A Letter to George

Dear George Lucas,

You know I love you. Well, perhaps you don't. In fact, I'm almost certain you know nothing about me, Evan Orion Koehne, self-proclaimed Star Wars fan. But let me paint you a picture: a young boy, seven years old. No television, hippie parents who won't let him have a coca-cola, home-schooled and playing in his backyard. And no friends, unless you count his sister. Life is simple and good for him. He loves life, loves his family, and likes to watch movies.

Then one day he watches Star Wars: A New Hope. And it changes his life.

Suddenly space isn't just something he doesn't have much of in his room, it's a place where spaceship chases and smuggling rings and intergalactic intrigue take place. Suddenly words like "Millennium" and "Falcon," uninteresting words at best, have been transformed into something that conjures up adventure, excitement, and daring-do. Suddenly, Luke and Leia and Han and Chewie and Threepio and R2 aren't just names. They are friends. And suddenly, movies aren't just something he likes anymore. They are something he loves, something he cherishes, something he spends waking moments thinking about and planning and developing and shooting. Suddenly, this boy realizes that life can have a purpose, and this boy realizes what he wants to do for the rest of his: Make movies.

That boy was me, if you haven't figured it out. It's hard to get much past you, George.

Flash-forward 15 years. That boy (me) is now the recent recipient of a Film & Media Studies bachelor degree from the University of California. He writes scripts, he edits, he makes movies. Many things have changed about life goals and ideals (I still have not found a reasonable way to make Legos talk to me, and I'm betting I will never walk on the moon and shoot fireworks off of it), but at the core, I am still as excited, as elated, as passionate about that one thing I knew I wanted to do when I was seven years old: Making and admiring movies. I find it hard to admit how easy it is to pinpoint where my love of movies comes from, but you, Mr. Lucas, are almost single-handedly responsible for taking me down this path that I love so much.

So George, now you know, I really do love you. Anything I say to you can't be filled with malice, or hatred, or ill-intent. So it is with all honesty and earnestness, and a strain in my voice bordering on a begging plea: STOP MAKING MOVIES WHERE PEOPLE HAVE TO TALK TO EACH OTHER.

My thinking is this: you are excellent at crafting visuals. You are one of "Kurosawa's children," after all. You know when to hit beats in a story to keep it interesting. You can direct action and action sequences with seeming ease, and you, like many men who haven't quite learned to stop being boys, know when a good explosion is needed. I could go on about the way you are a genius at composing shots that use incredibly sparse visuals to convey all the story we need as well as crafting moving canvasses that skillfully paint epic crowds of far-away lands. So why not start making silent movies, where the visuals do all the talking?

Because, let's face it George, you are terrible with anything that has to do with dialogue. From writing unreadable lines (Harrison Ford once said, "You can read it but you sure as hell can't say it,") to not giving two shits about your actors (Your most common comment from behind the camera: "Good, but do it faster."), and even creating characters that seem to have speech impediments (coincidentally the most hated thing you have ever created), you are horrendous in all facets of creating dialogue-driven material of any kind on the screen. Is it a wonder that The Empire Strikes Back, universally hailed by many as the best film in the Star Wars canon, was co-written by Lawrence Kasdan, the man responsible for movies like The Big Chill, Grand Canyon, and Dreamcatcher? (Okay, we can ignore that last one.) All in all, I believe that there is absolutely no reason you should continue making movies that rely at all on words, written or spoken, in any form; and that the practices you maintain to this day are only detrimental to your image, your abilities as a story-teller and perhaps most importantly, your movies.

Shall I site precedent? I think so.

In the Episode II documentary "State of the Art: The Pre-visualization of Episode II," you yourself have said, "The kinds of movies I make… are very action-oriented, very visually complicated." So it's good that you recognize this about yourself. You are incredibly intricate, precise, and scholarly when you describe your ideas of motion, and how to create motion on the screen. It's actually quite inspiring. Everyone of your pre-viz and animatics staff says you have very specific motion directions, and because of that pre-visualization is obviously a large part of your process.

Now, you talk about the way that your new digital process is creating "a new way to create a movies… it's more like cooking," where you can take elements of a shot, almost years apart, and create the shot you see in your head. According to Producer Rick McCallum, all you wrote out for the elaborate 10-minute "Clone War" sequence in the film was "And all hell breaks loose." This is a testament to your skills as a visual and computer-savvy director, it also points to your lack of skills as a writer. Did you really have no ideas as to how to put this down on the page? With all the emphasis you put on pre-visualization, it's a surprise to me that you don't have a pre-writing department to keep you on track. It would more than likely be the equivalent to a college-level Intro to Creative Writing class.

In the Episode III Documentary "Within A Minute," how far into pre-production are you when you unfalteringly remark "Gee, I should start working on the script?" 5 months. Yes, that's right. This goes beyond mere thoughtlessness, this is almost intentional disregard for screenwriting and movie-making criteria. George, this hurts me.

I honestly can't always get behind flimsy arguments about the prequels, by so-called "fans" who are really only bitching about the movie they wanted to see, not the one you made. It's your story, you have a right to make it the way you want. However, what we all learn from making movies and what you seem to be adamant about ignoring, is that if you have a story you should try to tell it well. Ignoring the process of creating a script and then filming it robs you of the opportunity to have structure. Before you know it the set pieces and chase sequences are no longer beats in your story, they are your story. And honestly, those are some of the best parts of your films anyway, so why even bother putting in long, tedious sections of horrendous dialogue?

My point, George, is you need to play to your strengths. Writing is not amongst them. Even your plots are derived from other places (Many of us know about the "Hidden Fortress" plot structure rip-off), so why not start making movies where dialogue just… isn't that important? Wall-E has proven it can be done. You seem to be the perfect candidate for the job. I was actually quite excited when I heard about Red Tails, your WWII fighter pilot dogfight movie. I'm sad now to see that the imdb page lists you only as a writer and a producer.

I appreciate the way you like to tinker with your movies to tweak them in just the right way. It is that perfectionist attitude that in fact endeared me to you in the first place. But the fact is you have to have a story to be tinkering with. A story is something to hone, not something to blindly throw bits around inside until something in the end is assembled. And between love scenes that merely ring comical in their back-and-forth, almost Abbot & Costello-esque repartee, exposition scenes where human actors are stiffer than the CGI characters, and heated moments when you can't even get Samuel L. Jackson to play "angry," I'm tired of watching this all go down the whole. All I'm saying is, yes, play. But write a script first, and the next time, please make sure no one has to talk. George, stop making the Star Wars franchise your lifes work as a director and start making silent movies (or, "non-conventional dialogue" movies, if you prefer). I'm begging you.

Sincerely yours,
Evan K.

P.S. If I sent you my original 1982 Boba Fett 12" Action Doll, would you autograph it? I bet it'll be worth a fortune one day.