Last weekend I watched Empire of Dreams, the 2004 documentary on Star Wars (you can find it on youtube). I was never one of those huge fans of the series - of the two Harrison Fords I loved Indiana Jones [1] more than Han Solo. The documentary though is really great, the epic of Star Wars being even better than the Star Wars epic.
George Lucas is a Californian entrepreneur, and this is no coincidence. As I was watching pieces of the documentary with my daughter and discussing a future trip to Los Angeles, I couldn't avoid talking about dreams. Everybody has them. We have stories in Italy that are in no way less heroic and dramatic and grand as the story of Star Wars, Apple, Pixar and many other Californian dreams. But our stories follow typically a different trajectory: a young person starts working on the factory floor and goes through a series of hardships, he emerges as a smart fellow with ambitions bigger than working for others, over time he accumulates enough savings to break out and start his own firm, the firm develops from tiny workshop to global giant[2].
George Lucas dreamt about making a space movie. He wanted the ability and independence to produce his own story but needed the money to do so. He gets a budget from Fox, gathers a group of unproven, and mostly unknown, actors and special effects makers, bets on innovation that doesn't exist yet. It is a story of vision, near-death failures, last minute sprints and fixes and ultimate overwhelming, unexpected success. A great Californian story.
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[1] Riders of the Lost Ark is still one of my favourite movies. Nothing can beat archaeology mixed with history mixed with religion mixed with magic. And that soundtrack...
[2] With few differences, this is the story of Ferrari and Luxottica, among others.