.: The Greatest Speech Against the Special Edition was from George Lucas
In 1988, the American motion picture industry went through a legal upheaval that went all the way to Congress. Ted Turner had purchased the rights to studio libraries, such as
.: The Greatest Speech Against the Special Edition was from George Lucas
In 1988, the American motion picture industry went through a legal upheaval that went all the way to Congress. Ted Turner had purchased the rights to studio libraries, such as MGM and RKO, and was releasing classic films in colourized versions, to surprising success. Many of the directors of these films were still alive and protested this bastardization--but alas, they had no legal case. This inspired Hollywood to go to Washington. Directors like Steven Spielberg, James Stewart, Woody Allen, John Huston and George Lucas testified before Congress in order to enact legislation that would protect artists from having their work defaced as well as ensuring the public had access to classic films--their cultural heritage--in the original form. This was sought through entering the Berne Convention for the issue of Moral Rights, a law which exists in many European countries. The United States did eventually recognize the Berne treaty, but this wasn't extended to motion pictures because of their complex and collaborative nature. Hollywood had failed. Which is why George Lucas today gets away with altering the Star Wars films and suppressing their original forms--there was no law passed that would have stopped people like him.
His younger self, however, fought against the very things his future self would do, not even a decade later. In 1988, Lucas issued a statement before Congress. In it, he gives a very heartfelt and passionate speech about the importance of cinematic preservation, with a level of verve and anger that the reserved Lucas could have only found within himself through a prepared statement. He rails on copyright owners for distorting and altering films, and he highlights, more than once, that films belong to the public. Copyright owners are merely custodians, he argues, and it is to the public that cinematic heritage belongs. He urges Congress to enact law in order to protect American cultural heritage and preserve films as they were.
In August of this year, I wrote a lengthy article on the dearth of American film preservation law--I should have just let George Lucas write it!
He also offers an eerily prophetic warning: that technologies were on their way that would allow copyright owners to insert younger actors, alter the music and colour, and change scenes to suit the philosophic tastes of the moment, as well as making new digital negatives at the expense of the original version materials. In short, everything that Lucas would later do with the Special Editions, from the new musical sequence in Jedi, youthful Hayden Christensen replacing old Sebastian Shaw in the same film, Greedo shooting first out of political correctness, to the totally different colour scheme implemented in 2004. It also prefigures making the new Special Edition negative by cutting up the original negative, and then not releasing the original version except for the Laserdisc master from 1993. He saw all of this coming.
Other filmmakers offered compelling witness to Congress as well. "I do know this," stated screenwriter Bo Goldman. "I want my children and their children to see my movies the way they were written. When the Indian finally speaks in 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest', I want him to say 'Juicy Fruit' and not 'diet bubble gum.' On the long shot of the ward, I want to see the old hallucinator dancing in the back, and on the pan I don't want it to stop before it reaches the poor, lobotomized soul behind the cage." He continued: "Remember the first time you went with your parents to 'Snow White', with your girl to 'Singing in the Rain,' with your children to 'E.T.' You have the right to see it that way and only that way forever." Steven Spielberg stated similarly, "Let generations yet unborn see the films produced by our film artists as they were released." He recalls how in war ti