VIETNAM WARS IN SPACE
In November 1972, while Lucas was in postproduction on Graffiti, he sent Kurtz to scout locations in the Philippines and Hong Kong for what he hoped would be his next film, Apocalypse Now. Kurtz stayed on the road until Christmas. Columbia Pictures was showing renewed interest in the film, and Lucas, who had wanted to make Apocalypse Now after THX 1138, was even more intent on not being put off a second time.
Alas, after Lucas had turned over Graffiti to Universal in early 1973, but half a year before its release, Columbia dropped Apocalypse Now. Lucas doggedly took it to several other studios, but no one wanted it. The Vietnam War was just too controversial. Lucas was in a fix: He was desperately poor—and Universal, like United Artists before it, was confused by and pessimistic about the prospects of American Graffiti. It told several stories that were intercut, which was revolutionary at the time, and it didn’t seem to have a plot. Despite a particularly enthusiastic preview, Universal began toying with the idea of releasing it on television instead of in theaters.
It was at that moment of despair that Lucas turned back to the “unnamed science-fiction project”—because at least it had the remnants of interest back at United Artists, where he’d signed the original development deal.
“I was in debt,” Lucas says. “I needed a job very badly, and I didn’t know what was going to happen with Graffiti, so I started to work on Star Wars rather than continue with Apocalypse Now. I had worked on Apocalypse Now for about four years and I had very strong feelings about it. I wanted to do it, but could not get it off the ground. Columbia had just turned it down. It had started at Warner and then it went to Paramount, and it had been just about everywhere in town. Everybody had that script at least once, and the main studios had had it twice. I think everybody was just afraid of the Vietnam War and they were afraid that it was going to cost more than what we thought it was going to cost, and nobody wanted to go near it. So I figured what the heck, I’ve got to do something, I’ll start developing Star Wars.”
Throughout his life up to that point, Lucas had had a number of key interests, apart from cinema and art: anthropology—the interaction of politics, history, and people; mythology, as a representation of cultural conditioning; traditional adventure stories; and … speed. From hot rods to rocket ships. All three interests are present in THX 1138, which contains an ambiguous government, robot police, a judicial system ruled by a computer, and people who are persecuted for not taking drugs prescribed by the state; it opens with a clip from a Buck Rogers serial and ends with an ultra-high-speed car and motorcycle chase. Graffiti also ends with a high-speed vehicular climax and a coda that mentions the Vietnam War—in fact, the whole film takes place within the shadow of that conflict and the impending social upheaval of the 1960s. But with Apocalypse Now on the sidelines, many of its particular political conceits were transferred to the front lines of Lucas’s space-fantasy film.
“A lot of my interest in Apocalypse Now was carried over into Star Wars,” Lucas says. “I figured that I couldn’t make that film because it was about the Vietnam War, so I would essentially deal with some of the same interesting concepts that I was going to use and convert them into space fantasy, so you’d have essentially a large technological empire going after a small group of freedom fighters or human beings.”
Lucas’s love of fast machines began with his own Fiat Bianchina.
It made the jump to cinema with THX, who roars away in a stolen Lola T70.
It continued with the ethereal glow of John Milner’s yellow hot rod cruising among other gleaming machines in American Graffiti.
“I grew up working on hot cars and I like hot cars,” Lucas says. “It’s something that I am personally drawn toward. Even before I was a teenager, I always wanted a hot car; when I got to be a teenager, I had a hot car and I worked on hot cars. That was my big drive in life—until I got into films. So it’s carried over into film.”
THE FORCE OF THE WILL
As George Lucas began to write, he moved in his mind from the large to the small, from big themes—such as those inherent in his thinking on conflict, governments, and Vietnam—to details, such as the names of characters and planets. He made lists that often read like streams of consciousness. Perhaps his first writing germane to Star Wars is a roster that dates from early 1973; the name at the top of the page is “Emperor Ford Xerxes XII” (Xerxes was a Persian king assassinated by one of his sons), followed by: “Xenos, Thorpe, Roland, Monroe, Lars, Kane, Hayden, Crispin, Leila, Zena, Owen, Mace, Wan, Star, Bail, Biggs, Bligh, Cain, Clegg, Fleet, Valorum.”
Not long afterward, Lucas started combining first and last names, and assigned roles to them. Alexander Xerxes XII becomes “Emperor of Decarte.” Owen Lars is an “Imperial General”; Han Solo is “leader of the Hubble people” (probably named for Edwin Hubble, the astronomer); Mace Windy is a “Jedi-Bendu”; C.2. Thorpe is a space pilot; Lord Annakin Starkiller is “King of Bebers”; and Luke Skywalker is “Prince of Bebers.”
Lucas used the same process for his locales, listing names, then giving them characteristics. “Yoshiro” and “Aquilae” are desert planets; “Brunhuld” and then “Alderaan” are city planets, capital of the “Border System.” Others listed are: “Anchorhead, Bestine, Starbuck, Lundee, Yavin, Kissel, Herald Square.” Aquilae is where the Hubble and Beber people live; Yavin becomes a jungle planet, whose natives are eight-foot-tall Wookies; Ophuchi is a gaseous cloud planet where lovely women can be found; Norton II is an ice planet; and a “Station Complex” is noted among the space cruisers.
From these lists Lucas moved on to a handwritten two-page idea fragment titled Journal of the Whills, [Part] I, which recounts “the story of Mace Windy, a revered Jedi-Bendu of Ophuchi, as related to us by C. J. Thorpe, padawaan learner to the famed Jedi.”
The initials C.J. or C.2. (it switches back and forth) stand for “Chuiee Two Thorpe of Kissel. My father is Han Dardell Thorpe, chief pilot of the renown galactic cruiser Tarnack.” At the age of sixteen Chuiee enters the “exalted Intersystems Academy to train as a potential Jedi-Templer. It is here that I became padawaan learner to the great Mace Windy … at that time, Warlord to the Chairman of the Alliance of Independent Systems … Some felt he was even more powerful than the Imperial leader of the Galactic Empire … Ironically, it was his own comrades’ fear … that led to his replacement … and expulsion from the royal forces.”
After Windy’s dismissal, Chuiee begs to stay in his service “until I had finished my education.” Part II takes up the story: “It was four years later that our greatest adventure began. We were guardians on a shipment of fusion portables to Yavin, when we were summoned to the desolate second planet of Yoshiro by a mysterious courier from the Chairman of the Alliance.” At this point Lucas’s first space-fantasy narrative trails off…
Handwritten first page of Lucas’s Journal of the Whills.
THE HIDDEN PLOT
Although light-years from what was to come, the two-page Journal has a number of elements that Lucas would recycle into subsequent drafts: the Jedi; the phonetics of Chuiee; a great pilot named Han; an academy; and the galactic Empire. “Journal of the Whills came from the fact that you ‘will’ things to happen,” Lucas says. Much like the Disney films that opened and closed with the device of a storybook, “the introduction was meant to emphasize that whatever story followed came from a book.”
No notes bear witness to the transition of Lucas’s thinking from this fragment to his next effort, but he probably did what he would do again and again when creatively stuck: He started making new lists, with new plot points, before writing another tale. This time the plot points were hard coming—until he remembered a particular Akira Kurosawa movie he’d seen. Lucas had already been leaning in that direction, as the name Yoshiro in the Journal is a variation on Toshiro, the first name of the great Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune, who starred in many of Kurosawa’s films, including Yojimbo (1961).
Lucas’s ten-page handwritten t
reatment, titled “The Star Wars” and dated May 1973, relies for its structure on another Kurosawa classic, Kakushi-toride no san-akunin (The Hidden Fortress, 1958). Lucas had first encountered the work of the great Japanese director at USC, where he was impressed with Shichinin no samurai (Seven Samurai, 1954). Not only was its master-disciple relationship of interest to the young student, but Lucas also admired Kurosawa’s fast edits.
“Hidden Fortress was an influence on Star Wars right from the very beginning,” Lucas says. “I was searching around for a story. I had some scenes—the cantina scene and the space battle scene—but I couldn’t think of a basic plot. Originally, the film was a good concept in search of a story. And then I thought of Hidden Fortress, which I’d seen again in 1972 or ’73, and so the first plots were very much like it.”
In Kurosawa’s black-and-white masterpiece, two bickering peasants become entangled with a princess and a general (Mifune) who are hiding out during a civil war, and end up helping their social superiors in their adventures. Certain scenes in Lucas’s treatment are reminiscent of Hidden Fortress, notably where General Skywalker can’t check his bird-steed in time and barrels into the camp of his enemies, much like Kurosawa’s general who can’t check his horse and gallops into a hostile camp. Skywalker’s one noted mannerism—he scratches his head—is taken from Mifune’s performance in several of Kurosawa’s films. “Having the two bureaucrats or peasants is really like having two clowns—it goes back to Shakespeare,” Lucas says, “which is probably where Kurosawa got it.”
Lucas on the set of THX 1138.
John Ford’s 1956 film The Searchers was also an early influence. Its saloon scene partially inspired the treatment’s cantina sequence. All in all Lucas’s exotic creatures and aliens, space battles and bird-steeds come from a mind formed by the reading and viewing habits of a typical 1950s kid—but these influences were just beginning a long transformation. One can already see how the “lost” boys of Peter Pan have become, given the political sway of the writer’s mind, jungle rebels with just a hint of the Vietcong. Lucas’s idiosyncratic mental amalgam would continue to reformulate ideas and materials—while Lucas the deal maker would try to procure the necessary funds to create a cinematic venue for their expression.
The Star Wars Treatment Summary, May 1973
Lucas’s fourteen-page typed treatment begins with:
DEEP SPACE.
The eerie blue-green planet of Aquilae slowly drifts into view. A small speck, orbiting the planet, glints in the light of a nearby star.
Suddenly a sleek fighter-type spacecraft settles ominously into the foreground moving swiftly toward the orbiting speck. Two more fighters silently maneuver into battle formation behind the first and then three more craft glide into view. The orbiting speck is actually a gargantuan space fortress which dwarfs the approaching fighters.
The fighters attack the space fortress, but the scene changes to a rebel princess who is fleeing across the galaxy with some loyal retainers and a treasure. It is the thirty-third century, during a period of civil wars. The sovereign of the Empire has posted a reward for her capture.
She is being guarded by one of her generals, (LUKE SKYWALKER) and it is he who leads her on the long and dangerous journey that follows.
Two terrified, bickering bureaucrats who have escaped the space fortress and landed on Aquilae are captured by Skywalker, who is disguised as a farmer. They meet the princess, who is also disguised. The small group travels “across the wastelands of Aquilae, headed for the spaceport city of Gordon, where they hope to get a spacecraft that will take them to the friendly planet of Ophuchi.” They eventually arrive at a ruined religious temple where a rebel band of ten boys are hiding. After the boys defend the group against a large beast, they are admitted into the party.
The general, one of the bureaucrats, and one of the boys, venture into a shabby cantina on the outskirts of the space port, looking for the rebel contact who will help them get a spacecraft. The murky little den is filled with a startling array of weird and exotic Aliens laughing and drinking at the bar. The bureaucrat and the boy are both terrified as the general orders two drinks and questions the bartender about the rebel contact man. A group of bullies begin to taunt and ridicule the boy. Skywalker attempts to avoid a confrontation, but worse comes to worse, and he is forced to fight. With a flash of light, his lazer sword is out … One of the bullies lies double, slashed from chin to groin and Skywalker, with quiet dignity, replaces his sword in its sheath. The entire fight has lasted a matter of seconds.
The cover and first two pages of Lucas’s treatment, which he started on April 17, 1973 and submitted a month later on May 20th.
The group makes contacts with the rebels but is reported on by a spy. At the space port the heroes are attacked but manage to escape in a stolen space fighter. A huge dogfight ensues and continues as they travel across the galaxy; Skywalker and his allies destroy many ships and avoid an asteroid, but have to crash-land on Yavin. On the planet surface, members of the group split up and are watched by a “giant furry alien.” While some of the boys set up camp, another group heads for a city with the princess and the two bureaucrats; Skywalker then has to do battle with aliens riding giant bird-like creatures. He defeats them using his blaster, but cannot help riding into the aliens’ camp. There the general does single combat with an alien leader, cutting him in half with his lazer sword. The frenzied aliens then throw Skywalker off a cliff, but he hangs on to a vine. Because of his miraculous return, the aliens worship him as a god.
Tracking the captured princess, the chief alien leads Skywalker to a farm where he meets “a cantankerous old farmer who is married to an Alien” and finds the other group of boys. They attack the Imperial outpost where they think the princess is being held, but discover she has been taken to Alderaan. With their ships disguised as “Imperial rangers,” Skywalker and the boys penetrate the Imperial prison. A fight erupts, but Skywalker escapes with the princess and wins a space dogfight.
The princess’ arrival on Ophuchi is celebrated by a huge parade, honoring the general and his small band. The princess’ uncle, ruler of Ophuchi, rewards the bureaucrats, who for the first time see the princess revealed as her true goddess-like self … After the ceremony is over, and the festivities have ended, the drunken bureaucrats stagger down an empty street arm in arm realizing that they have been adventuring with demigods.
Note: Following each of Lucas’s drafts, a running list will summarize those elements that will become permanent to the story. (Although not noted here, Lucas would also use certain material in subsequent films.) Spelling is consistent with that of the drafts. The elements are listed in the order they appear:
* * *
STAR WARS PROGRESSION
• Fighter-type spacecraft attack a space fortress
• Rebels on the run during a civil war
• A princess
• A Skywalker character (a general)
• Two bickering characters (bureaucrats, working for the Empire)
• A landspeeder going across wastelands in search of larger spacecraft for transport to a friendly planet
• A ruined temple
• Cantina confrontation
• A Jedi weapon (“lazer sword”)
• After cantina, a spy
• The planet Yavin (jungle planet for the Wookees)
• A giant furry alien
• A cantankerous old farmer
• The planet Alderaan (capital of the Empire)
• Prison rescue and ensuing space dogfight
• Award ceremony
* * *
A CLOCKWORK STUDIO
Having decided to develop the quasi-science-fiction film sometime early in the spring of 1973, Lucas approached United Artists again, and according to Lucas’s agent Jeff Berg they talked about “an epic space fantasy.” On May 7, 1973, Berg met with David Chasman, who was now vice president of production under David Picker, and gave him the fourteen-page typed treat
ment. On behalf of his client, Berg asked for a $20,000 development fee to transform the treatment into a screenplay. To give United Artists an idea of what kind of visuals he had in mind, Lucas had attached ten images to the treatment: four NASA photos (astronauts in space, satellites, spaceships with peculiarly shaped flat wings); a photo of US Army amphibious tanks; and five fantasy illustrations, consisting of a skull-faced, muscular man holding a dead woman, pietà-like; a sci-fi fantasy hero, crouching and holding a blaster; a swarm of warriors fighting a giant furry creature; another sci-fi hero standing next to a futuristic vehicle; and a goggle-faced alien staring out at the viewer.
Once again it was the time of the year for the International Film Festival, so Berg wired Chasman at Cannes on May 14, 1973. “I wrote something like, ‘Hey, we’re waiting [for] word from you on the science-fiction project—do you want to proceed with it or not?’ ” Berg says, “but they wound up passing on it.” United Artists’ official negative response came on May 29, 1973. “United Artists passed on it, and money was the main reason as I recall,” Pollock adds. “We had told them from the beginning that it was going to cost $3 million. We wanted to go with UA, but we then had a contractual obligation to submit the project to Universal, because when they made Graffiti they made George sign a deal for two options.”
In June 1973, however, Lucas was not enamored of Universal. In its continuing incomprehension of American Graffiti, the studio—in an almost exact replay of Warner Bros.’ handling of THX 1138—had cut five minutes from the film. “We did not want to go with Universal,” Pollock says. “At the time George was very unhappy with them, during the months of April and May, when the studio was recutting the movie.”
The Making of Star Wars (Enhanced Edition) Page 4
