By George & Josh Bate
As Chief Creative Officer of Lucasfilm, Dave Filoni has firmly taken the reigns of a galaxy far, far away in recent years. But Filoni’s first step into the galaxy were by the side of the legendary George Lucas in crafting Star Wars: The Clone Wars over 15 years ago.
In a recent interview with Joshua Horowitz on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Filoni spoke about a number of topics, including the possibility of an R-rated Star Wars, how he went about translating Ahsoka to live-action, and favorite Star Wars moments. But the thing that stood out most to us from the interview was Filoni speaking about his relationship with George Lucas, including whether he still consults with Lucas on current Star Wars projects.
“I’m very respectful of his time,” said Filoni. “He has a museum to finish…I’ve had a lot of mentoring from him. The answer is yes I do every now and then, but it’s got to be something really important for me to go and seek him out now. And yet even when I do, it feels every mythical to go before him and talk.”
Filoni went on the compare his relationship with Lucas to the relationship between Anakin and Obi-Wan. It was the greatest asset in Clone Wars,” Filoni continued: “It was the greatest confidence to know that he was there. To know that, no matter what we did, he was the backstop. And it had to be a little bit like maybe Anakin felt at times with Obi-Wan. Like Obi-Wan has got my back, I know he’s there. And so, when he’s not there…you’re flying free down that trench and you’re figuring, ‘Am I going to hit that exhaust port?’ I don’t always know. But we our best. We do it. We don’t try. We do our best.”
Filoni was also asked whether there is an open-door policy at Lucasfilm to welcome back George Lucas if he ever had an idea for a Star Wars story.
“Would you say no?” Filoni joked. “What would you say?…He can come right in. He has the pass…Whatever he came up with, would be different. He was always the most surprising in what he would do and how he would push things.”
Filoni continued by reflecting on how seemingly minor decisions from George Lucas years ago still have emotional payoff to this day. Filoni remarked, “Even when it’s a simple thing now to people like Ahsoka calling Anakin sky guy or him calling her snips, at first, I was like, ‘Wow. I never saw that in Star Wars. How does that work?’ And, as it went on, years later, you see it’s a big brother / little sister talk and now it pays off for us all these years when he says Snips. It’s like an emotional moment for people who grew up with it, who grew up with Ahsoka.”
“I always think he has such keen insight into those human things that make his characters real, make his galaxy is real,” Filoni continued. “It’s not just that the starships look worn, that things look lived in. He creates a lived-in world, because the characters have experience and they’re very knowledgable of their world, they’ve lived their life.”
Check out the full interview with Dave Filoni (and Hayden Christensen and Rosario Dawson) here.