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First of all, he is tired, still groggy from jet lag. He has just returned from Sri Lanka, where he was working on Indiana Jones: The Temple of Doom, the sequel to Raiders. Second of all, he is worried about the reception of Jedi. "What if we have finally got to the end of the shaggy-dog story," he asks, "and everybody says, 'That's it?' Technically and logistically, this was the hardest of the three films to make, and all I see is the mistakes and the stuff that doesn't work." Only 5 ft. 7 in. and always slight, Lucas has lost 20 lbs. in the past six months of work and worry. The way he talks, the sheriff will be at his door May 26 if there are not long lines outside theaters when Jedi opens May 25.
But there is more to Lucas' bleak expression than weariness or worry. There is a fundamental, existential malaise, and as he describes it, the telling of the Star Wars saga has taken a terrible toll on him. "The sacrifice I've made for Star Wars may have been greater than I wanted," he says. "After Graffiti, Star Wars could have gone in the toilet and it wouldn't have mattered financially. It's an interesting choice I made, and now I'm burned out. In fact, I was burned out a couple of years ago, and I've been going on momentum ever since. Star Wars has grabbed my life and taken it over against my will. Now I've got to get my life back again—before it's too late!
"Ever since I was in film school in the '60s, I've been on a train. Back then I was pushing a 147-car train up a very steep slope—push, push, push. I pushed it all the way up, and when Star Wars came along in 1977,1 reached the top. I jumped on board, and then it started going down the other side of the hill. I've had the brakes on ever since. My life since Star Wars has been spent pulling back on all these levers, trying to stop the train from going down this very steep slope, with the wheels screaming and screeching all the way. It's been work, work, work."
What that has meant in practical terms has been long stretches of getting up at 5 a.m., coming home at 8:30 p.m. or later, and no more than five hours of sleep. "People usually don't understand the implications of what I'm saying," he insists, "but they are awesome! It's one thing to talk about it; it's another to actually live your life that way. After a while it just gets to be grim. I'm not going to turn around 16 years from now and have my 18-year-old daughter say, 'Hi, Dad, where have you been all my life?' So I'm about to jump off the train. I've got this slim chance right now to decide what I want to do."