Born May 14, 1944, this son of a Modesto, CA retail businessman grew up tinkering with cars and dreaming of glory at the racetrack, until a near-fatal auto crash derailed his driving ambitions, forcing him behind the scenes as a mechanic. He had already begun experimenting with both still photography and 8-mm movies, when an assignment to help build a racing car introduced him to its owner – distinguished cinematographer Haskell Wexler, with whose encouragement he began to pursue filmmaking seriously. At U.S.C., he studied animation before moving to cinematography and excelling at editing, making eight student films ranging from one minute to 25 minutes. As the winner of a Warner Bros. scholarship, he came in contact with fellow filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola. The two quickly became allies and close friends, with Lucas serving as "general assistant,” assistant art director, production aide – basically, a general “do everything" – on Coppola's feature, "The Rain People" (1969). When Coppola opened his American Zoetrope production company in a San Francisco warehouse, with its ultra modern editing equipment, Lucas was named its vice-president by his close friend and mentor.

An expanded version of Lucas' award-winning short "Electronic Labyrinth: THX-1138: 4EB" (1968) was Zoetrope's first film, but Warner Bros. – on whom Coppola depended for financial backing – despised "THX-1138" (1971), withdrawing their support of Zoetrope and demanding the return of their money already invested. This move signaled the end of the production company for the time being. Lucas never forgot this strong-arming, and the memory of it would inform his future studio collaborations. Thankfully, Warner Bros. did end up releasing the picture, but they cut five minutes and provided half-hearted promotion – all to mixed reviews. Almost universally praised as a "dazzling technical achievement" with "stunning visuals and sound," "THX-1138" scored no points with critics for its Orwellian theme of the individual asserting himself against an authoritarian society policed by robots. Though the overall effect was cold and sterile and the zombie characters incapable of stirring sympathy, it was an extremely professional first film – one which its director re-released in 1977 with the missing five minutes restored. THX would famously live on as the name of the Lucas company which designed sound for theaters and home entertainment systems.

Wanting to break the industry's conception of him as a "science-fiction guy" with "stainless steel in my veins," Lucas decided to make a crowd-pleasing comedy, proving with "American Graffiti" (1973) that a warm, nostalgic film with an emphasis on personalities was well within his capabilities. More importantly, the movie was filled with his first love – fast cars. His vision was once again at odds with the studios, but Universal finally agreed to make the film – with a screenplay inspired by Lucas’ conversation with producer Gary Kurtz and written by Lucas with Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck. With Coppola and Kurtz co-producing, Lucas filmed "Graffiti" on the cheap for $780,000 in just 28 days while on location in two small towns near San Francisco – one of which, being his hometown of Modesto. Not surprisingly, he worked himself into a state of exhaustion. The largely then unknown cast – a veritable “who’s-who” of later seventies cinema and television – including Richard Dreyfuss, Suzanne Somers, Cindy Williams, Ron Howard and a pre-Han Solo, Harrison Ford – met all the director’s demands, despite acting in a film where the real stars were 1960s sports cars. Shooting almost entirely at night with very low light, the filmmaker achieved a "curious golden radiance" that would distinguish the picture, according to its entranced film critics.

True to form, when Universal executives first saw the film at a crowded preview – despite the enthusiastic response of the test audience – they hated it. Many later surmised that the studio brass felt threatened by Lucas' prodigious talent, and because "Graffiti" was so different from the cookie-cutter movies they were comfortable with, it scared them. Swooping in once again, Coppola pulled out his checkbook at the preview and offered to buy the film. Executives refused, preferring instead to torment Lucas with a plan to bypass a theatrical release and show it on TV. Considering the nostalgia boom it spawned, it was difficult to understand the executives’ fears, but its reliance on rock "oldies" for its structure seemed hopelessly "B-movie" to them at the time. They did not realize that Lucas was, for the first of many times, ahead of the curve, anticipating the nostalgia zeitgeist. By setting his film in 1962, he was evoking "the end of a political era, a sociological era; a rock era… a warm, secure, uninvolved life.” After humiliating Lucas with a four and a half minute cut, Universal finally relented and released "Graffiti" at the end of the summer. It was an immediate word-of-mouth hit with its target baby boomer audience, eventually grossing more than $100 million.

“Graffiti” was the last time Lucas would relinquish final cut, but it would not be his last war with a studio. Critical respectability and box office success had not made him bankable when pushing his own projects, so he inevitably had a difficult time interesting anybody in his proposed throwback to “Flash Gordon” B-movie action serials with high-tech special effects. After hearing his pitch, three studio chiefs told him to get lost. Only Alan Ladd, Jr. at 20th Century Fox believed in his vision, green-lighting "Star Wars" in 1974 for about $10 million. But Ladd would have a running battle with the Fox board, all of whom insisted it was not going to be commercial enough, right up until its blockbuster opening. With "Star Wars” – a project he firmly believed in and knew would not be cheap – Lucas flabbergasted Fox executives by forgoing his option to receive an additional $500,000 for directing the movie; instead wisely taking the merchandising and sequel rights.

Lucas set about creating his own world, inventing a future that smacked of the past while figuring out a way to strike the archetypal jugular of his audience. In order to come up with his own nonsectarian "Star Wars" mythology, he studied the work of Joseph Campbell, among other sources, and took structural elements from many different myths, combining them into an epic story which filled the moral void left by the demise of the traditional Western. Borrowing heavily from his film-school canon, his “Star Wars” drew inspiration from, among many other things, Kurosawa's "Hidden Fortress" (1958) for the lightsaber duels; Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" (1927) for C3PO's metallic human form; and Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will" (1935) for the film’s victorious closing ceremony. Cast as the wise Jedi Knight, Obi-Wan Kenobi, British actor Sir Alec Guinness, in a way, reprised his role from "Lawrence of Arabia” (1962) and lent a sense of authenticity to a project that was being scoffed at by Fox execs in pre-production.

Shot on location in Tunisia (for the desert planet of Tatooine) and at Elstree Studios in Hertfordshire, England, “Star Wars: A New Hope” was an arduous shoot, with everything that could go wrong, inevitably doing so – from the malfunctioning R2-D2 unit falling over or stalling mid-roll, to creating special effects that did not yet exist, to a grumpy British crew who thought their young American director was quite insane – to say nothing of the apprehensive studio breathing down Lucas’ back. Despite the apprehension of many involved – most of whom did not understand a thing that Lucas was trying to do – no one doubted the passion the man had for his silly fairy tale in space. One of Lucas’ best decisions resulted in the casting of the relatively unknown lead trio of actors – Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher. In addition to their chemistry onscreen, their bond w