Book Description:
After the 1973 success of American Graffiti, filmmaker George Lucas
made the fateful decision to pursue a longtime dream project: a
space fantasy movie unlike any ever produced. Lucas envisioned a
swashbuckling SF saga inspired by the Flash Gordon serials classic
American westerns, the epic cinema of Japanese auteur Akira
Kurosawa, and mythological heroes. Its original title: The Star
Wars. The rest is history, and how it was made is a story as
entertaining and exciting as the movie that has enthralled millions
for thirty years–a story that has never been told as it was meant
to be. Until now.
Using his unprecedented access to the Lucasfilm Archives and its
trove of never-before-published “lost” interviews, photos,
production notes, factoids, and anecdotes, Star Wars scholar J. W.
Rinzler hurtles readers back in time for a one-of-a-kind
behind-the-scenes look at the nearly decade-long quest of George
Lucas and his key collaborators to make the “little” movie that
became a phenomenon. For the first time, it’s all here:
- the evolution of the now-classic story and
characters–including “Annikin Starkiller” and “a huge
green-skinned monster with no nose and large gills” named Han
Solo
- excerpts from George Lucas’s numerous,
ever-morphing script drafts
- the birth of Industrial Light & Magic, the
special-effects company that revolutionized Hollywood filmmaking
- the studio-hopping and budget battles that
nearly scuttled the entire project
- the director’s early casting saga, which
might have led to a film spoken mostly in Japanese–including
the intensive auditions that won the cast members their roles
and made them legends
- the grueling, nearly catastrophic location
shoot in Tunisia and the subsequent breakneck dash at Elstree
Studios in London
- the who’s who of young film rebels who
pitched in to help–including Francis Ford Coppola, Steven
Spielberg, and Brian DePalma
But perhaps most exciting, and rarest of all, are
the interviews conducted before and during production and
immediately after the release of Star Wars–in which George Lucas,
Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Sir Alec Guinness,
Anthony Daniels, composer John Williams, effects masters Dennis
Muren, Richard Edlund, and John Dykstra, Phil Tippett, Rick Baker,
legendary production designer John Barry, and a host of others share
their fascinating tales from the trenches and candid opinions of the
film that would ultimately change their lives.
No matter how you view the spectrum of this thirty-year phenomenon,
The Making of Star Wars stands as a crucial document–rich in
fascination and revelation–of a genuine cinematic and cultural
touchstone.
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