Brian de Palma on that legendary screening of Star Wars: “We all saw it as a terrific thing that George had done”

- Advertisement -
- Advertisement -

Speaking with the Light the Fuse podcast, director Brian de Palma looked back to an iconic screeing of the original Star Wars, one shown before the release of the film, with no music or visual effects when George Lucas was keen to canvass the honest opinions of his fellow directors. Over the intervening years, Steven Spielberg has claimed that he was the only director in the group to see the potential in Lucas’ third big screen release, something de Palma denies.

“Everybody who was involved in that meeting, everyone has a different version of what happened. I was just watching the biography they did of Steven and he related how he saw it. They always portray me as the guy that says the worst thing that drives everybody crazy, but if you’re gonna show me something I’m gonna tell you what I think about it. Why am I there unless I’m gonna give an honest appraisal of what I’ve seen? And in this case, the fact that Steven says that only he saw the possibilities of Star Wars, that’s not really true.”

“We all saw it as a terrific thing that George had done and we were well aware of where the special effects weren’t there, and how they had cut in all these planes from other movies that were supposed to be the ships and stuff like that. But I did make a joke about The Force, that’s true … I just thought the idea of The Force, you know – ‘The Force,’ I would say, and I kept repeating it. ‘It doesn’t seem like a great name for this kind of spiritual guidance, “The Force.”‘ So needless to say I had a lot to say about The Force, which obviously I was terribly wrong about.”

“The other thing was the movie starts in chapter [four], we’re in a world nobody knows anything about, he’s got all these funny names for people, I said, ‘George you’ve gotta set this up somehow like those crawls in the Flash Gordon movies.’ George had that idea, but it was all gobbledygook basically, so I and Jay Cocks went over the crawl and basically rewrote it so it made some sense. And that was our contribution, but I said some things very direct to my director friends about their movies that went on to be extremely successful. Sometimes I was right, sometimes I was wrong. They did the same for my movies.”

Sale
Star Wars: The Tiny Book of Grogu (Star Wars Gifts and Stocking Stuffers) (Star Wars: Mandalorian)
  • Hardcover Book
  • Insight Editions (Author)
  • English (Publication Language)
  • 192 Pages - 11/09/2021 (Publication Date) - Insight Editions (Publisher)
Mark Newbold
Mark Newbold
A fan of the saga since 1978, Mark began in fan fiction in 1982 and since then has written for Star Wars Insider, StarWars.com, Star Wars Encyclopedia, Build The Millennium Falcon, Geeky Monkey, TV Film Memorabilia, Model and Collectors Mart, Star Trek magazine, StarTrek.com and Starburst as well as being a four-time Star Wars Celebration Stage host. He is the Daily Content Manager of Fantha Tracks and the co-host of Making Tracks and Start Your Engines on Fantha Tracks Radio.
- Advertisement -
- Advertisement -

Speaking with the Light the Fuse podcast, director Brian de Palma looked back to an iconic screeing of the original Star Wars, one shown before the release of the film, with no music or visual effects when George Lucas was keen to canvass the honest opinions of his fellow directors. Over the intervening years, Steven Spielberg has claimed that he was the only director in the group to see the potential in Lucas’ third big screen release, something de Palma denies.

“Everybody who was involved in that meeting, everyone has a different version of what happened. I was just watching the biography they did of Steven and he related how he saw it. They always portray me as the guy that says the worst thing that drives everybody crazy, but if you’re gonna show me something I’m gonna tell you what I think about it. Why am I there unless I’m gonna give an honest appraisal of what I’ve seen? And in this case, the fact that Steven says that only he saw the possibilities of Star Wars, that’s not really true.”

“We all saw it as a terrific thing that George had done and we were well aware of where the special effects weren’t there, and how they had cut in all these planes from other movies that were supposed to be the ships and stuff like that. But I did make a joke about The Force, that’s true … I just thought the idea of The Force, you know – ‘The Force,’ I would say, and I kept repeating it. ‘It doesn’t seem like a great name for this kind of spiritual guidance, “The Force.”‘ So needless to say I had a lot to say about The Force, which obviously I was terribly wrong about.”

“The other thing was the movie starts in chapter [four], we’re in a world nobody knows anything about, he’s got all these funny names for people, I said, ‘George you’ve gotta set this up somehow like those crawls in the Flash Gordon movies.’ George had that idea, but it was all gobbledygook basically, so I and Jay Cocks went over the crawl and basically rewrote it so it made some sense. And that was our contribution, but I said some things very direct to my director friends about their movies that went on to be extremely successful. Sometimes I was right, sometimes I was wrong. They did the same for my movies.”

Sale
Star Wars: The Tiny Book of Grogu (Star Wars Gifts and Stocking Stuffers) (Star Wars: Mandalorian)
  • Hardcover Book
  • Insight Editions (Author)
  • English (Publication Language)
  • 192 Pages - 11/09/2021 (Publication Date) - Insight Editions (Publisher)
Mark Newbold
Mark Newbold
A fan of the saga since 1978, Mark began in fan fiction in 1982 and since then has written for Star Wars Insider, StarWars.com, Star Wars Encyclopedia, Build The Millennium Falcon, Geeky Monkey, TV Film Memorabilia, Model and Collectors Mart, Star Trek magazine, StarTrek.com and Starburst as well as being a four-time Star Wars Celebration Stage host. He is the Daily Content Manager of Fantha Tracks and the co-host of Making Tracks and Start Your Engines on Fantha Tracks Radio.
- Advertisement -
- Advertisement -
- Advertisement -
Privacy Settings saved!
Privacy Settings

When you visit any web site, it may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. Control your personal Cookie Services here.

These cookies are necessary for the website to function and cannot be switched off in our systems.

In order to use this website we use the following technically required cookies
  • wordpress_test_cookie
  • wordpress_logged_in_
  • wordpress_sec

We use Google AdSense to show online advertisements on our website.
  • _tlc
  • _tli
  • _tlp
  • _tlv
  • DSID
  • id
  • IDE

For performance reasons we use OneSignal as a notification service.  This saves a number of cookies in order to apply notifcation services on a per-client basis. These cookies are strictly necessary for OneSignal's notification features.  It is essential to the service that these are not turned off.
  • _OneSignal_session
  • __cfduid
  • _ga
  • _gid

Fantha Tracks is reader-supported.  When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

We use Media Net to show online advertisements on our website.
  • SESS#

Decline all Services
Accept all Services