From Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock ‘N’ Roll Generation Saved Hollywood
Star Wars went into production at Elstree Studios outside London on March 25, 1976. Lucas chose to shoot in London to get away from the studio and to save money, but right away he ran into trouble. His relationship with the cast and crew was prickly, to say the least. He was a proud man who would not beg for what he wanted. “George does not ask people more than once,” says Howard Kazanjian, who was producer of More American Grafitti. “If you say no to him, you don’t get asked a second time.” George never said thank you, and the people who worked for him thought he was cold and remote. Most of the time he had no contact with them at all, didn’t know who they were. Recalls Huyck, “When George and Gary Kurtz, who was also not Mr. Warmth, got to England, they offended the English crew because they just don’t know how to deal with people.” Lucas, in looking back on the production later, observed, “I realized why directors are such horrible people, because you want things to be right, and people will just not listen to you, and there is no time to be nice, to be delicate. I spent all my time yelling and screaming at people.”
Once again, George was not terribly helpful to the actors. The dialogue was awful. As Harrison Ford famously told him, “George, you can type this shit, but you sure can’t say it.”
