♪ >> from our studios in new york, this is "charlie rose." charlie: you have every honor that a man could have. you've got, oscars? george: no. -- noe: no oscar he oscar? charlie: why would they give you this award? george: i don't have a lot. i have the irving fall berger award, and i get a lot of little awards. emmys, but i have

never had an academy award. i have been nominated, but i have never one. i'm too popular for that. charlie: meaning what? george: they don't give awards to popular films. charlie: are you proud of the fact you make films that people want to see? george: yes. charlie: popular is ok with you? george: popular is ok with me. i think it is an important part of society. if you are making a work of art or a film or what ever and nobody sees it, i don't see where it does anybody any good. charlie: francis is making movies that satisfy one person, him. george: i'm not sure with society at large, that it is helping much. that is what i'm going to do. i'm going to make movies i only want to do. i always wanted to do that. i fell into popular movies by accident. i always disliked theatrical hollywood movies. i didn't want anything to do

with them. charlie: but you know how to make them. george: i guess it was embedded in my dna. it is -- that particular thing -- i'm not sure whether it is a coincidence that some people like steven and i grew up and -- in the same environment. charlie: steven spielberg. george: steven spielberg. we liked the movies. there was a whole generation that were, that came of age in the 1960's that grew up on movies. i didn't really grow up on movies but it was a part of my up atn terms of, i came the beginning of television, and the whole idea of visual storytelling and that sort of thing was at the right moment. i got in there, and what i wanted to do and what a lot of people wanted to do was simply make films that people liked, and enlightened them, and

them.ained that is why we were in the business. charlie: the irony is you are considered one of the most innovative filmmakers ever in the history of cinema. george: the innovation part is like, i hate to say the word artist, but i will say the word artist. years, theys of were the scientists, the engineers, and the artists. because in order to accomplish certain works, especially in architecture, you had to figure out how to accomplish it, with the domo in florence, they couldn't figure out how to put the dome on it. berleschi studied the pantheon

and other places where they had domes. in the renaissance, it was the dark ages. he had to event -- invent the to geting poly -- pulley oxen to pull bricks that high. charlie: you had to create new things, because you had to do it on your own. george: i had a story to tell. there was a gap between what is possible and where my vision is. and i had to fill that gap. you don't invent technology and then figure out what to do with it. you come up with an artistic problem, and then you have to invent the technology to accomplish it. it is the opposite of what most people think it is. any artist will tell you that. and art on all levels is just technology. which is why, people will say monkeys could do paintings. they can't, really. they can do scribblings.

they can do what my 2-year-old does. but if you want to say, i want to convey in emotion to another human being, that is something only human beings could do. roaring in do it by your face or biting your handoff. that has an effect. or ao do it in a painting play or a story or poetry, or anything that is in the arts, you have to be a human being. charlie: we talked about innovator,mmaker, director, storyteller. george: director is just someone who has got a fetish with making the world the way he wants it to be. sort of narcissistic. charlie: that is you? george: all directors. charlie: and you were a director. all directors are

vaguely like emperors, which is, i want to build a society to reflect me and what i want. the great thing about it -- you don't have to kill people and spend a lot of money if you want to do that. if you are a king. and it is good for society. a director can do it with less money and just say i'm going to create a world where people can fly. charlie: what does star wars and indiana jones say about the world you want to create? george: well star wars and , indiana jones, especially star wars, indiana jones was done for fun to entertain people. there were some messages about , you know, archaeology, and also about what we believe in, in terms of of myths, but star wars was done in the vein that , what i was saying about the , patron creates the propaganda. what i wanted to do was go back

to some of the older propaganda, which was consistent through all of these societies, mythology, to say, what did they all believe? this propaganda was created independently. what are the things they all actually believed? we are talking about relationships with your father, with society, your history, relationships the gods. all of this stuff is old, but there are psychological motifs that are created through storytelling, primarily oral storytelling, that explained what they believed in, and who they believed in. so i want to do is go back and wind the psychological motifs that underline that. of a popular is him, and to say that not all, , boys,ajority of people

have a certain psychological relationship with their father's. that has been going on through history, and trying to explain that, to say we know your darkest secret, and you are part of us, because we all know the same things. we know what you think about your mother, your brother, your father really. those are the things that make people say, hey, this is why we believe this stuff. again, the crudest part of that in terms of the religious, spiritual thing, is that some people have taken those ideas, and then distorted them, and you end up in a cult, where they are using the psychological tools to make you adhere to their society , and part of it is, they have to keep it closed. it is the same thing. you go through history, and even though in most cases you have

open societies, they really weren't. let's face it you were going to , get killed if you went outside of the walls. so let's build a wall. so we can defend ourselves. they were self-fulfilling, isolated human events. charlie: because you have worn all these hats, filmmaker, director, storyteller, writer, technological innovator, what do you want a first line of your obituary to say? george: that i was a great dad. i tried. [laughter] charlie: you consider yourself any of those things first? writer, storyteller, filmmaker problem solver? , george: first is dad. i gave up directing to become a dad. for 15 years, directing, i just ran a company and was an innovator, but it wasn't doing

what i really like to do, which is actually make movies. charlie: because you wanted to be a dad. george: it was one of those things were you don't expect it to happen, but once i was a dad, it was like a bolt of lightning struck me. i ended up getting divorced around that time, and i decided, i think i am just going to take care of my daughter. that seems like the right thing to do. i have made -- it was after return of the jedi. i have made all of these movies, and i'm not going to escape star wars. my central concern was my daughter. i just said, i am going to raise my daughter. and then i adopted another daughter, and another son. , like, 15 years later that i actually said, ok, i'm going to go back now and direct movies again. it was very much, and in the meantime i developed a lot of

technology to do things that i could not do when i was doing star wars. in star wars, it is a fantasy , a science-fiction film, it pushes the limit, the technological limits of the medium. science fiction, fantasy, those sorts of things. you really, there are many things that just can't he done. they just can't. and there is an equation ultimately which is how popular is something, how much does it cost, and they subtract one from the other and decide whether they are going to do it or not. when i was doing star wars, right after star wars, they didn't have room for spectacular. they only had room for street movies. which is what i have been doing before that. doing something that was sort of an epic, a historical piece, science fiction, fantasy, any of

those things, you just could not do it because they cost too much money, and technically you could not accomplish it. charlie: the kennedy center on a -- honor, that is a big deal. what does it mean to you? george: i could be glib. charlie: just be real. i am sitting here with a guy who is the happiest he has probably ever been. married, 2-year-old daughter. all the money he will ever need, sitting in this remarkable place where you live. you have everything. but here is a saying that you are really one of america's finest artists. what does that mean to you that these people are going to honor you, sitting next to the president at the kennedy center? know, i will you be real. i am not much into awards.

it doesn't mean that much to me. i have gone through this. it is a group of people who say we are going to give you this award. a lot of them, it is just basically, you are there to draw eyeballs. charlie: there are awards and then there are awards. that this to believe means something to you. george: it does mean something. charlie: what is it? george: i don't know. again, i have the medal of arts, the medal of technology. charlie: so it's just another award, just give him another award. he will show up but he doesn't care. george: well, yeah. i know it's about the tv show. it is not about me. charlie: this is not a big tv show. it is shown in the middle of december. it is not about a tv show. it is not the oscars. this is in washington, where all of washington turns out and it selects only five people each

year, not based on what you have done that year. one movie. it is based on what you have achieved in your career. all of a sudden, and putting you up in a pantheon of people you admire. like your friend steven spielberg. george: we give each other awards all the time. francis and i give awards all the time. we are in a group, we do the same thing where we all happen to be, and you have to remember, i hate to say this but there are thousands of award shows every year. so, i will take a couple of the ones that are meaningful to me like the kennedy center honors. those are the ones that i will participate in. but i get a lot of other ones. charlie: is there a competition between you and stephen? george: sure. charlie: what is it? george: who can do the better work?

charlie: how do you compare? george: it isn't better work in terms of, it is the wow factor. if i can do something and steve says, wow, then i won. he makes 10 times more movies than i do, so i have to say wow more than he does. i don't present how many times. it's just that i enjoy the fact that i can see a movie and he can one up me and do something that i say that is unbelievable. charlie: what he says about you, american graffiti is one of the best films ever made. george: that is easy to say. charlie: because of what it was? george: because he went wow. charlie: and why did he go wow over american graffiti? george: it is exuberant. and different. charlie: what else? george: and had a lot of underpinnings of the kinds of things that a filmmaker wants to have in their movie. a lot of observations, and sort of philosophical musings.

it was in the guise of an entertainment film. most people pay attention to that stuff. they knew it immediately. it's very, again, critics have a tendency to be glib. they have to look at a movie a day or two movies a day and an hourt rattle off in what their feelings are about it. as a result, you get a very surface-y kind of point of view. charlie: i'm asking the filmmaker. i am not asking critics about the film. george: i know how to make movies. i went to film school. i have a knack for it. i studied it very well. i practice. i know what i am doing. a lot of filmmakers have tried but on the technical telling a story, how you put a story together, how you make it effective emotionally, i know how to do that, and part of it is, i have a talent for it.

part of it is, i worked hard to create an figure out how to do it. i am reasonably effective at it. i have made a lot of movies, i have produced more movies that were failures than successes. ♪

♪ george: as a director, most of

my films have been big successes except for one. and a couple have been huge successes. but most of them haven't been. but i know that going in. i know what is going to work and what is not going to work. but i love movies. i know a lot of movies are not popular. you can say that going in. one of the reasons i retired was to make movies that are not popular. in the world we live in, in the system we have created for ourselves in terms of, it is a big industry. you cannot lose money. to,he point is, you have you are forced to make a particular kind of movie. i used to say this all the time, russiaople, back when was then union of socialists greg -- republics, aren't you glad you're in america.

i know a lot of russian though -- russian filmmakers and they have more freedom than i have. charlie: what you have to do? george: you have to adhere to a very narrow line of commercialism. is only certain, and look. when i started in the 1970's, it was like this. i could say russia was like this but we could do this. i flaunted that system. x, my first film, it was not an american film. i shoved it in sideways. nobody, they would never have let me make that will be if they knew what i was doing. charlie: ken george lucas b george lucas because early on, he owned the right to make star wars. you negotiated that coming out of the first film. and it made you very rich, and made you very independent. so you would have to make movies

because you had independence, and you had also built a great business. in addition to making films. therefore, you could preach to anybody why to preach to, because you were not dependent on anybody. issue isell, the ultimately, the reality of it, i am a unique blend of a pragmatic, practical person, and a fantasy, completely daydreaming, you know, guy who is not very practical at all. charlie: and you combine those two. george: well, i do. -- the dna, orma whatever. charlie: whatever created george lucas gave him those skills. george: and they are the opposites. one of them is a, and i have always been that way. francis, when we started making movies, francis was very much,

it was odd, because when we started, he was a hollywood director. i was this crazy kid doing art films. i said, i will never go into the theatrical film business. i'm only going to do art films. i'm going to do documentary films, cinema verite. this is what i want to do. i'm excited. my ambition was to be michael moore. charlie: a documentary filmmaker. george: yeah. and cause trouble. i grew up in the 1960's. i am a 60's kind of guy. i always have been. i grew up in san francisco, the bay area. is just, that was my environment i grew up in, and i was perfectly happy to do it. i didn't want to make theatrical films. , francisning awards

and i moved to san francisco because neither of us liked the hollywood environment. we started a company up here, and i got to take one of my student films and turn it into a feature. it was a visual storytelling. the characters and the plot were not as important as the metaphor and the symbolism. as a result, and the emotional connection between the moving image and the audience. so i did that, and obviously our company went bankrupt. it destroyed everything. but, like, there is always a silver lining. it forced him to pay off the debts which meant he had to do the godfather. he challenged me, as he was walking out the door, he said stop doing this artsy stuff. , make a movie. make a comedy. i dare you to make a comedy.

i said, i can do that. i can do anything. i'm in my 20's. charlie: i'm george lucas. george: nothing to do with george lucas, it has to do with, i'm 23 years old, i can do anything. that is what you are thinking. by 30 you get that beat and out -- beaten out of you. so i did it. that was successful and it started me on a different train, to do, again, when i did star wars, i didn't think it would be a hit. i did not think american graffiti was going to be a hit. the studio hated the film so much they shelved it and said , you can't, we are not even going to release this. maybe we will release it as a movie of the week. it in can't release theaters. it is not that good. that is where i was. then, i started working on star wars. i was doing it because i needed a job, to eat.

do this kind of an experimental, in my mind, idea about mythology. and take films that i loved when i was young, which is republic the kindand transform of movie i wanted to make into a very popular genre. out of that came both indiana jones and star wars. wanted, know, it was, i i thought that was my last movie. then i was going to do what i wanted to do. and i said at least at the end i , want to have done an old-fashioned movie. on sound stages with makeup people. and, you know, sets, and, you know, do the thing, make one of those movies before i am kicked out. and, you know, the fluke of

american graffiti becoming a hit, it was, oh my god, that is the only time that will ever happen. i got a hit. i will make this movie which won't be a hit. star wars. when you describe star wars it is a space opera. it is not a science fiction film. we have large dogs flying spaceships. you describe it and people say, oh dear. this guy is off. charlie: in his own world. george: most of my friends were where i was, i was further into the art world than they were. but i threw that all away after american graffiti. expected again, nobody me to do a comedy based on thx. i am not a funny guy in real life. charlie: i will show francis i can do a comedy. george: i will show those guys. and then, but when i started to go into star wars, they said, why are you making a children's film? i said because i think i can have an influence, i can

influence kids, adolescents , 12-year-olds, and they are trying to make their way into the bigger world, and that is what mythology was. to say, this is what we believe in, these are our rules, this is what we are as a society. we don't do that, the last time we did that was westerns. this was the 1970's. the western sort of piddled out in the 1950's. we didn't have any national mythology, so i said, i will try this to see if it works. and it would be fun. because i like spaceships. i like adventure, i like fun and all of this stuff. so i will do it. but i figured that would be the last. i will have done my thing. then i got in trouble because the script got too long. then i had three scripts instead of one script. i had to try to get them all

finished. i got hooked into this tar baby and i could not get out. it was a while before i realized , no matter what happens, i will never get out. i'm always going to be george "star wars" lucas. no matter how hard i try to be anything else. charlie: think about your career. whenever you decide there are no more movies to be made by george lucas, and you look back at your body of work, are you going to say, star wars was my crowning achievement? cinematically? george: cinematically, i would say probably yes. charlie: in what way is it not your crowning achievement? george: i don't know. again, it is hard to come a you know, i have a pretty low opinion of my movies. so to me, i have always said these did not turn out the way i had hoped they would. i can see the flaws and all of this stuff. i mean, american graffiti is the most fun movie i made in terms -- in terms of what

i did. the most fun movie to work on was indiana jones. i did not have to direct it. i had the best director in the world. it turned out better. that is the one where everything went right, which happens very it just gets better and better and you just can't believe how wonderful it turns out. the other ones you suffer through, and you think they are terrible and then people say they are great. it is hard, i can see all of the scotch tape and the rubber bands holding it together. this is true of star wars number four, because it barely got made. i was so disappointed by what my vision was and what it turned out to be. i complained about it a lot right after the movie and interviews. you can hear me say it was 35% of what i wanted. my vision was beyond what was possible.

i did the best i could. after people say this is the best movie of all time. ok maybe it is pretty good and we will live with that. and then, part of it was to continue the story. just to finish the story. after that i worked on the technology and said, now i can tell the back story. the back story seems to have gotten lost. when it was one movie it was easier to see the back story of darth vader. charlie: did you intend to create three movies when you started? and then you decided only to take one part of that story? george: i took the first act. in the first act didn't really work. i said ok. what i'm going to have to do is take the ending of the third film and put on the first film. you have a bunch of stuff sitting on your desk.

let me take that and stick that in here. i wasn't worried about the sequels. because i want this one to succeed and work. when i moved on to the other ones i said, ben kenobi is now dead. i killed him. how am i going to fix that? what am i going to do about blowing up the death star? so i went through, and the story stretched itself and moved around. it is a creative process where you are doing things, and you maneuver through your imagination. part of it was simply when i got down to some of the other movies, i was able to create an environment and world that wasn't possible when i started the first one. to me, a lot of the things that were just technical, in the end getting yoda to do a sword fight, which i had always wanted

to do, but couldn't because he was a muppet. charlie: you said flash gordon was the inspiration and the bible. george: it wasn't the bible by a long shot. it was -- i knew i wanted to make a movie based on those serials. i did try to get the rights to flash gordon but couldn't. if i had it would have set me off on a funny thing. i realized after, i don't want flash gordon. i don't want -- i want a space opera that is like flash gordon. if i were making that movie i would take flash gordon out, and all of that stuff. i don't want to do that stuff. what i wanted to do was more on the lines of star wars and less on the lines of flash gordon. there is a similarity, but there

is a difference in perspective. that set me in the right direction of having to think up something completely new but inspired by, by westerns. just like whether you are a writer, no matter what you are, a painter, a politician, in theory you have steeped yourself in the genre you are working through. you know all of the various kinds of things, and you can pull the best parts of what you learned in theory. but it works everywhere except the seams of politics. they don't listen to history. charlie: where did the idea of force come from? george: the whole thing and star wars was to take again ideas,

psychological ideas from social issues, political issues, spiritual issues and condense them into an easy to tell story of those stories. the force came from distilling all of the religious believes, spiritual beliefs, go around the world all through time, finding the similarities, and then creating an easy to deal with metaphor for what religion as. -- is. the point was, in the beginning when you have people worshiping rocks, they called it life force. they called it the force. that is what it was. where did the name come from?

life force, what the more primitive religions believed in. all of the other religions have the same thing. whether you believe in god, don't believe in god, believe in religion or don't, you either don't believe there is anything out there, i believe something is out there, i have no idea or would dare to guess, but religions are based on it. human, psychological needs that have been put together mostly to create society. charlie: you believe something is out there. george: yeah. charlie: here is what is interesting about star wars. this was a personal film. george: all of my films are personal. i thought them up. i did them.

you could say star wars is a kids' movie. the idea of making it for kids, that it was a kiddie movie, that was important to me. i like star wars. i did it not because i thought it was going to make any money, because in the end we finished it, we showed it to the board of directors of fox, and they hated it. i had an ally at the head of the studio and he fought for me. nobody thought it was going to be a hit. especially me. charlie: a personal film becomes a blockbuster. george: a second time. american graffiti was a personal film. charlie: and a cultural mainstay. stephen said it is the moment the industry changed. star wars is the moment when the industry changed. george: well. it changed for the good and the bad.

it is again, when you invent things -- when you bring new things into a society you can either use it for good or use it for evil. ♪

george: what happens when there is something new, people have a tendency to over do it. they abuse it. there were two things that got abused with star wars and still are abused. one, when star wars came out, everybody said it is a silly movie, it is just a bunch of and stuff. it is not real. i said there is stuff -- it is not just a space battle. there is more to it than that. it is much more complicated. no one would listen. we like the spaceships. so the spaceships, that part of the science fantasy were terribly abused. everyone made spaceship movies and they were horrible, and they lost tons of money. there's more to it than that. you can't just do spaceships.

the other part, it was the technology. we will just take this new technology, it is great. especially when it came down later to digital technology where you can really do anything. people just abused it, which they did with color and sound. whenever there is a new tool people go crazy and forget there is a story. you are telling a story using tools. the other thing that got abused naturally in a capitalist society, the studios said we can make a lot of money. this is a license to kill. and they did it. the only way you could do that is not take chances. only do something that is proven.

star wars came from nowhere. american graffiti came from nowhere. there was nothing like it. now, if you do anything that is not a sequel or not a tv series, or doesn't look like one they will not do it. charlie: that is the downside of star wars. george: that is the downside of star wars. it shows an enormous lack of an imagination on the part of the industry. studios are not known for being -- they are known for being risk averse. movies are not risk-averse. every movie is a risk. it is like the movie business is exactly like professional gambling. except you hire the gambler. some crazy kid with long hair.

i don't get this guy at all. you give him $100 million and say go to the tables, and come back with $500 million. that is a risk. the studio is not going to think about it that way. maybe if we told him he could not that on red, because we did market research -- they try to minimize their risk. to do things that have never been done before, never been tested, you have no idea if they are going to work or not, that is the antithesis of what a modern corporation is. they want to test things. charlie: hollywood is not like an american corporation because it will throw money away behind somebody and have her go and figure out.

george: they don't know how to do that. they are corporate types. they think they know how to do it. then they start making decisions and ensure that it is not going to work. charlie: but you are george lucas, ahead of your time. ahead of your time with star wars. have you been ahead of your time since then? george: i have not directed a movie since then. producing, sort of ahead of my time with red tails. an all-black film. i paid for it myself. they would not distribute it. they would not make it. charlie: because of racism? george: they said the market research said nobody will go to that movie. charlie: market research may have said nobody will go to star wars. george: there is a certain --

over time a lot of these issues that we're just becoming dimly aware of have become institutionalized. now they know that movie will do well in france, this movie will do well in denmark. they have their markets. they do their little analysis and say we will we will not make the movie. it has nothing to do with what i do which is make a movie. i make money in spite of myself. i didn't care if it was a hit or not ahead. i wanted to make this movie as a movie. they can't do it. it is not in the constitution to do that. i have a duty to come up with a thing -- stockholders. that is why i will never go public. i'm not going to be beholden to anybody. now with the company, one of the

reasons i sold it, i was starting to make movies that were more personal and more obviously losing money. i can't do this much more because the company will be dragged down. i had 2000 employees. the best way to handle this is to sell it and take the money, put it in a bank account. i call it my yacht. i'm not going to buy a yacht but i take the money i would use to buy a yacht and i will use that to make movies that i know are experimental, but i have no way of knowing if they will work or not, but i want to see if they will work. i don't have to show them to an audience. charlie: when are we going to see that movie? george: you are not. you might. everything, you know they don't make money. red tails, you can't get anybody to distribute it. you can't get anybody to put

advertising money behind it. why go through that? it gets bad reviews. crazy people yelling and screaming? why not just make the movie for yourself. charlie: that is where you are today. george: i'm doing what i wanted, but i'm going to learn things. the things i learned, i will pass on to other friends of mine and directors, and say i didn't know you could do that. you learn from what peers are doing. you see how they manipulate film. doing things that have never been done before. that is what i want to do. in the movie business you cannot take a risk, you cannot do something that doesn't work. you don't get a second chance. i have taken second chances, to

polish them. there is no experimenting. what you do is every day on the set, what you are doing has to be right. if it is not right, the film will fail. if the film fails the people lose their money, and you have to get another job. charlie: are you telling me what you believe today, and your life's experience you know how to make a popular movie but that is not what you want to do in this stage in your life? george: yeah. why would i? charlie: you don't need the money. george: i don't need the money. my interests have shifted to more mature things. i did the kid thing. to me it is six films. charlie: why do you say the kids thing? george: it is a kid's film.

but the kinds of movies i'm going to make now are more demanding of an audience. most of the audience won't have anything to do with it. but i do. i have made movies for me that i wanted to see but i knew what they were. i said ok. this is this movie. this is this movie. producing films where i was able to get people to put their money in, studios, i wouldn't take it from real people, corporations. it is a robin hood thing. charlie: let me just talk about the upcoming star wars.

how do you feel about it? george: well, i made the decision to sell the company. i made that decision because i look to the future, i thought that i was going to have a baby, i was married, i wanted to build a museum, i wanted to make experimental films. i noticed the last few movies i made were costing the company a lot of money. i didn't think that was fair to the people that worked there. i made a decision to move ahead on the next star wars series. charlie: you were starting to make the next star wars. you as director, filmmaker. george: i was also stepping away a little bit and turning things over to kathy kennedy.

what happened was disney said if you want to sell your company -- we were talking about retirement -- we are very interested. that started the ball rolling. i knew from -- i have the story treatments -- we were working on scripts. so, i sold it. i knew when i sold i said i have tried to make movies where i step away, and after a couple of weeks i knew i could not do that. i had to stand over the shoulder of the director, whisper in his

ear constantly, and be there to help guide it. it was harder than if i directed it myself. charlie: jj abrams. george: jj abrams. he is a top director. disney, who was nervous. one of the issues was the first three movies had all kinds of issues. they looked at the stories and said we want to make something for the fans. i said all i want to do is tell a story of what happened, all about generations and the issues of fathers and sons. it is a family soap opera ultimately.

we call it space opera. it is a soap opera. it is all about family problems. it is not about spaceships. they decided they didn't want to use those stories. they would do their own thing. i decided, fine, but i'm not going to try -- they weren't keen to have me involved anyway. if i get in there i'm just going to cause trouble. i don't have the control to do that anymore. i said ok. i will go my way and let them go their way. it goes down to a simple rule of life. when you break up with somebody, the first rule is no phone calls. the second rule, you don't drive by their house to see what they are doing. you don't show up at their coffee shop. you just say no, gone, history,

i'm moving forward. charlie: do you have in you something that is -- personal films are what you want to do. no more star wars kind of adventure for george. that's over. george: yeah. these are little movies that are experimental. they are not using the same structure. i'm going back to where american graffiti was. i completely changed the way you tell a story using cinema. i have produced a few films that were like this. they weren't like what i would do but they were using the visual style rather than the book. charlie: what's exciting is that all of the stuff within you that made all of this, thx, star wars, indiana jones, it is all within you. it is who you are. you can apply that in any way. that is what you brought.

it is your ideas and your insight what you brought to film. george: and at the same time i have been fascinated with the medium, i have been fascinated with the true nature of the medium, it has been used more as a recording medium than an art form unto itself. in the beginning, like in russia, this was a whole movement of how you tell a visual story without dialogue, all of the things you use to tell a story, and you just use the film itself? it hasn't come much further in 100 years. i'm going to try to take it somewhere more emotionally powerful than most of the stuff we have done up until this point. charlie: thank you for doing this.

george: thank you. ♪

mark: i'm mark crumpton. "bloomberg west" is next. fbi director james comey told a cyber security conference today that the bureau is trying to determine if hackers connected to a foreign government want to influence u.s. elections this fall. >> those kinds of things are things that we take seriously and work very hard to understand so we can equip the rest of our government with options how to deal with it. mark: his remarks came as senate minority leader harry reid asked the fbi to investigate the threat of russian tampering with the u.s. elections. the spokesman for islamic state is dead. he was reportedly killed while