David Neal 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🏳️🏁🏁

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It all came together at the end and the film took $530m. It toppled Jaws to become all time #1 at the box office and Steven Spielberg took out the below ad in Variety. It’s still the second-most attended movie of all time, selling 178m tickets (Gone With The Wind is #1). 37/37

To create the crawl they had 6 foot long piece of black paper, with the yellow text on top. And they passed the camera over the paper and filmed it in such a way to make it look like the words are moving away. 36/37

On seeing that cut, Brian DePalma criticised the opening crawl. Lucas wrote one, and DePalma said: “It looks like it was written on a driveway. Let me write it for you.” So the opening crawl we see in the film was written by Brian DePalma. 35/37

The editor was John Jympson. Lucas called his first cut “an absolute disaster” and replaced Jympson with his own wife, Marcia, who said: “We sped it up, and made it tighter”. She’s often called the person who saved Star Wars. She won an Oscar for Best Editing. 33/37

They ran out of money until Fox greenlit a further $3m. Production was stopped for 2 weeks, and the situation made Lucas ill. He was diagnosed with hypertension and exhaustion, and hospitalised. 32/37

Another person responsible for the sound on Star Wars was sound designer Ben Burtt, responsible for creating the iconic effects in the film – the lightsabers, TIE Fighters, blasters, R2-D2, Chewbacca etc. Here he talks about creating the sounds of the Millennium Falcon. 29/37

The DP was Gilbert Taylor. He and Lucas clashed over how to shoot the film. They tried to replace Taylor but the crew said they’d go too. Taylor said “I hated every second of my time on the picture” Taylor then shot Flash Gordon – the movie Lucas wanted to make – in 1980. 28/37

Williams won another Oscar for Star Wars and took inspiration from a 1942 movie called Kings Row, composed by Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Can you hear Star Wars? 27/37

Lucas had planned to use classical music as the score. He mentioned this to Steven Spielberg, who said “you’re making a very original film, you need original music to go with it.” Spielberg had just worked with John Williams on Jaws, and introduced him to Lucas. 26/37

On working with Lucas, Mark Hamill said: “If he could make movies without actors, George would.” His direction would be one of two things: “faster” or “more intense.” When Lucas lost his voice the crew gave him two boards. One said “faster” the other said “more intense.” 25/37

When Lucas offered Peter Cushing the role of Tarkin, Cushing said: “What’s a Grand Moff? Sounds like something that flew out of a cupboard.” Cushing did not find the uniform comfortable and would wear fluffy slippers instead of the long black boots. 24/37

Kenny Baker (R2) and Anthony Daniels (3PO) didn’t get on. Daniels would reportedly call Baker (who was 3ft8), “little man” and when Baker was asked to go to a convention as guest of honour he said: “If his lordship is going – the one with golden balls – count me out.” 23/37

Darth Vader is played by David Prowse and voiced by James Earl Jones. Prowse wasn't happy about it, saying “It was reverse racism. Because of the lack of black actors, they were scared of losing some of their audience.” Judge for yourself with this before/after video. 22/37

Guinness himself wasn’t a big fan of the film, though. This is Oscar Isaac reading out a letter Guinness sent to a friend, Anne Kaufmann, while making Star Wars showing his dislike for it. Credit: @letterslive 21/37

Lucas eventually cast Alec Guinness as Obi Wan. Guinness said he wouldn’t do any publicity for the film and the studio agreed, on condition they reduce his salary and give him 2% of the profits instead. Lucas gave Guinness another 0.25%. That 2.25% ended up worth $18m. 20/37

Again inspired by Kurosawa, Lucas wanted Toshiro Mifune (star of 16 Kurosawa movies) to play Obi Wan Kenobi. Mifune’s daughter said: “He was concerned about how the film would look and that it would cheapen the image of samurai… so he said no.” 19/37

Lucas then turned to Harrison Ford, who was working as a carpenter, and considering quitting acting at the time. This is him auditioning with Mark Hamill. 17/37

Lucas based the personality of Han Solo on Francis Ford Coppola. Billy Dee Williams, Christopher Walken, Sylvester Stallone, and John Travolta auditioned. Al Pacino turned the role down and said “it was mine but I didn’t understand the script.” Kurt Russell auditioned too… 16/37