Sci Fi Trifles: Useless but essential pop culture tidbits and trivia from the worlds of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror that once you have read them you don’t know how you have lived so long without knowing them.
George Lucas and Steven Spielberg are renowned among sci fi fandom for their blockbuster productions that include genre pillars Star Wars, Indiana Jones, E.T., Jurassic Park and more. But do you know where these two much-vaunted (and at times much-maligned) filmmakers got their start?
George Lucas actually had an early love of racing but a near-fatal accident toward the end of his high school days changed his mind about the sport and landed him in college instead. He began as an anthropology major but discovered his love for filmmaking during this time and he eventually transferred to University of Southern California to study the craft. He produced several student films during this time including one about racing as well as a short piece of dystopian science fiction titled Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB. He later expanded this fifteen minute short into his first feature film, 1971′s THX: 1138 which starred Robert Duvall and Donald Pleasence. And while at USC, Lucas met and became friends another future filmmaker whom he would later collaborate with, Steven Spielberg.
Spielberg got his start filmmaking at age twelve when he did a nine minute western film to earn his Boy Scout photography merit badge. At thirteen, he did a 40 minute war film and at sixteen he did a 140 minute science fiction film Firelight that would later inspire his Close Encounters of the Third Kind (and the filming process of that early movie likely influenced his more recent Super 8). His first professional work to get theatrical release was the short road-trip film Amblin’. His first work in television would come directing a segment of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery titled “Eye” and which starred Joan Crawford. He had several more stints helming episodes of TV shows before getting the directing gig for highly regarded 1971 TV movie Duel, written by genre veteran Richard Matheson. This movie brought more attention to the young director and three years later (one year before the release of Jaws) Spielberg had his big screen debut with the (non-genre) drama The Sugarland Express.
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