Interview with George Lucas and Bad Astronomy

[athanasopolous]

Hi!
This is my first message here.

I love this web site. I might be influenced by it on one of my web sites.

Something I have noticed was the striking similarity between this image:

and this image:


Since Astronomy fans seem to be fans of Star Wars, and because I USED to admire the web master, I posted this on www.badastronomy.com in their forum area under "bad TV bad movie..." area. The Bad Astronomy must not have liked me disrespecting The Great Lucas and so I got banned from his forum.

In photo shoppe you can combine images without doing any other manipulation. I did this and I got this:



With all the infinite number of possible head positions, I find it almost impossible that this could be just chance. Especially with George's history of borrowing from popular culture.

Since I was banned from the "BABB". I will ask the geeks, to join me in chatting here. And I will beg the knowledgeable, intelligent screenplay writers and other intellectuals to go register at www.badastronomy.com and continue the debate in my behalf.

To further my proof, I have been in contact with LucasFilms for an interview. It would be a great overall subject matter: How Popular Culture has influenced Star Wars. I would like you to join me, Jitterbug Woman. Let's colaborate! It would be good for George after the Star Wars saga I think.

[athanasopolous]

Gee.
I thought I would have gotten someone to reply. I posted this yesterday.
People don't post many replies here, I notice. Only original posting are here mostly. I guess people here think originally.
Anyway, someone please tell me if you agree or disagree. Isn't there a striking similarity? Don't be shy. A little yes or no is all I am looking for.

[Kristen Brennan]

Athanasopolous:

1. those are strong image comparisons. I suspect that shot of Annakin is meant to echo the similar shot of Darth Maul when he's rapping w/Palpy in Couruscant. Both images may have been inspired by that National Geographic - the filmmakers seemed to draw from NG at least once before, for one of Padme's costumes for Phantom Menace. At a guess, I'd say 65% chance you're right about that image being an inspiration.

2. I have no plans to attempt to contat or interview Lucas. I'm writing a book about where I think Lucas got his ideas, and for many reasons (not the least of which is legal), even if Lucas had extra time to chat about it with a mostly-unknown webmaster (i'm sure he's deluged with interview requests, and deserves respect for his time), he would be strongly disincented to reveal more of his sources than he has already (he's been VERY generous about revealing his sources in interviews - much more than the average creative person). On the other hand, given that the book will be mostly educated guesses it shouldn't cause problems for LucasFilm - in a pinch they could always imply that my guesses are wrong. I'm sure many will be wrong.

3. Your observation is strong. I too once had trouble getting people to take my ideas as seriously as I'd hoped on the message boards. Given that you have strong ideas, perhaps your communication style could use a little tweaking? Corny as it sounds, a good starting place is the famous book 'How to Win Friends and Influence People', published by Dale Carnegie in 1936. You can get it at nearly any library. Here's a quick summary by the author:
www.westegg.com/unmaintained/carnegie/win-friends.html

At first I used books like this to learn how to communicate my ideas better. After awhile, though, I developed the habit of always considering the other person's needs and feelings when speaking, and I realized that it wasn't merely my presentation of ideas that was changing, but the way I *formed* those ideas. Empathy (considering the feelings of others) hones our thoughts into a more useful form, scraping away our Ego-filter and showing us the deeper, more universal stuff. It becomes a kind of power - not power over others, but power to shape our life into something better. The Force, kinda.

Thanks for writing and best of luck!

- Kristen B., webmeister