Starz Insider: Fog City Mavericks: The Filmmakers of San Francisco

By Stone Martindale Sep 21, 2007, 2:20 GMT

03/03/2007 - George Lucas - 24th Annual William S. Paley Television Festival "An Evening with George Lucas" - The Directors Guild - Hollywood, CA © Chris Hatcher / Photorazzi

'Starz Inside' Series Kicks Off Monday, September 24 With Fog City Mavericks: The Filmmakers of San Francisco.

Starz Inside is a new series of original specials from Starz Entertainment hosted by film critic Richard Roeper, and it kicks off next Monday, September 24 at 9 p.m. (ET/PT) with Fog City Mavericks: The Filmmakers of San Francisco.

Get insider information with filmmakers who call the San Francisco Bay Area home, including George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, Clint Eastwood, Chris Columbus and producer Saul Zaentz.

The special weaves interviews, commentaries and unforgettable moments from some of the most visionary movies ever created such as American Graffiti, the Star Wars film series, the Indiana Jones film series, The Godfather trilogy, Apocalypse Now, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Amadeus, Toy Story, The Incredibles, Lost in Translation, Flags of Our Fathers and many others.

It also features key A-List interviews with those who have worked with Bay Area mavericks: Steven Spielberg, Michael Douglas, Anthony Minghella, Milos Forman and Frank Darabont.

George Lucas is first up.  In "Fog City Mavericks," a Starz documentary, Lucas shares he is a firm believer in regional cinema, cinema that's not made by people who live in Hollywood but who live in regions and cities like Austin or New York City or Chicago, Baltimore, San Francisco.

Lucas told TV Guide about the several little film communities that exist outside the main center, Hollywood, taking ideas from different places and do different creative kinds of things.

"This film is about San Francisco. I hope, at some point, somebody makes one about New York and Austin and all of the other places, " Lucas told TV Guide.

Lucas shared the cinematic history of San Francisco, stating it was very small, but that the people who live and work in San Francisco have a different outlook and get their ideas from different sources, making the case that the more successful films that have come out of Hollywood actually haven't been made in Hollywood.

Lucas cited the nonconformist ethic of San Francisco. He noted in San Francisco a film maker was free of the institutionalized creative system, stating that "everyone here kind of thinks outside the box, and Hollywood is the box."

Los Angeles was never a place Lucas wanted to work, and never will be.

Lucas told TV Guide that many independent filmmakers around this country make movies in their hometowns. He claimed that "Mavericks" was about how even the most mainstream of movies can be made outside the system.

"If you become successful, if you make a movie that actually hits the mainstream, that becomes successful, don't move. Stay home. Work out of your own background. Work out of your own milieu. Work out of your own history."

Monday, September 24 at 9 p.m. (ET/PT) with Fog City Mavericks: The Filmmakers of San Francisco.