4 THX 1138

Chapter 4 THX 1138 At Warner Bros., George was assigned to work on a movie called Finian's Rainbow. The director was Francis Ford Coppola. Coppola was a hero to Lucas. He was five years older and a UCLA graduate. Coppola noticed the "skinny kid" watching him, and the two became friends.

Unlike George, Coppola was big, lively, and loud. But George found the movie they were working on boring. He decided to hunt down unguarded film stock to use for a movie of his own. "What do you mean you're leaving? Aren't I entertaining enough?" Coppola demanded. "There's nothing to do here," George said. Coppola promised to find him something to do. The two argued about Finian's Rainbow, but Coppola would often give in, saying, "You're a stinky kid, do what you want!" George loved the work enough to work with Coppola on his next movie, too—The Rain People, filmed in New York. Marcia had editing jobs elsewhere. He missed her. When she came to visit him, he asked her to marry him. Coppola wanted to make George's student film Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB into a longer film. He made a deal with Warner Bros. He would bring the studio new ideas, and Warner Bros. would pay him to develop them into movies. George got $15,000 to write a new

script for THX 1138 and direct it. Coppola and George then created their own company, called American Zoetrope, to develop and produce the film. George married Marcia on February 22, 1969. They moved to Mill Valley, California, and Marcia found work as an editor. George got to work on THX 1138. The first step, he thought, was to hire a writer. But Coppola said if George was going to make it in the movie business, he had to learn to write himself. George worked on the script with his USC friend Walter Murch, who would also do sound for the film. Unlike Coppola, who spent money freely, George planned on a strict budget for THX 1138. He had ten weeks to shoot—the same time it took to make his short (fifteen-minute) student film version—beginning September 22, 1969. Rather than build sets, he found places in San Francisco that could pass for a landscape of the future. The movie's final chase scene took place in the half-completed train tunnels for the

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new Bay Area Rapid Transit system. The actors wore simple costumes and little makeup, and they shaved their heads—even the women. Walter Murch created a "sound montage," a collection of noises and voices that played instead of music. George edited the footage at his house in Mill Valley. In the middle of 1970, Coppola showed it to the Warner Bros. producers. They hated it and wanted to break their whole deal with Zoetrope. But Warner Bros. did release the film on March 11, 1971. THX 1138 wasn't a hit.

Warner refused to make any other movies with American Zoetrope. Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas's plans for American Zoetrope were finished.