There are a lot of movies that are badly made that I love, and there are a lot of movies that are just beautifully made but I don't like them. And critics have a tendency - that's all they focus on, which is, "I like it. I don't like it. It's good. It's bad."
George LucasIt's now time for me to pass Star Wars on to a new generation of filmmakers. I've always believed that Star Wars could live beyond me, and I thought it was important to set up the transition during my lifetime.
George LucasI have a supermarket full of ideas and the challenge is how many ideas can I get in my cart before I'm gone. When you're doing it, you're not focused on success. It's not a matter of modesty. You're simply trying to get all the things done that you want to get done in your life.
George LucasSuddenly everything came together in one place. All my likes, everything I actually seemed to have talent for was right there. I said, "Hey, this is it. I can do this really well. I really love to do it."
George LucasIt's not a matter of how well can you make a movie. It's how well can you make it under the circumstance, because there's always circumstances. You cannot use that as an excuse.
George LucasI am a giant proponent of giant screens. But I accept the fact that most of my movies are going to be seen on phones.
George LucasSometimes people are surprised to learn that most of the films I've made don't work. They've been released but nobody has ever seen them. Maybe 40 percent of them are very successful. That's a very high percentage; most people have maybe 10 or 15 percent of their films work.
George LucasLearning to make films is very easy. Learning what to make films about is very hard. What you’ve really got to do is focus on learning as much about life, and about various aspects of it first.
George LucasNone of the films I've done was designed for a mass audience, except for 'Indiana Jones.' Nobody in their right mind thought 'American Graffiti' or 'Star Wars' would work.
George LucasI would like to see our society mature, and become more rational and more knowledge-based, less emotion-based.
George LucasPart of the reason my friends and I became successful is that we were always helping each other.
George LucasI wanted to transfer to an art school, and ended up going to the University of Southern California. They had a cinematography school, and I said "Well, that's sort of like photography, maybe that will be interesting." And once I started in that department, I found what it was that I loved and was good at.
George LucasBecause we [people] have an intellect, part of what we do is try to understand the "intelligent design." Everything we don't know is "intelligent design." Everything we do know is science.
George LucasFilm is a very tight little box. If you don't fit in that box, you're gone. Television, there's more room to move around.
George LucasYou really have to focus on what you're doing and just plow ahead no matter what hurdles are thrown in front of you.
George LucasThere wasn't much as a kid that inspired me in what I did as an adult, but I was always very interested in what motivates people, and in telling stories and building things.
George LucasAfter you've done the first feature, then you have heck of a difficult time getting your second film off the ground. They look at your first film and they say, "Oh well, we don't want you anymore."
George LucasA lot of people like to do certain things, but they're not that good at it. Keep going through the things that you like to do, until you find something that you actually seem to be extremely good at. It can be anything.
George LucasI was going to go to a four-year college and be an anthropologist or to an art school and be an illustrator when a friend convinced me to learn photography at the University of Southern California. Little did I know it was a school that taught you how to make movies! It had never occurred to me that I'd ever have any interest in filmmaking.
George LucasIf you look at 'Blade Runner,' it's been cut sixteen ways from Sunday, and there are all kinds of different versions of it.
George LucasAs a group, we are stronger than we are as individuals. We start to think we want everything for ourselves and we don't want to help anybody else. We want to succeed, but we don't want anybody else to succeed, because we want to be the winner.
George LucasMy life is making movies. I like storytelling, and I've got a lot of stories that are stored up in my head that I hope to get out before my time is up.
George LucasIn the future it will become even easier for old negatives to become lost and be ?replaced? by new altered negatives. This would be a great loss to our society. Our cultural history must not be allowed to be rewritten.
George LucasI've had much more down in my life than I've had up. And much more struggle. First of all, when I went into the film school everybody said, "What are you doing? This is a complete dead-end for a career."
George LucasOn the Internet, all those same guys that are complaining I made a change are completely changing the movie. I’m saying: ‘Fine. But my movie, with my name on it, that says I did it, needs to be the way I want it.’
George LucasI never had a story for the sequels, for the last trilogy. That's not really part of the plan at this point, and I'll be at the age where to do another trilogy would take 10 years. I'd always envisioned it as six movies. When you see it in six parts you'll understand that it really ends at part six.
George LucasYou simply have to put one foot in front of the other and keep going. Put blinders on and plow right ahead.
George LucasAs I talk to film students now especially, I say, "The easiest job you'll ever get is to try to make your first film." That's the easy one to get, is the first film because nobody knows whether you can make a film or not.
George LucasIf I'd have gone to art school, or stayed in anthropology, I probably would have ended up back in film ... Mostly I just followed my inner feelings and passions ... and kept going to where it got warmer and warmer, until it finally got hot ... Everybody has talent. It's just a matter of moving around until you've discovered what it is.
George LucasAlthough I write screenplays, I don't think I'm a very good writer. I'm very interested in studying cultures and social issues, but as an academic I don't think I would have been too successful.
George LucasFear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.
George LucasThe technology keeps moving forward, which makes it easier for the artists to tell their stories and paint the pictures they want.
George LucasWhen Star Wars became a hit and I had a chance to make the other movies, I had to figure out a way to bring Ben back, but a lot of the issues he had to deal with were carried by Yoda. In a sense, I combined Yoda with the spirit of Ben. I wanted Ben to have some kind of influence, but I didn't want it to be a direct influence where he could help Luke. So Ben has managed to keep his identity after he became one with the Force. One of the things he was doing on Tatooine besides watching over Luke was learning how to keep his identity after he became part of the Force.
George LucasThe first movies, they just put up a camera and had a train come into a train station, and everybody was amazed. That was sort of all technology.
George LucasFollow your bliss. Do the thing where you sit down at 8 a.m. and then you realize you're hungry and you look up and it's 10 p.m. If you can find something you love that much, it doesn't matter what you do.
George LucasWhenever you're making a movie, especially when you're writing, you always have self-doubts.
George LucasWhen people talk to me about the digital divide, I think of it not so much about who has access to what technology as about who knows how to create and express themselves in the new language of the screen. If students aren't taught the language of sound and images, shouldn't they be considered as illiterate as if they left college without being able to read and write?
George LucasYou want people to think. You want people to be emotionally moved. And there's a theory behind that in terms of storytelling. It has been around for thousands of years. And that's where something like live theater or a live performance is something that is very valuable because you get instant feedback from your audience and you kind of know the things that work and the things that don't work.
George Lucas