“My father wanted me to run a stationery
business store.” – George Lucas
“Of all the younger guys around, all the
hot-shots, why me?” “Well, because you know everything a Hollywood director is
supposed to know, but you're not Hollywood.” – George
Lucas to Irvin Kershner, the man who directed Empire Strikes Back
George Lucas once
referred to his friend Joseph Campbell as “my Yoda” and Campbell called Lucas
“my best student.” But let’s get practical? Who was George?
Where did he grow up? What happened to him that made Star Wars
happen? As we’re about to see, it’s important to not only ask these
simple questions, but find the answers.
What can you say about
a guy who wanted Hollywood to let him fly a giant hairy dog across the galaxy?
Well, what does George say?
“In high school I lived
to be a race car driver and I was in a very bad accident … Maybe there is a
reason I survived this accident that nobody should have survived … I was hit
broadside by a car that was going about 90 miles per hour …I should have been
dead …”
Joseph Campbell would
call this near-death experience falling into the belly of the whale.
Overnight Lucas, keenly aware of his mortality, suddenly became obsessed with
the meaning and the purpose of life. From moongadget.com:
[Lucas transformed]
overnight from a “directionless loafer” into “the guy who always works harder
than everyone else.” His convalescence left him little to do but read: mostly
science fiction and comic books. Lucas has said that his accident came from his
fascination with speed, and he explores that fascination in Star Wars,
constantly searching for the balance point between presenting as much visual
information as possible and incoherence.
When we are in the
headspace of our lives, we take life at face value. We feel the solidity
of the Earth beneath us, and that’s our reality. A near-death experience
shakes the ground beneath our feet, and suddenly we find ourselves in a different
world. All that we have, all that we are is impermanent, and may be lost in an
instant. We see our existence for what it is: dark and fluid. And
out of the ocean of our unconscious comes the beast, a dragon or a whale.
Whether we break into fragments or are swallowed by the whale, or whether we
kill the dragon power…whatever happens we must emerge from the watery
subconscious reconstituted, resurrected...
Get the rest now here!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment