Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1545125
47 S U M M E R Q 2 I S S U E B O O K R E V I E W the bounds of mainstream moviemaking. In the case of Lucas's career path, "American Graffiti" could trace its lineage to a hundred coming-of-age pictures, while Lucas's third film — ahem, "Star Wars" — was explicitly conceived as an elaboration of Flash Gordon serials. In other words, "the new kings of Hollywood" may have arrived with the intention of upending the system, but they ended up sustaining the system. Th e t h i rd key f i g u re i n t h e b o o k — Steven Spielberg — recognized sooner t h a n m o s t t h a t t h i s w a s h i s c a l l i n g . Possessing neither the cryptic pretensions of Lucas nor the circus ringmaster instincts of Coppola, Spielberg wanted to make good movies whose appeal was widespread. Not insignificantly, Universal executive S i d S h e i n b e rg wa s a m o n g Sp i e l b e rg 's earliest supporters on the strength of his first-class short film, "Amblin.'" "Sir, I liked your work," Sheinberg told Spielberg before proposing a seven-year deal to direct television. "How would you like to go to work professionally?" The book does deep dives into the makings of "The Sugarland Express" (1974), "Jaws" (1975), "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" (1977), and more, but Spielberg's cozy position within the studio infrastructure never really seems in doubt. "Steven wanted to be a studio director," said "Sugarland" star William Atherton. "He stormed the studios. He wasn't going out with a handheld." Fischer does not skimp on details when it comes to his making-of accounts of all these films and more, including Coppola's "Apocalypse Now" (1979) and subsequent installments of the burgeoning "Star Wars" franchise. He includes a good amount of material on editing and post-production. There's a nice anecdote of Lucas visiting the cutting room of "The Godfather." Upon l e a r n i n g C o p p o l a h a d n' t s h o t e n o u g h material to intercut a scene the way he wished, Lucas suggested using "the trim ends" — "the seconds of footage before the assistant director called action and after he called cut." "Studio editors usually discard- ed these as scraps, but George had learned to use every second of available film at USC," Fischer writes. Picture editor Walter Murch, ACE, longtime associate of both Coppola and Lucas, is a major supporting character, as is Lucas's first wife, picture editor Marcia Lucas. "Marcia shaped scenes around the characters' emotions," Fischer writes of her Oscar-winning work, with Paul Hirsch, ACE, and Richard Chew, ACE, on "Star Wars." "She cut her first passes quick and rough, like a writer following her gut, or a painter instinctively flicking her brush at the canvas." Murch, though, gets the best line when accounting for how these outsider filmmakers were incorporated into Hollywood but could not sustain their kingship forever. "The successful films of the '70s taught the studios: Oh, this is the new template," Murch said. "'Okay, we could make this work,' the studio would say, 'but we're going to do it our way.' Which immediately undercuts what made it successful. It's the trajectory of every revolution, you know. As Eric Hoffer said, every great idea starts as a movement, becomes a business, and winds up as a racket." ■ "The Last Kings of Hollywood: Coppola, Lucas, Spielberg and the Battle for the Soul of American Cinema" By Paul Fischer 462 pages Celadon Books $32 2026. P H OT O : P H OT O F E S T APOCALYPTIC: Coppola on the set of "Apocalypse Now." P H OT O : P H OT O F E S T ART OF 'WARS': George Lucas, center, working on "Star Wars" in 1977.