When you hear the name George Lucas, it is hard not to let your mind drift to a galaxy far away. However, I was blessed to interview George Lucas for his film Strange Magic, in theaters January 23,2015. The new animated film, from Lucasfilm Ltd., is a madcap fairy tale musical inspired by “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Popular songs from the past six decades help to tell the tale of a colorful cast of goblins, elves, fairies and imps, and their hilarious misadventures sparked by the battle over a powerful potion.
George Lucas, a proud father of three girls ages 33, 26, 18 months and a son age 21, shared his thoughts on parenting, love and raising girls. Below are highlights from our interview please feel free to share with your friends.
Can you tell us a little bit about why you wanted to make Strange Magic?
GEORGE LUCAS: I thought it would be fun to make a film that was more for tween girls. Unlike Star Wars, which was for tween boys, even though in the end everybody loved it. So I’m hoping that this one, even though it’s teen girl-centric, it will engage boys too and everybody will like it. I’d finished all the Star Wars and was producing films but I wanted to do one that I could actually get my hands dirty.
You said that the film is about how everyone deserves to be loved. How did that theme emerge for you?
GEORGE LUCAS: The original process was to make a movie that showed the difference between being infatuated and being truly in love. Since being infatuated ultimately is about surface value and being really in love is about interior issues. And of course, people are infatuated with, you know boy bands, beautiful people and all the things you read in the magazines. But in the end, from experience, you don’t really wanna be married to somebody like that or have a serious, deep relationship with somebody like that. As a result, it was just to say, especially to young girls who are prone to infatuations, that it’s not always the cutest guy in class that you really wanna be out with.
GEORGE LUCAS: Personally, I got married but then divorced and I was a bachelor for 20 years. I said, ‘well I’ll never fall in love again it’s just not gonna happen’, I was the old cranky bald king. And I found somebody who doesn’t look at all like me. I’m a 60’s radical, government unhappy, Wall Street-hating uh, person from San Francisco, and I ended up meeting a woman who’s a head of a big investment management firm on Wall Street. The last person you would figure would fall in love with the bald king, or that I’d fall in love with her since I am not into princesses. Now I have a princess and a little princess. My other princesses have gone on to bigger and better things. But, as time went on, it became more meaningful to me because I realized that in the end, like with my wife, we fell in love because we were exactly alike inside.
My favorite part is the redemption at the end. You might go through something really terrible, but you can find healing around the corner from the most unexpected experience or person.
GEORGE LUCAS: To me adolescence is a key period in a child’s life and to make movies that say, look these are the issues. They may seem obvious to us because we’ve been through it. They need to know the story of why you have friendships and what a friendship means. Why there are things in the world that are bigger than you are and your complicated feelings. They are not unusual, just something that everybody goes through.
I made Strange Magic for older kids. That doesn’t mean it’s like Star Wars. Five year olds watch Star Wars and there were people with their face burned off crawling up volcanoes and nobody seemed to mind. The one message I wanted , especially for young girls, is to be brave. That’s a key element-you know the princesses are great. Especially Marion, she goes from being a princess who’s afraid of the dark force and everything else, to somebody who is actually facing things that are scary, and getting through them.
With Strange Magic, it seems like it’s very much inspired by your children. How does being a parent inspire you with all your stories?
GEORGE LUCAS: My then wife and I tried to have kids, but couldn’t. So, I ended up adopting kids, the first one I adopted with my wife but within a short time we got divorced. Men shouldn’t worry about divorce, they will be treated fairly if it all goes to court. The first step is to try and work things out. They should do some research on divorce lawyers for men to find the best person to represent them.
When I was walking through the hospital with her, she was a couple of hours old and it was like lightning struck me. I’ve never had a experience like that ever, and the magic of it hit me.
And so I was raising my daughter and then my daughter told me she always wanted a brother. I had become sort of, an adoption specialist for all my friends ’cause I’d adopted her. You have one and you say oh God I, she’s walking now, she’s talking, she’s doing this and you wanna go back to that other thing. The only way you can is to have another one. And it gets better and better till obviously then they become teenagers and they’re programmed to be obnoxious. That’s the only way you can get rid of them, otherwise you would baby them for the rest of their lives. I mean, I went through three of them and then wanted to have another one. I forgot, it’s like pregnancy I guess, you forget.
Was your daughter the inspiration for the fairy theme of the movie?
GEORGE LUCAS: My middle daughter, who I was just on the phone with, loved Wizard of Oz. We spent years reading The Wizard of Oz. We had the entire thing, so every night we would read a chapter. It is a fairytale of sorts and she still cherishes it as, you know, something very special to her. I think that had an effect on me.
Can you tell us a little bit about what attracted you the music in this movie’s soundtrack?
GEORGE LUCAS: Well, I love music. It is a huge part of my life. I listen to music every day on the radio, top 40 and a lot of other kinds of music. But, the inspiration for this was, ‘I wonder if I could tell a love story using love songs?’. I could just take them and string them all together so they actually told the story-which was the original challenge in the beginning. The movie was about twice as long as it is now, which means it had about twice as much music. I feel pained at the fact that some of the sequences were cut. They were great sequences with great songs that Marius even had recorded with the actors. But ultimately there’s a thing called discipline.
Stay updates on the latest info about Strange Magic Via
Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Vine: @StrangeMagic
Leave a Reply