Reviews were generally positive; Lucas had won over critics at Time and the Los Angeles Times, and—in a real coup—even the highly opinionated Pauline Kael at The New Yorker proclaimed, “There is no sense that this ebullient, youthful saga is running thin in imagination.” But many reviewers were put off by the film’s intentionally darker, more grown-up tone. Janet Maslin argued in the New York Times that “the present film is just as polished and technically proficient [as Star Wars], but seldom as lighthearted and seldom as much fun.”36 Meanwhile, Maslin’s colleague Vincent Canby found it positively “bland,” dismissing it as “a big, expensive, time-consuming, essentially mechanical operation,” and adding, “It looks like a movie that was directed at a distance.”37
Lucas had also confused critics—and fans—by adding before the opening crawl that audiences were about to see EPISODE V—THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. Those paying attention pointed out that Lucas had tipped his hand on a re-release of Star Wars, with a new header on the crawl reading EPISODE IV—A NEW HOPE. From here on, Lucas would always claim that he had taken his enormous first draft of Star Wars, divided it into thirds, then decided to film the middle third first, with A New Hope as the fourth installment of a nine-part saga.
Kurtz could only shake his head. “That’s not true,” he said later. “There were a lot of little bits and pieces that were reasonably good ideas and that ended up being in the final draft [of Star Wars],” but “there wasn’t enough material to do other movies.”38 Lucas, however, would maintain he’d had a galaxy-spanning epic mythology in mind all along, though he would sometimes waffle on whether he had intended it to be six parts or nine. Regardless, at least one critic bristled at Lucas’s nerve in teasing fans with the promise of even more Star Wars. “George Lucas has revealed that the two pictures are actually parts four and five of a nine-part saga,” huffed Judith Martin in the Washington Post, “as if audiences will some day receive the total the way devotees now go to Seattle for a week of immersion in Wagner’s complete Ring Cycle”—a concept she dismissed as “nonsense.”39
In the weeks leading up to the release of The Empire Strikes Back, Lucas remained uncertain whether he had a hit on his hands. “I think it stands just as much chance of being a hit as not being one,” he said. “I guess I’m the biggest pessimist around here—after all, I said the very same thing about the first one.”40 He was also concerned about the math; after prints, advertising, and distribution costs, Empire was going to have to make $57 million just for Lucas to break even. And to build Skywalker Ranch into the kind of complex he envisioned, Empire was going to have to do much more than merely break even.
He needn’t have worried. Within five weeks, the film had made $64 million; by September, it would surpass $160 million. Empire would close out 1980 as the year’s biggest movie, and by the end of its first run, it would gross nearly $210 million, making it the third-most-successful movie of all time, trailing only Star Wars and Jaws. Lucasfilm would pocket more than $100 million in profits.
Lucas had literally bet the ranch—Skywalker Ranch—on Empire and won.
With Empire behind them, Marcia may have hoped that she and her husband could at last have a little downtime together. “My wife likes to have vacations,” Lucas told Starlog magazine. “She doesn’t like not to be able to go anywhere, year in and year out. She’d like to be able to say, ‘Look, let’s take off for two or three weeks and just cool out.’… It always comes down to saying [to her], ‘Next week. Just let me get past this thing.’ By the time you get past this thing, there’s always something else. And you can’t leave.”41
This time, the something else was Raiders of the Lost Ark. Once again, Marcia would have to wait.
Lucas had actually shopped Raiders all over Hollywood for the better part of a year, sending Kasdan’s first draft around to Universal, Warners, Orion, and Paramount—along with a list of terms. In a deal reminiscent of the one he had cut with Fox for Empire, Lucas was offering to finance Raiders himself to the tune of $20 million, and would then permit a studio to distribute the completed film in exchange for a percentage of the profits.
Warners, still trying to make amends to Lucas after his bitter experience with the studio on THX 1138, expressed interest early but then dragged their feet for so long that they were outmaneuvered by Paramount and its aggressive, forward-thinking president, Michael Eisner. “George came over to my house,” recalled Eisner, “and he said, ‘Let’s make the best deal they’ve ever made in Hollywood.’”42 On November 7, 1979, Paramount announced an agreement with Lucasfilm and The Raiders Company, in which the studio had given Lucas nearly everything he’d asked for. The film’s profits would be split 60–40 in favor of the studio, until the film broke even, at which point profits would be shared equally. Not a bad deal, but Warner executives warned Paramount that giving a filmmaker what he wanted meant the end of the film industry—a criticism that had already cost Ladd his job at Fox. But Eisner wasn’t a bit worried. “If we got shafted on this arrangement, we would like to be shafted two or three times a year in this way,” he said.43
Even as Kasdan continued with his script through 1979 and into 1980, there had been a moment of clarity from Lucas regarding the name of their main character. Spielberg continued to insist he didn’t like the name Indiana Smith, which put him in mind of the 1966 Steve McQueen western Nevada Smith. For Lucas, who simply wanted the main character to have a quintessentially American name, it was no problem to change the name to Indiana Jones.
The name was easy; casting, however, proved more difficult. As he usually did, Lucas had thrown a wide net, bringing in lots of actors and actresses for the lead roles of Indy and Marion—Christopher Guest, Debra Winger, David Hasselhoff, Jane Seymour, Sam Elliott, Karen Allen—and then videotaping various combinations to see if sparks flew. He was impressed with Tom Selleck, who had done mostly commercials and small television parts, but he had recently landed the lead role in the CBS television series Magnum, P.I. The network, however, sensing their actor’s rising star, locked Selleck in to his contract, making him unavailable.
Lucas admitted to Spielberg that he personally thought Harrison Ford would make an ideal Indiana Jones; he had even described him in one treatment as being played by “someone like Harrison Ford.”44 But Lucas had used Ford in every movie he’d directed or produced since American Graffiti and didn’t want to be seen as relying on a “stable” of actors, in the same way Scorsese repeatedly utilized actor Robert De Niro or Coppola had used James Caan. Still, Lucas and Spielberg met with Ford anyway and immediately knew they’d found their Dr. Jones. Ford’s contract was signed in June 1980, only a few weeks before principal filming was scheduled to begin in France.
There were some inside Paramount who were still skeptical of Spielberg’s ability to bring in a film on time and on budget—and Spielberg, despite the success of Jaws and Close Encounters, was coming off the bomb 1941. For Spielberg, then, “Raiders was a film to clean out my system,” as he described it later, “[to] blow the saliva out of my mouthpiece.”45 Lucas advised Spielberg to approach the film almost as if he were directing an old movie serial, shooting, said Lucas, “quick and dirty.”46 In a clever bit of misdirection, Lucas also advised Paramount that the film would be shot in eighty-eight days, while he and Spielberg had privately agreed it could probably be finished more quickly than that. This way, if Paramount asked, Lucas could always tell the studio they were ahead of schedule and would be left alone.
Lucas had also supplied Spielberg with a first-rate supporting staff, utilizing much of the same crew at Elstree that Lucas had used on The Empire Strikes Back, installing Howard Kazanjian as an executive producer and putting ILM entirely at his disposal for special effects. (Spielberg would be permitted to hire an associate producer of his choice as well, bringing in Frank Marshall, a veteran of several films for Peter Bogdanovich.) “What I learned on Raiders is that you set the whole thing up,” said Lucas. “Get the script pretty much the way you want it. Then, if yo
u hire the right person whom you agree with, you go with their vision.… But the truth is, we agreed completely on the vision.”47 Or almost. Lucas and Spielberg still disagreed over the nature of Indy’s character: Lucas saw him as a slick playboy who used treasure hunting to support a posh lifestyle, all traits that Spielberg—who saw Indy as more noble than that—tried to downplay. And ultimately, as he had done with Han Solo, Harrison Ford managed to incorporate a bit of his own personality into the character, giving Indy just the right combination of vitality and vulnerability.
Filming began on June 23, 1980, and for the most part Lucas left Spielberg alone—one of the few directors he wouldn’t hover over or pick at. “You’re the director,” he would tell Spielberg. “This is your movie.” Spielberg, who saw himself as mostly a hired gun, was having none of it. “Wait a minute, you’re the producer,” Spielberg would shoot back. “This is YOUR movie.”48 For the most part, Lucas was content mainly to solve problems and keep an eye on the bottom line. When the costs of building a four-engine flying wing threatened to send production over budget, for example, Lucas simply broke two engines off the concept model and told the crew to build it that way. The plane came in under budget. There were still times, however, when he found himself itching to look through the camera—and with Spielberg’s indulgence, he would direct a second-unit crew. “It’s great to see George running around with his director’s hat on, chasing a second unit around, setting up shots and shooting them,” said Spielberg.49 At one point Kasdan asked Lucas why he hadn’t directed Raiders himself. “Because then I’d never get to see it,” Lucas responded matter-of-factly.50
At the moment, however, he was actually subject to a technicality that would have prevented him from directing—or at least receiving a director’s credit—even if he’d wanted to. On the theatrical release of Empire, Lucas had placed all the film’s credits at the end of the movie—just as he had done with Star Wars—which meant director Irvin Kershner didn’t receive his director’s credit at the beginning of the movie, as mandated by the writers’ and directors’ guilds.51 While the guilds had looked the other way on Star Wars—the Lucasfilm logo, they decided, counted as the director’s and writer’s name—this time they threatened to have the film pulled from theaters unless Lucas recut the movie with the credits at the beginning, and fined director Irvin Kershner $25,000 for Lucas’s defiance. To Lucas, it was a preposterous requirement. Why bore an audience with credits when you could jump right into the action? He refused to recut, paid Kershner’s penalty himself (“I consider it extortion,” Lucas seethed), then resigned from both guilds.52 The credits would stay at the end—where most films have put them ever since—and Lucas would remain as disdainful of guilds and unions as ever.
George and Marcia trailed along after Spielberg as he moved from Elstree to Tunisia—where Spielberg filmed in many of the same locations Lucas had used in Star Wars—and finally to Hawaii, where the opening moments of the movie would be shot during the final week of production. Spielberg completed filming on the seventy-third day—right on the schedule he and Lucas had privately concocted but fifteen days ahead of the one they’d submitted to Paramount. They celebrated Marcia’s birthday at the wrap party, where Lucas dared producer Frank Marshall to jump into her birthday cake. He did.
While principal photography had been completed quickly, Lucas was disappointed to find ILM was lagging behind, struggling mostly with the effects needed for the sequence with the opening of the Ark. ILM had been given free rein—the only direction provided in the script was “They open the box and all hell breaks loose”—but everyone, from Lucas on down to the last animator, was unhappy with the sequence.53 With six months to finish the scene, the suggestion was made to hand off the effects to an outside company. Lucas was out of patience. “I’d done Star Wars, for God’s sakes,” he exploded. “I knew what real worry was.”54 ILM would finish the effects on time, and in spectacular fashion, but they would do so with Lucas practically straddling their shoulders.
Lucas had promised Spielberg final cut—but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to involve himself in the editing process. Spielberg had insisted on using his own editor, Michael Kahn, whom he’d worked with on Close Encounters, and Lucas sat with Kahn to review the first pass on the movie. Spielberg wasn’t concerned about what Lucas might do. “I get to change it all back if I don’t like what George is doing to the picture,” he said, “but I have never not liked what George has done.”55 As it turned out, Lucas asked for very few changes, for example, the removal of a joke that he thought fell flat. But there was one sequence, in which Indy shoots a scimitar-spinning swordsman dead rather than face a prolonged fight, which Lucas was still uncertain of. Spielberg had filmed the scene both with and without the fight, and Lucas actually preferred the longer version. But Spielberg, exercising the power of final cut, insisted on the shortened version—and Lucas, when he saw the reaction from a test audience, had to agree. “Well, I guess that works,” he admitted to Spielberg.56
There was one last editorial opinion that mattered. After watching the final cut, Marcia Lucas pointed out that the audience hadn’t seen what happened to Marion after she and Indy survived the ordeal with the Ark. There was a collective slapping of foreheads, and Harrison Ford and Karen Allen returned to film a brief scene on the steps of San Francisco City Hall, in which Marion and Indy walk away arm in arm, in what Allen called their “Casablanca moment.”57 George might have intuitively known when a film didn’t work logically, but Marcia could always tell when he’d shortchanged the audience emotionally.
As 1980 drew to a close, The Empire Strikes Back and Raiders of the Lost Ark weren’t the only projects Lucas had had his hands on over the past year. In November, Lucas donated nearly $5 million to the University of Southern California to underwrite the costs of constructing a fifteen-thousand-square-foot post-production facility, with state-of-the-art equipment for—what else?—editing, sound recording, and animation, three of Lucas’s passions. “It’s logical and appropriate for me to support the place that provided me with the means to get going into film,” Lucas said.58 A year later, Marcia would participate in the groundbreaking ceremony, and the $14 million project would be completed by November 1984. Gone were the rickety buildings and worn-looking central patio; in their place were the George Lucas Instructional Building, the Steven Spielberg Music Scoring Stage, the Marcia Lucas Post-Production Building, and the Gary Kurtz Patio.
Another project had come at the request of Coppola, who asked Lucas to help one of their idols, seventy-year-old director Akira Kurosawa, find the funding he needed to complete his samurai drama Kagemusha, which had been left in the lurch by Japan’s Toho studios. “It was a tragedy,” said Lucas. “It was like telling Michelangelo, ‘All right, you’re 70 and we’re not letting you paint anymore.’”59 With the heft of Star Wars behind him, Lucas went to Ladd, who secured funding from Fox just as he was being hustled out the door. On its release in 1980, Kagemusha went on to win the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, vindication for the venerable filmmaker, as well as for Lucas, who saw it as practically a moral obligation to assist fellow filmmakers in need, “either young directors who haven’t yet had a shot at it,” Lucas said, “or older directors who’ve been passed by but still have creative ideas.”60
As for a young director who hadn’t yet had a shot, in 1980 that was Lucas’s scribe of choice, Lawrence Kasdan, who was looking to direct one of his own screenplays, the steamy thriller Body Heat. Ladd was interested in producing it at his own production outfit, The Ladd Company, but informed Kasdan—in a move reminiscent of Lucas’s experience on American Graffiti—that he had to find a “name” producer who could step in if the film ran into trouble. Lucas thought the idea of Kasdan needing an overseer was “ridiculous,” but he threw the weight of his name behind the project anyway, and assured Ladd that he would be happy to defer his fee to cover the cost of any overages. Publicly, however, Lucas maintained a low profile, keeping his name off
the credits (“there would have been a giant controversy about me making this picture,” he sighed), and making sure all credit for the film’s success went to Kasdan.61 Body Heat opened to strong reviews in 1981 and turned a healthy profit; Lucas’s faith in Kasdan to pull it off had never wavered. Kasdan would go on to write and direct hits like The Big Chill and Silverado, and would come back to write both Return of the Jedi and, more than thirty years later, The Force Awakens.
Less successfully, Lucas had also helped find funding for a project by another old friend. John Korty—who, perhaps more than anybody else, had inspired American Zoetrope with his northern California beachfront film studio—had been experimenting with a new kind of animation he called “lumage,” in which an image was cut out and then lit from below the animation stand instead of above. Lucas, always intrigued by animation, arranged for Korty to meet with Ladd, who agreed to finance Korty’s Twice Upon a Time for The Ladd Company. The film would open in 1982, and quietly sink out of sight. “Nobody knew quite how to sell it,” sighed Korty.62
Lucas, however, would have no problem selling another movie he already had in pre-production in 1980. On May 14—one week before the premiere of The Empire Strikes Back—he had announced at a press conference that he already had a title for his next film: Revenge of the Jedi.
George Lucas was finally done with Hollywood.
While work on The Empire Strikes Back had required him to maintain offices in southern California, with that film wrapped—and before production could kick in on Jedi—Lucas closed down The Egg Company and brought everything north. The move would take several months, and Lucas couldn’t get away fast enough. “Hollywood is like a grandiose high school as far as I’m concerned,” he said derisively—and to his disappointment, employees at The Egg Company hadn’t behaved much better.63 “It was a bunch of spoiled people,” said Lucasfilm chief of operations Robert Greber.64 Assistant Bunny Alsup lamented that “our delightful, casual Lucasfilm was fading into a big-deal corporation.”65 Lucas also clashed with his own handpicked president, Charlie Weber. “George was focused on building the ranch, making Jedi, creating this kind of filmmaker’s community,” said one Lucasfilm insider, “while Charlie was looking at diversifying into other businesses to invest George’s money. But George had no interest in diversifying.”66 Lucas dismissed Weber and promoted Greber. The Egg Company was gone; Lucasfilm would now reside entirely in northern California, much of it at the ranch once it was completed.
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