Star Wars: “No one was supportive”

From Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock ‘N’ Roll Generation Saved Hollywood by Peter Biskind

Lucas worked on the Star Wars script for two and one half years, writing at the back of his house in San Anselmo in a room that he shared with a gaudy Wurlitzer juke box. A photograph of Sergei Eisenstein peered down at him from the wall behind his desk. The Emperor, corrupted by power, was based on Richard Nixon, although some of his friends suggested that it was only later, after the picture became a hit, that Lucas claimed this. He plundered Flash Gordon serials and other pulp sci-fi of the 30s for decor and costume. He wrote, revised, and revised some more. He puzzled over how to get the right “wholesome” tone, avoiding sex and violence, yet including “hip new stuff”.

First there were too many characters, then too few. They combined, and then divided again. The plot was too simple, too complex. Princess Leia’s role grew bigger, then smaller. Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader, initially one character, became two. The Force got a good side (Ashla) and a bad side (Bogan). Annikin Starkiller became Luke Skywalker. Kenobi began life as an elderly general, became an addled hermit, and then an elderly general again. A Kiber Crystal appeared, then disappeared.

Lucas, meanwhile, was afflicted by headaches, pains in the stomach and chest. He became compulsive about his writing materials, insisting on No. 2 pencils and blue and green lined paper. He took to slicing off bits of his hair with scissors, depositing them, along with crumpled sheets of paper, in the wastebasket. He could never remember how he had spelled the names of his characters, rendering Chewbacca differently every time he wrote it.

When Lucas finished a draft, he would show it to his friends: Coppola, Huyck and Katz, Robbins, and so on. No one was supportive. “They said, ‘George, you should be making more of an artistic statement,'” Lucas recalled. “People said I should have made Apocalypse Now after Grafitti, and not Star Wars. They said I should be doing movies like Taxi Driver.” He was depressed, convinced he was a failure. Marcia asked De Palma to talk to him. “George thinks he has no talent,” she said. “He respects you. Tell him he does.”

The third draft was finished on August 1, 1975, by which time Marcia had started work on Taxi Driver. Lucas wrote Coppola into his script as Han Solo, in a self-flattering version of their relationship. Solo outwitted the Empire (read, studios) and enjoyed skating along the edge of the precipice, but he gambled and lost heavily, never accumulating enough money to get any real power, and had a self-destructive streak a mile wide. And most important, he lost the girl to Luke, ie., George. He was still anxious about the script, and begged Huyck and Katz to do a polish, swearing them to secrecy. “They’re already nervous,” he told them. “If they find out that I’ve gotten someone else to rewrite the script, they’re gonna back out. I’ll give you some points.” He gave them two.

Meanwhile, Fox still hadn’t given Lucas the green light. Finally, the time came when Ladd had to decide whether to shelve Lucas’s movie, or let him begin. A few weeks before the Oscars, in March, he had put Lucas’s one-paragraph synopsis in front of CEO Dennis Stanfill and the board of directors. He asked them to commit $8.5 million to a project in a despised genre, without names, without a presold book. Miraculously, the board agreed. Lucas had a go.