Skywalking: The Life And Films Of George Lucas

Skywalking: The Life And Films Of George Lucas, Updated Edition
by Dale Pollock

Though Pollock makes much of the notion that a near-fatal teenage car accident is the secret behind director/producer Lucas' super-success ("From a close encounter with death grew a fanatical commitment to hard work and artistic excellence"), the emphasis in this rather overblown, essentially adoring biography is on detailed movie-making. With lots of interview-quotes, Lucas is followed from skinny Modesto adolescence through his echt-1950s phase to the USC film school and wife Marcia. (She's a major quote-source throughout, and the only one "brave enough to take Lucas on in a head-to-head dispute and occasionally emerge victorious.") There's the colleague-ship with Coppola, their anti-studio Zoetrope film company, their split after arguments about American Graffiti profits. Then, of course: "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Star Wars" - with almost day-by-day accounts of the shooting, the problems, the special effects. . . and the oh-wow popularity. ("Marcia and George drove to a Hamburger Hamlet that just happened to be across the street from the Chinese Theater, where there was an immense traffic jam and crowds of people.") And, after similar treatment for Empire Strikes Back and somewhat briefer attention to Raiders of the Lost Ark, there's a day-in-the-life ("he crawls out of bed at 6:00, as the morning sun makes its first assault on the fog that blankets San Francisco Bay and San Anselmo") and a preview of Return of the Jedi. A cut or two above fan-mag gush - and definitely of interest to Star Wars aficionados.