Luke Skywalker Goes Home

Just Beyond the fog-shrouded wooden gates, a guard whose arm patch says Skywalker Fire Brigade waves the visitor inside. Within moments, the road opens to Skywalker Ranch--3000 mostly pristine acres of rolling hills in the appropriately named Lucas Valley. There are mountain lions and bobcats in the hills. Cattle roam the meadows. Down a silent winding road, the visitor sees, in the distance, a grandiose Victorian mansion that was designed by George Lucas to serve not only as his haven but as the nerve center of an empire that has grown immense. It is deep in Marin County, in the town of Nicasio, 425 miles north of Hollywood. But in its psychological distance from the movie capital, the ranch that Star Wars built could be, to borrow Lucas' own words, "in a galaxy far, far away."

"I opted for quality of life," the 53-year-old Lucas told a visitor several months ago. "It's a different world. Most of my friends are college professors." He loathes the Hollywood-Beverly Hills-Malibu social whirl. Years ago, he sat with a visitor and pointed south. "Down there"--as he is inclined to say of Hollywood--"for every honest filmmaker trying to get his film off the ground, there are a hundred sleazy used-car dealers trying to con you out of your money."

Following a difficult period in which the normally reclusive filmmaker seemed to retreat even deeper into Skywalker Ranch (he suffered through a divorce, produced a big-budget flop and consumed himself with the lucrative merchandising and special effects businesses that have made him a billionaire), Lucas has abruptly returned once again to Hollywood.

The 20th anniversary rerelease of the newly enhanced Star Wars took in $36.2 million on its first weekend, and Lucas has, for the first time in years, turned to writing a trilogy of films that will most certainly outrival, in their technological wizardry, the intergalactic saga that forever changed the movie business. After all, Star Wars opened the way for Alien, Ghostbusters, Batman, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Back to the Future, and dozens of such terrible concept movies as Last Action Hero and Judge Dredd.

"I'm not saying it's George's fault, but he and Steven Spielberg changed every studio's idea of what a movie should do in terms of investment versus return," says Lawrence Kasdan, who co-wrote The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. "It ruined the modest expectations of the movie business. Now every studio film is designed to be a blockbuster."

Spielberg put a more positive spin on the impact of the film. "Star Wars was a seminal moment when the entire industry instantly changed," he said. "For me, it's when the world recognized the value of childhood."

Even before the rerelease earlier this year of Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, Lucas was deeply immersed in writing (he often writes his scripts and ideas longhand in notebooks) and planning the three Star Wars prequels. The first will start shooting in the fall, with Lucas himself set to direct for the first time in two decades.

Lucas is as much a businessman as a filmmaker. He's responsible for four of the top 20 highest grossing films in history--he was the hands-on visionary for the Star Wars and Indiana Jones trilogies. "George at his heart has a modest vision," said Rick McCallum, producer of the Star Wars Trilogy Special Edition and the prequels. "I think he's kind of embarrassed by the huge success of both Indiana Jones and Star Wars."

Embarrassed? Forbes has estimated that his personal worth may be as high as $2 billion. And his umbrella of companies, valued at $5 billion, have virtually reinvented the way audiences view and hear movies. All this was possible because Lucas made a daring--and brilliant--decision in 1975.

With the success of his second film, American Graffiti, which cost $780,000 and grossed $120 million, Lucas negotiated with Twentieth Century Fox for his next film, Star Wars. He gave up a large salary and, instead, asked Fox to give him ownership of the merchandising, music and publishing--and all sequels. The studio, viewing these as nearly worthless, happily agreed.

Since 1977, Lucas has sold more than $4 billion in Star Wars merchandise. There have also been 21 Star Wars--related novels published by Bantam Books, all but one making the New York Times best-seller list. "The biggest change over the past 20 years is that initially it was only kids buying the products. Not anymore," said Howard Roffman, vice president of licensing at Lucasfilm. "The kids have become adults. They're interested in literary works, and in more sophisticated video games. There's a significant collector market out there."

And, of course, it will not end.

Lucas poured his fortune into digital experiments that, he sensed correctly, would transform the movie business. He created the premiere special effects research and development lab, Industrial Light & Magic, which charges studios as much as $25 million a movie and has worked on Hollywood's splashiest special effects films, including Jurassic Park and Twister. The sound heard in movie theaters worldwide has been enhanced by Lucas' THX Sound System. And many of the entertainment industry's most popular video games were created by Lucas Arts Entertainment, which used the Star Wars franchise to create such games as Rebel Assault, X-Wing and Dark Forces.

Seated atop this empire is a man as complicated as he is private. Lucas gives interviews only in his sprawling office at Skywalker Ranch. His home several miles away, where he lives with his three children, is off-limits to journalists. Although inward and a bit distant, Lucas seems without pretension and enormously self-confident. He invariably wears sneakers, jeans, a plaid shirt and Swatch watch, and his beard and thick black hair are flecked with gray. Lucas seems, in his elaborate office, not unlike any other northern California mullet-millionaire whose soft-spoken style masks his determination. Like his friend Spielberg, Lucas is accustomed to getting his way.

The success of the rereleased trilogy has energized him. Star Wars, the highest grossing film of all time, has now taken in overall more than $460 million in box office receipts in the U.S., and at least $200 million overseas. (Pretty good for a movie that was rejected by Universal and, when made by Twentieth Century Fox, cost $10 million.) With the rerelease, the three films have grossed over $1.5 billion around the world.

"Star Wars has always struck a chord with people. There are issues of loyalty, of friendship, of good and evil," said Lucas. "The themes came from stories and ideas that have been around for thousands of years."

Actually, the themes of Star Wars seem to have come from a variety of sources: mythologist Joseph Campbell, classic films such as The Wizard of Oz and Stanley Kubrick's 2001, the Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers movie serials, plus Lucas' own tortured relations with his father. According to Dale Pollock, author of Skywalking: The Life and Films of George Lucas, one of the most significant sources is Carlos Castaneda's Tales of Power, an account of a Mexican sorcerer who uses the phrase life force.

"The major theme in Star Wars, as in every Lucas film, is the acceptance of personal responsibility," says Pollock. "What Lucas seems to be saying is that we can't run away from our calling or mission in life but have a duty to do what is expected of us. Hard work, self-sacrifice, friendship, loyalty and a commitment to a higher purpose: These are tenets of Lucas' faith."

Lucas himself says, "I mean, there's a reason this film is so popular. It's not that I'm giving out propaganda nobody wants to hear."

By all accounts, the broad details of the prequels have been in Lucas' mind since the trilogy was completed with Return of the Jedi in 1983. Lucas says he's aiming for an epic, David Lean look, which will make unprecedented use of digital filmmaking technology.

The prequels, which Lucas will finance with his own money, will explain how young Anakin Skywalker succumbs to the dark side and becomes Darth Vader. "It's bleak, but if you know the other three movies, you know everything turns out all right in the end--that his son comes back and redeems him," Lucas told the Los Angeles Times. "That's the real story. It's always about the redemption of Anakin Skywalker. It's just that it's always been told from his son's point of view.

"When the story of the six films is put together," he added, "it has a more interesting arc because you're actually rooting more for Darth Vader than you are for Luke. Until now, you didn't know what the problem really was, because Darth Vader is just this bad guy. You didn't realize he's actually got a problem, too."

People who know Lucas have always insisted that the tortured relationship between Darth and Luke springs, in many ways, from Lucas' relationship with his own father. George Sr. was a domineering, ultraright-wing businessman who owned a stationery shop in Modesto, California. He died in 1991.

"Did you ever meet George's father?" asked Tom Pollock, George Jr.'s attorney in the Seventies and Eighties. "I did not understand him until I met his father and spent some time talking with him about his son. That's when you realize George is his father." Certainly some of Lucas' hostility toward Hollywood, big-city hustlers, bankers and lawyers stems from his father's conservatism. The elder Lucas referred to Hollywood as "Sin City." Lucas also inherited his father's fiscal moderation, "the common sense I use to get me through the business world."

"I'm the son of a small-town businessman," said Lucas. "He was conservative, and I'm very conservative, always have been."

Yet the filmmaker has also recalled being "incredibly angry" at his father. Each summer George Sr. would shave off his son's hair, giving the boy the nickname Butch. They had raging arguments over young George's decision not to take over the family stationery business. Even after his son became extraordinarily wealthy, the elder Lucas, while proud, seemed surprised. He never believed his son would amount to much. "George never listened to me," his father told Time in 1983. "He was his mother's pet."

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George Walton Lucas Jr. was born on May 14, 1944 in Modesto, a northern California city distinguished mostly by its withering heat in the summer, the Gallo winery on its outskirts and its wide, flat roads perfect for car racing. Lucas was a terrible student ("I was bored silly"), and as he grew older, he immersed himself in music (he kept an (continued on page 174)george lucas(continued from page 120) autographed picture of Elvis in his bedroom), photography and drag racing.

Weighing only 100 pounds as a teenager, Lucas loved the thrill of drag racing for its freedom. To the horror of his parents, he hung out with a rough crowd: He greased his hair, cruised for girls and listened to rock and roll. "The only way to keep from getting the shit kicked out of you was to hang out with some really tough guys who happened to be your friends," he recalls. (Lucas used his teen experiences for American Graffiti, his most personal film.)

Cruising, Lucas told biographer Dale Pollock, is more than a quaint adolescent experience. "It's a significant event in the maturation of American youth," he said. "It's a rite of passage, a mating ritual. It's so American: the cars, the machines, the cruising for girls and the whole society that develops around it."

Cruising also introduced Lucas to sex--a subject that is almost totally avoided in Star Wars. (Lucas ordered Carrie Fisher's breasts be taped, leading Fisher to remark, "No breasts bounce in space, there's no jiggling in the Empire.") Painfully shy, Lucas welcomed the anonymity of cars. "Nobody knew who I was," he recalled. "I'd say, 'Hi, I'm George,' but after that night I'd never see the girls again."

Lucas' life changed when he was 18 and a senior at Thomas Downey High School. Speeding home in his Fiat Bian-china, a fast Italian import, Lucas made an illegal left turn onto a dirt road near his home and smashed into a Chevy Impala that was barreling toward him. The Fiat was hurled sideways, flipped over four or five times and wrapped around a walnut tree. Lucas was thrown out the open roof. Had his seat belt not snapped at its base, he would have likely died.

His near-fatal experience--he lingered close to death for several days with serious internal injuries--changed Lucas. He spent three months in and out of the hospital. "I realized that I'd been living my life so close to the edge for so long," he said years later. "That's when I decided to go straight, to become a better student, to try to do something with myself." The accident, Lucas added, gave him a sense of his own mortality.

"I began to trust my instincts," he told Pollock. "I had the feeling I should go to college, and I did. I had the same feeling later that I should go to film school, even though everyone thought I was nuts. I had the same feeling when I decided to make Star Wars, when even my friends told me I was crazy. These are just things that had to be done, and I felt as if I had to do them."

Lucas enrolled at Modesto Junior College, where he became fascinated with cinematography and experimented with an eight-millimeter camera owned by a friend. While racing sports cars--a hobby that continued even after the accident--Lucas also met cinematographer Haskell Wexler, who took a liking to this short, skinny kid who seemed obsessed with camera techniques. Lucas applied to the prestigious film school at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and--to George's and his father's amazement--got in. "I fought him; I didn't want him to go into that damn movie business," his father recalled years later. Meanwhile, Wexler had phoned friends at the school: "For God's sake, keep an eye on the kid," he'd told them.

USC was a milestone for Lucas. "Suddenly my life was film--every waking hour," he says. He had found his calling. He especially loved editing--partly because, he said later, it offered a way to manipulate the perceptions of audiences. He concentrated on making abstract science fiction films and mock documentaries, which impressed Francis Coppola, who saw one of Lucas' student films and invited him to sit in on the shooting of Finian's Rainbow. Later, Lucas directed a short documentary about Coppola's film The Rain People.

Coppola persuaded Warner Bros, to sign his protégé to a contract and make a film based on one of Lucas' science fiction student movies. The full-length feature, THX-1138, a bleak futuristic tale, was released in 1971 to modest reviews. It was a box office flop. (The film also contains the only erotic sequences in Lucas' oeuvre, including a nude striptease by a buxom black woman.)

But studio executives were impressed with Lucas' obvious talent. He turned his attention to American Graffiti, partly because he wanted to dispel the notion that he was a skilled but mechanical filmmaker devoid of humor and feeling.

In the meantime, Lucas had met Marcia Griffin, a film editor. She was the first woman he dated seriously. "My relationships with women were not complex," he said. "Until I met Marcia, it was a very animalistic attraction." (Or, as Pollock put it, "His relationships usually lasted for a few dates and a couple of sessions in bed and then petered out.") Lucas and Griffin wed on February 22, 1969, in a Methodist church near Monterey.

Even before completing American Graffiti, Lucas wanted to make a science fiction film, splashed with drama and comedy, that would break the mold of the cheesy futuristic films churned out by the studios. Lucas sensed that audiences yearned for an empowering and bold adventure in the face of all the sexually charged and violent realism produced by studios in the late Sixties and early Seventies.

"I was very interested in creating a modern myth to replace the Western," he said recently. "I realized that it had to be somewhere outside people's realm of awareness. That is where Westerns were. Greek mythology, or mythology from any country, often takes place in an unknown area believable to the audience. The only area we now have that is like that is outer space. So I decided outer space was a good idea."

After researching fairy tales, mythology, movie serials and social psychology, Lucas began writing Star Wars, a bizarre saga (no one in Hollywood, including Lucas' agents and lawyers, understood the concept) about intergalactic war, chirping robots, a rebel princess fleeing from an evil sovereign and an intrepid hero named Luke Skywalker who pits himself against a dark, menacing force.

"A lot of stuff in there is very personal," he said years after Star Wars was released. "There's more of me in Star Wars than I care to admit. Knowing that the film was made for a young audience, I was trying to say, in a simple way, that there is a God and that there is both a good side and a bad side. You have a choice between them, but the world works better if you're on the good side. (It's no coincidence that Lucas chose Mark Hamill, who is about his height, to play the last of the Jedi knights, or that he named the character Luke.)

As for the recent success of Star Wars, Lucas says, "If it were just an adrenaline-rush movie, it wouldn't be here 20 years later. There are other things going on that are complicated and psychologically satisfying. It's like sex and love. Sex is a rush for a short period of time, and then it goes away. An adrenaline movie is more like having sex. But if people are still interested in and fond of your movie 20 years later, it was either the best sex they ever had, or it's romantic love, which means there is more to it than just the adrenaline rush."

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Lucas' profits from the Star Wars trilogy enabled him to purchase the thousands of acres in Marin County. He built a seemingly Utopian community (Lucas calls it his "psychological experiment") where everyone speaks in whispers, wears jeans and immerses themselves in some of the world's most advanced film postproduction facilities, where films are edited, special effects added and other enhancements made. "It's my biggest movie. I've always been a frustrated architect," says Lucas, who has lavished at least $75 million on the set of Victorian buildings that makes up the ranch.

Of course, beneath the laid-back style of Skywalker Ranch--and Lucas spent a ton of money, for example, just planting about 2000 mature trees to encourage the foxes and pheasants in the rolling hills of Marin County--there's an aggressive and expanding multibillion-dollar business controlled by the filmmaker: Lucasfilm Ltd., Lucas Digital Ltd. and Lucas Arts Entertainment Co.

"The guiding principle is that the company can sustain itself without having to make movies," confesses Lucas. "I don't want to have to make movies. Your bottom-line assumption has to be that every movie loses money. They don't, of course, but you go on that assumption. It's like baseball. You don't always get into the World Series, but you keep playing."

The Eighties and early Nineties were difficult for Lucas. Marcia, who shared an Academy Award for editing Star Wars, left him for an artist who worked on the ranch. The 1983 divorce devastated Lucas (the settlement reportedly cost him $50 million). He had a relationship with Linda Ronstadt, but that broke up. His associates don't know--or aren't saying--anything about his personal life now.

Lucas is raising three adopted children on his own. His older daughter, Amanda, 16, was adopted while George was still married. Lucas also has an eight-year-old daughter, Katie, and a four-year-old son, Jett. In recent years, he has spoken of the children a bit more freely, although Lucas guards his own--and his family's--privacy intensely.

Lucas has produced some disappointing films, including Howard the Duck, Willow and, more recently, Radioland Murders. His TV show, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, got marginal ratings.

These days, Lucas drives to his Skywalker Ranch office sporadically. The majority of the time he's home, writing and planning the three films that will consume him past the millennium.

Even Lucas' critics call him a visionary--one of the few filmmakers of the Seventies to grasp the significance of marrying computers to cameras. He now views films (such as the Star Wars trilogy) as dynamic creations, forever showcasing the latest technological breakthroughs in sound and image.

"I can take images and manipulate them infinitely, as opposed to taking still photographs and laying them one after the other," he told Wired earlier this year. "I move things in all directions. It's such a liberating experience."

The dominant figure in digital moviemaking, Lucas speaks mystically about the untapped potential for computers and film. "Digital technology is the same revolution as adding sound to pictures and the same revolution as adding color to pictures," he said. "Nothing more, nothing less."

Surprisingly, Lucas is hardly consumed with computers on a personal level. He uses e-mail infrequently. "I don't have time to spend on the Web," he told Wired. He added: "For being sort of a state-of-the-art guy, my personal life is very unstate-of-the-art. It's Victorian, actually. I like to sit on a porch and listen to the flies buzz if I have five minutes, because most of my life is interacting with people all the time. I interact with a couple hundred people every day, and it's very intense. I have three kids, so I interact with them during whatever's left of the day. The few brief seconds I have before I fall asleep are usually more meditative in nature."

Since the car accident that nearly killed him at the age of 18, Lucas' credo has been remarkably simple: Work hard, believe in yourself and persevere.

"My films have a tendency to promote a personal self-esteem, a you-can-do-it attitude," he told writer Paul Chutkow in 1993. "Their message is, 'Don't listen to everyone else. Discover your own feelings and follow them. Then you can overcome anything.' It's old-fashioned and very American."

Lucas said he often meets people who are drifting. "All they need is the inspiration to say, 'Don't let all this get you down. You can do it,'" he said. "It's the one thing I discovered early on. You may have to overcome a lot of fear and get up a lot of courage, sometimes to do even the simplest things, sometimes to just get up in the morning. But you can do it. You can make a difference.

"Dreams are extremely important," he said. "You can't do it unless you imagine it."