"Sometimes you can have science fiction where you create a whole other world, like Star Wars. The genesis was Apocalypse Now. It was supposed to be George Lucas’s movie at first. George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola, they came up from LA to the Bay Area because it was the hotbed of radicalism. They wanted to make a radical film collective. And they didn’t. But after Lucas did American Graffiti, he was like, “Cool, I have a hit. Now I’m doing my Apocalypse Now,” which was his movie based on Heart of Darkness.
"The protagonists were [supposed to be] the Vietcong — we were following them, going into enemy territory, into the US’s conquered territory, and finding their Kurtz, which was someone who had come from the Vietcong, joined up with the US, risen in the ranks because of everything he knew and how murderous he was against his own people, and they were going to go get him.
"He couldn’t get it funded. He was like, “What? I just made all this money? What’s going on?” They were like, “It’s too radical. You’re not going to get this funded. Leave it alone.” He was like, “Okay, I’ll take the same story and I’ll put it in space.” The Rebels were the Vietcong, the Empire was the US, and Darth Vader was their Kurtz."
