GEORGE LUCAS

The idea here is to present occasional conversations - some vintage, some brand new - with people associated with making, presenting or analyzing quality TV. Because the first season of ABC's ambitious The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles was just released on DVD (as The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones, Volume One), it seemed like a good time to excavate my interview with series creator George Lucas, conducted on Sept. 4, 1992, when that show was on the air. He discusses, among other things, CD technology that didn't yet exist, mythologist Joseph Campbell and the "future" of Star Wars. The Young Indiana Jones series starred Sean Patrick Flanery in most episodes as the title role, and Corey Carrier in others, as an even younger Young Indy.

Q: Are they all going to be still, by definition, 1916-17 and 1909-10, in those time frames?

A: So far, everything we're doing is in those time frames. And it still works out to somewhere between 20 and 30 percent are with the younger kid, and the rest are with the older kid.

Q: Originally, this came out of an interactive concept that you had had with one of your companies?

A: It was an educational foundation. It came out of an educational project.

Q: I was wondering if you ever really did do anything with interactive multimedia yet?

A: The area that we're dealing with in the educational foundation is interactive learning systems, which obviously is interactive media. It's a more hybrid (high-bred?) thing than kind of what is commonly now becoming known as the entertainment medium. We've been working in this area for 10 years.

Q: I was thinking, for example, you would have a basic work-study station that would be connected, through videodisc libraries and hard discs and stuff, to pull up images as well as sound, and -

A: Well, that's what we're developing in the educational foundation. We're studying how that works in the school system on the largest sort of level. How do kids learn? How to the teachers interface with it? What does it mean to the school system? And then we're trying to develop prototypes and test them with students, and test certain theories in schools - that sort of thing.

Q: In general, what did you come up with?

A: The technology is definitely going to be a major, major factor in the future of education. And it's extremely effective.

Q: Do you find that students in the classroom are very adept and eager at the new equipment?

A: Yes, they are.

Q: How about the teachers?

A: Well, obviously, you're talking about millions of people here, and it's very hard to generalize. We have worked with schools, and in schools, and had students and teachers that have had no experience with computers at all, and they have taken to it very well. That doesn't mean everybody will. But it definitely is going to happen, and we're trying to define the best ways to make the best use of the technology in the schools, and to have it be the most effective in terms of learning process. And it is very effective.

Q: How would you measure, from the response that Lucasfilm has gotten to the first batch of Indiana Jones, how this, as a prime-time entertainment series, has been used or received as both an entertainment program and a teaching tool?

A: We've gotten a lot of feedback from schools. But again, it's not a teaching tool. It's not an educational program at all. Just because it came out of an educational project, that doesn't particularly make it an educational program.

Q: I don't mean to curse it with that label.

A: But schools are using it. We have sent around to schools an information sheet which allows the teachers to understand who's in the show and what the show's subject matter is dealing with, and suggest topics for further study, that sort of thing. It makes it easier for teachers to integrate it into the curriculum program. We've had a huge amount of support, and encouragement, from various schools, teachers, students - we get tons of mail. So in that area, I think, we have found a very supportive, enthusiastic audience.

Q: Forgive me for dwelling on this... but I was just curious as to how it came out.

A: Well, it seems to be working very well. This is what I would call the backbone of an interactive system. Obviously, at some point, we are going to be able to put this into our prototype that we're developing. Right now, we're really working on one week in the eighth grade, and we're focusing history a little bit more on the Civil War than we are during this time period. But at some point, we'll be able to expand it and include this into a demonstration about how you can develop these materials for the schools. And part of what I'm trying to do is show how you can cross media lines, and use one medium to expand into a different market - let's say, education, using the television industry, for lack of a better example. You could develop some program that then could be used in education.

Q: Also speaking in terms of crossing media, you're very comfortable, it seems, at crossing between film and television, and don't look down on television as some people in previous generations have. Do you get a sense, among the peers in your group and your friends, how TV is perceived?

A: Most of the people that I know don't look down on television at all. Many people work in it. It's a very demanding medium, and I think, in any of these media - whether you're in features or in television, you have a certain amount of resistance to new ideas, and pressure to do things that have been done before. Which, I think, is what most creative people sort of get upset about. So in that case, that's the one drawback, because the pressure seems to be worse in television than it is in features, though I'm not exactly sure that it is. I've been fortunate enough to be able to do whatever I want to do, and have very little interference and a great deal of support from the television network ABC, and the financing body in Paramount. Obviously, it's not a normal television show. That makes it just more difficult in getting audiences to watch it, that sort of thing, because it's very different. It breaks many of the formula rules that TV shows are supposed to follow. But I'm very proud of the shows, and I think they're very good. And I think that eventually, if we can stay on the air long enough, an audience will develop around it. On the six shows we did last year, we were pretty good - averaged a 19 share, and we were in a very tough time slot. I don't know what we finally ended up at the end of the year, but we were in the thirties, I think, in the overalls.

...There are so many variables in television that don't have anything to do with the product. What I'm really focused on is making the movie - or making the TV show - and telling the story.

Q: One wonderful thing about television these days is that there are so many ancillary markets. I'm sure the global market for this is tremendous, and the afterlife for it will also be very strong, in terms of videocassette, if you choose to go that way.

A: Yeah. We're really making this for the compact CD market. If anything, it's sort of the first film designed for compact CDs. But we want it to be successful on television, and we have managed to sell it overseas. We're pretty much concurrent all around the world.

Q: I have a question about you as story editor of this. I have children who were 8 and 10 when they watched this series in the spring. I wasn't sure if the younger one, especially, was going to take to this. I had sort of targeted 12, 13, as the perfect age. And they loved it. And I don't know if, after all the things that you've done for wide-appeal audiences, if you have a real sense of how not to talk down when you're writing for an audience, or whether you're actually just writing for yourself, or what. How do you do this?

A: I pretty much write for myself. And this project was targeted, pretty much, at the same audience that the movies were targeted at - which is sort of the 13- to 23-year-old group. Although the movies appeal to, you know, 13 to 83 years old, and younger. And we've noticed, in the demographics of the show, that we have a very large audience under 13, even thought the show is basically a PG-13 show. It's really not designed for kids under 13. But we seem to have a very large audience under 13, which is interesting, because all the features were PG-13. And we found a large adult audience.

Many of the issues that are dealt with in the show are obviously fairly adult in nature. I've always had the assumption that most teenagers are as smart as adults, and in many cases probably smarter. Maybe not in experience, but definitely more inquisitive and more willing to accept new ideas. The interesting thing that I've found is that even the older audience - one of the big breakings of tradition of the show is that it's a very feature-paced, more foreign-film, European-paced show, which is slow for American television - and the older audience seems to have a very short attention span. But the fact that we have such a very large audience is sort of encouraging that maybe our younger generation is having longer attention span than most adults. We've found that a lot of kids will sit through shows that don't have a laugh a minute, and don't have a hook at the beginning, and don't do the things that normally one would be forced to do.

Q: The only reason I'm not surprised by that is that I shamlessly use my own kids as guinea pigs just to check their reactions to things. For instance: David Attenborough nature documentaries, they will soak up hour after hour of. I really do think that they have the taste that I wish more adults would. If it's something that really compels them, they will stay with it.

A: It's an interesting prospect. It'd be interesting to have somebody do some research on it. Because, from all the indications here, the younger generation seems to have a longer attention span, which is contrary to the popular belief that every generation seems to get a shorter and shorter attention span. And I'm not sure that's actually happening...

The show is not meant to be educational. But at the same time, what it's meant to do is introduce people - young people especially - to famous historical people, so that when they come across them in another context, they will take the time, and have the interest, to follow through and learn a little bit more about them. It's something I've noticed with my kids, and it's something that I was aware of when I was young - that if I met a famous person, suddenly whenever his name came up, I would read everything I could about him. It's taking that idea and using it in this context. If people are exposed to Albert Schweitzer, and they hear about Albert Schweitzer in a context, or a book, of they're looking ina library, they're more likely to pick itr off the shelf and look through it because they have had some kind of connection with it. And we not only deal with historic figures, but we also deal with issues and various disciplines. Each show has its own discipline, whether it's political science or comparative religion or psychology or art appreciation.

Q: With the shows, did it actually break down that way, that with the younger protagonist, that more younger viewers actually tuned in? That seems almost too easy.

A: More younger viewers and women - women, especially - are very big watchers of the younger show. And mostly men and teenagers watch the older boy's show. It works out that way very consistently, and we've tested a number of shows, and it always comes out that way. And there's not a big difference between the two. But the younger show is more maternal. His mother and the tutor are more involved, it's more about nurturing, and it's more about the problems of raising children. The mother is fairly prominent in the shows. And for the kids, obviously for a 10-year-old, some of these adventures are more interesting to them. The younger shows are, by design, more intellectual. It's moe of an intellectual coming-of-age motif, where the older shows are more emotional... The older ones deal more with the war, and the war years have to do with things like battle, and real conflict.

Q: You've got this so nicely mapped out. How close has this come to the original vision you had when you decided to bring it to television?

A: Very close. It's turned out, for me, very, very much what I envisioned in the first place. It's probably one of the few things I've done, actually, short of the features, which also came out very much the way they were envisioned. For some reason, I've had a lot of luck with Indiana Jones. And this idea was very complicated, in terms of the initial criteria I had put together to make the show. It seemed almost impossible, to put it together and make it happen, just in terms of the concept. Trying to combine the subject matter and the historical figure with the theme, with the story - and still make it interesting, and have it be believable, and have it be logical that these things would actually happen to them. A lot of people at the beginning, when they heard about the series, said, "Oh, it's celebrity of the month, it's What's My Line" - but they don't exactly watch the show. You realize, if you watch, that if you were in that situation, like my kids are in that situation, you do get to meet most of the movers and shakers of your era, if your father is in a position to do that. And with his father, having written a few books and taught at universities, being a respected professor, Indy would be in a position to have come in contact with these famous people as a young kid. And as he's older, it's not a stretch to have him be in places where these people actually were, and to have him meet them.

Q: Is it too personal a question to ask that, of the people your children have met, who they have responded the most to, in terms of being impressed by, in terms of ideas?

A: Well, my one daughter's 10. My other daughter's four. And to be very honest with you, the person they're most impressed with is Sean [laughs] - because he's cute.

Q: We mentioned comparative religions. I know your interest in Joseph Campbell predated the Bill Moyers telecast [1988's Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth] - because, of course, you took part in that, and financed part of that. I'm curious, in that particular instance, how early you came upon his writings, because they influenced you so much. And also, what you thought about Joseph Campbell on television.

A: I had read some of his books in college, and then, when I did Star Wars, I did a lot of research, mostly in the area of mythology. At that point, I read more of his books, along with a lot of others. But it really wasn't until a couple years after did Star Wars, which would be late '70s, that I actually heard a tape of lecture that he'd given. And when I heard him, I was electrified by his lecture. I said, "I've got to meet this guy." Shortly thereafter, I met him, and we became friends. He was just a very articulate and interesting scholar, in an area that I'm obviously very interested in - but at the same time, he had a gift for giving a lecture, a gift for speaking, a talent that few people have. And it was really in working with the educational foundation, and part of what we're trying to do -

Q: Is there a name for the foundation, by the way?

A: It's called the George Lucas Educational Foundation.

Q: [laughs at himself] I'm sorry. I wanted to get out of here without asking one super-dumb question.

A: Well, for lack of a more creative title, that's it... And one of the things that we're interested in, one of the premises behind interactive education, is to be able to record some of the great lecturers, some of the great thinkers, of our time, and have kids be able to have access to them. And I really wanted to include Joe in that, but far enough along in the foundation to be able to do anything, so Bill and I were just talking one day, and I said, "What we really have to do is get Joe on film, because he's just an amazing persona that you want to capture. It's like Dr. [Richard] Feynman the physicist. There are a few people who just kind of get it, and it's up to society to be able to capture these people for posterity, to be able to refer back to them.

So that's why we did that show. In the beginning, we didn't even know it was going to be a PBS show. It was purely a matter of getting him on film... The original idea was to be able to include it in some sort of interactive learning system.

Q: And what would your reaction be to the actual program that was put out over the air?

A: I thought it turned out well. I was very pleased with it...

Q: I would be negligent if I let you go away without asking, because you've been quoted three different ways over the past year, and I just don't know where you stand at the moment. Are you still contemplating the possibility of diving in again to Star Wars? Or are you not contemplating or are you not sure whether you're contemplating?

A: I am. I've always said exactly the same thing. It's just that it's been always reported differently. [Laughs] I've always said it, ever since 1983, when the last one finished I said, "There will be more. It'll just take some time." I am going to do more.

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