Show Notes
Cameras rolled on Solo: A Star Wars Story in early 2017. For six-ish months, Phil Lord and Chris Miller directed their version of the film - a highly stylised, ambitious take on Han Solo’s backstory. But in putting their version to film, Lord and Miller used the filmmaking process they’d honed over decades of work together - improvising, trying things out and throwing things away in pursuit of the best story.
But that process might not have been the best one for Solo. At home in LA, Lawrence Kasdan was watching the dailies. And he wasn’t happy with what he saw.
Kathleen Kennedy, producer of Solo and President of Lucasfilm, had the deciding vote in what happened next.
Strap in, this is a long one mates.
CLIPS:
Rewriting Collective Insights: Phil Lord at TedXCoconut Grove
Team Deakins Podcast Episode 78: Phil Lord and Christopher Miller
Solo: A Star Wars Story
Solo: A Star Wars Story Bonus Feature: Bradford Young
Solo: A Star Wars Story Deleted Scenes
Happy Sad Confused: Lord & Miller II
MUSIC:
“Unanswered Questions”, “Hot Pursuit”, “Bicycle”, “Neo Western”, Rollin At 5”, “Simplex”, “Space Jazz”, “Floating Cities”, “Screen Saver”, “Groove Grove”, “Bleeping Demo”, “Stay The Course”, “Oppressive Gloom”, “Mystery Sax”, “Man Down”, “Scissors”, “Martian Cowboy”, “I Can Feel It Coming”, “Crypto”, “Lost Frontier”
Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
"Quiescent In Time" by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com
"The Good Guy" by John Powell (I'm trying to make a thing where every time a director gets fired or replaced I do a bit of sad music from the film)
More from Going Rogue
An A-list Japanese cast. An international action star. A budget somewhere between $175million and $225 million. A director making his first feature film.
Endings are tough. But they tell us a lot about what a storyteller, or a company, values.
Without the edit, there is no film. Without Marcia Lucas, there is no Star Wars.
Star Wars Episode IX is often dismissed as a film made by committee, but with its constant on-set rewrites, loose improvisational style and hyperactive camera movement, it’s very much a J.J. Abrams film.
It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that any criticism of J.J. Abrams’ work must discuss the Mystery Box. Check out Jon McCoy’s Episode IX Visual Sketchbook - it’s really fuckin cool! Also while you’re at it, Phil Saunders has also shared a heap of his work on the film with explanations of the process AND exact dates that really helped me piece together the timeline on this one.