PLUME: Oh, I don’t know – in Episode I, the CGI still calls attention to itself.
KURTZ: Well, it does, yes, that’s true. Even though there’s lots of it and most of the shots have some kind of CGI – but it’s less annoying, I think, and stands out less than it does in the Special Editions.
If you remember the scene when the robots go down to Tatooine, to the desert, and then later you cut back to the Stormtroopers looking for them, there’s a scene where Stormtroopers are sitting up on the hill in the background riding what looks like a giant lizard. In the original, that’s a mock-up that we borrowed, rendered from a prop house, and carried all the way out there and stuck it there in the sand. It didn’t do anything. There was just a Stormtrooper sitting on a giant lizard, a model. It doesn’t do anything – it’s just in the background and the Stormtrooper in the foreground stands up with a piece of the robot and says, “They’ve been here.” That’s all the scene is supposed to be for. As it is in the Special Edition, that Stormtrooper on the dinosaur in the background moves – it’s all CGI.
PLUME: And it adds nothing whatsoever to the story.
KURTZ: I know, and that’s what I mean with the proliferation. Just because you can do it, doesn’t make it better. But those animals moving actually distract from the principal purpose of the scene. If they had been horses, if it had been a Western and those were horses, chances are the horses would have just been sitting there, because horses do that a lot. They don’t move much. If they’re not running or trotting or something, sometimes they just sit there – and maybe flick their ears a bit – for long periods of time.
PLUME: But they don’t do a song and dance number.
KURTZ: No, they don’t move around at all. They just stand there. If they had made it that subtle, if they had had that creature in the background move its head an inch to the right or something, a blink – that would have been all that you need to do. But it’s not necessary at all, because the way it was in the beginning, in the first place, it was that way because that’s all we could afford and it worked fine. I’m just not a great believer in messing with what is done. It may not be perfect, and as I said a long time ago, there’s nothing that is. No movie is perfect, and every filmmaker is going to sit and watch a movie that he made 10 years ago, or 30 years ago, or 50 years ago, and say, “Oh, I wish I could have done that better.”
PLUME: You’re the person to ask about this – when you’re talking about these kind of special editions and changes and are they due to an original vision or changing sensibilities – I have to ask you about your thoughts regarding the infamous redo of the scene with Greedo in the cantina…. the whole shooting first thing.
KURTZ: Yeah, I really was livid about that one. I think it was a total – it ruins the scene, basically. The scene was never intended that way. Han Solo realized that Greedo was out to get him and he had to blast him first or he would lose his life. It shows you how much of a mercenary he is. That’s what the point of the scene was. And so the way they’ve changed it around, it loses the whole impact of that whole aspect of it.
PLUME: Do you think that’s due to George’s changing sensibilities as opposed to his argument that, “No, that was my original intention”?
KURTZ: Well, he can say that was his original intention, but we could have shot it that way very easily. There was no reason that it couldn’t have been shot that way. It was shot and edited the way it was because that’s the way the script was. That’s what he wanted at the time.
PLUME: What is your opinion of why he would try and rationalize it, when he could very well just say, “You know, I just thought nowadays, it’s better if he shoots first.”
KURTZ: Maybe he just didn’t want to say that. Maybe he felt it was a stronger argument to say, “That’s what I really wanted to do and I just didn’t have time or inclination at the time.” You listen to all these directors, they all say that. That’s the stock argument … somehow if they say that, you can’t argue with them.
PLUME: I think Apocalypse Now is now, what, 16 hours or something?
KURTZ: 16 hours? No, no. No, they’ve added the 50 some odd minutes back …
PLUME: With the French Plantation scene.
KURTZ: Yeah, it’s mostly the French Plantation scene. That’s probably a mistake, too. It’s a disease, basically. I suppose they can do whatever they like, but I just would like to see the original version of everything preserved. When Star Wars comes out on DVD, the only version that’s going to be available is the Special Edition. They’re not going to do the original – unless he changes his mind.
PLUME: Which is unfortunate, because that’s the perfect medium for it.
KURTZ: Yeah, the idea is that you could do both. I’m sure you’d have an audience out there that would buy both. Maybe it will be both, who knows. Be interesting to see how that would work, marketing wise. But I just don’t like changing whatever a film is like when it’s finished – good, bad, or indifferent, that’s the way it was it released and the way the audience perceives it. To keep fiddling with it, long after the fact… Jean Renoir said in a documentary interview that we did with him when we were all film students, that something that he learned from his father was that, for an artist, the most important thing is to know when you’re done, and leave it. Of course for a painter, it’s absolutely crucial, because you put too much extra paint on and you’ve ruined the painting. With a filmmaker, you have a certain amount of recourse and you can change it again, but the principle is still the same – to know when you’re done, and when it’s over, and when it’s finished – and you walk away. It’s critical, because you can be like Kubrick, and you can work on it forever, and it’s still not going to get any better.
PLUME: At least one can say Kubrick didn’t go back 25 years later and add a scene to Dr. Strangelove.
KURTZ: No, he didn’t; or 2001, or any of those early films. He at least accepted that they were finished, and that was it.
PLUME: And wouldn’t allow others to tinker with them, either.
KURTZ: No.
PLUME: After you divorced yourself from Hollywood, I mean we already discussed Slipstream – what exactly is your mindset after that?
KURTZ: Well, I went away for a few years, and I’ve always wanted to do this sort of spiritual quest project that I’ve written on for a long time, and I went away to spend time on my own personal kind of spiritual studies and growth and studied at Buddhist monasteries and Hindu ashrams and some Roman Catholic monasteries in parts of Europe. Just to kind of study various concepts and talk to people, and I spent a lot of time doing that, and also time talking to film students and contributing to helping other people get things made, and it’s only recently that I’ve decided to do more active things. There’re several scripts that I’ve been funding and getting written and I’ve been working with the BBC with some 3-D animation stuff for television, for children. I think children’s television is really critical. It’s just been a lot of fun, really, not having to deal with the Hollywood mess. It’s very easy to say, “Well, things were better in the old days,” but I think the movie business goes through cycles – up and down, up and down – and the last few years there’ve been very few really good films. I’ve been really disappointed. But I’m sure there will be some comeback, and there will be more.
PLUME: Do you ever itch to return to the Hollywood scene?
KURTZ: What, do big films? I always enjoyed making films. I think that having the opportunity to do a project is always a wonderful challenge, but most of the things that interest me are smaller, more European based kind of projects, rather than the sort of big Hollywood kind of movie. That’s much more intriguing. More crews and more interesting relationship with a more tight-knit family – the way the European filmmakers have been working all along, really.
PLUME: What lead to you getting involved with Patrick Read Johnson’s 5-25-77?
KURTZ: I was involved for a brief period at Universal with developing several projects with Patrick just after Slipstream, none of which happened. That was another nail in the coffin of Hollywood, basically. The studio liked the scripts, but just didn’t want to go ahead and make them – and wouldn’t allow us to buy them or sell them to anybody else to get made – so it was just one of those things. I liked Patrick’s writing a lot, and when he came up with this script, I read it and we talked about it a great deal. It’s a really interesting kind of story around this boy’s life and this day in his life, and using the Star Wars gimmick of trying to see the screenings and missing them all as a kind of a jumping off place for his interest in movies. Since he actually had come out to Hollywood and seen ILM in operation on some of the effects shots and visited the Close Encounters set – I thought it was it could be a really interesting little film. It’s very European in style and I just would like to see it get made, so I’m just trying to help get it made.
PLUME: How are things looking, in that respect?
KURTZ: A certain amount of the financing is in place, and we’ve been constantly putting together a cast of various people, and it looks like probably in a little while we’ll get all the bits together. One of the decisions is how. It’s the kind of film that you could do in the sort of contemporary world, you could shoot it on video and do it for a million dollars. That’s one way to do it. You could do it in super 16 for $5 million, and you could do it as a sort of out and out art film in 35 for 6, 7 million. We haven’t decided yet what the best approach is, but certainly the slightly higher budget approach to give it a little more time, production parameter and production value, is probably the way we will go.
PLUME: Digital doesn’t seem like it would do the story justice.
KURTZ: No. Certain kinds of stories you can get away with doing that, but not this one.
PLUME: I’m assuming since this would be filmed in the States, and that you would be in the States for the few months that it was shooting?
KURTZ: Yes, definitely. Outside Chicago, where Patrick grew up.
PLUME: What other projects do you have currently in the pipeline? I’ve heard some other Patrick projects that you might have in the pipeline.
KURTZ: Yes, he’s got a fairly large-scale science fiction project, Star Sailor, which I’ve always liked and I think we have an interest from a variety of financing sources to do it, also in Europe probably. There’s a science fiction television series that I’m negotiating with the BBC on right now, called Hydra 12, that I think has a lot of potential. Terry Gilliam is going to direct the pilot – the first 2-hour episode. He hasn’t seen a script yet, so we’re desperately trying to get the script done in time for him to kind of look at it and evaluate it.
There’s a kind of rock & roll movie, I suppose you’d call it, called Eddie and Gene. It’s about Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent, set in 1959/1960 in their one and only tour of the U.K. It’s an interesting transition period for rock & roll. People forget that that period was a scary time for rock & roll, there was a lot of – in this country anyway, and to a certain extent in America – it was that transition from the old days to forward looking and the songs were about all kinds of things from kind of typical sappy love songs to kind of weird approaches to music. The characters are very interesting, because the two guys are so different, and yet they were good friends and they supported each other a lot. That’s another plan, another project.
So they’re all in various stages of development. And an animated series for BBC television which is mainly a children’s animated series, which is science fiction as well. And investigating the rights to two or three other as yet unnamable classic science fiction novels that I’d like to see get made, too. So along that line, we’re working with several financing organizations, to kind of put together a fund here without having to go to the Hollywood majors to be able to do some of these kind of things.
PLUME: Of all the projects, what do you think will most likely be your next one, your next big focus?
KURTZ: It’s hard to say. It has a lot to do with a balance of elements. Sometimes a project gets delayed because the script needs rework, or you can’t get the cast together for the perfect time – it’s like juggling. At some point, one of the balls falls out, and that’s the one that goes, because all of the elements happen to fall into place. It’s very difficult right now, sitting here today, to say, “Well, it looks like 5-25‘s elements will come together first.” I think that that probably will be the case, but I can’t tell absolutely.
PLUME: So you wouldn’t put money on any one…
KURTZ: I wouldn’t put money on any one right now, until I know a little bit more over the next month or so.
PLUME: Now, as far as your career goes, what do you believe at this point would be your legacy? If anyone were to point at one thing and say, “You know, that was the epitome of the kind of work that Gary Kurtz was involved in”?
KURTZ: Well, gee, that’s awfully hard to say. I think that probably of the films that I’ve produced, every one of them is different, quite different in a way… somewhat unique. Some were successful financially, and some weren’t so successful. But in thinking of the group, I think I can be pretty proud of almost all of them. Two-Lane, American Graffiti, Star Wars, Empire, Dark Crystal, and Return to Oz have elements that that I’m very, very pleased with. I think that we were able to achieve pretty much what we set out to achieve … so except for Slipstream, which came along a bit later and was, in a way, kind of throwaway because it was a favor for a friend, and I didn’t absolutely control the project. And as I told you earlier, it was a bit of a mess because of the change in production plan and script, right at the very last minute. But all those others are, I think – given the time frame in which they were made – they were a very good block of films. I think that they all are about characters that – as different as they are – have some interest in seeing their place in the world. I think that’s probably – if there’s any enduring connection, that’s it.
PLUME: Would you say that right now, you’re happy where you are?
KURTZ: Oh yes. Yes. I don’t think I would change places with anybody, because I’m very pleased with having the experiences that I’ve had. The fact of the difficulties of Return to Oz, for instance – which kind of forced me to reconsider my life… at the time I was very disappointed about it all, but the truth is that it was a chance to spend a great deal of time focusing on myself and things that I’ve been interested in, personally. And things that I was interested in, in general, along the spiritual lines, which have been a big help for me, so I consider it a very positive step. Very karmic for me. Sometimes that’s what happens. The road that you take is forced upon you, and you don’t like it, but it’s the right one anyway.
PLUME: I have one final question for you. What was the genesis of your involvement in the Scrooge McDuck book?
KURTZ: Oh yes, Carl Barks. I used to collect comic books and Barks was one of my favorite authors. When everyone else was collecting Superman, I was collecting the Barks Uncle Scrooge books. I had almost a complete collection, then I lost some of them to water damage and some other things. During the Star Wars period, Ed Summer, who ran a comic book shop in New York City, was a friend of mine and I would ask him to see if he could find some of these Barks things. He had had conversations with Barks and at that time and he suggested to me that it would be really nice to do a limited edition of Barks’ stuff that was colored properly, the way it should have been in the beginning, and not edited for the regular comic book. So that was the start. And I said, “Yes, that is a really good idea.” So we sat down and went through our favorites of the old stories and got Peter Ledger from Australia to do the coloring work – the airbrushing and the coloring the way Barks had originally intended it. It was a labor of love, really, and it cost about $300,000 to do it, and there were only 5,000 copies of the book.
PLUME: I used to dream about that book as a kid.
KURTZ: It was just a lot of fun, really, because I loved seeing the stories properly colored and in some cases with frames put back that had been left out, originally. Yeah, that’s really where it came from, and I had the resources to do it, and it just seemed like kind of an homage to Barks’ work, because I had really loved him as a kid. I think he was one of the reasons why I really loved adventure, fantasy, and science fiction movies – because of that whole feeling of other worlds and going off on these grand adventures and things, which his characters did all the time.
PLUME: It’s great that you were able to spearhead that effort and actually get that thing put out into the market. It’s a shame it’s not in print anymore.
KURTZ: Yes, it is. It is a shame – Disney was very difficult about that, and we eventually got over that difficulty, but when it came up time to reprint it again, the administration had changed, and they didn’t want to be bothered, really. Although it wouldn’t have cost them anything and they would have had a royalty, it’s just one of those management decisions that you wonder about sometimes.
PLUME: How involved are you in the book, still?
KURTZ: Not very involved – there’s nothing going on right now, that I know of. There was a lesser edition, there was another 5,000 copies that was printed on less good quality paper.
PLUME: Which is the only version I’ve been able to find, and I had to pay $150.00 for it.
KURTZ: You never found one of the original covers, did you?
PLUME: No, no.
KURTZ: Well there aren’t very many floating around … as I said there were 5,000 numbered copies with a hand-signed Barks lithograph inside. I only know there were a few floating around on the market, and that’s about it.
PLUME: They go for upwards of $5,000.
KURTZ: Really? That much?
PLUME: Yes.
KURTZ: Really, well I can believe it. Having dealt with the collector’s market in a lot of different areas, especially with Star Wars stuff, it seems like anything that’s scarce somehow becomes incredibly valuable. I don’t know how they decide, but – you remember the Star Wars cookie jar? The little one – the little R2-D2 cookie jar? That was made by a small ceramics company that made a few things at the beginning of Star Wars. The company went out of business, and I think that they made 10,000 of those. I remember, I had ordered 500 of them myself, to give away as gifts – which I did, to family and friends at the time that Empire came out, because they were actually made after Star Wars came out. I did that, and I sent them all out and I saved about 20, I had in my storage facility. Then I forgot about them, and something like 15 years later I found a lot of stuff in storage when I was cleaning out that area and had people moving stuff to a smaller storage area – and I said I don’t want to keep 20 of these, so we’ll call up some of the collectors and see if anyone’s interested in them. It turns out this $13 item is now worth $700!
PLUME: So you made a tidy profit?
KURTZ: Yes, so all the merchandise stuff that I sold either went to my children’s education or to various charities of one kind or another. I felt that was sort of worthy use of merchandising revenue.
PLUME: To say the least.
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June 21st, 2020 at 10:58 pm
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