GEORGE LUCAS LUCASFILM BIOGRAPHY George Lucas is the creator of the phenomenally As a successful "Star Wars" saga. The epic film adventures--"Star Wars," "The Empire Strikes Back" and "Return Of The Jedi." Lucas was born in Modesto, California, where he attended Modesto Junior College before enrolling in the University of Southern California (USC) film school. student at USC, Lucas made several short films including "THX-1138′′ which took first prize at the 1967-68 National Student Film Festival. In 1967, Warner Bros. awarded him a scholarship to observe the filming of "Finian's Rainbow," directed by Francis Coppola. The following year, Lucas worked as Coppola's assistant on "The Rain People" and made a short film entitled "Filmmaker" about the directing of the movie. Lucas and Coppola shared a common vision. They dreamed of starting an independent film production company where a community of writers, producers, and directors could share ideas. In 1969, the two filmmakers moved to Northern California where Coppola founded American Zoetrope. The company's first project was Lucas' full-length version of "THX-1138." Graffiti." In 1973, Lucas co-wrote and directed "American P. O. Box 2009, San Rafael, California 94912 Telephone (415) 662-1800 Telex: 330499 LFL SRFL 2 · Golden Globe, the New York Film Critics and National Society of Film Critics awards, and received five Academy Award nominations. Four years later, Lucas wrote and directed "Star Wars"--a film which broke all box office records and won seven Academy Awards. The film not only brought audiences back to the theater but also opened new frontiers for technicians. Lucas established Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) and Sprocket Systems to create the special effects and sound design for "Star Wars." The ILM team introduced computer technology to the film industry and revolutionized special effects. Ben Burtt of Sprocket Systems brought new dimensions to sound design as he created voices for aliens, creatures, and droids. Lucas went on to write the stories for "The Empire Strikes Back" and "Return Of The Jedi” which he also executive produced. In 1980, he was the executive producer and co-writer of "Raiders Of The Lost Ark," directed by Steven Spielberg, which won five Academy Awards. He was also the co-executive producer and creator of the story, Jones And The Temple Of Doom," released in 1984. "Indiana For the next few years, Lucas concentrated on completing the building of Skywalker Ranch and developing individual divisions within Lucasfilm Ltd. The Ranch houses Lucasfilm's pre- and post-production facilities. The company includes film production, animation, computer games, licensing, THX and TAP, special effects, and post-production divisions. Within the past year, Lucas served as executive producer for Disneyland's 3-D musical space adventure, "Captain EO," and creator of Disneyland's most popular attraction, STAR TOURS. "Captain EO," directed by Francis Coppola and starring Michael Jackson, is shown in a theater uniquely designed for the 17-minute spectacular. Lucas, Industrial Light and Magic, and Disney designed the theater as part of the show and produced a visual, aural, and environmental experience unique in the 3-D medium. Lucas, Industrial Light and Magic and Sprockets also collaborated with the Disney Imagineers to create Disneyland's newest attraction, STAR TOURS. Lucas combined technology with creativity to produce a new realm of entertainment. George Lucas is currently the executive producer for two Lucasfilm productions. George Lucas and directed by Ron Howard, is an adventurefantasy that takes place a long time ago in a mythical land. "Tucker: A Man And His Dream," directed by Francis Coppola and starring Jeff Bridges, is the story of Preston Tucker--an innovative car designer who dreamed of creating the car of the future. Senator DECONCINI. Thank you, Mr. Lucas. Mr. Goldman. STATEMENT OF BO GOLDMAN ON BEHALF OF THE WRITERS GUILD OF AMERICA Mr. GOLDMAN. Mr. Chairman, copyright is the life's blood of an artist. You hear from magazines and publishers, studios and producers, software owners and pharmaceutical proprietors, but how ironic that you hear from so few of us you wish to protect. Respected members of the Subcommittee on Patents, Copyrights and Trademarks, art is neither a patent, a copyright, or a trademark. Art is the soul of a nation. Art is the substance without which, other than bread, man cannot live. Art is a Grandma Moses or a Jackson Pollack, a Bob Dylan song or a Jerome Robbins ballet, a Tennessee Williams play or a movie from Francis Coppola. Art is that which we cannot eat or drink but which can, like our faith, sustain us in our darkest moments, enhance our daily lives, celebrate our tiny but intense victories. How can you legislate art? It is like quicksilver. It can't be shaped or hammered into some form to serve one generation and then be dismembered to serve another. It's like taking a baby and saying, "This arm is no longer any good. It's not the kind of arm that is in fashion now. Let's take an arm from that baby over there, and how about that leg? Is the head right? Fix the nose, change the figure, take a tuck here and a nip there. Now we have a saleable baby, but it bears little resemblance to the baby that was born. So what? We can sell more of them." Respected members of the subcommittee, I do not envy you your job: the hours of droning testimony, the tedium of marking up a bill and then marking it up all over again, the lobbyists, the press, the enemies and, God knows, the friends, the compromise of family life, the long flights back to the constituency on the weekend, and then the long flight back after to make sure you are here to cast your vote on some issue on which your convictions are not clear but your intuition and your heart fairly shouts at you what to do. Why do you do it? The New York Times may love you and the big newspaper back home may hate you. Dan Rather may snarl at you, but then again he may smile on you. And do you, like me, ever look in the mirror and say, "What in the hell am I doing this for?" Politics, like art, is not an easy dollar. And I may be on dangerous ground if I offer, you do this, just as I do what I do, because you cannot do anything else as well. It is a calling, a sometimes distant and distorted one, to be sure, but nonetheless it speaks to you. How would you like your words changed? How would you like your face tinted? How would you like the substance of what you say altered or compressed, truncated, or bowdlerized to suit what a publisher may deem the fashion of a later generation? Why should it be "four score and 20 years ago," why not just 100 years ago? It is much easier to remember, simpler to digest and besides, the man who wrote the phrase isn't around to complain about it. Our movies belong to us, like our house and our land. They are dear and indefinable, like our wives and our children. They are as unique as a fingerprint, and sometimes as dangerous and stunning as an earthquake. "The Grapes of Wrath" of Ford and Steinbeck tells us more about the Depression than a college of economics, and "The Godfather" of Coppola and Puzo provides more insight into the criminal mind than all of the files of the FBI. Phrases like "cultural heritage" confound me. I feel as if I were studying for a high school exam. I do know this. I want my children and their children to see my movies the way they were written. When the Indian finally speaks in "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest," I want him to say "Juicy Fruit" and not "diet bubble gum." On the long shot of the ward, I want to see the old hallucinator dancing in the back, and on the pan I don't want it to stop before it reaches the poor, lobotomized soul behind the cage. In "Melvin and Howard" you could take out the first and last reels of the movie, excise Jason Robards completely, forget about Howard Hughes. Call the movie Melvin and it will play fairly well as a country western. I want my children to see it the way it was written. I want their children to do the same. I want their friends and their parents, their communities and their cities, I want to world to see the movie in the color, in the shape, with the words and the texture it was conceived because, simply enough, that is the best way. Democracy is the last and best hope of mankind. It is great for mankind but terrible for art. A movie is not written by committee. It is not shot by consensus. It starts with one man or woman alone in a room and then the director, despite the hordes around him, is alone on the stage. There is collaboration at every step, but the decision a costumer makes to sew a sequin here or a bow there, a cameraman to jell this window or not, an editor to go to the long shot from the closeup or the closeup from the long shot, every artist ultimately makes the decision, and it is a lonely one, forged by years of experience, the pain of trial and error, but made with the deepest of emotions. These movies are who we are, who we have been, who we will be. These movies are the litany of our existence and the food of our souls. They are absentminded laughter and they are unconscious tears. You can't change them any more than you can change the wart on Lincoln's face. They are sometimes not pretty, they are sometimes dispensable, but a thousand years from now they will still be us. What are the mechanics for this, you might ask. Forty-five years ago my father sat before a Senate subcommittee with a plan to fight inflation. Compulsory savings, it was called, and my father took the long train ride home, clutching the hot acetate of his appearance. We gathered around to listen and heard Senator Taft, or was it Vandenberg, say, "What are the mechanics for this, Mr. Goldman?" And I thought, all 10 years of me, "They've got him. What is he going to say?" And I promptly fell asleep as he intoned his reply. My answer to how to implement moral rights is simply, "If you want to do it, you will do it." If politics is the art of the possible, then art is the science of the impossible. You will find a way, give teeth to the dry, dusty phrases of the Berne Convention, not a very |