YouSaid · the spoken record

George Lucas

lines on the record: 66
first: 2024-04-12
most recent: 2024-04-12
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Of 1980 and 126 theaters and broke attendance records in 125 of them. No other studio opened a single movie against it. The movie 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, the movie was going to have to do much more than break-even. He needn't have worried. It became the third most successful movie of all time, and George Lucas would pocket more than $100 million in profits. Lucas had literally bet the ranch, Skywalker Ranch, and won.”
2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And they see his weekly expenses and his costs are ballooning for the sequel. His weekly payroll alone was a million dollars a week and they're threatening to pull the loan and call the loan and shut down the operation, which is nuts considering how big Star Wars winds up becoming. So he comes up with a unique solution to his problem. And he goes to Fox. He's like, listen, I don't want any more money from you, but I will give you a couple more percentage points than you were getting earlier. I just need you to do one thing. So he says, eventually he agreed to give a few points to Fox in order to have the studio guarantee a new loan from the first National Bank of Boston. But even with this agreement, Lucasfilm remained the main guarantor of the loan, and if this movie didn't turn a profit, highly likely that his business was going to go under. And so the good news was the bank didn't have to wait very long for the outcome. Listen to this. This is an entire story in two sentences. The Empire Strikes Back opened in May.”
2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That this was an opportunity he had to pounce on. He says it's the perfect opportunity to become independent of the Hollywood system. There would be no studio executives staring over my shoulder in the editing room, no executives forcing him to make arbitrary changes. That is the part that I wanted to avoid, he said. Everything I own, everything I have ever earned is wrapped up in the Empire Strikes Back, he said. If this is a flop, I will lose everything. He continues. All the money I made from Star Wars was committed to this film, plus more. But I didn't want to go to Fox and give them the movie because I'd have to give them all the rates backs, meaning if he had to get money from them. I had to keep the picture going somehow, get people to work without pay, hope to hell that whatever they asked for didn't involve me having to go back and renegotiate with Fox. As always with Lucas, it was always a question of control. I wanted my independence so badly, he said. But at the same time, he has this loan from Bank of America.”
2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so he's like, I want a lot of property. I want it to be a house. I want it to be in the middle of nowhere. And I want to fill it with the most advanced technology where we could sit, see the trees, and make movies. So he buys the first 1,700 acres right now as he's building, making the sequel that eventually he buys a bunch of surrounding properties and builds 5,000 acres. And so the way to think about what he's doing, he's literally betting the Skywalker ranch on the sequel. He's either going for complete freedom or bankruptcy. He's putting everything he has into this. And everybody around him is saying, hey, don't do this. Give up more points. Take more money. Like this is nuts. And so it says, even those who knew Lucas were aghast at his bullheaded determination to finance the entire film himself. Independence was one thing. Bankruptcy was another. But those people were missing the point. Lucas wasn't paying for a movie. He was buying his own creative freedom.”
2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so, this idea about using his assets as collateral to a bank loan is exactly what Fox was doing there, just a bigger company. So he's going to use the money he made from Star Wars. And remember, he owns all the merchandising rights. This is nuts. Just in 1978 alone, George Lucas sells 40 million Star Wars figures. That's in a year. And so what he do is Lucas would finance the sequel one action figure at a time. He used the substantial profits from the film themselves, but also tapped into the revenues from an almost endless stream of Star Wars merchandise. At the same time, he's looking for a place where he can actually house all of his studios and build this vision that he's had, you know, that he was working on when he was in his early 20s with Francis Ford Coppola. And so this is the idea for Skywalker Ranch. And he has this idea. He's like, I want to live in a ranch house or work in a ranch house rather. I had forgotten that Lucas never lived at Skywalker Ranch. It was just where he worked out of.”
2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of the bravest and our most reckless acts were not aesthetic but financial. For the sequel Lucas matter of factly informed the studio that he would be financing the film himself using his profits from Star Wars as collateral for a bank loan. So this time around, the last time around the studios got 60% of the money. This time he's like, hey, I'm getting 77.5% and you can get 22.5%. And they take the deal because of course you want to be involved. Think about it. Like even if you own less of Star Wars and you're the Fox, Fox has a bunch of other movies. So there's going to be millions of people going to watch Star Wars 2. And at the very beginning, you see this huge logo, the Fox logo. It's like advertising for them. And then I loved the way Spielberg, you know, he saw this coming. He's like, Spielberg wasn't at all surprised by the way Lucas was playing hardball. He says, if you're an executive and you're going into business with George Lucas, you are no longer in the 20th century fox business.”
2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The studio. All they did was finance the film, and they get 60% of the profits. And he said they're getting 60 the way Lucas looked at it. He's like, they're getting 60% for doing absolutely nothing. He's like, well, what do you mean they didn't do anything? And he would compare and contrast what he did for the rest of like his share, right? He's like, I know what I'm doing for my percent. I put my heart and soul in this. My whole career is at stake. I have to actually go out and make the movie. And so anytime these conversations with other people at Fox, even people he likes, like an executive there named Alan Ladd, he's like, well, what the hell are you doing? And Lad's response is like, well, I provided the money. And George said to him, it was very fascinating the way his brain works. He goes, you didn't provide the money. You go to a bank with a letter of credit and they supply the money. And then you get 50% of the movie. This is such an important distinction he makes here. George looked at it like a businessman saying, wait a minute, the studios borrowed money. Then they take a 35% distribution fee off the top. This is crazy. Why don't we just go borrow the money ourselves? And he said.”
2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So Star Wars comes out in 1977. He's a director. And then he stops doing that. He becomes an executive producer. He bankrolls it. He writes the stories. He picks the directors. But he really meant it. He hated directing. And so he finally finishes the film. It's almost done. And this is fascinating because this happens too. I mentioned I was going to do another episode on Tarantino at the end of the Tarantino episode, but I re-listened to Tarantino and I thought it was really, really good so much. And I could kind of tell because you get a lot of responses and like the text messages I was getting from like hit a note. Like people really, really liked it. And I was like, I'm not. And then I looked at the outline for the second Taranto episode I was making. And I maybe we'll do in the future, but I was like, man, if I do this right, like, it's going to pay on comparison to the Tarantino episode. So I shelved it for now. But in that source material, some of the research I was doing, I come across this conversation.”
2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The reason I bring this up to you is because Spielberg tells us what George was thinking at this time. He says George was so depressed he didn't like anything. He didn't like the lighting. He didn't like what the cameraman was doing. He was very, very upset. He was saying, I've got myself into a mess that I'll never really get myself out of. He was in a state of near despondency, so much so that he's rushed to the hospital. He feels sharp pains in his chest. He was afraid that he was having a heart attack. So he gets checked into a hospital, they diagnose him with hypertension and exhaustion. So after that, he's like, I'm never doing this again, but he had no intention of relinquishing control over the film even if it killed him. He's got to get this done first. And it wasn't until I read that section I went back and looked. I thought he directed all the Star Wars movies. This is the last movie he directs for 20 years.”
2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I can give you a brief synopsis here from day one, Star Wars would be Problem Plague Production that would blow through its budget mentally and physically exhaust Lucas and try the patience of executives at Fox that so much so that the studio very nearly pulled the plug on the film altogether. I forgot how impossible making movies really is, Lucas wrote. I get so depressed, but I guess I'll get through it somehow. And another example of this idea, it's really hard to tell what you have when you're in the middle of it. He goes and visits Star Wars is nearly killing him. This is what I mentioned earlier. He's working 20 hours a day on it. And he's so deep into it. He goes, decides to fly down to Alabama to visit his friend Stephen Spielberg, who's working on the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. And he brings with him this booklet of all these black and white pictures from the set. And Spielberg's going through this, and he thought it was amazing.”
2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Very hard stumbling across the desert, picking up rocks and not knowing what I'm looking for, and knowing the rock I've got is not the rock I'm looking for. I kept simplifying it. I kept having people read it, and I kept trying to get more of a cohesive story, but I'm still not very happy with the script. I never have been. I have never arrived at a degree of satisfaction where I thought the screenplay was perfect. If I hadn't been forced to shoot the film, I would doubtless still be rewriting it now, the power of deadlines. And again, there's an entire book I might cover. So I think you already know this, but when I read all these biographies, when I'm done, I go through the bibliography and I find a bunch of new sources to read more books on in the future and turn them into more episodes. And so I found one, two, three, four new books from this bibliography and one of them is just about how gut-wrenching and difficult making Star Wars was. I think maybe reading that book and doing an entire episode on it would be fascinating.”
2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They said, George, you should be making more of an artistic statement. Yeah, that's a good way to go out of business. What are you talking about? He did that with THX 1138. How did that go? People were telling me that I should have made apocalypse now, George Lucas said. They said I should be doing movies like taxi driver. His own wife was telling him that because she was one of the main editors for Morton Scorsese and she wanted her husband to make movies like Morton Scorsese did. But I think this idea, it's one of the most important ideas I've learned in the last like year, year and a half. It's like you have to believe that your own opinion about what you're working on is greater than everybody else's opinion around you. None of this works if you can't trust your own judgment. And so another important thing, this is really the power of deadlines because he's been working on the script for three years and he has to shoot the movie now. And the important part about having a deadline is like if that didn't happen, he'd probably still be working on the script now. I didn't really know where to go with it and I've never fully resolved it.”
2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Need to control every aspect of the production. Industrial light and magic would stand as one of the cornerstones of Lucasfilm's empire, an investment that would set him well on the way to becoming a multi billionaire. And then this is a quote I shared earlier, which one of my favorite quotes in the book. How many people think the solution to gaining quality control, improving fiscal responsibility, and stimulating technological innovation is to start their own special effects company? Ron Howard said admiringly, but that's what he did. You and I have already talked about the fact that this guy is stubborn, he's persistent, he's bullheaded, and you have to be. Why is that so important? People thought he's like making this like little kids movies. This is like, he's kind of getting depressed, but he's still persevering. Because his friend's advice, he says, Lucas saw Star Wars as his response to a weary world in need of new heroes and mythologies. His friends said it was a juvenile exercise unworthy of his talent.”
2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Securing sequel and merchandising rights he had just negotiated for himself a billion dollar clause. Decades later Fox executives would shake their heads in wonder at Lucas' instincts and audacity. So let's go back to this idea that businesses' problems and that the best companies are just effective problem solving machines. He's got a problem. He's got an idea in his head. No one can make the special effects. There's no technology at the time. So what does he do? The solution sometimes to a problem is to found your own company to solve that problem. The solution to this problem he's having now is the founding of industrial light and magic. So it says Lucas would not merely have to produce the visual effects. He would have to develop the technology needed to shoot them in the first place. George was absolutely adamant that he wanted to set up his own shop with his own people. Industrial light and magic would then be an official subsidiary of Lucasfilm, born of necessity, seeded with his own money and feeding off Lucas.”
2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To five times, it says three times the amount on toys. Lucas makes three times the amount of toys as he does on the films, and the films did make billions and billions of dollars. It's insane. So he's like, okay, I want, you know, the merchandise and I want the sequel rights. I'm not going to charge you more money. What was par for the course? Is if you have a smash hit, then your director fee should go from whatever, 50,000. could go to a million could go to two million whatever the case is He would also insist that Star Wars be produced by Lucasfilm, thereby ensuring that he could keep an eye on the bottom line and that any expenses billed against the film were really his. I was very careful to say I don't want more money, Lucas said. I said, I don't want anything financial, but I do want the rights to make the sequels and he wants the merchandise rights. Fox was willing to sign over the sequel and merchandising rights mainly because they'd gotten the director of American graffiti so cheaply and no one, not even Lucas appreciated that by”
2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Are, you know, arguably the most successful movie franchise in history, and only one studio said yes. And so even though he's negotiating with the only interested party, one, there's certain things in his contract that he demands, right? And so he wants as much control over the final edit of his film as possible. And he even says, like, I'm not willing to listen to other people's ideas. I want everything to be my way. That's an exact quote from George Lucas. And so I would argue this is his most important, what's about to take place here. This is his most important decision ever. So he starts negotiating with Fox, and this is what George Lucas says about this. Fox thought I was going to come back and demand millions of dollars in all these gross points recalled Lucas. I said, I'll do it for the deal memo, but we haven't talked about things like merchandising rights and SQL rights. He would insist that those particular clauses normally considered underbrush in a contract. And it's really weird that they didn't understand at this point how important merchandise rights were, because if you remember, I've done a bunch of episodes on Maltese before.”
2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My head on paper was difficult, and so what he would do is he'd go to the television and he'd start taping old war movies and specifically footage of airplanes like, you know, dogfights with airplanes. And he taped 20 hours of these scenes from random movies, right? He then transferred it to film, and then he would edit it down to a reel of about eight minutes long. And the description of this reel is fascinating. It says, while he didn't yet know, the reel of dog fighting would be one of the most important bits of film he would ever put together, the wet concrete that he would pour into the mold for the cornerstone of his film empire. So now he has something that he can show. Now he needs to go and raise the money for the movie. Now this is fascinating. You and I have talked about this over and over again already. Lucas desires control above all else. And he still stuck to that idea, even though Fox was the only studio who said yes to Star Wars. Think about this.”
2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Happens even if I didn't write anything. It's a terrible way to live, but I do it. I sit down and I do it. I can't get out of my chair until five o'clock. It's like being in school, but it's the only way I can force myself to write. Then over his desk he would hang this giant like wall calendar to track his progress. And he's like, okay, I have to write five pages every day and you mark a big X, like a big X on the days where you write five pages. And here's the deal he made with himself. If I can finish my five pages a day early, then I can leave. So some days he gets to, you know, eat his chocolate bars and listen to music, but most days no words are written at all. And then he would just go downstairs and he'd glare in anger at the TV. He'd eat a TV dinner. And he would just be pissed off staring and watching the news.”
2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Entire chapter about this. It's called Bleeding on the Page because George says over and over again, like in the book, I forgot, I lost track of how many times he says this. He's like, he does not believe that he had a natural talent for writing. And so he calls the process awful. He hates it. But he makes himself do this. Listen to this. So it's going to take him three years to write like the first version of Star Wars. But the way he does this is fascinating. So he's like, okay. I'm going to treat the writing of Star Wars. It's going to be a full-time job. Okay. So he's still working out of his home. He's got upstairs like an office studio library kind of thing. And he's like, I'm going to go upstairs at nine o'clock. I can only do one thing. I can look at the wall or I can write, but I can't do anything else. And from nine to five, eight hours a day, listen to how he describes this. He says, I would sit at my desk for eight hours a day no matter what.”
2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“1973. So these are $1973. I'm about to tell you. American graffiti cost a million dollars and it earned at the box office $55 million, making it one of Cinema's most profitable returns on investment ever. Lucas earned nearly $4 million after taxes, and as he had vowed to his father more than a decade before, Lucas was a millionaire before the age of thirty. He had done it with two years to spare. And he's got to figure out what am I going to work on next? And he has, at this point in his life, he's got a couple million in the bank, and he's got a two-page treatment on handwritten notebook paper. And the title, which is scrawled in the center of the treatments cover page, is The Star Wars. Now, one of the smartest things that George Lucas does is learns from his own mistakes. So he's not going to hire somebody to raid the Star Wars. And he's going to bleed on the page.”
2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I will invest my own money and I will release this movie. You have a hit on your hands. Coppola's forcefulness kind of calls their bluff. They wind up releasing the movie. The movie's a smash hit. Listen to this though. So it has this great review in the New York Times. They call it American Graffiti a work of art. Now this was very fascinating because this is the way I thought when you read about George Lucas, the way I think of him as I think of him as a craftsman. Turns out that's how he thinks of himself because he does a lot of this stuff himself. He didn't really like the fact that people called it a work of art. My thing about art is that I don't like the word art because it means pretension and bullshit. And I equate those two directly. I don't think of myself as an artist. I'm a craftsman. I don't make a work of art. I make a movie. And you can also see he's not modest by any means. I know how good I am, he said. American graffiti is successful because it came entirely from my head. It was my concept, and that's the only way I can work. And it prints money. Keep in mind, American graffiti is released in”
2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And what is fascinating is he starts to preview the movie. The audiences love it. And the studio execs can, this is so nuts to me. The studio executives can be in a theater full of cheering, potential fans and customers, right? And they're like, this movie isn't good enough. We're not going to release it. Maybe we'll put it on TV. They're just like completely jerking around and screwing him over. And he's obviously depressed. And he's like, this is where he's like, I'm going to be an independent filmmaker. I'm going to control the money. He hates these people. And then they edit his film again and they take out another four minutes just like they did in THX. And this is the importance of just having good relationships and good friends that truly care about you too. Because they're at a screening. Lucas is there. Coppola is there. The studio executives are there. And the crowd loves it. But after in like the lobby, the executives like bitching at George Lucas and Coppola is just, he comes to the defense. He's like, are you out of your mind? Did you not hear them? And he pulls out his checkbook. He's like, how much do you want for the movie? You don't want to put this out. Sell it to me.”
2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You get physically sick. I get a very bad cough and cold whenever I direct. You feel terrible. There's an immense amount of pressure and emotional pain, but I do it anyway, and I really love to do it. It's like climbing a mountain.”
2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And most himself. He bets on himself here. He could have been paid, you know, he could have asked for big director fee. He's like, no, no. I want a less director fee. I will cut my director fee in half. I want $50,000. I will not only direct it, I will write it for that fee. There's no extra money for that, but I want 40% of the profits if there are any profits. And at this time, he's doing that. It is a big if that American Group fee could ever turn a profit. George Lucas before this has never had a successful film. He's just had a flop. And so through this entire book, there's huge chunks of the book that I think you should read because it's just problem after problem after problem after problem. I'm going to read just a highlight of this from American graffiti and then I'm going to tell you one of my favorite ideas I've ever come across says despite the agreement he had negotiate with the town under which he could pay $300 a night to film on Fourth Street. Local businesses were already complaining about closing the street. When Lucas and his crew arrived, they learned that a local council had”
2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I thought I'd never get out. It took years to get from my first film to my second film, banging on doors, trying to get people to give me a chance, writing, struggling with no money in the bank, getting little part-time jobs, eking out a living, trying to stay alive and pushing a script that nobody wanted. A script that nobody wants is going to give the person that finally finances the film one of the greatest return on investments in movie history. Think about them. There's this guy at Universal, this guy named Ned Tannon, finally gives him a shot. But Tannin produces films that are usually only budgeted. These are small scale films, you know, million dollars or less is usually what Tannin can do. And even though, this is incredible, even though Lucas doesn't have any other options, no one else is willing to finance this, you see that his desire, remember how this started? George Lucas unapologetically invests in what he believes.”
2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So he's writing the script is done. Now he needs money to make the movie. He's going around. No one wants to give him money to make the movie. But they were interested in him as a director, just not directing his own screenplay. Think about this. He's got no money. He's in debt to his dad and Francis Four Coppola. They're offering him $100,000 to direct a film. He thinks the film is shit. He hates it. He's like, these are terrible projects. And he says no. And this is interesting. Why? He's like, if graffiti sells, I can't be in the middle of another project for someone else. So he had to turn down every offer. Listen to what he says about this. That was a very dark period for me. We were in dire financial straits. He's already married, okay? That was a very dark period for me. We were in dire financial straits. I turned the movies down at my bleakest point when I was a debt to my parents, in debt to Francis Ford Coppola, in debt to my agent. I was so far in debt.”
2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What he's going to do. He calls it bleeding on the page. He says that line, I don't even know, 10 times in this book. And so he's like, okay, forget it. I'm going to have to do this myself. And so over the next three, the next three week period, he writes from eight in the morning until 8 at night, seven days a week. He calls us bleeding on the page. He also is humiliated because now he's got no money. Coppola's got a bunch of money because Godfather. So he goes to Coppola and George Lucas Sr. He's got to go to his dad. His dad that told him, don't do this. You'll never make any money. You'll be a bum. And he's almost 30. And he's like, I need money, dad. You have to, can you loan me money so I can do this movie? And this is the insane thing. It's so hard to comprehend and I don't even know how many people would make this decision because he somehow maintains this focus on getting his own project done through the struggle.”
2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Unnamed Space Opera Fantasy Film. Great, said Picker, we'll make a deal in this too. And that, Lucas said, was really the birth of Star Wars. It was the only, this is fascinating, think about how he says this, right? It's the birth of Star Wars. It goes from a notion to an obligation. It was only a notion up to then. At that point, it became an obligation.”
2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Fails a few times. Then he gets to the president of United Artists. This guy's got the perfect name for his job. His name's Picker. David Picker. He's literally having to pick screenwriters and And so he's like, he's telling about this. And he's like, I want to write, I need money and I want to write American graffiti. And Picker says yes on May 14th, which is also Lucas's birthday. He had just turned 27 years old. He gives him like $10,000 to write the script, but Lucas is going to make the mistake because he hates writing. He gives all that money to a screenwriter and the screenplay sucks. So he's got to do it himself anyways. But what was fascinating about this is in this meeting with David Picker is the birth of Star Wars. So he's like, okay, I'll take American graffiti. Let's do a deal on that. Do you have anything else? And Lucas is like, actually, I do. Remembers him sitting back in his room eating chocolate bars and drinking coffee and getting diabetes, which he definitely got diabetes at a young age. He was drawing little starsup troopers. So Picker's like, hey, what else you got? And Lucas told Picker about his idea for this.”
2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so he's like, well, since I spent my youth doing this, it's like a coming of age film about your last year of high school transitioning in, like, you know, everybody knows that experience. It's like your entire life's going to change. I have no idea what's going to happen. So that's why he's going to make a movie on. Here's the problem. No one wanted to give him money. And this was fascinating. Didn't even think about this because he's got no money. He's considered damage goods. And he's struggling to get any kind of money to write the script. And then once he writes the script, then he's got to make the movie. And he talks about the predicament that he's in. He says, listen, the easiest job you'll ever get is trying to make your first film. That's the easy one to get because nobody knows whether you can make a film or not. After you've done that, then you have a heck of a difficult time getting to your second film off the ground. They look at your first film and they say, oh, no, no, we don't want any more of that. And so Lucas goes back to doing what he was doing. He's like knocking on doors, trying to figure somebody. Just give me a little bit of money so I can write this script. Now, this is hilarious. He eventually...”
2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Lucas officially opened Lucas Film, this independent production company would be run out of his little house and its lone employees were him and Marcia. Marcia is his wife. So even though they broke up as co founders, they're still friends. And Copala actually gives him some good advice because THX is just this weird abstract. They called Lucas at the time a cold, weird director. So it's not, he's just like, what are you doing with all this like strange abstract stuff? He's like, stop being so weird. You need to do something human. You need to do something that makes money because if not, your career is over before it begins. And so the advice that Copala gave him was like, you should just write something that has to do with your own life, an experience you know well, something that, you know, is more positive. And so Lucas has this idea to make this movie that's going to be one of the most profitable best return on investments of every movie ever made. And it's called American Graffiti. And so at the time, he grows up at this little town in California. They do this thing called cruising. So on Friday and Saturday nights, it's like little town. They would soup up these cars and they would just drive slowly down one block, then turn around and do it all over again. They just cruise over and over again.”
2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That they had only cut four minutes from a 90 minute film. They were cutting the fingers off my baby, he said. Lucas wouldn't trust the studios again ever. And again at the time, this sounds like the end of the world. It's the worst thing that ever happened. They cut my film. Our company's over, but it ended up being one of the best things ever happened to him because this is the founding of Lucasfilm, the exact company he's going to sell to Disney. And he talks about like why they had to have a co-founder breakup because it really was sparked by the different management styles and their attitudes towards money. Lucas says, I'm very cautious. I don't borrow money. I'm very protective of the things that I build. Lucas is always tight with a dollar and Coppola would continue to spend money recklessly. Lucas had made up his mind to break away from Coppola and to make it on his own, determined to control his own projects, no studio he vowed would ever force him to compromise his vision again. This led him to forming his own company in nineteen seventy one”
2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This issue of leaving a safe environment and going out into the unknown would be an underlying premise of his first three films, THX, American Graffiti, and Star Wars. He is really making a film about himself. Reject the status quo and pursue freedom. And the problem is that THX eleven thirty eight, the studio hates it. They hate it so much. This is so bad. Now, this is, I guess, as important. There's two things that are going to happen. I want to talk to you about the Godfather and I want to talk to you about the fact that George Lucas's first movie is so terrible that it literally causes the collapse of his company and the cancellation of his deal. And yet as a direct result of this, it also leads to the next thing and his desire for control, which is Star Wars. Goes back to what Tarantino said, what Spielberg said. You know, a lot of entrepreneurs say the same thing. You're in the middle of it. You have no idea the impact that you're potentially having. And a lot of people quit before they even get to realize that.”
2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That American Zoe trope is going to make this movie THX 1138 really is a Luke Luke is making a film about himself because the main idea, it's like science fiction kind of weird so he kind of like hides that but essentially just you should reject the status quo and you pursue freedom and so he's talking about the idea behind the movie and one sentence here just stuck with me from the first time I remember this line from you know reading this book for the first time seven years ago So he says this movie is the importance of self and being able to step out of whatever you're in and move forward rather than being stuck in your little rut. This is the sentence that stuck out to me. People would give anything to quit their jobs. All they have to do is do it. They're people engages with open doors. At its core, THX 1138 was about refusing to accept the status quo. It's about a hero who lives in an anthill and dares to go out.”
2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He won a complete control, and he never wanted people to decide what he should be working on or to tell him what to do. That's it. That's all you need to know about Lucas. And the reason I would recommend reading this book is because it goes into great detail of how he actually accomplished that. Now, I'm going to talk a little bit about that, but I do want what is fascinating is that not all the ideas they were having, you know, they're young entrepreneurs don't have experience, don't really know what they're doing, the movies they're going to make are going to flop. What's fascinating is they still had an insight into the future. And so it says both Coppola and Lucas predicted a bold high-tech future. Remember, this is 1969, 1970, maybe. And they said movies will eventually be sold like soup. What does that mean? You'll be able to buy it in cartridges for $3 and play it as you would a record, you know, music record at home. He's predicting, you know, VHS tapes, then DVDs, then Blu-ray, and now streaming. And so the first movie.”
2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One problem. They don't have any money. So they have to go to the studios to ask for money. And at the beginning, as they're trying to do. The Hollywood studios is like, no, you can't make movies up there. You have to do it here. But Lucas is very stubborn. He's very persistent. He's also willing to take risks, but he's like, I love San Francisco. I don't want to live in Hollywood. And so I'm just going to keep knocking on doors until I find the money. Now, they have something happens that in some ways they have perfect timing because you have to ride a wave. Go back to the episode I just did on Portugal's almanac. Charlie Munger's surfing model is so important. He'll analyze extreme success. And he always asks himself. He's like, they had to surf a wave. What wave are they surfing? And the studios actually figure out at this exact same time that Coppola and Lucas, they would have never got the money if this didn't happen. This is why I'm telling you. At the exact same time, they realized, oh, like if you, the studio's figuring out, it's like if we can just hire young talent making independent films can actually print money because they make films for almost nothing. And some of these are like power.”
2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Slightly older. And it's this guy named John Cordy. So Lucas is invited. He sits on a panel. He goes to a conference, sits on a panel with other filmmakers who made books into movies, and one of the guys sitting next to him on this panel is a 31-year-old, so slightly older, and he was an independent filmmaker who also lived in Northern California. At this time, Lucas is in LA. He hates LA. He hates Hollywood. He hates the studio systems. He's grew up in Northern California. He wants to go back, but he's not sure how to do it. And so John is sitting on this panel and he starts going into the details of his filmmaking. And Lucas is like, oh, wow, this is our blueprint. And so it says, John had been running his own filmmaking facility out of a barn in a small ocean town just north of San Francisco. He had privately raised $100,000 for this movie that he was premiering by hitting up friends, colleagues, and even his actors for money. He shot the movie locally.”
2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Lucas, like any great director has to know how to put together a screenplay. And so he would repeat to Lucas over and over again. Like, if no one's going to take you seriously unless you write. And that wind up being excellent advice because Lucas forced himself to write Star Wars, which is obviously his entire empire. The reason he was able to sell his company, you know, 30, 40 years into the future to Disney for many, many billions of dollars. And it's also one that Coppola was older. slightly older, but also like really showing, hey, we can young filmmakers can have a chance here. Like we can get in here and do this. But it's also, he's one of the most charismatic people that ever lived. I did an episode on Coppola a long time ago. I'll link it down below. And everybody, the women in his life say this. The people that work for him say this. Spielberg and Lucas say this. In fact, listen to what how Lucas describes Coppola's just charisma. He says Francis could sell ice to the Eskimos.”
2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was hilarious. So Coppola notices this skinny young man, beard, glasses sitting there with his arms folded, not saying a word, and so he walks up. They tell him, oh, that's a student observer from USC. So he walks up to Lucas and he goes, hey, do you see anything interesting? And Lucas shook his head and said, nope, not yet. And this is how I met George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola said. Now him and Francis are going to wind up being very good friends right from the moment that they meet. Go back to this advice that Charlie Munger gave, right? Develop relationships, relationships around the world. Lucas is 23 when he meets Coppola. Copa is Copala is 28. They're going to be making movies, doing deals, starting companies, breaking up, fighting for decades, right? But it's really important because at that time, there is no young director. There's no 28-year-old director doing a major movie studio. You have to be an independent filmmaker to do that. And so Copal inspires not just Lucas.”
2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“See a major motion picture being made, and Lucas was not impressed. We had been around such opulence zillions of dollars being spent every five minutes on this huge, unwieldly thing, Lucas said. It was mind boggling, because we've been making films for $300, and we saw this as an incredible waste. That was the worst of Hollywood. So this relentless resourcefulness that he's always going to have. Like, I'm going to get into some of the numbers of his movies later. It is remarkable. And think of them again, like I said last week in the Tarantino episode. Like, these are miniature businesses and viewed through that, the financial performance of his miniature businesses is remarkable before we get there. So now he's on this set of this movie, and this is really important because Francis Ford Coppola is like five, six years older than all the other movie brats, and he's the one. It's like, you know how people like the first time you can run, people thought you'll never be able to run a four-minute, humans can't run a four minute mile. And then one person does it. And then immediately all these other people start doing it. Same thing here, but their first interaction.”
2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Should probably do too. And at the beginning, he's working on a movie set. And his idea was like, you know, he didn't think he wanted to be a director. I don't really think he liked people. And he wanted, he's like, I'll be a cameraman or an editor. And he gets a job working on that. And he's like, these people are bossing me around. He goes, more than anything else, I didn't like being bossed around. I didn't like being told which shots I could do and wouldn't and which shots I couldn't. It annoyed him. And he says at this point, I was really wanting to be an editor and a cameraman. And then in the course of doing this, I asked, well, maybe I want to be a director. And you know how he figured out why he wanted to be a director? Because he figured out who is the person on the movie set that no one else can tell what to do. The answer to that is the director. So he's like, okay, I guess that's what I'll do. I'll be that. So he's making a short movie at the same time. He has like two jobs. Again, he's a workaholic.”
2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Before he might have directed more movies and had a longer career if he worked on consistency over intensity, but he, in terms of optimizing your intensity, he went full throttle on intensity. And so he's going to graduate film school. Again, I said those on the margins often control the center. It's such an important concept. You see it over and over again because even if you, when you graduate film school this time, there's no mainstream movie studios hiring you. And so he starts working for the US government, making these propaganda films for them during Vietnam, making his own little movies on the side. He's going to wind up being able to learn. He wins this grant to spend some time on an actual big budget movie studio set. And that's really important because that's where he's going to meet Francis Ford Coppola. But before I get to that, I just want to point out, like, this is kind of hilarious. And I feel the exact same way that he does. And if you're listening to this,”
2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Breaking into this is hilarious. So he says the rules were of no concern to him. I broke them all. He said, whenever I broke the rules, I made a good film, so there wasn't much that the faculty could do about it. George Lucas was very resourceful. He always would find a way to get what he needed in terms of equipment and bodies to put together a crew. Like sometimes when you film Star Wars in London later on, they have these really strict rules for the London film union. You know, it's like you have to start at 8.30. There has to be a T. I'm not even joking about this. You have to start at 8.30. Then you have to break for tea at 10 p.m. or 10 a.m. And then you have to break for an hour lunch at 1 o'clock. And then you need another tea break at 4 o'clock. And then you can't work past six. And he's like, this is madness. He didn't want any kind of restrictions. So they would break into the equipment room to get not only materials that they needed, like an expensive camera, but they would also break into facilities. It says Lucas didn't want to limit his use of...”
2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you see this from a very early age because he's getting all these assignments when he's in film school. And they're going to make you work on teams. And he did not like that. He was becoming increasingly cranky about the idea of working with others and preferred doing everything himself. He could be easily irritated. If he was saddled with crew members who could not keep up with him, he's also super, super competitive. Later on in the book, it says something like Francis Ford Coppola responds back a few times Lucas says, I'm retired, never making movies again. He does this a few times. And Coppola is like, he'll be back. And they're like, why do you think he's going to be back? It's like, because George loves winning too much. And so young George says, I was intimate, I was really into making it a competition. Who can get it done first and best if they couldn't cut the mustard, they shouldn't have been there. And then he also has some talent that's obvious everybody else was clear that he was one of USC's most dexterious editors. Lucas worked quickly and without complaint. He'd cover up any defects, shortages, or missing shots.”
2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Were his addiction. We were passionate about movies. We were always scrambling to get our next fix. Listen to how they're describing this. This is how he knew this is what you should be doing with your life. Described working as your next fix to get a little film in the camera and shoot something. And then here's a glimpse of something that he's going to have problems with his entire life. He wasn't really a big fan of collaborators. He wanted subordinates. Again, he is a dictator. He wants, you know, prefers working alone. In many cases, I almost feel like He was born at the wrong time because it even says like he's really kind of a really bad onset. Didn't know how to deal with humans. He's super shy, wouldn't talk, wouldn't give instructions. And yet he said like he really made films in the editing room. He's just by himself editing. And so I almost think like if he was born now, he's going to, especially with all these new technologies, basically have one person filmmakers because they're going to use all this technology. I think that's how George would have preferred.”
2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Even 50 years later, look at life as an impressive debut, aggressive political, and utterly confident. As soon as I made my first film, I thought, hey, I'm good at this. I know how to do this. From then on, I never questioned it, Lucas said. And right from the rip, he is completely obsessed. He preferred shutting himself in his top floor bedroom, sitting at the drawing board, planning out his films and sketching out ideas. I would always try to get him to go out to parties and clubs and stuff, this is his roommate. And George would usually stay upstairs in his room, drawing these things, he called them little star troopers. This is like a decade before Star Wars. So he's drawing these things he calls little star troopers. But for Lucas, that was better than parting. I'd be working all day and all night, living on chocolate bars and coffee, said Lucas. It was a great life. I had enthusiasm, enthusiasm, and I was too busy to get into drugs. Movies.”
2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Letters. That's what he put on this movie that he's making. Lucas had chosen to set his film to music and open defiance of his professor's instructions, and so the movie he made is called Look at Life,”
2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's episode 295. If you haven't listened to it yet. But he talked about the fact that they would meet people in their 20s, 30s, and 40s, and they would do business and do deals for the rest of their lives. Many of the people that he that Charlie was referring to, because Charlie was 99 when I met him, were dead. But he said that's exactly what they did. Okay, so let's go back to this idea where Lucas is just, he's unmanageable. He's a juvenile delinquent. And so now he's in film school. And, you know, the film professors are like, okay, we're going to practice making films. And they give you like this sheet of instructions. And it must be, you know, must be filmed in black and white. Must be this story must look this way. It must not go over, you know, this length. And George Lucas is like, I don't give a damn about your instructions. I'm going to do what I want. Lucas made his intentions immediately clear with his first on-screen credit. This was no student assignment. It was a short film by George Lucas. That is in big.”
2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Lucas would be one of a group of highly motivated and young filmmakers. They were all friends who would have a lasting impact on film and culture. This is another example that relationships around the world. You see it over and over again in these books. It's so important to develop relationships with other people that are just like you. Even if you're, they don't look at themselves as competitors, they tend to compete, but they also collaborate. But they all need each other because they're trying to break into a system that is close. At this point in history, unless you're part of a union, unless you already know somebody in the industry, you're not breaking in even with a film degree. It's yet another illustration of one of my favorite concepts from Game of Thrones, where they said those on the margins often come to control the center. At this time, Spielberg, Corsica, De Palma, Coppola, Lucas, they are on the margin. The center is controlled by these old school conservative studios that are locking all these young people out. It was unheard of to have a director in their 20s. And yet this network...”
2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It, I slept it 24 hours a day. There was no going back after that. That is a direct quote from George Lucas. There was no going back after that. You know what's fascinating? I'm going to put this book down. Picking up the Steven Spielberg book that I republished last week, right? That book is 25 years old maybe. This book is 25 years old. Listen to how Stephen Spielberg describes. He uses the exact same language. This is what Spielberg said. Making movies grows on you. You can't shake it. I like directing above all. All I know for sure is I've gone too far to back out now. There is no going back. They both discovered what they're going to do. Now, this is the fascinating part because this turns into the USC Mafia Spielberg's part of that, even though he didn't go to USC. You're talking about a group of super talented filmmakers. And a lot of them come out to California, even though they call the UC Mafia.”
2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source