TV Guide sat down for a rare interview with George Lucas, creator of both the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises, about the film Fog City Mavericks.
A documentary about San Francisco based directors, gives insight into his life and his choices as a director. You can access it here.
Some Highlights:
TV Guide: More amazing serendipity in the history of San Francisco filmmakers: If THX 1138 [Lucas’ ambitious 1971 box-office failure, which nearly bankrupted his friend and producer Francis Coppola’s American Zoetrope studio] was a hit, Coppola might not have made The Godfather.
Lucas: [Laughs] Possibly, yeah. You know, you sort of have to look at opportunities and sometimes things come along and you sort of, even though you want to reject them outright, you have to look at the other side of it. Fortunately, in terms of The Godfather, Francis would never have done that just for the money, no matter what. He had to find something that he loved about it. He had to find the hook that would get him into it, to say, “How can I make this mine? I know something about Italians, I know something about the Mafia and I know something about family” — and those are things that really interested him. And so he turned it into his movie. And you know, it’s different than the book, and obviously he had to fight very hard against the system to do that. Fortunately, he managed to survive and overcome all of the influences. That was literally going to be a very cheap gangster movie starring Kirk Douglas, and he made it something extraordinary.
