Wasn’t it just three years ago around the end of “Revenge Of The Sith” promotion that George Lucas said he wanted to leave the world of big-budget space epic operas to concentrate on smaller, more personal films like 1971 dystopian film, “THX1138”?
In a New York Times article from Sunday, June 29, discussing the upcoming animated film and television project, “Star Wars: The Clone Wars,” Lucas not only suggested these personal projects would probably never come to pass, he threw his longtime pal Francis Ford Coppola under the bus while saying so.
The Times says Lucas learned a lesson from Coppola’s arty metaphysical 2007 film, “Youth Without Youth,” that only played 18 theaters in the U.S. and grossed only $250,000. “Did you see it?” Lucas asked rhetorically. “Uh, no. Did you even know it came out?”
For his part, Coppola said he was well aware his films weren’t going to be blockbusters made for mainstream audiences and the personal risk was the whole point. “We make films for ourselves. If no one wants to see them, what can we do?” He shrugged, “Emotion does much better at the box office than philosophy.”
As for “Star Wars: The Clone Wars,”the feature-length version which is set to come out August 15, Lucas financed the movie and TV shows himself, reportedly for $750,000 to $1 million per episode. And of course the irritable, impatient and perennially intolerant Lucas basically said he pitched studios with his patently petulant, “it’s my way or the highway” approach to filmmaking, business and life.
“It’s much easier for me to just do the show I want, say, ‘Here it is, do you wish to license it or not?’ ” Lucas told the Times. “That’s it. There’s no notes, no comments. I don’t care what your opinion is. You either put it on the air or you don’t.”
Lucas did suggest he still has the chance to make “personal films,” but it seemed like lip service from a guy who doesn’t seem to crave making anything that doesn’t have blockbuster appeal. Plus he’s still working on a live-action “Star Wars’ TV series (a milieu he can’t seem to let go). Is he going to make personal films in his 80s? Still, he insists it could happen. “I can go and make half a dozen ‘THXes.’ I’ll lose everything I put into them, guaranteed. But I can have a lot of fun doing it.”