George Lucas Calls Disney “White Slavers” in Charlie Rose interview

our studios in New York City this is Charlie Rose you have every honor that a man could have you've got almost Oscars no no Oscar Oscar I got the real ugly giving you this award then if you don't have an Oscar I don't have anything I don't really have a lot of awards to be very honest today I have the Irving Thalberg or and you know and I get a lot of little awards you know I got two Emmys but I've never had an Academy Award I've been nominated but I've never won my too popular for that too popular meaning what they don't give a cut and worse two popular films are you proud of the fact that you make films that people want to go see yeah I belong it was okay with you popular is okay with me I think it's a very important part of society and if you're making a work of art or film or whatever and nobody sees it I don't see where it does anybody any good I tell you who thinks it does do people good as Francis and yes Francis is making movies that satisfy one person that's right in but I'm not sure with society at large it's helping much you know and of course that's what I'm going to do now I'm going to make movies that only I want to see and I want to do I've always wanted to do that I fell into popular movies by accident I always disliked Hollywood theatrical movies I know what I need to do with them so but you simply knew how to make them no I mean I guess it was embedded in my DNA it's it's that particular thing which is I'm not sure whether it's a coincidence that some people like Steven and I grew up in the same environment Stevens Gilbert Steven Spielberg you know we liked the movies standing with Marty there's a whole generation right there that were came of age in the 60s that grew up on movies I didn't really grow up on movies but it was a part of my life in terms of it wasn't you know it I came up at the beginning of television and the whole idea of visual storytelling and that sort of thing was at the right moment I got in there and what we really what I wanted to do and what a lot of the people wanted to do was simply make films that people liked and enlighten them entertain them and that's what we were in the business for we liked movies but the irony of this is that you are considered one of the most innovative filmmakers ever in the history of cinema but the innovation part is because I like I just say the word artists but I will say they were artists they for thousands of years were also the scientists the engineers and the artists because in order to accomplish certain works especially in architecture you had to figure out how to accomplish it because you know I mean they zap with the domo in in Florence for hundreds of years because they couldn't figure out how to put the dome on it and Brunelleschi who did it went and studied the the Pantheon and other places where they had big domes because they used to do it in Rome but by the time they got the Rosetta Renaissance it was after the Dark Ages and nobody knew how to do that stuff anymore so he had to actually invent the ratcheting pulley in order to be able to get oxygen to pull bricks up that high so that's what you have done you had gotten able to create new things simply because I could have done it before and you had to do it on your own because I had a story to tell and there's a gap between what is possible and where my vision is and I've had to fill that gap which is what anyways you don't invent technology and then figure out what to do with it you come up with an artistic problem and then you have to invent the nology in order to accomplish it so it's the opposite of what most people think it is and any artist will tell you that and art on all levels is just technology which is why it's you know people say well monkeys can do paintings well they can't really they can do they can do scribbling they can do like what my two-year-old does but if you want to say I want to convey an emotion to another human being that's something only human beings can do animals can do it by roaring in your face or biting your hand off and that usually has an effect but to do it in a painting to do it in a play or a story in poetry or anything that's in the arts you have to be a human being so we talked about artists a filmmaker innovator director storyteller well a director is just somebody who's got a fetish with making the world to be way he wants it to be sort of narcissistic that's you all directors they're no different in your direct they yeah all directors are there they're there vaguely like Emperor's which is I want to build the society to be to reflect me and what I want and the great thing about you don't have to kill a lot of people and build a lot of stuff and spend a lot of money if you're a king and want to do that it's good for society obviously but a director can do it with a lot less money and just say I'm going to create a world where people can fly so what a Star Wars and Indiana Jones say about the world you want to create well Star Wars and Indiana Jones were basically put together especially Star Wars more than Indiana Jones any other Jones was just done for fun to entertain people and there are some messages in there about you know archaeology and also about what we believe in in terms of myths and that sort of thing but the real one has Star Wars and that was done in the same vein that what I was saying about the the patron creates the propaganda and what I wanted to do is go back to some of the older propaganda which was consistent through all the societies which is mythology but to say what did they all believe because they were all this propaganda was created independently yeah and what is one of the things that they all actually believed which object relationships with your father relationships with your society relation your history relationships with the gods all this stuff is it's old but their psychological motifs that were created through storytelling primarily oral storytelling that explained what they believed it and who they believed in so what I wanted to do is go back and find the psychological motifs that underlie that because those grow out of a popular ism and to say that not all but a majority of people boys have a certain psychological relationship with their fathers and that's been going on through history and trying to explain that to say we know your darkest secret yeah and therefore you're part of us because we all know the same things we know what you're thinking about your mother we know what you think about your brother we know what you think about your father really and those are the things that make people say hey this is why we believe this stuff and again the the crudest part of that in terms of the religious spiritual thing if some people have taken those ideas and then distorted them and you end up in a cult where they're using the psychological tools to make you adhere to their society and part of it is they have to keep it closed and to them and to them and but but it's the same thing I mean and again you go through history you know and even though in most case you had open societies but they really work because let's face it you were going to killed if you go outside the walls build a wall around the whole thing so we can defend ourselves so they were self-fulfilling you know isolated human events because you where I've worn all these hats though filmmaker director storyteller writer a technological innovator what do you want the first line of your obituary to say that was great down I tried but do you consider yourself any of those things first writer storyteller filmmaker robber solver first is dad I mean I gave up directing in order to become a dad you know for 15 years directing I just ran a company and it was an innovator but it was not doing what I really like to do which was actually make movies that was you want to be a dad because yeah I and I never was one of those things where you don't expect it to happen but once I was a dad it was like a bolt of lightning struck me and I ended up getting divorced around that time and I just decide well I think I'm just going to take care of my daughter because that seems like the right thing to do you know I made these that was right after Return of the Jedi I said I've made all these movies and I'm not going to escape star wars and my central concern was my daughter so I just said I'm going to raise my daughter and then we had to I'd opted another daughter and then dumped into the Sun and it wasn't until like 15 years later that I actually said okay I'm going to go back now and make direct movies again so it was very much an it's in the meantime I had developed a lot of technology to do things that I could not do when I was doing Star Wars because in Star Wars because it's a science fiction film as a fantasy film it pushes the limit the technological limits of the medium science fiction and fantasy those sorts of things you really there's many things can't be done they just can't and there's an equation ultimately which is the how popular is something how much does it cost and they subtract one for the other and decide whether they're going to do it or not so a lot of the films when I was doing Star Wars right after Star Wars they didn't have room for spectacular they only had room for you know street movies so which is what I've been doing before that and so doing something that was sort of you know an epic a historical piece science fiction fantasy any of those things you just couldn't do it because they cost too much money and technically you couldn't accomplish it Kennedy Center honoree that's a big deal what does it mean to you um well I could be glib I'll just be real I'm sitting here with a guy who's got who's a happiest he's probably ever been married two-year-old daughter all the money you'll ever need sitting in this remarkable place where you live um do you got everything but here is a saying that you are really one of America's finest artists what does that mean to you that these people have gonna honor you sitting next to the president at the Kennedy Center well um you know don't be glib be real well I will be real I'm not much into awards it doesn't mean that much to me because I've gone through this and I know it's just a group of people get together and say we're going to give you this award and a lot of them that's just basically you're there to draw eyeballs but they are Awards in their awards and I've got to believe that this means something to you well it does mean something so what is it I don't know it's you know again I got the the Medal of Arts I got the of Technology I've got the so it's just another missin hell you just get him another what he'll show up if you want him to but he doesn't care well yeah you know I know it's about the TV show it's not me this is not a big TV show they give us and honors as a television show doesn't do very well and shown in the middle of December I know so it's not about a TV show it's not the Oscars this is in Washington you know where all of Washington turns out and it in fact selects only five people each year and it's not based on what you've done that year someone movie it's based on what you have achieved in your career and all of a sudden but you know and you're putting you up in a pantheon of people that you really admire like your friend Steven Spielberg okay we give each other awards all the time Francis and I give awards to each other all the time you know we're you're in a group obviously Marty and I do the same thing where we all happen to be and you better remember yes I hate to say this but there are thousands of award shows every year so you know I'll take a few couple other ones that are meaningful to me like the Kennedy Center Honors those are the ones that I will participate in but I get a lot of other ones is there a competition at all between you and Steven sure what is it uh who can do the better work and how do you come it's not better work in terms of its the old wow factor if I can do something as Steve says oh wow then I won and he makes ten times more movies than I do so I have to say oh wow a lot more than he does but I don't resent how many times it's just that I enjoy the fact that I can see a movie and he can kind of one-up me and do something that I said he'd that's unbelievable well let me tell you what he says about you American Graffiti is one of the best films ever made yeah but that's very easy to say because of what he was know cuz he went Wow cuz he went well huh and why did he go Wow over American Graffiti well because it was so different and exuberant okay go ahead what else and had a lot of underpinnings of the kinds of things that a filmmaker wants to have in their movie a lot of observations and sort of philosophical museums and it was in the guise of an entertainment film so most people didn't pay attention to that stuff but they knew it they knew it immediately you know it's very again critics have a tendency to be extremely glib and they you know they have to look at a movie a day or two movies a day and they just rattle off in an hour or what their feelings are about it as a result you get a very surfacey kind of point of view or an ideological game I'm asking the filmmaker I'm not asking critics about this film filmmakers I know how to make movies I went to film school I have a knack for it I studied it very well and practiced and I know what I'm doing a lot of filmmakers try but on the technical tip tell in a story how you put it story together how you make it effective emotionally I know how to do that and part of it is I have a talent for it part of it as I've worked hard to create and figure out how to do it and I'm reasonably effective at it I've made a lot of movies as I tell people I've produced more movies that were failures than successes as a director most of my films have been big successes except for one so and a couple of ones I've produced have been huge successes but most of them haven't been but I know that going in I know what's going to work and what's not going to work but I do like movies I love movies and I know a lot of movies aren't popular and you can say that going in one of the reasons I retired so I could make movies that are popular because in the world we live in in the system we've created for ourselves in terms of it's a big industry you cannot lose money so the point is that you have to you're forced to make a particular kind of movie and I used to say this all the time when people you know back when Russia was the Union of Soviet Socialist and they say oh but aren't you so glad that you're in America I said well I know a lot of Russian filmmakers they have a lot more freedom than I have all they have to do is be careful about criticizing the government otherwise they can do anything and so what do you have to do you have to adhere to a very narrow line of commercialism and there's only certain and look when I started in the 70s it was like this yeah I could say Russia was like this but we were like this you could do a certain kind of way and I flaunted that system I mean thx my first film is definitely not a an American film and I shoved it in sideways and Frances help me Trixie you're right right nobody they would have never let me make that movie if they knew what I was doing kid George Lucas be George Lucas because um early on he got them he owned the rights to make Star Wars well you negotiated that yeah I'm coming out of the first film yes the difference there boy it made you very rich and made you very independent so you'd have to make movies because you had independence and you had also built a great business right well in addition to making film so therefore you could preach to anybody you want to preach to because you weren't dependent on anybody well the issue is ultimately reality of it which is uh I'm in a unique blend of a practical person pragmatic person and a fantasy completely d dreaming you know guy who's not very practical at all can you combine those two well I didn't but the DNA or we can say whatever what if force wasn't worked there to create by whoever created George Lucas gave him those two skills yes and they're and they're the opposites yeah one of them is a and I've always been that way Francis when we when we started it started as a trope and started making movies Francis was very much and it was a nod because when we started he was a Hollywood director right and I was this crazy kid doing art films and I said I'm never going to go into the theatrical film business I only want to do art films I'm going to do documentary films documentaries cinema Veritate that sort of thing was just coming in and I said this is what I'm doing I'm excited my ambition then was ultimately to be Michael Moore and a documentary filmmaker yeah and it only caused trouble because that's what I you know again I grew up in the 60s I'm a 60s kind of guy I always have been and you know I grew up in San Francisco Bay Area and you know that's just that was my environment that I grew up in and I was perfectly happy to do it I did not want to make theatrical films I was making kind of tone poems in school I was winning awards Francis I moved to San Francisco because we didn't neither one of us like the Hollywood environment we started a company up here and I got to take one of my student films and turn it into a feature which was AJ's yeah but it was a tone poem it was just a visual storytelling you know the characters and the plot were not as important as the metaphor and the symbolism and as a result and the the emotional connection between the moving image and the audience so I did that and obviously it our company went bankrupt and pretty destroyed everything but it like there's always a silver lining you know it caused him to be forced to pay off the debts which meant he had to go to The Godfather he challenged me as he was walking out the door he says stop doing this artsy fartsy stuff yeah make a movie make a comedy I dare you to make a comic and I said well I can do that yeah that's so big I can do anything you know I'm in my 20s George Lucas no it's not nothing - Georgia - it has to do with I'm I'm 23 I can do anything you know that's when you think it by 30 you hit that beatdown of you but when you're young you sort of think you can do anything so I did it and that start and that was successful and that started me on a whole different train to do again when I did Star Wars start a Star Wars I certainly didn't think it was going to be a hit I didn't think America graffiti was going to be hit I had no idea I mean mckennon American PD was the studio hated the film so much they shelled it and they said you can't wear I can't even release this maybe we're going to see if we can release it as a movie of the week we can't release in theaters it's not that good so that's where I was and then I started working on Star Wars and I was just doing it because I needed a job to pay you know to eat and I wanted to do this kind of experimental ish in my mind idea about mythology and take films that I loved when I was young which was Republic serials and transform you know the kind of movie I wanted to make into a very popular genre and now - that came both Indiana Jones and Star Wars but you know it was I wanted to I thought that was my last movie of this thing that I was going to go back to doing what I really wanted to do and I said you know at least at the end I want to have done a a old fashioned movie you know a on sound stages with makeup people and you know sets and you know yeah do the thing make one of those movies before I'm kicked out and you know it the fluke of America really becoming a hit was like oh my god now what but I guess that'll be the only time that'll ever happen so I got ahead so I'll make this movie which probably won't be a hit but Star Wars yeah Star Wars but you know when you describe Star Wars you say it's a space opera it's not a science fiction film you know we have large dogs flying spaceships and you know you describe it and people say Oh this guy's off you know it's it yeah he's in his own world and of course most of my friends are of the where I was persuasion I was further into the art world that they were but I threw that all away after a Murphy I mean graffiti was again I mean nobody expected me to do a comedy based on thx yes so I thought I can and I'm not that funny a guy in real life I'll show I'll show Francis into a comedy I'll show those guys uh and then but then when I started to go into Star Wars they said why are you making a children's film I said well cuz I think I can have more of an influence on people and I think I can have things to say that I can actually influence kids you know adolescents troll girls and you know they're trying to make their way into the bigger world and that's basically what mythology was what's to say I'm saying this is what we believe in these are our rules these are this is what we are as a society and we don't do that the last time we were doing that was westerns and of course this is in the 70s and the Western sort of fiddled out in the 50s so it's like we didn't have any national mythology so I said I want to try this and see if it works and I'm just doing it you know and it'd be fun because you know I like spaceships I like adventure I like fun and like all this stuff so I'll do it but I figured that would be the last I'll do it I'll have done my thing then I got in trouble because the script got out too long and then I had three scripts instead of one script and then I had to try to get them all finished India you know I got hooked into the star baby and I couldn't get out and it was a while before I finally realized that no matter what happens I'm never going to get out I'm always gonna be George Star Wars Lucas no matter how hard I try to be something else just think about the career at whenever you decide that there are no more movies to be made by George Lucas and you look back at a body of work are you gonna say Star Wars was my crowning achievement cinematically cinematically I'd say probably yes okay and what way is it not your crowning achievement I don't know again it's hard to you know I have a pretty low opinion of my movies so to me I've always said well these didn't really turn out the way I'd hoped they would and you know and I could see all the flaws and I can see all the stuff I mean American Graffiti is the most fun movie I made in terms of what I created the most fun movie to work on was Indiana Jones because I didn't have to direct it yes Stephen yeah I had the best director in the world it turned out better that was the one where everything went right yeah which happens very rarely in real life you know but it just gets better and better and better and you just can't believe how wonderful turns out the other ones you suffer through and you think they're terrible and then people say oh they're great but it's hard to get that they're actually terrible because I can see all the the scotch tape and rubber bands everything holding it together and it was a particularly true of Star Wars number four because you know I barely got made and I was so disappointed about what my vision was and what it actually turned out to be and I complained about it a lot during right after the movie when you know the interviewer should see it came out to be thirty five percent of what I wanted all those kind of help but I did have a vision but my vision was way beyond what was possible and I did the best I could and then after a lot of people said well this is the greatest movie of all time you have to do that I said well okay maybe it's pretty good and we'll live with that and then part of it then was to continue the story was just a thing to finish the story and then after that I worked on the technology and I said well gee now I can tell the back story because the back store seems to have gotten lost in when it was one movie it was much easier to see the back story of Darth Vader didn't you intend to in the beginning create really three movies when you started and and then you decided only to take one part of that life story yeah I took the I took the first act exactly and the three acts and you took the first yeah but then the first act didn't really work so I said okay what I'm going to have to do is take the ending of the third film and put it on the first film you know I what you do you've got a bunch of stuff sitting on your desk because you're creating it well let me take that stick that in here make it so I wasn't worried that much about the sequels when I was actually making it because I have to make this the best film you know cuz I want this one to succeed and work so then when I moved on to the other ones I said well gee you know Ben Konami is now dead I killed him or that was a unfortunate how am I going to fix that and what do I do about the fact that I already blew the Death Star up and that's what the ending is and what you know and I so I went through and so the story stretched the self and moved around you know it is a creative process where you're kind of doing things and you maneuver through your imagination but part of it was simply when I got down to some of the other movies I was able to create an environment in a world that wasn't possible when I started the first one so to me a lot of things were just technical or no in the end getting Yoda to do a sword fight which I'd always wanted to do but I could never do it because he was a puppet you said famously Flash Gordon was the inspiration and the Bible well it wasn't the Bible by longshot it was the inspiration but at the same time with Flash Gordon it was better I knew I wanted to make a movie based on the serials but I didn't you know I wasn't going to be it was going to be Flash Gordon so I did try to get the rights to Flash Gordon couldn't but that was good because if I had it would set me off in a funny ok because I realized after I didn't get I said well I really don't want Flash Gordon I don't want to do any I want a space opera just like Flash Gordon but I if I were making that movie I would probably take Flash Gordon out of it and I'd take all that stuff and all that stuff I don't want to do that stuff because what I really wanted to do is more on lines of Star Wars and less of the lines of Flash Gordon there is a similarity between the two but there is definitely a difference in perspective about how they're doing so that sent me in the right direction of having to think of something completely new but inspired by that of course inspired by westerns and you know people go through and say these rest of the inspirations that were influenced Star Wars and they are just like whether you're a writer whether you matter what you're a painter whether you're a politician in theory you have steeped yourself in them the genre you're working in and you know all the various kinds of things and you can pull the best parts of what you you know of what you learned and theory you know but you know it works everywhere so it seems in politics because they are doomed to repeat themselves every few years because they do not listen to history where did the idea of force come from the whole thing in Star Wars was to take again ideas psychological ideas from social issues political issues spiritual issues and condense them down into a easy to tell story of those stories the force basically came from you know distilling all of the religious beliefs spiritual beliefs go all around the world all through time finding the similarities and then creating a and easy to deal with metaphor for what religion is and the point was is that the I'm in the very beginning when you have people worshipping rocks and deer they called it life force they called it the force that's what it was and so where did the name come from it came from basically lifeforce of what the more primitive religions believed in and then you go through all the other religions and they have the same thing you know that it's all the same you know whether you believe in God don't believe in God believe in religion don't believe in rigid the issue is that you either don't believe there's anything else out there which is a little I think would be hard to live with at the same time I mean I believe something's out there I just don't know what it is I have no idea or what I dare to guess but I do know the religions are based on it their human psychological needs that have been put together mostly to create a society but you believe something's out there yeah so here's what's interesting to me at Star Wars too I mean to hear you talk about it this was a very personal film yeah very now well all my fellows are personal because I didn't I thought them up I did them and you could say well but Star Wars is just for kiddies movie I said you know the idea of making it for kids the idea that it was a fun kiddie movie all that stuff was very important to me I like that sort of thing and I like Star Wars and I did it not because I thought it was going to make any money because I say in the end we finished it we showed it to the Board of Directors of Fox they hated it and I had an ally at the head of the studio and he fought for me and got through there but you know nobody thought it was going to be a hit especially me so personal film becomes a among other things a blockbuster right well and again it was a second time because America rafidhi was a very personal film and also SAR was became a cultural mainstage we've said and it's what Steven said he said it is the moment in which the entire industry changed Star Wars is the moment when the industry changed well it changed for the good and for the bad yeah and you know it's again when you invent things where you don't invent things I don't know but when you when you bring new things into a society you can either select the balance of the force you can either use it for good or you can use it for evil and what happens when there's something new people have a tendency to overdo it they use it now there were two things that got abused with Star Wars and still being abused one when Star Wars came out everybody said oh it's a silly movie it's just a bunch of space battles and stuff it's not real there's nothing behind it I said well there is stuff that it's not just a space battle there's more to it than that it's much much more complicated than that and but nobody would listen so they just know how simple like the spaceships we like to stop so they said fine so the spaceships and the that part of the science fantasy whatever got terribly abused and of course everybody went out and made spaceship movies and they were all horrible and they all lost tons of money and you say well you know there's more to it than that you can't just go out and do spaceships and the other part was at was the which is the technology which is Oh we'll just take this new technology it's great especially when it came down later to digital technology or you can really do anything and then people just abused it all over the place which they did with color they did with sound whenever there's a new tool everybody goes crazy and they forget the fact that there's actually a story and that's the point you're telling a story using tools you're not using tools to tell a story you understand that I do the the point was the other thing that that got abused naturally in a capitalist society especially in an American point of view which is the studio's everything except we can make a lot of money this is the license to kill and they did it they just simply and of course the only way you could really do that is not take chances only do something that's proven that's not doing it we kind of member Star Wars came from nowhere American Graffiti came from nowhere there was nothing like it now if you do anything is not a sequel or not a TV series or not it doesn't look like one they won't do it they say we want something new so that's the downside of Star Wars that's the downside of Star Wars and it really shows an enormous lack of imagination and fear of creativity on the part of an industry I mean corporations are not known for you know maybe not Silicon Valley but the old institutions are not known for being risk they're known for being risk averse and movies are not risk averse every single movie is a risk a big risk I like to say you know it's like the movie business is exactly like professional gambling except you hire the gambler usually some crazy kid belong here it was like I don't get this guy at all you give him a hundred million dollars and you say go to the tables and come back with five hundred million dollars that is a risk now the studio's been going to think of it that way they said well maybe if we if we told him that he couldn't bet on red maybe if we told him because we did market research and we've realized that red wasn't so they tried to minimize their risk but once you and of course you're hiring the kid to be take risks to be creative to do things that have never been done before never been tested you have no idea whether they're going to work or not that's completely the antithesis of what a big modern corporation is they want to test things 360 ways you know know you ollie wood is not like a big American corporation because it'll just throw money away behind somebody and have him go or her go and figure out but they don't know they but they don't know how to do that because they're basically corporate types they think some of the worst thing that happens when they think they know how to do it then they start making decisions that ensure that it's not going to work but you're George Lucas and you were ahead of your time with American Graffiti you were ahead of your time with Star Wars um have you been head of your time since then well you know I haven't directed a movie since then I know that producing I don't know I was sort of ahead of my time with red tails yeah an all-black film but you the only person could've got that made some well I paid for it myself I ll say they wouldn't distribute it they wouldn't make it they wouldn't advertise because of racism or because of what they just said the market research says nobody will go to that movie there you go and in Europe nobody goes that far the research said nobody will go to Star Wars market rich research may have said no well not but they but this one was ok we know there is a certain now over time a lot of these issues that we're just becoming very dimly aware of them have become institutionalized now they know that movie will do well in France this movie will do well in Denmark this movie you can't do in Asia and they got their markets they know how much of the share they get and they do their little analysis and then they say we will or will not make the movie it has nothing to do with what I do which is make a movie something that people can enjoy ok it has nothing to do with that I made money in spite of myself and I think I made money it's cuz they didn't care I didn't care whether I it was a hit or not a hit I wanted to make this movie as a movie and that's the thing that they won't do and that they can't do it's not in their constitution to do that you know I have a fiduciary duty to come up with the thing I got a 10% a year my stockholders that's why I would never go public and that's why I said I'm not going to be beholden anybody and that's why even now with the company when I sold it one of the reasons I sold it was I was starting to make movies that were more personal and more obviously losing a lot of money and I said I really can't do this much more because the company will be dragged down and I had 2,000 employees so I had people to think about so I said best way to handle this is to sell it and then take the money put it in a in a bank account I call it my yacht because a lot of my friends have yachts I said I'm not going to buy a yacht but I'll take the money that I would use to have a yacht and I'll put it in a bank account and I will use that to make movies that I know are experimental that I have no way of knowing whether they'll work or not but I want to see if they work and it means I don't have to show them to the audience I don't have to have people so when are we gonna see that movie you're not you might but you you're in a world now where everything is well first of all those movies you know they don't make money and you can't like read tales perfect example not only does it not make money you can't get anybody to distribute it you can't get anybody to put any advertising money behind it you can't so it loses money no matter how you do it so why in the world go through all that and get bad reviews get all you know crazy people yelling and screaming why not just make the movie for yourself and your friends and that's where you are in your life today yeah I'm doing what I wanted to do back when I started but I'm gonna learn things and the things I learn possibly I'll I'll pass on to other friends of mine and other people who are directors to say you know I didn't know you could do that because that's what directors do you know they learn from what all their peers are doing you know I'm doing this and I'm doing you sort of see how they manipulate film the visual image moving image and doing things that never been done before and so that's what I want to do because in in the movie business you cannot take a risk you cannot do something that doesn't work you don't get a second chance I've taken a second chances but I've just take it to polish it but at the same time you can't there's no experimenting like there's no experimenting in movies what you do is every day on the set what you're doing has to be right if it's not right if and you make the mistake enough the film will fail if the film fails then the people lose their money and you know and you usually don't get another job but are you telling me and is this where you what you believe today that in your life's experience you know how to make a popular movie but that's just not what you want to do and right stage in your life yeah why would I you don't need the money I don't need the money uh my interests have shifted to more mature things I mean I did the kids thing I did it to me it's six films and you know and how do you say the kids thing well it is a kid's film you know I mean adults like it it's for everybody obviously but the kinds of movies I'm going to make now are much more demanding of an audience and most of the audience won't have anything to do with it and it's all subject matter that most people don't want to see movies about so but I do and you know it's it's I've made movies for me that I wanted to see but I knew what they were you know I said okay this is this movie this is this movie this is this movie and in producing films where I was able to get other people to put their money in studios I wouldn't take it from real people I'd only take it from corporations so you know it's a little bit of a Robin Hood thing yes I know let me just talk about the upcoming Star Wars The Force awakens how do you feel about it well it's um you know I made the decision to sell the company the Star Wars I made that decision because I looked at the future I looked at the thought that I was going to have a baby I looked at the fact that I was married and I looked at the fact that I wanted to build a museum and I looked at the fact that I wanted to make experimental films so my life was going on a different track I noticed the last few movies that I'd made were costing the company a lot of money and I didn't think that was fair to the people that work there or the company and so I made a decision to move ahead on the next Star Wars series and we were starting to do that so you were starting to make the next Star Wars yeah you as director filming so and we were working with a writer wasn't quite working out but I was also you know I was also stepping away a little bit too and turning things over to Kathy Kennedy and so what happened was Disney said gee or Bob Iger said gee if you really want to sell your company for thinking about selling it because we were talking about retirement and what are you going to do after all is Kutta and he said well you really want to sell it you know we're very interested so that started that ball rolling and I knew from you know and I had the story treatments or you know outlines and and we were about just we're working on scripts and so I sold it but I knew when I sold it I said I've tried to make movies where I step away to sort of Empire and Return of the Jedi right right and after about a couple weeks I knew I couldn't do that I had to stand over the shoulder of the director help him you know whisper nerds are constantly know do this do that do that you know and be there to help guide it and it was much harder than if I just directed it myself JJ Abrams JJ Abrams he's a good director and he's good friends and all this sort of thing but he's also a top director company his own company all the soda and Disney who was a little nervous you know there's one of the issues was the first three movies had all kinds of issues they looked at the stories and they said we want to make something for the fans so I said all I wanted to do is tell a story of what happened you know it started here and went there that's all about generations and it's about you know the issues of fathers and sons and grandfathers and it's a family soap opera I mean ultimately I mean Spade we call space opera but people realize it's actually a soap opera and it's all about family problems and that it's not about spaceships so they decided they didn't want to use the stories they said that we're going to go do their own thing and so I decided fine but basically I'm not going to try to they weren't that keen to have me involved anyway but at the same time I said I'm not going to if I get in there I'm just going to cause trouble because they're not going to do what I want them to do so and I don't have the control to do that anymore and all I would do is muck everything up so I said okay I will go my way and I'll let them go their way and it really does come down to a simple rule of life which is when you break up with somebody the first rule is no phone calls the second rule you don't go over to their house and drive by to see what they're doing it's the third one is you don't show up at their coffee shop or the things where you're going to bring it you just say nope god history I'm moving forward because every time you do and you know we all learned this from experience every time you do something like that you're opening the wound again and it just makes it harder for you you have to put it behind you and it's a very very very hard thing to do but you have to just cut it off and say okay in the ballgame I got to move on and everything in your body says don't you can't these are my kids so all the storm or all the Star Wars films they were your kids yeah well they are right you know I I love them I created them I'm very intimately involved in them and obviously to follow them I sold them to the white slavers that take these things and and but I mean but but having said all that and having talked to you for the last and known you for a while and admired you I mean it must hurt you well it's your family you that story it's your story but it's you but I knew there's through more stories and I knew that was going to probably take you know to do it right would take about ten years and I said I'm 70 I don't know whether I'll be here when I'm 80 you know every 10 years the odds get less and so I said and I'm not ready to do that cuz I want to do these other things so I have to make the decision on my own that it's time for me to move on so it wasn't like they were taken away from me or they were think and they felt they knew you know they wanted to do a retro movie I don't like that I like every movie I worked very hard to make them different I make them completely different with you know different planets with different spaceships with different you know make it new so are you at peace with this yeah as much as you can be ya know I was I said look I'm fine then you get to the thing which is another thing that I'd been through 14 I'm old enough to have been through all this stuff before and that one is tape I had to do it then in you do end up with this thing which is you know you've got to live with it and people are going to talk about it and all that kind of stuff that's like talking about your divorce or something it's just as awkward but it's not painful do you have within you something that's a series of small personal films you've said that's what you want to do no more great Star Wars kind of adventure for George knows no that's over yeah these are little tiny movies that are experimental they are using the same structure I'm going back to where America Ruffini was where or thx where I've completely changed the way you tell a story in using cinema it's back there I produced a few films that were like this but they weren't like what I would do but they were using the visual style rather than the book here's what's exciting George what's exciting is that all of the stuff that's within you that made all of this whether it's thx or American Graffiti or Star Wars are all that you contributed to Indiana Jones it's all within you it's who you are and you can apply that in any way because that in the end is what you brought it is your ideas and your insight is what you brought to them and at the same time I've been fascinated with the medium and I've been fascinated with the true nature of the medium which is very different it's been used more as a recording medium then as a art form unto itself and that's where the kind of movies that I made that are sort of tickled called tom poems but in the beginning like in russia there was this was a whole movement of how do you tell visual stories basically without dialogue without you know all the things that use to tell a story and you just use the film itself it's kind of esoteric I'm going to try to take it it hasn't come much further in a hundred years I'm going to try to take it into something that is more emotionally powerful then some of the most of the stuff we've done up to this point thank you for doing this all right thank you yeah more about this program in early episodes visit us online at pbs.org and Charlie Rose calm you

Channel: Laurent Touil-Tartour

Views: 1,275,103

Rating: 4.8597379 out of 5

Keywords: george lucas, charlie rose, star wars, interview, clash, disney, walt disney, december, 2015

Id: 6jWtbJxzGpQ

Length: 54min 51sec (3291 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 02 2016

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