(Cannes) George Lucas, who will receive an honorary Palme d’Or on Saturday during the closing gala of the 77e Cannes Film Festival, rarely finishes his sentences. His anecdotes fade into endless circumlocutions. A nightmare for an interviewer. Guest of a very popular master class on Friday at the Théâtre Debussy, he answered a question about Star Wars from host Didier Allouch by talking about his previous film, American Graffiti.
“What film made you want to make films? », the French journalist also asked him. I wondered if he was going to talk about the cinema verite of Quebecers Claude Jutra and Jean-Claude Labrecque, which he saw during his film studies at the University of Southern California, or the documentaries produced by the NFB by Norman McLaren and Arthur Lipsett, sources of inspiration for his first feature film, THX 1138. He responded for about ten minutes, without naming any title…
At the heart of George Lucas’s long anecdotes, however, there are pearls. The 80-year-old filmmaker pointed to his friend and famous editor Walter Murch in the room, then recounted how they had both come to Cannes 53 years ago, to present THX1138which they had co-written, at the Directors’ Fortnight.
At the time, Lucas was living in his friend Francis Ford Coppola’s apartment in New York. Coppola’s wife, Eleanor, was due to give birth to their daughter Sofia, who was born on May 14, Lucas’s birthday. He suddenly had no place to sleep.
“Walter and I took what pocket money we had left, really not much, and paid for our trip to Cannes ourselves. It was pouring rain. It was in a small room in the Fortnight. We didn’t have tickets, so we sneaked in. When I returned to Cannes a few years later, I was asked why we didn’t attend the press conference for THX1138. We didn’t know there was one! »
PHOTO VALERY HACHE, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
George Lucas and host Didier Allouch during the master class presented Friday in Cannes
It was at the Cannes Film Festival, during this whirlwind trip, that he reached an agreement with United Artists to develop his next two films, American Graffiti… And Star Wars. A few years earlier, in 1967, Lucas had founded with Francis Ford Coppola, of whom he had been an assistant, the independent production house Zoetrope, in San Francisco.
“We wanted to operate on the fringes of Hollywood. It gave us the freedom to do whatever we wanted… until THX1138 not making money and being asked to repay what we owed. So Francis told me that he was going to accept an offer to make a film about Italian-Americans, which would fill us up! »
A visionary
George Lucas insists he didn’t go into acting to get rich. But he had business flair, for example negotiating licensing rights for derivative products and sequels to Star Warswhich made him a billionaire.
“The studios thought it was a stupid movie and had no plans to produce a sequel, even though I had way too many ideas for just one script. They didn’t believe it at all. And then licenses for derivative products did not exist at the time. Making a toy took more time than making a movie! I was told that I had a genius idea. Not really. I especially wanted t-shirts and posters to promote the film before its release at fan conventions. Star Trek, at Comic-Con. Because we didn’t have a promotion budget. »
Produced with a budget of 13 million US, in England, Star Wars upon its release became the highest-grossing film in history. And to this day he continues to make “little ones”. Two hours before the master class, quantity of young people geeks were hoping to get a spot, dressed in their Star Wars t-shirts.
PHOTO YARA NARDI, REUTERS
George Lucas
George Lucas is a visionary. A legend of cinema, more for his technological innovations (visual effects, THX sound) and the cultural impact of his productions than for the quality of his work behind the camera. He wrote and produced the Indiana Jones saga films, directed by his friend Steven Spielberg, but he only directed six films, including four Star Wars : the one who was renamed A New Hope (1977), as well as the unfortunate prequels The Phantom Menace (1999), Attack of the Clones (2002) and Revenge of the Sith (2005).
“It always feels good to be recognized by your peers,” he said of his honorary Palme d’Or. I have a lot of fans, of course, but I don’t make the kind of films that win awards! »
Lucas responded indirectly to the diehards of the original Star Wars trilogy, who are secretly circulating poor quality copies of the films from the 1970s and 1980s, which were not retouched by Lucasfilms in the 2000s. Which seems irritate him.
“It’s well known that I’m a perfectionist. That’s why I wanted to retouch certain things in the first three Star Wars when we developed at ILM [Indistrial Light and Magic] a technology which made it possible, for example, to create a Jabba The Hut that lived up to my expectations. I finished what I could not finish at the time, due to lack of technological and financial means. »
He compares these alterations to Michelangelo who repainted entire sections of the Sistine Chapel because he was not satisfied. “I firmly believe that the director and the screenwriter should have the last word on their film, as they see fit,” says Lucas, who says he has been retired for a decade. He sold his company to Disney for US$4 billion in 2012.
The filmmaker and producer also reacted to criticism directed towards Star Wars, including the famous one from astrophysicist Carl Sagan, who criticized the film on Johnny Carson’s show in 1978 for being “too white”. “Most of the characters are aliens!” The idea is that we should accept people as they are, whether they’re tall and hairy or green. They are all equal. The only beings who have been discriminated against in Star Wars are robots! »
George Lucas may be rambling with anecdotes and endless one-liners, but he hasn’t lost his sense of humor.
The hosting costs for this report were paid by the Cannes Film Festival, which had no say over it.