JOHN BAXTER
George Lucas
A BIOGRAPHY
To Marie-Dominique Moveable feast
CONTENTS
13 For Sale: Universe, Once Used
14 ‘Put Some More Light on the Dog’
25 Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
There are times when reality becomes too complex for oral communication. But legend gives it a form by which it pervades the whole world.
The computer Alpha 60 in Alphaville, by Jean-Luc Godard
The Man in the Panama Hat (years older now) removes the Cross of Coronado from Indy’s belt.
PANAMA HAT: This is the second time I’ve had to reclaim my property from you.
INDY: That belongs in a museum.
PANAMA HAT: So do you.
From Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Screenplay by Jeffrey Boam, from a story by Menno Meyjes and George Lucas
As he neared his sixtieth year, George Lucas sat in the shade on the red-brick patio of his home at Skywalker Ranch in Northern California and thought about destiny.
Almost without realizing it, he had become a legend – a man larger than life, magnified by his achievements, but dwarfed by them too. Over forty years, head down, brow furrowed, working every day and most of every night, ignoring discomfort and ill-health, banishing every distraction to the edge of his vision, he had created something remarkable. An empire. A fortune. A myth.
He was not a myth to himself. Only a megalomaniac takes his legend at face value. A sense of his ordinariness was part of the reason he’d succeeded. At first, the awe of his acolytes had puzzled him. Then he’d been amused, but irritated too; he’d been brought up to scorn self-advertisement and conceit.
But as one ages, adulation rests more comfortably on the shoulders. Occasionally, these days, he surrendered to the belief that perhaps he could really achieve anything on which he fixed his energy and instinct.
Other men, less able, less driven than he, paused before embarking on a project, and sometimes wondered, ‘Why am I doing this? What will be its effects, on me