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“I Ripped Up Millions of Sprocket Holes”: George Lucas at Sundance on Building His Empire
“Why should we use all this equipment and all this stuff when we can make it better?” In this excerpt from a recent Sundance panel on “The Power of Story,” George Lucas once again attempts to explain how his loathing for the Hollywood apparatus led to the creation of a special effects empire that enabled a whole new super-strain of Hollywood blockbusters. In his narrative, Lucas had to create a special effects house because none existed, and he had to get into the toy licensing business to prolong the life of his movies inn the market place, and he had to create digital filmmaking because “I ripped up millions of sprocket holes” and thought there had to be a better process. The big paradox of Lucas’ career is how a Bruce Conner devotee helped birth pretty much the exact opposite. Here, as ever, he sounds reasonable in explaining his thinking and utterly disconnected from its inevitable result.
