“Congratulations Dear George”: 57 years after they met, Francis Ford Coppola will present the honorary Palme d’Or to the Star Wars creator.

“Congratulations Dear George”: 57 years after they met, Francis Ford Coppola will present the honorary Palme d’Or to the Star Wars creator.

After Meryl Streep and Studio Ghibli, another great figure in cinema, George Lucas, was celebrated at the closing ceremony of the 77th edition of the Cannes Film Festival, after a great masterclass for festival-goers.

The father of two iconic franchises – Star Wars and Indiana Jones – that restored the nobility of blockbusters and large-scale action films, the screenwriter, producer and director received an honorary Palme d’Or throughout his career.

Mistress of Ceremonies Camille Cotin also ushered in the closing ceremony with the legendary music from Star Wars, with the speech projected onto the big screen and similar to intergalactic film intro panels.

The Palme d’Or branch of this honor is welcomed by the Cannes Film Festival “One of the greatest figures in modern cinema, a man with an extraordinary career that combines great spectacle with innovation, mythology with modernity and cinephilia with technology.”.

In addition to his achievements and productions in action and science fiction cinema through his company Lucasfilm and its subsidiaries acquired by The Walt Disney Company, George Lucas is also known for his role as a visionary and pioneer in the film industry for his companies Industrial Light & Magic and THX.

Lucas and Coppola, two of the greats of cinema, reunited

This great man of cinema was able to see in the Grand Theater Lumiere of the Palais des Festivals de Cannes how his ambitions, vision and passion characterized Hollywood and the 7th art. And after a montage of his fame, his life and work, it was Francis Ford Coppola, who participated in the competition this year with the science fiction work Megalopolis, who gave him the honorary Palme d’Or.

It must be said that the director of the Godfather trilogy is one of his closest friends, with whom he defined the new Hollywood along with Martin Scorsese, Brian De Palma, Dennis Hopper, Michael Cimino and Steven Spielberg. And George Lucas got his start in the industry thanks to Francis Ford Coppola, who helped him produce his first feature film, THX 1138, released in 1971.

“The Godfather”, who took George Lucas under his wing, therefore supported his friend and gave him a brotherly testimony.

“It is absolutely extraordinary for me to be here to pay tribute to the imagination, success and perseverance of my comrade here. I met George Lucas when he was a student at the University of Southern California, a rival film school to my own. From California, Los Angeles.

He came to see me on the set of my first studio film with a group much older than me, all in suits and ties. I asked this 19-year-old boy, dressed casually in a T-shirt, what he was looking at. He replied: Not so much. Happy to have found someone of my generation, I offered to come back every day, on the condition that he would make a brilliant suggestion every day, which he did brilliantly.

Thus began our friendship that has never ended. I’ve followed his entire career full of brilliant ideas, like the first movie with period songs, the first movie to end with a brief explanation of what happened to each character, and again the first movie with a title in the middle. Brilliant ideas that marked the history of cinema, the history of screenplays, the commercial history of cinema.

And now, the story continues in France, the country where cinema was born thanks to the Lumiere brothers and where cinema is celebrated with great joy and passion. I also remember that sad day when he felt rejected. He met with the rights holders of Flash Gordon, this astronaut from the futuristic comics created in 1934.

He was told that he was not important enough to trust this famous character, the star of several movies, who had graced his childhood. Then he looked at me and said, well, I’m going to make my own movie and call it Star Wars or Star Wars or whatever. And that’s what he did, risking everything he had to get there.

Congratulations, dear George. Not only do you have a lot of friends and I’m proud of you, but the whole world is here to honor you.”

“I’m just a kid”

After a touching speech by his friend Francis Ford Coppola, with whom he hugged, George Lucas thanked the festival for this honorary Palme d’Or.

“Thank you Francis, I did not expect this. He is a great friend. He is like a big brother. He has always supported me and I thank him for everything he has always done for me. I want to thank the Cannes Film Festival, thank you. My co-writer, my sound engineer, great friends , who came here to Cannes with me.

Besides, we were here in Cannes 52 years ago. We were here together to present my first films, it was also the directors’ fortnight. Everything went wrong in Cannes that day. We entered the room because we almost didn’t have an invitation.

These are two buckles that close slightly. I came here today to thank you all. Me, I’m just a kid who grew up in the middle of the vineyards in California and used to shoot movies in San Francisco with my friend Francis.

So we spent our entire careers in parallel, especially in San Francisco. In fact, I have never made a film in Hollywood as a director. So it’s a great honor to be here. I can’t tell you. And I thank you from the bottom of my heart.”


Source: Allocine

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