American Zoetrope

However staged and manipulated and shaped that drama might have been.

But, you know, it's funny you bring up the new Hollywood idea that obviously this, because this film, of course, was made through the auspices of American Zoetrope, which was...

Coppola and Lucas's? Was it Coppola's venture? I'm not sure.

There was another

But Friedkin fell out with everybody, so that's not the...

Right, right, right.

American Zoetrope was...

I think Lucas was involved, yes.

So of course you're going to get under his wing.

And he had a big bold idea in the early 70s that he brought George Lucas in on, and that was when he launched American Zoetrope, which was supposed to be kind of like a production studio to help those young guys get films made.

I highly recommend Rick Rubin's podcast.

He spoke, I mean, not recently, because I'm just now getting into the podcast, so I'm going on deep dives into the back catalog.

Incredible.

One of my jobs at Zoetrope was to inventory all the equipment.

Francis used to like to buy equipment.

He didn't want to rent anything.

I want to work with the cameras on set.

That started my path.

And so I worked at Zoetrope for a while when Francis bought the studios in Los Angeles, Hollywood General, to do one from the heart.

He asked me if I would, quote, run the camera department, whatever that meant.

I, I've seen people, they've made a very good l- you know, very low budget independent films, and the world is replete with filmmakers who have done that.

And I would always take that approach of, if I looked six months down the road, what money could I have in my bank account? Who do I know who has some money who might be willing to fund it? And what, what, uh, deals can I strike, and what do I own? What d- deals can I strike? What can I beg, borrow and, and, uh, and so on, that I could use? Francis Ford Coppola, when he was, um, when he first started Zoetrope Studios in, in sort of that house in San Francisco, sort of the famous house in San Francisco, and, you know, he went to Europe and purchased a, um, a Moviola, like an editing machine, and brought it back from Paris to his studio.

So he had this, like, old, you know, what would now be called an old school editing machine, editing table.

And he ha- already had a 16 millimeter film camera and a bunch of like, you know, film short ends that he was able to get from, from, uh, UCLA or from whatever.

Further contributors include Dave Isay, Stacy Abramson, Andy Lanset, Jad Abumrad, Marianne McCune, Beth Fertig, Tara Anderson, Cathy Brew, John Schaefer, Art Silverman, Mary Beth Bowen, Minoli Weatherell, Crystal Smith, Steve Dima, and the countless individuals and institutions who contributed to this memorial.

Special mention goes to Anne Pasternak and Creative Time, author Angus Kress Gillespie, Joanne Wallace and KQED, Robert Krulwich and Deborah Amos, American Zoetrope, Rick Madden, and the community of public radio stations who helped bring these sounds and stories to air.

The Sonic Memorial Project is a collaboration between Lost and Found Sound, NPR, WNYC, Picture Projects, and independent radio producers nationwide.

Major funding comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Today we're exploring George Lucas's bold decision to keep merchandising rights that turned Star Wars from a film into a multimillion dollar franchise.

George Lucas began his filmmaking journey after dropping out of college to pursue movies in New York City, eventually moving west where he met Francis Ford Coppola and co founded The American Zoetrope, a cooperative that challenged traditional studio practices and allowed writers like himself to explore auteur narratives.

This early experience gave him a keen sense of narrative ownership versus corporate control.

It also exposed him to the harsh realities of film financing.