Twenty-four hours after the new trailer for J.J. Abrams’ Star Wars: The Force Awakens debuted online and damn near broke Twitter, the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival gave New York City’s biggest fans of the franchise the best possible post-trailer gift: the mastermind himself, George Lucas, in person inside the Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC). Making the sweetness even sweeter, Lucas was interviewed on stage as part of this year’s Tribeca Talks® series by Stephen Colbert.
And over the course of one laid-back, informative, and often-hilarious hour, Lucas explained his next steps in film making when an audience member asked if he’s interested in going back to smaller, weird experimental movies like his 1971 debut, THX 1138, now that he’s sold the Star Wars franchise away to Disney. “That is exactly what I’m doing,” he quickly responded, triggering a round of applause from the crowd.
In Lucas’ opinion, there are two types of experimental filmmakers. The first are those whose humble bank accounts require them to scrape every dollar they can together and lay it all on the line in the name of their left-of-center art. Lucas, obviously, doesn’t fall in that category. “The other way to do it is become very rich, take the money I would otherwise use to build a yacht, put it in a vault,” and use those mountains of cash to fund his own experimental cinema. Lucas adds how you can experiment with art except films because movies are so expensive. However now with the rise of digital technology the costs have gone down and the Internet now gives experimental showcase a space to showcase their work.
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