There wasn't much as a kid that inspired me in what I did as an adult.
I think one of the reasons that Steven (Spielberg) and I have been as successful as we have is because we like the movies. We like to go to the movies. We enjoy movies and we want to make movies like the ones we enjoy.
I like racing. I love the speed and I'm a very kinetic person in terms of filmmaking. I love the movement of film more than anything else.
A film is sort of binary - it either works or it doesn't work. It has nothing to do with how good a job you do. If you bring it up to an adequate level where the audience goes with the movie, then it works, that is all.
The story being told in Star Wars is a classic one. Every few hundred years, the story is retold because we have a tendency to do the same things over and over again.
Each time I do a trilogy it's ten years out of my life. I'll finish Episode III and I'll be 60. And the next 20 years after that I want to spend doing something other than Star Wars. If at 80 I'm still lively and having a good time and think I can work for another 10 years between 80 and 90, I might consider it. But don't count on it. There's nothing written, and it's not like I'm completing something. I'd have to start from scratch. The idea of a third trilogy was more of a media thing than it was me.
Our system of education is locked in a time capsule. You want to say to the people in charge, 'You're not using today's tools! Wake up!'
I'm not much of a math and science guy. I spent most of my time in school daydreaming and managed to turn it into a living. When I was making "Star Wars," I wasn't restrained by any kind of science. I simply said, "I'm going to create a world that's fun and interesting, makes sense, and seems to have a reality to it."
You may make something you don't think is very important during your lifetime and it'll last for a thousand years.
When a movie comes out, I always go off on a beach so I miss all the craziness that goes on, all the hoopla, and the hype and the success, and how much it's making, or whether it's doing good or whether it's doing bad. I just miss it all. I don't talk to anybody, and a couple weeks later I come back and it's all over with.
It took me three, four years, to get from my first film to my second film, banging on doors, trying to get people to give me a chance. Writing, struggling, with no money in the bank, working as an editor on the side. Working as a cameraman on the side. Getting little jobs, eking out a living. Trying to stay alive, and pushing a script that nobody wanted.
I wanted to make a kids' film that would strengthen contemporary mythology.
For the third trilogy, I don't know if I will still be alive when it comes the time to make them.
If I make a movie that has a whole bunch of music in it, I get to listen to the music all day long, and I don't have to say, 'Well, I gotta go back to work and I gotta stop listening to the music.' I get to listen to music and go to work.
'Star Wars' is fun, its exciting, its inspirational, and people respond to that. It's what they want.
You have to understand that it's a very cooperative world, not only with the environment, with but our fellow human beings. If you do not cooperate, if you do not work together to keep the entire organism going, the whole thing dies, and everybody dies with it. That's a law of nature, and it's existed forever. We're one of the very few creatures that has a choice, and can intellectualize the process.
These Are Not The Droids You Are Looking For.
I'm lucky enough that there is never a blank canvas in front of me... I have hundreds of projects that I want to do but I am running out of time.
I made lots of movies while in school while everybody else was running around saying, "Oh, I wish I could make a movie. I wish they'd give me some film."
As I talk to film students now especially, I say, "The easiest job you'll ever get is to try to make your first film." That's the easy one to get, is the first film because nobody knows whether you can make a film or not.
I wanted to make abstract films that are emotional, and I still do.
I don't ever see movies by myself. I always see them with other people because I want to know what works. I want to know where they laugh. I want to know where they don't laugh. I want to know what they think about it afterwards because in the end that's what the art that I'm working with is.
When you are a beginning film maker you are desperate to survive. The most important thing in the end is survival and being able to get to your next picture.
None of the films I've done was designed for a mass audience, except for 'Indiana Jones.' Nobody in their right mind thought 'American Graffiti' or 'Star Wars' would work.
I'm aware that dialogue isn't my strength. I use it as a device. I don't particularly like dialogue which is part of the problem.
