Who lives in the Star Wars galaxy?
It’s hard to say where old Hollywood ended and new Hollywood began. People in the industry don’t consider themselves making history, they just go to work. But on the day in 1967 that Jack Warner emptied his desk at the Warner Bros. studio, George Lucas and Frances Ford Coppola arrived on the lot.
The two young filmmakers had a very different demeanor. Coppola, a legend at UCLA film school, was 27, a loud and boisterous mix of mogul and Marxist, who prided himself on dressing as Fidel Castro. He impressed movie executives at first with his bravado, but would later annoy them with his reckless profligacy. Lucas, five years younger, who went to USC, was quiet and introspective. The only guys at Warner who were under 30 and wore beards, they instantly hit it off with Coppola taking on the role of mentor. Lucas had made a thirteen-minute science fiction film project called THX 1138, a dark look into a computer-controlled future. Coppola convinced his protégé to extend it to a feature film and talked Warner Bros. into financing it.
For the next few months, Willy Coppola played both sides. “I’m telling you, this guy Lucas is making a great movie.” Coppola told Warner bosses. “Don’t push yourself, they don’t expect anything,” he assured Lucas. When they saw the completed THX 1138, the suits were furious. “Francis, what is this?” “I don’t know, I’ve never seen it.” replied the puzzled producer. To Lucas’s dismay, the studio cut parts of THX 1138 before releasing it. “They’re cutting off my baby’s fingers.”
THX flopped at the box office and Coppola was financially responsible for $300,000, but the two filmmakers were given another chance to make a low-budget movie at Universal. Impressed by the success of Easy Rider (1969), the studio’s old guard was looking for new talent, once again Coppola would produce and Lucas would direct. Lucas was encouraged by his wife Marsha to make the second project more positive. At USC he had studied anthropology learning that the American male has a unique mating ritual, he drives around trying to pick up girls. Lucas combined this observation with his own love of classic cars, his upbringing in a small town in Modesto, CA, and his appreciation for top 40 songs being played on the radio by disc jockeys like Wolfman Jack. The result: American Graffiti (1973).
The now beloved film got off to a rocky start. It was previewed in San Francisco to an adoring young crowd. After the show, Lucas and Coppola waited for Universal executives to come over and congratulate them. Instead, they were shocked by angry accusations that their friends had been planted in the crowd and that American Graffiti was unpublishable. True to their characters, Coppola argued and Lucas remained silent. Once again, George watched as his film was taken from him and cut down by what he thought was a nosy and ignorant studio. But there was a difference between THX-1138 and Graffiti; Graffiti was a hit, a very profitable movie that made Lucas a millionaire.
Now Lucas decided to go back to science fiction, this time wanting to make a more positive story than THX. After failing to acquire the rights to Flash Gordon, he sat down to write his own script. Influenced by the writings of Carlos Castaneda and the mythology of King Arthur, he based the characters on familiar figures. Luke Skywalker’s personality came from George Lucas himself, young, adventurous, and quiet from a small town, a lover of race cars, or in this case spaceships. Han Solo was based on Francis Ford Coppola. He was loud, arrogant, reckless, always in debt, going through a love-hate relationship with the young Skywalker. And the empire was actually the Hollywood studios. George Lucas’ fight for his creative freedom as a filmmaker would parallel Luke Skywalker’s journey to win freedom from the empire, and both would achieve it thanks to Star Wars.
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