I listened to Founder’s podcast episode #345 about the life of George Lucas.
The following is the 4 points I want to save:
A movement coming from the fringe
This excerpts remind me of
- Paul Graham’s essay The Power Of The Marginal
- The importance of finding the people who inspire you via Bill Gurley’s Running Down A Dream speech
Keep in mind, this is the mid-1960s. There’s not many film schools in the United States. And so this is why Tarantino last week in his book would talk about the movie brats. He said they love movies, they dreamed of movies, and they even received degrees in movies back when that was a dubious major. And Lucas talks about this like it was embarrassing. Other people were like, you’re going to a film school, they didn’t even call it a film school, they call it cinematography school. “Like what the hell is this?” and he says, “I lost a lot of face.”The idea of going into film was a really goofy idea at the time. His dad’s like “there’s no way in hell, I’m playing for art school”.
That decision changed the trajectory of George Lucas’ life is because that’s when he meets essentially just a collection of filmmakers who are all obsessed with movies, they’re all young, and they wind up helping each other for decades. It’s almost like the island of misfit toys because before this, it says, for many of them, it was the first time they had a click of their own, a gathering place where they could talk about their interest, movies without eye rolling from the other cool kids. For many reality finally began when they entered film school.
Lucas knew that he had found his way. Before he wasn’t sure, obviously in the college he had all these other interests. And he’s like, “Oh, wait, this is it.” I was sort of floundering for something. “And when I finally discovered film, I really fell madly in love with it. I ate it. I slept it 24 hours a day. There was no going back after that.”
Steven Spielberg describes, he uses the exact same language. This is what Spielberg said, “Making movies grows on you. You can’t shake it. I like directing above all. All I know for sure is I’ve gone too far to back out now. There is no going back.” They both discovered what they’re going to do.
Now this is the fascinating part because this turns into the USC Mafia, Spielberg is part of that, even though he didn’t go to USC. You’re talking about a group of super talented filmmakers and a lot of them come out to California, even though they called the USC Mafia, some of them like Martin Scorsese, Oliver Stone, they went to NYU, Brian De Palma went to Colombia. Francis Ford Coppola was at UCLA, Spielberg is on the lot getting his own curriculum at Universal.
They were all friends who would have a lasting impact on film and culture. This is another example that relationships around the world. You see it over and over again in these books, so important to develop relationships with other people that are just like you and even if you’re — they don’t look at themselves as competitors. They tend to compete, but they also collaborate, but they all need each other because they’re trying to break into a system that is closed.
At this point in history, unless you’re part of a union, unless you already know somebody in the industry, you’re not breaking it even with a film degree. It’s yet another illustration of one of my favorite concepts from Game of Thrones, where they said those on the margins often come to control the center. At this time, Spielberg, Scorsese, De Palma, Coppola, Lucas, they are on the margin.
The center is controlled by these old school conservative studios that are locking all these young people out. It was unheard of to have a director in their 20s. And yet this network that they’re building and the talent that they have for their craft, like those on the margins often come to control the center. They become the center.
Now this is really fascinating because when I had dinner with Charlie Munger, this is the advice that he gave us. He talked about is exactly what him and Buffett did. I think he was 35 when he met Buffett, Buffett was about 28, 29 something like that. Each talked over and over again, the importance of — the advice he gave was like you have to develop relationships with people. He’s like, they were still doing deals. He talked about the fact that they would meet people in their 20s, 30s and 40s, and they would do business and do deals for the rest of their lives. The USC Mafia would regularly hire, fire and conspire with one another on countless projects over the next five decades, putting together a kind of system of their own. Lucas is 23 when he meets Coppola. Coppola is 28. They’re going to be making movies doing deals, starting companies, breaking up, fighting for decades.
It’s really important because at that time, because there is no young directors. There’s no 28-year-old director doing a major movie set. You have to be an independent filmmaker to do that. And so Coppola inspires not just Lucas, he inspires Steven Spielberg too.
Coppola actually succeeded in getting his hand on the door knob and flinging open the door. And suddenly, there was a crack of light. And you could see that one of us, a film student, without any connections had put one foot in front of the other and actually made the transition from being a film student to being somebody who made a feature film sponsored by one of the studios.
To Steven Spielberg, Coppola was a shining star. Spielberg said, Francis was the first inspiration to a lot of young filmmakers because he broke through before many others. So not only did Coppola proved to Spielberg and Lucas that, “Hey, this is possible.”
But the influence that Coppola had on Lucas too is like, “Listen, you have to learn to write.” At this time, and you’ll see Lucas make this mistake a few times. He tries to outsource the writing. And Coppola was saying, “Hey, what separates just a director to a filmmaker is like you have to — any director, he would tell Lucas like any great director has to know how to put together a screenplay. And so he would repeat to Lucas over and over again like no one’s going to take you seriously unless you write. And that wind up being excellent advice because Lucas forced himself to write Star Wars, which is obviously his entire empire.
I’d be working all day and all night living on chocolate bars and coffee, said Lucas. It was a great life. I had enthusiasm, and I was too busy to get into drugs. Movies where his addiction, we were passionate about movies. “We were always scrambling to get our next fix.” Listen to how they’re describing this. This is how he knew what he’s been doing with their life. Described working as your next fix to get a little film in the camera and shoot something.
Spielberg has said multiple times that George Lucas inspired him and said at the time of his first encounter with Lucas in early 1968, Spielberg’s filmmaking was still more aspiring than actual. And Spielberg talked about this, like no longer did his role models have to be these older, in many cases, deceased filmmakers. They’re actually someone his own age, someone I can actually get to know, compete with and draw inspiration from.
“Surf the wave when it comes”
The next year, the film Easy Rider comes out. It is written and directed by a 32-year-old or a 33-year-old Dennis Hopper. It was not made in Hollywood. It was made on a shoestring budget. They raised $350,000. Why is that important? $350,000 is released in theaters. The film makes $60 million. Easy Rider goes on to be one of the most profitable films ever made.
And so the studio executives see them and they’re like, “Oh, s***”, and this is what they said. The studio smelled money. Why invest millions bank rolling production of an enormous film on a studio backlot when you can simply distribute independently produced films. Suddenly, independent films and independent filmmakers, which is exactly what Lucas and Coppola want to be, were in demand. The studio wanted young talent.
I just said that Charlie Munger talks about surfing the wave.
Listen to the words that they use to describe this.
Easy Rider had created a tsunami of independent enthusiasm. Coppola decided to ride the wave right into the offices of Warner Bros. Come on, that fit together so perfectly there. So goes with Warner Bros.
This is Coppola who’s like — sometimes I think you might need a guy like this because it’s not like we’re going to make one movie.
He is like, listen, you front us a bunch of money. We’re going to bring you a finished film just like Easy Rider did. We’re not going to do with this once. We’re going to — we have seven films we want to make with you guys. We have seven films we want to make with you guys.
They’re young entrepreneurs, don’t have experience, don’t really know what they’re doing. The movies they’re going to make are going to flop. But what’s fascinating is like they still had an insight into the future. And so it says both Coppola and Lucas predicted a bold high-tech future. Remember, this is 1969, 1970, maybe. And they said movies will eventually be sold like soup. What does that mean? You’ll be able to buy it in cartridges for $3 and play it as you would a record, music record at home. He’s predicting VHS tapes, then DVDs, then Blu-ray and now streaming.
Forgiveness not permission
This is more juvenile delinquent behavior. He says the rules are of no concern to him. I broke them all. He said, “Whenever I broke the rules, I made a good film”, so there wasn’t much that the faculty could do about it.
George Lucas is very resourceful. He always would find a way to get what he needed in terms of equipment and bodies to put together a crew like sometimes when you film like when you film Star Wars in London later on, they have these like really strict rules for the London like Film Union. You have to start at 8:30. There has to be a tea and I’m not even joking about this. You have to start 8:30, then you have to break for tea at 10 a.m., and then you have to break for an hour lunch at 1:00 and then you need another tea break at 4:00 and then you can’t work past 6. He’s like this is madness.
He didn’t want any kind of restrictions. So they would break into the equipment room to get not only materials that they needed, like an expensive camera, but they would also break into facilities. It says Lucas didn’t want to limit his use of the equipment to the building’s regular hours either. We’d shimmy up the drain spout, cross over the roof, jump into the patio and break into the editing rooms so we could work all weekend. And this idea that you use juvenile delinquent actions to actually be more productive.
Entrepreneurship is problem-solving
Tarantino in his book, he says, the job of a director is to solve problems. Solve problems for your actors. And I read this book by Danny Meyer, the famous restaurateur called Setting the Table. It’s excellent. And he tells a story that I’ve never forgotten. He’s at dinner with Stanley Marcus, who is part of the Neiman Marcus family, the family that controls the Neiman Marcus. He’s a wiser older man, probably, I would guess, 40 years older than Danny at this point. I think Danny’s in like mid-20s, maybe late 20s at this point. And so he’s — they’re having this conversation:
Danny says:
“Opening this new restaurant might be the worst mistake I’ve ever made.”
Stanley set his martini down, look me in the eye and said, so you made a mistake. You need to understand something important and listen to me carefully. The road to success is paved with mistakes well handled. His words remain with me throughout the night. I repeated them over and over to myself and it led to a turning point in the way I approached my business.
Stanley’s a lesson reminded me of something that my grandfather had always told me. He said the definition of business is problems. His philosophy came down to a simple fact of business. Success lies not in the elimination of problems, but in the art of creative, profitable problem solving. The best companies are those that distinguish themselves by solving problems most effectively.
The way I condense that down so I can remember myself, business is problems. Therefore, the best companies are just effective problem-solving machines. The best directors are just effective problem-solving machines.
Lucas has a problem. He’s got an idea in his head. No one can make the special effects. There’s no technology at the time. So what did he do? The solution sometimes to a problem is to found your own company to solve that problem. The solution to this problem that he’s having now is the founding of Industrial Light & Magic.
So it says Lucas would not merely have to produce the visual effects. He would have to develop the technology needed to shoot them in the first place. George was absolutely adamant that he wanted to set up his own shop with his own people. Industrial Light & Magic would then be an official subsidiary of Lucasfilm, born of necessity seeded with his own money and feeding off Lucas’ need to control every aspect of the production.
Industrial Light & Magic would stand as one of the cornerstones of Lucasfilm’s empire, an investment that would set him well on the way to becoming a multibillionaire.
Ron Howard admiringly said:
How many people think of the solution of gaining quality control, improving fiscal responsibility, and stimulating technological innovation is to start their own special effects company.