'Ralph McQuarrie Archives', Author, John Scoleri

0:06John ScoleriAt a very high level, I kind of grew up aware of Ralph as a Star Wars fan. I was seven when… ... Star Wars came out. And so, through the portfolio of paintings that Ballantine published in the, in '77, one of the few products that was available right away, I immediately knew Ralph's name the way I knew, you know, Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher.

0:33Jawad MirRight. Right

0:34John Scoleri... And so was basically a fan from very early on.

0:39Jawad MirYeah.

0:40John ScoleriAnd through a strange batch of circumstances, a good friend of mine, ran a movie memorabilia shop and was hosting a convention. And one day I was in his store and he asked me if I'd be, if I knew who Ralph McQuarrie was. And I thought, "Well, of course I know who Ralph McQuarrie is. I'm a child of the '70s." and he asked me because I had worked at a bookstore and done a lot of signings. And he said, "Well, I'm, I'm gonna invite Ralph to be a guest at my convention. Would you mind sitting with him that afternoon and, you know, helping out?" And I thought, "Let's see. Sit with Ralph McQuarrie for a few hours." It's like, "Yeah, I'll do that. I'd, I'd love to do that."

1:25Jawad MirWell…

1:25John ScoleriThinking that I'm gonna have, you know, this amazing experience that, you know, to sit with somebody I've admired, you know, all my life. Thought that'd be great. So we did this event. We sent a limo up to pick up Ralph. He lived in Berkeley, California. And limousines were not Ralph's thing. He was a v… He was a very down-to-earth guy, very humble.

1:50Jawad MirYeah.

1:50John ScoleriI think he would've been more comfortable sitting up front with the driver, frankly, than back in the back of the limousine.

1:57Jawad MirYeah.

1:57John ScoleriBut he came to the show, and he met fans, and I got to kind of talk with him, 'cause, you know, I kind of helped, coordinate the line and the signing. And, just had a wonderful time. He was a wonderful, sweet guy, just very, generous with his time. You know, very interested in everyone that came up and wanted to meet him. And at the end of the event, I thought, "Wow, w… what a great day. I'm gonna remember this always." And R… Ralph turned to my friend Stan and I and said, "You know, that was fun. If you ever wanna do it again, just give me a call." So our minds immediately started thinking, it's like, "Well, we gotta do this." And over the next several years, we took Ralph across the country, we took him to Europe, to meet fans and to, get an opportunity not only to, you know, see some of the public that, you know, he kind of was aware that he had fans.

3:00John ScoleriPeople would write to him, but I don't think he realized quite the impact he had. Because when you're sitting at a table and someone comes up to you and says, you know, "I'm, I'm doing what I'm doing today, I'm an artist today, I'm a model maker today, I'm doing something because of what you did. You know, what you did inspired me." If you hear that once or twice, maybe you can brush it off and say, "Well, that's a fluke." But when, you know, person after person does that, it starts to sink in and you can't deny that, you know, you've had this impact. So we did that for a number of years. Had a great time, really, you know, kind of became family with Ralph, which was the real blessing for us. And one of the interesting things is we'd, we'd go visit him, you know, a couple times a month. We'd go up to his house, we'd have lunch. Just, you know, hang out and spend time with him. And usually at some point during the day, we'd kind of descend down into his office and, you know, he'd show us things he might be working on or he'd open a drawer and pull out sketches that he had.

4:08John ScoleriAnd it was constantly this revelation of things he would pull out. I remember very specifically one afternoon he pulled out a drawing and it was vaguely familiar. It's like, "Well, Ralph, what's that?" And he said, "Oh, that's just the one piece I did for Raiders of the Lost Ark." And our eyes kind of got big and we thought, "You worked on Raiders?" And he's like, "No, I just did this one thing." Well, it turns out in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Ralph did the drawing that's in the Bible prop. So when they say, you know, "What does this ark look like?" And they open the Bible and they, you know, right, splashed across the screen is this illustration. Well, Ralph had done that. And we were blown away 'cause, you know, that kind of trivia wasn't common. You know, there weren't people talking about it.

4:57Jawad MirRight.

4:57John ScoleriAnd it turned out there were a lot of things like that. You know, we found out, you know, we had known Ralph worked on, Close Encounters and we knew Ralph worked on Battlestar Galactica. But there were more and more things that would come up and we'd realize, "Gosh, you've, you've done a lot of things that the fan base isn't really aware of." And we were more and more inspired over time to get this into the, into the public eye. You know, to get people to know Ralph for more than just Star Wars. Which was really, you know, e… even now, that's what Ralph will always be remembered for because he made such a monumental contribution to it. But there were so many other things he did, and so many other stories he had that hadn't been told. We said, "Ralph, you know, we wanna, we wanna do a book of your work. We wanna publish a big, heavy coffee table book that will represent everything you did, and not just Star Wars." And he kind of laughed and said, "Well, you know, others have tried and it, you know, it's never really worked out.

6:02John ScoleriBut, you know, you guys go f… You're young, go for it. What… you know, whatever you wanna do, I'm on board." And it turns out that others had gone down this path, had approached, you know, had kind of deals in place, and usually where they would get hung up is they would contact Lucasfilm, and at the time, you know, one particular publisher, a gentleman named Byron Price, who had used Ralph and had Ralph do some really beautiful illustrations for Isaac Asimov short story collections., He approached Lucasfilm and basically was told, "You can have two pages of the interior and nothing on the cover of Star Wars." And, you know, from his standpoint, it's like, how do you, how do you sum up Ralph's contributions to Star Wars in two pages? And really, that's, that's the marketable aspect of the book. So it never happened. Yeah. So undaunted, we pressed on.

7:04John ScoleriWe had some friends working at Lucasfilm that we knew, and we basically built a mock-up of the book we wanted to do and, you know, got our foot in the door and made a pitch. Right. And rather, cavalierly made the pitch that what we were gonna do is a tw… a two-volume set, and first we were gonna do a book of Ralph's non-Star Wars work to prove that we were capable of this. And then that would, you know, prove to Lucasfilm that we were legitimate, and they could then allow us to do a Star Wars volume. And they patted us on the head and said, "You know, that's nice, but leave us your, leave us your sample. We've got some changes happening in publishing, and we'll get back to you." And about two weeks later, we got a call saying, "You know, we talked about it. Everybody's kind of excited. The one thing they agree is it needs to be, it needs to be one volume, and it needs to have Star Wars. So what do you need from us?"

8:08John ScoleriWow. And we were kind of, we were kind of slack jawed. It's like, "Well, we need access to the archives of what you have." Yeah. They said, "Okay." We thought, "All right." They said, "Well, how much, how much are you s… thinking this would be?" And so I immediately kind of, in my head, I'm doing calculations. I said, "We want to do a 400-page book, a third of it Star Wars." And they said, "Okay." And then we were kind of in shock, like, "All right." and the next thing I know, we've got access into their digital archives at the level of their highest licensees. And we're suddenly f… you know, going through files and pointing out things that, "Hey, you've got this marked as Ralph's, and it's not his," or, "You've got this other thing unidentified, and it is Ralph's." so we were able to kind of add some value to the process, but basically went through pulling artwork.

9:11John ScoleriI'll, I'll never forget one day i… in talking to Ralph about what he wanted to see in there, he had mentioned, he's like, "Well, you know, there's this one painting I really loved. It's probably my favorite Star Wars painting." We said, "Well, that's, that's gotta be in there. What is it?" He said, "It's, it's one of the pieces I did for the Star Wars Holiday Special." Which is the, notorious, you know, aired once and never seen again except for the bootleg copies that circulate, about… Right... The Wookiee home world. But we thought, "Well, again, if it's Ralph's favorite piece, that's going in this book." Yeah. And we approached, we approached our contacts in licensing and we said, "Hey, you know, we don't see this, but Ralph, you know, this is Ralph's favorite piece. We want it in." And they said, "Well, you know, anything having to do with the Holiday Special, you know, that's gotta go across George's desk." And we thought, "Well, they haven't said, they've never said no to us yet." So we said, "Okay. Ask George."

10:12John ScoleriAnd a week later, we get a call saying, "George said okay." And it's like, yeah, because George loved Ralph. George n… you know, knew what a valuable contributor Ralph was, and I think they also were clear that what we were trying to do was honor Ralph. We weren't just trying to, you know, get our piece of Star Wars and, you know, have a product that we could say is a Star Wars product. We were doing a Ralph McQuarrie book. And it was constantly like that, the entire relationship. The, I've been involved in several licensing projects with a lot of m… major licensees, and if you, and if I listed all the names, anyone would point to Lucasfilm and say, "They were probably the hardest to work with." And the absolute opposite is true. They didn't ask anything of us. They didn't ask to review our, what we were doing. They basically just, every time we asked for something, they handed it over.

11:13John ScoleriThey invited us over one day. They said, "We're about to ship 10,000 35-millimeter slides back to ILM. Before we do, would you like to go through them?" Wow. Again, it's like, "Yes. What time should we be there?" And, in the process of this, we found photographs of Ralph working. We found painting, photographs of Ralph's paintings that Ken Ralston and Joe Johnston and Dennis Muren had taken pictures of. You know, they'd just basically set them up and take a picture with a 35-millimeter camera. And it turns out there were slides of Ralph's paintings that had changed. Meaning, as the designs changed, oftentimes Ralph would just repaint over the original version. Right. So we were find… I f… I found a particular slide of an image that had never been really seen before, because it, the finished painting is very common and had been widely published, but this particular…... Variation no one really knew existed.

12:16John ScoleriSo I was thrilled, and we ordered up this particular slide and, that was a case where, you know, when they uploaded the new digital images I'm, I was really excited and I went through them and I thought, "Wait, there's a, there's a missing one. There's supposed to be one of this..." You know, it's the TIE fighter cockpit. And the people in the archive said, "Oh, no. We didn't scan that one because we already have it." And I'm like, "You don't already have it." I said, "It's actually different than the one you have." But they went back and they scanned it, and we were able to get it and use it. But again, these little bits of history that, you know, to the untrained eye you'd never notice.

12:55John Scoleri... But we were having a blast. We were just, e… every turn, every corner there were new discoveries being made. And we, you know, we went through this process. We're literally at the point of the book is done, we're about to send it off to the printer, I'm about to write the biggest check I've ever written in my life assuming that people will be as interested in this book as I was, and as my partner Stan was. And I, we contact Lucasfilm. I said, "Okay, what I really need to know now," I said, "is how much the licensing fee is going to be." I said, "Because, you know, what… whatever it is, we're gonna have to pay it. But I need to know before we, you know, set the price, figure all these things out." And they kind of dragged their feet and dragged their feet, and I thought, "Oh, I'm, I'm terrified at not knowing what this is gonna be."

13:47Jawad MirYeah.

13:48John ScoleriAnd got a letter from legal saying, "The license is granted for the promotional consideration this offers." And again, that's George Lucas respecting Ralph McQuarrie, in the grandest fashion. We were able to release our book, and as a result I can proudly say that we paid Ralph more in royalties for the book than George paid him to paint the original paintings for Star Wars. But all that aside, the most, the most significant part of this process for us is when we got the first copies of the book back, from the printer and we took them up to Ralph and his wife's house in Berkeley and laid them out on a table. And Ralph, you know, came downstairs and started flipping through it, and suddenly in his eyes it dawned on me that throughout this almost two-year process that he never really believed that it was gonna happen.

14:59John ScoleriHe was sure that at some point the floor would fall out from under us and it just wouldn't be. And so seeing him holding the book and flipping through it, he gave himself the highest compliment I ever heard in the 16 years that I knew him, and he did that by saying, "Some of this isn't too bad."

15:25John ScoleriLike, Ralph, there are a lot of people that wish they could do as not too bad as you do on a regular basis.

15:37Jawad MirYeah.

15:37John ScoleriBut that day we were beaming. When we left Ralph's, it was, it was not a question of, is this book gonna sell enough copies to make the cost back? It was like it didn't matter. We had the book we wanted, and Ralph had the book while he was there to see it and hold it and appreciate it, and know that it was gonna be there long after all of us were gone. And that was a great moment of pride for us. But again, just that recognition of knowing that at the time that he was honestly surprised to see it realized, w… was a great, a great thing. That made the whole experience worthwhile. And then, you know, from that point on and even, you know, past the point of Ralph's passing in 2012, w… I've kind of seen myself in the role of an evangelist for Ralph McQuarrie to continue to, do what I can to make sure that Ralph is not only known and recognized for what he did for Star Wars, but for all the other films he worked on and all the other projects he worked on, because he was so versatile and some of that comes across in the imagery that people are familiar with.

16:56John ScoleriBut just in that he worked on movie posters and he worked on book covers and he worked on film and television and video games and, you know, amusement park attractions. He affected us in so many ways, that w… the last time I saw Ralph I said to him, I said, "I don't know what I did, Ralph, to get the honor of knowing you in my life." I said, "But I'm going to be repaying that debt for a long time." And that's, that's one of the reasons why I'm, I'm here today, is to continue to, share Ralph's stories that I was able to hear firsthand. And again, continue to evangelize his artwork and his contributions to these films, these properties that we all love so much.

17:49Jawad MirWell, I have to tell you, which I'm sure you've been told before, that the way you have told his story in the last 22 minutes to me, it felt as if you were talking about, not in a, in a vanity way, about your own life story. Like, you were just so... I mean, I can tell it was a big part of your life and it still is, right?

18:09John ScoleriYeah.

18:10Jawad MirThe amount of passion you have, and it's, it's rare because people… I mean, even for your own family member, you know, you don't have that kind of a passion and dedication of someone's work. But the fact that you're so involved in it, I think if he's listening from above, he would be glad that he met you as well. So, you know, I really enjoyed listening to the way you even put the story together. And I, as I was, as you were talking, I was thinking in my head as a filmmaker why I wish you guys had documented all this journey, you know, getting the book published. Like, because that itself was like, you know, a film to be, to be made about how, what you guys went through, the struggle. So bravo. Good stuff. Really good stuff.

18:59John ScoleriThank you. Yeah. It

19:02Jawad MirAnd…

19:02John ScoleriAnd really just to speak about Ralph the man for a, for a moment, what, one of the things, just one of the things that made Ralph so amazing is that someone that talented has every right to have the biggest ego on the planet. And I think we all know those people whose ego and talent are aligned. We also know the people whose ego and talent aren't aligned. But for someone of Ralph's caliber to be so self-deprecating and so humble, it was, a… again, just a… amazing to see that, you know, a 15-year-old kid would come up to him at a convention and say, "Can I, can I show you my portfolio, my drawings?" And Ralph would take a sincere interest and, you know, they'd show them, you know, what they did, and he'd offer feedback, and he'd say, "Well, you know, depending on what you wanna do, you know, you render things really well," or, "You can, you know, you do likenesses really well.

20:15John ScoleriBut if you wanna, if you wanna be a concept designer, what you wanna do is show people the process, you know? Show them your sketches. N… not just, you know, kind of finished, polished work, but your…

20:27Jawad MirYeah

20:27John Scoleri... Your thought process." or he'd say, you know, "Don't," you know... He said, "Every artist will have that period of their life where you're kind of mimicking the styles of the people you like." He said, "But find you." He said, "What you have to offer is equally valid to your ability to, you know, mimic somebody else's style." And he said... And again, it was just the, kind of the heart of who he was and being interested in helping other people kind of develop their skills or become successful. Yeah, his road to, into doing what he did was very unique. He didn't set out to, you know, to work in films or to work on the types of projects that he did, but it was very much a path of one thing leading to another. You know, he started off in industrial design and working at Boeing 'cause he loved airplanes.

21:29Jawad MirRight.

21:29John ScoleriBut as he told us, he didn't love drawing, you know, the rows of windows on a 747. You know, that wasn't…... You know, where his passion was.

21:39Jawad MirYeah.

21:39John ScoleriBut through that, through his work at Boeing, you know, he did design work, promoting the supersonic transport that Boeing was working on. And during that process, he met some young filmmakers, Hal Barwood and Matthew Robbins, who later, when Ralph moved to LA, they were, they were working on a script for a science fiction property, and they said, "Well, you know, Ralph, you had done, you know, you had done those paintings we all loved for the supersonic, you know, jet. Could you do some paintings that we might be able to help us sell our film?" And he said, "Sure." So he got their script and he read it, and he came up with some paintings. And doing those five, six paintings for them was, as he described it, the first time he really felt like he was in his element, like he was doing what he was supposed to be doing.

22:34Jawad MirYeah.

22:35John ScoleriAnd the film never got made. It never went anywhere. But through some stroke of fate, Hal Barwood and Matthew Robbins were film school buddies with a guy named George Lucas. George saw the paintings when they went to, I think, pick them up at one time from Ralph's little apartment in Los Angeles, and he told Ralph, "You know, I've, I'm, got this idea for kind of an epic galactic war. Maybe someday I'll, you know, reach out to you." And Ralph thought, "Okay." Didn't think any more of it. George goes on to make American Graffiti. Little while later, he gets a call. "Gary Kurtz and George wanna come by." January 31st, 1975, they drop off the script. Ralph opens it up, immediately starts sketching, does little illustrations. Before February's over, he's already created his first paintings for Star Wars that define what we now know as Darth Vader and R2-D2 and C-3PO.

23:45John ScoleriAnd again, it's the, these connections of, you know, because he happened to, when he was working at Boeing, he ran into these other guys and they were friends with George. So many other things could have happened where that connection never gets made. You know, a case could be made that Star Wars never gets made.

24:04Jawad MirYeah.

24:04John ScoleriOr Star Wars gets made and it's very different because…

24:07Jawad MirRight

24:07John Scoleri... It's lacking that thumbprint of Ralph McQuarrie that is so pivotal to what we now, you know, think of as the Star Wars look and feel. And again, you know, Ralph was now thrust into this reality where not only was he working on this project that in time became this huge success, but the paintings that he did so that the crew and the other filmmakers would get a sense of what George was trying to do were now being reproduced. They were showing up in magazines. They were… And a… as an artist, if you think about it, you know, there's an element where you're a little bit, "Gosh, well, if I knew they were, if I knew they were gonna be that widespread, I might have worked a little bit harder. I might have tried to do a better job."

25:01Jawad MirYeah. Yeah.

25:01John ScoleriAnd again, it's just the fact that those original paintings, can work, you know, as licensed artwork, is a testament to the quality of an artist that Ralph was.

25:16Jawad MirYeah. And, a… and what I… And correct me if I'm wrong. I mean, I'm pretty sure things like that existed before. But one of the things that Star Wars did, and obviously Ralph's work, is that, you know, films like Raiders or, Minority Report, Jurassic Park, Back to the Future, I'm… There's so much concept work. Like, you know, for example, one of the books that Cassine worked on, well, he's book… worked on several, Back to the Future, E.T., and other books similar to it, those books, that are, by the same publisher. They just have so much concept art in it, right? Like, the ones that we never see, the ones we have never seen. And I find that a lot of it has to do with the fact that Star Wars started this trend at a mainstream level and Ralph's work. Because there's just so much stuff out there of so many films.

26:17Jawad MirEven, you know, the most recent films like Avatar, for example. You wouldn't have that idea of drawing something, painting something, and that, you know, it's always difficult even as a director for you to have that visual sense. And sometimes somebody like Ralph comes along and draws it for you, and you're like, you know, that eureka moment.

26:38John ScoleriYeah.

26:39Jawad MirSo I… Am I, am I right in that assumption that he pretty much started that trend at the mainstream level?

26:43John ScoleriHe was, he was certainly one of the most influential.

26:47Jawad MirYeah.

26:47John ScoleriThere's an artist named, Bill Stout who had done a lot of concept work. And, when I met him, and we were talking about Ralph, he described it in a way that I had never really thought about before. But he said, you know, filmmakers like George Lucas and Dan O'Bannon and Ridley Scott, kind of all… Star Wars in that same era were going to artists. So in the case of George, they went to Ralph. In the case of, Dan O'Bannon, when he was first working on Dune, he went to H.R. Giger, and he went to Moebius, and he went to Ron Cobb. And then I'll… When Dune didn't happen as a movie, most of those guys transitioned over to Alien.

27:37Jawad MirYeah.

27:38John ScoleriAnd Bill Stout described it as, if you were a working artist, you couldn't break into Hollywood. You couldn't crack that closed system because you weren't coming out of the family history or, you know, the studio system where you would have had a leg into the industry. But suddenly, these young filmmakers were stepping outside the boundaries and, you know, picking artists based on liking their styles. You know, seeing Frazetta and saying, "I… That's, that's what I'm going for."

28:14Jawad MirYeah.

28:14John ScoleriSo rather than saying, "I'm gonna go to a studio-assigned artist and ask them to do something for me, I'm gonna go to an artist that I admire, that I appreciate, and have them do the work for me." And so for someone like Bill Stout, now there was an opportunity for someone like him to get into films and work on things like Conan and Return of the Living Dead. And so, you know, Ralph was there on the ground floor, but really the credit goes to those filmmakers that sought out artists that were outside that kind of Hollywood system…

28:50Jawad MirYeah

28:50John Scoleri... And gave them an opportunity. And then it kind of defined this new role of a concept designer. Whereas previously you'd have, you know, set decorators, production designers. You'd have people that would have the responsibilities. But particularly for a film like Star Wars, where, you know, basically everything needed to be defined.

29:11Jawad MirYeah.

29:12John ScoleriAnd again, one of the very unique things about Ralph is that here was someone who was basically doing set design, world-building, you know, creating kind of the look of the locations.

29:26Jawad MirYeah.

29:26John ScoleriHe could do the mechanicals, the machinery, the ships, the, you know, the weaponry, the costumes. It's like all these different pieces where, you know, even today, you know, you'll have separate artists kind of responsible for each of those things. To have one artist who is able to kind of fluently kind of create in all those arenas and then render a finished painting, that would exploit them all, you know. One of the reasons why, you know, people often talk about Ralph's paintings is it's not just, like a mechanical drawing to say, "Oh yeah, I get what that, you know, sh… spaceship is gonna look like." But he puts it in a frame. He puts it in something where you're like, "I'm seeing the finished film in this one piece of art." And almost always, it's so engaging that you're like, you see that piece of art and you want to see the film that comes from that or that, you know, that you would think of, that representing, whereas the art, you know, is kind of defining what that look is going to be.

30:27Jawad MirYeah. I think, you know, it's, it's, it's interesting that you mentioned that I was talking to Marca Manzina, or Man… Manzina. He's a composer. I don't know if you know his work from Twister, Speed, and Bad Boys.

30:39John ScoleriOh, sure.

30:41Jawad MirYeah. And we were talking about something similar that, you know how there are soundtracks that you can listen to on their own without ever having to watch the film, right? Like, they just live independently on their own. I think that's similar to really great concept work or artwork or painting like Ralph's, is that you don't need to see the film, you know?

31:04John ScoleriYes.

31:05Jawad MirObviously it would be, it would be good to, but the, some work just translates so much storytelling with just one visual or two visual. Like the design of Darth Vader, right? Like, you know, it speaks... I mean, to this day, who doesn't know about Darth Vader, right? It's been sh… it's been done in so many movie and TV shows and made fun of or, you know, done a parody of. And it's just…

31:30John ScoleriHe was on the cover of Time Magazine.

31:32Jawad MirYeah. And it's becomes... And there has never, there hasn't been anything like it, right? And to be able to draw that and leave a such a, it's become such an iconic, cultural phenomenon. Not just in North America, but, you know, all over the world. And that's what I think is a testament to his work, that by itself, if I was to, or that, you know, 30 years from now or 100 years from now someone, if Star Wars DVDs or movies disappeared for some reason and there was some artwork left, they'll be able to do something with it. Or they'll be able to identify that there's a story behind this.

32:10John ScoleriYeah. You know, it's funny because Ralph, he went through a period in his life where he thought, "You know, I've, I've been doing these, you know, projects and movies and different things." He's like, "May… maybe I should, I should do something, or maybe I should be an artist. Maybe I should be a fine artist. Maybe I should do something that, you know, holds up on its own rather than, you know, being someone else's kind of concept."

32:36Jawad MirYeah. Yeah.

32:37John ScoleriAnd he did some pieces of like, you know, he painted rocks. And he did a lot of, you know, a lot of his things were surrealistic and just beautiful. But it was so funny to us, we think. You know, we look at it and we're like, "Ralph, any one of your pieces can be considered fine art." and I understand where he was coming from and why he kind of felt that desire, but that wasn't really where his passion lied, you know? And, but he was... He also liked to work with his hands. He built furniture and he built clocks. And he would…

33:11Jawad MirOh, cool

33:12John Scoleri... You know, he would paint, you know, he'd do ornamental painting of them. And they're just beautiful things. You know, he'd scratch build airplanes 'cause airplanes were something he loved. And, yeah, there were, there were times, you know, he developed Parkinson's late in life, and that unfortunately robbed him of some number of years of, being able to do more, painting. But also, again, I think more of the work with his hands, the woodworking things. That we, that, you know, we regret those lost years, but we certainly cherish everything we did get from him.

33:50Jawad MirYeah. I think you're right about him wanting to do something on his own because even though, you know, he has a large fan base, right? But an average moviegoer probably doesn't know who he is, right? Let's, you know, that's just the reality of things. So to be able to associate, you know... When people talk about Star Wars they talk about Darth Vader, they talk about George Lucas, they talk about Luke Skywalker or, Han Solo or Princess Leia, or John Williams. But they don't talk about the backend work, like whether it's ILM special effects, whether it's Ralph's work. And I think he probably wanted to be associated with something that was just his own. Not for vanity…

34:31John ScoleriYeah

34:31Jawad Mir... But just, you know, that he, it's, it's his and people remember that work and they only refer to him about it. Which is perfectly fine.

34:40John ScoleriYeah.

34:40Jawad MirAnd I think as human beings we all crave that.

34:44John ScoleriWell, and you know, it's interesting because one of the things he was, he was quick to point out is that unlike so many artists, and unlike so many artists who even kind of work in the field, Star Wars actually did bring him some, notoriety, some fame. Where many other artists in the same position would never have.

35:09Jawad MirOf course. Of course.

35:09John ScoleriAnd he recognized that, you know, the fact that his work was reproduced in books, you know, b… before ours, you know, they did The Art of Star Wars. And again, for the portfolios for kids like me growing up, that was how we came to know him. And he really respected the fact that unlike so many artists that had come before him, not only was there the artwork, you know, ha… was kind of reproduced and would exist, for the ages. But, you know, there'd be little write-ups that might say, you know, "Here's, here's who I was…

35:46Jawad MirYeah

35:46John Scoleri... And here's what I did." and again, respecting the fact that, th… that's such a rare thing for someone in his position. For any artist to kind of get to that point where someone is publishing your work, you know, writing about who you were, you know, even, you know, at a smaller level. It's, he, h… he used to say, you know, he would've done the work on Star Wars for nothing…

36:15Jawad MirYeah

36:15John Scoleri... Just for the experience and how much fun he had with it.

36:19Jawad MirYeah.

36:20John ScoleriYou know, and that, and that speaks volumes.

36:23Jawad MirYeah. And do you thi… do you know if he was ever interacting or if he knew Drew Struzan?

36:31John ScoleriI'm trying to think if…

36:35Jawad MirI mean, they both come from the same time

36:37John ScoleriThey ever met. Yeah, you know, I honestly don't know if they met. He knew Syd Mead. Syd Mead had gone to ArtCenter, and it's funny because, you know, Ralph used to talk about when he was at ArtCenter, it was Syd Mead's work that would be up on the walls that everybody would look at it and say, "Oh, that's, that's the guy. That's the superstar." Didn't matter who else they were, you know. He was the one they all looked up to. But I honestly don't, I don't recall if he ever actually met Drew. He knew who Drew was. You know, he was familiar with his work 'cause, you know, r… he certainly had an appreciation for, other artists kind of working in and around this, arena. And he did, he... Y… you know, Ralph was n… not a big social person. You know, in the Star Wars days he was in his 40s when, you know, most, the rest of the cast of Drew were in their 20s.

37:37Jawad MirYeah.

37:37John ScoleriAnd he was working at, out of his apartment. So, you know…

37:40Jawad MirYeah

37:40John Scoleri... He'd, he'd come, he'd come in to ILM, and, you know, bring paintings in or to meet with George. But, he was, he was kind of removed, you know, socially. He had, he had a lot of those folks are friends. And we have, you know, through the years we'd recorded some interviews with Ralph, and we did a lot of work, interviewing a lot of the people he worked with. And it's amazing that, you know, to a person everybody just talks about how much they loved Ralph and what a wonderful person he was. And the funny thing is, you know, you'd call somebody up and say, "Hey, can we come talk to you about Ralph McQuarrie?" Everybody would make time in their schedule. You know, no one would say, "No, I don't have time. I'm not interested." It's like, "Ralph? Yes." and it's funny…

38:33Jawad MirThat's incredible

38:33John Scoleri... Because the, you know, the Lorne Petersens, the Dennis Murrins, the John Bergs, Phil Tippetts, all those guys, you know, that got to know Ralph, not only during Star Wars but after they moved up north. 'cause that's, you know, after coming back from London working on Empire Strikes Back, is when Ralph moved to Berkeley. And so he was just across the bay from ILM, and so, oftentimes over. And everybody knew him and loved him, and again, continue to sing his praises to this day.

39:08Jawad MirThat's, that's, that's such a great way of being remembered r… while you're living too. That, you know, you, your name. Normally people who have, are very extrovert, they attract other people more than introverts. And from what you're telling me, you know, he was an introvert or at least not much of a social person.

39:27John ScoleriYeah.

39:27Jawad MirAnd to be able to pull audiences, not just because of his work but also his personality, that's a testament to who he was.

39:37John ScoleriYeah

39:39Jawad Mir... And I think people probably, I mean sure, Ken, I can tell by talking to you remember him more for him being the human being that he was. O… obviously the work too, but…

39:48John ScoleriYeah

39:48Jawad Mir... Th… that's phenomenal. What was some of the stuff that he wanted to work on and he couldn't for what, you know, whether he got sick at the end or whether it was a conflict in terms of the project that he was working on?

40:03John ScoleriWell, there, y… you know, there are some things that he worked on that just didn't happen. There's a particular project he worked on with, Irvin Kershner. Post Empire Strikes Back, Irvin Kershner was trying to mount a remake of Forbidden Planet.

40:21John ScoleriAnd Ralph did a ton of paintings for that. Stan Winston was involved. A lot, a lot of people were involved. But it's, it's one of those cases where the artwork exists thankfully. We, you know, we included that in a s… a book we did, that came out in 2015. So it was after Ralph passed away. But we…

40:50Jawad MirYeah

40:50John Scoleri... It was one of those things we thought, "Oh, we've gotta, we've gotta get this artwork into the world. People, you know, it can't just, you know, forever be locked in a drawer unseen." but that was a project. Y… you could tell when you kinda went through Ralph's body of work the projects that he responded to. Another example was Cocoon.

41:16Jawad MirOh, right.

41:17John ScoleriCocoon he worked…

41:18Jawad MirThat was a Ron Howard movie, right? I think.

41:19John ScoleriWell, originally it was a, Bob Zemeckis.

41:23Jawad MirOkay.

41:23John ScoleriSo he was working on it with Bob Zemeckis, and then the studio was concerned about Romancing the Stone. They thought it was gonna be a flop, so they fired Robert Zemeckis. Of course, we all know. So whatever happened to Robert Zemeckis, right? But then Ron Howard picked it up and Ron Howard, you know, finished the film. But Ralph was working, Ken Ralston was the visual effects supervisor. Ralph did a lot of work directly with them. And Ralph did a ton of beautiful paintings for Cocoon. Lovely stuff. Some things that, you know, really beautiful kind of underwater, you know, kind of like city ruins, you know, like Atlantis. And when it came time for Academy Award consideration, Ken Ralston included Ralph in the, in the five, I guess, names for the…

42:23Jawad MirFor one

42:23John Scoleri... Visual effects, and they won. And so Ralph actually won an Oscar for that film. And it's funny because I think, you know, again, in Ralph's kind of self-deprecating way, he felt like, "Well, you know, I think they just, I think, I think they kinda roped me in because Star Wars, you know, they kinda wanted to recognize me." And it's like, "Ralph, we've seen your Cocoon paintings." It's like we, w… and they rendered those things on screen beautifully. It's like…

42:53Jawad MirYeah

42:53John Scoleri... You were v… you are very deserving of the honor that they bestowed upon you. So that was one. There was, w… w… there was one project that, around '97, it was the 20th anniversary of Star Wars.

43:10Jawad MirOkay.

43:11John ScoleriAnd o… one thing Ralph, one thing Ralph had worked on in the spring of 1977 is Gary Kurtz had him do some, movie poster concepts. And so Ralph designed, you know, a couple different ideas, m… you know, that really kind of laid a lot of the foundation for the artwork that we saw in the classic Tom Jung one-sheet for Star Wars, or the Hildebrandt brothers Star Wars, you know, the big Darth Vader in the background and kind of Luke and Leia up front.

43:44John ScoleriAnd Ralph had done a movie poster comp for Star Wars, but he ha… he never did a finished painting on it because, you know, they went with other artists to do the final work. And as the 20th anniversary was rolling around, he thought, "You know, that might be kinda fun to do, to take, you know, finish that painting that I started, or that I, you know, I designed, but actually now do it as a finished painting."

44:11John ScoleriAnd he called up Lucasfilm. And it's one of those things. If he had called up George would've said, "Do it, Ralph. Do it." But he called up w… the appropriate people in Lucasfilm, and someone said, "Oh, no. We've... You know, Drew Struzan's doing the 20th anniversary one-sheets."

44:33John ScoleriAnd Ralph said, "Well, no. I'm, I'm, I'm not... I know this wouldn't be the one-sheet. I was thinking it would just be kind of, you know, maybe a commemorative sorta thing." And they said…

44:42Jawad MirRight

44:42John Scoleri... "Oh, no. We've, we've got this other artist doing a commemorative thing." And Ralph got off the phone and thought, "Okay," and didn't do it. And I heard this story, a little bit later. Because had I known, had I known…

44:57Jawad MirYeah

44:57John Scoleri... That Ralph wa… he wanted to do it for him…

45:00Jawad MirYeah

45:00John Scoleri... But he wouldn't, he wouldn't do it just for himself. But if they had said yes, he would've done it. And had I known, I would've told him, "Ralph, do it. Do it for, do it for you." and sadly, we never got Ralph's finished version of that painting. But in 2008, for the 30th anniversary of Star Wars in Japan, we went to, we actually, we did a Japanese translation of one of our books. And we asked a friend of ours, who was a friend of Ralph's, a sculptor named Lawrence Noble, who had started off as a, you know, an artist doing all kinds of, licensed work and projects, but had gotten into sculpting. He's famous for the bronze Yoda that…

45:59Jawad MirOkay

45:59John Scoleri... Exists in front of, you know, all of…

46:01Jawad MirYeah

46:01John Scoleri... The Lucasfilm, facilities. But we had asked him, we said, "Larry, would you be interested in taking Ralph's comp and doing it as a final painting?" And he hadn't done, you know, he had kinda moved away from painting to sculpting. But because he had known Ralph for years and he thought, "Well, what a great way to kind of do a tribute to Ralph," and particularly now that Ralph was no longer able to do the painting. And so we had him do basically his version of Ralph's Star Wars one-sheet that we offered

46:38John Scoleri... At this Japanese convention. So it was kind of a nice way to... You know, it's, it's not, it's not the same as having Ralph's version, but at least it kind of brought Ralph's vision to a wider audience that

46:50Jawad MirAnd it's interesting you mention Japanese, right? I've noticed that too when it comes to, films done by Spielberg, whether they're produced or directed, or even Star Wars or anything. The, be… because of possibly, I'm guessing, they, the, their culture of anime and they really appreciate art to a level I don't even think Europeans or French do. Like, it's just another level. Like, you know, any time, like a film like, I don't know if you've seen AI: Artificial Intelligence that came out 22 years ago by Steven Spielberg. It, there was a Japanese program book, like about, you know, I don't know, 11 by 18, 10 pages, full color. When the film came out, I really liked the film and I just randomly bought something off eBay, Japanese AI, a book, and it was like 30 bucks. And then the film tanked at the box office, and, when it came out on DVD, it's some… you know one of those things where the films do better on VHS than DVD.

47:59Jawad MirAnd I just kind of, just for the heck of it, I put that program book back up, the Japanese program book. I sold it for $800.

48:06John ScoleriHoly smokes.

48:08Jawad MirIn six months' time. I mean, and somebody from Japan bought it. Because of the i… the, they just appreciate art to another level, and I wouldn't be surprised... I mean, you probably already know this. I think you probably have a bigger following with Ralph's work in Japan than anywhere else, but.

48:25John ScoleriThe funny thing is w… we did, and particularly when we did our first book, the downside of having done a 400-page, 12 by 15… 12-pound hardcover book is you quickly find out no matter what you charge for the book, if someone in Australia, Japan, Europe wants it, the shipping is more than, more than the book itself.

48:53Jawad MirYeah.

48:53John ScoleriBut, you know, to their credit, the pe… the fans in those areas, you know, didn't, didn't hold back. They were supporting it as well. But yeah, I think in the, particularly in the case of Star Wars II, that was a film that even if you, even if you were watching it in the original language and you didn't speak English, there's enough visually that you can pick up what's going on with Star Wars.

49:24Jawad MirRight.

49:24John ScoleriYou know? It's, it's, it's an easy enough film to kind of, you know, f… figure out the archetypes of…

49:29Jawad MirRight

49:29John Scoleri... Of what's going on a… and it appeals to such a wide audience as it is.

49:34Jawad MirWell, it's not even just Star Wars. I think th… they say that if you are making a film and if you can watch it without music and without any kind of audio, and you understand it, that means you've done the job, right?

49:47John ScoleriYeah.

49:47Jawad MirSo I think that's what Star Wars, and a lot of great films are like that. Like, if you just watch it with the mute button turned on, and you get it, that means that it has something. It's, has just a basic, like you said, the very basic elements of storytelling.

50:02John ScoleriYes. Yeah.

50:04Jawad MirForbidden Planet you were talking about, I think they were talking about making Forbidden Planet in the early 2000s. I don't know if it was... I don't know if you read about this.

50:13John ScoleriThis was…

50:13Jawad MirBut there was a con…

50:14John ScoleriI dream…

50:15Jawad MirBut for DreamWorks. But I think it was a time when DreamWorks was in its, fourth or fifth year because they were talking about a lot of new projects, and it came up, but I, it never transpired into anything. Is that something that rings a bell, or am I mixing it up with something else?

50:30John ScoleriThis would've preceded that. I wanna say this was the mid…'90s when the…

50:36Jawad MirOkay

50:36John Scoleri... The Forbidden project was happening. Now, it could have been, you know, the lingering smoke of that fire, you know…

50:44Jawad MirCould be

50:45John Scoleri... Getting rekindled. But I'm not, I'm not sure if that was specifically that or if that was a completely new attempt at relaunching it.

50:55Jawad MirI wonder now with so much com… you know, like, films like Avatar and a lot of nostalgia sorta taking place, I wonder if somebody would have that kind of ability to take that. And if that does happen, let's just say if some director wants to, you know, remake Forbidden Planet from the 1956 version, do you think, like, do you see anybody approaching you guys for all the work that he did, or is it something that depends on the artist type of thing?

51:27Jawad MirOr the…

51:28John ScoleriI would, I would guess that if someone were going to try and mount that in a remaking of a classic… ... Chances are th… they will be motivated enough or have a vision of their own that they're gonna try and realize. Again, you know, Ralph, we've published the book that has, you know, the lion's share of Ralph's design work. Somebody could kind of see that and extrapolate.

51:58Jawad MirThat's true, too.

51:59John ScoleriBut my guess would be, you know, a… as we see with a lot of, you know, remakes of classic films, people try and put such a new stamp on it so that it can stand on its own, that I would think in, you know, just the world today of what you can do, which, you know, even, you know, late '90s when Ralph was designing this, you know, everything was still, you know, would... The visual effects would not be at the, you know, kind of level they can be today. You know…

52:32Jawad MirRight

52:32John Scoleri... Ralph watched as, digital technology kind of swept in and, you know, was kind of amazed by the things they could do. It's funny, one thing, when The Phantom Menace came out, the Coruscant, the kind of galaxy, the center of the galaxy, the city planet.

52:55John ScoleriRalph had done design work on that when he was working on Return of the Jedi. That was originally part of the story that didn't, kind of got abandoned, but he had done quite a few paintings. And they went back and referenced a lot of those designs, and, you know, obviously they still do. You know, even, you know, The Mandalorian will watch a new episode, and it's like, "Oh, there's, there's a piece of Ralph that they pulled out of the archives." but the one thing he said when he saw Phantom Menace, and, you know, he was... And he had, he had met the crew, and he knew Doug Chiang, and, he was excited about what they were doing. But his one comment about Coruscant, he said, "Yeah." He's like, "They sure put a lot of traffic in the sky." You know? And what's interesting is that's one of those things that is, I think the curse of the technology when it makes it easier to do things.

53:54Jawad MirYeah.

53:54John ScoleriYou know, when you're not having to fight for every little thing you get on screen, you can kind of go, it's easier to go overboard. And I think in Ralph's eye, it's like there was so much information on screen that his sensibility would've been to simplify it a bit. Just, you know, d… allow the, you know, the majesty to take over the audience but not have so much in every kind of corner of the screen because you could. It…

54:23Jawad MirYeah. That's so true, though. I mean, it happens even nowadays, right? You look at, like, I'll give you an ex… I'm, you, I'm sure you've seen The Matrix trilogy.

54:32John ScoleriYeah.

54:32Jawad MirI mean, I, in my view, even Star Wars, but I think Matrix particularly because of the time it came out, if you watch the first Matrix now… And you pay attention to it. It literally, other than those, you know, cool action sequences, it doesn't really have any special effects that are... You know, they kinda kept, they kept very limited frames. They didn't have, like, a st… you know, super wide shot. But as soon as you watch the second and third one, it ju… and now the fourth one, it loses that premise of the story. That becomes a secondary thing. And w… everybody talks about this, right?

55:07John ScoleriYeah.

55:07Jawad MirThat how if, the idea of having access to so much technology, and now w… I'm glad you mentioned that because one of my questions was gonna be about this AI thing now. Like, I saw one of my colleagues on Facebook. He, I don't know which, AI technology he used. He basically, you know, told AI to create something, like people in South Asian outfit but in a futuristic setting. And it was mind-blowing that, what it did, you know, and it looked so real. And do you feel that, I know, I know that it probably won't, but do you feel there is a f… with AI, not just in the work that you ha… are, you know, working with Ralph's work and hi… his legacy, it might obsolete the artwork when you can just tell AI technology just to do it in matter of seconds if not minutes?

56:05John ScoleriWell, you know, th… there will always be opportunities for inexpensive s… to, solutions to problems, right?

56:14Jawad MirYeah.

56:14John ScoleriSo if you can get AI to meet your needs, people are gonna use AI. They're gonna say, "It's cheaper for me to just go boom, and get a result." What you're not gonna ever get from AI is the heart of what Ralph McQuarrie was able to do.

56:33Jawad MirRight.

56:33John ScoleriWhich is Ralph McQuarrie could read words on paper and come up with a vision. And not only a vision that looked good, because for Ralph, a… and I think this is something that, and I'm, I'll admit a bias because I spent so much time with Ralph, but this is something that I think separates Ralph from a lot of contemporary, conceptual designers. When Ralph designed something, he brought to bear all of his experience, his industrial design experience, his world experience, his life experience. When Ralph created a spaceship, he could tell you the mechanics of it, and he would, in his mind, know how it worked. If he said, "Well, you know, how does, how do these ships kind of just float when they're, you know, not yet flying? You know, when they're on the temple and they gotta take off."

57:40Jawad MirSure.

57:41John ScoleriAnd Ralph would kinda work something out, and it was just for him. It was just his own edification of, "I need to, I need to have something that I can do that allows me to do this design and justify why it is the way it is." a… as a, as a perfect example, you know, when Ralph designs a spaceship that is, you know, a robot is gonna sit in…

58:08John Scoleri... There is space where, and a way in which that robot is gonna sit in that spaceship. If you look at some of the designs for the prequel trilogy, they look really cool, but if you ask yourself, they've got a wedge spaceship…... That's got a droid that's taller than the spaceship, and his head is sticking out. Where in a...

58:33Jawad MirYeah.

58:33John ScoleriAnd the good news is most of the audience doesn't necessarily give it any attention.

58:40Jawad MirYeah.

58:40John ScoleriBut as soon as you start to think about those things, you think, "Oh yeah, that is kind of odd that, you know, they're doing something 'cause it looks cool." But i… if you want it to make more sense, you know, it's gonna, you're, you're gonna pick it apart, you're gonna pull threads. It's not gonna withstand that sort of scrutiny. And with Ralph's work, the things always... You know, when we first saw them, we'd, you'd see the spaceships, you'd see the sets, you'd see the des… designs, and they kind of, even though they were otherworldly, they're things we'd never seen before, you kinda got it. You kind of looked at it and said, "Yeah, that kinda makes sense."

59:17Jawad MirYeah.

59:17John ScoleriYou know, when they're walking around inside the ship, you're like, "You know, it kinda looks like, you know, it means something." It's, you know, it's... And that's, you know, partially Ralph's work. It's partially the work of the people that then fabricate and build the sets. But it starts at that point of design where if the thought is going into it of, you know, how would this work, I do think that informs it much further down the road, so that when something appears on screen, the audience's ability to accept that, you know, as real or, you know, versus seeing it and thinking, "Gosh, that's, that's a really cool special effect."

59:58Jawad MirYeah

59:58John Scoleri... I think when I, it's, it's been a while, but seeing the last Avatar, there were times watching that movie when I thought, "Boy, where did they find all these blue people to, you know, to make this movie?" Because the world building and the intricacy of the design and the locations and then the look of the characters and things is such that as an audience member you're able to just kind of forget that, yeah, they didn't, this isn't people wearing makeup. This isn't, you know, just…

1:00:29Jawad MirYeah

1:00:30John Scoleri... Something was fabricated. This is, somebody's vision, and they really thought through all the little details.

1:00:38Jawad MirYeah.

1:00:38John ScoleriThat is often missing when you, when you see kind of sci-fi spectacle, big explosions, and you know, Transformer things where, you know, they turn into this, that, and the other, and you're like How does something with this much mass suddenly have more mass or less mass? And it's like…

1:00:54Jawad MirYeah, the science behind it doesn't make much sense. Yeah.

1:00:57John ScoleriYeah.

1:00:57Jawad MirI get that.

1:00:58John ScoleriYeah. And again, whe… whether it takes you out of the movie, e… even if it doesn't, I do think there's the, there, that your body absorbs that. Your brain can kind of tell that. And when it has that extra thought that has gone into it, I do think it can make a difference in the audience experience of, you know…

1:01:19Jawad MirYeah

1:01:20John Scoleri... Something that…

1:01:22Jawad MirI agree with you 100%. My only concern now is that how would things be in the next 80, 70 years when the generation that's being, you know, that's born into the world of social media and digital, how would they preserve all the stuff? And I was actually thinking about also that how, you know, when you look at, when we look back at our past, right? Majority of the stuff is very limited to photos. Maybe if any randomly, you know, where you pose to get a family photo or stuff like that. But in about 70, 80 years, even this conversation is gonna be on YouTube, provided the internet's still around. Which I, which I think, which I think will be. So there's just so much information overload. I don't know if that's gonna be good for the society or not, but…

1:02:10John ScoleriYeah

1:02:10Jawad Mir... But I hope that they appreciate the authenticity of work like Ralph's and other artists. You know, even like, you know, Picasso, like, you know, would it still be around? Who knows? I hope, I hope so, and I hope, I hope, Ralph's work sticks around, too. If it's okay, I didn't expect our conversation was gonna go this quickly, which is great. I would love to do another part to this at another time, maybe more specifically to Ralph's particular amount of work. Maybe if we can go through some of his ar… artwork, you and I can talk about it over the email…

1:02:48John ScoleriSure

1:02:48Jawad Mir... And we can show it, 'cause I think audience would be more susceptible to that, too, to showing stuff…

1:02:54John ScoleriYeah

1:02:54Jawad Mir... While we're talking.

1:02:56John ScoleriYeah, no, I... And I can provide, imagery and happy to do so to help support that. I can actually even give you some, video clips of footage we shot with Ralph, in talking about some of his ex… specific experiences on, you know, Close Encounters and ET in particular, and the work he did with Steve. And he's got some interesting stories, that I'm happy to…

1:03:20Jawad MirOh, cool

1:03:20John Scoleri... Happy to share.

1:03:22Jawad MirSure. Let's do that for another episode because we basically talked about Ralph's work on a, from a grand scheme.

1:03:27John ScoleriGrand scheme, yeah.

1:03:29Jawad MirYeah. Let's, let's focus on project. But this was great. I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation, not just as a…

1:03:35John ScoleriAppreciate the opportunity

1:03:36Jawad Mir... Yeah, no, as a moviegoer, but as a creative person, it's just phenomenal the amount of creativity there's out there in the world, and we always think we have seen enough, but, you know. And it's amazing. And thank you for doing the work that you're doing. I really appreciate it.

1:03:52John ScoleriNo, like I said, this is, it, you know, it's just one of the, one of the many ways that keeps Ralph alive for us. So, day… days don't go by where we think about all he did. He's, you know, I'm surrounded by his artwork, but it's his spirit that, you know, that will always be the piece that I am so thankful to have experienced.

1:04:23Jawad MirI bet. Well, I think that's a perfect way to wrap this up. John, let's stay in touch.

1:04:29John ScoleriYes

1:04:29Jawad Mir... Would love to talk to you more about more films beyond ET and Close Encounters.

1:04:34John ScoleriSure.

1:04:34Jawad Mir'Cause our podcast is now kinda wide open to cinema worldwide. So

1:04:39John ScoleriExcellent

1:04:40Jawad Mir... I would love to chat with you more. Thanks. Thank you so much.

1:04:43John ScoleriSure thing. Thank you.

1:04:45Jawad MirTake care. Have a great evening.