With the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art only a few short months away from opening and the 50th anniversary of Star Wars also racing towards us, George Lucas is once again in the spotlight, and speaking to A Rabbit’s Foot his words here might explain why the man who changed cinema would want to embark upon creating a museum celebrating narrative art.
He laughs softly. “I liked experimental films. I was into, and I still am into, the fact that moving pictures are moving and that makes them different from paintings. So the mystery of it, and the art of it is in the movement. But it needs to have emotion in it. You go to the movies because the stories move you emotionally.” The same belief helps explain how Lucas thinks about technology. Many filmmakers see digital tools as a rupture, but Lucas sees it as part of the natural evolution of an artform. “I have a lot of friends who are on the Film Foundation with me, that’s dedicated to saving old movies, and some of them say,” he pauses to adopt a gravelly tone, “‘I’ll never do digital. Lawrence of Arabia (1962) was shot with film.’” He smiles. “And I say, ‘No, it’s cinema. It’s the moving image. That’s what it is. It’s not a technology, it’s an idea.’”
