Wookieepedia

READ MORE

Wookieepedia
Register
Advertisement
Wookieepedia

"That night he and George had kind of a verbal duel in a Chinese restaurant, which was pretty amazing to have witnessed. But out of that conflict came a wonderful contribution. De Palma inspired the new crawl, which gave the audience some kind of story geography."
―Steven Spielberg, on the discussion between De Palma and George Lucas about Star Wars[1]

Brian De Palma (born James Giacinto DePalma on September 11, 1940 in Newark, New Jersey) is a prolific American film director. His is known for films such as Scarface, The Untouchables, and Carlito's Way.

Biography[]

"[…] Brian was saying, 'What's all this Force shit?! Where's all the blood when they shoot people?' If you know Brian, that's the way he is. He does that to everybody; he's very caustic. […] Brian was the one who actually sat down and helped me fix the roll-up, he and Jay Cocks. The next day we rewrote the roll-up; Brian dictated it to Jay. He typed it up and it got rewritten a couple of times after that."
―George Lucas, on Brian De Palma's response to a screening of a rough cut of Star Wars[1]

He is notable in Star Wars history as the director of Carrie, since the pre-production process for Carrie coincided with that for Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope, then simply titled Star Wars. De Palma and George Lucas held joint auditions for the two films, and according to Carrie Fisher, De Palma interviewed the actors instead of Lucas.[2] It is frequently rumored that De Palma would have cast Fisher in Carrie's title role, but she refused to do the required nude scenes. Fisher denied this in an interview with Premiere magazine.[source?] It's also rumored that De Palma mocked an early cut with unfinished effects of Star Wars during a meeting where Lucas showed the film to some of his friends and that only Steven Spielberg saw potential in the project, though De Palma has affirmed this isn't true yet he did rib about the concept of the Force as he felt that it didn't sound like a great name for a power of spiritual guidance. He later admitted to be wrong after the film was released.[3]

After seeing a rough cut of Star Wars in mid-February of 1977,[1] De Palma disliked the six-paragraph opening crawl, and helped Lucas shorten and rewrite the crawl into the three paragraphs seen in the final release.[4] As Star Wars was meant to be the saga's fourth chapter with characters the audience still didn't know about, De Palma recommended Lucas to include a crawl reminiscent to those of the Flash Gordon movies, but as Lucas' initial crawl was too long, De Palma and screenwriter Jay Cocks rewrote it to make it shorter and more meaningful.[3]

Filmography[]

Year Title Contribution Notes
1977 Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope Rewrote opening crawl[1] Uncredited[5]

Sources[]

Notes and references[]

External links[]

Advertisement