George Lucas retires from filmmaking. Begins construction on artificial moon in Earth's orbit. Some speculate that's no moon he's building.
http://www.g4tv.com/attackoftheshow/...om-filmmaking/
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George Lucas, the man who created what may possibly be the most seminal pop-culture phenomenon film franchise of all time (and I'm not talking about Twilight) has announced that he's done with the movie business.
With this week's release of Red Tails, in which Lucas serves as executive producer, the legendary filmmaker will bow out of an industry that he no doubt helped shape.
For some fans, it's a bittersweet moment, especially to those critical of his more recent work in the Star Wars prequels and his perpetual tinkering with the original trilogy with its subsequent home releases.What will become of Star Wars fandom without the white-bearded Godfather?
As Lucas state unequivocally:“I’m retiring, I’m moving away from the business, from the company, from all this kind of stuff.”
The task of getting Red Tails, a big-budget film chronicling the World War II deeds of the famed, socially-significant Tuskegee Airmen was a difficult one for Lucas, who has always been known to appreciate having the autonomy to do the kind of films that he wants to make, the way that he wants to make them. On Red Tails, studio bigwigs were obstinate on the project, not giving him the time of the day, treating the iconic filmmaker as if he was pitching a sequel to Plan 9 From Outer Space.
By the time, he eventually overcame those obstacles and finally got the film made with director Anthony Hemingway, it might be the case that he just had enough.
There was also the issue of the rabid fanboy backlash, which may have affected the usually stone-faced Lucas more than he would have them think.
As Lucas tells The New York Times:“I think there are a lot more important things in the world” than feuds with fanboys.
Later adding:“On the Internet, all those same guys that are complaining I made a change are completely changing the movie,” Lucas says, referring to fans who, like the dreaded studios, have done their own forcible re-edits. “I’m saying: ‘Fine. But my movie, with my name on it, that says I did it, needs to be the way I want it.’ "From his perspective, the studios have been ruining his films since the early days with American Graffiti and THX 1138, a process which Lucas, the car buff, describes as "someone keying your car." Yet, it was not until the success of Star Wars where he had achieved the kind of independence from the studios which he craved.
So, now, with some of his muscle seemingly diminished in the eyes of those bigwigs who make the movies happen, to come full-circle and find himself at their mercy, may not be the way he wants to continue.It's an interesting phenomenon that the man who reaped untold fortunes off the most popular franchise of all time still felt a type of artistic OCD when it came to his work.
While I'm sure you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who thought that the heart-wrenching climax of Return of the Jedi could have used a "Nooooo," one still has to respect that, despite the "money-grubbing" persona that haters often affix to him, that Lucas remains within, that skinny kid at the University of Southern California that just wanted to make HIS movies.
At the end of the day, I think that even the haters can put aside the issues and join the chorus of fans to say, "Thanks for everything, George."
This is sourced from the NY Times which writes a much more comprehensive article, but G4's Attack of the Blog does a pretty good job of condensing the 6 page story. Here's the read if you're interested.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/ma...ewanted=2&_r=1
If you don't want to read the article then here are some quoted highlights of Hollywood douchebag talk.
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The first “Red Tails” scripts, which Lucas began commissioning in the early 1990s, suggested a three-part epic. Imagine the opening scenes in segregated Alabama, where one of the original Tuskegee instructors takes Eleanor Roosevelt for a spin; then picture the airborne dogfights over Europe, with slick visual effects from Industrial Light and Magic; and finally, in an irony worthy of Ralph Ellison, envision the war heroes returning home to find that the country they fought for is still in the clammy hands of Jim Crow. “You think ‘Lawrence of Arabia,’ you think ‘The Bridge on the River Kwai,’ ” Rick McCallum says. “Then you think, Oh, my God, ‘Red Tails.’
“I can’t make that movie,” Lucas recalled thinking when he read the scripts. “I’m going to have make this kind of . . . entertainment movie.” So Lucas focused on the middle chapter: the dogfights and the Nazi-hunting black pilots who shout, “How you like that, Mr. Hitler!” (When I mention Lucas’s naïve style to Michael Bay, the director of the “Transformers” movies, he says sympathetically, “That’s what I get crap for from my critics.”)
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After downing a few Grey Goose tonics at New York’s Royalton hotel, Cuba Gooding Jr., one of the stars of “Red Tails,” came up with a rejoinder to all the people who turned down the project. “I like to say James Cameron made a movie just like this,” he said excitedly. “Instead of black people, there were blue people being held down by white people. It was called ‘Avatar!’ And the studios said the same thing to him: ‘We can’t do a movie with blue people!’ ”
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Hemingway couldn’t believe he was working with Lucas. At the end of their first interview, the director turned to Lucas and said, “May the force be with you.” (Hemingway told me that afterward he was so embarrassed, he felt like jumping out of a window.) When Hemingway got the call telling him he’d been hired to direct the next George Lucas movie, he pulled over to the side of the road and began to cry.
The article keeps saying he was a director for The Wire, and for anyone who watches good TV knows that to be one of the greatest shows of all time. So I'm thinking this movie might be entertaining, maybe great with a good director, but a little research reveals he's only directed a few episodes and mostly other episodes of shows like Treme and CSI New York. Well, that's okay, he was still involved in those shows and they're all okay. Plus, you've got Cuba Gooding, Jr., Terrence Howard, and Bill Cranston. I don't know how involved their roles are in the story, but they're really cool actors.
Remember that scene where Indiana Jones survives a nuclear blast in a refrigerator? Maybe you blacked out that traumatic movie moment because you couldn't believe someone would actually try to plausibly use that as a method to survive a nuclear explosion. Here's some insight on that.
I'm going to watch the movie. I don't have total disrespect for the guy. I do think Star Wars fanboyism and the billions of dollars have given him an oversized ego. He's helped make some great movies and some of my personal favorites such as Americna Graffiti, THX 1138, Labyrinth, The Land Before Time, and Hook. So at the end of all this, what do I think? I think George Lucas is trying to find a fanbase in the black community because he hasn't completely destroyed their childhoods in the last decade with shitty trilogies and another sequel.Quote:
In fact, it was Spielberg who “didn’t believe” the scene. In response to Spielberg’s fears, Lucas put together a whole nuking-the-fridge dossier. It was about six inches thick, he indicated with his hands. Lucas said that if the refrigerator were lead-lined, and if Indy didn’t break his neck when the fridge crashed to earth, and if he were able to get the door open, he could, in fact, survive. “The odds of surviving that refrigerator — from a lot of scientists — are about 50-50,” Lucas said.
