Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
By Associated PressThe Star Wars director's first film, the relatively unknown THX 1138, is being rereleased this weekend, with a DVD to follow.
SAN RAFAEL, Calif. - In his most soothing voice, George Lucas has these important messages to share: Work hard. Prevent accidents. Increase production. Buy more. And most important, be happy.
Those mantras come from 1971's THX 1138, Lucas' comparatively unknown first film, which he is reintroducing to audiences with a limited theatrical release this weekend, followed by its DVD debut Tuesday.
In a way, Lucas views this as the true premiere of THX 1138, a dark sci-fi satire starring Robert Duvall as the title character, struggling to escape a dehumanized society whose inhabitants are mere numbers to a government that preaches boundless consumerism and keeps the population happy through mandatory sedatives.
"It's almost like it's a new movie, because a lot of people don't know about it," Lucas said over lunch at his 2,600-acre Skywalker Ranch. "And I think this time in terms of the way the release is going, it's much more the kind of release that it should have had in the first place, which is mostly for college students. It's kind of an arty film."
In 1971, distributor Warner Bros. did not have a clue about how to handle Lucas' avant-garde flick, so the studio hacked a few minutes out of it and dumped it into theaters, where few saw it. Warner rereleased it in the late 1970s to take advantage of Lucas' Star Wars fame, but THX 1138 still failed to find an audience.
Most who have seen it caught it on television or videotape in a bad full-screen format that spoils the effect of Lucas' carefully crafted wide-screen images. The new version is a director's cut restoring the footage Warner took out and giving the film a thorough digital restoration.
The two-disc DVD set has terrific background material about THX 1138 and the era of young Hollywood lions from which it emerged.
The first film from Francis Ford Coppola's American Zoetrope studio, THX 1138 sneaked into Hollywood during the transition between the old movie mogul days and the rise of corporate-run studios.
"THX was as strange then as it is today, and I think if I took this same movie in to anybody today, they would look at me and roll their eyes," Lucas said.
Much of the film is told without conventional dialogue, the soundtrack filled with mechanical human voices and machine noises that Lucas calls a sort of "techno-poetry." The film's middle passage is set in an endless, snow-white expanse without sets. The characters, women included, have shaved heads.
Instead of a traditional three-act structure, the film essentially tells the same story three ways. Duvall's character breaks society's mold in each section, first when his self-aware roommate cuts off his sedatives, second when he escapes from a prison for defective citizens, third when he makes a high-speed run from his underground city for the forbidden planet's surface. As serious as it sounds, parts of the movie are wickedly funny.
Rather than a portrait of a grim tomorrow, Lucas intended THX 1138 as a future-is-now metaphor of '60s complacency and mass consumption. The film came years before the prevalence of Prozac and other antidepressants, and it presents a twist on the drug war, with citizens subject to prosecution for "criminal drug evasion" if they fail to take their sedatives.
The themes are more relevant now than ever, Lucas said.
"I think that a lot of people just believe anything you tell them, and no matter what it is, they just go along with the program," Lucas said.
After THX 1138, Lucas knew that if he wanted financial backing, he would have to do something more populist. Coppola challenged him to try a comedy.
Lucas had an idea for a nostalgic car flick about cruising, which grew into American Graffiti. The success of that movie gave Lucas the clout to launch one of the most enduring movie franchises ever.
That series concludes next summer with Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith, the last of his six films chronicling the saga of the Skywalker clan.
Once he lays Star Wars to rest, Lucas wants to make any stories he likes, without regard to their commercial prospects.
"I've earned the right to be a failure and not be making megahits anymore."