Given that the mediocre quality of the Star Wars prequels ignited a debate over whether or not Lucas was ever truly talented, or if he simply got lucky and had a lot of help, I’m wondering if it is known for sure how much creative control Lucas had on THX-1138 and American Graffiti?
I ask because whereas Star Wars (1977) was a confirmed collaborative effort (and given that I am a Star Wars geek and as such have read as much as I can about it), I don’t know much about the previous two films’ productions.
With Star Wars, the question of what “percentage” of that film is Lucas’, and the “percentage” that came from help from his friends and edits by Marcia Lucas is debatable, but what about these two?
I think no one would disagree with the notion that Lucas is a terrific idea man. If you’ve ever read the 1978 Story Conferences for Raiders of the Lost Ark, you can tell at least 80% of that film’s plot, characterization, and structure came from Lucas (with Spielberg refining Lucas’ ideas, and then Kasdan translating both men’s ideas to screen while adding a few of his own). Empire Strikes back was pretty much made with Lucas only acting in a “final approval” type of role. He wrote the entire story and all of the plot beats, but left the direction, editing, dialogue, and such totally up to Kershner. But what about his early films?
Lucas directed both films, but he was not the sole writer on either of them. He wrote the first draft of THX, but it was deemed unacceptable by Francis Ford Coppola (the producer) who assigned Walter Murch to work with Lucas. While Murch was nominally the fim’s editor, he must have worked some magic on Lucas’ draft, because Murch shares the writing credit with Lucas.
For Graffiti, Lucas hired the husband wife team of Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz to help him write the original film treatment. The three of them wrote several drafts, but Huck/Katz went on to another project and Lucas hired Richard Walter to polish the screenplay. By the time the film was greenlighted, Huck/Katz were available to do further work on the screenplay. Walter Murch came back to “edit” but also helped Lucas restructure the storyline.
I am under the impression that quite a bit of “Graffiti” was Lucas. It was a real low budget film that struck a chord via word of mouth. I heard of it by getting a letter in the summer from a college friend urging me to see it. One of the studio executives, Ned Tannen, didn’t helieve it but was persuaded to release it and ultimately the bad guy in the “Back to the Future” films was named after him. Tannen had a career of spectacular goofs and great successes, saying that jehad no idea that “Animal House” would be so huge.
Lucas was able to get a soundtrack of some 40 songs for a grand total of $100,000 which coincided and amplified the 1950s revival then gathering steam.
Impossible to tell for sure, but the story of Lucas is really the story of a guy losing his creative talent. It degraded in the 80’s. He took almost all the 90’s off and when he came back in 1999, he was like an older athlete trying to make a comeback.
From the early 70’s through early 80’s, though, he was a pretty talented guy.