This is an illuminating, interesting, odd story about the fairly unknown life of Marcia Lucas-Griffin, George Lucas' ex-wife and brilliant film editor. Apparently, this is the most conclusive biography about her anywhere. Along with Lucas of course, comes fascinating interplay and insights into Francis Ford Coppola, Scorcese and Speilberg, among others. I would love to learn more and also discover some kind of semblance as to what became of her. Apparently, nobody knows where she is anymore and nobody knows why. She completely fell off the map. As a Star Wars-phile, just typing the above reminded my of this dialogue:
Han: "Aw, we've come out of hyperspace into a meteor shower. Some kind of asteroid collision. It's not on any of the charts."
Luke: "What's going on?"
Han: "Our position is correct, except...no, Alderaan!"
Luke: "What do you mean? Where is it?"
Han: "Thats what I'm trying to tell you, kid. It ain't there. It's been totally blown away."
Luke: "What? How?"
Obi-Wan: "Destroyed by the Empire."
Han: "The entire starfleet couldn't destroy the whole planet. It'd take a thousand ships with more fire power than I've..."
Anyhow, fascinating read:
(excerpt from beginning)
Biographer Dale Pollock once wrote that Marcia was George Lucas' "secret weapon." [i] Most people are aware that George Lucas was once married, and probably some are aware that his wife worked in the film industry herself and edited all of George's early films before their 1983 divorce. But few are aware of the implications that her presence brought, and the transformations her departure allowed. She was, in many ways, more than just the supportive wife--she was a partner as well. "Not a fifty percent partner," as she herself admits, but nonetheless an important one, and the only person that Lucas could totally confide in back then. Today, she has been practically erased from the history books at Lucasfilm. Looking through J.W. Rinzler's Making of Star Wars, she is mentioned only occasionally in passing, a background element, and not a single word of hers is quoted; she is a silent extra, absent from any photographs and only indirectly acknowledged, her contributions downplayed. In the documentary Empire of Dreams, she is barely even mentioned in passing, except when the narration states that she edited the film and Lucas says he "got divorced as Jedi was complete" in the last two minutes of the supposedly-definitive documentary. Other products fare not much better, since many of them are published through Lucasfilm; her entire existence has nearly been ignored. Marcia Lucas, the "other" Lucas, has basically become the forgotten Lucas.
Perhaps it is the painful memories of the final unhealthy years of their marriage, during which Marcia finally left Lucas for another man and got a large cash settlement, that has prompted him to essentially never speak of her again. Indeed, it is a rare day when her name is uttered by him, even as "my wife" and other impersonal labels. Even in the 70s and 80s she was defined not on her own merits but by her relationship to George--she was not just Marcia, she was "Marcia, the wife of George Lucas", forever overshadowed. Yet nonetheless, Lucas and every fan of his films owe her a debt of gratitude. She was an instrumental part in the shaping of his scripts, and the primary force behind their final form in the editorial stage, where she cut the pictures herself. But more than that, she had a prolific and successful career of her own as an editor, and was a key figure in the New Hollywood movement of the 1970s; a secondary figure, perhaps, yet unlike other secondary figures such as Walter Murch and John Milius, her existence has been almost entirely forgotten.
In this article I will be taking a look at the life and career of Marcia Lucas (nee Griffin), and the impact and influence she had on her husband's films.
Such a piece has never been attempted before, whether in print, in video, or on the internet. Even on web pages all one finds is a couple of piecemeal trivia bits; forget about an actual quote from the woman herself or anything more than a handful of sentences. This is the first-ever biography of Marcia Griffin, and the reason why I decided to undertake such a piece. Marcia was a charismatic and talented woman, who had a significant--but basically unappreciated--influence on 1970s filmmaking, both directly and indirectly. In the direct sense, she was the primary picture cutter for her husband, George Lucas, as well as Martin Scorsese, in addition to the other films she edited and assistant edited. Indirectly, she was part of the social scene, as both Lucas' spouse and as a creative collaborator herself, and part of the inner circle of the influential "Movie Brats". Her opinions, her suggestions and her interactions formed and shaped the collective movement, and her subtle influence in this respect is especially unnoticed. She also, as I alluded to earlier, was a profound part of the cinema of her husband, who himself is one of the most successful and influential filmmakers in history. In fact, the only Oscar the Lucases ever earned was hers, for editing Star Wars .
Creating both a portrait of Marcia Lucas and assembling a compelling biography of her and her work is a difficult task. Whether in books or magazines, no matter the publication, one finds only brief mentions of her, always as an addition to the main piece about her husband, supplemented only by the occasional rare glimpse into her thoughts and feelings; she comes to us fragmentary, and often only in publications that are obscure today because of their age. Author Denise Worrell, who was one of the last journalists to speak to her before her divorce from Lucas and subsequent disappearance, introduces her in 1983, when Marcia was closing in on forty years old and had basically retired from the industry to become a full-time mom:
"Marcia Lucas, thirty-seven, is spunky and unspoiled. She wears a huge diamond on her left hand but often has her brown hair in a ponytail on the top of her head, and dresses in blue jeans, sweat pants, sweatshirts, and tennis shoes. She uses the adjective real a lot." [ii]
Such a description, brief as it is, is rare by comparison to most references, which gloss over her existence or merely acknowledge her in passing. Because of this dearth of sources, any survey of her is by nature somewhat limited, and very George Lucas-oriented. Dale Pollock's Skywalking: The Life and Films of George Lucas, published in 1983, is the wealthiest source of info, and treats her as an active partner with Lucas, even recalling Marcia's background history, and includes a swath of interviews with her. Peter Biskind's Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, published in 1997, includes participation from her as well, and the only participation from her after the 1983 divorce, which affords us a unique view of an older Marcia Lucas reflecting retrospectively on events (often with bitterness, it seems). The remainder of her comes in cubist form by assembling small sections from smaller publications; Denise Worrell's piece contains involved, but still limited, participation from Marcia, while she is heard from here and there in other publications such as Time and People. John Baxter's book Mythmaker (also titled George Lucas: A Biography) provides her some attention, while she is briefly discussed in A&E's Biography episode on George Lucas. One of the only quotations from her in an actual Lucasfilm publication is in John Peecher's 1983 The Making of Return of the Jedi, where she shares an anecdote about editing the original Star Wars.
Yet from this relatively small sampling, a surprisingly detailed and compelling picture emerges, more than enough to provide us insight and appreciation. "I love editing and I'm real gifted at it," she stated in 1983. "I have an innate ability to take good material and make it better, or take bad material and make it fair. I'm compulsive about it. I think I'm even an editor in real life." [iii] Today she has disappeared, and routinely has refused to talk to press; my own efforts to contact her, through a family connection, were unsuccessful, though she wrote to me briefly to offer a small handful of corrections. At the time of this writing, she would be about sixty-five years old. I hope that the following suffices as an informed overview of Marcia Lucas, and recovers her from the dustbin of history.
http://secrethistoryofstarwars.com/marcialucas.html
