Found something interesting about "The Flannel Shirted One", one George "I can't leave my own movies the fuck alone" Lucas.
This is from Lucas' statement pp.482-490 of a document bearing the title The Berne Convention: Hearings Before the Subcomittee on Patents, Copyrights and Trademarks of the Committee on the Judiciary United States Senate. One Hundreth Congress. Second session on s.1301 and s.1971. February 18 and March 3, 1988.
As some one who is pissed off at Greedo shooting first and all the planed changes he's talking about making in the Blu-Ray re-release of Star Wars...I have to address this. My comments are in blue.
"My name is George Lucas. I am a writer, director, and producer of motion pictures and Chairman of the Board of Lucasfilm Ltd., a multi-faceted entertainment corporation.
I am not here today as a writer-director, or as a producer, or as the chairman of a corporation. I've come as a citizen of what I believe to be a great society that is in need of a moral anchor to help define and protect its intellectual and cultural heritage. It is not being protected.
This from a man who can't leave his own movies alone without picking at them like a 5-year-old with an itchy scab.
The destruction of our film heritage, which is the focus of concern today, is only the tip of the iceberg. American law does not protect our painters, sculptors, recording artists, authors, or filmmakers from having their lifework distorted, and their reputation ruined. If something is not done now to clearly state the moral rights of artists, current and future technologies will alter, mutilate, and destroy for future generations the subtle human truths and highest human feeling that talented individuals within our society have created.
And what about the talented people who have had their work cut out of the films? What about the modelers that have had their carefully painstakenly done scenes replaced by some CGI simply because you have a hard on for whomp-rats and wanted them scurrying around Mos Eisley.
A copyright is held in trust by its owner until it ultimately reverts to public domain. American works of art belong to the American public; they are part of our cultural history.
And yet you seem hell bent for leather to change our cultural history every time a new technology comes about. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_changes_in_Star_Wars_re-releases#Blu-ray_edition
One change that has already been confirmed for the Blu-ray release is the replacement of the Yoda puppet in The Phantom Menace with a CGI model.[13] Lucasfilm also confirmed that Darth Vader now shouts "No" when he saves Luke from Emperor Palpatine's Force lightning attack in Return of the Jedi.[14]
Yeah, and what about the talents of Frank Oz? What about his performance of Yoda that you're replacing with CGI? What did Frank do? Cut you off one morning? Parked in your space? Farted in your general direction? Took a shit on your corn flakes? What did he do to piss you off so much that you decided to delete him from the movie?
And are you going to stop there? Why not delete him out of Empire and Jedi while you're at it?
People who alter or destroy works of art and our cultural heritage for profit or as an exercise of power are barbarians, and if the laws of the United States continue to condone this behavior, history will surely classify us as a barbaric society. The preservation of our cultural heritage may not seem to be as politically sensitive an issue as "when life begins" or "when it should be appropriately terminated," but it is important because it goes to the heart of what sets mankind apart. Creative expression is at the core of our humanness. Art is a distinctly human endeavor. We must have respect for it if we are to have any respect for the human race.
You know, I get it that these are his films and this is his intellectual property. But with Star Wars helping him achieve a net worth of $3.2 Billion (That's Billion with a "B" boys and girls)...one has to wonder the source.
These current defacements are just the beginning. Today, engineers with their computers can add color to black-and-white movies, change the soundtrack, speed up the pace, and add or subtract material to the philosophical tastes of the copyright holder.
Hrm...Pot, Kettle...black?
Tommorrow, more advanced technology will be able to replace actors with "fresher faces," or alter dialogue and change the movement of the actor's lips to match.
This is from the guy who replaced Sebastian Shaw's Jedi-ghost with Hayden Christensen's when we had the scene at the end of "Jedi". Let's go back to the bit where people and their hard work is defaced. What about the acting of Mr. Shaw. You on one hand say that the work of all the talented people needs to be preserved and on the other hand wipe him out of the picture. What's next? Taking him completely out of the movie and replacing him with Hayden in scene where Luke pulls his mask off?
It will soon be possible to create a new "original" negative with whatever changes or alterations the copyright holder of the moment desires. The copyright holders, so far, have not been completely diligent in preserving the original negatives of films they control. In order to reconstruct old negatives, many archivists have had to go to Eastern bloc countries where American films have been better preserved.
Funny, Lucas can't seem to be able to pull the original negatives out of his ass for "A New Hope".
In the future it will become even easier for old negatives to become lost and be "replaced" by new altered negatives. This would be a great loss to our society. Our cultural history must not be allowed to be rewritten.
Yeah...show me any retailer, online or brick and mortar, that has a copy of the original, unedited versions of the original trilogy. Since the old VHS tapes are degrading to the point of not being worth it, the only way I can see the original copy is to find someone who has the old Laserdisk version on ebay and then try to find a working laserdisk player.
And frankly those are harder to find than a fart in a jacuzzi.
There is nothing to stop American films, records, books, and paintings from being sold to a foreign entity or egotistical gangsters and having them change our cultural heritage to suit their personal taste.
Hell! For that matter there is nothing stopping YOU either.
I accuse the companies and groups, who say that American law is sufficient, of misleading the Congress and the People for their own economic self-interest.
I accuse the corporations, who oppose the moral rights of the artist, of being dishonest and insensitive to American cultural heritage and of being interested only in their quarterly bottom line, and not in the long-term interest of the Nation.
The public's interest is ultimately dominant over all other interests. And the proof of that is that even a copyright law only permits the creators and their estate a limited amount of time to enjoy the economic fruits of that work.
And how many people have been screaming about the "Greedo shooting first" edit that you have violently ignored? There are hundreds of T-shirts, web sites, forums, and letter writing campaigns all complaining about it and you do the whole "Talk to the hand" bit to them.
Let me expand on that a little bit. In the original, Han Solo was a scoundrel. A smuggler that only really looked out for number one. Himself. He was as much a part of the culture in Mos Eisley of "A retched hive of scum and villainy". Him shooting Greedo to save his own ass was the beginning of his story. through out the trilogy you get to see Han evolve into someone who starts looking at the bigger picture and starts letting in people he cares about. Leia certainly as a love interest, but Lando, Luke and others as his circle of friends. And he stops reacting and looking out for himself and actively joins the rebellion and leads a team that was crucial in the destruction of the second Death Star.
Making Greedo shoot first takes that away from Han and his development from scum to hero of the Alliance.
Not to mention having Greedo miss at that range made him look like he had to be a cock-eyed, half stoned twit that shouldn't be allowed anything more dangerous than a marshmallow.
Seriously watch it! There is no way you can miss THAT badly at that range. Anyone who has held a gun knows this. If you don't like or own guns...do this. Take your fingers and make a gun with them. Sit across a small table from someone, look them in the eyes and "point" the "gun" at them without aiming. Now look down. Are you pointing at their chest or are you pointing one foot over and one foot to the left of their left shoulder?
Odds are you're closer to their chest than Greedo was.
There are those who say American law is sufficient. That's an outrage! It's not sufficient! If it were sufficient, why would I be here? Why would John Houston have been so studiously ignored when he protested the colorization of "The Maltese Falcon?" Why are films cut up and butchered?
I don't know why you were there back then but you need to lose the brain-eating flannel and go back there again.
Attention should be paid to this question of our soul, and not simply to accounting procedures. Attention should be paid to the interest of those who are yet unborn, who should be able to see this generation as it saw itself, and the past generation as it saw itself.
That's a telling point there. My step-children do not know what Mos Eisley looked like to me the first time I saw it and likely never will. To my kids Greedo shot first and think I'm daft for being pissed about it. And when the children of my friends now born get to see Star Wars, they'll yet another new movie and wonder what we're talking about the past DVD release.
I hope you have the courage to lead America in acknowledging the importance of American art to the human race, and accord the proper protection for the creators of that art--as it is accorded them in much of the rest of the world communities."
And I hope you Lucas will one day have the courage to look back at this statement THAT YOU MADE and reflect on what you have done to a major milestone in Geek Culture.
