Something was happening, On May 25th, 1977 a movie was released which was sending shockwaves\u00a0through popular culture. Star Wars, a science fantasy film by American Graffiti wunderkind George\u00a0Lucas had set the film world on fire. I had decided to wait to see it with a group of friends. On the 25th\u00a0I had started to receive frenzied phone calls from friends who had been at the opening and were all in a\u00a0total froth of what they had seen.
\nThe following Tuesday, I cut out of class early and made my way down to the Uptown Theatre in\u00a0Calgary Alberta. The Uptown Theatre was built in 1951 by Jacob Barron, a Calgary lawyer and owner\u00a0of National Theatres, a chain of local movie houses. It is the finest example of Art Deco architecture in\u00a0the city. The theatre lobby has been likened to a Lapidus designed Miami Beach hotel lobby. It was and\u00a0still is an amazing place to see movies.<\/p>\n
Thankfully it is still operating as a movie theatre today.\u00a0I sat down in the third row from the back, dumped some ice down a friends back and started munching\u00a0on Red Twizzlers, and sipping on an ice cold Coke. The screen opened, there were no trailers, the Fox
\nfanfare exploded, followed by two rather plain title cards. And then my life changed.
\nSome people have eureka moments when they first glimpse the eyes of their future life partner, others\u00a0when they discover a passion or hold their child for the first time. I have had several of these…I am very lucky but my very first OMG on May 27th, 1977 was furnished courtesy of an diabetic\u00a0gangly, Northern California uber nerd. I knew who Lucas was because I really enjoyed American\u00a0Graffiti. It was the first soundtrack album I bought and played it incessantly reliving the ballet of cars\u00a0that Lucas choreograph dancing down the streets of Petaluma, Modesto and San Rafael. I thought the\u00a0film touching, poetic and a aching portrayal of what it was to be young and hopeful in pre-Vietnam
\nAmerica.
\nI was stuffed by the imagery, the skill and the execution of the story. That cemented it for me I wantedto make movies….Yah. It lite the summer of 1977 on fire. Sweet summer nights dreaming of girls, TIE\u00a0Fighters and Carrie Fisher.\u00a0I read everything I could on the boy genius from Modesto California. His humble beginning on a\u00a0Walnut Ranch, a near fatal crash, his transfiguration at the University of Southern California, his\u00a0tutelage by Francis Ford Coppola and his part in the founding of American Zoetrope. Wow…..What a\u00a0guy. I was dogged. Al Gore had yet to invented the internet, information on film and filmmakers was\u00a0often tough to come by,\u00a0Every word that Lucas uttered I hungrily consumed,
\nWords from Chairman George
\n“I came out of film school, what I refer to as pure cinema, non-story, non-character driven cinema,\u00a0which is much more kinetic and of the silent era.”
\n“Yes. That’s still where my heart is, and I can’t get away from it. Even Star Wars and American Graffitti\u00a0got a lot of criticism for the fact that they were so abstract-not made the way a normal movie is made.
\nAnd they aren’t. “Empire” goes in even further than Star Wars in terms of moving through an idea as\u00a0quickly as one can possibly deal with it.”\u00a0“I wanted to make abstract films that are emotional and I still do.”\u00a0“I don’t want to be a businessman. My ambition is to make movies, but all by myself, to shoot them, cut\u00a0them, make stuff I want to, just for my own exploration, to see if I can combine images in a certain\u00a0way.”
\n“My only interest in life is to make films, explore films and grow as a person.”
\n“I figured the merchandising along with the sequels would give me enough income over a period of\u00a0time so that I could retire from professional filmmaking and go into making my own kind of movies,\u00a0my own sort of abstract, weird, experimental stuff.”
\n“I’ve made what I consider the most conventional kind of movie[Star Wars] I can possibly make. I’ve\u00a0learned my craft in the classic entertainment sense as well as I think I can learn it. What I want to now\u00a0is take my craft in the other direction, which is creating emotions without understanding what is\u00a0going on in terms of purely visual and sound relationships. I think there is a whole world of film there\u00a0that has never been explored. People have gotten so locked into the story film — the novel and the play
\nhave such a strong influence over film that it has sort of become the weak sister. And if the films work,\u00a0I will try to get them out and get them distributed by whoever would be daring enough to pick them up.\u00a0Maybe they will be entertaining, it’s hard to know at this point. It is in an area that I have absolutely no\u00a0way of knowing what would happen and that is what excites me. And I have reached the point now that\u00a0I can say, well, I am retiring. Because I can really retire now.”
\n“It’s something that I’ve wanted to do ever since I was in film school. My friends who are making those\u00a0kinds of movies struggle along on grants, and it’s very difficult because they have very limited\u00a0resources. You cant’ make a living that way and I realized that years ago, so I went into “regular\u00a0filmmaking.” I happened to fall into it with Francis. If I hadn’t met him and he hadn’t sent me down that\u00a0line, I would have moved to San Francisco from SC, and I would have been up here doing films like\u00a0that-but struggling with them.”
\n“I was always coming from pure cinema – I was using the grammar of film to create content. I think\u00a0graphically, not linearly.”
\nI loved what he was saying, this was created, Hollywood would fall to its knees in the glow of the\u00a0ultimate visual story-teller, but I was wrong.\u00a0I was charged and was even buoyed by the fact that George got a lot of his inspiration of the French\u00a0Language Unit of the National Film Board of Canada. I had spent a few afternoons screening these\u00a0films at the local branch of the National Film Board and was impressed by their freedom and sense of
\nvision.\u00a0I waited and was impressed with the darkness of the \u201cEmpire Strikes Back\u201d, the deft sense of pathos\u00a0and story helmed by Irvin Kirshner, a former professor of Lucas. I saw \u201cReturn of The Jedi\u201d and began\u00a0to see something else, a move towards loss of story, an movement of towards spectactle.
\nLucas gave me a lot, he gave me the curiousity and passion to learn about something, I discovered a\u00a0legion of great films and great filmmakers. I expanded my vision and saw that maybe Grafitti had more\u00a0to do with the artistry of the great cinematographer Haskell Wexler and the editorial brilliance of Verna\u00a0Fields. I firmly rejected the idea of the \u201cAuteur Theory\u201d that any feature film that had any scope was\u00a0the result of a singular vision.\u00a0Film is at its apex a uniquely collaborative art form.
\nThe problem is that because of the success of his vision George had the resources and the ability to reshape\u00a0film in his own vision. Like the Emperor in Star Wars, he began to rely on technological to guide\u00a0and shape his vision and is suspect became a lead technological cultist. Humanity started to drip slowly\u00a0away from his vision. In his workshop he developed new sound technologies, non-linear editing, 3D\u00a0modeling….all visual impressive and in some ways liberating technology sets.\u00a0But Lucas and his hate of story and plot, as attested to in this quote,
\n“I hated scripting writing. I hated stories, and I hated plot, and I wanted to make visual films that had\u00a0nothing to do with telling a story. I didn’t want to know about stories and plot and characters and all\u00a0that sort of stuff. And that’s what I did. My first films were very abstract – tone poems, visual.”
\nHave moved him to push the industry towards the world of the computer and not of story structure. He\u00a0started to produce film which at best were momentary marvels, like the last Star Wars films or the\u00a0unfortunate last installment of the Indiana Jones series.\u00a0He has rejected story, and imposed that rejection on an industry that hangs on his every word. He has\u00a0set in motion a trend that diminishes story, plot and character. As a result film is becoming more and\u00a0more less interesting.
\nIn 1902 British author William Jacobs published his story, \u201cThe Monkey’s Paw\u201d. Three wishes are\u00a0granted the possessor of the paw of a dead monkey. The paw grants three wishes, but each wish has tied\u00a0to it a huge price for interfering with your destiny.
\nAt the recent Cinemacon, Lucas sat on a panel with Jeffrey Katzenberg and James Cameron. The\u00a0subject was \u201cThe Future of Digital Cinema\u201d. Lucas made the following comments;\u201cSo now when you\u2019re watching a movie and it\u2019s not in 3D, it\u2019s like watching in black and white,\u201d he\u00a0told cinema owners at their CinemaCon convention in Las Vegas.\u201d\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s a better way of looking at a film. … I totally believe now that 3D will completely take over just\u00a0like colour did.\u201d
\n\u201cWe have our third generation now of kids who are under 12 years old who have never seen Star Wars\u00a0on the big screen,\u201d Lucas said. \u201cAnd I am betting a lot of people will go see a movie that they have\u00a0seen on television a million times and they have the video at home, and they will go and see it because\u00a0they want to see it in the theatre in a social experience.\u201d\u00a0I think he’s wrong and in the words of his own creation<\/p>\n
“Don’t overestimate the power of this technological marvel. Its power is insignificant when compared\u00a0to the power of the Force” Darth Vader Star Wars Episode 4 \u201cA NEW HOPE\u201d
\nI think storytelling, good storytelling is the constant of great film. Sorry George…<\/p>\n