George Speaks! - Q&A with some guy named George Lucas

Q: Very soon, Francis Coppola's going to come out with Apocalypse Now Redux, which includes 50 extra minutes of footage, and there's been several other such re-releases. Has there been any discussion about this type of thing among filmmakers like you and Francis Coppola?

GL: No. I think every filmmaker ends up having to compromise in order to deal with the theatrical experience. And so given their druthers I think most filmmakers on their own without even consulting with each other says "gee, if I'm going to put this on DVD and the length doesn't matter, I can put material in that I really love." You know it used to be called Director's Cuts and now it's just called DVD. (laughter)

Q: Historically speaking, how do you think Phantom Menace will be seen 100 years from now? How it will be thought of?

GL: Well I have no idea, I mean obviously I won't be around so it won't make any difference but at the same time I would guess that they will be thought of as the first chapter in a six-part movie. So that it'll be thought of really as Star Wars, not as Phantom Menace.

Q: I was thinking more as far as cinema goes because it seems very kind of (??) where people were trying to figure out how to make a movie for the first time?

GL: Well, I don't know. When we made Star Wars with a sort of pioneering in its own way too but now it's sort of old hat. You know people forget very quickly the technological advances that are made on each movie. I guess there are technological advances made all the time. It's a progression of the medium, especially in terms of being able to incorporate digital characters and sets and that sort of thing. It had been done before but not on the scale. And you know the next film will be more extreme and I assume that when I make the third one it'll be even more extreme.

Q: Was there any initial hesitation supporting DVD, or have you been very confident since you first considered the format?

GL: No. The biggest issue is I wanted to do something special and I wanted to make it have a lot of interesting things on it. And in order to do that it took us quite a bit of time, we had to actually, in essence, shoot material. I mean we had shot it and cut it, but we hadn't done the special effects on it so we had to finish sequences that had been abandoned. Which took quite a bit of time.

Q: Was there anything unique about Episode I that you wanted to address in particular when bringing it to DVD? Anything you wanted to show fans about the process or anything about the film itself?

GL: No. (laughter) No, no, no, I mean we do so many behind the scenes documentaries, and we do so many things and the market is so broad, it's hard to come up with something that is specific enough for me to be saying well this is something I want to do. I mean you give a general overview, you get behind the scenes, a lot of material that nobody has seen before. And you get a chance to see the scenes that were cut out and in the documentary it explains a little bit why they were cut out and the problems that a director has in having to trim this film down to satisfy an audience on a Saturday night.

Q: How do you feel about the finished product, and is there a favorite feature that you have on the disc?

GL: Well I'm very proud of the finished product. I mean it's really, I love it and I think the interface is great. I'm happy to have those missing scenes back and finished, it was fun to finish them. You know you do things that you never really get to complete so you never really find out whether they're going to work or not, and that was a lot of fun to see that all put back together again.

Q: Did you learn anything new about the film in revisiting it for DVD?

GL: We ended up putting a few things that we'd cut out back into it just because when I finally saw them finished and I cut them in and I looked it and I said, "it's really better with this stuff in here than it is without it." And in a lot of cases in this kind of a movie it's very hard to make this kind of movie because it's made in theory. And then at the very end you get to see it finished.

Normally you'd do a rough cut of a movie, that's pretty much the movie so it's not a theory any more it's a reality. But with this kind of a film, the film hasn't even been shot yet, in a lot of cases. So you're cutting things out that haven't been shot yet. You're saying, "Well I'm not sure if this is going to work," so you just cut it out and you never see it actually work or not work. That's a very different way than most people make a movie.

So in this particular case I was able to finish a few things and I said when you cut this in here it just works great so I'm just going to keep it there. So there are scenes that were cut out but there's also a little bit of adjusting in the film itself which I was very pleased about.

Q: You talked in the documentary about the challenge of creating three or four new environments in each film. And I wonder now with DVD getting to the extent that it is, where you know you have Shrek coming out now and Godfather and Snow White, where they're just putting hours and hours and hours of extra things and getting more innovative all the time with new extras. Is this creating yet another challenge or stress level for you to have to try to up the ante for DVDs now as well?

GL: No, I think that a DVD should be organic. But there's certain material that traditionally has been included, you know the commentaries and now we have some behind the scenes things. We have a great deal of behind the scenes footage that we shoot because I have lots of other plans to do other things. And I obviously I don't shoot certain scenes just to end up on the DVD. I haven't gotten that far yet. I'm not sure, I assume someday people will do that but I don't think I will.

Q: We all know your original plan was to wait and release all six films to DVD at one time. Why did you change your mind? Thank you, but why?

GL: Well there's a lot of pressure on the market to release them and that sort of thing, and we were also in a situation where I wanted to complete the film. I mean I wanted to do the behind the scenes, I wanted to do the scenes that were taken out. And I really needed to have the people who were involved in it do it. If I'd waited for another four years when I finally made the third and the final and finished it, it wouldn't be as easy to accomplish all that. And once you've accomplished it and you've spent the money on it then it makes sense to release it.

And so now I think with these first three we will be releasing them as everyone else releases them, which is in the normal schedule after the initial theatrical release of the movie. Then I'll do the first three, because they're kind of vintage and it'll take a little bit more work.

Q: American Graffiti which has been on DVD for some time, for anyone who has read about what you had to go through with Universal to make that film, seems to be one of your most personal. So I was just curious why you chose to record your first feature commentary for Star Wars? Is this a film you're more proud of if that's possible? I mean because I know you're probably proud of all your features, but why did you start now?

GL: Well I don't know. I didn't have a lot to do with the DVD of American Graffiti, it was actually a Universal project. And I think when they were doing that I was actually shooting Phantom Menace or something so I wasn't even around to do it. I'm not quite sure what happened on that, but this one, we did ourselves. The American Graffiti DVD was put together and released by the DVD Department at Universal. They don't actually ask whether you want to do it or not. They just go ahead and do whatever they want to do.

Q: Would you possibly like to revisit it sometime and do a commentary?

GL: I don't know...