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George Lucas
22 quotes
“My primary concept in approaching the production of THX 1138 was to make a kind of theater verité film of the future — something that would look like a documentary crew had made a film about some character in a time yet to come. No film ever ends up exactly as you would like it to, but with minor exceptions, THX came out pretty much as I had visualized it, thanks to some excellent assistance — and a whole lot of luck.”
George Lucas (born 1944) first seen 1971 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: American Cinematographer (October 1971)
“It was insane, I wish I had filmed it. It was like bringing an audience to the Mona Lisa and asking, 'Do you know why she is smiling?' 'Sorry Leonardo, you'll have to make some changes.' At least the audience understood that THX was not a love story set in the 25th-century, which was the way Warners had planned to advertise it. Instead, the company settled for 'Visit the future, where love is the ultimate crime.'”
George Lucas (born 1944) first seen 1138 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On a test audience screening of THX 1138
“The Johnson film wasn't terrible. I just didn't agree with the politics. I'm not a fan of big government and propaganda films are distasteful.”
George Lucas (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Don't avoid the cliches — they are cliches because they work!”
George Lucas (born 1944) first seen 1985 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Comment at the Imagineering offices of Disney, on Star Tours simulators (1985), quoted in "The Imagineering Way: Ideas to Ignite your Creativity" (2003) by Marty Sklar
“Sound is half the experience of seeing a film. That's why I have been bothered by the poor sound re-production in many theaters and most homes.”
George Lucas (born 1944) first seen 1992 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In the Action With 'Star Wars' Sound" in The New York Times (May 3, 1992)
“Everybody has the choice of being a hero or not being a hero every day of their lives … and you can either help somebody, you can be compassionate toward people, you can treat some people with dignity — or not. And … one way you become a hero, and the other way … you’re part of the problem. And … it’s not a grand thing, you know; you don’t have to get into a giant laser-sword fight and blow up three spaceships to become a hero. I mean — it’s a very small thing that happens every day of your life.”
George Lucas (born 1944) first seen 1999 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview with Bill Moyers for The Mythology of Star Wars (1999)
“There is no Episode VII...Not about Luke Skywalker, not about, you know, that group of people and that struggle to bring democracy back to the galaxy.”
George Lucas (born 1944) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Minutes Overtime: George Lucas (2005)
“One of the amazing things about 'Seven Samurai' is that there are a lot of characters. And considering you have so many, and they all have shaved heads, and you've got good guys and bad guys and peasants, you get to understand a lot of them without too much being said.”
George Lucas (born 1944) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: George Lucas, in Marc Lee Film-makers on film: George Lucas, The Telegraph, 14 May 2005
“The truth is, the only thing I was inspired by was the fact that it's told from the point of view of two peasants, who get mixed up with a samurai and princess and a lot of very high-level people.”
George Lucas (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Being in Washington is more fictional than being in Hollywood.”
George Lucas (born 1944) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Lucas in a D.C. daze" in Variety (20 February 2006)
“The fans are all upset. They’re always going to be upset. Why did he do it like this? And why didn’t he do it like this? They write their own movie, and then, if you don’t do their movie, they get upset about it.”
George Lucas (born 1944) first seen 2008 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, "Keys to the Kingdom" at Vanity Fair (2 January 2008)
“No, I like my own characters. I want to get Anakin and Obi-Wan in. I want to give Anakin a padawan Let's take that girl there.”
George Lucas (born 1944) first seen 2008 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: early 2008 development of Clone Wars, per page 275 of How Star Wars Conquered the Universe by Chris Taylor
“Anakin Skywalker has a Padawan. Anakin has a Padawan.”
George Lucas (born 1944) first seen 2008 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: early 2008 discussion with Dave Filoni and Henry Gilroy
“It's Star Wars starring an eleven-year-old girl”
George Lucas (born 1944) first seen 2008 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 3 April 2008 at Cartoon Network's Upfront
“He could have known this little girl when she was just a kid. Had an affair with her when she was eleven. … He hasn’t seen her in twelve years. Now she’s twenty-two. It’s a really strange relationship. …This is a resource that you can either mine or not. It's not as blatant as we're talking about. You don't think about it that much. You don't immediately realize how old she was at the time. It would be subtle. She could talk about it. "I was jail bait the last time we were together." She can flaunt it at him, but at the same time she never says, "I was fifteen years old." Even if we don't mention it, when we go to cast the part we're going to end up with a woman who's about twenty-three and a hero who's about thirty- five.”
George Lucas (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We say, 'We think you are a talented, functioning person, and we are hiring you because of your abilities, and whatever you come up with, we're going to take.' If we make a mistake, it will be in picking the wrong person. What we're striving for is total freedom, where we can finance our pictures, make them our way, release them where we want them released and be completely free to express ourselves. That's very hard to do in the world of business. In this country, the only thing that speaks is money and you have to have the money to have the power to be free. So the danger is — in being as oppressive as the next guy to the people below you. We're going to do everything possible to avoid that pitfall. But if we fail, it's another saga in the history of man...”
George Lucas (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One of the fatal mistakes that almost every science-fiction film makes is that they spend so much time on the settings — you know, creating the environment — that they spend film time on it. And you don't have to spend too much film time to create an environment. What they're doing is showing off the amount of work that they generated, and it slows the pace of the film down. And the story is not the settings. The story is the stories, plot. You're always surprised with characters, I mean in film it's even more dramatic than it is in writing, because eventually you actually take a real person and stick them into that character. And that real person brings with him, or her, an enormous package of reality. I mean, Threepio is just a hunk of plastic, and without Tony Daniels in there it just isn't anything at all. In the first film we had maybe 20 colors to paint with, and this time we've had 40 colors to paint with. Well, that doesn't mean it's going to be a better painting. Visual effects are just a tool, a means of telling a story. People tend to confuse them as an end to themselves. A visual effect without a story is a pretty boring thing.”
George Lucas (born 1944) first seen 1983 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Star Wars to Jedi: The Making of a Saga (1983)
“People who alter or destroy works of art and our cultural heritage for profit or as an exercise of power are barbarians, and if the laws of the United States continue to condone this behavior, history will surely classify us as a barbaric society. The preservation of our cultural heritage may not seem to be as politically sensitive an issue as "when life begins" or "when it should be appropriately terminated," but it is important because it goes to the heart of what sets mankind apart. Creative expression is at the core of our humanness. Art is a distinctly human endeavor. We must have respect for it if we are to have any respect for the human race.”
George Lucas (born 1944) first seen 1988 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Excerpt from his speech in front of Congress in 1988 regarding the colorization of classic films by Ted Turner. Notable for requently being used as evidence of George Lucas being a hypocrite for later making many change…
“As you go through history, I didn't think it was going to get quite this close. So it's just one of those recurring things… I hope this doesn't come true in our country. Maybe the film will wake people to the situation. … When I wrote it [Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith], Iraq didn't exist… We were just funding Saddam Hussein and giving him weapons of mass destruction. We didn't think of him as an enemy at that time. We were going after Iran and using him as our surrogate, just as we were doing in Vietnam… The parallels between what we did in Vietnam and what we're doing in Iraq now are unbelievable… [In ancient Rome,] why did the senate after killing Caesar turn around and give the government to his nephew? Why did France after they got rid of the king and that whole system turn around and give it to Napoleon? It's the same thing with Germany and Hitler. … You sort of see these recurring themes where a democracy turns itself into a dictatorship, and it always seems to happen kind of in the same way, with the same kinds of issues, and threats from the outside, needing more control. A democratic body, a senate, not being able to function properly because everybody's squabbling, there's corruption.”
George Lucas (born 1944) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Star Wars Raises Questions On U.S. Policy" WBZTV CBS 4 Boston (2005)
“Pleasure's fun. It's great, but you can't keep it going forever; just accept the fact that it's here and it's gone, and maybe then again, it will come back, and you'll get to do it again. Joy lasts forever. Pleasure is purely self-centered. It's all about your pleasure: it's about you. It's a selfish, self-centered emotion, that is created by a self-centered motive of greed. Joy is compassion. Joy is giving yourself to somebody else, or something else. And it's a kind of thing that is, in its subtlety and lowness, much more powerful than pleasure. You get hung up on pleasure; you're doomed. If you pursue joy; you will find everlasting happiness.”
George Lucas (born 1944) first seen 2013 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Academy of Achievement Address, published by Corporate Valley (12 August 2013)
“In the world we live in - and the system we've created for ourselves, in terms of it's a big industry - you cannot lose money. So the point is that you're forced to make a particular kind of movie. And I used to say this all the time, with people, you know, back when Russia was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and they'd say: "Oh, but aren’t you so glad that you're in America?" And I'd say: "Well, I know a lot of Russian filmmakers and they have a lot more freedom than I have. All they have to do is be careful about criticizing the government. Otherwise, they can do anything they want".”
George Lucas (born 1944) first seen 2015 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview with Charlie Rose (15 December 2015)
“If you have a bird in your hand and you hold it too tight 'cause you don't want it to go and fly, eventually you'll crush it. So the important part is to let it go and fly off and be on its own. It'll come back, and the love will be even stronger. .. Jedis are not supposed to have attachment. They can they can love people, they can do it, but they can't attach. That's the problem when you get in the uh, in the world of fear. Once you're attached to something, then you become afraid of losing it, and when you became afraid of losing it then you turn to the dark side and want to hold on to it. And that's what, uh Anakin's issue was, ultimately is he wanted to hold on to his wife, who he knew, he had a premonition that she was going to die, he didn't know how to stop it, so he went to the dark side.”
George Lucas (born 1944) first seen 2020 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 2020 interview, archived 24 March 2021 36 minutes 55 seconds into a 72 minute interview regarding Anakin and Padme, and also 45m in