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Toolkit Ep 163: The writer of The Empire Strikes Back and Raiders of the Lost Ark explores how his stories were turned into movie magic.
As a young writer, Lawrence Kasdan made a name for himself with screenplays for three of the most beloved cinematic spectacles of all time: The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Return of the Jedi. When he settled into the director’s chair, however, his best work tended toward low-key humanist dramas and comedies like “The Big Chill,” “The Accidental Tourist” and “Grand Canyon,” films more concerned with asking deep philosophical questions about how we live our lives (and why) rather than pyrotechnics or heightened displays of heroism.
With his latest work, the six-part Disney+ documentary series Light and Magic, Kasdan has reconciled the two sides of his cinematic sensibilities to tell a sweeping story of spectacular technology through a personal lens. The show traces the evolution of the most influential special effects house in cinema history, Industrial Light & Magic, through an expertly curated mix of archival footage and contemporary interviews that provide a crash course in the key technical effects developments of the 20th century, while also thus explores the touching, funny and profound stories of the men and women responsible.
“The initial pitch, before there was a research team or anything like that, was that I want to get the story of these people and we’ll get the technology as we go,” Kasdan said. “I found these people so extraordinarily gifted and unusual and eccentric and funny, and I knew they couldn’t be this good at anything for 40 years and not be interesting.” Kasdan conducted all the interviews from his house via Zoom, with everyone from James Cameron and Steven Spielberg to ILM legends Phil Tippett and John Dykstra, who pitched in from studios around the world. The process created an unexpected intimacy, and one of the most remarkable aspects of Light and Magic is how revealing and forthcoming the interviews are—even the most die-hard Star Wars fanatics will see and hear things they’ve seen here. never heard before.
Even for Kasdan, who has known George Lucas since the late 1970s, there was new information that pleased and inspired him. “George was very well covered, but never quite in this context,” Kasdan said. “I interviewed him for six hours, and it was a wonderful conversation.” In addition to talking about his dreams and frustrations as he built ILM to realize his vision for the Star Wars films, Lucas and ILM gave Kasdan access to amazing archival resources; Lucas documents the behind-the-scenes beginnings and growth of ILM in painstaking detail at the time, and Light and Magic is filled with fascinating material showing the work of effects wizards. The treasure trove of documentary footage allowed Kasdan to create his version of Michael Apted’s “7 Up” series, comparing the men and women of ILM now to their younger selves and showing how much — or how little — they’ve changed.
“The result is that you can see a person who was barely 30 at the start and now he’s my age,” Kasdan said. “I’m talking to him right now, but we have footage and footage of what he’s talking about, so you see him as a 30-year-old and you see him now, and it’s just fun.” For Kasdan, turning to documentaries in recent years has been refreshing after decades as a feature film director. “I really enjoyed the whole process, especially making the story in the editing room. You are not fulfilling the preconceived notions of what you wrote a year earlier. Ultimately, directing Light and Magic left Kasdan with a newfound appreciation for George Lucas and what he accomplished. “I was more impressed than ever by the influence it had on everything: the way we watch movies, the way we cut them, the way we sound. He was so ambitious – “How can we take this forward?” People barely understood what he was talking about, but nevertheless it all came true. It takes a visionary.”
The Filmmaker Toolkit podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, and Stitcher.
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