Part Two: 1982 – 2018
The Dark Crystal
Leaving Star Wars and Lucasfilm behind him, Kurtz joined forces with Jim Henson on 1982’s The Dark Crystal. Kurtz and Henson knew each other from the early Sesame Street and Muppet Show days. Kurtz and co-director Frank Oz (and his Creature Shop) had previously worked together on The Empire Strikes Back.
Henson had already been working on designs for The Dark Crystal before Star Wars came out. Kurtz came on board to produce the project, while Henson and Oz directed the film. With a budget of $15 million, it would go on to gross over $40 million globally. However, it had the bad luck of being released the same weekend as E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial.
In 2010, Kurtz reflected on why he decided to change the direction of his career as a producer:
“The idea of doing something like Dark Crystal, a whole film made up of mechanical creatures with very little in the way of optical effects, trying to make that come to life was an entirely different kind of challenge. That was much more appealing to me. Universal didn’t have much hope for The Dark Crystal at all in America. In the end, it did very well, considering the kind of marketing they put behind it. It did 45, 50 million in a very specialized market.”
Return To Oz and Goodbye To Hollywood
Return To Oz, which Harlan Ellison called “The greatest film ever made,” came out 46 years after The Wizard Of Oz, but wasn’t intended to be a direct continuation of the MGM classic. First-time director Walter Murch approached Kurtz about doing the story for Disney. Unfortunately, Disney was in trouble at the time, going through management changes.
Still, Disney owned the rights to the Oz franchise and wanted to make a new film before the rights expired. Eisner and Katzenberg, who were running Disney at the time, wanted to scrap the project and it was canceled several times. They also wanted to fire Murch. Kurtz asked Coppola and Lucas to help save the project, and they convinced the studio to finish the film.
Disney mishandled the marketing with the artwork inferring that it was a ‘bright and bubbly sequel’ to The Wizard Of Oz. The filmmakers wanted it to be closer to L. Frank Baum’s books “The Marvelous Land of Oz” and “Ozma of Oz” which was a much darker story than the audience had expected.
Since Return To Oz was started under another management team, the new team had little interest in the film and put as little as possible into its marketing and gave it a short theatrical run. The PG-rated film earned only $11 million on a $25 million budget. Kurtz would later state:
“…It was a very, very frustrating thing for me, and it drove me away from Hollywood…I just said, ‘I just cannot put up with this anymore,’ and so I didn’t. “It didn’t satisfy any of the audiences, and I suppose a really astute marketing person would have told us to stay away from the L. Frank Baum Oz stories. THE WIZARD OF OZ as a film was nothing like the original book, that’s what people expected…it was much more like L. Frank Baum’s novels. But the audience that loved THE WIZARD OF OZ didn’t like it, because it wasn’t a bright and bubbly musical…”
Slipstream
Slipstream was the second film that Kurtz made as producer (he was executive-producer on Return to Oz), after the breakup with his former partner George Lucas. The 1989 film starred Mark Hamill, Bill Paxton, Robbie Coltrane, and F. Murray Abraham, with a cameo by Ben Kingsley. Lisberger described the sci-fi action vehicle as a “road movie with planes.”
A smaller budget film shot in the UK, the production was in trouble before it shot a single frame. It was written originally as a gritty hard R-rated film. Then, a week before shooting, the financier decided that the film needed to be a family picture, and the production team was instructed to remove the adult elements from it.
What made things worse was that the production was not given time to properly rework the script. Kurtz had asked to delay shooting for six weeks so that the script and story could be restructured, but this request was ignored, and the team was shooting and writing the script for Slipstream at the same time.
Having Difficulties
Slipstream never saw a North American theatrical release. Also, during the production of this film, Kurtz was in the process of getting a divorce. Although rumored that this was the film that caused Kurtz to go bankrupt, it would appear that Return To Oz was the real reason as he stated that he had little control of this film. This statement points to it:
“…the difficulties of Return to Oz, for instance – which kind of forced me to reconsider my life…at the time I was very disappointed about it all, but the truth is that it was a chance to spend a great deal of time focusing on myself and things that I’ve been interested in, personally. And things that I was interested in, in general, along the spiritual lines, which have been a big help for me…”
Kurtz would eventually auction off Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber, an X-Wing flight suit, Darth Vader’s lightsaber, a Stormtrooper blaster, and many other Star Wars production items from his collection, to offset that bankruptcy.
Slipstream would be the straw that broke Kurtz’s back, and basically, make him decide to leave being involved in big Hollywood productions. To this point, he had been the Second Unit or Assistant Director on five films including Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, as well as Producer on six films, dating back to 1973.
Kurtz had come up with the title The Empire Strikes Back and had chosen Norway to film the Hoth scenes. This was because he had trained there as a US Marine. He even directed the scene in The Empire Strikes Back with Luke and the Wampa due to the sudden death of second unit director John Barry.
The influence that Kurtz had in the Star Wars universe is undeniable. His extensive studies of religion were the impetus behind the creation of ‘The Force’ which was a universal religion that would give the franchise its additional depth. After Slipstream, Kurtz would only produce two more theatrical releases. The Steal was released in 1995 and 5-25-77 was released in 2017 and was a coming-of-age film about the premiere of Star Wars.
Uncle Scrooge
In 1981, Kurtz and screenwriter Edward Summer were able to convince Disney to allow them to publish “Uncle Scrooge McDuck: His Life and Times.” It was a collection of eleven comic classics, plus one new story from Carl Barks. Kurtz invested around $300,000 and they chose their favorite stories. Further, they were colored properly, the way Barks had intended.
Five thousand copies were produced by Celestial Arts and it became the model for every important collection of comic book stories. It also became the first of its kind to be reviewed in Time and Newsweek magazines. If you can find one of the first edition releases, they can cost up to $5000.
In the 1980s, Kurtz attempted to produce an animated version of The Spirit with Brad Bird and Jerry Rees. They got the rights from Will Eisner. This was despite Eisner wanting a live-action film starring James Garner. Unfortunately, they couldn’t secure the financing as no studio would back an animated film in the early 1980s that didn’t have “funny animals.” Looking back at his career in 2002, Kurtz would reflect:
“I think that probably of the films that I’ve produced, every one of them is different, quite different in a way…somewhat unique. Some were successful financially, and some weren’t so successful. But in thinking of the group, I think I can be pretty proud of almost all of them. Two-Lane, American Graffiti, Star Wars, Empire, Dark Crystal, and Return To Oz have elements that I’m very pleased with.”
In Conclusion
Gary Kurtz, who produced two of the most iconic films of all time, and helped George Lucas create one of the most successful franchises in movie history, passed away in 2018 at the age of 78. The cause was cancer. Kurtz left behind his wife Clare, as well as three children. On Twitter, a longtime friend and collaborator Mark Hamill said the following:
“I’ve lost a lifelong friend. The world has lost a kind, wise, multi-talented artist & filmmaker whose contributions to cinema cannot be overstated. It was an honor to have worked with him & I know I am a better man just for having known him.”
Kurtz’s last on-screen appearance and credit will be in the feature documentary Remembering Return To Oz. It’s in post-production and is expected to be coming soon to Blu-ray and Digital HD. Among other things, it will feature interviews with various cast members as well as production team members.
UPDATE: Remembering Return To Oz, is now available via Vimeo
