Exclusive George Lucas Interview For Upcoming Animated Film Strange Magic #StrangeMagicEvent

I was invited by Disney on an all expense paid trip, all opinions are my own.

Strange Magic

Strange Magic, a new animated film from Lucasfilm Ltd. is a musical fairy tale inspired by “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” With a vibrant vocal cast and popular songs from the past six decades, Strange Magic tells a tale of love and loss that the newest generation will look up to. Opening in theaters nationwide on January 23rd 2015, Strange Magic will have audiences singing along during the goblins, elves, fairies and imps romp around on their hilarious adventures over a battle of a powerful love potion.

My Strange, Yet Very Lucky Opportunity

Last week I along with 24 other bloggers from across the country had the opportunity to screen Strange Magic at the Skywalker Ranch with none other than Executive Producer George Lucas himself. Screening the film in the 300 seat state of the art theater amongst filmmakers greatest was an astounding opportunity.After the screening we had the opportunity to interview George Lucas about his newest animated adventure. George Lucas was very open and warm, he answered each question thoughtfully and he gave thoughtful and meaningful answers to each question, slowly opening up about his life, his children and his marriage. I left feeling as though I had been sitting next to George Lucas in his kitchen, simply chatting about the film while sipping on coffee. You may have read in my Skywalker Ranch tour post about how amazed I was at the humbleness of the atmosphere and the complete lack of pompousness. The Skywalker Ranch and George Lucas himself are quite honestly down to earth and completely normal – something I did not expect to experience. You would think that being a talented filmmaker with loads of green in the bank would create an egomanic monster, but I will say that George Lucas and his plain white sneakers are just regular people. And that above all else is the most inspirational to me. If he can do it, with one great idea, create this huge Empire (pun intended) then any one of us can too.

Anyway, back to the George Lucas Strange Magic interview…

George Lucas had this to say about making Strange Magic: “It’s one of those fun movies, I loved doing it because I love the music, I love coming to work on it, I love watching it, which is the key in the end for me, it’s something I did for the fun of it.”

Isn’t hearing that someone made a film because they love making fun films inspiring to you? In fact pieces of George Lucas’s life are sewn throughout Strange Magic, from his love of music, his daughter’s love of fairy tales, his own love life, his desire to tell a story that can always be retold to younger generations, and his love of animation.

Dawn (voice of newcomer Meredith Anne Bull) is serenaded by Sunny (voice of Elijah Kelley) with “3 little birds”

Strange Magic Music

Strange Magic began over 15 years ago as a side project as a kind of harken back to his pre-Star Wars period George said: “I love to do musicals, I love to do musicals using my favorite music and so it harkens back to my pre-Star Wars days.”

George Lucas was inspired to tell a love story using love songs, that he could take the songs and string them all together so they actually told the story. The first song he chose for his newest animation film was “I can’t help falling in love with you” which as George Lucas said during our interview “This is what the movie is about”. Originally, Strange Magic included over 100 songs, but through the evolution to blend the music and words the song list got drastically cut to about 25 songs.

A Father’s Love

One of the most special times of the exclusive George Lucas interview was when he opened up about his love for his children. Perhaps he knew his audience (a group of parent bloggers) but his candid confession about how he felt holding his newborn daughter for the first time gave me chills. George had this to say about fatherhood: “Well, I’m a big kid person. I didn’t think much about kids when I was working a lot, I thought “yeah I’ll have kids when I’m ready”. And then, my then-wife and I decided to have kids, you know we tried and we couldn’t so in the end , I ended up adopting kids. When I was walking through the hospital with her, you know she was a couple of hours old, it was like lightning struck me. I just, I’ve never had a experience like that ever, and it just, the magic of it hit me.”

When George Lucas’s now 26 year old daughter was a child, she loved “Wizard of Oz” so every night he would read her a chapter from the books, he spent years doing that. And although “Wizard of Oz” isn’t technically a fairy tale, George knows that reading to his daughter was something that had an effect on her and she cherished it, so in turn, had an effect on him. Hearing George Lucas say this has inspired me to start a book series with my own children, perhaps the Wizard of Oz as well.

George Lucas As The Bog King

George Lucas said during the interview that he saw himself as the Bog King in Strange Magic, that after being divorced from his first wife and mother to his 3 adopted children for over 20 years, that he would never fall in love again: “No it’s never gonna happen to me, I just will never find anybody, I am the old cranky Bog King”. Low and behold George Lucas did find someone new and he is a new father of a 18 month old girl “I found somebody who doesn’t look at all like me, I’m a 60’s radical, government unhappy, Wall Street-hating person from San Francisco, and I ended up meeting a woman who’s a head of a big investment management firm who’s on Wall Street who doesn’t look like me. She is last person you would figure would fall in love with the Bog King and, or I’d fall in love with her since I am not into princesses. So as time went on it became more meaningful to me because I realized that in the end, as in with my wife, we fell in love because we were exactly alike inside.”

The moral of the Strange Magic story is Everyone Deserves To Be Loved and George Lucas’s own love story seems to have the same moral as well.

 A Story That Can Always Be Retold To Each Generation

George Lucas was persistent in creating a movie about the difference between being infatuated and being truly in love. And although stories like these seem to be everywhere, George Lucas recognizes that these kinds of stories can always be retold for younger generations. George said: “Well it’s a story that needs to be told every generation because the girls growing up, or boys, they don’t know any of this stuff, by the time they reach 12 they’re very confused. And, even though we all know it, and oh I’ve seen that, oh I, well that’s been told over and over and over again, well it needs to continue to be told over and over again, you can’t sort of let kids slip through the cracks and say oh yeah, I was in the generation that didn’t get that message. The message is so simple and, it’s been around for thousands of years that it can always be retold.”

For The Love Of Realistic Animation

Lucasfilm Animation Singapore and Industrial Light & Magic bring to life the fanciful forest turned upside down with world-class animation and visual effects.

“The whole idea of animation, the art of animation, is to create a style that is different from shooting a live action movie.” 

George Lucas noted that creating an animated film takes twice as many actors than a live-action film, but if you’re really looking for a particular style, as George Lucas was looking for in Strange Magic, you have to create that world in animation. Strange Magic invites audiences into a mystical fairy tale world that definitely has a George Lucas spin on it as you will see. George Lucas said: “People use animation because ultimately in this particular case you’re using a style, a particular style, and in this case I wanted the style to be very realistic, much more realistic. Rango is an animated film, it’s got some realistic looking stuff but this is a whole different level of realism.” 

The biggest take away from the exclusive George Lucas interview was the notion that George Lucas is going back to his filmmaking roots and we’re all invited to follow along on his journey.

“This is my pre-Star Wars period, I’ve gone back, I’m going back in time. I tell people yeah I’m gonna go back and do experimental films like I did in college, well this is getting myself back there, which is a fun movie that I love to listen to and a lot of the songs were my favorite songs”

Strange Magic opens in theaters nationwide on January 23rd 2015