The George Lucas Usenet Archive

Re: Question about George Lucas
From: [email protected] (George Lucas)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.starwars.misc
Subject: Re: Question about George Lucas
Date: Sat, 14 Aug 1999 04:38:09 GMT
Organization: Lucasfilm, Ltd.
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
References: <[email protected]>
Summary: What I have been doing
Keywords: gayness gummi bears nice summer days
BatboyWB wrote in <[email protected]>:

If he is just now writing the script for Epsiode 2, what the hell has he been doing the past 16 years since Jedi???

Sitting home waiting for movie technology to get up to his standards??

Movie technology may have taken this long to be worthy of George, but why couldn't he have written these scripts over the past 2 decades?

I don't understand the man


Dear Batboy,

I would like you to know I have been very busy in the 16 years between Return of the Jedi and The Phantom Menace. I have done and seen many things, not all of them related to the Star Wars universe. I have spent evenings in some of the most uninhibited and wild dance clubs in Los Angeles. I have spent hours talking to my spiritual advisor in the middle of the night as he wept into his phone receiver. I even took some time out to write a sequel to Catcher in the Rye, featuring an older Holden Caulfield who works as a janitor and falls in love with a retarded girl who teaches him the value of life. I played Nintendo all day in my underwear.

I didn't cut myself off from Star Wars completely--how could I? I have continued to manage the vast merchandising empire that is responsible for placing the Star Wars logo and characters on every dye-receptive surface known to man. I set into motion the development of the bio-cube, a revolutionary new medium that will become the ultimate repository, in approximately 80 years, of the Star Wars saga. I came up with new ideas for the prequel movies, such as having a lightsaber duel and a battle against a single space station, and making one of the characters an uptight princess. I bounced these new concepts off my sycophantic assistants, who were impressed right on cue.

Then there are the ideas and projects that never came to pass. ABC refused to air a docu-drama about my ex-wife, called "Which Way to Heartache, You Bitch?" I managed to hush up a small scandal that brewed around a night I spent with Gary Coleman, in which the two of us did nothing more than explore new sides of ourselves. My sequel to American Graffiti, titled "Ron Howard the Duck", failed to make it out of development.

And, of course, I have spent most of the last five years monitoring email, the web, and Usenet, spending as much as 12 hours a day reading and posting and laughing with my new cyber-friends.

I think this fuller, richer life that have I lived has made the script I wrote for "Star Wars: Episode 1 A Phantom Menace" more mature. And right now my thoughts are very much with Gary as I write the script to Episode 2. I will be exploring a very different side of myself, both behind and in front of the camera. I can't wait to show you.

In loving approval of my fans,

George