The Rolling Stone interviews - Jann Wenner [64]
The film’s success should guarantee some success in the merchandising program you’ve launched.
One of my motivating factors for doing the film, along with all the other ones, was that I love toys and games. And so I figured, gee, I could start a kind of a store that sold comic art, and sold 78 records, or old rock & roll records that I like, and antique toys and a lot of things that I am really into; stuff that you can’t buy in regular stores. I also like to create games and things, so that was part of the movie, to be able to generate toys and things. Also, I figured the merchandising along with the sequels would give me enough income over a period of time so that I could retire from professional filmmaking and go into making my own kind of movies, my own sort of abstract, weird, experimental stuff.
So now you want to sell toys and games, and make esoteric films?
Yes. The film is a success and I think the sequels will be a success. I want to be able to have a store where I can sell all the great things that I want. I’m also a diabetic and can’t eat sugar and I want to have a little store that sells good hamburgers and sugarless ice cream because all the people who can’t eat sugar deserve it. You need the time just to be able to retire and do those things, and you need to have an income.
‘Star Wars’ is sci-fi that taps into an epic and heroic tradition.
It has always been the same thing and it is the most significant kind of fiction as far as I am concerned. It’s too bad that it has gotten that sleazy comic-book reputation, which I think we outgrew a long time ago. I think science fiction still has a tendency to react against that image and try to make itself so pious and serious, which is what I tried to knock out in making Star Wars. Buck Rogers is just as valid as Arthur C. Clarke in his own way; I mean, they are both sides of the same thing. Kubrick did the strongest thing in film in terms of the rational side of things, and I’ve tried to do the most in the irrational side of things because I think we need it. Again we are going to go with Stanley’s ships but hopefully we are going to be carrying my laser sword and have the Wookie at our side.
So now you have made your bid.
So I made my bid to try to make everything a little more romantic. Jesus, I’m hoping that if the film accomplishes anything, it takes some ten-year-old kid and turns him on so much to outer space and the possibilities of romance and adventure. Not so much an influence that would create more Wernher von Brauns or Einsteins, but just infusing them into serious exploration of outer space and convincing them that it’s important. Not for any rational reason, but a totally irrational and romantic reason.
I would feel very good if someday they colonize Mars when I am ninety-three years old or whatever, and the leader of the first colony says: “I really did it because I was hoping there would be a Wookie up here.”
JOHNNY CARSON
by Timothy White
March 22, 1979
I think that one of the things that is the most innovative about ‘The Tonight Show’ is the way that you work with the camera. The camera and, as a result, the audience become accomplices or conspirators with you, to where we feel a sense of intimacy.
Well, television is an intimate medium. I’m not conscious when I use the camera. I know it’s there. I use it like another person and do a reaction at it—lift an eyebrow or shrug or whatever. I’m conscious of it, but I’m not conscious of it.
There is a real sense of . . . naturalness in the way you work with the camera that makes the air of intimacy so convincing.
The Tonight Show is one of the few places on television where one can see stars, prominent people, and you’ll get a glimpse behind their public personas.
Sometimes you cannot penetrate them. You know they will do what they want to do. You try to break through