6 Filmmaking Tips From Lawrence Kasdan

"A lot of people who comb through movie news will recognize Lawrence Kasdan‘s name next to all the Star Wars developments that have been pouring out in the past two weeks. Some will know the franchise (as well as Indiana Jones) as his legacy while others would point to his intimate portrayals of life’s difficulties in movies like Grand Canyon and The Big Chill.

He’s gone through eras of great prolificness and droughts where work seemed impossible to find, and after four decades, he’s amassed a great amount of wisdom and expertise. He’s also in the unique position of abandoning (and being all but abandoned by) the studio system years after having been a mid-wife to massive franchises.

So here’s a bit of free film school (for fans and filmmakers alike) from the man who told us who Luke’s father was.

Don’t Forget Humor

“I want everything I do to have humor in it, because it seems to me that all of life has that. Even the most dire situation – sometimes those are the most close to hysteria …”

Surely there’s a limit to this, and there are some phenomenal, bleak movies, but there are far more movies where a distressing scenario turns everyone into stone statues instead of human beings. Sometimes a bit of humor within the framework of a hopeless situation is exactly what we need as an audience to remember why the heroes go on fighting the good fight. Brooding can be tiresome, and forgetting about comic moments also cuts out a huge element of the human experience. It can also make depressing parts more powerful by contrast, so try to remember that there’s humor to be found in just about everything.

Comfort is the Death of Artistic Freedom

“You see, that’s the trap, becoming a slave to your lifestyle. Then you’ve given up the power. You can’t fight the power if you’ve given them the power. If that becomes your priority, which is understandable when people reach middle age, they become used to a very comfortable lifestyle that is enviable because you get to do work you like and then you’re well-remunerated for it. But when that becomes the priority, you’re dead meat as an artist, because you no longer control your destiny. The only way to control your destiny is to not need things…I’ve got as many weaknesses as anybody, but what I can’t buy is people complaining that they have to do this kind of work. Why do they have to? In Hollywood, I think you can make almost any kind of movie if you’re passionate about it.”

Emerging from the late 1970s, an era that Kasdan clearly sees (as do many) as the golden age of storytelling in Hollywood, he has a lot to say about how the situation has devolved into a corporate trap where box office is what determines the worth of a film instead of how challenging or well-executed it is. Ironically, Kasdan was involved in the very films - Empire Strikes Back and the Indiana Jones franchise – whose financial returns urged studios to go down the path that he now despises. His early success is exactly what eventually kept him from taking his later, more personal films to the studio system."

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