Part One: 1940 – 1980
Award-winning film producer Gary Douglas Kurtz was born on July 27, 1940, in Los Angeles. In high school, Kurtz focused on music; specifically the drums. This is why later in life, film scores would become so important to him.
Kurtz would attend film school at USC in Los Angeles in 1959 on a music scholarship. However, his filmmaking career would be put on hold. This is because he was drafted and served in the U.S. Marine Corps between 1966 to 1969. The producer would later reflect on this in 2002:
“I spent three years in the Marines as a cameraman, a director of documentaries. I was actually a conscientious objector and I never carried a weapon. I carried an empty pistol holster. I was just very lucky, actually, to come through unscathed. I had four or five close friends who were also cameramen who were killed”
While in film school, Kurtz was a jack-of-all-trades: Grip. Electrician. Sound boom operator. Director of photography. Film editor and production supervisor. Over a three or four-year period, he worked on forty or fifty Roger Corman kinds of “low-budget exploitation films”.
In 1965, Kurtz would serve as an assistant director on Ride in the Whirlwind. A moody and tense Western directed by Monte Hellman, it starred relative newcomer Jack Nicholson, as well as Harry Dean Stanton.
That same year Kurtz would also work on Voyage To The Prehistoric Planet (1965), with Basil Rathbone, as well as Queen Of Blood (1966), starring Rathbone, John Saxon, and Dennis Hopper, of which Kurtz served as Production Manager.
After leaving the military service, Kurtz became an Associate Producer with Universal Pictures, starting in 1971. He’s credited on Chandler, starring Warren Oates, and Two-Lane Blacktop – a film about drag racers – also starring Oates and James Taylor (and Beach Boy Dennis Wilson). Both were released in 1971.
At the time Universal had a program allowing young filmmakers to make low-budget films ($1 million or less) with minimal studio input and giving the director a final cut. Easy Rider was the model they were using. Films produced under this program were The Hired Hand (1971). The Last Movie (1971). Taking Off (1971). Silent Running (1972) and American Graffiti (1973).
From Apocalypse to American Graffiti
Kurtz was introduced to George Lucas via a mutual friend, Francis Ford Coppola, as Coppola took Kurtz to meet Lucas while he was editing THX-1138. Kurtz, Coppola, and Lucas were all involved in the production of Apocalypse Now at one point. It was to be a dark comedy, closer to M.A.S.H. in tone, than Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
Lucas was to direct the 16mm movie with some live-action footage from the Vietnam War. The plan was to have a Japanese crew go to Vietnam to shoot stock footage. Kurtz would scout all over the Philippines for suitable filming locations. Eventually, Columbia Pictures got cold feet. Kurtz would later state:
“Well, the atmosphere is not conducive to a comedy about the Vietnam War.”
Once Columbia backed out of the picture, Lucas told Kurtz that he had an idea about a rock & roll movie that he wanted to make – a movie that was “about cruising.” Due to Kurtz’s good relationship with Universal, he and Lucas were able to score a two-picture deal, American Graffiti, and an untitled science fiction film to be made later.
Initially, Universal thought American Graffiti was unmarketable due to the story and unknown actors. However, the studio signed on and increased the original $600,000 budget when Coppola agreed to be the producer for the film. Universal was able to market the film as “From the Man Who Gave You The Godfather.”
American Graffiti was a low-budget film at $777,000; lower than Kurtz’s $850,000 budget for Two-Lane Blacktop. A Universal head, Ned Tanen, called the film “un-releasable” upon seeing the preview with a test audience. Coppola, who was bluffing, offered to buy the film from them while an exhausted, burnt-out and ill Lucas watched on in shock.
A deal was finally made that allowed the studio to make some suggestions about changes to the film. Still, Lucas was not happy about this as he felt that it took artistic control away from him. The film would sit on the shelf for six months after it was completed, as Universal still had no faith in it.
While Kurtz and Lucas were editing American Graffiti they looked through a newspaper to see if there was anything worth seeing in the cinema. There wasn’t, and that’s when the discussion came around to Flash Gordon. They thought it would be great to see a movie in a modern-day Flash Gordon style. However, no one was making movies like that.
Despite American Graffiti being a smash hit, Universal decided to pass on Star Wars as the script was not yet fully developed, and science fiction films were no longer popular. The studio simply would not commit the kind of funding required to make that type of film, which was about $8 million.
Star Wars And The Fallout With Lucas
Once Universal passed on Star Wars, Kurtz shopped it around and was able to secure $8 million at 20th Century Fox Studios. The “Star Wars Corporation” was created with Kurtz named as Vice President. He would be in charge of the development of the film and securing merchandising rights. In a 2010 interview, Kurtz reflected on its themes:
“Star Wars, the first film, is very much a comic book story. It’s a very archetypal standard story about a hero coming of age and engaging with the world and trying to right some wrongs…we always wanted to have each picture directed by a different person, to add a slightly different style or focus to the overall development, so that when they were eventually seen in a group one could see how the individual filmic styles added to the development of the characters.”
Trying to keep the film on schedule and under budget, Kurtz directed many of the pick-up shots at Elstree Studios in the United Kingdom, including most of the cockpit dogfights, and the fight on Leia’s ship, Tantive IV. He also oversaw the special effects in the US as John Dykstra and ILM were not producing shots on time.
With Kurtz’s help, Star Wars would wrap up production and go on to break all box office records at the time. On an $11 million budget, it was released on May 25, 1977. The film earned $460 million in the United States, and $314 million overseas, surpassing Jaws as the highest-grossing film of all time, until the release of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, in 1982.
Star Wars received ten Academy Award nominations, winning six. Kurtz was nominated for Best Picture, and Sir Alec Guinness was nominated for Best Supporting Actor. To this day, the film is routinely named one of the greatest films of all time and was preserved in the National Film Registry in 1989 for being “culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant.”
Initially, Kurtz and Lucas wanted to help Coppola finish Apocalypse Now. However, Fox wanted a sequel right away. Their plans for Apocalypse Now were effectively abandoned. Once the script for The Empire Strikes Back was completed, Fox had planned on one more sequel being made.
Troubles began on the set of The Empire Strikes Back almost immediately when Elstree Studios’ large sound stage caught fire during the production of Stanley Kubrick’s film The Shining. Kurtz negotiated a deal with Elstree to build a new sound stage with Lucasfilm funds. They would shoot there rent-free, selling it back to Elstree once they were done.
The production also had bad weather in Norway for the exterior Hoth scenes, which caused further delays. In the end, The Empire Strikes Back went 80 days over the 100-day deadline, and the budget for the film ballooned, forcing Lucas to borrow $10 million to finish the production.
George Lucas had been trying to expand Lucasfilm for some time. However, he also wanted to spend more time with his wife, Marcia. While finishing the production of More American Graffiti, he was also running the day-to-day operations of Industrial Light & Magic, Skywalker Sound, and Lucas Licensing.
Kurtz and director Irvin Kershner were in charge of the production of The Empire Strikes Back. However, once the film ran over budget and schedule, Lucas was forced to step in. He directed portions of the film’s many re-shoots. Since Lucas had funded this movie with his own money, it was imperative to get control back and complete the picture.
At-risk was not only $18 million of his profits from Star Wars, but also a $15 million loan that he had secured with Bank Of America. If the movie failed, Lucas would be ruined and the franchise would be over. The ongoing stress strained Lucas’s relationship with Kurtz, and all parties involved. It also took a toll on Lucas’s health.
On top of all this, Kurtz and Lucas had different ideas for the next chapter in the saga. Kurtz felt that Lucas was becoming less and less concerned about the story, and more concerned with how to tie in toys to the films. Regardless, the two long-time friends and collaborators had a professional falling out.
Some sources state that Lucas fired Kurtz, while others say that Kurtz chose not to work on the next film in the saga. Regardless, of what happened, the result was that George Lucas and Gary Kurtz would never work together again. In 2002, Kurtz would discuss his time and involvement in The Empire Strikes Back and his eventual falling out with Lucas:
“At the very beginning with American Graffiti and with Star Wars, and into the start of Empire it was a very, very small shop… there were four or five of us in the office, and that was it. Then, in the middle of Empire, we were here in England shooting and George was back in San Francisco working with ILM on visual effects and other things, too. He hired some film people from other companies and started to expand into a much bigger operation…people to negotiate in some of the toy deals…by the end of Empire, it turned into kind of this big organization. It was an entirely different attitude about everything. That was part of it…I think he blamed me for all the things that were difficult on Empire; a director that was difficult to control, a film that was too expensive…”
Kurtz, in the same interview with IGN, goes on to discuss in detail the different visions that he and Lucas had for The Return of the Jedi. He pretty clearly spells out that the franchise was now becoming about money and not the story:
“I was really unhappy…the fact that all of the carefully constructed story structure of characters and things that we did in Empire was going to carry over into Jedi. The resolution of that film was going to be quite bittersweet, with Han Solo being killed, and the princess having to take over as queen of what remained of her people, leaving everybody else. In effect, Luke was left on his own. None of that happened, of course..“It would have been quite sad, and poignant and upbeat at the same time because they would have won a battle. But the idea of another attack on another Death Star wasn’t there at all … it was a rehash of Star Wars, with better visual effects. It was just entirely different. It was much more adult and straightforward, the story. This idea…that the story doesn’t have to be very adult or interesting, seemed to come up because of what happened with Raiders of the Lost Ark…the fact that that seemed to make a lot of money and it didn’t matter whether there was a really good story or not… We had serious differences about a lot of that.”
