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A Life In Film Making - The Star Wars Episode! · Mythmakers

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome to MythMakers, the podcast for fancy fans and creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy.
• 0:17
  My name is Julia Golding, a writer and director of the Centre, and today I'm joined by a very special guest, Joe Gallagher,
• 0:26
  a veteran of the TV and film industry, and a great friend to me and the Centre. So, Joe.
• 0:33
  Well, hi Julia, I'm delighted to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
• 0:37
  It's a complete pleasure. So, before we go on to chat about fantasy, I thought we would start by outlining for listeners a few things about your career.
• 0:48
  So, if you don't mind, this is your life moment. So, Joe went to Harvard Law, the very prestigious Harvard Law,
• 0:57
  but he left the law behind to eventually work on the production side of the movie industry. He started out in universal pictures,
• 1:06
  and rose up to be President of the Industrial Light and Magic ILM, which people will know as the place that developed and produced all the effects for the Star Wars films and many other films.
• 1:21
  Joe also served as Corporate Vice President of 20th Century Fox Film Corporation, and as Senior Vice President of Production and Administration for 20th Century Fox Pictures.
• 1:34
  Now, they're all very familiar names to everybody, but what that really means is Joe was responsible for creative affairs, strategic planning, and the oversight of the Fox Studio Operations, developing and supervising many Fox films.
• 1:49
  So, getting to know Joe for me has been one of the unexpected delights rising out of our attempt to honour Tolkien and establish a literary centre in his honour here in Oxford.
• 2:02
  There are many other things to say about Joe, but about time I asked him a question, so he could tell us about himself.
• 2:10
  So, Joe, many of us are listening to this both as those who are aspiring to write fantasy and those who just love it are absolutely intrigued by what goes on behind the scenes of making films.
• 2:24
  Looking back over your career of content making, movie making, what are the big fantasy films that you've personally had the most involvement with?
• 2:34
  Well, I think the Star Wars movies are certainly the ones that mean the most to me, partly because I do think they were brilliant, that I do think George Lucas and the team he put together were extraordinarily gifted, and also the impact they've had.
• 2:53
  I mean, it is a delight to me and all of us who were involved in the early days of the Star Wars, to see the extent to which that brand has been so well received around the world, and has truly had a positive impact on the zeitgeist.
• 3:07
  I think most people would say that the sensibility of Star Wars, of imagination, of undo dogs fighting for good is something that has made the world a better place.
• 3:17
  So, I'm grateful for that. Plus, a lot of creative satisfaction being with extraordinarily gifted people.
• 3:25
  So, Joe, were you involved in the very first films? I know that the numbering in the Star Wars system is a little bit confusing with episodes four, five and six being the first ones.
• 3:37
  Were those the ones you were involved in, or was it the one, two, three?
• 3:41
  Well, yes, it was the earlier ones, and then some of the later ones as well, but certainly the early ones, the ones that I guess we'd say starting with five, mean the most to me because it was brand new.
• 3:56
  I was very young. Of course, I was very young, or else I'd be dead by now.
• 4:01
  I was very fortunate to have a good position at Fox in my mid to late 20s and to be involved with some of the selection of our movies.
• 4:11
  My boss, Alan Ladd Jr., who was the president of Fox, certainly is the person corporately who deserves the most credit for his relationship with George, and for making sure Star Wars was stewarded well.
• 4:24
  But it was exciting. It was exciting in part because it was brave, and it was exciting in part because it was surprising at every step along the way.
• 4:36
  Science fiction as a genre was not particularly a point of enthusiasm for the movie studios in the late 1970s science fiction films had not done well.
• 4:48
  So there was definitely an industry skepticism about a science fiction film, especially one like this that really didn't have any major box office stars and that had to the extent that the script was leaked or people knew what it was about.
• 5:03
  It seemed a bit strange and there were lots of negative rumors floating around that, but certainly George and the producer Gary Hertz and others guarded their secrets well.
• 5:16
  And contrary to some reports, I think that the film enjoyed a lot of support from Fox and I think most of us were highly enthusiastic, although a bit on the edge of our seats because the scenes were filmed without effects, of course.
• 5:32
  So there was a huge leap of faith, leap of trust in what George was doing, but we had the good fortune. I particularly have seen what was being done and industrial light magic and seeing the type of effects that were being created and what that might mean and that it would be a generational leap for movies.
• 5:52
  So we were we were excited. We're a little bit scared. Fox was not in a good financial position at that time. So the company had quite a bit riding on on this movie put out 20 to 25 movies a year, but this was one that a lot of importance was attached to.
• 6:10
  So yeah, it was an exciting time. And as we saw different pieces of it, we became became thrilled, certainly thrilled with the special effects, certainly thrilled. We heard John William score for the first time, which sent a chill down my spine still does actually.
• 6:28
  When I hear either the Star Wars score or the Fox logo, maybe I'm just an all sent a medalist, but those both still are meaningful to me.
• 6:39
  And you've got the advantage of having had a very long time perspective on the development of fantasy films.
• 6:48
  Do you ever stop and sort of ask yourself, is there anything unfilmable now because George Lucas said, right, we're going to go into space and do a serious film setting space.
• 7:00
  And I imagine there were a few skeptics that were possible, whereas today everyone says, yes, of course, we can put that on blue screen, green screen in the computer environment. Do you think we've now reached the point where anything works on film.
• 7:12
  I think everything physical works. That doesn't mean everything emotional works. I don't think we have computer graphics that can capture the human spirit. So I think capturing what's internal still remains something that only very gifted writers and performers and directors can can capture that's never going to come through the technology side. I don't believe.
• 7:35
  But in terms of physical representations.
• 7:38
  I think probably everything's possible right now.
• 7:41
  I'm very reassured that there's going to be a place for writers in the future.
• 7:45
  A place for writers. Oh, my goodness. I think, you know, certainly a number of people have said creativity is the highest form of intelligence within that.
• 7:54
  I have a special soft spot for literary creativity.
• 7:59
  My greatest joy at Fox for a long time was working with writers and everyone knows it starts with the blank page and it starts with the word whether it's the Bible or Star Wars or any any work starts with the word and with the page.
• 8:16
  I think there always be a place for writers. I think maybe the definition of writers has been beautifully expanded by technical technological progress so that writers can be perhaps defined not just in traditional ways of those who create the words but those who write the right the images.
• 8:37
  I would certainly consider some of our tech guys to be writers, even though they're not not putting words on a page the way people like you do, Julian.
• 8:47
  Thanks. So Joe, I want to take you back in time to the sort of late 70s early 80s and when you then moved over to working for ILM.
• 9:00
  What was that like? How did your what I'm imagining a fairly geeky folk on the computer side? How did they work with the creatives and if you were involved in making that relationship work? Did you find you had the job of like an interpreter or was everyone pointed in the same direction? How did that all work?
• 9:20
  I don't think anyone everyone was pointed in the same in the same direction, but maybe they saw the same distant point on the horizon where they hoped to go.
• 9:30
  When you talk about the creatives and of course you're referring to the writers, the directors, filmmakers, but I think the tech guys, the computer guys and girls, I shouldn't say guys, the computer people would very much think of themselves as being the creatives as well.
• 9:46
  Traditionally, we thought of the creatives as being the writers, the directors, the actors. If you look at the Pixar movies, certainly the writers are the creatives, but those who create those images are as well.
• 9:58
  So in terms of Star Wars and how people got along, there was a good degree of separation between the technology people and the people who were involved with the physical production of the movie, whether those are those who wrote it or directors, actors, whatever.
• 10:14
  So there was not a lot of personal interaction, but I don't think there was any sense of competition. I think there was a sense of mutuality and a sense that each of their contributions was going to make it better.
• 10:27
  I think their sense of competition or jealousy or suspicion was more always directed toward the corporate side, toward what people call the suits, the money people or the legal people.
• 10:39
  So I think the creatives verbally and the creatives technically both had some suspicion of the suits and of course the suits had great suspicion of those other people, those creatives who were doing strange things, especially in the early days of ILM, where corporate side was skeptical.
• 10:56
  The money was being poured down a hole that no one knew what was going to ever, ever emerge from it. It was drilling into fields that had not been very well researched.
• 11:10
  But going back to your question, now I think the technology people and the literary people are pretty much allies in most cases. I think where they might diverge is in a sense of what makes the movie special and each would probably like to claim claim that her side of it had more to do with the totality than the other.
• 11:32
  I think part of the charm or the magic of the Star Wars movies is certainly they were visually astonishing, especially for their time when the first Star Wars movie came out in 77 when people saw that there was always a gasp in the theater that people had never seen something like that before.
• 11:52
  I do think in many ways Star Wars was the most visually revolutionary movie of all time. So that was thrilling, but none of that would have mattered if the story wasn't solid.
• 12:03
  And I think part of the gift of George and other people close to him was that they made the story work.
• 12:11
  I completely agree about the importance of the visual effect of it because I remember going as a little kid to watch Star Wars and there were two things which I can remember. So I would have been 9 or 10.
• 12:26
  I can remember the desert landscapes because I had been used to watching the BBC Doctor Who, which was always in a quarry in Wales.
• 12:37
  It was sort of never huge landscapes like that, the kind of things that you might have seen in a David Lean film or something that was so spectacular.
• 12:46
  The other part was the way I think there's a shot with the ship arriving sort of behind you and it sort of goes spaceship and it sort of approaches you see a little bit and it gets bigger and bigger and it's like a fly over.
• 13:00
  The effect of seeing that I didn't want to know that this was a miniature in a I wanted to believe I was out in space and of course at that moment in the theatre you are and that's where the writing and the special effects of completely work together and gone hand in hand.
• 13:18
  Yes, no, that was a magic moment that was at the very beginning of the film and I think from that point on George had had the audience. There was a wild factor within the first 90 seconds and people wanted to continue on the ride.
• 13:35
  Completely so in addition to Star Wars looking sort of later in your career where there are other films that were strongly reliant on fantasy that you were involved with or was it that the main fantasy franchise for you.
• 13:51
  Well, I was on and off at Fox for for a long time I was there when when Fox produced Avatar so Avatar was certainly a movie that had enormous success and proud of that I I was much closer to the Star Wars movies than I was to Avatar so I can't claim any direct credit for anything that achieved.
• 14:15
  But again like Star Wars we had in James Cameron uniquely compelling creator who had a very strong vision and fought fought for it and made it work a difference between Cameron and George Lucas is that Cameron probably had more strength behind him at that point because of a longer track record of success.
• 14:42
  George had done American graffiti which certainly did quite well but there was some skepticism of whether that fairly small personal period movie prepared somebody to direct huge and by those standards reasonably expensive science science fiction movie.
• 15:01
  But so George had his run-ins with the studios and various things James Cameron did as well but they were they were quite different.
• 15:11
  I won't say James Cameron is a bully because that's unfair he's a very smart man he's a gentleman who is extremely strong willed and he would fight aggressively for every tooth and nail.
• 15:23
  George much more diplomatic much more laid back relied more on on surrogates on wonderful people like his lawyer Tom Pollock his lawyer Tom Pollock who later became my lawyer later became long time chairman of Universal Studios unfortunately Tom died last year but George had a good group of of nights who would go out on his on his behalf.
• 15:50
  The other thing is that Star Wars established the genre so George was fighting a preconception that his genre was commercially perilous while Cameron's movies were in an atmosphere where everybody was looking for the next highly inventive science fiction movie so that was a big point of differentiation.
• 16:11
  That comparison of George Lucas reminds me a bit of Peter Jackson who took on the Lord of the Rings movies with only a relatively small number of other films just before that.
• 16:23
  Again another moment where perhaps his power within the industry at that stage was not as great as it gets you know subsequently became it was a big risk you know people were rolling in the dice to see if this would work.
• 16:37
  Yes and in the catered Peter Jackson for a huge amount of money much greater amount than than we did with Star Wars but turned out pretty well right.
• 16:48
  Yeah yeah I did okay didn't it so Joe we've always when we've had our conversations and we've become genuine friends over the last few months it's been such fun but you've always told me how much you love working with writers and creatives so speaking to people out there who may be wanting to be a screen writer or move into that kind of medium what does somebody sitting in your seat on the production side look for.
• 17:17
  In a script. Is it obvious what's going to work or how do you judge which projects to follow and which to let go.
• 17:29
  Julia partly it's the quality of execution and partly it's the originality of the of the idea and with the two come together then you.
• 17:40
  Push your green button say we want to we want to do this everybody in the film business probably everybody in the oil business and the automobile business insurance business is looking for something new something to differentiate from the competition so certainly in the movie business it's always a high priority to find something that is.
• 18:01
  Going to surprise people something is not going to be easily compared to others so originality is terribly important by the same token the studios and the networks as I think you know Julia every three months they send out to their trusted colleagues to their top agents producers whatever what they call the mandates and the mandates are what we're currently looking for and the mandates coming from Fox might be slightly different than those coming from universal or those.
• 18:30
  Coming from Paramount or whatever it might be and similarly on television there are the network mandates and the three major networks probably so I'm giving you such a US context you know and I don't even know what the UK context is for this but I would expect it's similar but I should say that the major institutions that have the funding to select and produce product.
• 18:54
  Put out quarterly reports of what they're looking for and so that is a guideline to agents managers producers whatever what to look for in terms of script but you know I take that with the grain of salt because the mandates change with every management change you know at any studio maybe like most companies in other industries when a new team comes in the inherited projects have a disability because if they succeed the new
• 19:23
  team won't get full credit for them so the new production senior management team at any studio and I suspect it's the same in in UK or anywhere wants to put their stamp on it so the 2021 mandates may be irrelevant in 2022 but I think it in broad stroke there's a sense that people are looking for something something really new there are certain things that endure I think there's a long term wrecking
• 19:52
  long term recognition that beautiful creative original love stories are hard to find and hard to tell and if I were to say one genre that every entity is always looking for it would be love stories there is a shortage of good love stories.
• 20:10
  So if any of your listeners have a good love story to tell the door for that will always be open science fiction certainly is in the post star wars era kind of enduring with popularity whether that will always be the case I don't know
• 20:27
  but I think beyond science fiction that we live in a time where fantasy is unlikely to lose its popularity in the foreseeable in the foreseeable future I dare not say otherwise to you Julia you know escapist entertainment is what people are looking for in in so many ways but in terms of advice to a writer the cliche is to say right what you know
• 20:50
  everyone always is right what you know but if you're writing fantasy you're not really writing what you know you're writing what you can dream of what you can imagine what might be what you might be seeing in your mind's eye that no one else has seen there so I wouldn't say right what you know I say right what you enjoy right what you love right what you look for going back to the computer to pick up again and I don't think that writing always needs to be solitary is really helpful to get a few
• 21:19
  good allies confidence advisors around you and say what do you think about this is this working is this this funny is this interesting is this scary whatever and I guess only other thought would be if you are writing commercially for the movies or television just certainly different then writing creatively and other areas but if you're writing for movies or television think of who your audience is who are we going to write this for
• 21:48
  I read a script recently by a very good writer it was an excellent script and it was a script meant to be to be something something for a youth audience focused for under 12 and it was meant to be something that would take kids on a happy fantasy adventure and it was brilliant in many ways except it was terrifying the kids got tortured and horrible things happened to them and I told the writer nobody
• 22:18
  is going to touch that movie until you take the terror out of it if this is a movie for kids make it you know make it fun so that's just saying no who know who you're or no if you're writing for film or TV remember the
• 22:32
  these are big businesses with huge dollars involved so if you want to write for those media keep the commercial side in mind as well.
• 22:42
  So we're living through a time when there is an explosion of content and none of us can find the time to watch absolutely everything but I've noticed there is a large number of very big budget fantasy series arriving
• 22:59
  onto the streaming platforms we've had Game of Thrones we've got the wheel of time coming there's the Witcher and still we've got fantasy films being made and a lot a lot of these are also appearing primarily on the streaming platforms.
• 23:15
  What do you think about the writing you're seeing between these much bigger canvas pieces and the more concentrated possibilities of a film do you think that the bigger budget big you know seasons of stories lose something or are they gaining something I think good writing is a rare commodity in the movie TV business.
• 23:41
  There are certainly many many good actors my wife is a very good actor she doesn't work nearly as often as she'd like to.
• 23:50
  There are far more good actors than there are jobs there are quite a few gifted filmmakers there are not that many genius filmmakers but they're like good competent filmmakers but writers are in short supply and I would say the most precious commodity and certainly the entertainment business is good writing.
• 24:09
  So I do think to some extent that the proliferate pro I can't say the word proliferation of outlets and the expanded demand for content some writers who may not be quite as good as those who.
• 24:24
  Be getting the jobs if there was half as much content are doing the writing so I do think actually that the quality of writing has been diluted diminished to some degree I think the best projects the projects that can afford to pay for the best writers are still excellent and and will be but there are yeah overall I would say the quality of writing in.
• 24:50
  It's especially extended length fantasy production is isn't is an endangered species and that we need to be a little bit aware of that maybe there's an upside to that maybe it means that not only the 5% of best writers get to write for some of those shows but that the top 10% gets to write so maybe the.
• 25:13
  The second echelon still gets in there but as one who loves a genre as I know you deeply love it hope that the best people will be attracted to it and that the stories will be told well and but I.
• 25:27
  Long answer and I apologize but do I worry about a diminution of the quality of writing I do yeah.
• 25:35
  Well I think that there is an and widening of access so you're getting new voices coming in which is positive but which is very.
• 25:45
  I think there is a problem in the tension between putting everybody in a writers room and then you've got the production demands and so there's a while it is a golden age for writers I think there are lots of new pressures that may.
• 26:01
  Make it harder for the original person to.
• 26:05
  Merge will see I think it's a really interesting time.
• 26:09
  I agree with you that's very positive and I think the challenge for people who are in the established mainstream media business is to be more creative more open minded and more aggressive looking for those new voices voices of diversity and every way from all around the world to obviously.
• 26:30
  Gender and race and and every everything else also one positive thing is that the movie television businesses have become much more.
• 26:41
  Geographically dispersed and there was time early in my career where we thought we knew every major movie in the world that was being made and that we could track it and we knew who is how much it caused and who is directing it and how it would compete with what we're doing.
• 26:57
  No one can do that anymore and that's really good older white male sitting here in Los Angeles.
• 27:04
  It is a very very good thing that people like me are a decreasing percentage of those who make the movies or those who get to pick the movies that's that's really good.
• 27:17
  Well I for one are extremely pleased that you're there so Joe thank you for that.
• 27:22
  I mean there's so much we could talk about but that's been fascinating and as part of this podcast we always have a segment where we.
• 27:30
  My self and the guest debate where is the best place in a fancy world to go so we've done things like where's the best forest where's the best bar or tavern and in your honor and in honor of Star Wars.
• 27:44
  I thought I'd ask you where you think is the best place to go into space in which fantasy world it doesn't have to be a book it can be a TV series or a film.
• 27:56
  If you personally were shot up into space where would you like to be you know Julie I love that I love that question.
• 28:02
  I might go to Kesheak Kesheak which is a planet of the wookies a planet of Chubaka and his drives in the Star Wars movies.
• 28:12
  Partly because I really love apes so to go to a planet of these highly intelligent technologically sophisticated kind giant monkeys I would be very happy with that.
• 28:25
  But also it's a place that George described in some detail as being quite beautiful jungles forest credibly tall trees trees like our giant redwoods here in California in a tropical environment.
• 28:38
  So I think Kesheak would be a good place to go. I like wookies so much that my secret retirement plan is that you know we get all the merchandise from all the movies from whatever studio we're involved with.
• 28:50
  I have collected wookies over the years I've got a garage full of wookies and if wookies become the new Bitcoin then I will be favored.
• 29:00
  Excellent so asking myself the same question I think I was it's a toss up for me between Star Trek because I quite like the idea of being part of the Star Trek crew that sounds quite fun.
• 29:16
  But on the other hand I'm also very fond of the Douglas Adams hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy because it has a certain level of comedy and it makes space seem very relatable.
• 29:32
  So if you've got a sense of humor I think the yes I think I'll choose Douglas Adams space as the one to go into just because it makes me laugh.
• 29:42
  It's got some very notable lines as well so that's my choice.
• 29:47
  Oh Julie I like that very much and I was at Fox when we did all the alien movies and one of the enduring tag lines with the alien movies was in space no one can hear you scream.
• 29:58
  So I agree with you I'd like to go to a place in space where everyone can hear you laugh and where we can all laugh together.
• 30:06
  Well I don't think I can better that ending so thank you Jo thank you very much for being with us on the MythMakers podcast and I look forward to everybody tuning in next time so thank you very much Jo.
• 30:18
  Thank you very much Julia delight to be with you.
• 30:23
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• 30:34
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