According to David Biskind's excellent book, "Easy Riders, Raging Bull," when George Lucas was a fresh-faced film-grad, all he wanted to do was make small, personal experimental films like all of his director buddies were. His first movie, THX-1138, was a dreary, Kubrick-esque movie about a futuristic totalitarian society run by robots in which everyone is forced to look the same and act the same. Nobody saw it. So Lucas then went out and made "American Graffiti" and a little movie called "Star Wars." The rest, as they say, is history.

Following "Star Wars," Biskind writes that Lucas was haunted by it's success - that whole selling out thing. Not to mention being the one blamed for killing the Golden Era of 70's movies by showing the studios just how much money could be made by big, action-packed, special-effects movies that are cross-marketed with Happy Meals. Wracked by guilt, he made "the Phantom Menace" and "Attack of the Clones." Now, one year before the supposed final chapter of the "Star Wars" saga ("Revenge of the Sith" for those who haven't read it online), Lucas has decided to re-release his Rosebud of a first movie, which opens this Friday. In typical Lucas fashion, he's gone in and redone some of the effects and looks, adding CGI touches to a movie originally filmed on a shoe-string budget (some of the interior scenes were filmed in BART stations that were still under construction). Hopefully, he didn't add Ewoks. SFist remembers seeing parts of the movie when they were in college and recalls it being very early 70's - bleak and thoughtful, arty and earnest, yet filled with incredibly cheesy sets and costumes. Kind of like "Logan's Run" if done by Robert Altman.

SFist Jon, Contributing