7/3/2017
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Into the Maelstrom
Our small publishing department was in the attic of the Carriage House (Lucy’s office was on the groundfloor). The rest of licensing occupied the two floors below, having moved over from the Brook House in 1987. Apart from myself, there was long-time editor Sue Rostoni, who handled the novels (and eventually the comic books), and Chris Cerasi and Michelle Vuckovich, who started about a month before me. Everyone would stash their cars in the underground parking lot and come up through a basement, which, intriguingly, housed a Foley stage and some sort of sound editing/mixing board. Hidden technology was one of the themes at the ranch, though in this case it was also a matter of necessity: At Lucas’s request, Foley had been moved out of the Tech Building to make room for the first digital sound studio, which Ben Burtt and his crew had used for Episode I (later, Foley would be moved back into the basement of the Tech Building).
Up a flight of stairs from Foley, licensing was made up of about 35 men and women in offices or at desks in an open-floor plan. What I found to be a funny, but endearing aspect of my new working environment was that nothing—well, hardly anything—was designed for business. Some of the managers were business-like, even corporate, but the place itself felt like a home.
“The Main House was built by a retired sea captain,” Jo Donaldson, the ranch’s long-time librarian, told me.
Jo and had taken over years before from the first ranch librarian/archivist, Debbie Fine, and we were standing in their abode, one of the more beautiful libraries in the world, the jewel of the Main House. A stained-glass dome capped a fantastic chamber dominated by a spiral redwood staircase to a mezzanine. Behind her were framed photographs of the ranch cats. Always patient and helpful, Jo pointed to a bank of nautical instruments embedded in dark wood paneling, and I recognized a barometer.
Around us, bookshelves were crammed with titles reflecting the subjects and needs of Lucas’s films: furniture and costume design; world history, anthropology, psychology, evolution, and religion; but also UFO-ology and esoteric subjects, such as the Nazi’s use of occult magic. Anyone at Lucasfilm could check out books if they had a legitimate business reason for doing so. Jo and one or two assistants at the library also provided research and reference services to outside clients (for example, the productions of J. Edgar, Lincoln, The Great Gatsby, Iron Man, Memoirs of a Geisha, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Moulin Rouge, Chicago, etc.)
“What about the Carriage House and the Gate House?” I asked.
“George told the architects that the four houses behind the Main House were built by the sea captain’s children. That’s why their architectural styles are different from the Victorian style here. One of the grandchildren built the Tech Building.” (I also heard that this son, or grandson, was a rebel, who planted the vineyard and went into the wine business.)
Above the library fireplace was an original Maxfield Parrish painting. Jo told me that when Lucas had first revealed his showplace to Steven Spielberg, the latter had remarked that it was a little hard to see the painting. That same afternoon workers installed recessed lights in the ceiling.
“George wrote down a whole story,” Jo added, “to explain to everyone involved, the builders and architects, why one building was a certain style, or different from another.”
I never saw his written story, but it was consistent with his way of working, which often integrated history, art, fairy tales, and family sagas. Even many of the ranch’s bathrooms were like those you might find in a house of the period, with claw-foot tubs and wooden cabinets. Lucas figured that the tubs and showers would be useful if anyone had to work overnight.
The unintended humor of the ranch’s non-utilitarian character meant that us four editors in the attic had nice oak desks, perfect for typewriters, but not our hulking PCs and wide keyboards that hogged their surface space. Whenever illustrated pages came in, I’d go into the hallway and sit on the floor to lay them out. Nor did we have file cabinets. Instead, we had a complex system of loose papers piled high on a shelf. Strong winds were dangerous, but we had to keep the windows open, because people were never meant to stay nine or ten hours a day in that attic: we sweated through the summer and shivered during the winter. During the former season’s very hot days, the attic’s roughly 15-foot-long glass wall converted our workspace into a greenhouse, in which we were the desiccated orchids.
It didn’t help that, in my enthusiasm to sign up for everything offered at the ranch, I wound up playing intramural softball, which I’d never played before, and dislocated my knee. In the second game I had to be rescued by the Fire Department and bandaged up. I was on crutches for the next few weeks, hobbling up and down the Carriage House staircase.
It was in this sorry condition that I made a discovery: As the newly hired nonfiction editor, I was in charge of behind-the-scenes books—and my first “mission” was to discuss a recently submitted manuscript with Prequel Trilogy Producer Rick McCallum, which was the equivalent of drawing the short straw. McCallum was widely feared, for he was volatile. In some quarters, he was ... not liked. Former assistants had hidden beneath their desks when he was on one of his rampages.
My first day during lunch in the Main House dining room, at the table next to ours, I’d spotted McCallum with Lucas, composer John Williams, and actress Carrie Fisher. I noted then that Rick resembled physically a more charming Quasimodo. He’d let himself go a little, but had the hunched large shoulders and upper body of an Olympic swimmer, which he’d nearly been*. He’d also been a daring young producer in the UK, though American, who was written up by Italian tabloids as having an affair with actress Elizabeth Taylor on one of his first film experiences as an assistant director on location in Rome. (The Driver's Seat, 1974; Rick's step-father, Michael York, wrote that the tabloids were in error.)
Apart from his reputation, I had another problem. Upon reading the manuscript, although it was a solid piece of journalism, it wasn’t my cup of tea. Its author, however, was a friend of McCallum’s. This last fact was related to me by someone who hastened to add that I was, “screwed.”
I sent the pages over to Rick with a note asking him to let me know when he was ready to talk. About a week later I was summoned by his assistant, Ardees Rabang, who, like Radar on M.A.S.H., often knew what Rick wanted before he did (and wasn't intimidated by him either). Rabang always made three copies of every document: one for Rick, one for the files, and one for when Rick lost the first one.
The day of our rendezvous, I climbed the wide, carpeted, curved staircase of the Main House—something out of Gone with the Wind—up to McCallum’s office, not sure what I was going to say. On the second floor, to the left were Jane Bay’s office, that of her assistant, Anne Merrifield, and Lucas’s suite, neither of which I’d yet to glimpse. This was my first trip to the inner-sanctum, off limits to anyone without good reason or an invitation. To the right of the staircase was Rick’s lair, so producer and director had easy access to each other.
In the anteroom, I was told to wait. McCallum was on the phone. I was apprehensive, but felt that he had been type-cast. McCallum couldn’t be all one way. No one was.
After about 30 minutes, Ardees showed me in. I saw various awards on shelves; on the fireplace mantel a few high-end Star Wars replicas; on the coffee-table, assorted foreign cinema magazines—and books. Several art and photography books, which was reassuring.
Rick was behind a massive desk on another call. I sat down opposite. That day and on many subsequent occasions, he was not shy about letting it all hang out, no matter who might be on the other end, no matter what business was being discussed, no matter how angry or beseeching he might be. “Honey, I know…,” he was saying (anyone could be “Honey”). “Just help us out… yeah, I know.”
He hung up, looked at me, and said, “The book’s pretty boring, isn’t it.”
“Yes, it is.”
“What can we do about it?”
“Nothing,” I said. “It’s too late. But for the next one, we could tell the story of production, talk about the real drama of making a movie, follow it from day one up to the release of the film. Preproduction, on the sets, editing—everything.”
“Okay,” Rick smiled. “Let’s do it.”
Next: I Was a Secret Mole-Man
* See Michael York's autobiography, Accidentally on Purpose. His book is a good read, too.
And please note, as I mentioned before: This blog is about my time at Lucasfilm, from October 1, 2001, to December 31, 2015. As such, though I’ll try to be objective, my observations are no doubt my subjective views of these years and people, not any clinical “truth.”
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