George Lucas: Close Up: The Making of His Movies

by Chris Salewicz

Director, writer, producer -- George Lucas has done it all. By securing the merchandising and sequel rights to his movie Star Wars and starting Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) to produce special effects, Lucas created an empire. This book covers the latest details about Lucas, his projects, and ILM.

Genres: Biography

141 pages, Paperback

First published May 20, 1999

About the author

Chris Salewicz's writing on music and popular culture has appeared in publications around the globe. He is the author of more than a dozen books, including Redemption Song: The Ballad of Joe Strummer."

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 1 out of 5]

Subtitled ‘The Making Of His Movies’, I knew going in this wasn’t going to be a biography but I don’t think even it know what it’s supposed to be. Written with absolutely no interviews conducted by the author, this cut-and-paste job lifts heavily from several key texts (especially Dale Pollock’s excellent “Skywalking”) and doesn’t have anything new to say. Even worse, on a big film series such as “Star Wars”, Salewicz makes some basic mistakes - Biggs isn’t Luke’s brother, the original release wasn’t subtitled “A New Hope” and nobody went into “The Empire Strikes Back” worried about Luke’s attempts at patricide because none of us knew until the end there was a link. Beyond “Raiders Of The Lost Ark” (where Salewicz obsesses over the idea of Jones being a playboy, to the extent you wonder if he’s watched the film), “The Temple Of Doom” is covered in a couple of lines, “The last Crusade” not faring much better (and I wonder if this is because “Skywalking” ends after “Return Of The Jedi”?). Poorly constructed, weakly written, I had been planning to pick up other books in the series but won’t bother. For completists only, though you’ll have probably read all of this before in other, better produced works.

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this to be fascinating.

[Glen Gerard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Even though the book is filled with nuggets of insight into the world of filmmaking , it never does the deep dive into the person he is.

The cover page describes GL as a complex personality but the content inside rarely dwells on that matter.

But overall it was a good lean read and GL's accomplishments are nothing short of being remarkable.

Would suggest reading it once more just to go through the drama which unfolds during his Star Wars time.

[tai lyn sandhu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bro just casually dropped the greatest saga of all time