Martin Scorsese spotlights the George Lucas brilliance that doesn’t get enough credit
Martin Scorsese’s admiration for George Lucas runs deeper than the “visionary” label — and it’s rooted in something else entirely.
On CBS Sunday Morning, Norah O’Donnell put a pointed observation to George Lucas that she said came straight from Martin Scorsese: the thing that actually separates Lucas from the pack isn’t imagination — it ’s follow-through. She relayed Scorsese’s take directly during their sit-down about Lucas’ newest passion project outside of filmmaking.
“Not only you’re a visionary or a dreamer, but what you may not get credit for is that you can execute too on that which is really the genius of George Lucas.”
Lucas didn’t disagree. He answered with a shrug of a line that sounds like a career motto:
“Well, I’m a contrarian. Everything I’ve ever done, everybody said you can’t do that.”
He also opened up about something he rarely discusses: dyslexia. Lucas said struggling with words pushed him to think in pictures early on. Writing never felt natural, so he leaned on illustrators to turn ideas into finished images — which is how Star Wars lived as storyboards and concept art long before a camera ever rolled.
Star power at the museum
That builder mindset was on full display at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles, where Lucas and Mellody Hobson hosted a blowout event that looked more like an awards-night roll call than a museum gathering.
Event co-chairs included:
- Tom Cruise
- Steven Spielberg
- Greta Gerwig
- Guillermo del Toro
- Pharrell Williams
- Lewis Hamilton
Inside the galleries, film and TV heavyweights moved through the crowd:
- Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Samuel L. Jackson, Hayden Christensen
- Leonardo DiCaprio , Al Pacino , Robert De Niro, Oprah Winfrey
Tech, media and pop-culture names were out in force too:
- Jensen Huang, Melinda French Gates, Evan Spiegel, Ted Sarandos
- Kim Kardashian, Kris Jenner, Magic Johnson, Lindsey Vonn
The Black Eyed Peas performed live, capping an opening that underlined what Scorsese was talking about: the museum — a reported $1 billion project — is something Lucas didn’t just imagine. He built it.