Was Producer Gary Kurtz Fired After “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back”?
Few stories spawn their own legends in the same way as the Star Wars saga. As one of the highest grossing properties of all time, anyone at every level of production has their own to tell. However, this legend goes all the way to the top, starting with the two men who created it all: George Lucas and Gary Kurtz.
The first is probably known to any reader; Lucas has thoroughly established a coup as the “father of the franchise”. Consequently, he’s buried the role that other key figures played in the movie’s inception . Enter Kurtz, a producer introduced to Lucas by Francis Ford Coppola in the early 1970s. The two hit it off, settling together on their first collaboration, American Graffitti, which released in 1973. A hit smash, Graffiti gave Lucas the equity he needed to convince Hollywood to take a bet on his other project, a gestating space opera based on… Flash Gordon?
After failing to secure the rights to Gordon, an. ancient sci-fi serial from the 30s, Lucas and Kurtz bounced ideas off one another for an original movie “inspired” by Gordon instead. Writing draft after draft, the film known today as Star Wars: A New Hope slowly took shape. Kurtz often pruned some of Lucas’s stranger ideas from the script; he even claimed credit for Star Wars most famous line: “May the Force be with You.” It’s a mantra Lucas needed as the difficulties of adjusting to a studio film set- and a grueling location shoot in Tunisia- pushed Star Wars beyond its budget and schedule. Rewarded, but burnt out by the movie’s success, Lucas handed production of its sequel, The Empire Strikes Back, to director Irvin Kirschner and its sole producer (in name), Kurtz. Having failed to learn their lesson on the first movie, the difficulties of a frigid shoot in Norway and a man-made swamp on the Dagobah set pushed Star Wars behind schedule…again. Self-financing the movie himself rather than turn to distributor 20th Century Fox put Lucas at personal risk of bankruptcy. With debtors closing in, Lucas needed a fall-guy, someone to blame.
While the Empire eventually released to enormous financial success similar to the first Star Wars, Lucas’s view that Kurtz’s mismanaged the production put a strain on the relationship between the two men. He then fired Kurtz — or at least, that’s one version of the events. Kurtz always maintained that he left amicably after becoming disillusioned with Lucas’s story concepts for the upcoming Return of the Jedi.
So, whose story is true? Well, when discussing egos built by some of the highest grossing movies of the all time, finding an answer is tricky.
Kurtz was free about his aspirations for Return of the Jedi. Based on the original outline Lucas had shared with him, he often spoke about how melodrama would spring from the characters. Casualties were encouraged; at one point, Han Solo would die in the second act, putting the rest of the cast in danger (according to Lawrence Kasdan, the Empire Strikes Back screenwriter who wrote Jedi as well). After the climax, Leia would remain to lead the rebels while Luke plunged into the expanse of space to find his lost sister, an unknown character —not Leia — hinted at in the previous film by Yoda. This set the stage for an upcoming sequel trilogy (although this 1983 interview with Mark Hamill confirms that Lucas had already been planning a Force Awakens- style revival set to release in the 2010s). Despite Kurtz’s enthusiasm, Lucas scrapped this original outline during preproduction on his collaboration with Steven Spielberg, Raiders of the Lost Ark. Years later, Kurtz suggested Indiana Jones’s rollicking adventures had drawn Lucas away from the cerebral underpinnings of a movie like The Empire Strikes Back.
In that sense, Return of the Jedi became Lucas’s second attempt at the first Star Wars, Death Star and all. Besides Kurtz word, archival evidence supports this. The first publically available script for Return of the Jedi is a revised rough-draft dated June 12, 1981, although Lucasfilm historian J.W. Rinzler recites an earlier version from February of 1981 in The Making of Star Wars: The Return of the Jedi. It’s the barest bones of the Jedi that eventually released. There’s the Death Star, a revived Obi Wan Kenobi, and a battle with the Emperor to decide the galaxy’s fate between — with a last minute assist from force ghost Yoda. Story differences aside, the date on the draft reveals the pre-conceptual stage for Jedi began in late 1980/early 1981, with Rinzler setting it as early as 1979. Lucas had to be mulling ideas during Empire’s post-production phase — well, if there’s truth to Kurtz version of events. This begs the question: why would Lucas share his ideas with someone he’d already decided to fire months earlier during principle photography?
Well, there’s the testimony of a third player yet to be introduced: Kurtz’s replacement, Howard Kazanjian.
According to Kazanjian in a 2021 interview with Jamie Benning for his podcast Filmumentaries, Kazanjian had been a second producer on Empire Strikes Back in all but name. Lucas, knowing that he wouldn’t bring Kurtz onto the next film, used Empire to train his first partner’s replacement. While Benning’s interview took place some 40 years after the fact, it revealed that Lucas had already considered a Kurtz-less future. True to his word, he brought Kazanjian alone onboard his next project, Raiders of the Lost Ark. As for those previous conversations about Jedi Lucas had with Kurtz? Well, according to Kurtz himself, those took place during Empire’s writing process. As a cost-saving measure, the filmmakers had convinced the studio that it made sense to greenlight both movies at the same time, especially since a third film would assuredly be on the horizon. Therefore, Empire had been written with Jedi in mind. Kurtz knew details about the movie before anyone else, expect for maybe Kazanjian. Finally, there’s this quote from J.W. Rinzler’s 2010 book The Making of Star Wars: the Empire Strike’s Back which puts the final inconsistencies to rest,
“Kurtz was not asked back to produce the last film of the trilogy. ‘When we finally wrapped up Empire and shipped it off, George and I had a long talk about it and it was clear he was unhappy with what had happened,’ says Kurtz. ‘The cost, and then the other things. And I was weighing the option of joining Jim Henson to do The Dark Crystal, which we had talked about over the years, from way before Star Wars, when I worked with him on The Muppet Show. So it was mutual. George didn’t really want me to do the next film and I didn’t think I really wanted to do it. It was just better for us to part company there without making the relationship worse.’”
[Excerpt From
The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (Enhanced Edition)
Rinzler, J. W.
This material may be protected by copyright.]
Lucas’s new star pupil, for his part, would see the worse end of Lucas’s treatment as well. Kazanjian wouldn’t be credited as a producer until his work on Raiders (well, as “executive producer”), and Lucas parted ways with him after Return of the Jedi. Rick McCallum, who worked on the Young Indiana Jones series, would be chosen by Lucas to shepherd the rereleases of the original trilogy a decade later. Bringing McCallum along for the prequels ensured that their partnership lasted well beyond Kazanjian or Kurtz’s. McCallum remained at Lucasfilm until Disney purchased the company in 2012; until that point, he’d been in active development on the scrapped Star Wars: Underworld live-action show. Meanwhile, Kazanjian and Kurtz both saw some success in the following years before drifting into obscurity during the late 90s. Lucasfilm’s brand had subsided by the 90s, taking with it an entire genre of fantastical, effects-driven blockbusters. Kurtz and Kazanjian found work in low-budget spaces, although both occasionally collaborated with former colleagues from Lucasfilm. They also appeared in the 2004 Lucasfilm documentary Empire of Dreams: the Story of the ‘Star Wars’ Trilogy, although the film makes no mention of Kurtz falling out with Lucas. Over the years he’d share more information about his time with the series, and unfortunately died in 2018 from cancer. He left behind a fulfilled legacy- Empire Strikes Back and A New Hope are widely regarded as the best movies in the whole series.
So TLDR; to answer the question of whether Kurtz was really fired from Return of the Jedi or not: we don’t know for sure, and probably won’t. That being said, evidence suggests that Kurtz, while maybe fired in Lucas’s mind, left the project with no ill will. There weren’t any lawsuits in the wake of the departure, and Kurtz remained open about his work on the trilogy until his passing. The exact reasoning is another lost piece of Lucasfilm lore, a company dogged by nearly half a century of myth and heresy. Return of the Jedi, under Lucas, Kazanjian, and director Richard Marquand, became a fitting end to the first era of Star Wars — just without Kurtz.
Sources for this article include:
https://www.avclub.com/gary-kurtz-the-forgotten-force-behind-star-wars-1850391769
https://mashable.com/archive/star-wars-myths-gary-kurtz#NmkTBxhHouq2
- The article this links to is based on an interview conducted by Chris Taylor for the “Full of Sith” podcast.
“Empire of Dreams: the Story of the ‘Star Wars’ Trilogy” (2004)
The Making of Star Wars: the Empire Strikes Back and The Making of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi by J.W. Rinzler
