Review - The Making of Star Wars: The Definitive Story Behind the Original Film (Star Wars)

One of my Christmas presents this year was the massive coffee table book, The Making of Star Wars by J.W. Rinzler. What distinguishes this book from the dozens of "making of" books and documentaries that have come before was the discovery and use of decades old "lost" interviews of all the major and many of the minor players conducted before, during and just after the production of Star Wars. The book also features dozens and dozens of rare and fascinating production photos, the awesome Ralph McQuarrie pre-production drawings, as well as summaries of all of Lucas's very different drafts of "The Star Wars" up to the shooting script.

I've long suspected Lucas of retconning various events and his own perceived shortcomings of Star Wars, especially to justify his edits in the Special Editions. The interviews in this book show what Lucas was really thinking at the time. To my surprise, less retconning has gone on than I suspected. What is very clear is that Lucas is a huge perfectionist who was never satisfied with his brilliant and visionary movie, even as it was raking in hundreds of millions of dollars.

What was really fascinating to me was how so many things could have gone wrong (and did) and yet they still managed to produce a nearly perfect movie. Reading about the studio's reluctance and how they nearly pulled the plug on their billion dollar payday multiple times is almost agonizing. I've been a Star Wars fan for thirty years, but I still learned an awful lot from the book.

Many of the little details are intriguing.

• I've long known that Luke was originally named "Starkiller". What I didn't know was the he was still "Starkiller" while they were shooting the Tatooine scenes in Tunisia. It wasn't until they went to London to shoot interior scenes that his name finally became Skywalker.
• As far as the look of the film, ILM's first job was to create front-projection shots for special effects. Space and planet landscapes seen from the interior of all the spaceships and Luke's landspeeder were actually supposed to be front-projected onto a screen in front of the actors, rather than done with blue screen! Fortunately, this disastrous (and cheesy) plan was foiled when ILM couldn't deliver the front projection plates in a timely fashion.
• The scenes set on the Death Star were originally set in the Imperial (cloud) City of Alderaan where, after the rescue of the princess, Obi Wan survived. Budget constraints (fortuitously) necessitated moving all of the action to the Death Star, while the decision to kill off Obi Wan was made while they were filming in Tunisia and almost resulted in Alec Guiness quitting the movie!
• In an appendix filled with notes from a 1978 Lucas "interview" laying out the background of the universe for sequels, Lucas mentions the dreaded word "Midichlorians" in connection with the Force. Wow.

If you're a fan of Star Wars and movie-making, this is a must read.