“I didn’t care about making money, I cared about making good films.”

A “stubborn” man who doesn’t like being told how to make his films. This is how the legendary described Friday George Lucas In Cannes, he belonged to a generation of filmmakers, the “American New Wave” generation, which included icons of the seventh art such as Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese s Brian DePalmaWhat It will transform Hollywood Because, unlike the studios, they didn’t care about money. “To be honest, we weren’t interested in making money, we were interested in making films, and that was the big difference,” Lucas explained on his way through the Cannes Film Festival, where he received the award on Saturday. Palma d’honor de In the hands of his colleague Coppola, who in turn presented his new film in the French competition, Major cities. In his 80s and retired for a decade, he is an innovator Galactic war He admitted that it was accompanied by a certain amount of nostalgia, although he admitted that it was “a great honour”, because although he had “many fans”, he had not made “the kind of films that win awards”.

The director who wanted to become a pilot

Lucas grew up in a “small town in central California” (Modesto) that only had two movie theaters. If he wanted to see a movie that deviated from commercial norms, he had to drive to San Francisco. He arrived at the university at a time when there were no film schools, and began studying photography after, as he recalls, abandoning his passion for car racing, which he would later embody. American graffiti (1973). “My first thought was: ‘I want to do this, race,'” he said in Cannes, but his dream ended in a serious accident a week after finishing high school. “That’s when I realized I wasn’t a good driver, and in racing, if you’re not good, you better quit.”

But the director mostly talked about cinema and how he struggled throughout his career to finish his films, especially the first ones, including films star Wars And without giving up doing it as he wanted. It was a good sample American graffiti (1973), a film that was told at first preview that it was “terrible” and unfit for theatrical release, even though the audience in the seats went crazy with it as if it were at a rock concert. Today it is considered one of the essential classics in the history of cinema.

Galactic war It’s a kids’ movie, and it’s always been a kids’ movie

Based on perseverance, which he considers the most important factor in his career, it ended up hitting the box office and in the first weekend alone it grossed $25 million at the box office, a major success at the time. “It then stayed in cinemas for a year,” he recalls. “The people who founded Hollywood and the studios were retiring because it was the ’60s. They were leaving and the studios were being bought up by companies like Coca-Cola,” he recalls, “and how they didn’t know how to make movies; they were retiring.” I started recruiting enthusiastic young people coming from film schools. “Little did they know…,” he said jokingly.

to’success Dr’American graffiti It opened the door for him to make another story he had in his portfolio: a fictional space journey that would become not only cinematic history, but part of the lives of legions of fans around the world. “It’s a kids’ movie, and it’s always been a kids’ movie.”