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I used to see him (and occasionally his wife) eating breakfast at "greasy spoon" restaurant called Hilda's in San Anselmo (Marin County, CA).
Hilda's sadly closed for good in the past year or so.
I accidently bumped into him at the Borders Bookstore in San Rafael back in the late 90's. I was looking at the new hardbound SciFi books and he was looking at the Star Wars books on the top shelf. I just said "excuse me" and he said "no problem" and we returned to our tasks.
Maybe that's when he read about Coruscant, picking up Heir to the Empire in there.
He pops up in the background of a random documentary:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OC9RI8_QYmw
My son used to wait on him at a restaurant in Chicago when he came by to visit his now wife. My son, being a professional actor, had to use his best skills to treat him as just another customer
Obligatory random appearance of George.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OC9RI8_QYmw
Fortunately, that thing didn't get built in the Presidio of San Francisco. That was proposed a few years ago.
I think he wanted to have it on Treasure Island at one point also
And Chicago lake front on museum campus.
I'm told Chicago screwed themselves on that
Chicagoans fought quite hard to preserve the parking lot it would have replaced. I hope they are happy with their choice.
I hope you are happy with their choice, because it would have required overturning this [1] to build. The museum lost in federal court, BTW.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois_Central_Railroad_Co._...
Note that the museum was planned to be built on the actual land that was the subject of that Supreme Court case ;)
Nope. None of the frivolous NIMBY lawsuits ever made it to trial, nor was the museum ever a defendant in any of them (it was the city being sued for approving it). I don't see what you gain from misrepresenting this years after the fact.
The city could've gone to trial for the one case you're referencing, and would've won given enough money and time, but by that point the museum had already started investigating other locations.
He gave up in Chicago because the federal judge wasn’t ruling in their favor.
“They would have won given enough time and money” is certainly debatable, but this ruling was ultimately what ended the museum in Chicago:
https://cases.justia.com/federal/district-courts/illinois/il...
In federal court. And sure, if you want, you can put “lost” in scare quotes and claim I’m misrepresenting things.
Hey solider field south lot is very important 8 days a year.
Not for much longer.
It was an impasse. Chicago wants the development money and tourism, but it also holds pretty strongly to the idea that the lakefront belongs to everyone and shouldn't be developed with private money and closed off. Yes, it was a parking lot. But it was a public parking lot.
That means sometimes these kinds of developments don't happen and you can argue either way. Lucas got a little pushy about how he wanted the museum to be developed and also turned down alternate sites. So he took his ball and left and that's okay too.
Why is that fortunate? Seems like a loss for San Francisco whose arts scene used to be thriving.
No no. San Francisco must be preserved in state as it existed in 1970 for all time, you see.
Fortunately for Los Angeles, unfortunately for San Francisco!
We're happy to have it. It's a gorgeous building and I can't wait to see the weird museum exhibits.
I'm openly (very) curious to hear the reasoning behind that statement, not having lived in SF.
From what I've read, George Lucas funded 100% of the project, and the Presidio trust rejected it. Then he tried building the museum in Chicago, but he was sued and blocked for a couple years and eventually gave up. Finally he found a spot in LA. IIRC the project took 12 years. The same source mentioned SF hasn't started any major museum projects since 2016.
America is falling behind on public works. We used to have the largest aquarium in the world, and now we're sitting at #5 or #6.
So I am genuinely curious why you and others are opponents of public works projects? I honestly do not understand.
It's a gorgeous park in a place with very little space left. ILM already takes up some of its space. That's probably enough reason.
Need to leave some room for Starfleet Academy as well. Anyway I'm glad it came to Exposition park, which needed some love.
He also wanted to put it on the lakefront of Chicago, but that’s not what Chicago’s lakefront is for.
Very cool! Can’t help but think that the museum library is inspired by the main hall of the Stockholm City Library https://biblioteket.stockholm.se/about-the-stockholm-public-...
Isn't multiple floors of bookshelves with open central area a very common theme in large fancy libraries? For example British museum reading room, Oval room in France national library, Morgan Library & Museum, Rose reading room in New York Public Library.
The shelves can't be very high to keep them easily accessible, adding additional levels solves that. Open central area with higher ceiling gives more natural lighting.
It truly is a one of a kind museum. You'll see some of the most famous art in the world from people like Norman Rockwell and Frida Kahlo on the same walls as a random strip from Doonesbury or The Far Side. You'll walk through a reproduction of the Sistine Chapel shortly before walking through a reproduction of the podrace from Phantom Menace. You'll go to the theater and see a 60+ year old experimental short film made without a camera by pressing moth wings into film and then a few minutes later they'll show an episode of Cowboy Bebop.
It's such a bizarre and idiosyncratic collection that the museum itself inspires as much thought as the art in it.
Spoiler warning.
EDIT: Get it? For the Museum of Narrative Art?
In all seriousness, I think I would have preferred the [Renaissance masterpiece] -> [Pop culture artifact] progression to have been a surprise. People seem to be more and more focused on expressing their own exuberance and less on preserving for everyone else the experience they put so much stock into. It's a bit selfish and hypocritical.
I knew who Luke's father was years before I saw Empire, and I can only imagine what a shock that must have been to people who didn't. I can only imagine. It would have been nice to have known, though.
It hardly makes sense to conceive of a museum as having spoilers, since you go there to see the things that you know are there.
Brother it's a museum, not the newest Marvel movie. There aren't "spoilers".
I never imagined I would be accused of posting spoilers for a museum, but even if we accept the idea that a museum can have spoilers, I think you're reading too much into what I said. There's no overt progression in the curation. I was simply detailing what I was thinking as I browsed the museum. In fact, the museum seems to be specifically designed to let the visitors experience the museum however they want. It was just my personal experience that this attempt to background the curation paradoxically had me thinking more about that curation than if they took a more traditional approach.
Nothing makes me more excited about this museum than the turnover in curatorial leadership throughout the project, capped off by Lucas assuming the title himself.
Give me his unrestrained vision. Put it in my veins.
CGI already did that. It turned out… ok
It's reminiscent of the difference between the Star Wars prequel and sequel trilogies. Regardless of your opinions on the quality of those movies, the biggest differentiator is that the prequels were the singular vision of a self-funded artist while the sequels are a corporate product of a global media empire. Even if the latter produces a better movie, it ends up sanding off many of the edges and those edges are where a lot of us found the magic of Star Wars. The Lucas Museum is similar in that it very clearly is the product of an excentric billionaire rather than the same type of curatorial thinking you will find in other art museums.
Let’s not forget though, the prequel trilogies were—not good. Lucas is at his best when he has collaborators who can help take the half-baked ideas and fully bake them.
Yes, but while I may prefer "good" when it comes to the multiplex, I much prefer "interesting" when it comes to my art museums and Lucas's prequels and museum are both very interesting.
These are two crappy choices, and it's not a coincidence that a resource strapped filmmaker having to engage with many skilled artisans to sharpen their "singular vision" resulted in much better films (the original trilogy) than either of those two.
This group photo from the opening gala doesn't have all the stars that were present that night, but what a wild assortment of talent this is. https://deadline.com/2026/09/lucas-museum-opening-hollywood-...
Is that Frank Miller next to Spielberg? Quite a crew!