Sublime

George Lucas and Gary Kurtz were friends of Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck, who had recommended us for a science-fiction film the director was making. He was looking for the same ‘used’ style of sets and Twentieth Century Fox had told George Lucas that he could make the film if he made it in the UK for the budget they had allocated.

George and Gary left the next day. I found out later, when we were in Los Angeles, that George had hired us for Star Wars, or The Journal of the Whills as it was called then. I was the third person hired. First was John Barry as production designer, and then Geoffrey Unsworth as director of photography, and third was me as the set decorator (noted

Lucas: He still deserves to eat, you know. Rosie: EW LUCAS. NO.

Lucas may have created Star Wars, but even he had to admit to Roffman that the fans own it now. He meant this figuratively, of course. In a literal sense, ownership is something else entirely. But it’s all bound up with a much larger issue, which is control. Who controls a story—its creator or its fans?

Fortunately, George had had the experience of making an experimental science-fiction movie with THX 1138. He had created a science-fiction world in real locations with a very limited budget, so he was instinctively able to understand what we had to achieve and what we were up against. This made our small team of five people, comprising John, Les, m