Force-Fed Inspiration

Some movies change the way we look at movies (“Citizen Kane”); some become must-see events (“E.T.”). But few films have had the profound personal and cultural impact of the original “Star Wars.”

With the opening of the long-awaited prequel “Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace” just 17 days away--but who’s counting?--we asked some Hollywood types about how the first “Star Wars” rocked their world and influenced their films.

John Lasseter

Director (“Toy Story,” “A Bug’s Life”)

Here at Pixar, a majority of animators and filmmakers and effects people of a certain age--almost 100%--were influenced to do this because of “Star Wars.” For me, I was already at Cal Institute of the Arts studying animation. I saw “Star Wars” the first week and waited five hours in line in front of the [Mann’s] Chinese. Seeing the film was one of the two great moments in my life in determining what I wanted to do. The first was finding the book “The Art of Animation” in my freshman year of high school and realizing that people could make cartoons for a living. Seeing “Star Wars” reinforced my desire.

What excited me is what it did for me as an audience member. It was a thrilling experience, and by the climax I was literally shaking. I looked around and thought, “I believe that I could do this with animation too--reach kids, adults and teenagers.” “Star Wars” was smart in how it combined the cinematic elements you’d seen before but with a twist. It felt familiar but it was like nothing you’d ever seen before.

Kevin Smith

Writer-director (“Clerks,” “Chasing Amy,” “Dogma”)

The “Star Wars” movies taught me the importance of creating one’s own universe or mythology. The big influence [of “Star Wars”] on the films I’ve done is how closely related the characters I’ve written are to the characters from my other films. Just like in the “Star Wars” movies, everyone in our flicks knows each other. And with our latest film, “Dogma,” the Lucas influence is probably the most noticeable in the complete fantasy world we created, which is inhabited by angels and demons rather than Jedi knights and Death Stars. And putting aside professional influence, I got married at Skywalker Ranch, for cryin’ out loud. Talk about the Force.

Adam Rifkin

Writer (“Mousehunt,” “Small Soldiers”); writer-director (“Detroit Rock City”)

I was always a huge movie fan since I was a little kid and making movies with my friends. But “Star Wars” was the first time in any of our collective experiences that we saw the culture at large around us becoming obsessed with a movie. We had our own movies we were obsessed with like “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein” and the “Godzilla” movies. “Star Wars” was the first time it wasn’t just us.

We sensed the phenomenon around us, which made it so exciting, because suddenly we weren’t outcast movie nerds. The whole world suddenly became movie geeks. It was exciting to see that a movie could influence the entire world. That’s why we would wait in line and why we bought all the paraphernalia. My favorite horror magazine started doing articles about how George Lucas was influenced by some of the same movies as I was.

It was also the first time a movie for my generation didn’t speak down to us. Other movies for us would treat you like an idiot. . . . You had to pay attention. It had a mythology. We felt so cool because we could understand it and get into the mythology.

Michael Bay

Director (“Armageddon,” “The Rock”)

There are a couple of seminal movies in my life, and “Star Wars” was one of them. It was a low-budget movie but so inventive, a western in space. I remember when I saw it--I was 12--and I was totally intrigued by how they got the visual effects. It was a whole new world of filmmaking. When I was 15, I got a little summer job working at Lucasfilm, filing art work for the “Star Wars” trilogy. I remember that the plans of how they made Yoda’s house really intrigued me. . . . I got to see how they did the magic. And to a kid that’s pretty exciting.

Gale Anne Hurd

Producer (“Aliens,” “The Terminator,” “Dante’s Peak”)

In college I’d loved movies but couldn’t see myself pursuing a career in film. I was a sci-fi enthusiast, but other than [Stanley] Kubrick’s “2001,” it was clear that Hollywood didn’t take the genre seriously. Then the “Star Wars” phenomenon hit; I lined up opening weekend at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco and took the ride of my moviegoing life. Lucas showed me it was possible to make a technologically inspired, compelling and emotionally satisfying fantasy film. Within a year I was in Hollywood working for Roger Corman, hoping to mount my own science-fiction film, and in 1984 that dream came to pass when I produced my first film, “The Terminator.”

Andrew Fleming

Director (“The Craft,” “Dick”)

I was 13 and I lived in San Francisco, and I remember waiting on line for hours. I was in such a frenzy that I actually got sick to my stomach. I was a sci-fi freak--Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury. In the days “Star Wars” came out you didn’t know that much about a movie. You saw a commercial or a trailer and that was it. There was an aura of mystery around it.

Just from the technical standpoint, “Star Wars” raised the bar. I already had aspirations of being a filmmaker. It was the first time I watched a movie and thought, “I have no idea how they did that.” It was so seamless, that even when I found out how they’d done it, I couldn’t tell.

Stephen Sommers

Director (“The Mummy”)

“Star Wars” was a riveting experience. I remember being in my hometown theater in Minnesota and feeling the entire audience gasp at the first shot as the big spaceship flies overhead. I’d never heard an entire theater react like that. From that moment, George Lucas had us. I went back to see it as many times as my parents would let me.

I don’t know that I thought of becoming a filmmaker then because when you grow up in a small town in Minnesota, you never believe you’re going to write and direct Hollywood movies someday. But “Star Wars” kind of made that inevitable. I was a big Michael Curtiz fan--”Captain Blood,” “Robin Hood.” And “Stars Wars” showed me that you could still do romantic, swashbuckling movies and not have them appear like period pieces.

Bryan Singer

Director (“The Usual Suspects,” “Apt Pupil”)

I think at the time the thing that amazed me the most about “Star Wars” was its scale. I was blown away from the opening titles--”a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.” I can still quote the movie word for word. I remember thinking, “Oh my God, everything I’m going to see happened before I was born.” In retrospect, that’s what helped me buy into that universe and helped me believe it. The film took liberties with special effects and sound and the whole vision of the future, but it was all OK because it happened in some other time and some other place far away from me, so I believed it.

“Star Wars” also helped me understand the use of the thematic orchestral score, helped me appreciate classical music and my parents’ love of it. . . . The film also evoked mythology and a view on religion in an accessible way for a young boy--the sort of Arthurian legend and the religious notion of the Force.

Mark Gill

West Coast president, Miramax Films

I was in high school when I saw “Star Wars.” But it only darkened my view of the taste of the average moviegoer. There were enormous lines in the small town in Michigan where I grew up, the sort you’d never seen before. There’d been “Jaws” a year or two before, but this was a whole different league. I didn’t understand the long lines then, and I don’t understand them now. It was the talk of my school for a month with kids whose attention span in high school is eight seconds. I didn’t get it.

Doug Liman

Director (“Go,” “Swingers”)

Since “Star Wars” there have been films that have captured parts of what that film did but none that so completely excited my imagination. George Lucas was impressive both as a director and a producer. He spent his money on things that count and not on the things that don’t count, as Hollywood tends to do more and more.

Lucas approached “Star Wars” as a great story and had to come up with the technology to convey it rather than the other way around. Very few people out there have his brilliance. Like Jim Cameron, he comes up with the idea first and then creates the technology to achieve it. Other films have come along that are flashy and had cool special effects, but a year later there’s nothing left, because others have copied the effects, but there was no good story underneath.

Wes Anderson

Director (“Bottle Rocket,” “Rushmore”)

For me the influence started with the “Star Wars” action figures and all the materials. I didn’t see the movie until later and then I lied, saying I’d seen it 20 times. We did a play of “Star Wars” at my school, a one-act version, that was kind of a disaster. The climax had Luke Skywalker swinging across this chasm, a stunt, and plays don’t usually lend themselves to stunts.

The thing about “Star Wars” was the fact that they started with [episode] No. 4, which was mysterious, strange. It made you believe there was a real history that went with it. Harrison Ford was our favorite [Wes’ and his brother’s]. He was the most fallible and the one who was the funniest and he seemed the coolest. And he had a better gun than the other guys.

Tom Jacobson

Former studio executive; producer (“Mighty Joe Young”)

It was my first year in Hollywood and I saw it opening day, the first show at the Chinese. I was working at Roger Corman, as second assistant director on Ron Howard’s “Grand Theft Auto,” and I got a three-day job as floor director on a publicity junket at Fox for “The Other Side of Midnight”--the movie they were really excited about--and a sci-fi movie called “Star Wars.”

“Star Wars” was like a wish fulfillment. Highbrows have criticized it as a kinetic cartoon. But it’s not just the effects. Everyone identifies with the characters, wants to be them and live out those life-and-death circumstances. “Star Wars” offered a unique blend of right- and left-brain experiences.

Richard B. Lewis

Executive producer (Showtime’s “The Outer Limits,” “Backdraft,” “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves”)

I was in graduate film school at UCLA, so I was already slightly jaded. I probably got yanked with my peer group to go the first week or second week. What I remember as much as anything was the sound. I had never been in a theater where the sound came from behind you and went over your head.

I remember thinking how cool and how original and what a journey--I had never been in that kind of aural experience. So for me, that combined with the kind of Joseph Campbell mythology was such a gestalt. No one had done things that combined science and philosophy and entertainment in such a clever way.