By George Lucas and Richard Schickel
TIME Magazine
May 1, 2005


After nearly three decades, George Lucas has finished
his culture-changing saga of a fallen father and the son
who redeems him. The director seems as surprised as
anyone at what he has done. He sat down with TIME's
Richard Schickel, who has known him since shortly after
the original Star Wars came out in 1977, to talk about
how he works, his fear of failure and the sort of movies
he really wants to make.

TIME: Now that you've finished the entire saga, what do you
feel? Sad? Glad? Half mad?

LUCAS: Well, I'm still stunned at this point. Yesterday was
the first day I saw it, actually sat back and looked at it
with an audience. I'm very happy with it. I think it turned
out as well as I could have hoped, and at the same time I'm
very glad that I finished it. It was desperate just to get the
first one made. But the idea of actually doing the other two
was this huge Mount Everest. And then the concept of going
beyond Mount Everest was completely unthinkable. I expected
this to be one movie. I expected it to take me a year, year
and a half to make, and then I expected to move on to other
things. Especially in the storytelling sense, it was very
stylized, very much in opposition to what my natural
inclinations are. It was a kind of whim which turned into my
life.

TIME: Is that why, after the first three Star Wars episodes,
it took you 16 years to come back and do these last three
films?

LUCAS: Star Wars was written very carefully around the limits
of technology. I had one big technological leap that I had to
make, and that was to be able to pan the spaceships. I thought
I knew enough about animation that I could make that happen.
Everything else was written for what I knew I could get away
with, given the fact that I had a limited budget, limited
resources. But in terms of having creatures? I could barely
get the cantina scene done. I had a couple of really stupid
rubber masks. I had to go back and beg another $10,000 so I
could go down to a garage and have a friend of mine make some
better masks that actually moved their mouths. It took every
ounce of energy to create Chewbacca. But then Jurassic Park
inspired me. I didn't have to use rubber masks. I could build
digital characters that can act and perform and walk around
and interact with actors. I can use digital sets. I can paint
reality. In essence, it means that cinema has gone from being
a photographic medium to a painterly one.

Now just having made it to the end of the river is a relief.
All the pieces are together, and I was able to buff up the
older ones. I can put it together in a six-part DVD and be
very proud of the way the story gets told. On the other hand,
I have a feeling this one is going to be sort of like the last
one in terms of some people like it, some people hate it. And
like everyone who makes movies, I'm always convinced the next
one will be a flop. So right now I'm thinking it probably
won't make any money and will be considered a failure...