In 1971, after screening “THX 1138” at the Cannes Film Festival, director George Lucas reportedly desperately needed money to pay for his hotel bill.
So, he met with David Picker, then head of the film studio United Artists (UA), and tried to sell him on a few projects.
“I have this sort of space opera thing. It’s sort of an action-adventure film in space,” Lucas said haltingly.
By the time the conversation ended, Lucas, then 27, had signed away the rights to “Star Wars” and “American Graffiti” for just $10,000 total.
Lucky for Lucas, UA would end up dropping both projects because the “Graffiti” script wasn’t satisfactory. Years later, Picker confessed that given the tiny amount of money, he didn’t even remember making the deal.
The anecdote is one of many in Paul Fischer’s new book — “The Last Kings of Hollywood: Coppola, Lucas, Spielberg, and the Battle for the Soul of American Cinema” (Celadon Books, out tomorrow) — that portrays the twisted, bumpy road the young directors took to make some of the most iconic films in history. Though they were creative geniuses for certain, they also had plenty of bad ideas and moments of poor judgement.
When the three auteurs met for lunch for the first time in 1969, Spielberg, then 22, told the pair about a film he was hoping Universal would green light for him to direct.
“It was a sex comedy retelling of ‘Snow White’ featuring, in lieu of dwarves, seven guys who run a Chinese food factory,” writes Fischer.
Thankfully, Universal rejected the idea weeks later.
At that point, Lucas’ “American Graffiti” had been accepted to Cannes, and he had offers to direct both the film version of The Who’s rock opera “Tommy” and the rock musical “Hair.” Despite being destitute at the time, he rejected them both, insisting instead on creating his own original work.
Spielberg, meanwhile, was hired to direct “Jaws” after the studio’s first choice, television commercial director Dick Richards, met with studio executives and kept referring to the shark in the film as a whale.
Lucas, along with Scorsese and screenwriter John Milius, dropped in on Spielberg to see the building of the film’s mechanical shark, leading the director to play a prank on his friend that went further than anticipated.
“George poked his head into [the shark’s] mouth to check out the inside mechanisms,” writes Fischer. “Steven, for a joke, pulled the lever that shut the shark’s mouth, and got George stuck inside. Steven, Marty, and Milius yanked and pulled, forced the jaws apart and, after several minutes of sweaty, panicked struggle, managed to free George.”
It was just the beginning of a tumultuous filmmaking process.
Just one week before shooting was scheduled to begin, Spielberg still hadn’t cast any of the lead roles — police chief Brody, shark hunter Quint, and Hooper, the oceanographer.
“Lee Marvin, Steven’s first choice to play Quint, turned him down,” writes Fischer. “Jon Voight, Timothy Bottoms, and Jeff Bridges had passed on Hooper.”
Charlton Heston wanted to play Brody, but Spielberg thought he would “date the movie and overwhelm the balance of the cast.”
A few days before filming was set to begin, Spielberg happened to meet Roy Scheider, fresh from an Oscar nomination for “The French Connection,” at a party. Within minutes, he had his Brody.
Lucas suggested Richard Dreyfuss, who had just starred for him in “American Graffiti,” for Hooper, but Dreyfuss passed because he hated the script. Only after meeting with Spielberg and reworking it did he agree to take the role. Robert Shaw fell into place as Quint soon after.
Then, Martha’s Vineyard residents thought the film crew were idiots.
The camera team would frequently change the lighting, unaware that the light on the vineyard changes by the minute.
“‘Don’t they see,’ the bystanders muttered to one another, ‘the water is different, the light is different?’
The residents also watched the fake sharks with disbelief, as “no one bothered to ask the local fisherman for an alternative, or they would have been told dozens of tiger sharks could be caught just a few miles away anytime.”
The movie’s most famous line, “You’re gonna need a bigger boat,” was an actual line of criticism repeated by residents anytime something seemed off while filming on the water. The line only made it into the film because Scheider kept inserting it, defying Spielberg, who was annoyed to exasperation every time.
Spielberg initially hated John Williams’ iconic two-note musical theme. When he first heard it, the director laughed in the composer’s face and said “You can’t be serious.”
Lucas, meanwhile, was trying to sell “Star Wars.”
He showed the script to his friend, “The Exorcist” director William Friedkin, who said “What’s this shit?”
Lucas finally got a deal at 20th Century Fox, though the studio’s VP at the time, Alan Ladd Jr., said he didn’t really understand the movie.
“I don’t get it at all, but I think you’re a talented guy, and I want you to make it,” Ladd said.
Casting director Fred Roos was convinced that Harrison Ford should be Han Solo, but Lucas wanted someone unknown that he’d never worked with and Ford had had a small part in “American Graffiti.”
But Roos was so convinced that he arranged for Ford to be present at one of Lucas’ meetings in the guise of his day job — as a carpenter.
Lucas walked in and saw Ford kneeling down to work on something with a tool belt — looking “not unlike a gun belt.” The director invited him to read for the role.
Meanwhile, the studio wanted Al Pacino to play Hans Solo, but he passed, saying later that he “didn’t understand the script.”
The casting sessions were a rare double, as Lucas shared them with Brian De Palma, who was casting the film version of Stephen King’s “Carrie.” Actors would read for parts in both films.
Over three days, the two saw “every hopeful actor in Los Angeles.” Those who failed to secure a role in either film included Kurt Russell, Christopher Walken, Farrah Fawcett, Sigourney Weaver, and Karen Allen, who Lucas and Spielberg would later employ in the “Indiana Jones” series.
Initially, the character of Princess Leia was seen as more of a young teenager. Lucas had hoped to hire 13-year-old Jodie Foster, who had just finished shooting “Taxi Driver,” but she was already signed to star in Disney’s “Freaky Friday.”
Lucas was also strongly considering 14-year-old Terri Nunn, who would go on to 80s fame as the singer of the band Berlin.
He eventually raised the character’s age and cast Carrie Fisher.
The shoot itself was a disaster.
“None of the special effects worked as [Lucas] hoped,” Fischer writes. “The awe-inspiring world he had invented looked like cheap rubber and plastic.”
The cast teased him mercilessly.
“Hamill cracked jokes about George’s direction — all he said, it seemed, was ‘faster!’ or ‘more intense!’ — and Ford routinely made fun of the screenplay,” writes Fischer.
Once the film wrapped in July 1976, Lucas was “very, very depressed about the whole shooting experience.”
But Spielberg thought the still shots from the “Star Wars” set looked so good that he offered to trade one profit point from “Star Wars” for one on “Close Encounters,” which he was shooting around that time. Lucas, thinking “Star Wars” points would be worthless, agreed.
The director-friends would later team up on a Lucas idea about a swashbuckling archeologist named Indiana Jones. Paramount refused to let Lucas hire Spielberg to direct “Raiders of the Lost Ark” because he’d had a flop with the over-budget comedy “1941.” Lucas only won that battle after promising that, along with Spielberg, they would cover any cost or budget overruns out of their own pockets.
As with their other films, the initial vision didn’t always match the eventual cast. Lucas and Spielberg both wanted Tom Selleck for the role of Indiana Jones, but he was starring in “Magnum P.I.”
By the end of the 1970s, Lucas and Spielberg had conquered Hollywood, with four of the top 20 highest-grossing films of all-time belonging to the pair. “Star Wars” was number one, with “Jaws” at number two and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” at number seven. “American Graffiti” sat at number 13.
While recent EGOT-designee Spielberg went on to a career as a prolific and legendary director, Lucas didn’t direct again for over 20 years, until the “Star Wars” prequels of the late 90s. He sold Lucasfilm, including the complete rights to the “Star Wars” and “Indiana Jones” franchises, to Disney in 2012 for over $4 billion.
Lucky for him, David Picker had a terrible memory.
Read the full article here
