DROIDMAKER George Lucas and the Digital Revolution
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
DROIDMAKER George Lucas and the Digital Revolution DROIDMAKER George Lucas and the Digital Revolution Michael Rubin Triad Publishing Company Gainesville, Florida Copyright © 2006 by Michael Rubin All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, digital, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher. For information on permission for reprints and excerpts, contact Triad Publishing Company: PO Box 13355, Gainesville, FL 32604 http://www.triadpublishing.com To report errors, please email: [email protected] Trademarks Throughout this book trademarked names are used. Rather than put a trademark symbol in every occurrence of a trademarked name, we state we are using the names in an editorial fashion and to the benefit of the trademark owner with no intention of infringement. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rubin, Michael. Droidmaker : George Lucas and the digital revolution / Michael Rubin.-- 1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-937404-67-6 (hardcover) ISBN-10: 0-937404-67-5 (hardcover) 1. Lucas, George, 1944—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Lucasfilm, Ltd. Computer Division — History. I. Title. PN1998.3.L835R83 2005 791.4302’33’092—dc22 2005019257 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed and bound in the United States of America Contents Author’s Introduction: High Magic. vii Act One 1 The Mythology of George. .3 2 Road Trip . .19 3 The Restoration. 41 4 The Star Wars. 55 5 The Rebirth of Lucasfilm . 75 6 The Godfather of Electronic Cinema. .93 Act Two 7 The Visionary on Long Island. 103 8 The Train Wreck. .115 9 Escape from New York. 131 10 Inside Wonkaland . .143 11 Flying Free . .163 12 The Silverfish. .179 13 Sound and Vision. 189 14 Obnoxio. .213 15 Double Suicide. 231 16 One Thousand, Six Hundred and Twenty-One Frames. .241 17 Queen’s Rules. .259 Act Three 18 A Hole in the Desert . .291 19 Non-Stop Coffeepots. .315 20 These Aren’t the Droids You’re Looking For. 335 21 My Breakfast with Andre. 347 22 Playing Games. 379 23 Rendezvous with Reality. 393 24 Stay Small, Be the Best, Don’t Lose Any Money. .417 25 Into the Twilight Zone. 433 26 Esoteric unto Occult. .453 v vi D R OI dm AKE R Epilogue: Return and Revenge. .467 Acknowledgements. 489 About the Research. 491 Bibliographic Notes . .493 Photo Credits. .500 Computer Division Roster. 502 Index. 504 D R OI dm AKE R author’s introduction High Magic STAR WARS was made for kids, and the kid in everyone. In 1977 when the film released, while Lucas was celebrating his thirty-third birthday on the beach in Maui, I struggled through Central Florida’s ungodly humidity, waiting in record lines to see the flick before heading off to summer camp. As a thirteen- year-old boy, I was in the target market for this film. Like so much of America, I was inexplicably drawn to those first images I had seen in Time magazine, to the strange names of characters and places. That summer I was at a camp in the woods of northern Wisconsin, a thousand miles from my home. Throughout the small cabins were a black market of photographs snapped in darkened theaters—of X-wing fighters vII viii D R OI dm AKE R and storm troopers—usually bartered for candy bars and Sunday cabin clean- ing favors. Rumor spread of one unusually clear shot of the Millennium Fal- con that went for three Bit-O-Honeys and a week of latrine duty. The camp’s program director (who campers called “Starn”) kept a wary eye on the illicit activities in a stern but compassionate way. Starn wasn’t like other counselors. At twenty-three, he was the epitome of cool. His composure was of a Jedi master; he was deeply admired by campers and staff alike. He maintained a calm control over kids that itself became a source of camp lore; it was said he was a master of “high magic,” an expression Starn himself used sometimes. If you asked him about high magic, if you were lucky you might find yourself in a long deep talk around the campfire; by morning, you were never quite sure if he admitted he was a wizard or had told you there was no such thing. “There are things that are known and things that are not known,” he’d say to his few selected protégés, “and there are things that are real and things that are not real. The important thing is that just because something is not known does not necessarily mean it is not real.” Heady stuff for pre-teens. With images of Star Wars fresh in our minds, we always felt a direct con- nection with the fantastical story through the magic of our real-life Jedi coun- selor. You couldn’t get close enough to the warmth of that glow. Years later, after having lost touch with those wilderness days, I was a col- lege junior at Brown University. Crossing the green commons early in spring I came across two freshmen who were oddly familiar—former campmates. Not only were we excited to see each other, but they were—at that precise moment—on their way to meet up with a grown-up Starn, who was visit- ing campus that day. “Would I like to come?” Would I possibly pass up an opportunity to re-connect with the wizard of high magic himself? I wondered silently what would he really be like, far from the fire’s glow and the north woods mythology. After warm hugs and a soda, we faced off in a small café for a recap of our lives. What does a charismatic legend like Starn do for a job? “I work for George Lucas,” he said. After an afternoon of re-connection he told me he figured I’d like it at Lucas- film, although he wasn’t in a position to hire me. Maybe a summer job? Maybe an internship? With Starn as my principal reference, I began obsessively fol- lowing the public face of the company: reading articles, shooting off pithy letters, making strategic phone calls to try to secure a position. Periodically there would be hope, only a month later to be dashed. This continued for eighteen months. My parents insisted I come up with a plan for a career after graduation. I insisted my schedule had to remain open. Three days before D R OI dm AKE R HI gh M A G I C ix graduation I got the call that I had been waiting for. I was invited to join a new project Lucas was initiating, involving computers and Hollywood. The Lucasfilm Computer Division was a skunkworks project that Lucas had enacted in 1979, during the making of Empire Strikes Back. By 1984 the advanced and secretive research in editing movies, sound, computer graph- ics and games had crystalized into tangible tools and products. I expected to join the graphics project (later known as Pixar), but by the time I arrived at my desk in San Rafael, California, I found I had been assigned to The Droid Works, introducing new editing and sound tools to Hollywood. I demon- strated the EditDroid and SoundDroid to directors; I trained editors in New York and Los Angeles. Eventually I became an editor myself. The executives and managers in the company probably considered me sufficiently non-threatening and apolitical that they candidly exposed me to their tribulations. It was not uncommon for my early evenings to be spent with someone or another who was happy to rant about our company, Hol- lywood, and Silicon Valley. I was young enough that my social circle of under- lings extended throughout the divisions of Lucasfilm and all the subgroups in the splintering Computer Division. For almost two years I experienced remarkable events first-hand, events that not only changed filmmaking but resonated through all of media technology. By the time George Lucas began making the prequel trilogy to Star Wars in the late 1990s, his visions for modernizing Hollywood had become well- established practices, and the legacy of the Computer Division was wide- spread. Everywhere I turned were reminders of those days—Pixar movies, THX logos, epic blockbusters with computer-generated characters, immersive multi-user videogames, a host of consumer software for editing, sound and graphics—but few people I spoke with realized how much had come directly from Lucasfilm research. Because the company was privately held, because George is so secretive anyway, there were only bits of information available, much of it erroneous or exaggerated, some of it mythologized. I decided then that I should research the story of the Computer Divi- sion—how it came to be, why a filmmaker spent a disproportionate amount of his wealth to create it, what historical events happened there, and what became of it. It would span the history of filmmaking and the history of technology. It would be comprised of the experiences of the people I had met there—the executives, the filmmakers, the scientists, the competitors, the friends—who along with George Lucas reveal this story. Starn continued to be my good friend, my guide and advisor through my years at Lucasfilm and beyond. As Yoda said in Episode I, “There are always two: the master and the apprentice.” Lucas had Coppola. I guess I had Starn. x D R OI dm AKE R But I could never get the question out of my head, “Was all that talk about magic real or just camp stuff?” It was hard to say if he ever answered.