From Publishers Weekly
The life and career of the one-man cinematic revolution that is George Lucas gets a lush visual treatment in Hearn's frankly adoring and uncritical coffee-table book, though there's plenty of smart text underpinning the artwork as well. The first two of the book's eight chapters are best, covering Lucas's childhood and student filmmaking days at USC, which culminated in the 1971 masterpiece
THX 1138 and 1973's iconic
American Graffiti. Hearn deftly portrays this heady period in Lucas's life, in which the director was furiously experimenting with the form and working inside the short-lived San Francisco filmmaking collective American Zoetrope with pals Francis Ford Coppola, master editor Walter Murch and legendary cinematographer Haskell Wexler. This section is elaborately illustrated with photographs, publicity stills and script excerpts, and the photos of young Ron Howard, Richard Dreyfuss and Lucas himself will amuse fans. Once Hearn begins to delve into Lucas's rise into the cinematic stratosphere with
Star Wars, and the creation of his mini Hollywood in the Bay Area, however, the book fails. Hearn's worshipful tone doesn't allow him to satisfyingly explain how this long-haired rebel turned into the mini-mogul that he is today. Still, this is a crucial addition to the libraries of not just
Star Wars aficionados but all lovers of modern cinema.
(Mar.)
From School Library Journal
Adult/High School–With this impeccably constructed coffee-table book, movie aficionados have the opportunity to explore 20th-century science fiction and American culture through the work of an immensely talented director. Film clips, scripts, and interviews help readers to review his vast output. Hearn describes Lucas's childhood, his college filmmaking career at USC, his work with the American Zoetrope collective of San Francisco, his friendship with director Francis Ford Coppola, the making of the classic coming-of-age film
American Graffiti, and more. The volume includes photographs of Harrison Ford, Ron Howard, Cindy Williams, and Billy Dee Williams; reproductions of film posters and publicity stills; and the action-packed, movie-shooting schedules of
Star Wars and the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, as well as a history of Lucas's educational foundation. Although the book is highly readable, the author sometimes dips into sentimentality and hero worship, and he only briefly discusses the director's movie-business enterprises (Lucasfilm, Ltd., Skywalker Ranch, Industrial Light Magic, and LucasArts), known as the San Francisco Bay Area's mini Hollywood.
–ayo dayo, Chinn Park Regional Library, Prince William, VA Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.