Walt Disney's Home, Los Angeles, CA
December 31, 1975
Walt sat hunched over on the floor, frantically working the controller of the Magnavox Odyssey that laid just a few feet away from him. His opponent, his daughter Diane, was doing the same, trying to score at least one point on her father. He was a natural at video games, it seemed.
"You see what I mean?" asked Walt, the question directed at his wife and various other guests to his New Year's party seated on the couch behind them. "Anyone can pick up and play these video games!"
"Yeah, but how can they have fun with them if their dad's a wizard at the game and can't be beat?" grumbled Diane, throwing down her controller as the game blared out that Player One (Walt) had won the game.
"That's not a problem with the game, that's just a problem with you all being horrible at these things," he retorted.
Roy piped up. "I'm not bad at them. I beat you at
Pong back at the studio."
"Roy," began Walt. "I'm probably a horrible person for telling you this, but I let you win that game."
"...Wh--what? But... but... I--"
"You're just as bad as the rest of them," laughed Walt.
"Hey Mom, have you tried to beat Dad?" asked Sharon, their other daughter.
Lilly just smiled and shook her head. "Oh, no. I'm not exactly interested in a little boy's game."
Her husband glared at her. "You calling me a little boy?"
"No, no, these things just don't interest me in the slightest."
"C'mon, just play it."
Lilly rolled her eyes. "Fine, but I'm not moving."
After much finagling with wires and chairs, the game was all set to play. Walt quickly scored several points, but his wife just as quickly figured out how to play and revealed her raw skill. Soon, the game was tied neck-and-neck, at match point. The ball bounced around the screen at a feverish pace, each player just barely launching it back and forth over and over. But finally, Lilly hit it... and Walt missed! The whole group let out a cheer.
"Haha! I did it!" exclaimed Lilly.
As his wife hopped up excitedly to the celebrating crowd, Walt should've felt mad. She had, after all, ended his win streak in
Pong and its lookalikes. But he didn't. No, Walt Disney was happy, as he looked at his happy group of friends and family who were celebrating over a video game. Because, in the end, that's what he was hoping to do with this new medium. He wanted it big, mainstream. He felt like he was on the cusp of something that could easily become as huge and well-respected as the motion picture.
Hopefully Walt could do that, without screwing it up.
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"
The Adventures of Luke Starkiller as taken from the Journal of the Whills, Saga I: The Star Wars."
--The title of the final draft of the script to
Star Wars, dated January 1, 1976
"
Holy SHIT! That title needs to be slimmed down more than my waist after Thanksgiving! Everything else is great, though. You're greenlit to start filming whenever your actual final script is finished."
--Walt Disney, in a January 1976 memo to George Lucas
"
Finally managed to work the sequel rights out of Walt's hands. I don't know what I would've done if American Graffiti hadn't done so well, but that was all the leverage I needed."
--George Lucas, in a March 1976 phone call with Steven Spielberg
"
George has his own production company, right? Called... what... isn't it LucasArts? Yeah, we should try and buy it out. I don't want him or his ideas escaping us."
--Walt Disney, from a March 1976 conversation with Roy Disney
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The Desert, Chott el Djerid, Tunisia
March 30, 1976
George Lucas had the worst luck.
He and his crew had arrived in North Africa to shoot the Tatooine parts of
The Star Wars a little over a week ago. The first couple of days, everything had gone terribly. The second Anthony Daniels had stepped onto the Tunisian sands, the leg to his suit had shattered and drove plastic deep into his foot. It didn't help that the suit basically blinded him as well, what with the eyes of the mask being covered in gold to "prevent corrosion" (Lucas would be firing whoever came up with that idea). All of his electronics were going haywire, and Kenny Baker couldn't control any of the R2-D2 units.
So things had to get better, right?
Wrong.
The next day, it started raining. In a desert in Tunisia. A place that, on average, gets about 0.6 inches of rainfall
annually, if they're lucky.
Now, Lucas sat hunched over inside, staring out the window as the rain churned the sands into soup and the earth and sky blurred together in a mass of gray. Word from the construction crew over in Tozeur hadn't been good, and a process that was supposed to take six weeks to make the desert over there ideal for his vision of the film was going to take another two thanks to this downpour.
"Oh, I should've just kept Tatooine a jungle planet..." sighed Lucas, head in his hands.
The movie was turning out to be impossible to shoot in the same vein as
Jaws and their mechanical sharks. But where Spielberg had to suffer through most of shooting with Bruce, Lucas just kept on telling himself that these desert scenes would be over soon, and they could then head back over to LA and shoot the indoor stuff on a nice, air-conditioned soundstage where problems could be fixed in an instant.
"Mister Lucas...?" called a voice.
George Lucas spun around. "Yeah?"
"Uh, the rain's stopping. We were wondering if we should start getting ready to film now or--"
Lucas looked back out the window, and saw the blazing African sun emerging from the thick cover of gray clouds. "Yes! Go! We need to get more shots before monsoon season starts again!"
The other man ran out of the room, and George Lucas smiled. Things were looking up for sure.