George Walton Lucas Jr. was born on May 14,1944 in Modesto, California. He spent his childhood fascinated with comic books, especially Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. He spent his teenage years bored with the tedium of routine school days and teachers. Car racing was the only excitement that George Lucas was allowed. It was his love of car racing that would dramatically change his life. June 12, 1962, three days before George Lucas was to graduate from high school, he was involved in a serious accident. George Lucas was gravely injured when his Fiat Biancina was struck broadside by another car (a fellow student at Downey High School, Modesto California) and was sent rolling toward a walnut tree at sixty miles per hour. His seat belt snapped and he was flung from the car which, a split second later, collided with such force that it moved the tree two feet, roots and all. If the seat belt had worked, he would have been killed instantly. You cant have that kind of experience and not feel that there must be a reason why youre here, George Lucas has said. I realized I should be spending my time trying to figure out what that reason is and trying to fulfill it. He immediately enrolled in a local junior college in a successful attempt to bring his grades up high enough to be accepted in the University of Southern Californias film school. He interpreted film to mean photography, but once he began his work in motion pictures he knew it was what he loved. He became determined to succeed in this competitive environment. George Lucas differed greatly from much of the rest of the 60s film school generation that his love affair with movies began only after he entered college. I only went to movies to chase girls, George Lucas commented of his youth in Modesto. It took years before good movies got to my town  and foreign films? Never. George Lucas student work reflected the pop culture obsessions of his youth: 1:42:08, a racing mini-epic, and The Emperor, about a disc jockey named Emperor Hudson, were signature student works, which George Lucas would later revisit and build upon in American Graffiti. In 1966, George Lucas was hired as a teaching assistant After graduating from USC in 1966, George Lucas was hired as a teaching assistant assigned to train cameramen for the U.S. Military. It was during this time that George Lucas found an opportunity to shoot THX 1138:4EB  an abstract, Orwellian science fiction short which went on to win several major student awards and which would ultimately be adapted to the big screen for George Lucas first studio feature. In 1967, George Lucas re-enrolled as a USC graduate student. In the same year, he was selected as one of four student filmmakers from the USC and UCLA film programs to make a behind the scenes documentary about the making of McKennas Gold. On the strength of his many student awards, George Lucas won USCs annual scholarship to become a production apprentice at Warner Brothers. George Lucas might be driven by grand ambitions, he was financially cautious Along with his high school car accident and the decision to attend USC; the apprenticeship turned out to be another life-altering event. Warner Bros. was in turmoil thanks to its recent purchase by Seven Arts and the resulting exodus of founding production chief Jack Warner. There was only one film in production on the entire lot: a musical starring Fred Astair and Petula Clark entitled Finians Rainbow, which was being directed by a 27-year-old UCLA graduate, Francis Coppola. It was due to this that the two met and became life long friends despite their opposite personalities. George Lucas was physically slight, Coppola was large and flamboyant; while George Lucas might be driven by grand ambitions, he was financially cautious while Coppola was reckless with money; where George Lucas was quiet and reserved, Coppola reveled in the spotlight. During his apprenticeship, Coppola made George Lucas an offer he couldnt refuse During his apprenticeship, Coppola made George Lucas an offer he couldnt refuse. George Lucas would become a paid assistant on both Finians Rainbow and The Rain People, the artier road movie that Coppola was prepping on the side, and Coppola would help nurture George Lucas newest baby, a feature length version of THX. When Finians Rainbow wrapped, Coppola made good on his promise and talked Warner Bros. into signing George Lucas to develop his THX feature. George Lucas continued to work on both The Rain People with Coppola during the day and work on THX by night. In 1969, when The Rain People was completed, Coppola decided to move on to the next phase of his plan to take over the film industry. He went on a celebrated equipment-buying spree during his trip to Europe, which, by some accounts, left the more conservative George Lucas terrified. Once back in the U.S., Coppola and George Lucas conceived a plan to rent a warehouse in San Francisco, CA and turn it into an independent studio called American Zoetrope, after one of the earliest motion picture devices.