George Lucas

Moedred

Administrator
Staff member
Here's an interesting 1975 Time article, aptly titled "Citizen Coppola," about Francis's short tenure as publisher of San Francisco's City Magazine. The vanity project folded in 1976. A new article (subscription only, sorry) says Cafe Zoetrope remains below those former offices, with a plaque dedicated to Coppola, Werner Herzog, Carroll Ballard, and George Lucas.

The most interesting part: "a number of the men who passed through City graduated to work for Larry Flynt." Sure enough, a Hustler's Club can be seen across Columbus and Kearny from the patio. Were Lucas less interested in family entertainment and new media, he might have followed a different path...
 
George Lucas aide grilled as discrimination trial begins

SAN RAFAEL — A woman who applied for a job at the home of film mogul George Lucas didn't get it because she was deemed an underqualified San Francisco socialite with an intense sense of entitlement - not because she was pregnant, a Lucasfilm attorney said Monday.

"George Lucas has three adopted children - the last two when George was a single parent," said Janine Simerly, an attorney representing Lucasfilm Ltd. "All of the witnesses we will bring up have children. No one of these women would tolerate pregnancy discrimination in the workplace."

Lucasfilm is being sued by former job applicant Julie Gilman Veronese, who claims an employment offer at the filmmaker's San Anselmo estate was revoked in 2008 after she became pregnant and mentioned it to company officials.

The rest: http://www.marinij.com/ci_15247343
 
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Jon Stewart will interview George Lucas again for an hour at the Star Wars Celebration V in Orlando this August. He's been referencing Indiana Jones on his show lately, lets hope he asks the important question.
 

Cole

New member
Rocket Surgeon said:
If you were going to interview George Lucas what's the question EVERYONE on this board would want you to ask?
Um...um....well, if they ask him if he likes the movie - we already know what he's gonna say. I genuinely think he likes it.

And if they ask him about a 5th film, I'm sure we already know what he's gonna say - "still in the development stage."

I guess the most interesting thing they could ask him is his response to Shia.
 
Lucas and Spielberg's Norman Rockwell collections show at Smithsonian

Selections from The filmmakers discuss the painter's influence in 'Telling Stories'

Early on in Steven Spielberg's 1987 "Empire of the Sun," before the Japanese invasion of Shanghai shatters the privileged world of the movie's young British hero, we see the boy in the comfort of his own bedroom. In the dim room, the mother's face glows as she tucks her son into bed, while the father, reading glasses and newspaper in hand, walks into the room and for a moment leans over both of them.

The scene looks as though it's straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting. And it is just that, according to Spielberg. "I based the scene of the parents tucking Jim into bed on Rockwell's 'Freedom From Fear,'" he says, adding that the page that Jim carries with him into the internment camp was a replica of the painting. "I think his 'Freedom' series best represent these ideals of family, home, community."

"Telling Stories" has 57 works in all, primarily paintings, drawn exclusively from the holdings of the two filmmakers and longtime friends. The idea for the show grew out of a conversation that Spielberg had a couple years ago with art consultant Barbara Guggenheim, in which he suggested that he and Lucas owned enough paintings for a serious show.


"Here's the problem," Guggenheim remembers telling Spielberg. "What the world doesn't need now is just another Rockwell show. But what if it's not just about Rockwell, but about how two of the greatest storytellers of the 20th century connect to one of the greatest storytellers of the early 20th century?"

When she brought the idea two years ago to Elizabeth Broun, director of the American Art Museum, Guggenheim says, she had the pitch down to three words. "I called her up and said, 'Spielberg, Lucas, Rockwell,' and she said 'yes' almost that fast."

So the exhibition has three subjects in a way, exploring their various connections through catalog essays as well as video interviews with the filmmakers.

"There's a different lens for looking at Rockwell because of how George and Steven see their pictures," says the show's curator, Virginia Mecklenburg. "They are both drawn to Rockwell's stories — the way an entire narrative unfolds because of how he crafts a single frame."

Lucas' first purchase, following the success of "Star Wars," was "Boy and Father: Baseball Dispute," the spring entry in Rockwell's 1962 Four Seasons Calendar. One of the most all-American images of many all-American works in the show, it captures a tense moment between a father and his son, who wears umpire gear and points to home plate defiantly. It's easy to imagine the disputed call that came before it.

Spielberg's first Rockwell, also in the show, was "And Daniel Boone Comes to Life on the Underwood Portable," a 1923 advertisement for the typewriter company that tells a story about a story: a studious-looking, clean-cut boy sits at his typewriter with a thought-bubble device above revealing his dramatic vision of the rugged frontiersman.

The March 17, 1956, cover of the Saturday Evening Post, this painting shows a prim schoolteacher caught off guard in front of her class after they've written "surprise" and "happy birthday" on her chalkboard. (While Spielberg owns the oil, Lucas owns the large-scale pencil version of this painting, and the Smithsonian show brings both together.)

"When my kids were younger, they would bring friends over to play, and they would be stopped in their tracks by that painting," Spielberg says. "Nobody was stopped by the Monet, but that's the one that arrests everyone's attention."

"For me, the interest is mythological," says Lucas, who first majored in anthropology when he couldn't study illustration in college. "There's the myth of patriotism, the myth of religion, the myth of America as a wonderful, bucolic place where everyone is created equally and good people succeed. Rockwell taps into our best aspirations for ourselves."

The complete article:

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-lucasspielbergrockwell-20100627-50,0,4870338.story
 
Lucasfilm loses pregnancy lawsuit in California

Surprising the news hasn't been picked up on and reported...much.

The company founded by "Star Wars" creator George Lucas has lost a pregnancy bias suit filed by a woman whose job offer was withdrawn when she disclosed she was having a baby.

A jury in Northern California on Wednesday awarded Julie Veronese $113,800 in damages.

Lucasfilm Ltd. denies it discriminated against the 37-year-old woman, saying its decision in 2008 to withdraw the offer of a 30-day job as a manager at Lucas' San Anselmo estate was for reasons unrelated to her pregnancy.

But the jury decided Veronese should get $93,800 for lost wages and $20,000 for emotional distress. It rejected a request for punitive damages.

The woman's lawyer says she will ask for up to $1.2 million in attorney fees from Lucasfilm
 

Montana Smith

Active member
But the jury decided Veronese should get $93,800 for lost wages and $20,000 for emotional distress. It rejected a request for punitive damages.

The woman's lawyer says she will ask for up to $1.2 million in attorney fees from Lucasfilm.

Greedy lawyers... :whip:

There goes the entire budget for Indy V! (well, we weren't expecting much, were we?)
 
Montana Smith said:
Greedy lawyers... :whip: There goes the entire budget for Indy V! (well, we weren't expecting much, were we?)

Don't think they could make it back with the profits?

HEY! Maybe we could sue Lucas into making another Indy film!
 
Montana Smith said:
I thought you'd rather sue him for making that last one! :p
I probably saw it in the theaters more than anyone on this board, I bought the dvd, the toys, the legos, the games. Indiana Jones is a great character but the story didn't even come near to his potential. In any event, hope springs eternal that a man so driven by education might learn from his mistakes.
 

Montana Smith

Active member
Rocket Surgeon said:
I probably saw it in the theaters more than anyone on this board, I bought the dvd, the toys, the legos, the games.

You really did all that? And with re-watching George's vision just seemed further and further away from where it all began?

Saying that, I don't like Mutt, but I have a 1/6 Medicom Mutt figure that I really like.

Somehow I can separate the toys from the character as portrayed...

Rocket Surgeon said:
Indiana Jones is a great character but the story didn't even come near to his potential. In any event, hope springs eternal that a man so driven by education might learn from his mistakes.

...and hope that George can learn from his mistakes and give us something that more of us can agree on. Go back to character and feeling, rather than ever on into visual and mental overload.

George has experienced a definite shift since 1977 and 1981, the points at which he launched his greatest sets of characters onto an unsuspecting world. He became a kid in a candystore, without limits, and I think he near enough ate the store empty!

Indy's the great survivor, and he emerged from KOTCS intact. If only George can pedal back a bit...
 
Montana Smith said:
You really did all that? And with re-watching George's vision just seemed further and further away from where it all began?
Sure, I even enjoyed, and owned those Mad Magazines with Indy parodies. One thing about going to a new fangled cinema it can be a great place to hear John Williams music!
Montana Smith said:
Somehow I can separate the toys from the character as portrayed...
...and I, the character from a weak story/film.;)
Montana Smith said:
He became a kid in a candystore, without limits, and I think he near enough ate the store empty!
Too much of anything...
Montana Smith said:
Indy's the great survivor, and he emerged from KOTCS intact. If only George can pedal back a bit...
One can hope.:hat: In the mean while I will be paying $5 to see Raiders of the Lost Ark on the Silver Screen, in a few weeks!(y)
 

Montana Smith

Active member
Rocket Surgeon said:
Sure, I even enjoyed, and owned those Mad Magazines with Indy parodies. One thing about going to a new fangled cinema it can be a great place to hear John Williams music!

That's one definite plus for George - he picked and stuck with one of the greatest composers of movie music. The music from Indy or Star Wars never fails to bring back the warm feeling of nostalgia. It's something that helped to get me into KOTCS (it's the second consistent ingredient).

Rocket Surgeon said:
One can hope.:hat: In the mean while I will be paying $5 to see Raiders of the Lost Ark on the Silver Screen, in a few weeks!(y)

All that nostalgia, and only $5! (y)
 
George Lucas Among 40 Billionaires to Donate Half Their Money

Forty US billionaires pledged today (Wednesday) to give at least half of their wealth to charity, either during their lifetimes or after death.

The list of those taking the pledge includes Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, T. Boone Pickens, Michael Bloomberg and George Lucas, the man behind "Star Wars" and "Indiana Jones" movies who is said to be worth $3.5 billion. Lucas is the only person in Hollywood to do this.

Bloomberg, like several others on the list, said he made the pledge because he has more money than he could ever use himself.

Buffett is the second richest man in world with a worth around $60 billion. The 79-year-old has already announced that he will donate 99% of his money to charity after his death.

http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/will-indian-billionaires-donate-like-americans-not-yet-42310
 
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