I imagine that seventy five years from now, someone will find this site and all of our rantings and wonder to themselves... "Hmmm, rather passionate bunch of people, what's all this talk of film? You mean they used to make movies on film? HA? That's preposterous. Why George Lucas III just the other day told me that's nothing but a fairy tale?"

Mr. Lucas has three adopted children: Amanda, Katie and Jett. No George II (yet).

Steve

I haven't seen the new 70mm DTS print of "Patton" (but hopefully I will). I've read comments the new print looks great. I was amazed at the quality of "Lawrence of Arabia" and I imagine the new 70mm DTS prints will likely look great as well. So it would only seem logical that if a movie production used the latest 65mm cameras and film stocks available they could generate a movie with staggering levels of high image quality that would stand up against any other format for decades.

With so many films costing more than $100 million to make (not counting marketing expenses) it seems silly the studios don't go to the extra effort of protecting their investments with better film stocks like 70mm and VistaVision.

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On top of that, 70mm has some cool logos. The logo for DLP sucks.

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If I were driving down the street and I saw the cool 70mm DTS logo on a theater marquee I'd probably do a very sharp turn without braking into the theater's parking lot to check out the show. Same goes for scanning newspaper ads.

Now I just try to remember what movie theaters suck my ass, and avoid those like the plague. It's more like what theaters don't suck my ass actually.

My apologies to anyone here who might be sucking my ass.

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I am sure that lucas has assured that episode three gets made in the event of his death. But I do not think he would will that to speilberg, because as you recall, speilberg will not shoot with video. As I recall, he will hold on to film with his last dying breath. I would think he has willed it to a george cloney, I mean croney, someone willing to do it as willed to him by the ghost of lucas.

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I have right here in front of me a Rolling Stone magazine from June 12, 1980 which contains an interview with Lucas. From what he says there, it looks like he condensed some parts of what were supposed to be 7-8-9 into parts 5 and 6. Here are some excerpts:

LUCAS: It was January 1973. I had been paid $20,000 for [American] Graffiti, it had taken two years, and I was $15,000 in debt and Universal hated the film so much they were contemplating selling it as a TV Movie of the Week. I had to start paying back some of this money. So I thought, "I'll whip up that treatment, my second deal at United Artists, my little space thing." (NOTE: He originally had a 2-picture deal at UA, for Graffiti and Star Wars.) I did a fifteen page treatment, showed it to United Artists. No deal. So I took it to Universal.... I hated Universal, but I had to go to them. Part of my deal to make American Graffiti was that I had to sign my life over to them for seven years. They owned me. They had first refusal on any idea I had. I showed it to them and they said no. I took it to [Alan Ladd Jr.] at Fox and he said he would take a chance. I was only asking for $10,000 to write the screenplay. In August 1973, American Graffiti came out and was a huge hit, and that sort of finished my financial woes once and for all.

RS: What happened to Star Wars?

LUCAS: At that point, I was thinking about quitting directing, but I had this huge draft of a screenplay and I had sort of fallen in love with it. Plus, I was a street filmmaker. I had never done a big studio picture, so I thought, "This'll be the last movie I direct." I finally finished the script. I wanted to make a fairytale epic, but this was like War and Peace. So I took that script and cut it in half, put the first half aside and decided to write the screenplay from the second half. I was on page 170, and I thought, Holy smokes, I need 100 pages, not 500," but I had these great scenes. So I took that story and cut it into three parts. I took the first part and said, "This will be my script. But no matter what happens, I am going to get these three movies made." [Laughing] When I made the deal to write and direct Star Wars at Fox, I obviously made it for nothing. All I had was a deal memo, no contract. Then Graffiti came out, was a hit, and suddenly I was powerful. Fox thought I was going to come back and demand millions of dollars and all these gross points.

RS: Did you?

LUCAS: I said, "I'll do it for the deal memo, but we haven't talked about things like merchandising rights, sequel rights.'" I said I wasn't going to give up any of those. Fox said fine. They were getting me for less than $100,000....All I knew was that I wanted to control the sequel rights because I wanted to make the other two movies.

RS: What is your deal with Fox?

LUCAS: They have first refusal on every Star Wars film I want to make.

RS: How many is that?

LUCAS: Seven left.

...........

RS: In the movie, ["The Empire Strikes Back"] Ben says Luke is the last hope and Yoda says no, there is another.

LUCAS: Yes. [Smiling] There is another, and there has been for a long time. You have to remember, we're starting in the middle of this whole story. There are six hours worth of events before Star Wars, and in those six hours, the "other" becomes apparent, and after the third film, the "other" become apparent quite a bit.

RS: What will happen to Luke?

LUCAS: I can't say. In the next film, everything gets resolved one way or the other. Luke won the first battle in the first film. Vader won the second battle in the second film, and in the third film, only one of them walks away. We have to go back to the very beginning to find out the real problem.

.....

RS: Do you have story lines for the seven Star Wars movies left to be made?

LUCAS: Yes, twelve page outlines.

RS: How can you think that far ahead?

LUCAS: Marcia says I either live in the past or the future, never in the present. I'm always sort of living for tomorrow, for better or worse. It's just a personality quirk.

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(This is Mike again) So from this, I'm not sure where the other "seven" movies would fit in. He says there are 6 hours of events before Star Wars, but that's only 3 movies worth...and then everything's wrapped up at the end of Jedi. But, he supposedly had 12 page outlines for nine films. So, what is the DEAL?

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