Long, Long Ago....

"I may never get to ever again direct a big budget movie."

This was George Lucas talking to reporters twenty years ago. He had just finished filming Star Wars and was predicting that the movie most likely would bomb. In early 1977, nobody took science-fiction seriously at the movies. Not even the filmmakers.

Lucas knew better than most the kind of gamble that he was taking. A mere six years earlier, his production of THX-1138 had tanked at the box office through a combination of audience indifference and critical scorn. The film had also become the focus of intense Hollywood hostility as movieland's old guard attempted a final, futile effort to circle the wagons against the young turks with beards who were taking over the industry.

Though Lucas did have one hit movie to his credit (American Graffiti), he was not viewed as a powerhouse director. A quiet and very self-effacing man, he was still primarily hidden in the shadow of his mentor, Francis Ford Coppola. Likewise, Coppola's edgy and naturalistic Godfather films helped set the tone for movies in the 1970s.

Realism was in, fantasy was out, and some executives at 20th Century Fox were privately debating about what they were doing with the world's most expensive space opera. As the summer of '77 grew near, Fox began a campaign among theatre exhibitors to undercut the release of Star Wars.

Advance market research suggested that Star Wars would quickly fade upon release. Besides, many senior Fox executives were convinced that the impending hit of the summer would be The Other Side of Midnight, a Sidney Sheldon kiss-and-tell epic about old Hollywood. During the spring of '77, Fox's distribution people successfully convinced many of the major regional exhibitors in the US to skip Star Wars and to go "for a movie with a proven formula."

By May, Star Wars became a phenomena hit. In June, many booking agents for the major theatre chains were out looking for new jobs. By the fall of '77, Fox was trying to strong arm second-run theaters by offering them Star Wars on the condition that they also had to book The Other Side of Midnight.

What did this all mean? Simple. The young men with beards were now in control of both the camera and, now, the banks.

And Hollywood was never quite the same.