Marcia Lucas obituary
Film editor who won an Oscar for her work on Star Wars, which she nevertheless referred to as ‘a kids’ movie’ In February 1977, George Lucas screened a rough cut of his science-fiction fantasy Star Wars, devoid of any music or special effects, to a select audience at his home in
Film editor who won an Oscar for her work on Star Wars, which she nevertheless referred to as ‘a kids’ movie’
In February 1977, George Lucas screened a rough cut of his science-fiction fantasy Star Wars, devoid of any music or special effects, to a select audience at his home in northern California. Among those in attendance, reported Peter Biskind in his book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, were studio executives from 20th Century Fox, colleagues such as the screenwriter Gloria Katz and the director Brian De Palma. Katz recalled that the screening was greeted by “stunned silence”. De Palma was heard asking: “What is this shit?”
Lucas’s wife Marcia, who had edited Star Wars with Richard Chew and Paul Hirsch, was in tears, convinced the film was doomed. Katz advised her: “Don’t cry when there are people from the studio there.”
Marcia, who has died of cancer aged 80, won an Oscar the following year for her work on the picture, sharing it with Chew and Hirsch. George Lucas’s biographer, Dale Pollock, called her the director’s “secret weapon”.
Nevertheless, she rejected the misapprehension that it was she who supplied the movie’s heart, or even, as some claimed, that she was “the woman who saved Star Wars”. “I wouldn’t think so,” she told the film historian JW Rinzler. “I definitely made scenes work … [but] George came up with all of it using his amazing imagination.”
Still, she never seemed entirely at home with the film. She left the editing room in December 1976, where she had been busy cutting the climactic assault on the Death Star, to take over on Martin Scorsese’s musical New York, New York (1977) after the death of that picture’s original editor.
“Marcia respected Marty above all other directors, and didn’t believe in Star Wars terribly much,” Hirsch told Biskind. “It was not her thing. She abandoned George to work on this serious, artistic film.”
According to Katz, Marcia told George: “New York, New York is a film for grownups, yours is just a kids’ movie, and nobody’s going to take it seriously.”
