\u201cThat\u2019s my pot dealer!\u201d exclaimed Michelle Phillips in a crowded movie theater in 1977. Months earlier, the Mamas & the Papas singer had only known Harrison Ford as a stoner-carpenter with a few bit parts to his credit. Now he was Han Solo in \u201cStar Wars,\u201d directed by a young upstart, George Lucas. Clearly the world was changing.<\/p>\n
How much, though? Conventional wisdom about the Hollywood renaissance of the \u201860s and \u201870s suggests that starting with \u201cBonnie and Clyde\u201d and \u201cEasy Rider,\u201d a batch of emerging auteurs shook the studios out of a rut and transformed American film. There\u2019s plenty of truth to that: Francis Ford Coppola\u2019s shift in 10 years from a director-for-hire on an old-hat musical, \u201cFinian\u2019s Rainbow,\u201d to the auteur behind \u201cApocalypse Now\u201d is just one of the era\u2019s most remarkable achievements.<\/p>\n
A pair of new books, though, suggest that the overall shift was only so modest, ultimately shoring up not just the old-school studio system but the social norms the interlopers were supposed to be upending.<\/p>\n
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Paul Fischer\u2019s lively history of the new wave of California directors, \u201cThe Last Kings of Hollywood,\u201d<\/a> concentrates on Lucas, Coppola and Steven Spielberg. (New York contemporaries like Martin Scorsese and Brian De Palma are present but relatively off-screen.) Fischer has a gift for highlighting the ways that moments that we now accept as inevitable were often the product of dumb luck, pyrrhic victories and tough decisions. Coppola made \u201cThe Godfather\u201d out of financial desperation, averse to adapting a mob novel; Spielberg\u2019s \u201cJaws\u201d was beset with mishaps, from a foolhardy attempt to train a real shark to its malfunctioning mechanical one; only when Lucas learned that the rights to Flash Gordon were unavailable did he pursue a space-opera concept all his own.<\/p>\n Their brashness and can-do spirit were worth cheering for: As the trio delivered films that broke box office records \u2014 \u201dThe Godfather,\u201d \u201cAmerican Graffiti,\u201d \u201cJaws\u201d and more \u2014 there were reasons to believe that big-budget films could operate outside the studio system. Lucas in particular was driven as much by resentment of the old as passion for the new. He never forgot how Warner Bros. manhandled his debut feature, \u201cTHX 1138\u201d and was driven to muscle \u201cGraffiti\u201d into existence to spite the suits who said he couldn\u2019t. In 1969, Coppola and Lucas launched their own studio, American Zoetrope, in San Francisco, with a passel of scripts in progress (including \u201cApocalypse Now\u201d and \u201cThe Conversation\u201d) and a $300,000 investment from Warner Bros. But Coppola wasn\u2019t much of a businessman, and he had an easier time putting the office\u2019s fancy espresso machine to work than the suite of state-of-the-art editing bays: \u201cHe ran his business like he ran a film set \u2014 on vibes,\u201d Fischer writes.<\/p>\n A decade later, both Coppola and Zoetrope would declare bankruptcy, and he would split with Lucas, who\u2019d used the success of \u201cStar Wars\u201d to cut his own path as a Hollywood kingmaker via his own production company, Lucasfilm. It allowed him to indulge his love of classic cliffhanger serials, and he tapped Spielberg to direct \u201cRaiders of the Lost Ark.\u201d But Fischer frames Lucas\u2019 career arc as a disappointment, despite all those dollar figures \u2014 Lucas wanted to return to artsier \u201cTHX\u201d-style fare, but needed cash flow. \u201cIf George was ever going to be independent from Hollywood, he thought he wouldn\u2019t get there by making abstract mood poems,\u201d Fischer writes. By the \u201880s, with two \u201cStar Wars\u201d sequels done, Lucas was out of the mood-poem business entirely.<\/p>\n ![\""They](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1771594573_146_.jpeg\")
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