The story of the making of Star Wars belongs to the 1970s, when independent filmmaking penetrated even the heart of corporate Hollywood. When Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, William Friedkin, Brian De Palma, Robert Altman, Woody Allen, Stanley Kubrick, and others made a string of movies that shocked, energized, and entertained in ways that cinema never had up until then—the result of circumstances, cultural change, and artistry. Whether operating with next to no money or with a good-sized budget, these directors managed to make personal films that spoke to audiences everywhere: The Godfather, A Clockwork Orange, The Exorcist, Taxi Driver, American Graffiti, Annie Hall…
The particular story of how bearded iconoclast George Lucas transformed the joys of his childhood into a swashbuckling space-fantasy is a movie-making tale wrapped around a fairy tale, and it has already been told many times in books, documentaries, magazine articles, and biographies.
So why tell it again?
Because the original story of the original film has never been told—because the original words have remained hidden, almost unknown and forgotten.
Lit by amber-colored lights and capped by a fabulous stained-glass dome, the jewel of Skywalker Ranch is its Research Library. It contains much of the Lucasfilm Archives. One day, after a tip from director of fan relations Steve Sansweet, I called library manager Jo Donaldson and asked if she knew of any old papers associated with Charles Lippincott, Lucasfilm’s vice-president of marketing and merchandising in the mid-1970s. I’d heard he’d worked on a making-of Star Wars book that had never been completed, and I was curious.
A couple of days later, research librarian Robyn Stanley directed me to four boxes. As I went through the first box, which happened to be the least organized of the lot, I saw stacks of yellowed paper with the names “George Lucas, Harrison Ford, John Stears, Joe Johnston, Ben Burtt …” The next box had neatly filed folders marked with more names: “Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, John Dykstra, Gary Kurtz,” and even “John Barry”—the fantastic production designer who is absent from nearly every account of the film’s genesis, due to his untimely death in 1979.
After I’d examined the contents of all four boxes, it was clear that, over thirty years ago, Lippincott had gathered a huge quantity of material for a making-of book. He had conducted more than fifty interviews between 1975 and 1978, many of them over sixty transcribed pages long. I read through these thousands of pages during the next few months. The interviews were still fresh, sometimes quite candid, and—above all—more accurate than much of what has been written about the film since. Sixteen of the interviews—including conversations with writer-director George Lucas; producer Gary Kurtz; actors Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, and Anthony Daniels; and several key department heads—were completed a year or more before the film was released on May 25, 1977. They were particularly interesting because the speakers were unaware of the future impact of the movie. Even those interviewed after the film’s release, in 1978, had no idea just how huge and lasting the effect of Star Wars would be, and their recollections of the previous years’ events were still vibrant.
If ever there was a book wanting to be written, The Making of Star Wars was it—and strangely enough, while making-of books had been published on all the other Episodes, the original Star Wars film was without one.
Thanks to prequel trilogy producer Rick McCallum, I had spent the years 2002 to 2005 shadowing George Lucas as he and his team made Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith, which resulted in that film’s making-of chronicle. When the thirtieth anniversary of Star Wars appeared on our publishing radar, I proposed a book about that one, too. It would have to be drawn from archival sources—but its writing ended up being as exciting as the process for Revenge, albeit in different ways.
Reading the Lost Interviews was the giant first step in the rediscovery of a fascinating story—and many half-forgotten stories: the front-projection dilemma, the earliest casting sessions, and how Lucas had to finance the preproduction of a film that no one wanted to make. Other key moments of research included asking Ralph McQuarrie if he had kept the original reference material Lucas had given him: he quickly found an old envelope from 1975 in his studio, still filled with interesting illustrations—including sketches Lucas had made of the first ships and the Wookiee planet from his rough draft. Internal notes from Industrial Light & Magic allowed me to re-create the chronology of its postproduction special effects, while a “diary” in the film archives department contained information on the trailer. E-mails to the law offices of what used to be Pollock, Rigrod and Bloom yielded, thanks to Tom Hunter, original letters written by Lucas’s lawyers to Twentieth Century-Fox that revealed the real ebb and flow of a very difficult relationship.
Coincidentally, from 2005 to 2007, I was working on another book with George Lucas, which facilitated his patient answering of many questions. A visit to Park Way—where the offices and editing rooms of Lucasfilm were originally located—was very helpful, as was the reading of Lucas’s bound versions of his various drafts, including the hard-to-find May 1, 1975, story synopsis and typed outline.
Since 1977, Star Wars has spawned two sequels and three prequels; countless books, comic books, and video games; television shows; and innumerable interviews. But its original creation, involving a relatively small group of gifted artists and craftspeople led by one inspired filmmaker, was recorded and transcribed many years ago in the Lost Interviews. Together, Lucas and his collaborators overcame health-shattering obstacles—storms, crises, an implacable studio, technical limitations, high stress, and bitter disappointment. In order to maintain the original points of view of the participants, nearly all of the quotes in this book are from the Lost Interviews recorded at that time. So, if someone is complaining about their career or explaining how little they know about special effects, these comments should be read as circa 1975 to 1978 (as should all dollar amounts). It may be that now they know more or have different opinions about what happened, but their words in this book are what they said back then. (The few exceptions are quotes from those—such as James Earl Jones and Peter Cushing—who were not interviewed until quite a few years later.)
To find out how it all came to be, read on.…