Rocket Surgeon
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Profile of George Lucas by Time Magazine contributor Denise Worrell
End of Part 1
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George Lucas slouches on a couch in the area office of his home in the rolling, oak and bay covered hills north of South San Francisco. The 39 year old creator of Star Wars looks limp and worn and almost never smiles. He has lost 20 pounds in the last 6 months. He's wearing faded brown, slightly bell bottomed jeans, an oversized shirt and a brown vest. His glasses are brown. His brown hair and beard are flecked with grey. ?I am burned out I am burned out period? Lucas says. I was burned out a couple of years ago and I've been going on forward momentum ever since. Star Wars has dominated my life, sort of grabbed it and taken it over against my will. I've got to get my life back again before it's too late. The sacrifices that had to make it this point are greater than what I wanted to make, ultimately.
Whatever personal sacrifices Lucas has made, he and his pal, Steven Spielberg will go down in film history as Hollywood?s 2 most popular film makers. Star Wars (1977) and the Empire Strikes Back (1980) rank number 2 and number 3 on the list of all time biggest money makers. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), a Lucas idea and story, executive produced by Lucas and directed by Spielberg, is number 5. Lucas? American Graffiti (1973), is loosely based on his own experiences as a small town adolescent racing souped-up cars, is one of the most profitable movies ever made. It cost universal 780,000 dollars to produce and has grossed more than $145 million worldwide. And Lucas's upcoming Star Wars film, Return of the Jedi, the third in the trilogy, looks to be no less a blockbuster then its brethren.
But George Lucas is tired. Soon he will rest. Earned it he has. He says, my life, once I got into film school in 1965, was like pushing a 147 car train up a very steep slope. It was push, push, push. I pushed it all the way up there and then Star Wars came and I reach the top. I jumped on board and started going down the other side, and I've had the brakes on ever since, pulling and pulling on all these levers, with the wheels screeching and screaming trying to stop. There's no way the brakes are ever going to stop it, and it's all been work, work, work. I'm about to jump train. I've got this slim chance right now to decide whether I'm ever going to climb back on again and see if I can find some level terrain for the train to travel on.
I am afraid that if I did another Star Wars movie now, I'd be straying from my path. To me that would be like being seduced by the dark side, but more than anything else, I think I'd be unhappy. Star Wars is a book. I look at the movies as 3 chapters in a book. I have made the last chapter and put the book on the shelf. I wanted to finish it so I could say, The End. Up to this point it has been incomplete. Whether or not I'm going to write another book, I have to decide. This book practically killed me. I didn't know after I did the first chapter if I could finish the book or not. I was ready to quit then. I wanted to quit then. But I kidded myself into thinking that if I stopped directing, it would be like quitting. I thought I could just over see it. But it didn't work that way. Star Wars is so uniquely my vision and so incredibly complicated to do that I ended up having to get involved. It's bigger than what 1 or 2 or 3 people can do. It needs a giant team of people. I relinquished endless control. It didn't bother me to give up the control dash I couldn't have kept it.
End of Part 1
I'm working out a speech recognition application, so I figured this would be worth while.
This represents a page and a half of twenty two.