American Graffiti and lost opportunities

[touchingcloth]

"Lost" isn't quite the right word, but I've just been looking at Lucas's filmography and it's American Graffiti, then Star War, then that's it.

American Graffiti was a great little film, with Kevin Smith's sensibilities minus the verbosity and Ridley Scott's aesthetic, and it would have been interesting to see what he came out with in a galaxy near, near to home without a Star War in it.

Are there any other lost alternative realities you'd like to have seen? The stars who died young are obvious ones, but were there any promising directors or cinematographers who had promising careers cut short or diverted for some reason? Grace Kelly is maybe the closest thing to Lucas in that it wasn't death that stopped her from making the same kinds of films.

[PlanktonSideburns]

Mr bungle being able to afford Thomas Dolby to produce their first album

[bgmnts]

Mad innit? You create what is considered a masterpiece, do a Star War and then sit on your fat arse for 50 years like Ray Winstone in Sexy Beast, coining it.

Maybe he was just one of those that had one great film in them.

[touchingcloth]

Mad innit? You create what is considered a masterpiece, do a Star War and then sit on your fat arse for 50 years like Ray Winstone in Sexy Beast, coining it.

Maybe he was just one of those that had one great film in them.

Or the biggest genius in cinema. One and Star War and done.

[Rizla]

Lewis Collins eighventies Bond.

[Gulftastic]

Bowfinger should have been a return to form for both Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy but both went straight back to making shitty comedies.

[steveh]

Only discovered this year that there was a More American Graffiti follow-up in 1979, directed by Bill Norton and with most of the original cast. Don't think it ever screened in the UK.

[greenman]

Starwars I think you could argue is perhaps not THAT far from American Graffiti, a lot of the interaction between Luke/Han/Leia has a similar kind of humorous edge to it and visually its very interesting, arguably having an influence on Scott in Alien.

I'm guessing a big issue is Lucas just didnt enjoy directing actors that much or writting the final script and Starwars sucess allowed him to avoid doing those things. When he did finally return to them with the prequels the results were obviously far worse than what he was involved with between the original Starwars and them.

[Armin Meiwes]

To add to this specially on Lucas - I'm listening to the audiobook of Mike Medavoys (big shot at various studios) autobiography at the moment and he was just talking about how Lucas was originally meant to direct Apocalypse Now and his idea was that it would be a kind of docu-style film (more Battle Algiers I guess) and to shoot it all on 16mm, but obviously he got distracted by Star Wars which is why Coppola ended up taking it over.  Maybe that's really well known but I'd never heard about it before!

[Armin Meiwes]

And Christ Lucas either got incredibly lucky or was an absolute genius because part of the deal he negotiated on Star Wars was that he would own all merch rights a year from after the film was released, the studio didn't give a shit because obviously nobody had ever made anything from merch up to that point.

[idunnosomename]

Whats abouts THX 1138

[Bad Ambassador]

Only discovered this year that there was a More American Graffiti follow-up in 1979, directed by Bill Norton and with most of the original cast. Don't think it ever screened in the UK.

The BBFC has a record of it getting a certificate in November that year.