Entrevista a George Lucas

George Lucas Interview With Leonard Molten

PART 2 - THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

HELLO I'M GEORGE MOLTEN. WHEN YOU'VE MADE A FILM THAT IS NOT ONLY EXTRAORDINARY SUCCESSFUL BUT HAS EMBEDDED ITSELF IN OUR POPULAR CULTURE THEN THAT'S A TOUGH ACT TO FOLLOW BUT GEORGE LUCAS MANAGED TO PULL IT OFF. AFTER STAR WARS CAME THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. A TOTALLY SUCCESSFUL FILM IN IT'S OWN RIGHT AS WELL AS ONE IF THE MOST POPULAR SEQUELS EVER MADE. AND HE'S HERE TODAY TO TELL US ABOUT THE GENESIS OF THAT FILM AND IT'S PLACE IN THE STAR WARS TRILOGY. THANKS FOR BEING HERE GEORGE.

Thank you.

STAR WARS HAS COME OUT, A SUCCESS I THINK IT'S FAIR TO SAY BEYOND YOUR EXPECTATIONS?

Yes, definitely.

AT WHAT POINT DID YOU RECEIVE A COMMITMENT OR URGING TO DO A SEQUEL AND DID YOU IMMEDIATELY SAY YES OR WAS THERE ANY HESITATION ON YOUR PART TO DO IT?

Well, it didn't really happen that way, because what I did when I was writing it was I wrote one movie and then I couldn't do the whole movie because it was way too big. The first draft had too much stuff in it, it was way too big, it couldn't possibly be done. So I took a deep breath and I'm gone to have to take all these great ideas and I'll just do what was really the first act and I'll do this and make this into a movie. So I did that, but then as a writer, you know, you create this whole thing, sitting there on the shelf. So as soon as the film was successful there wasn't any question in my mind that I would immediately go on and do the rest of them so I could finish it.

WHAT TO YOU IS THE BIGGEST DIFFERENCE, OVERALL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FILM NUMBER ONE AND FILM NUMBER TWO?

Well, the biggest problem I was grappling with was the fact that it is the middle act of a three act play.

SOME PEOPLE FIND IT A DARKER FILM THAN THE FIRST.

It is a darker film because in the first act, you introduce everybody, the second act you put them into the worst possible position they could ever get into in their lives and they're in a black hole, never able to get out. and then in the third act they get out. Again that's drama, that's the way it works you don't have exuberant, happy second act.

WHAT WAS THE BIGGEST TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCE BETWEEN THE MAKING OF ONE AND THE MAKING OF TWO?

Well, there wasn't really much of a technological adavance. We were fine with what we had, primarly there wasn't really any giant technological adavance. The magor technological break was in one and that was using motion draw cameras to allow the ship to be able to move freely, that was the big advance. Everything aftere that was, we were able to do more stop-motion. I was able to do a lot more things. They weren't technological adavances, but I was able to get into stop-motion which I couldn't do before and generally have a bigger scope to things. The first film was a technological challenge, to get ships to fly in space with a lot of movement, the second one was to do a stop-motion movie.

HOW DID YOU CHOOSE OR GET TOGETHER WITH FRANK OZ, TO BE YODA?

When I created Yoda, I said I wnat him to be really really small, but not six foot, about eighteen inches, two foot high, and to do that, I said well what am I going to do, and how am I going to get a character and what am I going to do. Whenever I'm creating one of these films I have my imagination, and if I were a novelist I could just write it, I wouldn't have to think about it but I write it and think how am I going to pull this off. And I decieded to do it as a puppet, I thought that was the best, and so I'd known Jim Henson and I went to Jim and said you wanna do this? Clery asked Jim to do it first and he said "Well, I'm busy, I'm doing this, doing that, making a movie, I reallt can't, but how about Frank. Frank's the other half of me and everything" and I said that'll be fantastic.

IT'S A EXTRAORDINARY CREATION.

I think it was exciting for everybody because the idea of taking, and Jim was very interested in doing realistic characters. There weren't really muppets. And so we all really worked together on it.

TELL ME ABOUT HOW YOU FIRST MET AND WORKED WITH JOHN WILLIAMS.

I had know Steven Spielburg for a long time, up to this point and, we were talking about the film, real early on when I was writing the script and I said I want a classical score and I want the corn gold kind of feel about this thing. It's an old fashion kind of movie and I want that grand soundtrack, that you used to have on movies and he said "The guy you gotta talk to is John Williams, he did Jaws, I love him, he's the greatest composer that ever lived. You gotta talk to him" and so I did, and it was really Steven that introduced us and recommended him and, you know, I talked to him and he was interested so he did it and he's a dream to work with, he is the most wonderful collaberator.

DIDN'T YOU AT FIRST WANT HIM TO USE EXSISTING CLASSICAL MUSIC, IS THAT TRUE?

No, no. I had written it to various pieces of music, I write to music. So when I'm writing a scene I have the music there and I'm writing it to the music and then in a lot of cases we'll use that same music as a temp track. So there was temp tracks of classical music in the score. And with Johny you can say look, I want something that feels exactly like this. You understand the emotion here, and the emotion there and what's going on and he said "Yer, yer, yer". Then he will take that and he will come up with his own composition, and his own themes that are unically Star Wars themes in this case and he will give it that same emotional thrust that was in the classical piece. He knows exactly what I'm talking about, and he's really consicious of trying to get the directors vision on the screen.

WHAT KIND OF FEEDBACK DID YOU GET TO THAT INCREADIBLE CLIMATIC SCENE IN EMPIRE WHEN WE ALL LEARN WHO DARTH VADER REALLY IS?

I was nervous about it but in the end I didn't get much reaction over it. You know people were curious whether it was true or not, and I purposely left it so it would be ambiguos so that you wouldn't really know and people would debate it for the next two more years. Yer, I wanted people to debate whether it's true or not true sort of thing.

WELL GEORGE AS YOU KNOW PEOPLE ARE JUST NUTS FOR THESE MOVIES AND TO LEARN SO MUCH ABOUT THEM AND WHAT WENT INTO THEM AND WHAT INSPIRED YOU IS A REAL TREAT.

No, thank you it's fun. I hope that people continue to enjoy the films because it's nice to think of them as being timeless.