March 21, 1999

George Lucas: 'I'm a Cynic Who Has Hope for the Human Race'

ollowing are excerpts from several wide-ranging conversations between the director George Lucas and the writer Orville Schell that took place recently at Mr. Lucas's house in San Rafael, Calif., and nearby at his Skywalker Ranch.

ORVILLE SCHELL. In your films you deal with very futuristic subjects, yet clearly part of you is firmly rooted back in the past.

GEORGE LUCAS. I'm basically a Victorian person. I love Victorian artifacts. I love to collect art. I love sculpture. I love all kinds of old things. But I would say that the primary word for me is romantic. I like the esthetics of the Victorian age and things that are homey and kind of Midwestern -- a very warm, fuzzy kind of reality.

SCHELL. What do you mean "the primary word is romantic"?

LUCAS. In terms of stories, I think the word suggests a humanist perspective on things -- an emotional point of view. That's really the primary focus of everything I do.

SCHELL. But people seem to perceive you as being more interested in technology than emotions. Now you're describing yourself as an emotionally or, as you put it, a "romantically" inclined "Victorian" person.

LUCAS. Well, most people know me from my work using technology. But I think one can tell from my movies that I have a very romantic point of view about technology. I don't hate technology. But at the same time I'm well aware of the dangers of technology. Anybody who knows me knows that I'm not really a high-tech person. I mean I like technology and I enjoy technology, but technology to me is just a tool. It's not something that I'm intrigued by and obsessed by and need to be with per se. I would rather go sit under a tree and read a book than sit in front of a computer, go on line or join a chat room. I would rather have tea with someone.

SCHELL. Is there implicit in this view an optimism vis-à-vis the state of the human race?

LUCAS. I'm a cynical optimist [laughs].

I'm a cynic who has hope for the human race, although I look at human folly and sometimes I get very frustrated. We have, I think, gone quite a ways intellectually. But emotionally the human race has hardly moved at all, which is something I find fascinating. It's dangerous that we're advancing so fast technologically while we're not advancing very fast emotionally.

SCHELL. Does your concern with the emotional side of things have some bearing on your interest in mythology?

LUCAS. Yes. One of the reasons I do the things I do in my movies, and why I've gotten so wrapped up in mythology, is that for me they offer a chance to explore psychological archeology. It really is interesting to be able to cut across cultures and then go back 3,000 years and find what the emotional driving points were then and realize that they're the same now, that they touch the same chords today that they did then.

SCHELL. So how does the mythology of "Star Wars" fit into all this?

LUCAS. Jung was amazed by what anybody who delves into this past is amazed by -- namely, how many psychological motifs are constant throughout the human race and time, which is where mythology comes into it. Mythology is a performance piece that gets acted out over hundreds of years before it actually becomes embedded in clay on a tablet, or is put down on a piece of paper to be codified as a fixed thing. But originally it was performed for a group of people in a way in which the psychological feedback would tell the narrator which way to go. Mythology was created out of what emotionally worked as a story.

SCHELL. But these stories, these mythologies, have evolved over a long period of time, whereas you have created your mythologies out of whole cloth. Is this a kind of distortion of the process?

LUCAS. I haven't really distorted the process. Even though "Star Wars" is a completely new story, it's using the same old motifs. I mean it's still "The Hero of a Thousand Faces." The hero does have a thousand faces and this is just one of them. I'm obviously contemporizing my stories and personalizing them. What I am saying in my films is: These are emotional issues that I care about, that came out of my time, which are the 50's, 60's and 70's. But they embody ageless themes, a distillation of a lot of different mythologies from around the world.

The fun part is that I have been able to work in a worldwide market, and one of the weird and more interesting things about "Star Wars" is that it seems to work in as many cultures as it does.

SCHELL. Does this help explain its popularity?

LUCAS. I'm amazed that people haven't really figured this out. I've talked about it, but people think that it is all this high-tech and special-effects stuff that makes people want to go back and see these films over and over again. The interesting thing for me is that since "Star Wars" a lot of people have made science fiction movies and a lot of people have made special-effects movies, but nobody has wanted to go back and see them over and over again.

SCHELL. Many of them have turned out to be strangely emotionless, haven't they?

LUCAS. Yes. The one special-effects film that people did go back and see over and over again was "Titanic." Now "Titanic" was anything but a science-fiction movie. But it was a high-tech special-effects movie just like "Star Wars." The old "Star Wars" had about 500 special-effects shots in it and "Titanic" also had about 500. But the story was very romantic and actually runs along the very same lines as "Star Wars."

SCHELL. So where did all the strange characters and ideas come from?

LUCAS. I took off from the folk side of things and tried to stay with universal themes apart from violence and sex, which are the only other two universal themes that seem to work around the world. My films aren't that violent or that sexy. Instead, I'm dealing with the need for humans to have friendships, to be compassionate, to band together to help each other and to join together against what is negative.

SCHELL. You sound awfully Buddhist to me.

LUCAS. My daughter was asked at school, "What are you?" And she said we're Buddhist Methodists. I said, well, I guess that's one way to describe it [laughs].

I've always had a keen interest in education, in how and why people learn. I think that we're in a race for survival and the only adaptable ability we have is our brains. Only we can exchange information. And the test of how accurate the information is will be whether we all die or not. If we all die, then it wasn't the right information. I would rather see us be a positive force in the universe than a cancer. We have the knowledge to be either one. That, in essence, is what "Star Wars" is about. We are both good and evil, and we have a choice.

SCHELL. Enemies are thematically very prominent in your movies. In the way you see the world, does the current dark side have anything to do with the culture of business in a mutated form?

LUCAS. There is a huge danger in corporations which really have no one to answer to except the imperative to make money. There's a great danger here that we're just beginning to confront. I don't want to sound moralistic, but if you create an animal and it's O.K. for it to feed on whatever it wants, then you've got a problem. The key in everything is to find balance.

SCHELL. How do you try to do that? I mean, you are a mogul yourself. You have an empire and are leading lots of people. And how do you temper the corporate threat you've just spoken about?

LUCAS. Well, fortunately, I have compassionate stockholders [chuckles].

SCHELL. But wait a minute! Who are your stockholders?

LUCAS. Me! I'm the only one [laughs]! And it's through me that this organization hopefully tries to take a more compassionate view of its employees and what we do. If we became a public corporation, then that unique aspect would disappear. As the chairman and the president of everything, I, of course, have to make money to survive. But as the stockholder, I can say, "Yes, but, one must have a little bit of honor, good manners and consideration for everybody else." Nonetheless, we live in a world where you have to be reasonably tough in order to be taken seriously. Sometimes you have to be the shark, because you have to live. Between two animals like baboons who cross each other in the forest, it's the one that yells at the others the most that makes the biggest impression. You can't just shy away from that situation. You have to stand up and yell in their language in order to get them to respect you. That's part of the jungle we live in. But it's also my feeling that with the people who work beneath us in our pride or our herd, so to speak, one must try to treat them with compassion and in a nurturing manner.

SCHELL. Would you say that you're now leading a good life?

LUCAS. I would say I am happy. The interesting part of it is that -- and I hate to say it because it's such a cliché -- the good life has nothing to do with the money thing and fortune.

SCHELL. Since you have money, you're probably not quite the right person to say such a thing [laughs].

LUCAS. No, I am the right person! I've been there! I've done it! And I want to tell film students: "If you've gone into films to make money, fame and fortune, just forget it! The odds are way against you. Go into the stock market! Go into something else. You're never going to find money in the film business. Because it's too hard." Well, maybe there's fame, if you're lucky. But you might just as well go out and become a serial killer, because you can get famous much faster that way!

I've got just about as much money as you can get, and I was just as happy 30 years ago. As long as I could make a movie, I was happy. And as long as I still can make movies, I'll still be happy. The thing that makes me unhappy is when somebody else tells me what to make.

SCHELL. The fact that now you don't have to get permission from others to do what you want must make a great difference, and that freedom derives in no small measure from the vast cushion you've got around you to protect yourself.

LUCAS. Sure, the urge toward independence grows out of the frustration that any artist -- a writer, a painter, a sculptor -- faces, which is: you want to get into a position where people aren't distorting or destroying your vision. When you get into opera, architecture or film, you're dealing in art forms that are so large and require so many resources that you can't help but be in a more communal kind of situation. And to dominate such a situation with your vision is much, much harder. Knowing how to get people to cooperate and to build a pyramid the way you want the pyramid built is a much larger social endeavor than, say, being a Picasso and painting in your studio.

I'm not a big proponent of art with a capital A. To me art is just a way of communicating. Once you say, "I hope somebody likes my painting," then you're going to paint for somebody. No matter how esoteric an artist you are, you're still playing for an audience. If you only play to 10 people, then, maybe you're a high artist [laughs].

SCHELL. There also is the question of when the artist, writer or filmmaker has to become more than just artist, and has to become a spokesman on the "Today Show." What I'm driving at here is the role of a public life for an artist.

LUCAS. Well, it's no secret that I'm not fond of public life. But, of course, I want people to like what I do. Everybody wants to be accepted, at least by somebody. But we live in a world now where you're forced to become part of this larger corporate entity called the media, which is devouring as much information as it possibly can get in order to keep itself going. Going on the media becomes a kind of social duty. Sure, some people use it because they want to promote their products or whatever. And in certain cases when I make a movie, I do like to promote my product. You get people to invest money in what you're doing, and then you feel responsible to do all you can to help them get their money back. Since I'm doing the films myself, I don't have quite that obligation. I'd just as soon let my own films die than have to go out and sell them on a circuit. And I do as little as I have to, to feel responsible.

So why am I doing publicity? I'm doing it because there's a social obligation. I'm not doing it for me. I'm doing it for the media. And the media would feel cheated if I didn't do it. It would feel that I was shunning them, or abusing them in some way. I don't have to make money off this. It'll do fine. But the media has to make money. And they feel I owe it to them to sell their magazines and sell their TV programs as part of society. I do feel part of the society, so I have come to the conclusion that there is a certain obligation that you have as part of the social structure.

SCHELL. Do you think that one reason "Star Wars" works is that, having so defoliated our real world of heroes, we need to project our yearnings for heroism into an unreal world?

LUCAS. Movies have a big voice, and what we filmmakers have to do is to set a good example. There's nothing wrong with that. The story being told in "Star Wars" is about heroes who have the ideals that we as a society would like people to possess. It's a terrible thing to say, but there's a certain part of society that would like everybody to be cynical. But at the same time, another segment of society needs to have heroes -- to have somebody of whom they can say: "This is the kind of person that we should aspire to be."

SCHELL. Where are we going to get such models?

LUCAS. Society creates them. That's why society builds statues.

SCHELL. But, if I follow your logic, you're saying that we are now incapable of resisting putting feet of clay on these statues.

LUCAS. The United States, especially the media, is eating its own tail. The media has a way of leveling everything in its path, which is not good for a society. There's no respect for the office of the Presidency. Not that we need a king, but there's a reason why kings built large palaces, sat on thrones and wore rubies all over. There's a whole social need for that, not to oppress the masses, but to impress the masses and make them proud and allow them to feel good about their culture, their government and their ruler so that they are left feeling that a ruler has the right to rule over them, so that they feel good rather than disgusted about being ruled. In the past, the media basically worked for the state and was there to build the culture. Now, obviously, in some cases it got used in a wrong way and you ended up with the whole balance of power out of whack. But there's probably no better form of government than a good despot.

SCHELL. And, in a sense, is that what you're trying to be here at Lucasfilm?

LUCAS. Possibly. Yeah, at least in my little kingdom. But I rule at the will of the people who work for me.

SCHELL. But let's say you have a leader who's only pretty good and does some shady things. Do you think that the media should be more discreet about investigating and looking into what he is doing? Basically, do you think certain things should be off limits in order to maintain the heroism of a leader?

LUCAS. Yeah, I do. I think that the media should look at the situation in the larger sense -- at what is necessary for the culture as a whole rather than exposing and tearing everything down all the time. That will not bode well for people's confidence in the institution. After all, a society only works on faith. If you lose that faith, then your society will crumble and it will be hard to get a consensus on anything.

SCHELL. But isn't that a slippery slope, one that quickly leads to what we have seen in countries like the Soviet Union and China, where in the name of positive role models it becomes unacceptable to criticize the leaders or the country?

LUCAS. That's sort of why I say a benevolent despot is the ideal ruler. He can actually get things done. The idea that power corrupts is very true and it's a big human who can get past that.

SCHELL. Confucius said that the good ruler should rule so that the citizens bend before his moral suasion like rice seedlings before a breeze.

LUCAS. You try to keep people from being used or abused and listen to their grievances and try to do what is fair. Some people get upset because they want everything. Some people feel that they deserve to have everything, even though there's no reason for it. They just feel it's their right. That's one of the problems of a democracy. You get these individual voices that are very loud, and very dysfunctional. And if you cater to those voices, you end up with a very dysfunctional society.

SCHELL. Have you gotten better at management as you've grown older?

LUCAS. Yeah. Before, I had a mix of insecurity and over-dominance, which was maybe to compensate for the insecurity. But then as you get older, I guess you get less insecure, and thus have less of a need to dominate.

SCHELL. Do the films you make not help imbue the company with a certain subtle set of unifying values?

LUCAS. I would hope so. It's like "the film" is the hero of this company. Of course, employees have other heroes. But "Star Wars" is kind of the overall hero.

SCHELL. And how about you as a hero?

LUCAS. I would say I am probably in the mix in some way, too. So that helps the company. A company, a country or anything, for that matter, has to have some kind of allegiance to somebody or something. People need to believe in something or admire somebody, so that they can say, "I admire this and I am proud to be a part of this."

SCHELL. You have not only created a rather incredible fantasy, but, if our end-of-the-century possesses magic, it must be computer graphics and the sorts of technological tricks that you have mastered.

LUCAS. I agree. You've got a lot of different people here who are very creative in different kinds of disciplines. What comes out is kind of amazing to all of us, not just to those people who see it in the end. We, too, are amazed when we do it! Which is where the fun of it, the joy of what we do, comes from. It's the joy of creativity. We put it together, step back, look at it and say, "Whoa, that's kind of neat!" As corny as that sounds, that's ultimately the primary driving force for us.

