| GEORGE LUCAS ON MYTH
by Jason Loewith on 12/04/2007 05:53:00 PM
I had the wild and woolly opportunity last night to hear George Lucas (yes, the Star Wars guy) speak for about an hour to the Economics Club of Chicago. The event was surreal in every way - about 1500 folks in black tie (1400 of them Captains of Chicago industry, 99 of them starstruck 12-year olds, and me) listening to Chairman Bill Daley asking Lucas where he got the idea for the light saber colors (the answer: the good guys had cool colors, the bad guys had warm colors, and "Sam Jackson asked for purple").
So that clearly tells us that businessmen shouldn't interview artists, and we'll avoid the reverse. Nonetheless, George dropped a couple of pearls, one of which I wanted to share.
Daley framed the conversation in his remarks by calling Star Wars and the Indiana Jones films as a new American mythology, or actually, Lucas' contemporary American adaptations of classic myth-based stories of fathers and sons, revenge and forgiveness, sin and redemption, etc. Daley asked Lucas to expand on that idea, and he said the following, which I boldly and badly paraphrase:
We return to myths for our stories to remind us of what's important to our generation, and to let the next generation know what we expect of them.
Well said, George.
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The best part will be next year, when he reveals the opening remarks he always intended to precede that speech, plus a few important revisions to the speech you liked so much. (Daley shot first.)
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