1. Constitutives values
2. God the Father at Skywalker
3. Portraits of Lucas
4. Yoda, Luke or Palpatine
5. Coherence and flannel

Amusing is the contrast in the appreciations relating to G. Lucas : Ewok or guru, rebel or autocrat, head of an empire, creative genius or hypocritical manipulator, one does not know exactly if this is all about the same person. However nice or unpleasant some features may appear, they are not necessarily antagonistic. And in so far as they are all proven, they testify in their own way of the very rich personality of the producer. I thing that to seize the reality of the man behind the image is more than an anecdotal exercise. Indeed, in cinema as in reading, one can make mistakes : if one wishes to interpret the work of G. Lucas, it is necessary to keep some of the man’s features in mind. Otherwise, misunderstandings can happen.

I. The constitutive values

G. Lucas was born in 1944 in Modesto, California, in a lower middle class family. He went to school without problems in his home town with, already, towards the end of his studies, an interest for social sciences, history, anthropology and mythology. If he likes to work with wood, to play handyman, his passions at the time are particularly speed and motorcars. He owes this his first existential crisis.

The crossroad in my career happened very early on. I was in an automobile accident. Before that I wasn't really a very goodstudent. I wasn't really focused in my life. I came through an automobile accident that I should never have survived. And, in the process of that, I realized that there must be some purpose for me to be here and I'd better figure out what it is, and I'd better find out what my talent is and I'd better find what it is that I love, and I'd better accomplish whatever it is that I was here to do.
That really motivated me in a very direct way which sent me off,ultimately, searching for the things that I loved and winding up in the film business.

Pushing this reflexion long-term, Lucas considered joining an art school, then finally chose the cinema section at the University of Southern California. With film, he discovered a passion, a calling – almost a predestination. A talent, in any case.

A talent is a combination of something you love a great deal, something you can lose yourself in -- something that you can start at 9 in the morning, look up from your work and it's 10 o'clock at night -- and something that you have a natural ability to do very well.

Lucas thus discovers his « talent », but also the difficulty to exercise it.

You know, it's very important that you find something that you care about, that you have a deep passion for, because you're going to have to devote a lot of your life to it. And you're going to have to really be focused on it. And you're going to have to overcome a lot of hurdles, a lot of people saying you can't do it. And you're going to have to take a lot of risks.

It is intentionally that I quote such long extracts of this interview, which seems to reveal G. Lucas’ personality, but also what I will call his « constitutive values ». The very passionate character of his relation to his work, initially ; the conviction that everyone is made for a well-determined task; then, finally, the importance of work and perseverance.

G. Lucas expanded on this last point at great length. But it is perhaps this quality, therefore, which is his most outstanding feature. His first years as a scenario-writer were indeed a real drag. He needed an unusual obstination and even an extraordinary eagerness to achieve his projects – including the Star Wars episodes – for which he even put his health in danger. Retrospectively, one can wonder whether this epic is on the screen, or much more in the production of these films, with so many and generally devastating developments, leading to increasingly acute conflicts with finance people.

Working hard is very important. You have to find something that you love enough to be able to take those risks, to be able to jump over the hurdles, to be able to break through the brick walls that are always going to be placed in front of you. If you don't have that kind of feeling for what it is you're doing, you'll stop at the first giant hurdle. So, I think you'll never make it unless you persevere.

When one questions him further on the conditions of his success, G. Lucas underlines what is due to collaboration and mutual aid. The beginnings were difficult, both for him and for those who remained his friends ever since. Their only way of coming out was through solidarity and altruism . Coppola, Spielberg also confirm this.

When we were in film school and we were starting in the film business, the door was absolutely locked. And there was a very, very high wall, and nobody got in. Therefore, all of us beggars and scroungers down at the front gate decided that if we didn't band together, we wouldn't survive. If one could make it, that one would help all the others make it. And we would continue to help each other. So we banded together. (...)

If I got a job, I would help somebody else get a job. If somebody got more successful than me, it was partly my success. (...) And we continue to do that, and we do it with younger film makers. There's no way of getting through any kind of endeavor without help from friends. And trying to be the number one person, ultimately, is a losing proposition. You need peers, you need people who are at the same level you are. You never know in life when you're going to need help, and you never know who you're going to need it from.

This conviction leads to a broader, more humanistic vision.

If you put that notion on a larger scale, you have to understand that it's a very cooperative world, -- not only with the environment, with but our fellow human beings. And if you do not cooperate, if you do not work together to keep the entire organism going, the whole thing dies, and everybody dies with it. And that's a law of nature. And it's existed forever, and it will continue to exist unless... We're one of the very few creatures that has a choice and an intellect to be able to intellectualize the process. Most organisms either adapt and become part of the system, or get wiped out. The only thing we have to adapt to the system is our brain. And if we don't use it, and we don't adapt fast enough, we won't survive.

Finding your talent, what you are made for, working hard and persevering, whatever the difficulty, agreeing to help and to be helped, these are the three recurring themes one can find both in G. Lucas’ interview and in his films. I think that these three features sometimes also explain his reaction to criticism.

Lucas is convinced to be a born film-maker. This is almost like a genetic predestination. He is therefore motivated by an inner necessity to achieve the task for which he is made : create films. He finds self-assurance, strength and an extraordinary obstination in this conviction. But at the same time, this inner certainty makes him inflexible, and gives him an assurance which can displease. I think this is what some journalists call pride.

In his whole itinerary, Lucas shows an incredible resoluteness. These « struggles », in which, like it or not, he kept his head out of the water, left traces and somehow resentment. Exhausted and nauseated, when the Return of the Jedi came out, he promised himself to better control the parameters of his creation in the future. Fifteen years later, Industrial Light and Magic, THXsound, LucasArts have become the three jewels of a small empire which ensures their founder a comfortable financial independence; on the other hand technological progress enables him from now on to liberate his creativity.

At the end of the 90’s, therefore, Lucas can call himself an independent film-maker, he can do what he wants, as he wants it, without restriction of time or means, and finally to dictate his conditions with the distributors (large theaters, adapted equipment, limited publicity, no interval, no sale of popcorn during projection…). Journalists (and some people at the Fox) will denounce his autocratic side and his arrogance. In fact, he imposes in the distribution of his films the same qualitative requirements he puts in making them. And if one keeps in mind all the preceding elements, one understands his sometimes bitter reactions to criticism relating to his « empire ». This remains above all a way to achieve his purposes, one that he obtained after a hard fight. This is nonetheless very profitable: G. Lucas’ fortune is estimated around 4.5 billion dollars.

As to collaboration, mutual aid, solidarity, one will incidentally find, in the Lucas empire, a foundation for education, and a continuous support to charity. Charity business ? Maybe, after all. But let the beneficiaries decide…

(quote: George Lucas, Academy of achievement, June 1995, Williamsburg, accessible on line, http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/luc0int-1.html )

III. Portraits of Lucas

A word about the portraits of G. Lucas, i.e. the official image of himself which he spreads or has spread. Hardly any changes since the photos where the young producer can be seen, on the set of THX1138, or a little later, on the production of Star Wars.

Crédit photographique: recherche altavista pictures, fichiers "perso" internet (voir liens), Lucasfilm and ^TM, Lucasbook, G.L.E.F. (George Lucas Education Foundation, Edutopia project)

When people ask him about his favourite hero, G. Lucas avoids the question, thinking that replying would be too revealing. But he points out that Yoda, the Sage who represents the taoist ideal so well, is his children’s idol, and his own friends nicknamed him « Flannel Yoda ». Because of his composure and his self-control during the shooting, it seems, which are not always apparent during his press conferences, some people said.

Opponents to G. Lucas will not hesitate to compare him to a Machiavellian unscrupulous Palpatine, marching towards complete power. The comparison is easy, and has more and more arguments. The producer’s sometimes autocratic character but more importantly the commercial development of his « empire » do him harm in this respect. Because Lucasfilm both fascinates and scares, by its control and its hold.

Its latest initiative, the taking-over of all the Star Wars sites on the Internet leaves us with a bitter taste. The « Commerce Federation » appropriates the richness and liberty of opulent Naboo, and gets its hands on the fans’ intellectual property without further ado… We are far from the generous declarations of intention, and in the middle of a paradox experienced painfully by the fans… Some of them have the makings of Rebels (cfr: http://www.miscellanies.net).

If I had a choice to make, I’d say Luke, but then after his hand was amputated and replaced by a prosthesis.
Like it or not, G. Lucas indeed loses his integrity by gaining his own autonomy, and the system which guarantees his creative (since financial) freedom traps him in cruel contradictions. Does he even see them ? I’m not so sure. The main thing is to see where his transformation will go to : from the hand to the arm, then the heart, we could be faced with Dark Vador tomorrow.

But after all, there is a redemption, even for him.

Ah, flannel shirts, their relaxed, comfortable, all-purpose look… What a coherence, what an obstination, what a fidelity to oneself do these flannel shirts reveal. They’ve been worn for more than 20 years, during Lucas’ first shootings and are triumphantly exhibited on the set of the Phantom Menace. Would these be the same ones ?

Men will say that it’s impossible, that Lucas has taken volume and maturity (in short, that he has put on weight). But I have doubts. I can indeed bring my personal experience here. Twelve years ago, during our first year of marriage, I offered by beloved husband several of these shirts. I washed and ironed them 12 times 52 weeks – I know the number of squares almost by heart. It becomes boring. Alas: flannel felts, it pills, it sometimes fades, or becomes flask and soft: IT DOES NOT WEAR OUT.

Surely these shirts will last for a long time.

And it really does not comfort me to know that my husband, after all, is as inelegant as G. Lucas… ;0)