How Star Wars was saved in the edit

That is what is so magical about production and post. So much of what we see is developed after the script. And at that time editing was done with 35mm print film and magnetic stripped 35mm sound track on a separate piece of film stock. Every edit was done with a razor blade and sticky tape.

Ok, here's my contribution to film editing history. James Cameron was doing post for Terminator 2 at Skywalker Sound. They screened it two weeks before release. I was a nobody at Skywalker. I watched the screening and commented that it made no sense that there was a tear-jerker scene at the end when he was lowered into the vat of molten steel. I said he would have just jumped in. From that comment, they had Arnold do a voice over line that was added "Here, I cannot self terminate. You must lower me into the steel." . And with that, Terminators suddenly could not self-terminate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOLBTRazZpM&t=6s
 
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Ok, ok, being old and living in the past here is another of my incredible contributions movies. In Terminator 2, there is a scene where they look at a chip in a sealed container. They pull it out and it falls to the floor. The sound guys asked me for a chip they could record. For the record, it was an Intel 8051. Huh.....huh? Yeah, that was me. Autographs are available for $25....Paypal.
 
The title of this thread says "How Star Wars Was Saved In The Edit by Peter C......you know, Peter Cushing! Well that's what I read.
 
We all see what we want to C.

Speaking of Terminator 2, one last thing I did for that movie. The screen test audience hated the ending, me included. So they replaced it with that very simple shot of the road at night with a voice over. I mentioned it on a Facebook group and a guy was kind enough to point out that the original (or alternate as it is labeled) was on Youtube. I hadn't seen it in 30 years. The original ending - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEaS8X1_gcU
 
I don't know if anyone knew if you were serious or not with that first part - but, okay, now it sounds like you're serious with both. lol

That ending song is always so iconic, btw.
 
That's a problem I've had with my sarcastic remarks and dry humor. When I am serious, people don't take me seriously. Yes, those are all true stories. I worked at Lucasfilm for 4 years. If I tell a story about my personal life, it's a true story.
 
Meant to ask this yesterday, but so what did you do in the second story, the screening?

It's unclear but I guess you voiced your opinion that you also didn't like that ending? [I don't think anyone would like that ending with SC/LH.]
 
In that case, there was nothing outstanding about what I said. We all thought it sucked. So we as a group got the ending changed.
 
Thanks for posting. Great find! Story, story, story. We are pretty simple beings and we need pretty simple stories to follow in movies.
 
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