Top 10 Stories You Have Never Heard About George Lucas
Although he has only directed six movies in his whole career, George Lucas is regarded as one of Hollywood’s most influential directors. His beard is as legendary as his checkered shirts and his “faster, more intense” commands while sitting in the director’s chair. He might not be the best people-director in the world, but his skills as a storyteller, worldbuilder and editor are undisputed. Most fans know about Lucas’ passion for fast cars and how his dream of becoming a racecar-driver where literally smashed when he had a nearly fatal car accident in 1962. Or how his dog Indiana has been an inspiration both for Indiana Jones and Chewbacca. But here are 10 stories about George Lucas that you have (probably) never heard.
10. No Shelter
Back in 1969, Lucas worked as a camera operator for the movie Gimme Shelter, which chronicles the last weeks of the US tour of The Rolling Stones. The movie, which was released in 1970, also includes footage of the Altamont Free Concert, that ended with the stabbing of Meredith Hunter by a Hells Angels guard. Although the movie credits George Lucas as a camera operator, his camera jammed just after about 100 feet and none of his footage was actually used in the final film.
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9. Houseboy
After a rather nasty divorce from his first wife Marcia, Lucas met the then famous singer Linda Ronstadt after one of her concerts. Although Lucas was rather introverted while Ronstadt lived an excessive lifestyle, the two ended up together for five years and even engaged, although there are no photos showing the two of them together. One day, when Lucas trailed along Ronstadt into a drugstore in San Anselmo, the proprietor didn’t recognize Lucas, thinking that he was her houseboy.
8. Another Number
1138 surely is the number that Lucas is most associated with, due to the experimental film Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB that he did while he was still a student at USC and which he later turned into his first feature film: THX 1138. But there is another number that had quite an influence on the young George Lucas: 21-87.
This 9 minutes, 33 seconds short film by Arthur Lipsett is basically just a collage of unrelated scenes cut together, but it still had a profound impact on young Lucas, as he described the film as “the kind of movie I wanted to make — a very off the wall, abstract kind of film."
This is probably where Lucas’ long-lasting wish to make small, independent movies that nobody would want to see stems from. 2187, of course, is the number of the prison cell, where Princess Leia is kept in the Death Star, as well as the stormtrooper designation of Finn in the sequel trilogy.
7. Mouse Owner
Around the time of the release of Episode VII, Lucas’ relationship with Disney had clearly cooled off, due to the rejection of his ideas for the sequel trilogy, culminating in Lucas calling the mouse-house “white slavers.”
Nevertheless, the sale of Lucasfilm suddenly made the director Disney’s second biggest shareholder, second only to Steve Jobs. The Apple founder became Disney’s largest shareholder after he sold Pixar in 2006 for 7.4 billion dollars. And Pixar itself was a spin-off of Lucasfilm’s Graphics Group.
6. No Heart of Darkness
Years before Lucas told stories about a dystopian future, the youths of Modesto in the early '60s, or Jedi and lightsabers he planned to do an adaptation of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Lucas’ friend John Milius had written the screenplay for the film that would be released as Apocalypse Now and wanted Lucas as a director. Milius and Lucas worked on the project for four years, with the latter intended to make the film after THX 1138 was done. But as time went by, Lucas became occupied with other projects (most notably Star Wars), and so Lucas' friend Francis Ford Coppola took on the task of making Apocalypse Now.
5. Indiana Jones and the Beach of Mauna Kea
When the work on the first Star Wars movie was complete, Lucas was exhausted and burnt out. He had nearly suffered a heart attack and just wanted to get away from it all. So he flew to Hawaii and asked his longtime friend Steven Spielberg to join him. And so both directors sat on the beach of Mauna Kea and waited for the first reports of opening day of Star Wars to come in. When news broke that all 10am screenings were sold out, Lucas finally started to relax and asked Spielberg what he wanted to do next. The Jaws directors answered that he would like to do a James Bond movie, but Lucas pitched him the idea for Raiders of The Lost Ark. Then and there they decided to move on with this project, and the rest is cinema history.
4. Go and Write, Kid
Lucas is quite a slow writer – this is one of the reasons there have been three years between the films of each Star Wars trilogy – and he doesn’t like it. When he met Francis Ford Coppola before the work on THX 1138 started, the latter urged Lucas to start writing scripts for his movies: “You want to do a film? You write it.” But Lucas intended to hire a professional writer, proclaiming that he couldn’t do it. Thereupon Coppola answered: “You’re never going to be a good director unless you learn how to write. Go and write, kid.”
3. No Power to Barbarians
Back in 1988, Lucas and Spielberg went to Washington, D.C. to speak before the Congress against the alteration of movies and in favor of a global copyright, that should protect movies and their creators.
“People who alter or destroy works of art and our cultural heritage for profit or as an exercise of power are barbarians. [And] if the laws of the United States continue to condone this behavior, history will surely classify us as a barbaric society.”
Of course, Lucas himself has been tinkering, refining, and altering his own movies nearly since they have come out.
2. Too Fast for the Air Force
Lucas might have created the Empire with a nearly unstoppable military might, but he himself was rejected from serving twice: first in 1967 when the US Air Force didn’t want him because he had too many speeding tickets, and later the Army itself, because he had diabetes.
1. Cut in Half
Lucas’ sale of his company to Disney earned him more than $4 billion (a sum that Samuel L. Jackson called a bargain, although he used a not so sophisticated word). But even before that, Lucas was already a billionaire, with much of his fortune coming from toy and merchandise sales of the Star Wars franchise.
But Lucas is not a greedy person who keeps all his money for himself. In 2010, he signed the Giving Pledge – a promise to give away half of his fortune during his lifetime. Lucas pledged to put his wealth into education:
"It is the key to the survival of the human race. We have to plan for our collective future—and the first step begins with the social, emotional, and intellectual tools we provide to our children. As humans, our greatest tool for survival is our ability to think and to adapt—as educators, storytellers, and communicators our responsibility is to continue to do so."
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Sources: J.W. Rinzler: The Making of Star Wars, Mentalfloss, Zoomer, Factinate