George Lucas Star Wars VHS Interviews Get Digital This Week

Back in the year 1995, before Star Wars was released as a set of "Special Edition" movies, before the idea that a set of prequels would be created was made solid, the film series was released to VHS. On these tapes – on the 1995 edition of these tapes, that is – a long-running interview was included before each film began. The first of these interviews was published digitally – officially – for the first time today.

What you're going to see is film critic Leonard Maltin speak with the creator of Star Wars on a variety of points, starting with the initial process between the scripts for the films being written up and a studio picking the story to be made into a film – or films, as it were.

It's also here that you're to understand that Lucas developed backstories for both Obi-Wan and Darth Vader alongside the original Star Wars movie, later re-sub-titled "A New Hope". Taking Flash Gordon as his inspiration, Lucas created a script that eventually had to be chopped into three, then re-developed into a saga much more full than the original treatment.

Star Wars was a film George Lucas has no small amount of trials with – no studio wanted to have any part of it until Alan Ladd, Jr., at 20th Century Fox decided it was time for a space epic. Having just (successfully) launched American Graffiti, George Lucas was well on his way to success – a success he never really expected.

This interview series is being published by the official Star Wars team and is expected to be released in either 3 or 4 parts. It's not likely that these interviews will ever see their way to another on-disk publishing, but here they are at last, in as "good" a quality as you're going to find them, tugging at your memory strings.