories from our
big cities and small towns. But we truly can't do
the show without you. Our stories are free to listen to,
but they're not free to make. If you love what
you hear, go to Ouramerican Stories dot com and click
the donate button. Give a little, give a lot. Go
to Ouramericanstories dot com and give. And we're back with
(08:10):
our American Stories and Chris Taylor telling us the story
of George Lucas and the creation of Star Wars. Before
the break, we just heard how Lucas had shopped Star
Wars around Hollywood, facing rejection after rejection. Twentieth Century Fox
executive Alan ladd Junior or Laddie, was the only one
(08:30):
who thought Lucas was worth taking a chance on.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Back to Chris, a budget hadn't even been set. He
had to spend his own money. Kind of a nutty
way to make a film when you look back on it,
But you got the sense that he knows he's sitting
on something big. He doesn't know how big. At some
point in the process. He suggests that it could be
(08:54):
as big as a Disney movie, the average Disney movie.
It could make like twelve months million dollars, which is
roughly kind of what he is expecting the budget to be.
It is roughly what the budget ends up being, which
is an overshoot, which is more than Fox A lotted
him supposed to be eight million. You know, he ends
up spending close to twelve. But yeah, he thinks he's
(09:18):
basically just going to make his money back because that
was the thing with science fiction movies in this day
and age, small budgets because the stuff was just for
kids and there wasn't that much money there, and you didn't,
you know, no point in spending big on it, and
kids won't notice the difference anyway, if it's good or bad,
if the special effects are good or bad. You know,
two thousand and one didn't make its money back until
nineteen seventy five, which is crazy if we think of
(09:41):
that now, like it's a stone cold classic. Why did
people not go see it? They just didn't, And it
wasn't until actually, you know, saw war was was sitting
in limbo waiting for its budget to appear. That two
thousand and one gets re released and finally, you know,
makes a profit. So that's all Lucas is expecting. Just
like George, you would know, I dear what you're sitting on.
(10:01):
But yeah, he's he's a terrible scriptwriter. It takes him
four drafts to get close, and even then he has
to draft in will Audhuck and Gloria Katz to do
a rewrite of It's been estimated roughly a third of
the dialogue in the original Star Wars is theirs.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
Despite the progress being made on the script, twentieth Century
Fox wasn't making things easy for Lucas. They froze all
spending in mid October of nineteen seventy five, depending a
board meeting on December thirteenth, with filming scheduled to start
only a few months later in March of seventy six.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Fox is really dragging its heels that there's no budget
in sight. It really does take until that nineteen seventy
five meeting. After two thousand and one has been a
success and after the Fox board has seen the Macquarie paintings,
they can finally visualize what this thing is supposed to be.
Because without that meeting, without them deciding that budget, it
(11:00):
never would have been made. I mean it was barely
made as it was. It really is resources stretched the
absolute limit, right, George seems to be in the seventies.
He seems to spend a lot of time around the
(11:21):
dying parts of the industry, like the internship that he
had at Warner Brothers that got him to meet Copla
in the first place. Only reason they met Copla is
because he was supposed to work in the animation department
and Warner Brothers and they just closed it. He sees
that the animation industry is moribund, he sees that the
special effects industry is morribund, so kind of has no
(11:44):
choice but to start his own. And it's sort of weird. Again,
I think this is something that we have a hard
time grasping in the twenty first century, because there's obviously
so much work for special effects houses that in this
day and age that it can support of vast global industry.
But yeah, you know what, you just created one of
(12:04):
the most legendary special effects houses because nobody else had
well yeah, and he kind of had the money to
do it. Again, this is why the American graffiti money
was so important, because he could never have just gone
cap in hand to Fox and said, oh yeah, by
the way, on top of the budget for this film,
I also need to start a special effects house. Can
(12:25):
you make me spot me some cash for that? No,
so yeah, Industrial Light Magic started in a warehouse and
Van Nuys these ideas are cameras, computer control cameras. That's
really the secret source of ILM. But also it takes
so long to get off the ground that it almost
(12:46):
gives Georgia heart attack that they're working so slowly that
they've only got one shot done by the time George
comes back from principal photography in London. So yeah, so
you know, but that's kind of a sign of the
fact that I Lamb had to reinvent everything from the
ground up. That's why there was only one special effects
(13:09):
shot in the can is because there's so much work
on the technical side to be done. No Lucas is
casting throughout seventy five with Brian Depalmer working on Carry
at the same time. Luke Skywalker like it doesn't there
are many other options, but it kind of Mark Hamill
(13:29):
kind of kind of wins that one pretty easily. Carrie
Fisher almost didn't get it because she was in acting
school in London at the time. Her mother, Debbie Reynolds,
packs her off to London. She goes off to learn
proper pronunciation on things, which is why if you watch
Star Wars she seems to have half of a British
accent for like half the movie. That's why she was
(13:51):
in London repeating things like I've got to have a
proper copper coffee pot. But yeah, she just comes in.
And it was actually the Bruce, the casting guy on Godfather,
who tells he's sort of an unofficial casting executive for
Star Wars, kind of unpaid, just because he, you know,
(14:12):
knows George well through Copler. The most interesting piece of casting,
and one that's there's thrown up a lot of legends
over the years, is that of Han Solo. You know,
we know that there are many other actors who could
have done it, but also we hear that, and this
is true, George did not want to cast Harrison Ford
because he had been in American Graffiti. Because the thing
(14:34):
that George was terrified of critics saying when Star Wars
comes out is, oh, it's just American graffiti in space.
So I think as a director you're always terrified that
your last movie is going to influence the perception of
your current one. So he you know, he was a
jobbing actor. He was also a carpenter. And the myth
has grown up that Fred Ruce, casting director, was so
(14:56):
certain that Harrison Ford was right for the Han solo
role that he brought Harrison Ford in to do some
carpentry on a door in his Cursing studio to kind
of throw Harrison Ford in his path. And I sat
down with fredrus in person, I was like, is this
really the case? And he kind of sheepishly admitted that
(15:18):
the legend, as good as it sounds, is not true
and that in fact, he just actually needed a door
and Harrison Ford was the only carpenter he knew, so
he just brought him in to make that door. Anyway,
So it wasn't It was inspired in retrospect, like a
(15:39):
lot of the Stole Wars' stories, and a lot of
it was just more haphazard than you think, and sometimes
a carpenter making a door is just a carpenter making
a door.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
Unfortunately, even though the cast was in place, that didn't
mean that everything would go smoothly from there. Quite the opposite.
They had location shoots to film in Africa and filming
at a studio in London, which did anything but inspire
confidence Lucas.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
The shooting in Tunisia itself is an absolute nightmare. You
get this part of the world that's not supposed to
have any storms have its biggest storm for forty years.
A lot of the equipment is destroyed. The first air
shooting goes terribly. The droids, especially, are all over the place.
This is kind of a thing throughout the filming of
(16:25):
Star Wars that R two dto didn't function. And if
you pause every scene in Star Wars where R two
D two is rolling forward and just kind of look
at the trajectory of where he's going, it's almost always
into a wall. And then you imagine those scenes on
tato Wine aka Tunisia, you know, supposed to have gone
a lot more differently and look a lot more impressive
(16:48):
than it did. Again, we have this sort of happy
accident of the fact that the Tunisia shoot went so badly.
The desert scenes had to be so straight down that
it kind of ended up looking accidentally like a Western
and that you know, people saw that, Oh, oh, john Ford,
(17:10):
you know that really, But no, he was not as much.
This was not as much of a Western homage as
we imagine. It was just he didn't have the budget
to throw in all of the creatures and all of
the stuff that it was in his imagination. How much
of a mess the script is in Luke's name, I
mean Luke's name in the script as far as they
are concerned while they're in Tunisia is Luke Starkler.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
And you're listening to Chris Taylor, author of How Star
Wars Conquered the Universe, tell a heck of a tale
about perseverance, about accidents.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
George Lucas was crazy.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
He took his own money from American graffiti and started
a special effects company. The story of Star Wars, how
it almost never happened, and how it came to be
here on our American Stories, And we're back with our
(18:09):
American Stories and author Chris Taylor, who was telling us
the story of how the original Star Wars came to be.
George Lucas was actually reworking the script as they were
filming in Africa. That was still shooting to be done
in England. But Lucas wasn't exactly hopeful. However, not all
was lost. Much of the Western feel in Star Wars
(18:30):
was due to production impairments a happy accident. Back to
Chris Taylor with the story of Star Wars, so.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
It's a mess, it's a love of the place. The
script is being revised at the last minute, and then
when he gets to London it turns out to be
not best than Junisi in a lot of ways in
terms of his inability to communicate with the crew, and
the London crew especially really just not happy with this weird,
(19:02):
shy glasses wearing, big bearded, big headed interloper guy who
can't even you know, kind of mumbles at you and
like they're like, who is this dude, And they're just
kind of making jokes about him and about the movie
the whole time. You know, the the the the studio
has been cleaned, which is exactly what what Lucas didn't want,
(19:27):
you know, the deaf style. We think of it. Oh,
it was supposed to be gleaming and bright, and no
it wasn't. You know, George had this idea that that
tune is he actually really helped him with with all
of the the dirt and muck that that Gore and everything.
The idea of the used universe is really big one
in George's head, and so you know, things get a
(19:49):
bit scuffed up, things get a bit used. You have
this sense of almost every object in Star Wars that
it has been used before. It's a bit and that's
what helps us believe it. Right, So you look around
the room you're in, it's kind of maybe it's a
bit mismatched. The things you brought on this date, things
you brought on that date. That's a bit scuffed. That's
(20:09):
got dust on it, right, And we never seen that
in science fiction before, but not on the Death Star
because the crew in the UK have cleaned the set
and would clean the set every day. Like he's like, no,
this is not what I want. But of course it
kind of works. It's beautiful for the reflections and like
Vader's helmet, like again, not meant to be. The case
(20:30):
turns out brilliantly. But yeah, George had a terrible time
in London, a terrible time with the crew, a terrible
time with Gilbert Taylor, you know, as the award winning
cinematographer who kind of was as dismissive as the crew
of George's shortcomings, especially when George kind of got on
the wrong side of him by like looking through the
(20:51):
camera right doing the stuff that a cinematographer is supposed
to do. Because George had done that previously on both
of his previous movies THHX one, three eight and American
Graffiti had been small, they'd been low budget. This is
his first time on anything like a Hollywood epic, and
here he comes face to face with with Gil Taylor.
You know, he's worked with Cubrick, he's worked with Hitchcock,
(21:12):
he's worked with Polanski, and he's kind of, you know,
telling George, no, you don't look through the camera, Suddin,
that's my job. So George is in a funk the
whole time. You know, Gary Kurtz is having to try
to negotiate with the crew to get them to take
this seriously. It is the hottest summer on record, The
(21:35):
summer of nineteen seventy six in the UK still famous
even now, Still seventy six is known as one of
the biggest, hottest, nastiest, sweatiest you know gave Rice the
famous Sun tabloid headline few water Scorcher in that summer.
That was the summer of seventy six, and that's when
Star was being filmed, and it's just so much of
(21:58):
a mess, and they don't have like a lot of
the students aren't ready, and just a lot of stuff
happening all over the place that just makes it feel
like a mess. They get around the end of shooting,
Fox won't give them any more budget, and they still
have to film all of the scenes on the ten
to four, you know, which is the ship at the
very start of Star Wars. This is the one that
(22:19):
famously gets shot at by this Star Destroyer passing overhead,
and it's the one that three po and AR two
on Darth Vader and Vases, et cetera. All of those
scenes of those those rebels sort of lining up in
front of the door, they're famous scene producing the tension
of like Darth Vader's going to walk through this dorm.
We know that, Like they don't say a word, but
(22:40):
really really great masterclass in building up tension in the
first few minutes of a movie. And it really was
just filmed at the last minute, you know, and the
last day with a second unit. I think Gary Kurtz
wants to direct the second unit, you know, and they're
just they're shuttling back and forth, they're trying to get
all the scenes filmed. You would never get it today
(23:03):
looking at that at that scene that it was just
such on a shoe string on the last day, kind
of thrown together kind of thing. But it works. And
they were just so lucky in the in that sense,
and then the things that they were able to do.
The resources of the original Star Wars were just stretched
gossamer thin. You know, everything was like on the on
(23:24):
the point of breaking. And you can see how if
you're coming back from that shoot and you're going to
I believe it was Alabama, where Steven Spielberg was filming
Close Encounters at that time, you would think this is
such a mess, Like ILM, I started this special effects house.
(23:45):
They've only got one shot in the can. That's what
he discovers, by the way, when he comes back from
Spielberg's shoot from Close Encounters, he goes back, he checks
in on ILM and the van Neys warehouse. That's just like, hey,
we've only got one shot, but we've figured out a
lot of stuff. You want to see. The shot looks
a lot like two thousand and one. That's it. That's
(24:07):
all I've had for my months and months of investment
and my own money into this with the special effects
that are either going to save or damn this film. Yeah,
so he sees that, and he flies back to San
Francisco from you know, down in La Finally he's heading
back home, and almost straight from the plane, he starts
(24:30):
feeling like he's going to have a heart attack, has
to check himself into hospital instead of going home in
the marine, and turns out it's no, it's not a
heart attack. But he's also told he's having an incredible
amount of anxiety, a lot of stress, and he should
probably go take some rest. I just kind of good advice,
but yeah, George's kind of put through the ringer. This
(24:54):
also explains why while he and Spielberg are together on
the set of Close Encounters, they swap points. I think
it's two points each in so Spielberg gets two percent
of the profits of Star Wars, Lucas gets two percents
of the profits of Close Encounters. Not an unusual thing
to do, but also an indication of each of them
(25:15):
thought that the other ones was going to be the
better movie. And you can see George thinking, well after
that mess of a shoot with my special effects house
is just nowhere in this process. Obviously, I'm going to
win that bet. Obviously I'm gonna sol was gonna be
a disaster. It's gonna be you know, my name is
gonna be mud in Hollywood. But that's fine because I'll
(25:35):
just make my personal films and I'll have my two
percent of close encounters to keep me going.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
And Lucas seemed justified in his feeling when the movie's
release is pushed from Christmas of nineteen seventy six to
the summer of nineteen seventy seven.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
And the novelization still does come out in the fall
of seventy six, which is just bizarre looking back on
it to us these days, like, oh we the whole
story of Star Wars was out there like for months
before the movie hit theaters. Really weird. So you know
that the release date slips not unusual, but it slips
because the special effects is so far behind schedule, and
(26:14):
they're so far behind schedule that George when he screens
his rough cut of Star Wars for his friends, including
that screening where Brian de Palmer tore him to pieces,
he's screening a shot with kind of temporary placeholder special effects,
which is basically he's using especially for the death Star
sequence at the end, he's using a lot of shots
(26:37):
from World War II movies.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
And what a story we're being told by Chris Taylor,
how Star Wars Conquered the Universe. My goodness, all of
those early scenes done at the last minute, on the
last dime, and it just shows you that, indeed, Benjamin
Franklin's quote, necessity the mother of invention. My goodness, it's
the mother, the father, the grandmother, and the grandfather here.
(27:05):
It indeed drives the film. It was a hot mess,
and maybe indeed that's why this worked. When we come
back more with author Chris Taylor, the story of how
Star Wars came to be and almost didn't hear on
our American stories, and we're back with our American stories
(27:40):
and our last segment on the making of the original
Star Wars. Chris Taylor, author of How Star Wars Conquered
the Universe, was just sharing how Star Wars release was
pushed back from December of seventy six to the summer
of seventy seven due to delays in the special effects.
Lucas had even gone to the hospital for what he
(28:00):
felt was a heart attack brought on by extreme stress.
Things were not looking good for Lucas and his passion
project Star Wars.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
That the release date slips not unusual, but it slips
because the special effects is so far behind schedule, and
they're so far behind schedule that George when he screens
his rough cut of Star Wars for his friends, including
that that screening where Brian de Palmer tore him to pieces,
he's screening a shot with kind of temporary placeholder special effects,
(28:39):
which is basically he's using especially for the Death Star
sequence at the end, he's using a lot of shots
from World War two movies to illustrate, like, oh, you know,
the attack of the Death Star is going to happen here,
you know, cut to spitfire from World War Two, you know,
downing a couple of German measiousness, just that the explosion
of the Death Star, Like when they filmed that on set,
(29:02):
it was just a guy holding a piece of paper
and going bang, you know. But yeah, so so all
of that is waiting until right in the last minute.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
You know.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
This is part of the reason why George and Marsha
are just kind of Sleepless and Dazed on the day
Star Wars release, because they're still working, they're still tweaking it,
they're still changing it. They you know, obviously, again this
is the looping of the dialogue. Is an area where
you see a lot more happy accidents, like the casting
(29:38):
of James L. Jones as the voice of Darth Vader.
You know, he wasn't paid that much money. It was
just a couple of days work. Because, by the way,
Darth Vader, George didn't think he was a very scary villain.
He's only on the screen for ten minutes in the
original Star Wars. He didn't seem scary until you add
the sound effect, and until you add James darl Jones's
(29:59):
voice and ben Bert breathing through a scuba mask. You know,
that's what really sells Darth Vader, you know, what comes together.
But he's worried that Darth Vader isn't going to be
seen as that big of a villain. He almost wants
to kill him off. So you know, a lot of
this stuff doesn't come through at the last minute. Obviously,
(30:20):
James L. Jones was a great get. Really really makes
the film.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
Part of George Lucas's pessimistic outlook on Star Wars certainly
stemmed from the numerous delays in production, and another part
came from his perfectionism and the idea that this movie
would never live up to his expectations, a feeling he
still has to this day.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Yeah, George was definitely heads down in the studio in
those final days working on the audio, and I believe
what Lucas is doing. On May the twenty fifth, nineteen
seventy seven, the day that Star Wars is released, by
the way, a Wednesday, kind of weird to us this
day and age Wednesday before Memorial Day weekend, Like what
are you even doing releasing it? Then? It's just bizarre,
(31:06):
Like kids aren't off school, this is supposed to be
a movie for kids. What are you even doing? You know?
Just kind of a sign that Fox wasn't even thinking
about that sort of thing. It was actually trying to
get theaters to take a movie called The Other Side
of Midnight, which we don't even remember today, was a
gritty seventies drama by saying well, you have to take
(31:27):
Star Wars if you want the Other Side of Midnight.
And it wasn't until you know, a month or so
after Star Wars comes out, they flip it. They're like, oh, no,
you had to take the other side of Midnight if
you want Star Wars. So they're just not thinking about
it just gets released, and I think George isn't thinking
about either, because there was no premiere party. So he's sleepless,
Marshals sleepless, and supposedly they go to Hamburger Art, which
(31:52):
was a restaurant that is on Hollywood Boulevard. It was
on Hollywood Boulevard, right opposite Man's Chinese Theater. But I
guess he didn't realize which thirty two theaters it was
being released in around the country, and the one of
them was right here. I can believe that he would
sit in there for Hamburger, which is his favorite food,
(32:13):
with Marsha and just sort of kind of get over
that kind of sleeplessness, you know, that kind of where
you've pulled in all night and nothing seems real, and
then you look at the window and you see, oh,
my movie's playing over that, this movie that I'm still fixing.
That's weird. He's playing over there, and there seems to
be a line. But yeah, we should remember that he
(32:36):
my favorite story about this about where his head was
is the fact that he calls George Lucas calls up
Mark Hamill on the day on May twenty fifth, and
he says, high KD. You famous yet, So he's obviously
aware that it's kind of it's doing okay, at least
at this one theater. Little remembered fact it wasn't actually
(33:01):
Star Wars that was the most popular movie of that week.
It wasn't top of the box office. It was Smoky
in the Bandit and that was simply due to the
fact that it was on more screens. I mean, Jaws
I Believe, which was the best selling movie up until
that point, opened in over one hundred and you know
(33:23):
it was kind of a hit from the beginning. Thirty
two is like, that's just such a sign of defeat
and failure to open your movie on just thirty two screens,
even forty would have been in a sign of defeat
and a sign that not only if Fox didn't believe it,
but the movie has themselves didn't believe in it. But
(33:46):
then that too kind of turns out to work in
Lucas's favor because it means that there are lines if
you got supplme demand matched perfectly. No lines. But the
interesting thing about Star Wars is a very early on
becomes famous for being famous, and it becomes famous for
having its lines, and journalists kind of latch onto that.
(34:10):
Like there's no mention of the lines on in the
first aid reports, mention that it's done pretty well, like
you know, variety is a garg at. It's perse green average,
which is part of the reason why you see eight
other theaters by the end of the week going oh yeah, actually,
I'll take that, you know, and it kind of kind
of snowballs from there. But part of the reason that
(34:30):
it's snowballing is because everywhere it goes it has lines,
and because the lines become famous for being lines, Star
Wars becomes famous for being a thing that people will
wait in long lines to see. And I mean, I
always go back to the San Francisco Chronicles report, which
I believe that was the first report on the line,
and the movie theater owner is just aghast. And the
(34:52):
kind of people who are waiting these lines, like you know,
the long hairs, the acid freaks, the stoners, the you
know that people playing chess in line, but also like
people with different ages. It's not one particular age group,
it's not just limited to kids. So the lines are
sort of this great physical example of how it is
not just for children. It's not just your average science
(35:16):
fiction flick. We can go too far in saying, oh,
it wasn't going to be a hit, or it wasn't
supposed to be a hit, but we can definitely say
that it became a phenomenon because of the sublime amount problem,
because of the lines. Then it starts to open up
in other countries because, of course, you know, America is
(35:39):
the global center of culture, and you know, you hear
about American movies. Certainly growing up in the UK, you
would hear about American movies long before you would see them.
That was definitely the case with Star Wars. That my
first encounter with Star Wars was on the back of
a box of cereal when I was about four years old.
It's just it starts people start to realize that it
(36:01):
is just so rewatchable, and we think of that as
sort of being a normal thing now like that. Of course,
that's what that's what directors are going for. They want
to make a movie that you'll want to rewatch, and
you know, Lucas was the first to do that. It's
just so compelling. The story is so compelling that just
(36:22):
taps into something deep and primal in our brains. Just
probably a good point too. I'll just throw in the
you know, the legend being that George Lucas based it
on the hero with a thousand faces, right, Joseph Campbell
and all of that kind of you know, archetypal hero narrative.
(36:43):
You know, in these days, Star Wars is used as
a great example of that. But you know, in terms
of Lucas thinking that he had produced this hero's narrative
that audiences were just going to fall for. No, he
had no idea, he had no idea what he was
what he was doing, And to quote Charlie Livencott is
talkeeting director, he was just foughting around.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
And a terrific job on the production and storytelling by
Robbie Davis and a special thanks to Chris Taylor, how
Star Wars Conquered the Universe and go to bookstores, go
to Amazon however you get your books by it if
you're a Star Wars fan, by two. And if you're
not a Star Wars fan, watch the movie again. Give
it another shot, and my goodness, happy accidents.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
None bigger than.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
The voice of James Earl Jones as Darth Vader. No
one saw the scenes as scary until well, you add
the soundtrack, You add Jones's voice and that eerie breathing sound.
Think about that premiere night, What is Lucas doing grabbing
a burger after tweaking a film he was sure wasn't going.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
To do well?
Speaker 1 (37:54):
And then those lines the story of how Star Wars
conquered the universe. Here on our American stories.
Host
Lee Habeeb
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.