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The Lightsabre Interview
J W Rinzler
Welcome to
Lightsabre. Our latest interview is the second part of our chat with Lucasbooks senior
editor and the author of The Making of Revenge of the Sith. Please welcome back J W Rinzler.
Q It must be really interesting being where you are at the moment, with all the things that are coming over the next year or two, but not being able to say too much.
A- Well, you don't really think about that
too much, that's just the nature of things. It takes a long time to get that stuff done. The Making of Sith was more than three years in the making. Right now I'm working on The Making of Star Wars from 1977. You know, I can't say too much about that, I've been writing that for about six months.
Q - There must be an awful lot of research going into that?
A - Yeah, that's more of a research project. But that's going really well. Making any kind of book, the lead in time is tremendous. Most publishers want to get some finished books anywhere from four months up to a year before it's actually printed. That's mostly because they print overseas.
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the making of star wars by j w rinzler |
Q So what are your specific
duties as senior editor of Lucasbooks?
A My specific duties? Basically anything non-fiction comes to me, and our definition of non-fiction is kind of broad. It includes the DK (Dorling Kindersley) books, which are still in universe but because they're not story related they come under non-fiction. We're doing this book right now called Sculpting the Galaxy that Lorne Peterson is writing. That's going to be fantastic. The interiors are pretty much designed, now they're starting to work on the deluxe book, with CG vehicles, environmental maquettes, things like that, but Lorne Peterson has sculpted himself the concept Landspeeder that was done back in 1976, and painted it and everything, and in the deluxe edition that is going to be one of the things you get and it is amazing. There's also going to be six pieces of the Death Star that they used to make the surface of the Death Star, plus a piece of the
trench. It's going to be a pretty amazing book.
Q You have involved
yourself in the blogs on the official Star Wars
site. Do you find the blogs useful and what role do you think the internet
will ultimately have in furthering the Star Wars saga.
A I think the blogs are fairly popular, I'm supposed to be writing them but I don't. I've written one or two but I just don't have time. But there's obviously a group of people who are really into it.
Q They are good fun when they're done properly.
A - I guess so. I don't really do the message boards or anything like that.
Q - You're too busy!
A - I guess so!
Q - One of the great
behind the scenes book is Once Upon A Galaxy by Alan Arnold. In that book he captured the pressure cooker atmosphere on the Empire Strikes Back set,
trying to improve upon the stellar success of A New Hope. Was Arnolds book on your mind when
embarking upon the Making of Revenge of the Sith?
A
Oh absolutely. The inspirations for Sith were his book, and Return of the Jedi and the Jaws log. Of the great behind the scenes books, there was Jaws, a couple of others. There's a book on John Huston's Red Badge of Courage. To me that was how you should do a making of book. Unfortunately 98% of making of books they hire somebody once the movie is practically done, they spend a week interviewing people, throw together a bunch of art and that's the book. As a result the making of book genre, nobody really cares about because the books are such low quality. To really do it right it's a major commitment. And it's really only because George has, over the years, been able to set up this company wherein there's a book division where he can do something like that because normally who would want to pay my salary for three years? And Rick McCallum was really the key,
because early on we talked about this and he said "Well, let's do it". We talked specifically about the earlier Star Wars books and I said "Let's do it this way", and he said "Yes, that's the way to do it man", a production story, not how they did every visual effect, which everybody knows anyway. Publishers, there's no way they could afford to pay a writer for three years, it would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. I was able to fit it in with all the other stuff that we were doing.
Q - There would have been other books on the go at the same time.
A - Yeah, I mean in a movie year there would be upwards of thirty books. It's not as much as most editors though, I know editors who have forty-five books a year. But they're just reading them, we actually make a lot. Out of twenty we make two or three of them ourselves, so that's a lot of work.
Q Now that the Star
Wars TV series has been confirmed there will likely be regular documentation
of behind the scenes events. Would you
be interested in being involved in that again?
A Well I can't really say right now unfortunately. There are things happening, people would be upset if I said anything.
Q - I won't tell...
A - (Laughs)
Q - What do you foresee
for yourself in the future?
A Well, we're certainly going to be working on a lot of Indiana Jones books, presuming that goes forward, which of course nobody knows for sure yet. If they are nobody's telling me, so that's one thing. We basically are going into more high-end books, like the Dressing the Galaxy book, that was a real departure for us and that did really well, and the model-making book. We'd like to do more books like that . You know, keeping the Scholastic and the six dollar books alive, but just like the toys are doing the high-end as well it seems like there's a market for that.
Q - Well, I'm 35 and I've been into it since I was seven so people like me have grown up, got a house, followed it through. Your wallet can go that little bit further and there's definitely a market there.
A - Yeah, you might sell a few thousand and the publisher's happy. Instead of having a knock-off thing you have a piece of art, a high-quality product.
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the three amigos... |
Q - It's been a great
interview, and thanks for being our guest on Lightsabre. Just one final question. George Lucas, Rick McCallum and Hayden
Christensen are locked deep in conversation, discussing a follow-up project
to Revenge of the Sith. You overhear
their chat and stunned, scribble the revelation down. Knowing this snippet of golden sci-fi gossip will net you a fortune in the
worldwide press, do you :-
1.
Sell the story to the Weekly
World News?
2.
Pretend you never heard it?
3.
Let Hayden believe that his
Jedi Mind Trick skills are a lot better than they actually are?
A (Laughs) I'd have to say none of the above.
Q - You're definitely an editor, that's a diplomatic answer.
A - (Laughs)
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