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George Lucas

George Walton Lucas, Jr. (born 14 May 1944) is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter mostly famous for Star Wars and the Indiana Jones trilogy.

Sourced

On a test audience screening of THX-1138:
  • "It was insane, I wish I had filmed it. It was like bringing an audience to the Mona Lisa and asking, 'Do you know why she is smiling?' 'Sorry Leonardo, you'll have to make some changes.' At least the audience understood that THX was not a love story set in the 25th century, which was the way Warners had planned to advertise it. Instead the company settled for 'Visit the future , where love is the ultimate crime.'"
    • The San Francisco Chronicle, May 23, 1971


On a United States Information Agency Film about President Johnson's trip to Asia, which he worked on as an editor:
  • "The Johnson film wasn't terrible. I just didn't agree with the politics. I'm not a fan of big government and propaganda films are distasteful."
    • The San Francisco Chronicle, May 23, 1971


On how American Zoetrope functions:
  • "We say, 'We think you are a talented, functioning person, and we are hiring you because of your abilities, and whatever you come up with, we're going to take.' If we make a mistake, it will be in picking the wrong person. What we're striving for is total freedom, where we can finance our pictures, make them our way, release them where we want them released and be completely free to express ourselves. That's very hard to do in the world of business. In this country, the only thing that speaks is money and you have to have the money in order to have the power to be free. So the danger is -- in being as oppressive as the next guy to the people below you. We're going to do every possible to avoid that pitfall. But if we fail, it's another saga in the history of man..."
    • The San Francisco Chronicle, May 23, 1971

  • "My primary concept in approaching the production of THX 1138 was to make a kind of cinema verité film of the future -- something that would look like a documentary crew had made a film about some character in a time yet to come"
    • American Cinematographer, October 1971

  • "No film ever ends up exactly as you would like it to, but with minor exceptions, THX came out pretty much as I had visualized it, thanks to some excellent assistance -- and a whole lot of luck."
    • American Cinematographer, October 1971

  • "As you go through history, I didn't think it was going to get quite this close. So it's just one of those recurring things… I hope this doesn't come true in our country. Maybe the film will waken people to the situation."

  • "When I wrote it [Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith], Iraq didn't exist… We were just funding Saddam Hussein and giving him weapons of mass destruction. We didn't think of him as an enemy at that time. We were going after Iran and using him as our surrogate, just as we were doing in Vietnam… The parallels between what we did in Vietnam and what we're doing in Iraq now are unbelievable…"
    • CBS4Boston.com, "Star Wars Raises Questions On U.S. Policy"

  • "[In ancient Rome,] why did the senate after killing Caesar turn around and give the government to his nephew? Why did France after they got rid of the king and that whole system turn around and give it to Napoleon? It's the same thing with Germany and Hitler."
    • CBS4Boston.com, "Star Wars Raises Questions On U.S. Policy"

  • "You sort of see these recurring themes where a democracy turns itself into a dictatorship, and it always seems to happen kind of in the same way, with the same kinds of issues, and threats from the outside, needing more control. A democratic body, a senate, not being able to function properly because everybody's squabbling, there's corruption."
    • CBS4Boston.com, "Star Wars Raises Questions On U.S. Policy"


  • "Remember in the end, John, you're not looking at the background, you're not watching the Pods, you're listening to the music."
    • George Lucas to John Knoll


On the infamous "Star Wars Holiday Special"
  • "If I had time and a hammer, I'd track down every bootleg copy and smash it."
    • at a Star Wars fan convention


On Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull:
  • “The fans are all upset. They’re always going to be upset. Why did he do it like this? And why didn’t he do it like this? They write their own movie, and then, if you don’t do their movie, they get upset about it."
    • VanityFair.com "Keys to the Kingdom"


On cliches
  • "Don't avoid the cliches- they are cliches because they work!"
    • George Lucas to Marty Sklar, quoted in "The Imagineering Way: Ideas to Ignite your Creativity" (Disney Editions, 2003)

Unsourced

  • A movie is never finished, only abandoned.

  • Dreams are extremely important. You can't do it unless you imagine it.

  • Good luck has its storms.

  • I regret not the things I have done, only those I have yet to do.

  • It's not like the old 'Star Wars'. This one's a little bit more emotional. We like to describe Episode III as Titanic in space. It's a tearjerker.

  • Sound is 50 percent of the moviegoing experience.

  • The secret to film is that it's an illusion.

  • A talent is a combination of something you love a great deal, something you can lose yourself in - something that you can start at 9 in the morning, look up from your work and it's 10 o'clock at night - and something that you have a natural ability to do very well.
 
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