by Edward Gross
GEORGE LUCAS
(executive producer, screenwriter, The Empire Strikes Back)
I just said, “I will now take over and start financing my own pictures,” because then they cannot touch me. They cannot come in and recut it afterward. They can’t make notes on the script, they can’t do anything. I will say I’ve been very lucky in my career. When I did Star Wars, I was in England and it all came down to the very end. At the same time, Fox was very, very good to me. The board hated the movie, but Alan Ladd, Jr., who was the head of Fox, gave me all the help and cooperation I needed. He gave me some extra money to do retakes and he never wanted to cut anything. It was like, “Hey, this is the way it’s supposed to work.” But I realized that that is such a fantasy, though I actually got to live it. But you’re never going to find a studio executive like that. After that, the studio executives all decided that they were Irving Thalberg and that they were really in control of everything. That they’re the ones making the movies, not the director. The director’s just some hired person, right? Like the plumber who comes in and does the work. I don’t know what they do, but plumbers do the work that makes it happen.
Writers have always felt that way and they’ve been treated badly. So you kind of just say, “I don’t want to be a part of this.” And so I went off and invested everything I had and more into The Empire Strikes Back and took out a big bank loan. There was a thing where we went over budget and the bank wouldn’t extend our loan, so we had to get another bank loan. So we did it, and the film worked and I made that money and invested into the next film. So I kept investing everything I had into the next movie and in the company.
* * *
What this also meant was expanding the scope of ILM—which had begun as a small group of people working in a warehouse—to the premier visual effects company not only working for Star Wars, but other projects like E.T. or the Star Trek feature films, among many others. And then there was Skywalker Sound, created for sound mixing purposes that greatly expanded its output.
GEORGE LUCAS
We built that and I got to do what I really wanted to do with Francis and with American Zoetrope, to be able to build a bigger studio. I was just working at a house in San Francisco, which was not red zoned to be a studio or anything, but that’s where we made Star Wars. But after that, we built a bigger studio and had a great state-of-the-art mixing facility and ILM. We were bringing it along to be state of the art, because I wanted it to be great. But you don’t make any money in those businesses. Anybody who says they make money in postproduction is lying. Anybody that says they make money in visual effects is lying. It’s about action figures. All the money’s in the action figures. Yes, you own the movie, which I came to do, and you make a lot of money, but you have to own everything. And that means, again, you have to put the money in, so you have to take the risk.
LORNE PETERSON
(chief model builder: miniature and optical effects unit, The Empire Strikes Back)
The success of Star Wars was pretty unusual; we didn’t expect it to happen. There was no expectation that it would become a blockbuster. My partner and I and the people at ILM, we rented the equipment back from George Lucas and did Battlestar Galactica. George wasn’t really happy about that, doing a film that was a little bit similar to Star Wars, but we had to make money. Then, Star Wars did make a lot of money and George Lucas asked six of us to move up north to start over again in an empty warehouse, so that’s what we did. We went up, there weren’t even walls inside the building. We laid out two by fours like where we wanted the rooms instead of doing a drawing. We just basically took a bunch of two by fours and made different rooms in the hallway and then had the carpenter start to build after that.
You know, when we were doing Empire, I had saved a bunch of questions for George about the models and he was coming to the model shop that day, so I wanted to ask him what he wanted on this model, what he wanted with that. I started asking the first question, and he stopped me. He said, “Well, that sounds like your job to me.” It was like, that isn’t what he wants. You didn’t think of that as his job. He already hired me because he liked what I did and you do whatever you want. “I like whatever you want to show” is a real joy to work with. You didn’t feel he was micromanaging anything.
* * *
Thanks to the success of Star Wars, Lucas could now abandon the idea of a low-budget sequel, as postulated in the Splinter of the Mind’s Eye novel written by Alan Dean Foster (and published in March 1978). In November 1977, he wrote a handwritten treatment for the film that he was already referring to as The Empire Strikes Back. To flesh it out, he began meeting with screenwriter/author Leigh Brackett, believing her writing represented the perfect sensibility for what he was looking for.
Leigh Douglass Brackett was born on December 7, 1915, in Los Angeles, California. Beginning at an early age, she began writing science fiction and fantasy stories, with her first short story, “Martian Quest,” being published in the February 1940 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. Brackett was also an active member of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society and contributed to an issue of STF-ETTE, an all-female science fiction fanzine.
Brackett published her first novel, No Good from a Corpse, in 1944. A hard-boiled mystery novel in the tradition of Raymond Chandler, this work would prove instrumental in getting Brackett her first work as a screenwriter. Hollywood director Howard Hawks was so impressed by her novel that he had his secretary call in “this guy Brackett” to help William Faulkner write the script for the 1946 film The Big Sleep. A sad testament to the time, women writers, and particularly women screenwriters, were a rarity, making the achievements of Leigh Brackett an inspirational tale of her generation.
She would continue to write science fiction novels for the next thirty years, and be called upon by Howard Hawks to write screenplays for such films as Rio Bravo, El Dorado, and Rio Lobo. When George Lucas set to the task of creating the Star Wars sequel in 1977–78, he wanted an expert writer who could tackle Howard Hawks–like dialogue of the forties and fifties—and so he called upon the then sixty-one-year-old Leigh Brackett.
RAY MORTON
At this point, it must be stated that Lucas’s oft-repeated claim that the entire three-part saga had originally been contained in his first draft of the Star Wars screenplay, and that he cut that first draft into thirds and made each section separately, is simply not true. Lucas’s first draft of Star Wars does contain some locations, concepts, and rudimentary versions of set pieces that eventually appeared in the trilogy (and later in the rest of the series), but it did not tell the same story that the trilogy told. Following Star Wars, Lucas had to think up the rest of his saga.
As things developed, he decided to build the trilogy around Luke’s journey to becoming a Jedi Knight. Having become aware of the Force and embracing it in the first movie, in the second Luke would formally begin his Jedi training under the tutelage of a Jedi Master. Meanwhile, the Galactic Emperor—having become aware of how strong Luke is with the Force—orders Vader to capture young Skywalker. The Emperor wants to turn Luke to the dark side so that Luke can help him complete his conquest of the galaxy. Vader takes up the search, but has his own reasons for wanting to turn Luke. Luke makes excellent progress in his training, but his impetuousness and immaturity become a problem when Vader captures Han and Leia and uses them as bait to lure Luke into a trap. Desperate to save his friends, Luke runs off before his training is complete and thus faces Vader woefully unprepared. During a titanic lightsaber duel, Vader does all he can to goad Luke into giving in to his anger and hatred, which will trigger Luke’s turn to the dark side. We learn that Vader wants Luke to embrace evil not to help the Emperor, but to help him overthrow the Emperor so Vader can rule the galaxy himself. Vader almost succeeds in turning Luke, but young Skywalker manages to escape (barely) before he does. In the third film, Luke would complete his training and become a full-fledged Jedi. He would face Vader again, resist the temptation to turn to the d
ark side, and finally defeat Vader and the Emperor and save the galaxy.
STEPHEN SCARLATA
(host, Best Movies Never Made podcast)
What ended up happening was that George Lucas was really burnt out from Star Wars and didn’t want to tackle writing the script. He was also working on More American Graffiti at the time. He was sinking everything into Empire, so he just wanted someone else to tackle writing duties. Enter Leigh Brackett.
LEIGH BRACKETT
(screenwriter, The Big Sleep, The Empire Strikes Back)
Early in my career I did a script, and actually got something that I was pleased with. But I discovered [producers] don’t know anything about science fiction. They’re afraid of it. They just wanted a good, warm family picture. Science fictional, but no monsters, no hardware, no spaceships; in other words, nothing science fictional; just a good, warm family story. It was hard to do. Every time I’d throw in something that was the least bit technical, I’d get, “Oh, the audience isn’t going to understand that.” They’d be surprised, because the audience is generally miles ahead of them. I think Star Wars is a great thing, and I think Star Trek is a great thing, too. Perhaps it’s gotten to be a little too much of a cult item, though.
JOSH MILLER
(screenwriter, Sonic the Hedgehog)
I didn’t know much about her as an author, but she cowrote The Big Sleep adaptation with William Faulkner, Rio Bravo with John Wayne, Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye. So she had this kind of hard-boiled Western background.
BONNIE BURTON
(senior editor, StarWars.com 2003–2012)
Which makes sense, because Star Wars is a Western. I always called it that, a Western soap opera.
KYLE NEWMAN
It’s interesting, though, Lucas’s choice to work with her. People say he was a fan of her. Same thing with Irvin Kershner, who would direct and who was his mentor and teacher at USC. But that’s what George was like. He puts his ego aside and finds who’s going to bring out things that he didn’t have the time or patience to do. Like Kershner finding those little comedic moments, or things like Artoo stepping on his tippy toes to peek into something. That’s not scripted. Those are all things the director is finding. Like, “I love you.” “I know.” Just finding those people that are about making it better and not about their ego. With Leigh Brackett, I know the script didn’t work out, but he said, “I didn’t like this script at all, but I’m giving her credit, because she recently passed away.” He wanted to work with people he admired. I think he eventually went to Lawrence Kasdan out of desperation, because he was frustrated with writing, but he was a fan of Kasdan, who was a tremendous writer. At the same time, it is interesting to see what Leigh did before George and other people got involved.
ERIC TOWNSEND
(author, The Making of Star Wars Timeline)
One of the most significant ideas to come up during these meetings was the concept of Yoda to essentially replace Ben Kenobi as a mentor to Luke. At the time, Yoda was seen as a crazy, tiny little creature known only as “the Critter.” The writers saw the Critter as an almost frog-like creature with a wide mouth, no nose, bulbous eyes, thin spidery arms, short legs, and very large, floppy feet. An idea of Darth Vader in a black castle surrounded by lava was also thrown around. Unused ideas of a water planet with an underwater city, and a “city planet,” that was to be the home of the Empire, were also discussed. The backstory of Han Solo was fleshed out during these meetings. Solo was an orphan raised by Wookiees on their planet. The character of Lando Calrissian also grew out of these meetings. He was to be a slick gambler, possibly a clone from the Clone Wars.
LEIGH BRACKETT
I think that this is because Lucas cut his eyeteeth on science fiction; he’s been reading it for years and years. He’s one of the few in Hollywood who knows science fiction. Not “maybe he’s read one book by Isaac Asimov or one by Heinlein,” but he’s read the whole field, and he came to it knowing all the things to throw in, the stuff which is all a part of the matrix. And he threw it all in with no apologies whatsoever.
Star Wars was just a great film, I thought; just beautiful. He didn’t try to teach anybody anything; it’s not beating people over the head with what terrible people they are and how they’re ruining the environment, or telling us we must all get down and wallow in our shame and beat our breasts. With no apologies to anybody, he just took us back “a long time ago” to “a galaxy far, far away,” and did one hell of a rousing adventure story. Beautiful! So much of it was “throwaway” lines or shots. You know … momentary shot of a skeleton of a sand-worm; “Hello, Frank Herbert.”
BONNIE BURTON
Leigh Brackett was groundbreaking. Just speaking as a woman screenwriter myself, I’m breaking into this field now and am looking at the history of women who shaped Hollywood, and she was definitely one of them. It’s so mind-boggling to me that a lot of women in the forties to the seventies earned these great chances to show their stuff. Now it’s like Thunderdome; it’s such a battle. You have to have a brand and a social media following and a fan group that can attest that we’re worthy talents as screenwriters. It’s just a lot harder for female directors and screenwriters now than it was then, where you had more collaboration. Also, in sci-fi you had a lot more women back then who were working in that industry. But a credit to George for not making it all a boys’ club.
JOSH MILLER
It’s also interesting that people kind of remember Kasdan, but not Brackett, who was the veteran on this. Clearly John Carpenter, a big Western fan himself, named a character in Halloween after Leigh Brackett: Sheriff Brackett.
STEPHEN SCARLATA
Also from the forties to the seventies, she wrote an insane amount of short stories and novels. She was regarded as the Queen of the Space Opera and writing stories like Martian Quest, The Beast Jewel of Mars, The Dragon Queen of Venus, Eric John Stark: Outlaw of Mars, and Purple Priestess of the Mad Moon.
PETER HOLMSTROM
(cohost, The Rebel & the Rogue podcast)
Most big-budget films have nine or ten writers who work on drafts and never receive a credit. There’s stuff in the Brackett draft that stays through to the end, but it’s mostly ideas, concepts, not the actual script. I doubt it would get a credit in WGA arbitration. Lucas gave Leigh Brackett a credit to honor her, even though he was the main writer on the film. He wrote most of the drafts, and Kasdan just did dialogue punch-ups. That’s the sort of humble guy George is.
ALAN DEAN FOSTER
(author, Star Wars novelization and the sequel, Splinter of the Mind’s Eye)
Empire is a science fiction film written by a science fiction author, which almost never happens. Even though Kasdan did rewrites, I think Leigh Brackett had a lot to do with a lot of the elements of Empire. I can’t prove it; I don’t know what was written by whom, but it resulted in a very different film with a very different tone.
GARY KURTZ
(producer, The Empire Strikes Back)
We wanted someone with a background in science fiction who also understood screenwriting; we didn’t just want a novelist. Leigh had done The Long Goodbye for Robert Altman, and he mentioned her to us. Then, after we talked to Leigh, she really seemed like the ideal person. She had the right sensibility about space as an adventure genre, and she loved the idea of the Star Wars characters. George gave her a rough overview of the story, and she was very easy to work with.
ERIC TOWNSEND
By February 23, 1978, Leigh Brackett had completed the first draft of the script. The idea of Luke Skywalker having a twin sister first appears in these early drafts, although it wasn’t necessarily Princess Leia at that point. The topic of Luke’s father was also a bit unsettled. In this first draft, his father appears to Luke as a Force ghost alongside Ben Kenobi. “The Critter” was known for a time as Buffy, but was eventually given the name Minch Yoda. And Lando was introduced as Lando Kadar.
JOSH MILLER
Vader is not Luke’s father in
this draft; he’s purely trying to make a power play. What’s interesting is that Vader was such an iconic villain in the first movie, but you can see in this draft, if they hadn’t added the father element, he kind of starts to feel less interesting.
KYLE NEWMAN
He just becomes generic. In their early meetings talking about Darth Vader, I know at one point George is quoted as saying he’s a disposable villain when they’re talking about Splinter of the Mind’s Eye; I think the story session with Alan Dean Foster or one of the early story sessions with Kasdan—there’s transcripts of it. It’s like, “He’s a nothing villain. He’s a throwaway.” He obviously revisited that, because he became the iconic supervillain, but sometimes you have to adapt to the way the movie is accepted into the consciousness.
JONATHAN RINZLER
(author, The Making of The Empire Strikes Back)
Each movie has their own interesting and sometimes bizarre backstory. George Lucas movies are particular in that they have their own George Lucas idiosyncratic backstory—which is more like a kaleidoscope. If you ask George Lucas today if Darth Vader was always Luke’s father, I’m 99 percent sure he’d say yes. And he would be justified, because in the rough draft of the original Star Wars, the main character was Annikin Starkiller, and his father was Kane Starkiller, who was a Jedi Bendu, and he was half-man, half-machine. So he’s there in the very earliest draft—except he wasn’t Darth Vader, he was this other guy—and then things shift around so many times, that it was no longer true, really. But maybe it was! There is this gray area where maybe he’s justified in saying that it’s true. But frankly, while he was making the movie, it wasn’t true. Darth Vader was the bad guy, Luke the good guy, the two were not related.