George Lucas

THX 1138

American Graffiti

Greetings, earthlings, nerds, geeks, and people who can only make it through the first few sentences of my blog (I understand.) Happy belated May the 4th and happy early birthday to George Lucas: the Taurean sci-fi pioneer and filmmaker extraordinaire who gave the world Star Wars—and all of the offshoots and prequels and sequels and side missions and other subsequent space-related content clearly inspired by this IP. Now, I, myself, am not the biggest Star Wars fan. I’m also not a hater of Star Wars, for that would require a certain level of giving a shit, too. I am somewhat into the 1970s era of Star Wars because Harrison Ford is hot and was too stoned to remember many of his lines, and yet the film still won six Academy Awards and created a cultural phenomenon. I can even dig the weird, campy quality of the Star Wars prequels of the 90s and early 00s, because Natalie Portman and Hayden Christiansen couldn’t help but slay despite the boring quality of some of these movies. The last Star Wars film I remember watching was Rogue One—a sort of standalone prequel to the original episode IV (god this gets confusing) with a hot cast and a tragic ending that actually effectively made me feel something. Other than this, I have no connection to Star Wars, or the several hundred tv shows, movies, comics, tv specials, cartoons, and internet conspiracy theories that have come out of this dense, never-ending series. Star Wars has remained and become so massive that I’m not even sure if I should italicize its title because it has grown so much from just a mere film series, into an entity that Disney is constantly churning out new or recycled content for. But before George Lucas’ success with Star Wars, he was like any other indie film student, who just so happened to be friends with Francis Ford Coppola, and they began a creative partnership and founded a production company. The first film Coppola produced with Lucas was developed from a film school project Lucas had completed at USC called Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB—shortened to the still inconvenient title THX 1138, and was released in 1971. THX 1138 stars Robert Duvall and Donald Pleasance and is far weirder, far more experimental, and way harder to follow than Star Wars, but nevertheless, I persisted. The film is set in a dystopian world with robocops, holograms of monks (George loves his holograms), and a human race that is born only to work. Love, sex, and relationships are outlawed, and human workers must take sedatives that suppress any and all emotions and personality quirks. Everyone’s head is shaved bald, they all wear white, and it is unclear what it is exactly these workers are working on apart from following the rules and staying alive. Robert Duvall plays the titular THX 1138, who, after rooming with a female worker named LUH 3417, decides to stop taking the sedatives, and the two fall in swift, illegal love. The only command of these workers is to “work hard, increase production, prevent accidents and be happy”, but when these two begin to show affection for one another, their routine day-to-days become tragically upended. This film is shot in a really cool, experimental way, and makes very creative use of what appears to be a parking garage. It feels far more robust and well-funded than your average student-film-to-mainstream-release project, but it still contains the same amount of headass-ness one might expect from an early and ambitious filmmaker. You can see the beginnings of Star Wars within THX 1138, from glimpses of robots that look like C-3PO, to hooded-costuming that resembles those hooded Star Wars dudes, to the general overarching theme of being distrustful of the government. But, in typical George Lucas fashion, he confused me quite a bit with this movie, and I felt lost for the majority of my watch. This was due, in part, to a factor that I cannot blame on George Lucas, but whomever uploaded the copy of this movie to the particular random website on which I viewed it. Throughout the film there was this intense, relentless, ahead-of-its-time, surprisingly catchy, techno music, that I found myself genuinely vibing to, but certainly was suspicious of. As I was jamming to these dystopian beats playing over the dialogue, I decided to Shazam a song, and it was at this point that I realized I’d been watching a re-edited version of THX 1138 where the soundtrack had been changed and CGI had been added to enhance the effects. So… I stopped the movie, deleted my recent internet history, and searched for an older, more correct copy of this movie, which I was able to eventually find and begin from where I’d left off. So, yeah, it’s safe to say that I might’ve missed some of the quieter dialogue, and I might’ve experienced this film differently than I was supposed to, but I just wasn’t invested enough in this story to start the movie over from the beginning—which is emblematic of THX 1138’s issues. When I resumed with my now techno-less, lower quality version of the film, I struggled to pay attention and maintain any intrigue I might’ve had going into it. I don’t want to discount the fact that THX 1138 had some very cool concepts, designs, and cinematic techniques that were genuinely impressive—for this bizarre, attemptedly-deep movie to be George Lucas’ first is pretty amazing. The film never lost its vision, but it really loses momentum about halfway through. For a genuinely good premise, it ultimately felt aimless and empty. Also, there are several lingering questions unanswered when this movie ends—something that would’ve had nerds up in arms if the internet had existed in 1971. George Lucas probably achieves a more fully-realized pathos in Star Wars honestly, where the characters and the chemistry build a little more naturally. The performances here were decent for what little emotional capacity the script had, but it still didn’t make me feel anything. Even when Princess Leia says “I love you” and Han Solo says “I know”, I felt something. But for all of the effort that clearly went into THX 1138, it still didn’t feel like there was enough there. George Lucas is a fascinating director to me because while he’s very creative, he doesn’t seem the most concerned with creativity. Only Lucas could explore the heights and depths of space only to focus on the minutia of robot policemen, or the bureaucracy of intergalactic governments. I still appreciated the trippy nature of THX 1138, although I honestly think the techno-edit of this film was more entertaining. Lucas would only improve upon the ideas of THX 1138 with Star Wars in 1977, but before this, he’d direct a rock n’ roll coming-of-age comedy that would kickstart the careers of several stars, with his 1973 classic: American Graffiti. American Graffiti is the first movie to be produced by Lucasfilm, and truly only exists because Coppola challenged Lucas to make a coming-of-age film that could appeal to mainstream audiences. The film is set ten years prior, during George Lucas’ teenagehood in the early 1960s, and follows several characters on the last night of summer before they start college / embark on the next chapter of their lives. These characters are played by Richard Dreyfuss, Paul Le Mat, Charles Martin Smith, Candy Clark, Cindy Williams, Suzanne Somers, Bo Hopkins, Harrison Ford, and Mackenzie Phillips—none of whom were famous at the time—the only familiar stars in this film were Ron Howard and DJ Wolfman Jack. Taking Coppola’s challenge seriously, George Lucas designed American Graffiti to be a somewhat autobiographical ode to the cruising culture of the 1960s—not the ship cruising or the gay cruising but the kind of cruising that involves teenagers driving around looking for friends and trouble and people to go steady with. And that is the entire premise of American Graffiti. We mostly follow two besties, Curt and Steve (Richard Dreyfuss and Ron Howard), who are set to go off to college “back East” together until Curt mentions that he may not want to rush into moving away yet. Even though they’ve only just graduated high school, Steve wants to relive the “good ole days” and hit the freshman sock hop with his girlfriend (Cindy Williams), while Curt would much prefer to track down the pretty blonde girl in a Thunderbird with whom he made eye contact. These two bros have different ideas of how their evenings and their futures should go, while their nerdy friend Terry takes Steve’s car for a spin and gets into some trouble of his own. The whole film takes place in the span of one evening where good music is played, hijinks ensue, and ultimately these two friends find a greater appreciation for each other and for their small town of Modesto, California. American Graffiti is full of bad boys, kooky girls, meddling police, and doo-wop music—all of the qualities you’d expect from the late 1950s/early 1960s minus the racism. Nearly every conversation is had in a moving car, and nearly every single character uttered the word “bitchin’” at least once. It was a fascinating practice in nostalgia that would inspire many aesthetics and stories within media for years to come. While cruising as George Lucas knew it had all but disappeared by the 1970s, I know for a fact that this activity is still done by teenagers, in real life and on screen, the second that they’re permitted to drive. Much of my teenage years were spent driving around with my friends, looking for something—anything—to do, and this is a part of many films like Dazed and Confused, Superbad, and Booksmart. In fact, I’m now certain that much of Superbad was inspired by American Graffiti because both of these movies take place in one night, follow two best bros who suddenly have different ideas about their future(s), and feature a nerdy friend who is forced to go buy the alcohol but instead has a wilder night than both of his buddies. This film introduced audiences to cruising, mooning, Mel’s Drive In, and the idea that a film’s premise can be centered solely upon the idea of remembering the “good ole days”. It was fun to see Richard Dreyfuss be an existential cutie (why did he have to say something problematic after years of being cool?) and Ron Howard be a douche, although absolutely no one is buying that Ron Howard and Cindy Williams were the popular kids of their school—like sorry but no lol. And Harrison Ford, though wearing a cowboy hat and shrouded in darkness for the majority of this film, was just so effing cute that George Lucas knew he had to make him Han Solo. Watching American Graffiti is just one of those things you have to do, as my mother tells me, and I’m glad that I did. Not just because it was better than THX 1138, but because it was sweet, funny, and it is quite literally the blueprint for so many other great movies. Thank you for reading along this week and thank you George Lucas for your contributions to nerd culture. Now, off you go into the cosmos. And remember to live, long, and oh shit wait that’s the other one uhhhh just try not to kiss your brother I guess? I dont know, I’m a film critic not a damn Jedi!