After his labors, the mythmaker plans to rest and perhaps retire From his office window, George Lucas looks out over a pleasant little
valley to a pleasant little mountain, Mount Tamalpais. Small as it is,
this friendly peak has an important if unheralded role in his life: it
blocks the summer fog that often rolls in from San Francisco, eleven
miles to the south, and makes the side on which Lucas lives and works
that much sunnier. Mount Tamalpais is only one reason Lucas has for rejoicing. Here, in no
particular order, are some of the others: He shares with his friend Steven Spielberg the title “Mr.
Blockbuster.” Besides Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, which rank
No. 2 and No. 3 in receipts, he drew up the plot of and produced No. 5,
Raiders of the Lost Ark. In addition, an earlier film, American
Graffiti , loosely modeled on his own adolescence in Modesto,
Calif., ranks as one of the most profitable films in Hollywood history.
It cost Universal Pictures only $780,000 to produce, but it has already
returned $145 million worldwide. Besides making money, the Star Wars pictures changed the way moviemakers
look at film and created a new vision of ancient mythological themes
that has deeply affected a whole generation of children. What Walt
Disney was to the children of the '30s, '40s and '50s, Lucas is to
those of the late '70s and '80s. “George has been able to hook into
some very basic universal images,” says Lawrence Kasdan, who wrote the
Jedi script with him. “Tying into these images isn't always conscious,
and part of George's gift is his being able to use everything he has
ever experienced or been exposed to. He is able to draw on the feelings
he may have had when he was twelve or much younger.” Lucasfilm and its various divisions, like Industrial Light and Magic,
are doing well. I.L.M., for example, has created special effects not
only for Lucas' films but for others too, including Star Trek II and
E.T. The company spends about $3 million a year on research and
development of things like better sound systems for movie theaters, and
it is pioneering the art of film far more than any of the Hollywood
studios. Even after generous profit deals for his stars and associates
, Lucas has kept enough for himself, roughly $20 million,
to provide the ordinary domestic comforts. Beyond all that, he has an apparently blissful marriage, a charming,
attractive wife Marcia, 37, and an adopted daughter Amanda, who is two
and whom he seems to worship. As he celebrated his 39th birthday last
week, just eleven days before the release of his latest and perhaps
most successful picture, he had every reason to celebrate. Why, then,
as he sits down to talk on this fresh spring day, his office deliciously
perfumed by a bowl of giant, sinfully luscious strawberries, is he so
gloomy, so unhappy, so downright miserable?
