The director who taught George Lucas how to make movies: “We’re each other’s foil”
In the case of most directors, there are people who love their work and have seen everything they’ve ever made, and then there are those who think they’re a stain on filmmaking. For George Lucas, he lies at the intersection of both those groups.
As the man behind Star Wars, he has shaped popular culture in ways that we mere mortals cannot comprehend. However, you could also argue that no one has done more damage to their own creation than George. His constant meddling with the original trilogy—not to mention the prequels and the Disney sale—has soured many fans to his creative genius, even if he did create one of the biggest media franchises of all time.
Before he ever dreamt up the word ‘midichlorians’, Lucas was an aspiring young director like everybody else. He studied film at the University of Southern California and made his first feature, THX 1138, in 1971. He followed this up with American Graffiti, a comedy-drama that first put him in touch with a young man named Harrison Ford. This is what gave him the platform to launch his intergalactic dream, and the rest, as they say, is history.
As with all future stars, a young Lucas had a number of mentors and helpful allies during the early days of his career. While Steven Spielberg and Lucas’ first wife, Marcia, would lend a hand later down the line, it was Apocalypse Now director Francis Ford Coppola who was there right at the start of his story.
“The way I make movies, I learned from Francis,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 1977, months before the original Star Wars film had even come out. “I was his right hand for ten years. I absorbed his idiosyncrasies. Yet we’re exact opposites, 180 degrees apart; as a result, we’re each other’s foil. You need that in this business.”
The two iconic directors first met on the set of Finian’s Rainbow, an obscure musical that Coppola directed in 1968. After hitting it off, they formed the production company American Zoetrope one year later. It would go on to produce a number of films directed by the pair, including American Graffiti, The Conversation, and The Godfather. Coppola was a producer on Lucas’ first two movies, and was even parachuted in to help finance Star Wars by bringing the project to the attention of William Friedkin and Peter Bogdanovich.
Before he had ever made a narrative feature, he directed a half-hour documentary called Filmmaker. He had been working as an assistant on a Coppola movie called The Rain People and decided to log the process in a cinéma vérité-style behind-the-scenes video diary. With only a $12,000 budget, Lucas shot most of the footage himself, with his then-girlfriend Marcia serving as editor. The Rain People wasn’t a hit at all, and Filmmaker was only ever shown in conjunction with it, but you can imagine how coveted both projects are today due to their creators’ later success.
The personal and professional bond shared by George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola has had far-reaching consequences on the world of film. Neither man would have been able to reach their full potential without the other, for better or for worse.
