George Lucas: The forgotten auteur (Part I)
George Lucas is an individual most associated with the science-fiction-fantasy franchise Star Wars, and/or in a more negative light, his trademark wooden dialogue and his consistent re-edits of his films. Lucas is more than just the man who made Star Wars, though, and created the idea for Indiana Jones, as well. He is as much an auteur—an individual with full creative and personal control over a film, allowing them to create a reflection of themself through the film—as peers such as Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, or Steven Spielberg.
In the first half of this retrospective, I will explore some of Lucas’ passions he adds to all of his work. Namely, his fascination with vehicles and speed, music and radio broadcasting, and a consistent interest in myth.
George Walton Lucas Jr. had one passion as a young man: cars. Growing up in Modesto, California, Lucas dreamed of a career on the racetrack. He’d hang around garages in his spare time and race his modified Autobianchi Bianchina on underground circuits throughout high school. This love affair with the racetrack would come to an abrupt end just days before his high school graduation when a classmate’s car collided with his which flung him from his vehicle while it wrapped around a tree. During his recovery, Lucas fell back in love with movies and course-corrected to attend the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts.
As a result, the sparks of his obsession with cars and speed would make it into many of his future projects. One of his earliest short films at USC, 1:42.08 (1966), covered the qualification lap time for a Lotus 23 Race Car, using mainly the roaring of the car’s engine as the soundtrack for the film. The climax of his feature directorial debut, THX 1138 (1971), is a high-speed car chase involving a modified Lola T70 Race Car. This is also the case for American Graffiti (1973), which follows several teenagers cruising in their hot rods as Lucas once did. Even in Star Wars, the fascination with speed is present. In Lucas’ return to directing in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999), a key scene occurs in which Anakin Skywalker secures his freedom by winning a dangerous high-speed pod race.
Another important factor in Lucas’ early life was music. Lucas grew up listening to radio plays and serials, and his teenage years coincided with the rise of rock n’ roll in the late fifties and early sixties with the growing popularity of Disc Jockeys on radio stations like XERB 1090 AM. Music, radio, and sound would play a large role in Lucas’ filmmaking and producer career.
American Graffiti (1973) was one of the first films to have a nostalgia-led soundtrack of radio hits from the youth of Lucas and his generation, and the film heavily featured the presence of California disc jockey Robert Weston Smith, a.k.a. “Wolfman Jack.” One of his lesser-known productions, Radioland Murders (1994), pays tribute to the radio dramas of his youth, where a murder mystery whodunit plagues a radio station’s inaugural night. His most recent creative project, the story and production of Strange Magic (2015), displays Lucas embracing his love of music by creating a fantasy jukebox musical story featuring the music of Elvis Presley, Whitney Houston, Electric Light Orchestra, and more. Even when not producing, Lucas’ obsession with sound led to the development of THX, his company based around improving sound systems in movie theaters and home video.
The last throughline of George Lucas’ film career I’ll cover in this part is his fascination with myth: In many of Lucas’ productions, myth and folklore all hold intense importance, whether it be Star Wars’ use of what Lucas called the “essence of all religions,” or better known as, “The Force;” Willow (1998) with its sequel novels written by Lucas and comic book writer Chris Claremont and their inspiration from J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth novels; Strange Magic’s (2015) use of European folklore concepts like fairies and goblins; or the many mythic objects in the Indiana Jones franchise, such as the Ark of the Covenant, Sankara Stones, and the Holy Grail.
While these aspects may be just general concepts Lucas puts in his work, many familiar with auteur theory may argue that the most crucial part of being an auteur is putting some semi-autobiographical elements into your work.
Next week, I’ll explain how Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) tells the story of Lucas after his first divorce, the political allegories in the Star Wars prequel trilogy, and Lucas’ long-term quest to escape.
Thumbnail Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons