Continued

DEAR MR. FANTASY

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It's the same thing with THX -- there is nothing changed except [now] I was able to show that they were in a city. In the end, all I change are the things that I tried to do originally but I couldn't for whatever reason.

Nobody seems to mind the [idea of a] ''director's cut.'' But to go the next step and say, had they given me another week's shooting, or another $50,000 to finish these matte paintings, this is what the film would look like -- well, it's not a matter of changing your mind. Star Wars was not meant, in the end, to be seen more than once in a movie theater. It was designed to be a large theatrical experience that, if you saw it once on a giant screen, would blow you away. But this was before there was such a thing as DVD. If you went down and sort of analyzed it and looked at it frame by frame, you can see the tricks that are going on. There's a lot of stuff that's very thin, as in any old movie.

EW Can you envision a future in which a filmmaker who didn't get the actor he wanted the first time can drop in a new performance to ''perfect'' the movie?

GL It has to do with the creative predilections of the director -- what he wants and how strongly he feels about it. But you could do that. The real issue is, who has the right to do that? I fall 100 percent on the side of the right of the artist to alter it.

EW So I assume that you are strongly opposed to those companies that offer people G or PG versions of R-rated films.

GL If it is objectionable to them, they should not see the movie. You know, I'm hoping they sanitize The Passion of the Christ. I would love to see that, because they're going to have to cut half the movie out. So are they going to do that? Or are they going to say, well, this is exceptional because it's about Christ? What they are really doing is censoring. And my feeling is, artists have a right to have their work shown as they intended it.

EW On the THX 1138 commentary track, you say that in a way, everything after THX was an unexpected detour for you. That's a big detour.

GL Well, the detour basically was success. I never thought I'd be successful. I was going to become a documentary filmmaker, cameraman, and editor in San Francisco. That was what I saw for my life. But I got these scholarships -- one at Warner Bros. to work with Francis [Coppola]. And I said, well, I'll just go and do my little six-month tour. Out of that, Francis got me the deal to write THX as a feature. I said, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I had no career to destroy. I didn't want to work in the film business, so I didn't care. And then, at the end of that movie, I was faced with making a living.

EW You've said that in Star Wars, you were trying to capture something for young viewers that would connect with the fun that you had at Saturday-afternoon serials. But the saga is actually pretty sad. If you take it as the story of the guy who became Darth Vader, isn't it a six-movie series about someone losing his humanity?

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