#27 – George Lucas – Founders Podcast
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QUOTES:
They've never made a film, but they would come down and talk to him and tell him – this is how you should make the movie – and he says they decided they know more about making movies than directors. And here's the problem, you can't fight them because they've got the money
A little more than a year before it was scheduled to hit theaters Star Wars was a mess and the movie was going to be terrible
Lucas is kind of a hippie or a rebel and his dad's the exact opposite of that
That's one of the ways that you learn, you attach yourself to somebody older and wiser than you. You learn everything they have to teach and then you move on to your own accomplishments
I didn't read business books, I read biographies and autobiographies, I thought they were helpful
In Scrooge's world hard work paid off but so did cleverness and a desire to do something in a way no one had ever thought of before
Peter Jackson said that this guy's the Thomas Edison of our industry
He was so dissatisfied with that he could not make the vision in his head real, that there was not the computer, graphics weren't there, the special effects weren't there, so he's like “what's the solution? I’m gonna start my own company. I have to create the technology that I want to see in the world, so I can make the movies look how I want them to look”
How many people think the solution to gaining quality control, improving fiscal responsibility, and stimulating technological innovation is to start their own special effects company?
If you want to understand the entrepreneur, study the juvenile delinquent
He's not doing well at school, doesn't really have a direction in what he wants to do in life yet, so he goes and briefly works for his dad at the stationary store. This doesn't last long. He quits and then him and his dad get back into the argument. This is Lucas’ description of that – I got really mad at my father and I told him I’ll never work in a job where I have to do the same thing over and over again every day. His father responded “you'll be back in a few years”. I’ll never be back, Lucas said
I find this fascinating because Tarantino studied Spielberg and Lucas. Spielberg and Lucas studied Walt Disney
All I know for sure is I’ve gone too far to back out now there is no going back
As soon as I made my first film, I thought hey I’m good at this I know how to do this from then on I never questioned it
I would always try to get him to go out to parties and clubs and stuff, his roommate said, and George would usually stay upstairs in his room drawing these things he called little star troopers. For Lucas that was better than party. I’d be working all day and all-night living on chocolate bars and coffee, said Lucas. It was a great life, I had enthusiasm, and I was too busy to get into drugs. Movies were his addiction
He was becoming increasingly cranky about the idea of working with others and preferred doing everything himself
George loves winning too much
He figured out who is the person on the movie set that no one else can tell what to do. The answer to that is the director. So he's like – okay, I guess that's what I’ll do
He's on this big movie set for the first time and he was disgusted by it. Says, it was the first time he had a chance to see a major motion picture being made, and Lucas was not impressed. We have been around such zillions of dollars being spent every five minutes on this huge unwieldly thing. It was mindboggling because we've been making films for $300, and we saw this as an incredible waste. That was the worst of Hollywood
Any great director has to know how to put together a screenplay
What we're striving for is total freedom where we can finance our pictures, make them our way, release them where we want them released, and be completely free to express ourselves. You have to have the money in order to have the power to be free
People would give anything to quit their jobs. All they have to do is do it. They're people in cages with open doors
This issue of leaving a safe environment and going out into the unknown would be an underlying premise of his first three films THX, American graffiti, and Star Wars. He is really making a film about himself – reject the status quo and pursue freedom
The easiest job you'll ever get is trying to make your first film. That's the easy one to get because nobody knows whether you can make a film or not. After you've done that then you have a heck of a difficult time getting to your second film, off the ground they look at your first film, and they say – oh no, no, we don't want any more of that
It's the birth of Star Wars. It goes from a notion to an obligation. It was only a notion up to then. At that point it became an obligation
Over the next three-week period he writes from 8 in the morning until 8 at night 7 days a week, he calls it – bleeding on the page
The job of a director is to solve problems, to solve problems for your actors
The road to success is paved with mistakes well handled
The definition of business is problems
Success lies not in the elimination of problems but in the art of creative profitable problem solving
I don't think of myself as an artist, I’m a craftsman. I don't make a work of art, I make a movie
I'm going to treat writing Star Wars as a full-time job. I'm going to go upstairs at 9:00. I can only do one thing. I can look at the wall or I can write, but I can't do anything else. I would sit at my desk for 8 hours a day no matter what happened, even if I didn't write anything. It's a terrible way to live but I do it. I sit down and I do it. I can't get out of my chair until 5:00. It's like being in school but it's the only way I can force myself to write
Lucas saw Star Wars as his response to a weary world in need of new heroes and mythologies
You have to believe that your own opinion about what you're working on is greater than everybody else's opinion around you. None of this works if you can't trust your own judgment
People who are curious and passionate read. People who are apathetic and indifferent don't
If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we should become a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants
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