George Lucas - Who starred in american graffiti?

George Lucas got his start going to school at USC, which got him an internship on a Francis Ford Coppola film currently shooting. Through this the two became good friends and ultimately produced films together under Coppola’s banner American Zoetrope. The first of these was a film called THX-1138, a feature length version of a student film Lucas also directed. It showed an uncompromising bleak future which was well received, giving Lucas many accolades as a director to watch.

Next Lucas made the nostalgia picture American Graffiti, which seemed risky at the time until it grossed a large amount of money, tapping into a yearning for nostalgia that has been mined again and again. With this success Lucas turned his attention to an idea spawned from reading Joseph Campbell’s books on mythology and the role of the hero: Star Wars. It was Star Wars (along with Spielberg’s Jaws) that heralded the rise of the Hollywood blockbuster.

In order to make Star Wars Lucas offered a reduced fee as director in exchange for sequel and merchandising rights. Fox, believing it would make no money, agreed. No such deal as ever taken place since as it turned out to be extremely lucrative for Lucas…. so much so that the future Star Wars films were all financed by Lucas himself. After the recent prequels Lucas’s net worth was around $3 billon.

However, in the late 80s not all was well with Lucas. He produced a big budget fantasy picture called Willow directed by his friend Ron Howard (who starred in American Graffiti). It was a financial failure. A worse failure was his produced adaptation of the cult comic book Howard the Duck, which failed completely both artistically and financially. As these were also produced by Lucas he took the brunt of their financial failure upon himself (Lucas paid $2 million to construct the duck suit alone). This coupled with the construction of his multi-million dollar Skywalker Ranch in the 1980s left him liquidating some of his assets, one of which was a computer animation unit which he sold to Steve Jobs. This became Pixar, whose success should be known to all.

Since then Industrial Light and Magic (formed by Lucas to do the special effects for Star Wars) has become one of the top special effects houses in Hollywood. THX certification, developed by Lucas, became one of the top audio standards in the 1990s with the advent of digital sound in theatres. This along with the financial success of the Star Wars prequels has brought him to his current financial state, which is needless to say, more than secure.

This is about the time Lucas stated in an interview that now that he had made so much money he was going to be able to direct art films again, direct a different low budget movie each year and watch as they tank since he had nothing to lose. Instead, he has announced a Star Wars television series. Despite the lack of financial risk involved his earlier experience in the 1980s seems to have blunted his desire to take chances.

Yet, throughout all of his films Lucas has placed the numbers 1138, sometimes subtly and sometimes in an obvious manner. While a funny in joke it seems a bit sad in retrospect. The personal reminder to be artistically bold means little without action, especially considering the recent statements by Lucas that he wants to move in that direction again.