A 'Star Wars' Summer of Schlock
Pacific News Service, Commentary, Behrouz Saba, Posted: May 17, 2005
Editor's Note: An Iranian-born film buff laments filmmaker George Lucas' trajectory from rebel to retailer. But in America, he says, there's always a second act.
LOS ANGELES--Coming to California in 1966 from Iran, I saw this country as a three-dimensional version of the American films that had mesmerized me as I grew up in Tehran. Seven years later, I decided to move to Los Angeles and study cinema, seeing Hollywood as the starry-eyed F. Scott Fitzgerald had viewed it, "a place of infinite possibilities."
I had reason for my irrational exuberance. In a seminal 1968 Time magazine article, Stefan Kanfer had named two USC film students, George Lucas and John Milius, as vanguards of a new cinema. I thought they would go on to top such groundbreaking masterpieces of the time as "Bonnie and Clyde," "A Clockwork Orange" and "Rosemary's Baby."
When I arrived in Los Angeles, the two young filmmakers were well on their way. Milius would eventually co-write "Apocalypse Now." (Alas, he later became too camp as the director of "Red Dawn," about the Soviet invasion of the United States.) Lucas had already directed the sci-fi "THX 1138" and "American Graffiti." Both films celebrated defiance of authority, showed distaste for conformity and condemned consumer culture. Lucas spoke for the young who didn't want to grow up to be like their parents, with boring jobs and materialistic preoccupations. He was my inspiration to enter the USC film school.
Nearly four decades later, as another "Star Wars" summer looms ahead -- complete with marketing and licensing campaigns to sell everything from 3 Day Blinds to M&M's -- the skinny rebel from Modesto who took USC Cinema by storm is a redoubtable authority figure, an avuncular, portly George Lucas who encourages conformity and consumerism with every shiny lure imaginable.
Lucas once said he didn't want to live like his father, whose life as a stationary storeowner followed a predictable, daily routine. Yet he has become his old man's super-duplicate, stuck forever in "Star Wars" and filling every stationary store in the universe with his junk. Many once-rebellious baby-boomers share the same fate, albeit under less gargantuan circumstances.
Irwin Blacker, my mentor at USC, urged the study of myths and legends to learn about the larger dimensions of storytelling. Of all his students, Lucas took this lesson most to heart. Raised on TV and movie matinees, he burnished the 1950s American obsession with space aliens with his awareness of ancient mythology and modern special effects to come up with "Star Wars."
As a class project, I decided to interview the film school's illustrious alumni and was told by them to include a guy named Steven Spielberg. He hadn't attended the elite school, but was showing promise. My first interview with him came to an abrupt end when he received a phone call. "I'm sorry," Spielberg said, "I have to fly to New York right away. I'm doing this movie called 'Jaws.'" I declined when he kindly asked me to share his limousine to the airport so we could continue our chat, not realizing that I was not destined for many similarly glamorous interludes.
"Jaws" came out in 1975, followed by "Star Wars" in 1977, both generating unprecedented box office returns. The timing was perfect. The public, tired of tortuous introspections about Vietnam and Watergate, was hungry for distraction and popcorn. A budding film critic, at first I welcomed these "movie-movies" as fun if passing fads, not knowing that the two directors had firmly reinstituted shallowness as Hollywood's standard to end an era of brilliant filmmaking.
Lucas and Spielberg became collaborators on the Indiana Jones franchise, "owning" succeeding summers with its sequels, more "Star Wars" films and more Spielberg sci-fi's. This summer seems like old times, with a new "Star Wars" and Spielberg's upcoming "War of the Worlds."
I'll wait for the DVDs. The game has long ceased to be about great filmmaking, and now solely concerns bragging rights about the biggest weekend opening.
Lucas, who prides himself on creative freedom, is permanently consumed by the "Star Wars" black hole and insists on sucking into it new generations of filmgoers. Spielberg, having made his forays into serious filmmaking, returns to his roots to find nothing but ear-splitting destruction and numbing special effects.
Meanwhile, a digital camera weighing less than a pound and a FireWire data transfer card in my PC are allowing me to realize a lifelong dream of making my own movies, as I get on the documentary bandwagon with kids half my age and hope for the best.
I have lived an instructive American experience, sitting with potential billionaires, seeing many of my dreams dashed, and realizing, also contrary to the incomparable Francis Scott, that there are always second acts in American lives.
PNS contributor Behrouz Saba (behrouzsa@aol.com) writes on American and Middle Eastern political, social and cultural issues. He is a graduate of USC with a Ph.D. in communications, with an emphasis on film history and criticism.
Related articles:
'Lord of the Rings' vs. 'Matrix': Patriarchy vs. the Rainbow Coalition
Who Took the Lord Out of 'Lord of the Rings'?
The Dream of ‘The Matrix’ is Over
Neo, ‘The Matrix’ Star, is the Unexpected Hero of My Generation
Also by Behrouz Saba:
Dawn of the Iranian Woman: 5 Found Spotlight in Past Year
'Terminal' Blues: Spielberg Film Misses True Immigrant Story
Page
1 of 1
|
