And people laughed when I created a category solely for Star Wars related entries...
From today's Dark Horizons, excerpts from an Associated Press interview with George Lucas:
Question: Why not release both the originals and special editions on DVD?
Lucas: The special edition, that's the one I wanted out there. The other movie, it's on VHS, if anybody wants it. ... I'm not going to spend the, we're talking millions of dollars here, the money and the time to refurbish that, because to me, it doesn't really exist anymore. It's like this is the movie I wanted it to be, and I'm sorry you saw half a completed film and fell in love with it. But I want it to be the way I want it to be. I'm the one who has to take responsibility for it. I'm the one who has to have everybody throw rocks at me all the time, so at least if they're going to throw rocks at me, they're going to throw rocks at me for something I love rather than something I think is not very good, or at least something I think is not finished.
Plenty of artists deal with works that are unfinished. Writers call them "drafts." Lucas can whine all he wants about how the original was "jerked from his hands," but only guys like Kubrick and Altman have the pull to dick around for years making a film. Everyone else (especially a director with one moderately successful studio picture under his belt) should be prepared to suck it up.
What's his excuse for redoing Empire and Return of the Jedi yet again? Certainly the success of Star Wars meant he could take the time to make something other than a "half-completed" film at the time?
As for those widely available VHS copies he's referring to, checking the Amazon listing for "Star Wars original versions" turns up a lot of "out of stock" messages. You can find a couple sets on eBay for $30 and up, but it isn't like one can just walk into Fry's and buy them. Maybe that's because Lucas is no longer allowing the tapes to be produced?
Poor guy, he's "sorry" all the way to the bank. I'd give more credence to his claims that it would cost millions to "refurbish" the originals, but he'd easily make that back in two hour's worth of sales.
Question: After "Episode III," will you ever revisit "Star Wars"?
Lucas: "Ultimately, I'm going to probably move it into television and let other people take it. I'm sort of preserving the feature film part for what has happened and never go there again, but I can go off into various offshoots and things. You know, I've got offshoot novels, I've got offshoot comics. So it's very easy to say, "Well, OK, that's that genre, and I'll find a really talented person to take it and create it." Just like the comic books and the novels are somebody else's way of doing it. I don't mind that. Some of it might turn out to be pretty good. If I get the right people involved, it could be interesting".
Man, I had this idea months ago. I'll give it a whirl, dude. Keep the executive producer credit and just give me a percentage of merchandising and let me handle the interviews. I work cheap.
So he's gone from "definitely not" to "it could be interesting" in the space of a week. The guy obviously needs some help solidifying his platform.
The whole interview can be read here.
Pete, please stop obsessing over this sad little man and his irrelevant little movie. I do not understand the curious power this unimaginative space opera holds over you and the rest of my age bracket. Our children think it sucks, their children will think it sucks, and a hundred years from now, only your head in its stale nutrient vat will care one whit about whether Han shot first.
It is widely accepted that the dialogue is awful, the acting 2nd rate, the story lifted wholesale and the cinemetography amateurish. What is left except some special effects and a handful of precious, precious Kenner action figures?
It is time to face yourself squarely in a mirror and say: I accept that Star Wars blows. It fascinated me as a child, but I am an adult now with adult values and standards, and I reject this dog as the scruffy nerf-herder of a movie that it is. George Lucas, I banish you and your memory to the Valley of Suck, where you are free to engage in your masturbatory enterprises without fear that I shall observe or even care.
There! I feel better already. You will too.
Permission to treat the witness as a hostage?
I do not understand the curious power this unimaginative space opera holds over you and the rest of my age bracket
Eh, it's more inertia now than anything else, kept rolling by the hilariously inane things that keep coming out of Lucas' mouth.
Plus, it's one of the few things about which I can speak authoritatively (unlike everything else on this blog).
HWRNMNBSOL... what you said!!!! Here,here!
The fact that this movie got as much attention as it did upon first release can be attributed to either Lucas selling his soul to the devil, or his catching lightning in a bottle as a public worn down by gritty realism in movies (ie Scorcese, Coppola, and anything else with Pacino in it) and by a decade full of bad news (from Kent State and Vietnam through Watergate through energy crises through inflation, etc.) was desperate for flights of fancy and old-style escapism.
The fact that anyone even bothers to pay attention to Lucas or anything he does today? Well, that can't be explained. The man wrote the worst dialogue this side of an Ed Wood or Russ Meyer flick. And any hint of storytelling ability he ever had disappeared with the advent of CGI... Lucas is the Lawnmower Man of film - swallowed up by technology to the point where the real man is laying shriveled and dead in a VR chair in some lab somewhere in the ILM complex. He ceased to be relevant at about the same time as Alicia Bridges and Amii Stewart.
However, I'll give you credit, Pete... reading your rants on the man is certainly entertaining!
Deja vu?
Sometime long ago and far away I ended up with an "extra" Star Wars VHS tape (original version). Since I already had the trilogy box set on VHS I figured I would eventually get rid of the extra tape. Now I know to hang on to it like it was made of gold.