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George Lucas

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2024-04-12
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2024-04-12
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  1. “Son got accepted in the USC and he didn't understand. They said, you know, the school cinema or cinematography. He didn't understand that it was his way of getting to a form of art school. And so his dad agrees to help him out, pays tuition, and help him get housing. And the reason I say that decision changed the trajectory of George Lucas's life is because that's when he meets essentially just a collection of filmmakers who are all obsessed with movies. They're all young and they wind up helping each other for decades. It's almost like the island of misfit toys because before this it says For many of them, it was the first time they had a click of their own, a gathering place where they could talk about their interest, movies without eye-rolling from the other cool kids. For many reality finally began when they entered film school. Lucas knew that he had found his way before he wasn't sure who was in the cars. He had all these other interests. And then he's like, oh, wait, this is it. I was sort of floundering for something. And when I finally discovered film, I really fell madly in love with it.”

    2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “That my son, like you're gonna go to our school, there's no way in hell I'm paying for it. And he told his son, there's no way you're gonna make money. You can't do that. And so one of Lucas's friends says, hey, why don't you, if you're not going to go to art school, take a look at USC, University of Southern California has this new cinematography school. And keep in mind, this is the mid-1960s. There's not many film schools in the United States. And so this is why Tarantino last week in his book would talk about the movie Brads. He said they love movies. They dreamed of movies. And they even received degrees in movies back when that was a dubious major. And Lucas talks about this. Like it was embarrassing. Other people were like, you're going to film school. They didn't even call film school. They called it cinematography school. It's like, what the hell is this? And he says, I lost a lot of face. The idea of going into film was a really goofy idea at the time. But what was fascinating is his dad's like, there's no way in hell I'm playing for art school. Then he was impressed that.”

    2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Invention and vertical integration is just a way, another form of control. And that control to make sure that no one else can ever, ever tell him what to do. And so he gets to college. He's like, I have no idea what I want to do. So he just goes to like a little junior college, a little community college. And then he realizes, like, listen, I'm not stupid. Remember the Tarantino episode? I don't know if I should have backup. Why am I doing like Lucas right now? I think if you listen to, re-listened to the Spielberg episode I just republished a couple days ago and then Tarantino. I think this line through what I'm doing right now, Tarantino studied there about 10. They came about 10 to 15 years before he did. Tarantino studied Spielberg and Lucas, all the movie brats, which I'll get into the rest of these guys. Essentially, like these filmmaking geniuses that all met in the early 20s and in many cases, they're 70, 80 years old today and they're still friends. But I find this fascinating because Tarantino studied Spielberg and Lucas. Spielberg and Lucas studied Walt Disney.”

    2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “As a matter of fact, I'm going to be a millionaire before I'm 30. And that is one of the smartest insights that a young George Lucas ever had, the fact that he realized that you need to make money, not to buy a bunch of useless shit, but to actually buy your own freedom. And that's exactly what he uses his money for. So it's almost like a contrast embedded in one person because he will bet literally the house, which he does multiple times on the success of one movie, but he's unbelievably fiscally conservative with the way he runs this business. And that fiscal conservatism actually breaks up. He has like co-founder breakups with Francis Fort Coppolo because Coppola was essentially the exact opposite. George Lucas was always very, very concerned about protecting his downside because all he wanted to do was never jeopardize anything that would cause him to relinquish his freedom over what he worked on. You could think of George Lucas's constant.”

    2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Comes from Yvonne Shenard, who is the founder of Patagonia. He says, if you want to understand the entrepreneur, study the juvenile delinquent. The delinquent is saying with his actions, this sucks, I'm going to do my own thing. His grades were so bad his dad was convinced that he was going to be a loser. Lucas thought his father's lack of interest in him was typical, and it was probably understandable. I was a hell raiser, and I didn't do very well in school. My father wrote me off, and then it doesn't help that he's not doing well at school, doesn't really have a direction in what he wants to do in life yet. And so he goes and briefly works for his dad at the stationary store. He doesn't last long. He quits, and then him and his dad get back into this argument. And so this is Lucas' description of that. I get really mad at my father and I told him, I'll never work in a job where I have to do the same thing over and over again every day. His father responded, you'll be back in a few years. I'll never be back, Lucas said.”

    2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Ron Howard said admiringly, but that's what George did. Back to Scrooge McDuck in Scrooge's world, hard work paid off, but so did cleverness and a desire to do something in a way no one had ever thought of before. Scrooge's ethic reflected honor, honesty, and allowing other people to believe in their own ideas, not trying to force everyone into one form which is, I think, exactly how he described what his dad was trying to do to him. His dad was trying to make another him. And George was like, but I'm not the same as you. I want to live life on my terms. The lessons Lucas learned from Uncle Scrooge, which shaped the kind of businessman he would become in the future, conservative and driven, believing strongly in his own vision and pursuing it aggressively. Let's go back to more of his juvenile delinquent ways, as his grades suffered, Lucas began to look more and more like the juvenile delinquent his teachers were already convinced that he was, one of my favorite lines ever, describing founder mentality and entrepreneurs.”

    2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “About going here, I was going to talk to you about this later, but I'm going to jump ahead because I think it's one of the most important ideas in the book. And I might repeat this in the future. But they talked about the fact that he was so dissatisfied with that he could not make the vision in his head real, right? That there was not, that the computer graphics weren't there, the special effects weren't there. So he's like, what's the solution? I'm going to start my own company. I have to create the technology that I want to see in the world just so I can make the movies look how I want them to look. And so he found this company called Industrial Light and Magic, which absolutely dominates in special effects for a couple decades. Ron Howard has this excellent quote later in the book, right, talking about the fact that who the hell would do something like that? And I think he summarizes it better than I ever could. He goes, 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.”

    2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Listen to the lessons he draws from watching Scrooge McDuck, which is the money hoarding globetrodding uncle of Donald Duck, right? And so it says Lucas was fascinated not only by Scrooge's exploits, but also by his conniving capitalist ways, work smarter, not harder was Scrooge's motto, and yet his stories were full of inventive schemes that more often than not made him richer and even more successful. In Scrooge's world, hard work paid off, but so did cleverness and a desire to do something in a way no one had ever thought of before. Think about it, come on. Think about the life and career of George Lucas, a desire to do something in a way that no one had ever thought of before. That is exactly Lucas's approach to the filmmaking industry. Movie making had been around for four or five decades before Lucas came along. Think about why Peter Jackson said, hey, this guy's the Thomas Edison of our industry. You know what? I wasn't even thinking.”

    2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “And reflecting on this time of his life, George Lucas says, I was addicted to those. It started me on a lifelong love of history. And as a kid, I spent a lot of time trying to relate the past to the present. And just like everybody else that gets to the top of their profession, Lucas references and uses that learning from history as a form of leverage. He'll talk about, I watched this interview with him and Christopher Nolan that took place probably a decade ago. And in that, Lucas is just talking about the fact that all this reading and studying of history that he was doing as a kid influenced the storyline for Star Wars. And then Lucas continues to use the entire world and all of its experiences as like this giant classroom. And so he actually gets, this was hilarious. You know who's going to have what fictional character is going to have a huge influence on the way that Lucas built his empire and thinks about building his business? Scrooge McDuck. I remember watching Scrooge McDuck and Ducktales when like I was a kid. I didn't even know that it was around when Lucas was a kid. And so”

    2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Entire life. He really talks about the importance of mentorship, but he never had an older brother. And so throughout his entire career, you see him trying to attach himself to a slightly older, almost like bigger brother figure. And he talks about why this was so important. He said, that's one of the ways that you learn. You attach yourself to somebody older and wiser than you. You learn everything they have to teach, and then you move on to your own accomplishments. And so another way that George Lucas was searching for mentorship was not only for older brother figures, but also through books. He was never very good in school, but he loved to read. I got to this section of the book and it reminded me of, I saw this interview that's pretty incredible. All the way back in 2012, it's with Elon Musk and he's being interviewed by this guy named Kevin Rose. I will grab the link from YouTube and put it in the show notes in case you want to watch it. Highly recommend you do. Because it takes place on the Tesla, the factory floor of Tesla back when I think they only...”

    2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Ran the business the way he did. He was the sole shareholder, the only shareholder in Lucasfilm when he sells it to Disney for over $4 billion. And he's got this, I would say, juvenile delinquent streak in him since he was a very young boy. A lot of this came out of this kind of butting heads are fighting that he would have with his father because Lucas is kind of like a hippie or a rebel and his dad's the exact opposite of that. So his dad is actually George Lucas Sr. And so George Lucas Jr. describes his dad as a very old fashioned kind of guy. He was a kind of classic small town businessman that you would see in a movie. He owned a stationary store. And Lucas said later in interviews that he was remembering very, very angry at his father for most of his childhood. And I think the main reason that that is because his dad was intent on controlling him. It's something else that Lucas never had that he looked for.”

    2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Make the movie, and he says they decided they know more about making movies than directors. And here's the problem you can't fight them because they've got the money. And so Lucas vowed one thing. If Star Wars worked out, one thing he would have to change for sure. He would control the money. Back to Lucas. I was seriously, seriously depressed at this point because nothing had gone right. Everything was screwed up. I was desperately unhappy a little more than a year before I was scheduled to hit theaters. Star Wars was a mess and the movie was going to be terrible. Lucas was certain of it. And I think that's a really important place to start when you analyze the career of George Lucas, the depth of his depression is going to influence all the decisions he's going to make. And in turn, the success of those decisions that he makes makes him a multi, multi, multi-billionaire. So I want to touch on a few things in his childhood because I think it would give us you and I a better understanding of just really why he.”

    2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “The executives at 20th Century Fox had nickel and dimed him every step of the way. They would deny him the money that he needed to ensure that everything worked. The people at Fox were also skeptical, science fiction, they said, was a dead genre. And they were actually right about that at this time in history. Science fiction was in films, was a dead genre. The difference was you needed the right people to show up. And those people happened to be George Lucas and his lifelong friend Stephen Spielberg. Stephen Spielberg makes close encounters of the third kind and Lucas, of course, made Star Wars. Go back to Lucas. It was very, very difficult to get things to work. Everything was a prototype. We had to build this and we had to build it with no money, but we had to make this work. The problem is nothing really worked as we wanted. Lucas vowed he would never cede control over his film to executives at the studios again. And something he would repeat over and over again. It's like, what do they actually know about filmmaking? They've never made a film, but they would come down and talk to him and tell him this is how you.”

    2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “About, but especially with the filmmaker biographies. Tarantino talks about this, Christopher Nolan talks about this, James Cameron talks about this, Steven Spielberg talks about this. You'll see this in George Lucas. It is very hard to understand at the time you're doing something how it's actually going to turn out and how impactful it was. He had no idea. There's no possible way when George Lucas started working on Star Wars that he could have predicted the impact that those movies would have on the world. And then, of course, the influence and control it had over the building of his business. And think about how difficult this movie was to make is fascinating to think about. But what I'm really interested in is how this experience influences this intense desire for control and independence. That is the main theme of Lucas's life and career. So he says, the chute was a disaster from the beginning.”

    2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Been fully appreciated by the industry for his remarkable innovations, the director Peter Jackson once said. George Lucas is the Thomas Edison of the modern film industry. But George Lucas knew what he had done. He knew his place, and he seemed comfortable with it. When asked by interviewer Charlie Rose what he thought the first line of his obituary might say, Lucas gave perhaps the best summation of his lengthy career in two single syllable words. His answer I tried.”

    2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “George Lucas unapologetically invested in what he believed in the most, himself. As a result, the film empire that he created would empower not just him, but other filmmakers to produce movies exactly as they envision them, without a studio imposing its own priorities, complaining about budgets, or micromanaging the process. George Lucas, the small town son of the owner of a stationary store, had said no to the family business and then built a cinematic empire based on his own uncompromising vision of the film ministry, not as it was, but as he thought it should be. Much of that vision lay in the possibilities presented by new technology. Technology that Lucas developed with his own money. I can't help feeling that George Lucas has never been”

    2024-04-12 · Founders · #345 George Lucas · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source