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Last week the visionary art house director made comments on a small failed Fox sci-fi project from 1977 named "The Star Wars" seen by the filmmaker as a misstep in the otherwise sterling career of Lucas who is today known for his sprawling philosophical independent dramas.

Lucas stated in a recent interview
>You know I think I just wanted to make something I would have liked as a kid. Something simple. I was watching a lot of the old Flash Gordon serials at the time and just wanted to make something in that vein but I guess to 1977 audiences it all seemed a little safe... a little too simple and so after a few weeks in which we were just able break even on the production along came Friedkin. I mean we all had seen the French Connection and The Exorcist, marvelous successes in their own rights but Sorcerer was just such a shot in the arm for the entire industry. It was everything audiences at that time were feeling about the world. The moral ambiguity, the political overtones, everything on a knife's edge. I mean, that bridge sequence, god. I watched that film slack jawed in amazement. It really sent a message that the cinema wasn't a place for children interested in black and white power fantasies and I took that message to heart. Children's stories are all well and good but they'll never deliver the kind of experience one can get from something like Sorcerer. When I compare what I made in Star Wars to that it all just seems so frivolous and banal.

Today we know the impact Sorcerer had that summer. Playing for a record breaking 23 weeks and ushering in the mainstream acceptance of non-english performances in american films. It solidified the director centric New Hollywood as an international powerhouse for bold, original cinema what the focus on social and moral realism remained a large focus for the decades that followed.