You know you’re dealing with a true believer when he remembers this:
“I saw Star Wars: A New Hope at Mann's Chinese in
Hollywood back in '77 when I was 10 years old,” reminiscences Henry
Gilroy. “Since then I've been a huge fan. I loved the world, the
characters, the story, everything about it…except I was extremely
disappointed that Darth Vader got away at the end!
“Later, I was really thankful he did. One thing I loved about Star Wars
was my mom liked it, my dad liked it, my sister liked it (she hated my
comics). It had something for everyone. Magic, fantasy, humor, action,
adventure, even politics. I realized that early on as a writer, Star Wars
blended many storytelling elements together very well and I liked to do
that too. In my experience, the best stories are inspired by many
sources.”
Now, as head writer for The Clone Wars, Gilroy’s main ambition is to carry what he loved about that day in 1977 to the new series.
“George [Lucas] did such a tremendous job creating this universe that
allows the telling of all kinds of stories,” says Gilroy, “so we're
keeping that storytelling tradition alive. The Clone Wars
will include many different genres as well. There's war drama, spy,
mystery, romance, horror, even comedy. The stories have fantastic
planets, strange creatures, weird aliens, light saber duels, space
battles, Jedi using the Force, all that stuff from the movies that we
love. Supervising Director, Dave Filoni, and I really worked to get
away from the serious, intense tone of the prequels and bring back to
the fun swashbuckling tone from the original trilogy.”
As it turns out, Gilroy could very well be just the right man for the
job. His writers resume goes as far back as the early ‘90s, where he
was a staff writer for Batman: The Animated Series on the episode “Nothing to Fear.” From there he worked on a highly diverse series of projects.
“I worked primarily in animation,” he said. “My television animation credits include work on series like Batman: The Animated Series, Justice League Unlimited, the Bionicle films to comedy like The Tick, Lilo and Stitch
and Mickey and Donald Duck cartoons. So the action adventure, epic
fantasy and character and comedy in those shows gave me tools. All the
jobs I had previously helped prepare me for Clone Wars.”
But as it turned out, it was his knowledge of the Star Wars universe
that helped him get the job. It also didn’t hurt that he worked on a
few Star Wars comics for Dark Horse.
“I met with series producer Catherine Winder back in the spring of 2005, before Revenge of the Sith came out,” says Gilroy. “She had been hired to put together the creative team for Clone Wars. I was very excited about the idea of working on the series and brought along a one page synopsis of Clone Wars
where I described it as ‘Band of Brothers with Jedi.’ She liked that I
knew the Star Wars universe well enough to show up with something
prepared. My animation experience combined with my Star Wars comics
work is what convinced her to give me the job.”
This knowledge didn’t make the job easy though, at least at the
begging. As intimated, Gilroy came in when the series was a start-up.
If that wasn’t enough, when he started the animation division was more
dream than reality. This leads to some interesting situations.
“There was a lot logistics work to figure out,” Gilroy remembers. “What
the show was going to be and how we were going to make it. I think I
was in the first couple dozen people to start at the ranch as we
started developing the show from content to technology.
“As a matter of fact, my first office was in a tiny room previously
occupied by a Xerox machine. It was barely big enough for the desk, it
was 7 feet by 6 feet and everyone used to make fun of 'the writer
locked in the closet.' You can imagine the jokes, cartoonists tend to
be cruel to writers. Anyway, it wasn't long before a very talented crew
of artists, both cg and traditional were assembled that would make the
show. I also got out of the closet and into a bigger office!”
Even with a bigger, better office, Gilroy still had his work set out for him.
“It's very challenging,” he said. “Working at other established studios
on animated series, most often the infrastructure is already there. For
example Disney, if they decide to do a new show, all you do is insert
the show into the system, with a few tweaks here and there, and it
generally goes pretty smoothly. For Lucasfilm it was starting at the
ground up so the infrastructure had to be created, everything from
email to copiers to how art would be created and how it would flow,
etc...
“Our VPs, Gail Currey and Catherine Winder did a great job of getting
the studio rolling, they chose a team of people who were great
collaborators, you can never over appreciate the make-up of a great
crew. It doesn't happen by accident.
“Then because George wanted Clone Wars
to really set a new standard and create a new visual style, technology
had to be created to make it happen, then a pipeline to execute that
for television. All in all it was a monumental task for a lot of people
who pulled off a miracle. The best part was that George wanted it to be
good and he was behind the creative team the whole time to make the
show the best and always pushed us to be more ambitious. After we would
have some story meeting where he would add new planets and characters
and leave us wondering how we were going to do it all, he would always
add, ‘Dare to be great!’ before he left. That was a kind of endorsement
to just go for it. We always did.”
Next Column: Gilroy talks about setting up the Clone Wars bible and universe.Star Wars: The Clone Wars debuts on Friday October 3rd on Cartoon NetworkRelated: Clone Wars Weekly Dispatch: Creating a New Clone WarsClone Wars Weekly Dispatch: From Big Screen to SmallClone Wars Weekly Dispatch: Director David FiloniMovie Review: Star Wars: Clone Wars
