Light & Magic

Star Wars comes out in the summer of '77.

I'm 13, living on a cattle ranch in Shawnee, Colorado.

-For me, at ten years old. -I was about 18 or something.

I must have been... I don't know, about nine.

At the age of 15,

I hear this film is supposed to change the way people make movies.

I was watching Saturday Night Live, and this commercial comes up and... (GASPS)

Somewhere in space...

Coming in too fast!

...this may all be happening right now.

Star Wars.

I didn't go into it cold.

We knew that it was some big kind of space opera.

I saw Star Wars the weekend it opened at Grauman's Chinese Theater.

I went to see it in Leicester Square with a few friends.

I was in Hong Kong.

In a multiplex at the Briarwood Mall in Ann Arbor.

Bunch of my friends waited in line for, you know, like 12 hours.

And that film had a profound effect on me.

Aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?

-Huh? -It was absolutely fantastic.

It was just magical.

It was just stunning.

It was like discovering another floor of your house.

It was like, "What? I can go there?"

This is Red Five. I'm goin' in.

My reaction was, "Wow, they could make movies like that?"

I mean, it really opened my eyes.

It took everything to another level on such a massive scale.

We walked out and all I did was say to Cheryl, "Want to see it again?"

and she said, "Yes."

And we walked over into the next two hour line and watched it again.

What? Like, there was nothing I couldn't even... There are no words even still

to describe what that felt like.

I went home and I said, "I'm quitting my job.

"You have to pay the bills for a while. I wanna make a film."

-(ROARS) -(GROANS)

When Star Wars ended, I went back to doing commercials for a little bit.

And figuring, well, that's it, you know how movies are.

That's the end of that.

We did our job. We worked really hard, had a great time,

and then went on our separate ways.

They split up because they wouldn't...

They were down in LA for six to nine months,

and I wasn't doing anything. ILM didn't exist.

I worked on Close Encounters for a few months.

Doug Trumbull was just setting up, and they needed somebody...

We ended up shooting the mothership.

Jon Erland and I, we got a call from the producer on Flesh Gordon.

Flesh Gordon... -(GRUNTING)

Journey with Flesh Gordon...

Not Flash Gordon, Flesh Gordon.

And John Dykstra immediately called us into the office.

He said, "What in the world are you guys doing?"

And he said, "There's a project that's coming along.

"I promise you, if you can wait another three weeks or something,

"there is a big project that's coming."

I didn't want Star Wars to finish. I didn't drag my feet, but I didn't...

I-I... The experience

was so enjoyable and so enlightening.

Everything about it was it was brilliant and I didn't want it to end.

(PEOPLE LAUGHING AND CHATTERING INDISTINCTLY)

I wanted to keep that place, and I wanted to keep those people.

More than anything, I wanted to keep those people.

Those people were my friends.

Those are the people that I spent Thanksgiving dinner with.

It was so exciting every day. Coming to work was fun.

I went, "This is what I want to do."

But at the time, even though Star Wars was a great success,

there was no way of knowing for certain

whether ILM would continue or dissolve or whatever.

So I pursued doing Battlestar Galactica.

He created a company called Apogee.

And Apogee got the contract for doing Galactica.

I came back and I was probably there on Galactica for maybe like eight months.

So that crew that had finished the work on the first Star Wars was still together

doing additional work in that environment, with that equipment.

We got the tools, we got the people.

I think we were still in the unknown for Galactica

wondering, "Why is George doing this? Why is he letting us do this?"

I lent it to John Dykstra to do Battlestar Galactica

while I was off writing.

So we produced the stuff

for Battlestar Galactica, and I think that's when George decided

he wanted to take the equipment and move it to Marin.

I just said, "Look, I don't want to live down there."

We said, "Well, let's just move to San Francisco.

"We don't have to make movies in LA."

I was working in the model shop on Galactica and Richard Edlund

came downstairs and he said, "There's a phone call for you upstairs,"

not saying it very loud.

I said, "Well, who wants to talk to me?"

There's a phone right here, you know. He said, "No, no.

"Go upstairs and take a phone that's off the hook at Joe's desk.

"Go right now."

And it was George and Gary,

and then they said, "We want to do the sequel in Northern California,

"but don't exclaim, don't spread the word that

"we're talking to a very few people."

There was all this talk about a sequel and George is working on it.

And so, basically, I said, "Look, if I get a call from up north,

"you know I'm going to take that phone call, and I'd be stupid not to."

And we were all sort of saying the same thing.

We did hear that maybe George might be doing another Star Wars movie.

Dennis was the slam dunk to be hired, and I knew I would be hired and Ken.

I went to them and said, "Would you like to come up to San Francisco?

"We'll pay for getting you up there.

"We'll find you a house," that whole thing.

It was performance-based. It was who had done the best jobs.

Some people didn't want to go up there.

Some people who we had to try to convince to come up,

but we knew we wanted Richard and Dennis.

Filmmaking was really important to me,

and I certainly saw that in George and I saw it

in the people that also got invited up north.

It's like they went through and picked the people that they thought,

"Well, here's someone who is a kindred soul."

Who am I to argue?

I mean, here we had this incredibly well-received movie

that I knew that our reputations were on the line to best it with Empire.

And so basically when the phone call came in, I left.

For me, I mean, it was no question.

I could stay and work in this sort of rundown warehouse

in Van Nuys or I could move to Marin County

and start a whole new visual effects facility.

I think most of those guys were very much of that kind of person

that would rather be in a place like Marin than Van Nuys.

The day of awakening, that actually was the last straw,

I was sitting outside in Van Nuys, where we were doing Galactica.

The Van Nuys airport is a half block away.

It's 105 degrees, we're facing due west into the sun,

and the sky was orange and yellow.

And it dawned on me, this is hell.

And I have a chance to get out of hell and go to someplace else,

and I just... And that was it.

I don't know. I mean, it was...

It's weird, right?

Because the business of moving up north, I wasn't invited to go.

I think he fully understood that that was going to be the case.

I think he realized that there was a bridge on fire there.

He did a great job.

But he was in a very difficult position when he was making the movie.

He was under a lot of pressure.

He was, I think, over his head.

So when changes would happen, he would get very angry.

I was not...

Oh, shoot. I don't know, what was I not?

Um...

It wasn't... I can't even say that he wanted a company man.

I just...

I probably was just too young and volatile.

John Dykstra called me into the office and he was really angry.

He actually took his desk, and he lifted it up

about four inches and he slammed it down,

you know, and all the stuff on the table, it was like... (IMITATES RUMBLING)

Let's face it, you win an Oscar,

and then you get left at the station.

How does that make sense?

I don't know.

The only thing I do know is that that must have hurt really badly.

You know, it wasn't... Uh...

Am I disappointed that I wasn't invited? Of course.

But we got to break a lot of ground.

And you know, there was, there were some chip...

There was some chipped paint and there was some dents

and a few scratches here and there.

But it was so much fun.

It really was a lot of fun, and I think that it was so tragic

when we all split up.

It was like breaking up a family.

It was just going to be for a two-year job.

That's all they would guarantee.

So I said, okay, and then managed to convince my other friends

who wanted to come up and so we all kind of moved up as a group.

That's kind of where it started,

and that's when we were at the Kerner facility.

When we first moved into the building, it was a single story structure,

with no walls at all.

It had a front door and offices and bathrooms at the front,

and then it was just an open warehouse.

We didn't even have the whole building.

There was an auto mechanic right next to us and somebody else next to that.

There was an open vacant field outside

where we actually blew up stuff for a while.

No frills, believe me.

I remember one of the producers said,

"Well, you know, we'll never fill this up."

And within six weeks we had already started building the second floor.

I mean, it was a lot of just mundane stuff

we had to take care of as it started to take form.

I can still remember the pieces to the Dykstraflex showing up,

and we were all sitting around going, "How did this go together?" (CHUCKLING)

We had to get going really quickly, and somebody came up with the idea,

well, if the carpenters would give us 2x4s,

we would just lay out the rooms, and where the doorways would be,

without doing drawings.

And so they just started building walls and everything where we said.

You know, I'd arrive in the morning and the 2x4s would be moved over two feet

into my department, you know, to make someone's hallway a little bit wider.

The model shop was not quite big enough