Before in search of the lost ark production had even begun, George Lucas asked young screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan to go back and write The Empire Strikes Back.
It’s one of those movie-making factoids that seems impossible to believe: the idea that George Lucas would have handed over the keys to his two fledgling franchises to an up-and-coming screenwriter with just two previous film credits. And when you talk to Lawrence Kasdan in 2022, he laughs and shakes his head. More than four decades later, even he can’t believe it.
“I had already written raiders for him,” says Kasdan. Reverse. “And then George says, ‘Now I want you to write Empire.’ I was shocked. I was immediately thrust into that world.”
42 years old, Kasdan is still in that world. The last credit of his is the direction light and magic, a deep dive docuseries on Disney+ that lovingly tells the entire story of the famous VFX house Industrial Light & Magic. But he is also responsible for co-writing the script for the force awakens (2015), and co-writing Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) with his son Jonathan Kasdan.
When you close your eyes and think of Lawrence Kasdan’s scripts, Immediately, the connective tissue between his writing style and his dialogue becomes apparent. When Kasdan is writing, the characters don’t just say things that are relatable, they say things that you wish you could say.
“I’m interested in people.”
“Everything I’ve done over the years is the result of everything I’ve seen, heard and experienced,” says Kasdan. “I am interested in people. I want to know the details. I want to stand behind what they say and try to see what they really are. You know, it’s not always easy. Whether I’m writing a character, or doing a documentary and interviewing someone, I want to know what drove them.”
Kasdan’s mention of working on documentaries is, of course, a reference to the new docuseries. light and magicthat humanizes certain players behind the scenes with Lucasfilm like never before.
Let’s face it, there have been many of Star Wars documentaries, and the prospect of making one focused on the story of a single special effects house could have been difficult. But Kasdan’s trademark wit, style and ability to compress information and convey it quickly is what he does. light and magic click. Although many of the main actors are outlined and given new dimensions, from Phil Tippet to John Dykstra to Dennis Muren — Kasdan also maintains light and magic centered on George Lucas. The mere existence of new interviews with George Lucas discussing the creation of ILM is all you need to know about why. light and magic is incredible.
I would be more interested in doing other movienot a T.V. series.”
“When I started making the big movies, I had George steering the ship,” says Kasdan. “Her imperative of him was to do the best you can think of. Akira Kurosawa, who is my favorite director, used to say when he was writing, ‘What’s the best thing that can happen next?’ George is from that school.
Inspirational words aside, Kasdan’s sentiment leads to a shocking revelation about how the first Lucasfilm movies were actually made: the writers didn’t care about the budget. In our conversation, Kasdan makes the scripts of in search of the lost ark Y The Empire Strikes Back they weren’t limited by thinking about how much anything would cost.
“It had nothing to do with the budget,” Kasdan said. “And that’s one of the geniuses at ILM. They scaled it up or down to the budget they had and still came up with miraculous things. And you see movies that were made for very little on ILM or giant movies, and the quality is the same.”
Under Kasdan’s able guidance, light and magic it’s a delicious jolt of nostalgia about things you might not have known you were nostalgic about. While it’s fascinating to learn about the development of each specific type of technology, Kasdan keeps ILM’s story focused on people, creating characters as only he can.
But will he ever return to one of the characters he possibly formed? Could Lawrence Kasdan return to writing dialogue for Han Solo? When she was asked directly about a Han Solos broadcast TV series, Kasdan turned her down.
“No, we don’t talk about that,” he says. “I have never been particularly attracted to expansion [Solo] in a show. But I do talk to Jon. [Kasdan] and rum [Howard] a lot about what went right and what went wrong with the Only experience. I would be more interested in doing another movie, not one T.V. series.”
light and magic is streaming now on Disney+.