This could apply to anything, but studying why some movies released at the theater are better than others is critical because of how the movie business works.  People get together and tell a story, and the value of that story is released to the public for them to vote on.  People tend to think of Hollywood as very glamorous, but in truth, very few people who work in the industry ever get to be a part of an extraordinary success, a ratio even less than in other fields of endeavor.  So it is always interesting to understand why some people put together a string of hits, such as Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, along with producer Howard Kazanjian.  An even more important example is the role that George Lucas’ first wife, Marcia Lucas, played in some of the most memorable and good movies of all time.  Also, why did a small, family-owned company like Lucasfilm lose its magic once it became a corporate conglomerate under Disney?  All this was in a fabulous book called ‘A Producer’s Life,’ which was about the life and times of Howard Kasanjian, who produced several of the Star Wars movies and the start of the Indiana Jones franchise, among other classic films like Cool Hand Luke, The Wild Bunch, and working with Alfred Hitchcock.  This book caused much stir when it first came out because Marcia Lucas was just as upset about Disney killing off Han Solo as I was for many political reasons.  That was just another example of how corporations that use processes to isolate individual contributions produce products in the world that are not as desired by the market.  In the case of the new Star Wars movies, the belief was that the film itself held all the magic and that a girl could replace a character like Han Solo to accommodate all kinds of woke rules wrapped around the axil of globalism. However, the Disney people never understood Star Wars, and this book had the opinions of someone who was very close to Star Wars, who was the key to their success initially. 

The book came out in 2021, right in the middle of the Covid monstrosity, and Biden had just been inserted into the White House, so I wasn’t in the mood to think about movies.  But I promised myself that if Trump returned to the White House, I’d get the book, take a bit of a vacation, and allow myself to think about some fun things.  For me, these are some of the most fun things, and they show how entertainment impacts culture as a whole.  And when it comes to those movies, Indiana Jones and Star Wars, few people have put together the kind of hits as filmmakers such as Steven Spielberg and George Lucas.  The corporate belief is that just anybody can make a good movie or a good anything if only enough money is spent on the project, and in film, typically, the industry attracts all the same kind of sharks looking for an easy dollar as Wall Street does.  But few of them, if anybody, understands what makes hits and misses in the marketplace.  I have always wondered why George Lucas was so good from 1975 to 1982.  After that period, George Lucas wasn’t very good at all.  He may have been interesting, but he had lost his touch, and I always thought it probably had something to do with his wife, Marcia. 

There were two good Star Wars movies, and then everything fell off the rails with Return of the Jedi.  The movies were self-funded and only distributed through 20^th Century Fox.  George Lucas hated corporate filmmaking; he wanted to make independent films from a family-driven company.  This allowed someone like the film editor, his wife, Marcia Lucas, to put her personal touches all over those early movies, which were key to their successes.  Something Disney and all its resources today don’t have is that personal touch.  During Return of the Jedi, Marcia and George divorced, and she ran off with the stained glass window guy working on their Skywalker Ranch.  That sounds kind of cheap and stupid, but George Lucas was working hard at the time to maintain his independence from the studio system, so he was putting all the pressure on himself.  This is another reason why those family-made movies were so good.  It wasn’t the board of directors or BlackRock assets making the decisions; it was George Lucas.  But it drove a wedge between him and his wife, and he never recovered.  Neither did she.  They should have stuck it out, but that’s history now, and the results tell quite a story.  Because she worked with her husband, Marcia knew how to get the best out of the coverage shots he provided as a director and could make a story pop on the screen that resonated with audiences.  You have to be an excellent person to produce good work, which gets lost in all corporations: those individual contributions.  For instance, if SpaceX lost Elon Musk, the company would fail quickly.  We always see it in sports: a star player carries a franchise.  As the saying goes, there is no “I” in team, but there is in win.  Teams are not values, they are places where people can hide so they don’t have to deal with the pressure of taking on too much responsibility.

One time, when the character of Indiana Jones was being created, Harrison Ford, Steven Spielberg, and George Lucas designed the character before principal photography, and they were all talking about giving Indiana Jones some flaws that the audience could relate to, such as making him smoke and drink too much.  But as she often did with many of those early Lucasfilm movies, Marcia stepped in and gave her opinion that was critical to the effort’s success.  Keep in mind that these three moviemakers were some of the best of the best in the business. But it took George Lucas’ wife to point out the obvious.  She told them this was a kid’s movie and they couldn’t have Indiana Jones drinking and smoking.  He’ll lose all his charm, which they didn’t understand then.  But George listened to his wife, as usual, and the character became one of the most beloved in all movie history.  They are still trying to make money off Indiana Jones, with Disney running the studio.  But they don’t understand the character because they don’t have someone like Marcia Lucas in the editing room polishing everything up.  They have access to tens of thousands of talented filmmaking types, but very few understand the subtlety of success and failure.  Without question, Marcia Lucas, as a high-quality individual, made those early movies better.  She also made Lucas, Spielberg, and Harrison Ford better.  Better than any of them would ever be again once she was no longer a part of their lives.  After the divorce, it went all downhill from there.  They still made good movies, but they had all lost their touch, never to duplicate it again.  And no matter what business we’re talking about, that same kind of ratio applies.  Corporations often don’t get it; they mimic what made them great and hope nobody notices.  But to become great in the first place, there is always some charismatic individual, or a collection of them, who come together and make magic happen.  And without those individuals, no process in the world can promise success, purposefully or by accident.  Family-owned businesses are some of the best ways to achieve that success, and Lucasfilm was a family-owned business in those early days.  Once they became a corporate conglomerate, they could no longer make magic, and the brands they were associated with died in the court of public opinion. 

Rich Hoffman

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