Word: spielbergisms
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WATCHING Raiders of the Lost Ark is somewhat akin to strapping yourself into a P-58 Mustang, which, as any old fighter pilot will tell you, was as close as you would ever want to come to strapping yourself to a cannonball. The Spielberg Lucas summertime epic starts off at a hellish pace and then refuses to slow down: there are Nazis and naked savages, reptiles and archeologists, pyramids, legends, car chases, curses, and even--albeit abstractly--a visit from the Supreme Creator. It is, in short something of an adrenalin mosaic: the first movie in a long time that...
Lucas, unlike most producers, can do anything that needs to be done around a production. He ran a second camera for Spielberg on one of his infrequent visits to a Raiders location. Uncredited, he supervises all editing and is final arbiter of everything turned out by Industrial Light and Magic, his special-effects shop down the road. A man who believes in careful preplanning-all his films are meticulously story-boarded-he simply cannot be conned into spending money needlessly by a careless line producer or a runaway director. Typical is his attitude toward casting. "All I care about...
This does not imply a lack of generosity when it comes to sharing credit or profits. When Empire struck gold, for example, Lucas gave 25% of the windfall to his coworkers. And he is not threatened by talent, as insecure executives are. Says Spielberg, who went substantially over budget on his last three pictures: "Raiders was wonderful because George is in no way intimidated by me. Also, it is hard to spend your friend's money." All the friend intended to spend, in any case, was $20 million - but he insisted that it look like $30 million...
...strong is the imagery, so compelling the pace, so sharply defined are the characters, that one leaves the Lost Ark with the feeling that, like the best films of childhood, it will take up permanent residence in memory. Such filmgoing experiences are, of course, what turned Lucas and Spielberg into film makers. The latter speaks particularly of the lasting impression Disney's Fantasia made on him - "life seen through different eyes...
...Spielberg has made the kind of movie Walt Disney might have made had he lived into the 1980s, an entrancing combination of pure cinematic movement, good-humored lack of pretense and allusive fantasy. And he has been collaborating with the man who is Disney's logical successor. For with the old master, George Lucas shares certain values - Wasp, smalltown, morally conservative - and certain talents - for technological innovation, cost-conscious super vision of team creative effort and responsible merchandising of motion picture offshoots. Lucas also holds to Disney's vision of a community of creative film makers living...