7/4/2017
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Note: In honor of July 4, seems like a good idea to post this one, which includes a bit about Lucasfilm’s July 4 picnics (below, after main text)…
I Was a Secret Mole-Man
Rick and I decided that I would find a writer who would become part of the on-set team. Because that hiring process would take a while, I’d begin taking notes at the first Episode III preproduction art meetings, for the author to use later on. To learn the ropes, I’d attend Episode II dailies at ILM.
It happened fast.
That’s how my second, more interesting job at Lucasfilm commenced, which I owe to Rick. We’d be at odds later, but at that moment, the reputed ogre of Lucasfilm had transformed himself into my mercurial fairy godfather.
When I told Lucy what we planned to do, the kind of book I wanted to make, she spoke to Howard Roffman about it. A small, careful man, with grey hair cut short, Howard was Lucasfilm’s éminence gris: not only the head of licensing, the company’s cash cow and economic lynchpin, but also influential in other spheres. Having performed in various critical capacities since 1980, and having come to know Lucas well, he had a say on many topics.
I wasn’t sure how they’d react, thinking I may have overstepped my bounds, but he and Lucy went along with it. (Subsequent experience would teach me that no one was going to go up against Rick. Also, the wants and needs of Production trumped those of every other department.) However, I was told to keep it quiet.
For a while, I would lead a kind of double-life at Lucasfilm. I’d take a secret staircase from the editors’ attic—probably meant to be an old-fashioned maid’s staircase—which allowed me to leave the Carriage House without being seen. In the Main House, a second secret staircase ascended from the library mezzanine, past framed artwork by Al Williamson, to the third floor. There, a more spacious attic stretched the entire length of the house in a kind of “H” shape, its main corridor maybe 30 yards long, opening into two rectangular spaces on either end. The concept art studio occupied one side, with drawing boards and computers somewhat cramped together. On the walls were pinned sheets of imaginative character, location and vehicle concept drawings from Episodes I and II. The other side of the attic was empty, but would be occupied later by the animatics squad.
It was on the concept art side that I attended the earliest sessions with Lucas and his two concept design supervisors, Erik Tiemens and Ryan Church, laying out in a few words his earliest ideas for Revenge of the Sith. A mellow native of Santa Cruz, Tiemens was also an accomplished landscape painter; Church excelled at vehicle design. Both of them were fantastic artists and fast, able to produce several conceptual artworks a day. Sculptor Robert Barnes was also there from the get-go, a kinky-haired art school graduate whose first job had been as an intern at ILM; thanks to his expressive concept sculpts he’d segued into the Prequel Trilogy art department. Not long afterward we started carpooling together.
“We might see the Wookiee planet in this one,” Lucas said at an early meeting. “We might see a teenage Boba Fett.”
That kind of brief was enough for them until next week. Every Friday, Lucas would come round, walking up the stairs from his office. During these sessions, I’d simply stand to the side, a human fly on the wall. Rick had told George I’d be there, but we didn’t exchange a word. I’d been told that he was shy, but it felt more like focus. He was making a movie and we were along for the ride.
Life at Lucasfilm II: Parties
The words apart from “dysfunctional” that many ranch denizens used to describe Lucasfilm was, a “Mom and Pop Shop.” In Lucasfilm’s semi-familial, not-always-corporate way of doing things, George was Pop, and Mom might have been Marcia at one time, but had become Jane Bay, who had a significant say in how things were done, organizing the big July 4 picnics, Christmas parties and associated gifts for many years.
Jane first met George at the 1974 Academy Awards, when she double-dated with Tom Pollock, Lucas’s attorney, and Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz. The latter two had co-written American Graffiti, which had been nominated for five Oscars that year, and would later polish the Star Wars script. That evening, Lucas and his friends left the award show empty handed, and Bay would remember that at the Governor’s Ball George was in a “grumpy mood.” Three years later, Bay became one of his very first hires, when Lucas needed a kind of office manager at Parkway House.
Since then Bay had become his executive assistant and essential to his work life. She would print up his daily schedule on a card he carried in his wallet; she would handle interoffice mail, myriad appearance requests, and a 1,001 other jobs.
Jane also masterminded, with a lot of help from Ranch Operations, the tremendous July 4 picnics, a nice tradition and open to the whole company and their families. The first picnic in 1978 had consisted of a few tables with red-checkered tablecloths and about 20 guests, and was held in the outdoor kitchen area of the deer club, in the canyon behind where the Main House would eventually be built (in days of yore, Bull Tail Ranch had an annual deer hunts and dinners). Because the picnics grew in size and their activities multiplied, by the late 1980s Bay moved the locale to the meadow in front of the Main House. In addition to volleyball, horseshoe pitches, and late-night dancing, guests such as Harrison Ford and concert promoter Bill Graham played softball. The picnic also became a regular Bay Area filmmaking community get-together, with Coppola, Zaentz, sound designer and editor Walter Murch, editor and DP Robert Dalva, director Phil Kaufman, and the usual Zoetrope veterans and old friends attending.
By 2002, the picnic was so popular that Jane had been moved it once again, this time to a larger field next to the baseball diamond where a giant tent was constructed for perhaps 50 long tables and a few thousand people, who would participate in an egg toss, a tug-of-war, a potato-sack race, as well as other games and paddle-boating on Ewok Lake. For the children, there was face-painting and pony rides. The ranch supplied the main courses—BBQ pork, hamburgers, hot dogs, and corn and beans—while we brought homemade salads. For desert, an ice-cream truck always had long, happy lines. Once I was with my family sitting under a tree to escape the intense heat, when a volunteer strolled over to offer us slices of apple pie, for which we were very grateful.
The Christmas parties had a similar growth trajectory. They started as small dinners at Parkway and the Main House, then grew over the years to about 400 people at the Carriage Room at the Palace Hotel in SF. People would dress up (ILMer Rose Duignan attended one in an 18th Century–style gown and wig). Another took place in the Tech Building, with a Dickensian theme. By the time I attended a Christmas party in 2001, a whole division of the company had worked for months to prepare a warehouse the size of a Boeing airplane hangar south of Mission, the only space big enough for the two thousand employees and their plus ones.
“I don’t know anybody at the parties anymore,” George told his old accountant Richard Tong.
Each party had elaborate themes, such as 1970s disco, World Travel, or Riverboat Gambling. One year, we could ride an actual indoor roller coaster; another time there was a rollerskating rink (where I nearly killed myself); employees could play with fake money at poker and blackjack tables; there were over the years photo booths, arcade machines, carnival tents, dancing, various bands, guest performers, even long, thick snakes. At these more adult affairs, alcohol flowed and the volume was often deafening, so Genevieve and I usually left early. But it was fun.
Lucas would also give Christmas presents to Lucasfilm employees. Bay would plan these and they, too, were often elaborate: for instance, a Western-themed wooden box, with the initials “SR” branded into its side, containing a Western dime-novel, leather coasters, and cowboy coffee.
ILM’s Halloween party was also a tradition, held on its soundstage, where countless effects moments had been filmed. Because awards were given for best group costume, best individual costume, etc., model makers would often go all out. I saw one arrive with a functioning carousel built around him, actually revolving with multicolored lights flickering, music playing, and horses going up and down. The prizes were fantastic, too, because sponsors sought favor with the facility. The top three might go to the experts, but if you could come up with something clever, the panel of judges might give you, say, sixth prize. A friend of mine walked away with some sort of Dolby sound system worth thousands of dollars. Those who wanted to compete could shuffle across a runway stage.
All of the above was part of the fabric of Lucasfilm, the “Mom and Pop Shop” that was also a billion-dollar corporation.
Next: The Rise of George Lucas Books
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