Just in time for the release of the latest Star Wars movie, Brian Jay Jones (author of Jim Henson) offers a cinematic and engrossing look at the life of filmmaker George Lucas.
From the start, Lucas wouldn’t bend to anyone else’s creative vision, whether it belonged to film school professors or the studios backing his movies. Early relationships with Francis Ford Coppola and Steven Spielberg shaped Lucas’ work and place in Hollywood—and foreshadowed what was to come.
When the book turns to the first Star Wars film, readers observe Lucas’ tortured creative process. He wrote treatments of the screenplay longhand in pencil and painstakingly edited snippets from other movies to show how he wanted Star Wars to look and feel. The result forever changed how Americans experience film.
For movie fans or anyone fascinated by the creative process, this is a well-researched and illuminating biography.
This article was originally published in the December 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.
