Something Something Origins Something!!

  In 2000AD's "D.R. & Quinch go to Hollywood" two alien sociopaths steal a handwritten screenplay from a corpse at a bus-depot only to discover once their bravado has ensured the project's greenlighting that, apart from the third word of the title which might be "oranges", the script is totally illegible.

 

 Fortunately the star they've procured, known simply as Marlon, is not only an unintelligible mumbler but also, secretly, completely unable to read, and so their secret is safe, unlimited "stuff that was sort of useful-looking" is purchased, and filming begins reardless. More than "Hearts of Darkness", more than "8 and 1/2", more than "Lost In La Mancha", more than "Fitzcarraldo", Jim Shenk's superb promotional documentary charting George Lucas' making of Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace reminds me of "D.R. and Quinch Go to Hollywoood".

 

 

  I'd already seen clips in Mike Stoklasa's brilliant, infamous and quite educational 70-Minute Phantom Menace Review (here) but hadn't realised how little cherry-picking he'd needed to do. The documentary's an astonishingly candid portrait of a workforce with the power to build worlds harnessed to a mind too lazy and/or frightened to remember to say "action". Only once, at the very end does Lucas look like he either knows or cares what he's talking about, in the sound editing of the Pod Race, and it's heart-breaking because that's exactly what everyone was waiting for all this time, and it's far too late. And everyone wanted this to work. Frank Oz looked so excited to be handling Yoda again. Ewan McGregor looked so happy working his nuts off as Obi Wan, bonding efforlessly with a frightened, miscast ten-year-old Anakin whom he'd end up having next to no scenes with. And I've already wrote about Ahmed Best. But George Lucas doesn't know what to do with any of it. Shenk's "Making Of" never actually goes so far as to say "and the film was inevitably shit", it just fades mercifully to silence on an audience cheering wildly over the opening scrawl – and hey, look, if you actually like the film, then this is a thrilling account of a maverick artist's triumph over adveristy. 

 But it's really not. Enjoy.