May The Farce Be With You

Star Wars fans may never think of their idol George Lucas in the same way again after they’ve seen the short film George Lucas In Love. The nine-minute parody has already outsold Star Wars: Episode I–The Phantom Menace in its first 36 hours on sale at e-commerce giant Amazon.com. More than 1,500 copies of the video were ordered at $7.99 (compared to $16.95 for the Phantom Menace), making it to number three in the website's list of top-selling items. The film details the attempts by a scrawny Lucas to overcome writer’s block and write the Star Wars screenplay, while dealing with an asthmatic, black clad nemesis and a Yoda-like mentor. Lucas eventually meets a female student with a familiar-looking, bunned hairdo who offers him some advice: “Write what you know.” Directed and produced by University of Southern California film students Joe Nussbaum and Joseph Levy, the film became an underground hit last year, on the back of the Phantom Menace’s hype and its ingenious use of Shakespeare In Love’s structure. The film somehow made its way out of the hands of sci-fi geeks and into the lap of Dreamworks, where Lucas’ real-life buddy Steven Spielberg screened it, liked it and sent it to the Star Wars creator himself, who has reportedly called it: “The life story I wish I had.” Nussbaum has now landed a directing deal at Dreamworks, while Levy is running a digital division with a production company. “We had no idea it was going to become any kind of big Star Wars fan cult item. It was absolutely a career move on our part,” said Levy.