Look, I'm looking forward to the last/third episode of
Star Wars myself, but this is taking the cake.
I subscribe to Wired because of my subscription to Salon.com. So when I got the latest issue, with Lucas' face halfway inside Darth Vader's famous helmet, of course, I was interested.
It looked like a pretty tame interview, until I got to the part where the Reichsbloggers are getting so exercised that the foam is at the edges of their lips. Watch Toilet Rush weigh in on this one.
This is what Lucas said to Steve Silberman, his
Wired interviewer:
In addition to the experimental films that you say you want to make now, you've expressed an interest in making historical films.
Yes, but I don't want to get into situations where people say, "That's not historically correct." History is fiction, but people seem to think otherwise. The thing I like about fantasy and science fiction is that you can take issues, pull them out of their cultural straitjackets, and talk about them without bringing in folk artifacts that make people get closed minded.
Give me an example of what you mean by a folk artifact.
Fahrenheit 9/11. People went nuts. The folk aspects of that film were George Bush or Iraq or 9/11 or -- intense emotional issues that made people put up their blinders and say, "I have an opinion about this, and I'm not going to accept anything else." If you could look at these issues more open-mindedly -- at what's going on with the human mind behind all this, on all sides -- you could have a more interesting conversation, without people screaming, plugging their ears, and walking out of the room like kids do.
And you do that by --
By making the film "about" something other than what it's really about. Which is what mythology is, and what storytelling has always been about. Art is about communicating with people emotionally without the intellectual artifacts of the current situation, and dealing with very emotional issues.
Okay. You know how I interpreted that? It wasn't necessarily a blanket endorsement of the big guy himself. Lucas was trying to say that his methods aren't as broad--or as polarizing. He does, however, acknowledge the big story in documentary films--Michael Moore. If Lucas wants to make historical films, he'd better choose his facts wisely. I think that was a reason why Martin Scorsese didn't get an Oscar for Gangs of New York, why Francis Ford Coppola's The Cotton Club failed miserably. History is not necessarily fiction, but film telling or embellishing or leaving out the story can make it so. Unfortunately some people don't know how to read. Predictably, Jim Geraghty's head exploded:
It's a free country, and Lucas can make whatever films he likes, and put in whatever subtle or not-so-subtle political messages he likes. But I can't be the only one who finds a stunning disconnect between the messages of Lucas' films and the decisions he's actually made in his life and work.
Let me get this straight. With villains in Attack of the Clones that consisted of the "Trade Federation", "Commerce Guild", "Techno Union" and "Intergalactic Banking Clan", etc., I'm being warned about the dangers of capitalism from a man who made perhaps more money from merchandising than any other man in history. I'm getting lectured about the dangers of greed from man who authorized, "C-3POs" breakfast cereal, "The Star Wars Christmas Special" featuring Bea Arthur's musical number, and not one but two Ewoks made-for-TV movies.
I'm being warned about the dangers of technology, and the glory of primitive cultures like the Ewoks, who are able to defeat the `technological terror' of the Empire, in what is supposedly an allegory of Vietnam. Technology is bad, soulless, dangerous, and dehumanizing. Mmm-hmm. This from a man who replaced a tall man in a hairy suit, a projecting the human-eyed loyalty and sadness of Chewbacca, with the CGI cinematic war crime that is Jar-Jar Binks. A man who tossed aside the Yoda puppet, the spaceship models, the stop-motion animation of the Imperial walkers to go all-computer-animation-and-green-screen, all-the-time.
I'm being warned about the dangers of a "you're either with me or against me" attitude, and the viewing of the world in a black and white morality, from a filmmaker who has his villain dress entirely in black, choke the life out of helpless pilots, and blows up entire planets. This from a man whose nuanced moral view required an edit to make Greedo shoot first.
What?
I guess what Geraghty's trying to say is, what's wrong with you, fool? You should be with us! Jason Apuzzo at Libertas, though, couldn't make up his mind.
From the sum total of Lucas' remarks, I'm left with the following impression: that Lucas is dismissing Moore, simply because Moore is too obvious - too openly political and `of the moment' - but that Lucas isn't otherwise troubled by Fahrenheit , at all. In fact, the film and its reception are obviously on his mind a lot - and seem to frustrate him. Moore is clumsy, Lucas seems to be saying, because he isn't able to explore the same issues in the more guarded language of symbolism and fiction. [For example, Lucas himself has repeatedly indicated that the origins of the `Star Wars' series - however it's subsequently developed - were in his reaction to the Vietnam War and Nixon's corruption.] Moore says things openly - and perhaps stupidly - that we can say in other, more sophisticated and insightful ways, Lucas seems to be saying.
Now, I find all of this a bit alarming, for obvious reasons. Lucas clearly wants to "affect" people, and he doesn't seem particularly concerned with how Moore had intended to "affect" audiences - only that it may not have worked. This is a bit like saying Goebbels was merely clumsy, but his intentions were pure. I sincerely hope I'm only misunderstanding what's being said here by this otherwise great filmmaker. If not, then what he's outlining is actually already what Hollywood's elite classes (of which Moore is not really a part) already believe: film is there to be used to shape people's values, but it can only be done effectively through popular entertainments that can't push their politics too much. And, of course, it's understood that those values are supposed to be left-wing.
Left-wing? Goebbels? I fail to see the connection, because not all film is infused with lefty values, just values--in general--about the human condition, both known and unknown.
You know, I believe Lucas was shaken out of his complacency by guys like megalomaniac James Cameron who filmed Titanic and hardworking munchkins like Peter Jackson with The Lord of the Rings, and thus toppled Lucas off his money-making throne as king/emperor of the Hollywood mountain. Statements like "I'm king of the world," must have hit Lucas hard. Lucas' innovations and tinkering and risks have made certain things possible in film that these people couldn't dream of doing for quite a while--until he showed up. Yes, the SW Empire seems cold, impersonal, sexist, racist and even laissez-faire capitalist. However, it's his own story, literally. Thousands of English/fantasy/literature, current/cultural and film conferences are going to be referencing his work forever.
It's evident to me that Lucas wants to make a connection with his audiences in the future with films that get people's attention or makes them respond. But more importantly, I think that he wants to make them in the same vein as his American Graffiti or THX 1138 were filmed in the early Seventies. Small indies that are classics. However, that may not be possible. He's not the same hungry guy. A couple of his films that he made after the SW Trilogy ended tanked at the box office. He may be trying to feel his way forward beyond what made him famous and what made him fail.
For the record, I think that Lucas got it wrong about Moore. It's been pile-on time for quite a while for Michael Moore, and I think that it's getting a bit too obvious. Frankly, people's minds were engaged, were changed, were enlightened by Moore's film, for good or bad. I think that the film helped make the election a lot closer than we know.
I know I got pretty riled when John Rhys-Davies was saying that the Orcs and Sauron and Saruman were like the Arabs and the Muslims or Osama bin Laden. Tolkien never meant for people to use his books for other purposes. The Rings books were non-religious and then they were religious, because they aimed for illuminating the human condition and spirit which beats any religious identification, order or sect of belief. So SW can't be used for--as Reagan's crew once did--painting Russians as the Evil Empire. Or Osama bin Laden as the Emperor Palpatine/Darth Sidious. This is nothing but hardcore wingnuttery. That's what these guys want Lucas to do, tie his series to their struggle--whatever that is.
But I digress. Back on Instapundit, Steve Silberman snapped back at Geraghty with this:
What's unnerving is that Lucas was certainly drawing a line between his own storytelling methods and Moore's in my interview -- Lucas' statements were critical, not praising of Moore, as you can see -- but apparently because Lucas doesn't share Apuzzo's opinion of Moore as a modern-day Goebbels (that's Appuzo's (sic) word), the readers of Libertas quickly branded Lucas a "Moore-loving liberal." They were way offbase, but such overheated rhetoric is so much easier to maintain when Lucas' actual statements are absent from the debate.
What do I think? Mountains out of molehills time. Anything to make traction on their culture war, and now George Lucas is grist.