The Secret History of Star Wars

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What is it?

The Secret History of Star Wars is a new full-length e-book exploring the writing and creation of the Star Wars saga. Culled from over 400 sources and filled with quotes from people such as George Lucas, Gary Kurtz and Mark Hamill, The Secret History of Star Wars traces all the way back to 1973 to examine how the first 14-page treatment that began the series came to be and was slowly built, draft by draft, year by year and movie by movie. Covering a period of over four decades, you will discover how George Lucas got his ideas for the original film, how Darth Vader was made into Luke Skywalker's father in 1978 and forever altered the arc of the story, what happened to the infamous third trilogy in the series and how the prequel stories came to be. The book also reveals the style and method of Lucas himself and how his personal life affected and shaped the story, for better and worse. This is a book which challenges many legends surrounding the series and places the films in a new light. For the more casual fan this will be a mesmerising read and for those who think they know everything about the series, prepare to be surprised!

Updates

08/10/08: I said the next update would be a bit more optimistic didn't I? Well, thought you might like to know that The Secret History of Star Wars will soon be available in print. It is being published by Legacy Books Press, with a tentative release date for early December. More details will be available when the date gets closer. I'm probably going to be taking down the current e-book in September or October; and for those wondering, yes, the printed version will be noteably different, and hopefully much better, than the e-version I've been publishing on my own. And it'll make for a much easier read when its actually in your hands and not on a screen! Also for those wondering--not much else will be changing on this site; I will continue doing original research when I can. I'm hoping to have another article up in a couple weeks.

07/15/08: FYI, the popular Nature of the Beast has been updated. I've been doing little revisions to it for a while now, as it is in my opinion a very significant, if critical, article of this site, and one that has been among the most popular; I've always felt and hoped that it would not be seen as merely some kind of justification of bashing but as a genuinely insightful essay of research that may shed light on some of the criticisms some of the films recieve. As long as I'm in a critical mode here, I might as well link you to another, perhaps more personal but equally important, article that I wrote for Obsessed with Film about the suppression of the original Star Wars trilogy. I promise next update will have more optimistic viewpoints of the series :p

07/06/08: Well, you probably figured out that mobile-reader version never happened. It's in limbo right now, for reasons I'll explain later. Instead, enjoy an article looking at the way copyright changed hands in the late 1990's that enabled the original version of the Star Wars trilogy to be suppressed.

06/12/08: The mobile-reader version is still on its way, even though I said it would be here last week, just in case anyone is wondering. Look for it tommorrow or the day after.

05/25/08: Well, a thirty-first anniversary doesn't sound as impressive as a thirtieth anniversary, but today is Star Wars Day and our beloved little film is another year older. To celebrate the occassion, I've unpredictably taken the route of nostalgia with an article today--a collection of memories from fans who were there in 1977. Would make for good learnin' for anyone under the age of thirty.

05/22/08: Just to let everyone know, I am doing a version of the book formated for mobile readers like Amazon Kindle and the Sony e-Reader. It should be up soon; I'm just going over the book and cleaning up a few things and it'll be available probably next week. Also, after seeing Indy IV at the midnight showing last night, I have to say I enjoyed my two hours. It's easily the worst of the four, as expected, and it's also way too far-fetched at times, with a final 1/3 that sort of falls flat, but its a fun adventure with some terrific characters and it entertains. Its not a great movie, but it ain't bad.

05/19/08: Anyone looking forward to new Indiana Jones? I know I am. I was apprehensive at first, but I have to say I'm really excited for another fun adventure with good ol Henry Jones Jr. I guess we'll see how things go, but with Spielberg at the helm I'm convinced that it would take a pretty good alignment of the planets to totally ruin this. In the meantime--I've updated the book page with the brand spanking new THIRD EDITION of Secret History. Yes, the third edition. And the last. While the second edition expanded my research, better organized things and finally put it all together in a more proper book form, I'm not totally oblivious to the fact that it was, how shall we say, in need of an editor. I've gone through and done a massive re-edit, to clean things up, better organize data, eliminate a lot of the redundancies and just make the book read a lot smoother. I've also incorporated a bevy of new facts which makes this the most complete overview of the writing of Star Wars yet. I would recommend a re-download of this edition to replace the old edition if it's sitting on your hard-drive. And I have to say, though I'm sure this version is not 100% perfect--and it never will be--I'm really proud, as it really has come together now. I hope to finally say goodbye to it. Of course, I won't be--this site will continue to have articles, as it has been (in fact, there will be another one in a few days), and this edition is currently missing one thing: an index. I'll begin working on that sometime in the future, but it won't affect the page count or content or anything, it'll just be added on to the end so if anyone wants to print it they can just print those specific pages, but it's not all that necessary anyway. Regardless, I hope future readers enjoy the new and improved Secret History of Star Wars --and I hope everyone here enjoys Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull this week.

05/07/08: Though this is all to be found within The Secret History of Star Wars, an article posted today more clearly lays out how Anakin's actual turn to the darkside developed and transformed throughout the series, notably in the latter stages of post-production of Revenge of the Sith. Read on to The Turn: A History of the Evolution of Anakin's Downfall .

04/29/08: The follow-up article I had planned never materialised due to research-related delays. For now though, it might be of interest that I've discovered the National Film Board of Canada actually hosts a copy of Arthur Lipsett's 21-87. The film was a major influence on George Lucas and changed the way he thought about cinema; you can see an enormous influence on his first short, Look at Life, as well as both incarnations of THX 1138. 21-87 is a sort of experiment in form, stimulating audience response through abstraction and juxtaposition; this type of experimentation was common at the time (a few years later, The Beatles would famously do a musical equivalent in their Revolution 9, showing how this "collage" type of art had found its way mainstream), but somehow Lipsett's piece works at a gut level lost in many of the similar short pieces floating the alt cinema scene of the time.

03/25/08: A special treat for today. In an article just posted I'll take you back in time to 1979 behind closed doors to the set of Empire Strikes Back for an inside look at how one of the movie's defining scenes came to be. You'll witness director Irvin Kershner creating the film in real time. Do not miss it. Read on to The Magic of Empire: A Visit to the Set of Empire Strikes Back . Look for a script-oriented companion piece this weekend!

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