Episode II News and Rumors!

* All characters are highly likely(almost to a certainty) to appear in Episode 2.

The Official Site on Episode Two Casting

Director and Screenwriter: George Lucas
Producer: Rick McCallum
Score: John Williams
Special Effects: Industrial Light and Magic
Distributor: 20th Century Fox

Interview from Entertainment Tonight
December 16, 1999

Leonard Maltin: Where do you stand right now on 'Episode II?'

George Lucas: I'm still writing the script. I was supposed to be finished by Thanksgiving but I'm not, so I'm a little behind. As long as I get it finished by February or March, I'll be okay. We start shooting in June. It's always a struggle -- it's a lot of hard work. I'm not into doing hard work. Even if it's something I like and enjoy, I still put it off as long as I can. Mostly, I've been doing research -- which means reading books and watching movies. (both laugh)

Leonard: Where do you start shooting?

George: We're shooting in Australia this time.

Leonard: At the new Fox studio?

George: At the new Fox studio in Sydney. They made us an offer we couldn't refuse. It's a great studio and they have lots of very talented craftsman. We'll shoot there and probably shoot in North Africa again. Same old thing -- it's like doing a very big TV series. (both laugh)

Leonard: I have to confront some casting speculation -- the casting of Anakin?

George: I have not even started casting yet. As a matter of fact, the casting director starts work on the first of January. Hopefully, I'll have some form of a script for her to work with. She has ideas and has been collecting resumes. The chances are extremely good that whoever gets cast as Anakin is somebody that nobody has ever heard of before.

Leonard: Why?

George: Because that's the way the film has always been cast. (both laugh). Apart from SAMUEL JACKSON, I don't think the public at large is too aware of the people -- maybe LIAM (NEESON) or ALEC GUINESS. But, the usual cast is around but not that well known.

Leonard: Just to bury some rumors here -- speculation about LEONARDO DI CAPRIO and RICK SCHROEDER -- those are names I've heard.

George: Those are just speculation. They came off the Internet rumor mill. I don't have anything to do with it. Usually, I'll hit the Internet when I'm editing and don't have much to do between cuts -- I'll see what people are saying about it. At this point, I'm staying completely out of the loop.

Leonard: Part of what I want to do is review your career and put it in some perspective. Starting towards the beginning, tell me what influence HASKELL WEXLER had on getting you started?

George: When I started I was an anthropology student from Modesto (California), who had gone to junior college and got my AA degree. I was about to go to the big city to film school, which I didn't know anything about. I knew I liked photography a lot and I had met Haskell -- I was very much into racecars and racing ---- through racing. He was the only person i knew when I went down to film school that was in the business. He was very influential actually. He helped get me settled in at USC, because he knew a couple of the professors there. He got me on some sets, so I could see how films were made. He was a big influence because at that point I wanted to be a cinematographer. I really started there.

Leonard: And you hired him later?

George: Well, I didn't actually hire him on 'American Graffiti.' On that film he kind of bailed me out. I was trying to shoot the picture myself, I had two operators, and after about the second night of shooting, they said that the depth of field was so shallow, like two to three inches, that we couldn't keep anything in focus. I was lighting it with very low light levels which I like to do. I talked to Haskell about it while he was doing commercials in LA. He would fly up every single night, because we were shooting at night. He'd work all day shooting commercials and then fly to San Francisco, shoot all night, fly back home and work all day. It was amazing -- I wasn't really paying him or anything -- he was just doing it to help me out. I did manage to get him a piece of the picture so he came out all right financially. In a way I guess I hired him, but he really did it out of friendship more than anything else.

Leonard: For review, tell me about your first encounter with FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA?

George: Well, I went to film school and graduated. I worked as an editor and cameraman for a while. Then I decided I really wanted to be a director, so I went back to start graduate school at USC. After a semester, I won a bunch of scholarships. One was at Columbia, where I could watch movies being made, and the other was at Warner Bros. When I went to Warner Bros., Warner's had been sold and the whole place was completely empty, so there wasn't much for me to observe there. Except, they were making one movie called 'Finian's Rainbow' and Francis was directing it. I got on to the set to watch them make this movie. I just finished a scholarship at Columbia and I had seen them make Hollywood movies already and I wasn't interested in Hollywood movies. I was much more interested in doing cinema verite documentaries and abstract, impressionist movies. About a week after I got there, Francis and I would eye each other because we were the only two people on the set that were under thirty and the only two people that had beards. Obviously, once we started talking to each other, we discovered we both went to film school. I told him, " I'm going over to the animation department -- I'm tired of watching this movie, it's boring. I'm going to make a movie over there with some stock footage." Francis said, "No, you stay here with me and I'll give you jobs to do." That really started out our relationship.

Leonard: What are some of the older films that have impressed you?

George: 'Citizen Kane' always impresses me. Also, 'Seven Samurai' always impresses me. No matter how much older I get, it holds up beautifully. One of the films that surprised me was 'Gone With The Wind'. I had not seen it in a long time, but the skill and the craft with which that film was made in terms of progressing a very complicated story in the most efficient amount of time was quite extraordinary.

Leonard: You are always an advocate of new technology. You are also a firm believer in storytelling. Do you think the three--act movie is dead?

George: I feel that is a possibility. I'm always very pro "pushing the genre," pushing the medium forward -- not only on the technology side of it but also the storytelling side. I come out of a nonstory, noncharacter type of pure cinema. For me, the idea of heavily plotted or heavily character driven drama is not where I started. I found myself in the middle of it. Even now, I have a tendency to go towards the more cinematic side of things. I think for certain kinds of stories you are going to end up with three acts. I've done films that had two acts. When you're working in the television medium, like the "Young Indys," you actually have eight acts with two major climaxes. It's dramatically very odd next to what the traditional feature storytelling is. I think we should be open to all kinds of storytelling. There is something very structurally sound about the three act.

Leonard: We were talking about movie length -- 'Gone With The Wind' was four hours long but it doesn't seem four hours long. Why do you think that is?

George: Cinema is an illusion -- if it works, then the film is not too long. Everyone said that 'Titanic' was too long and it would never work, but it actually does work and there is no getting around that part of it. The critics may not like it, but most of the audience will sit through it and enjoy it and maybe even see it again. You have to admit that James Cameron sustained the magic for a longer period of time. It's just like juggling -- the more balls you have to juggle, the harder it is. If you have to do it for four hours instead of two hours, it's even harder because the chances of you failing are that much greater. But, if it works, it works. I don't think there are on limits on how long a movie should be. Once you get beyond two hours, especially after three hours, people's bottoms begin to tell the story instead of the screen.

Episode II News and Rumors