Executive producer George Lucas and producer Howard Kazanjian on location in Tunisia during the shoot for Raiders of the Lost Ark, September 1980.
INDEPENDENT ILM
Gary Kurtz, the producer of Star Wars and Empire, sent a letter to Star Wars Productions Limited on December 11, 1979: “Dear Sirs, I hereby tender my resignation as Director of your Company with effect from today’s date and confirm that I have no claims of whatsoever nature against the Company.” An identical letter was sent to Chapter II Productions Limited. On Kurtz’s watch, Empire had taken too long to shoot and had gone far beyond its original budget.
Consequently, Howard Kazanjian had overseen aspects of Empire’s production toward the end of principal photography and in post, and had then segued easily into early meetings on Jedi in England. “Now I’m going back and forth a couple times to London, because I wanted to sit with production designer Norman Reynolds and discuss the crew,” Kazanjian would say. “One day Gary Kurtz comes in and says, ‘What are you doing here?’ I had to tell him that he was not on the picture: ‘Didn’t George speak with you?’ When I flew back, I met with George: ‘Gary said that you never told him.’ But George said, ‘I did.’ ”
For the last film in the trilogy, Lucas thus opted to do what he had originally considered for Empire: hire Kazanjian to produce, and Robert Watts, production supervisor on the last two Star Wars films, to co-produce. The former would take care of overall producing, while the latter would oversee UK operations. Not long afterward a second co-producer was deemed necessary to integrate ILM into the overall production.
“After Empire, I took a few months off,” says Jim Bloom, ILM manager and associate producer on that film. “But before I left, George said, ‘Howard Kazanjian is going to make the next Star Wars, and I would like you and Robert to act as his co-producers.’ Howard is at the top, then the co-producers beneath him.”
At the corporate executive level, Weber hired Robert M. Greber at the end of 1979. “I’m playing racquetball with Charlie, who says to me, ‘What would it take for you to leave and come work for us?’ ” Greber would say. “Lucasfilm had run into problems with Empire and had gone way over-budget, and the Bank of Boston had taken over the loan, but they had some demands. One was that Lucasfilm get a new chief financial officer and put in some new controls. Charlie and George wanted me to take that job. I’d never been a chief financial officer, though I had the training for it. My response wasn’t a lock-in: There was no guarantee that anything that followed Star Wars would do as well. But I gave up a promotion at Merrill Lynch and took a risk, because it seemed like a good one.”
Several months before the release of Empire, on February 7, 1980, a memo from now senior vice president of finance and administration Robert Greber to all employees announced several additional hires, including Tom Smith, the new director of production and administration at ILM. Smith had been a Fulbright scholar in France. After three years of military service, he’d moved to Los Angeles in 1968 and started his own corporation, which produced over 30 films, mostly educational shorts. Jim Bloom had worked for Smith; later, as associate producer on Empire, Bloom returned the favor, recruiting his former boss.
After Bloom got things rolling on postproduction for ILM and all the other photographic effects for Empire, “they offered to let me stay on and run the facility,” says Bloom. “But I said I’d rather not, that I preferred to remain independent, working from picture to picture. So I contacted Tom Smith. He came in, went through a rigorous screening process, and was hired.”
“I was going to have to make sure ILM had work and, if necessary, go down to L.A. and persuade people to work with us,” says Tom Smith, who started during post on Empire. “But people like Spielberg didn’t need persuading.” Smith’s job description included budgeting visual effects and assigning people to supervisory posts, promoting from within whenever possible. He was also tasked with making ILM more businesslike and financially predictable.
“As George grew ILM from a garage operation into a big facility, it was always understood that we would use the films that were produced by Lucasfilm to establish ILM as first-class entities in their field,” Weber would say. “Then we could make them profit centers for other producers and other studios in-between our films and eventually they’d be a stand-alone business with value.”
For Empire, Lucas had moved the visual effects facility up north from its origins in the Los Angeles area; ILM’s patchwork home was now located in San Rafael’s industrial zone, about a 15-minute drive from San Anselmo, Lucasfilm headquarters. For the two previous Star Wars films, Lucas had started his effects facility from scratch, even the second one from a dead stop. The hiring of more than 100 craftspeople, inventing new techniques and equipment, and building an infrastructure had been a big, time-consuming job, twice. And there was always the risk that essential craftspeople and technicians would migrate to other companies or form their own once a film wrapped, which had occurred after Star Wars when several heads of department (HODs) formed Apogee.
“Having gone through that, George didn’t want to do it again,” says Smith. “So we wanted to keep it up and running. Jim Bloom left me with a mantra he’d found useful running ILM: He called it ‘The six Ps.—Proper-Planning-Prevents-Piss-Poor-Performance.’ ”
“A kind of lifestyle had been established where everybody worked on one film and, when it was done, everything came to an end,” model maker Paul Huston would say. “It was pretty much accepted that you would be laid off. So I think there was a big concern about keeping it all together and keeping us busy.”
“We are trying to bring in outside projects so that we can keep everyone here working,” says Lucas. “The situation for having a permanent staff on special effects is very unique.”
“Jim Bloom worked with some of the people at ILM on the idea, ‘How can we have this as an ongoing business?’ ” Greber would add. “Now Paramount had gone way over budget with Star Trek: The Motion Picture [1979], mainly because of the special effects. So we came up with a way of making a bid on a picture: If they would give us the storyboards and the script, the business part of ILM and the creative part would come up with what they thought it would cost. But any changes the studio made from the storyboards would add to that cost. And then when the final credits came across, ‘Special Visual Effects Produced at Industrial Light & Magic,’ it was big time. We negotiated our contracts demanding that we get a percentage of the film—and that worked.”
The first non-Lucas film out of the gates for ILM turned out to be a Paramount–Disney co-production, Dragonslayer (1981), which was being produced, written, and directed by two of Lucas’s friends, Hal Barwood and Matthew Robbins.
“We’ve found some excellent in-house talent,” says Smith. “One of the best examples is Dennis Muren. When Dragonslayer came along, I gave it to him as his own special project.”
Logo concepts for the Egg Company building, where Lucasfilm South was ensconced. A 1980 geographical snapshot of Lucasfilm’s Northern California San Anselmo “campus” included several operations in many buildings: Lucasfilm corporate was located within the Ancho Vista facility (on a street of the same name). Sprocket Systems and the Ranch Design Division was in 6A Bank Street; the Editing Facility and Sprocket Systems Computer Development Division was at 165 Tunstead Avenue. Sprocket Systems Sound Department could be found at 321 San Anselmo Avenue, with Picture Editing next door at 323. Skywalker Development was at Park Way House, while ILM was located in the nearby city of San Rafael, at 3160 Kerner Boulevard.
Logo concept for the licensing arm of Lucasfilm, Black Falcon Limited.
In ILM’s reception area on Kerner Boulevard are model maker Paul Huston, receptionist/production assistant Kathy Shine, visual effects supervisor Dennis Muren, and production coordinator Laurie Vermont. Seen through the windows, matte camera operator Neil Krepela talks with Ralph McQuarrie (on right) and effects camera operator Jim Veilleux (on left).
DARWINIAN FILM
>
Also hired that February 7 was Alvy Ray Smith, as project leader for the Computer Development Division, who joined department head Ed Catmull. The two were to create a team to develop four products—a computer picture editing tool, a digital sound editing tool, a high-resolution graphics workstation, and a laser printer—all to advance computer–film interfaces for Lucas, who fervently desired to shove the film industry out of its analog origins.
“We’re going beyond the point of film now,” says Lucas. “Anybody who’s worked with film, especially anybody who has edited film, realizes what a stupid, nineteenth-century idea film is. Anybody who has torn sprocket holes or tried to show a first rough cut knows the only thing you worry about is if the film’s going to break. It’s just not what you’d call a sophisticated setup. You get into video and electronic technology, and you realize how sophisticated it is and how far in advance of anything in film. It’s just a whole different world. Then you combine that with digital technology and it’s light years ahead of even video.”
A letter from Smith to Kazanjian, who worked in Lucasfilm’s Southern California office, contained a preliminary planning report for ILM’s future electronic and data processing needs: To make proper use of computers, they would have to coordinate all divisions of Lucasfilm, so Smith proposed a meeting with Ed Catmull and finance executive Ray Scalice. ILM’s immediate goal was to avoid unnecessary large expenditures, while efficiently taking care of present projects, such as Dragonslayer.
Future ILM projects involved building a Micro Tower to provide both camera and motion control, digital follow focus, automatic interlock, and an interface to an HP-85 computer. They also planned to update the Oxberry animation stand, rework their beam-splitter printer (to help the optical department combine effects elements), and develop a matte scan controller for the matte painting department. A 12-month forecast, from May 1, 1980, to April 30, 1981, anticipated a $5,759,000 budget with $2,500,000 coming from the roughly 300 shots in Dragonslayer, hence a deficit of $3,259,000. Over $1 million of that budget would be for equipment investments such as a flying matte camera (this came to be known as the Auto Matte), a new camera movement (the inner mechanisms) for the Quad optical printer, and control elements for six field cameras.
Soon afterward Smith requested urgent funds to implement a computer program to track visual effects elements before Dragonslayer was in the thick of postproduction, as well as a programmer to work under Catmull and hardware totaling $126,000. He also notified Weber that staff layoffs would perhaps be needed between Empire and SW III depending on how much work Raiders’ visual effects would require, as ILM was slated to work on Spielberg’s film.
It was hoped by all that Empire would earn enough cash to keep ILM—and its parent company—going through the fallow years of the next sequel’s preproduction.
Early Lucas script notes: “The Emperor is the evil one—He kills Luke’s father. Vader begs Luke to kill him, he does.”
NEGOTIATIONS, PART II
Throughout early 1980, at Lucasfilm South (known as the Egg Company, near Universal City on Lankershim Boulevard in Los Angeles), Weber and executives oversaw licensing, marketing, and other business aspects, while Spielberg was casting Raiders in the kitchen, baking cookies with prospective actors.
“George had the amazing ability to wear different hats at different times or simultaneously,” says Weber. “The best analogy I can give you is in the middle of making $5 million decisions, I never had him on the phone for more than a minute before he’d say, ‘Well, that sounds okay, you can do that. Go ahead.’ He would give me all the authority in the world. But if I said somebody had burnt a hole in the banister with a cigarette, he would say, ‘I’ll be down to L.A. tomorrow. We’ll talk about how we’re gonna refinish it.’ From a business standpoint, he knew everything that was going on; he knew from the very beginning what he wanted to accomplish as a corporation.”
At that time Lucas wanted a deal with Fox. A letter from Lucasfilm attorney Doug Ferguson to Fox executive David Handelman contained a 100-plus-page draft of the “Distribution Agreement between the Star Wars Corporation and Twentieth Century–Fox Film Corporation for the Second Sequel to Star Wars,” dated February 24. But a follow-up letter from Weber to Hirschfield already exhibited frayed tempers, as negotiations for the second sequel stalled: “I have recently discussed with you the grave concerns shared by George Lucas and Lucasfilm respecting various aspects of the overall relationship between Lucasfilm and Twentieth Century–Fox.”
Weber proceeded to outline three areas of controversy:
• Distribution. Lucasfilm was dismayed by public statements from Fox officials as to their dissatisfaction with the distribution deal for Empire and by “a resultant apathy” at Fox per the film, particularly toward its back-end earnings. “George Lucas personally has asked me to underscore his own concern that Fox is simply not giving ESB the type of attention it requires as a unique film sequel.”
• Ancillary Rights. “What should be an atmosphere of partnership, in the exploitation of ancillary rights, has, since the departure of the Ladd management team, often been more of an adversarial proceeding. Underlying this have been endless delays and frustrations resulting from the necessity to gain Fox approvals on merchandising contracts. When Fox finally agreed to a formal transfer of copyrights and trademarks, which would substantially eliminate those problems, that agreement was subsequently disavowed. It appears that we may now at last be close to completing the copyright transfer, as originally agreed upon so long ago, but the true cost of the intervening delay must be measured in terms of a disintegrating relationship rather than in dollars and cents.”
• Star Wars III Agreement. On the one hand Fox was saying in public that a deal was in a place, whereas, in fact, “we have not received a word of comment [on pending agreement].”
Closing his arguments, Weber wrote, “Until we have discussed further the proposal […] any offer implicit in the draft distribution agreement delivered to Fox last month should be considered withdrawn.”
From its point of view, Fox was looking at its distribution deal for Empire and not seeing much advantage in knocking itself out to help the film make money. The lack of financial incentive to promote Empire once worldwide gross receipts exceeded $100 million had been anticipated when the original agreement had been signed, but the idea had been to wait until Empire was released and became a known quantity before renegotiating the fee per higher grosses. The need to address the problem earlier had arisen, however, after the change of management at Fox, when Alan Ladd left.
While potentially boosting Fox’s merchandising profits on Star Wars, Lucasfilm also proposed, “to avoid further frustrations and confrontations” with respect to licensing, that all ancillary rights become the sole property of Lucasfilm. Fox’s only involvement with the Star Wars properties would then be its theatrical distribution rights under the original Star Wars agreement, as well as its existing television and related video rights for the first two films.
“The deal was already in place, so to speak, where George would get the sequels, but what wasn’t in place is that the copyrighted characters were the same in Star Wars, owned by Fox, and Star Wars II and III, owned by us,” says Weber. “So it became a very complicated legal issue to decide who was gonna do the merchandising. We in effect had to renegotiate all the rights that, on one hand, we had on paper, but didn’t have practically. Tom Pollock, who was our lawyer at the time, [instructed us to] negotiate, right by right, everything back under one umbrella. From both a negotiation standpoint and a legal standpoint it was very, very challenging.”
Lucas’s early numbered scene ideas for Jedi; number 15 reads, “Celebration about to begin—Han + Leia confront Luke …” with an additional note by Lucas reading, “Sister!”—perhaps the moment when Lucas finally decided that Princess Leia was in fact Luke Skywalker’s sister.
George Lucas’s handwritten notes on the three acts of an undated outline.
TEAM STAR WARS ASSEMBLED
As ILM finished the last effects shots for Empire, a press release dated March 12 made public Kurtz’s departure. As preparations for the release of Empire reached critical mass, Lucasfilm laid the groundwork for its sequel. At a press conference on May 14, 1980, the film’s title was announced, without fanfare, as Revenge of the Jedi. A spokesperson said that the script was already being worked on.
“George came to me and he said, ‘The title of Episode VI is Return of the Jedi,’ ” says Kazanjian. “And I said, ‘I think it’s a weak title.’ He came back one or two days later and said, ‘We’re calling it Revenge of the Jedi.’ ”
“There were so many loose ends at the end of Empire,” says Mark Hamill. “Everyone was waiting for the other shoe to drop—that was my title, ‘The Other Shoe to Drop.’ George said, ‘Get outta here!’ ”
“We pretty much started right away,” Lucas would say. “There was a little breather period in between, but, you know, you’ve got to get going.”
By mid-May 1980, agreements had been executed between the principal actors and Chapter III Productions Limited. About a month earlier, the Phil Gersh Agency, representing Harrison Ford (Han Solo), had written Kazanjian to confirm an agreement for the actor’s return. He and his costars Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker) and Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia) were therefore asked to put aside 18 weeks between August 1981—the projected start date of principal photography—and January 1982. Billy Dee Williams (Lando Calrissian) was also notified.
Fans had worried that Harrison Ford might not return as Han Solo and, though it wasn’t discussed in the press, their anxiety was somewhat justified behind the scenes. Hamill thought Lucas had been smart to freeze Solo in carbonite at the end of Empire; unlike Hamill and Fisher, Ford hadn’t signed a multi-picture contract. “In case Harrison didn’t want to do the film, George would’ve only needed him for one day to be unfrozen at the end,” says Hamill. “Billy Dee could’ve taken up the slack.”
The Making of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (Enhanced Edition) Page 3