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TALENT AND VISION
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George Lucas
Entertainment Executive
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I decided to go to film school because I loved the idea of making films. I loved photography and everybody said it was a crazy thing to do because in those days nobody made it into the film business. I mean, unless you were related to somebody there was no way in. So everybody was thinking I was silly. "You're never going to get a job." But I wasn't moved by that. I set the goal of getting through film school, and just then focused on getting to that level because I didn't -- you know, I didn't know where I was going to go after that. I wanted to make documentary films, and eventually I got into the goal of -- once I got to school -- of making a film. One of the most telling things about film school is you've got a lot of students in those days especially, it's not quite so much today, but - wandering around saying, "Oh, I wish I could make a movie. I wish I could make a move." You know, "I can't get in this class. I can't get any this or that." The first class I had was an animation class. It wasn't a production class. I had a history class and an animation class. And, in the animation class they gave us one minute of film to put onto the animation camera to operate it, to see how you could move left, move right, make it go up and down. It was a test. You had certain requirements that you had to do. You had to make it go up and had to make it go down, and then the teacher would look at it and say, "Oh yes, you maneuvered this machine to do these things." I took that one minute of film and made it into a movie, and it was a movie that won like, you know twenty or twenty-five awards in every film festival in the world and kind of changed the whole animation department. Meanwhile all the other guys were going around saying, "Oh, I wish I could make a movie. I wish I was in a production class." So then I got into another class and it wasn't really a production class but I managed to get some film and I made a movie. And, 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."
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[ Interview ] George Lucas |
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George Lucas: Everybody has talent and it's just a matter of moving around until you've discovered what it is. A talent is a combination of something you love a great deal and something you can lose yourself in -- something that you can start at 9 o'clock, look up from your work and it's 10 o'clock at night -- and also something that you have a talent, not a talent for, but skills that you have a natural ability to do very well. And usually those two things go together.
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[ Interview ] George Lucas |
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George Lucas: Everybody has talent and it's just a matter of moving around until you've discovered what it is. A talent is a combination of something you love a great deal and something you can lose yourself in -- something that you can start at 9 o'clock, look up from your work and it's 10 o'clock at night -- and also something that you have a talent, not a talent for, but skills that you have a natural ability to do very well. And usually those two things go together.
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[ Interview ] George Lucas |
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I kept getting phone calls from producers saying, "I hear you're great." I had made a film called THX, which had no story and no character really. It was kind of an avant-garde film. And so I had all these producers calling me saying, "I hear you're really good at material that doesn't have a story. I've got a record album I want you to make into a movie." Or, you know, things like that. And they were offering me a lot of money and -- but they were terrible projects. And so I had to constantly turn down vast sums of money while I was starving, writing a screenplay for free that I didn't like to write because I hated writing. But, I did finish it. I did write the screenplay and eventually I got a deal to make the movie. And then after I finally got that, then my friends came back in and did a rewrite on it, but it was a very dark period, and I could have very easily just taken the money and gone off and done one of these really terrible movies. I don't know what that would have done for my career, but you know, when the times are hard like that you simply have to say, "This is what I want to do. I want to make my movie. I don't want to take the money." And you just walk forward, step by step and get through it somehow. And I got through. It actually only took me about three weeks to write that script. I just every day would sit down at eight o'clock in the morning and I'd write until about eight o'clock at night. And I just said, "I'm going to finish this, as painful as it is, and I'm going to ignore these phone calls of lure of riches and get through this. And somehow I did it.
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[ Interview ] George Lucas |
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I made a pact with myself that I was going to make all three (Star Wars) movies, and in order to do that, as I stated to make my deal with 20th Century Fox, I acquired the sequel rights, because I didn't want them to bury the sequel. I wanted to make these movies and I was determined to make these movies regardless of whether they wanted to, or the movie made any money or not. And then I got the merchandising rights, which weren't anything at the time because there was no such thing as merchandising on movies. Some TV stuff, but not movies. Their life span is just too short. But I figured I could make posters. I could make t-shirts and, you know, I could publicize the movie and, hopefully, people would go see it. And because the studio -- everything is sort of a struggle again to survive, which is -- the studio won't put enough money into your movie to get it into the theaters, to do the advertising. So I said, "Well, I can't. I don't have any money. I don't have any money, but I can maybe make a t-shirt deal and I can maybe make a poster deal, and I can maybe get these out at science fiction conventions and things before the movie comes out, and promote the movie." So I did it as sort of self-preservation.
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[ Interview ] George Lucas |
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Oprah Winfrey
Entertainment Executive
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I was raised on a farm with my grandmother for the first six years of my life -- I knew somehow that my life would be different and it would be better. I never had a clear cut vision of what it was I would be doing. I remember absolutely physically feeling it at around four years old. I remember standing on the back porch -- it was a screened-in porch -- and my grandmother was boiling clothes because, you know, at that time, we didn't have washing machines, and so people would, you know, physically boil clothes in a great big iron pot. She was boiling clothes and poking them down. And I was watching her from the back porch, and I was four years old and I remember thinking, "My life won't be like this. My life won't be like this, it will be better." And it wasn't from a place of arrogance, it was just a place of knowing that things could be different for me somehow. I don't know what made me think that.
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[ Interview ] Oprah Winfrey |
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I remember my father saying to me, "You can't bring C's in this house because you are not a C student. If you were a C student you could because I'm not trying to make you do or be anything that you can't be. But you are not a C student; you are an A student. So that's what we expect in this house." It was just so matter of fact. And I knew he was not faking it one bit. I never even tried to bring in a C because I realized that it's just not acceptable. When I was living with my mother, I was very rebellious. As I said, promiscuous and rebellious. I did everything I could get away with. Including faking a robbery at my house to save my glasses and my dog one time. I remember stomping the glasses in the floor and putting myself in the hospital, acting out the whole scene. I used to pull all kinds of pranks. I ran away from home. I got to my father's house, I never told another - I used to lie to my mother all the time. I'd stay out and make up stories. I moved to my father's house. I never told another lie because I knew it wasn't going to be accepted. I knew, "Okay. It stops right here."
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I don't know if anybody really skyrockets to success. I think that success is a process. And I believe that my first Easter speech, at Kosciusko Baptist Church, at the age of three and a half, was the beginning. And that every other speech, every other book I read, every other time I spoke in public, was a building block. So that by the time I first sat down to audition in front of a television camera, and somebody said, "Read this," what allowed me to read it so comfortably and be so at ease with myself at that time, was the fact that I had been doing it a while. If I'd never read a book, or never spoken in public before, I would have been traumatized by it. So the fact that we went on the air with "The Oprah Winfrey Show" in 1986, nationally, and people said, "Oh, but you are so comfortable in front of the camera; you can be yourself." Well, it's because I've been being myself since I was 19, and I would not have been able to be as comfortable with myself had I not made mistakes on the air and been allowed to make mistakes on the air and understand that it doesn't matter.
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[ Interview ] Oprah Winfrey |
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I couldn't do the kinds of shows that I see some other people do, I just couldn't. I've reached a level of maturity in this work myself. There was a time, when I first started out that, I would say, I was far more exploitative. You just put a person on for the purpose of having. I wouldn't do that anymore. I was in the middle of a show with some white supremacists, skinheads, Ku Klux Klan members and in the middle of that show I just had a flash, I thought, "This is doing nobody any good, nobody." And I had rationalized the show by saying, "Oh, people need to know that these kinds of people are out here." I won't do it anymore. I just won't do it. There are certain things I won't do - Satanism of any kind, any kind of Satan worship. I no longer want to give a platform to racists; I just don't because I think no good can come of it. So if you don't know that it exists, I'm sorry, you won't hear it here. But that's growth for me. I taped a show last year with a guy who was a mass murderer. He killed eighty people. I did the whole interview, and I had the families of some of the people he killed. In the middle of it, flash, I thought, "I shouldn't be doing this; this is not going to help anybody. It's a voyeuristic look at a serial killer, but what good is it going to do anybody?" And we didn't air it.
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[ Interview ] Oprah Winfrey |
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Huck Finn's Resume
In the video segments, filmmaker George Lucas says, "Everybody has a talent, it's just a matter of moving around until you've discovered what it is." He goes on to define talent as "a combination of something you love a great deal...and something you have a natural ability to do very well." A good resume highlights a person's talents, whatever they may be. Use the Resource Links to explore different resume styles. Then chose a literary character, like Romeo or Juliet. Make a list of their talents, interests and experience. Think about what kinds of jobs your character would be good at doing. Write a resume for your character, formatting it so that it may be emailed to prospective employers.
Visionaries Past and Present
A visionary is somebody who gets an idea in his or her head and doesn't stop until that idea becomes a reality. All visionaries have had to overcome obstacles in order to attain their goals. Visionaries are found in every field, from science and politics to art and education. The Academy of Achievement is full of such people. Conduct a survey of visionaries in the Academy. Read the interviews of two or three that you are interested in, paying close attention to what motivated these people to follow their dreams and the various obstacles they encountered while doing so. Then, write a short book jacket blurb for each visionary's biography.
Odysseus' Resume
In the video segments, filmmaker George Lucas says, "Everybody has a talent, it's just a matter of moving around until you've discovered what it is." He goes on to define talent as "a combination of something you love a great deal...and something you have a natural ability to do very well." A good resume highlights a person's talents, whatever they may be. Use the Resource Links to explore different resume styles. Then chose a literary character, or a mythological character who has an interesting talent. Make a list of your character's talents, interests and experiences. What kinds of jobs would your character excel at? Would Hercules be any good at accounting? Or would he make a better gym teacher? Write a cover letter and a resume for your character, formatting them so that they can be emailed to prospective employers.
Career Research Project
"If you do work that you love, and work that fulfills you, the rest will come," says talk show host Oprah Winfrey. Read Oprah's interview in the gallery of business. What sacrifices did she make in order to do the kind of work she loved? Make a list of things you like to do and things you don't like to do. Use the Resource Links to investigate career paths that are compatible with your interests. Narrow your job options down to two or three and investigate what types of qualifications each job requires. Create a computer file for each career path, which includes lists of potential employers; on-line articles about successful people in that field and a paragraph about why you would be a good person for that job.
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