James W. Hawk - filmmaker

I recently read (again) the Steven Spielberg biography by Joseph McBride. There is a passage in the book that always gets my attention.

“Early in 1977, when Close Encounters was still months away from completion, George Lucas showed a rough cut of Star Wars (without John Williams’s rousing musical score) at his San Anselmo home, in northern California. The audience included executives of Twentieth Century-Fox; Gloria Katz and William Huyck, who worked on the script; and several of Lucas’s other filmmaker friends, among them Brian DePalma, John Milius, Hal Barwood, Matthew Robbins, and (Steven) Spielberg. “It was the first time the executives from Fox had seen it,” Katz recalls. “It had no special effects; the battles were scenes from old World War II movies. Afterward, there was stunned silence. George’s then-wife (Marcia) broke into tears. I told her; ‘Don’t cry when there are people from the studio there.’ She said, ‘It’s the At Long Last Love of sci-fi.’ Brian DePalma said, ‘What a piece of shit.’” But while Lucas, Spielberg, and the writers were driving to a restaurant after the screening, Spielberg piped up, “I liked it. I think this movie’s going to make a hundred million dollars.”” (McBride, Joseph. Steven Spielberg a biography. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997. Pg 286 Print.)

I take several things from this story.

The first thing is, never give up. There are a lot more people out there that aren’t creative and never will be, than there are people out there that do have the creative gift. Don’t let their short sightedness derail you. At the end of the day, Lucas walked away with $4.2 billion, name recognition that far surpasses many other filmmakers and several film franchises that anyone would love to have.

The second thing is that Steven Spielberg saw the potential in George Lucas’ story that no one else was able to see. If you find it necessary to share your vision, do it with people of like mind. Spielberg was able to look passed all of the technical short cuts and see the underlying potential. If Lucas would have stopped with all the negative criticism, where would he be today?

The third thing is that it all comes down to money. You can make a fantastic ultra low budget film, but most people are going to hold you to the Hollywood big budget standard. I don’t know from this story whether Lucas didn’t have the money or the time to put the special effects into his screener, but in either case, he was being held to the big budget standard. This can become discouraging, but don’t let that drag you down.

Becoming a filmmaker requires a trip down a long road that passes through a mine field. Don’t give up and always remember there is only one direction to go…FORWARD!