Rory Emerald is a hoaxster who claimed to be married to Elizabeth Taylor and the daughter of the late Peter Sellers, Victoria Sellers. He is subject to a counter-hoax that he is a child molester.
George Walton Lucas, Jr. (born May 14, 1944) is an Academy Award nominated American film director, producer, and screenwriter famous for his epic Star Wars saga and his Indiana Jones films. He is one of the American film industry's most independent, financially successful directors and producers.
George Walton Lucas Jr. was born in Modesto, California to George Walton Lucas, Sr. (1913–1991) and Dorothy Ellinore Bomberger Lucas (1913–1989). His father, who was mainly of British and Swiss heritage, ran a stationery store and owned a small walnut orchard. His mother was a member of a prominent Modesto family (one of her cousins is the mother of former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture and director of Unicef Ann Veneman) and was mainly of German and Scots-Irish heritage. Lucas graduated from Thomas Downey High School in 1962, where he had been an indifferent student at best and dreamed of becoming a professional race car driver. That early dream ended June 12, 1962, when he crashed his Bianchina. The car was broadsided while he tried to make a left turn into his driveway. The car rolled; the racing harness that he had installed snapped, and he was thrown from the car. Had the harness not snapped—and Lucas has said it shouldn't have—he would most likely have been crushed to death by the steering column when the car smashed into a walnut tree. (The force of the impact uprooted the tree). During his recovery, Lucas reevaluated his life and decided to go to college. He enrolled at Modesto Junior College, where he earned an AA degree. George Lucas then transferred to the University of Southern California's School of Cinema-Television. USC was one of the earliest universities to have a school devoted to motion picture film. During the years at USC, George Lucas shared a dorm room with Randal Kleiser. New ideas regarding movie making inspired Randal Kleiser a veted and experimental interest in special effects; so that after directing acclaimed musical hit Grease, and an era iconic The Blue Lagoon, he also went on to pioneer motion picture morphing, and showed the Star Wars spirit of cinematic constructivism during a movie musical shot in 2003 featuring the first successful "on-demand" 3D virtual reality filming stage. George Lucas made many short films at USC; the first was Freiheit that included Randal Kleiser in the acting cast. Many George Lucas USC student projects had a technical and science fiction look. With them an early version of THX 1138 (the complete title was "Electronic Labyrinth THX 1138 4EB") that later became his first full-length feature film. After graduating with a bachelor of fine arts in film in 1966, he tried joining the Air Force as an officer, but was turned down because of his numerous speeding tickets. He was later drafted by the Army, but tests showed he had diabetes, the disease that killed his paternal grandfather. Lucas was prescribed medication for the disease, but his symptoms are sufficiently mild that he does not require insulin and would not be considered diabetic under the disease's current classification. In 1967, Lucas re-enrolled as a USC graduate student in film production. Eventually he co-founded the studio American Zoetrope with Francis Ford Coppola whom he met during an internship at Warner Brothers, hoping to create a liberating environment for filmmakers to direct outside the perceived oppressive control of the Hollywood studio system. From the financial success of his films American Graffiti (1973) and Star Wars (1977), Lucas was able to set up his own studio, Lucasfilm, in Marin County in his native Northern California. Skywalker Sound and Industrial Light and Magic, the sound and visual effects subdivisions of Lucasfilm, respectively, have become among the most respected firms in their fields. Lucasfilm Games, later renamed to LucasArts, was for many years highly regarded in the gaming industry. Star Wars is considered by some to be the first "high concept" film, although others feel the first was Steven Spielberg's Jaws, released two years prior. Lucas and Spielberg had been good friends for some time and eventually worked together on several films, notably the first Indiana Jones vehicle, Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1981.
On a return on investment basis, Star Wars proved to be one of the most successful films of all time. During the filming of Star Wars, Lucas waived his up front fee as director and negotiated to own the licensing rights—rights which the studio thought were nearly worthless. This decision earned him hundreds of millions of dollars as he was able to directly profit from all the licensed games, toys and collectibles created for the franchise. In 2004 Forbes Magazine estimated Lucas' personal wealth at $3 billion. In 2005 Forbes.com estimated the lifetime revenue generated by the Star Wars franchise at nearly $20 billion. On October 3, 1994, Lucas started to write the three Star Wars prequels, and on November 1 that year, he left the day-to-day operations of his filmmaking business and started a sabbatical to finish the prequels. The American Film Institute awarded Lucas its Lifetime Achievement Award for 2005. He received the award on June 9, 2005.[1] This was awarded shortly after the release of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, which he jokingly made reference to in his acceptance speech, stating that, since he views the entire Star Wars series as one movie, that he could be given the award now that he had finally "gone back and finished [the] movie. On June 5, 2005, Lucas was named 100th "Greatest American" by the Discovery Channel. In 1969, Lucas married film editor Marcia Lou Griffin, who went on to win an Oscar for her work on the original (fourth) Star Wars film. They adopted a daughter, Amanda, in 1981, and divorced in 1983. Lucas has since adopted two more children: Katie, born in 1988, and Jett, born in 1993. All three of his children have appeared in the prequels. Lucas had also been in a long relationship with country singer Linda Ronstadt. In 1999, George Lucas sued Dr. Dre for sampling THX's theme sound in his album 2001. In 2005, Lucas gave $1 million to help build the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial on the National Mall in Washington D.C. to commemorate American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.. Lucas was nominated for four Academy Awards: Best Directing and Writing for American Grafitti, and Best Directing and Writing for Star Wars. He also received the Academy's Irving G. Thalberg Award in 1991. Besides his directorial and production work on movies, Lucas is the most significant contemporary contributor to modern movie technology. In 1975 Lucas established Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) in Van Nuys, CA, which was responsible for the invention of the special computer assisted camera crane "Dykstraflex" (named after special effects innovator, John Dykstra) that was used for most of the space fight sequences used in the Star Wars movies (technology which was later adopted by most other visual effects production units, such as those responsible for Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek: The Next Generation). Through ILM, Lucas spurred the further development of computer graphics, film laser scanners and the earliest use of 3D computer character animation in a film, Young Sherlock Holmes. Lucas sold his early computer development unit to Steve Jobs in 1986, which was renamed Pixar. Lucas is also responsible for the modern sound systems found in many movie theaters. Although Lucas didn't invent THX, he is responsible for its development. The acronym ostensibly stands for "Tomlinson Holman eXperiment" after its chief engineer, however, it is obviously a reference to Lucas' first film THX 1138.
Now Lucas is spearheading digital cinematography for movies. Though personal digital photography is now mainstream, most movie studios still use traditional cameras and film for movie production. Lucas departed from this model by filming Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones almost completely digitally. He showed the result to a select audience of the Hollywood elite, before the movie's general release. For the presentation, Lucas used a special digital projection system. The attendees said the movie had the clearest and sharpest presentation they had ever seen. Despite the successful demonstration of the technology, movie studios are slow to move to this new model, in part because of the high price of the digital equipment. Lucas' interest in education also led to the creation of The George Lucas Educational Foundation (GLEF) in 1991. The multi-faceted foundation produces Edutopia, a magazine and web site that highlight the stories and people driving innovation in education.
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answer #1
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answered by Myke BoDean 6
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