Mythmaker: The Life and Work of George Lucas - Hardcover

Baxter, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0380978334 ISBN 13: 9780380978335

Publisher: William Morrow, 1999

Synopsis

George Lucas is one of the most innovative and commercially successful players on the movie scene today. Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi, together with the three "Indiana Jones" films-all six of which he conceived, produced, and co-wrote-comprise the most popular group of films ever made. Lucas masterminded a revolutionary shift in the control of funding and profits of Hollywood films away from the studios into the hands of the filmmakers themselves. His state-of-the-art film exhibition techniques (such as THX sound systems) have transformed the cinematic experience, and his Industrial Light & Magic is the finest special effects studio in the world. Yet he has remained an enigma and a recluse-until now.

About this title

About the Author

John Baxter has lived in Paris for more than twenty years. He is the author of four acclaimed memoirs about his life in France: The Perfect Meal: In Search of the Lost Tastes of France; The Most Beautiful Walk in the World: A Pedestrian in Paris; Immoveable Feast: A Paris Christmas; and We'll Always Have Paris: Sex and Love in the City of Light. Baxter, who gives literary walking tours through Paris, is also a film critic and biographer whose subjects have included the directors Fellini, Kubrick, Woody Allen, and most recently, Josef von Sternberg. Born in Australia, he lives with his wife and daughter in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés neighborhood, in the same building Sylvia Beach called home.

Reviews

"Baxter spares us the gossip and interpretation, instead choosing to make sense of his enigmatic subject."

An astute look behind the myths of the man and his work, this intelligent biography delivers a mixed verdict on director/ producer George Lucas's films: "Thanks to him... American popular culture had been immeasurably enriched in technique, widened in scope, but cheapened in content," writes Baxter, a biographer of Fellini, Spielberg, Kubrick and Woody Allen. "In his hands, cinema became synonymous in sensibility and style with the comic book, the hamburger, the soda." Yet Lucas fans won't mind, and may not even notice, Baxter's quietly devastating criticism as they feast on his detailed behind-the-scenes account of the making and marketing of American Graffiti, Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Willow and assorted sequels. Baxter presents the merchandising billionaire (who once observed that Star Wars "was designed around toys") as a socially inept director who finds the Hollywood filmmaking process boring and irritating. At the same time, Lucas has merely dabbled in what he claimed was his lifelong ambition of making inexpensive, personal, even experimental films as an alternative to the Hollywood system. In addition to offering an intense scrutiny of Lucas's creative process, this perceptive bio is peppered with gossipy glimpses into Lucas's rivalry with Spielberg and affair with Linda Ronstadt, details of Carrie Fisher's drug use, Francis Ford Coppola's hectic sex life and the battle waged by a new breed of directors to gain the upper hand over studios and investors in financially controlling their own films. (Oct.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: William Morrow
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0380978334
• ISBN 13: 9780380978335
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 450