Copyright Newhouse News Service May 30, 2005
) Shooting "American Graffiti" on a four-week schedule in 1972,
director George Lucas and producer Gary Kurtz didn't have much downtime,
their work days often ending at 5 a.m. One night, they found themselves
with a couple of uncluttered hours and figured the best way to unwind
would be a trip to the moviehouse.
They sat in their San Rafael, Calif., production office scanning the
newspaper listings for a science fiction picture with a sense of fun and
inspiration, similar to the action serials they followed as kids. With
nothing like that to be found, Lucas and Kurtz decided that one day they
would make that film themselves.
"George said, `Gee, it's too bad there isn't something like `Flash
Gordon' around anymore," Kurtz says. "We wanted a space opera, but
science fiction had taken this turn of being post- apocalyptic, very
depressing. There hadn't been a rousing space opera movie since
`Forbidden Planet' in 1956."
It turns
out a lot of other moviegoers wanted to see something like that. Lucas'
and Kurtz's 1977 sci-fi adventure "Star Wars" pervaded popular culture
and spawned a major franchise. Nearly 30 years later, the sixth and
final chapter, "Revenge of the Sith," grossed a record $50 million on
its opening day, totaling $182.7 million in less than a week.
Although Lucas masterminded the Skywalker saga, he had help
shepherding his concepts to celluloid. Kurtz worked collaboratively with
him during the early days, pitching the project to studios, hiring cast
and crew, scouting locations, and finding ways to render moon-age
imagery on a modest budget.
An unsung
hero of "Star Wars," Kurtz played a key role in launching the series,
yet has kept a low profile through all the hype.
The San Francisco native bridged into blockbusters from the indie
counterculture. He cut his filmmaking teeth working for B-movie mogul
Roger Corman and debuted as a producer with the off-beat road movie
"Two-Lane Blacktop."
Kurtz and Lucas
met as struggling film school graduates with a mutual friend in Francis
Ford Coppola. They forged a creative partnership that lasted from
"American Graffiti" through "The Empire Strikes Back."
Kurtz left the series after budget problems on "Empire" and a
disagreement over the storyline of the third movie, "Return of the
Jedi."
"The changes that (Lucas)
wanted to make in `Jedi' were such that to me it appeared as if it was
going to be another version of `Star Wars' with another attack on a
Death Star," Kurtz says. "I just felt it probably was better to try a
different challenge."
The producer
eventually abandoned Hollywood completely. He moved to London, where
he's spent the past two decades channeling his energy into independent
film and family-oriented programming for British television.
On the day "Sith" debuted in theaters, Kurtz was in Chicago on the
set of his latest project, a low-budget comedy titled "5-25- 77." It is,
coincidentally, about a teenager's misadventures trying to see the
original "Star Wars" on opening day.
For him, Tinseltown lost its allure a long time ago. "The homogenizing
mill of the Hollywood system is only looking out for another `Star Wars'
or another `Jurassic Park,"' Kurtz says. "I prefer working on a smaller
scale rather than trying to fathom what (the studios) are interested
in."
He can see the irony in his
complaints, since "Star Wars" tipped the scale toward mass appeal. He
adds, however, that he and Lucas never expected the movie to interest
anyone beyond genre fans. They sold it to Twentieth Century Fox on the
basis of a niche market.
"We used
statistics of other science fiction films to prove that you wouldn't
need any other audience to make a small profit," says Kurtz, 64. "It
wasn't until after the film was released (that) it became apparent that
it was a crossover film."
"Producer"
is a nebulous label in Hollywood. Sometimes, a check is all it takes to
earn the title. Kurtz, however, believes producers should work alongside
directors, managing all the logistical issues that can interrupt the
creative process.
"I grew up in the
school where the producer was just as much a filmmaker as the
cameraman," says Kurtz, who doesn't get a cut of "Star Wars" prequel
profits, but still earns royalty checks from the first two films. "I
always have looked at the producer's role as shielding the director so
he doesn't have to worry about anything except working with the actors
on the stage."
Hisa interest in the
fantastical side of cinema dates to childhood experiments in stop-motion
animation with an 8mm camera and a cast of toy soldiers. Although he
started at the 
University of Southern California as a jazz major, he switched over to the film department two years into his education.
After graduating, he worked on such Corman productions as "Queen of
Blood" and "Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet." These pictures were
recycled Russian science fiction epics, dubbed into English and trimmed
of communist propaganda. They were completed in a matter of days.
"Roger would buy a foreign film that had a lame story but excellent
visual effects," says Kurtz. "We turned them into new films, rewriting
the dialogue, adding scenes with our actors. We didn't use any of the
original footage except for spaceships and people in spacesuits walking
around on planets."
Corman remembers Kurtz as someone who was diligent, inventive and amicable.
"He brought the pictures in on schedule, on budget and he did it in a
friendly way," says Corman. "Some people can do that and everybody
wants to kill them. Other people attempt to be friendly and become a
little weak. He had the unique ability to make certain everything was
done the way he wanted it done, yet at the same time be one of the
guys."
The road to "Star Wars" began
with a call from Francis Ford Coppola, whom Kurtz had met through
Corman's company, American International Pictures. Having won an Oscar
for his "Patton" screenplay, Coppola earned the clout to start
developing his own pictures. He wanted to pair Kurtz with his friend
George Lucas as producer-director on "Apocalypse Now."
Although funding fell through for the Joseph Conrad adaptation
(Coppola made the film himself nearly a decade later), Kurtz and Lucas
decided to start collaborating on new ideas.
Their first effort was "American Graffiti," an autobiographical film
that follows a group of teen dreamers cruising their small town in
trophy cars circa 1962. It was made for $850,000 and had no marquee
names in its cast, yet went on to gross $65 million.
The picture's profitability didn't help much, however, when they were shopping "Star Wars" to studios.
"People didn't like the idea," Kurtz says. "`2001' had come out in
1968 and had not made its money back for five years. Of course, that was
a very cerebral movie and not like `Star Wars' at all, but we couldn't
convince anybody that science fiction came in different guises."
They finally found support with Twentieth Century Fox, mainly because
the studio had released one of the few successful sci-fi pictures of
the era, "Planet of the Apes." The company agreed to invest $10 million,
figuring it wouldn't be a great financial loss if the film bombed.
Shooting "Star Wars" at Elstree Studios in the United Kingdom, Lucas
faced the dual challenge of adapting to a new country and supervising a
production team that had little confidence in his abilities.
"He didn't have a great time," Kurtz says. "He didn't like the food,
the weather. The crew was not completely behind the picture because they
didn't understand it. A lot of things were shot against blue screen, so
even the actors didn't know what (the finished product) was going to
be. It was looked upon as a kind of a folly."
All the lead actors except Alec Guinness were newcomers. Lucas
purposely chose unknowns so they wouldn't bring the baggage of stardom
to the characters. Because the performers were so new to feature
filmmaking, they needed extra guidance. Lucas tended to be reserved on
the set and Kurtz found himself encouraging the cast.
"George has always been quite shy," says Kurtz. "He wasn't as
gregarious as actors like directors to be. The actors would come into
the office and say, `Am I doing O.K.? He isn't saying anything.' And I'd
say `Sure, you're doing great."' (Lucas was not available for comment).
When "Star Wars" was released to huge box office, the studio began
inquiring about a sequel. Lucas opted not to direct "The Empire Strikes
Back" so he could concentrate on the visual effects. He asked several
candidates to helm the follow-up Kurtz prefers not to identify them
but all of them passed.
"You can see
the dilemma because you approach a director and say, `How would you like
to do a sequel to the most popular film of all time?"' Kurtz says. "If
it's a success, the original film gets all of the credit. If it's not,
the new director gets blamed for the failure."
Eventually, the assignment went to Irvin Kershner, a filmmaker with whom Kurtz had worked as a college student.
"Empire" was a whole new challenge for Kurtz. The budget, $35
million, was more than double that of "Star Wars," and the funds came
from Lucas himself. Kurtz and Kershner oversaw shooting in Europe while
Lucas remained home in California working with his technicians at
Industrial Light & Magic.
The
picture ran over-schedule and over-budget. The situation was exacerbated
by the fact that Lucas was privately financing the film. The 10-year
alliance between Kurtz and Lucas began to erode.
"George felt a little bit of the pressure," Kurtz says. "I had to
take the responsibility because it was my film and I wasn't able to
bring it in on budget."
For all the mishaps, Kurtz thinks "Empire" turned out to be the strongest of all six films.
"It works the best, dramatically. We were able to take a risk in
going against the standard action film genre," he says. "We put the big
action scene in the first act and ended it quietly. The idea was that
`Empire' was the second act of a three-act play. It was the time when
all of our characters get into trouble, so we left it open- ended. It
didn't matter. It was popular anyway."
Kurtz said goodbye to "Star Wars" 25 years ago, but he still has
mementos from the era. One of his favorites is a comment card from an
early test screening of the original film.
"Some guy said that he thought `Star Wars' was the worst film he had
ever seen, the worst film since `Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster,"' Kurtz
says. "I have it framed."
LF/JL END ROSE
(Lisa Rose is a staff writer for The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J. She can be contacted at lrose(at)starledger.com.)
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