| 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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