Q&A with Jake Tibbs, Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz: On the Frontlines of Lucasfilm and New Hollywood
Why write a book about Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz?
Like many boys, I grew up obsessed with the films of George Lucas. As I grew older, I began to notice two names that popped up consistently in the credits: Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz. Once I learned they were a married screenwriting duo with connections to seemingly all of their generation’s most important filmmakers, I sought out the rest of their work. I detected an interesting voice in their scripts, one with a real handle on witty dialogue and clashing personalities. Huyck and Katz deserved a book-length exploration, but one had yet to be written. Thus, I embarked upon the project myself.
What role did Huyck and Katz play in the New Hollywood movement?
Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz were priceless collaborators to many of the era’s finest filmmakers, including George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Brian De Palma, John Milius, and Walter Hill. Like many of their contemporaries, they were ambitious film students hungry for a chance to reinvent the studio system and bring a level of cinephilia and artistry to the twentieth-century’s defining medium. It’s only fitting, then, that the Eighties saw their hopes and dreams crumble away, not too long after the same happened to Coppola’s American Zoetrope (where Huyck had been one of the first to board the ship). One from the Heart sank Coppola; Howard the Duck sank Huyck and Katz.
Tell me more about their relationship to George Lucas. His company is mentioned in the book’s subtitle.
Willard and Gloria were two of George Lucas’s most significant collaborators, playing an invaluable role during the first fifteen years of his career. It all goes back to his college education. Willard Huyck was one of USC’s “Dirty Dozen,” a group of film students in the Sixties that included John Milius, Matthew Robbins, Walter Murch, Robert Dalva, Randal Kleiser, Caleb Deschanel, Hal Bartwood, and George Lucas. He and Lucas remained friends and collaborators for decades to come. Once Huyck married Gloria Katz, the two would often join George and his then-wife Marcia at social occasions or on vacations.
Shortly after nabbing his first credit for The Devil’s 8, Huyck joined Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola’s co-venture American Zoetrope, where he penned several scripts that never made it to screen. With Gloria, Huyck would work with Lucas to draft an outline for American Graffiti before later providing a substantial rewrite of Lucas’s screenplay. After Graffiti’s great success, Lucas would rehire the writers for Radioland Murders, though they would have to endure twenty years of waiting and a round of rewrites by an outside party before their story could finally be realized.
With Star Wars, Huyck and Katz had been listening to Lucas’s brainstorming from the beginning, providing suggestions and cheering their friend on as he began to shape his magnum opus. Just before shooting took place in 1976, Lucas enlisted the duo for an uncredited polishing job on the film’s dialogue. The pair injected much-needed humanity into the outer space adventure, providing a number of the film’s best lines. After declining a gig on More American Graffiti, Huyck and Katz said yes to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, bringing their appreciation for Indian culture and a decidedly horrific voice that recalled their work in Messiah of Evil. The duo would be reenlisted by Disney to script dialogue for a pair of Indiana Jones theme park attractions over the following decade. Their final Lucasfilm job came in Howard the Duck, a project George had asked them to tackle all the way back in the Seventies. Lucas stood by their side throughout the chaotic production and brutal release, defending their work and comparing it favorably to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
In the book, you spotlighted many of Huyck and Katz’s unrealized projects. Which do you most wish had made it to the screen?
They tried to get a film called Night Ride Down, a tale of railroad laborers, off the ground twice: once in the Seventies and once in the Nineties. The story significantly evolved over those twenty years. The first version would have been built around Chinese immigrants while the second was to follow a lawyer (played by Harrison Ford) swept up in a kidnapping aboard a train during the Pullman Strike. That second version starring Ford could have been fantastic. I’m especially interested in that period of American history, when labor was making its voice heard despite massive resistance from the establishment.
Was Willard Huyck involved in this book?
Early in the research process, Mr. Huyck graciously donated his time on two separate occasions, both via telephone. He answered all my questions, providing particularly amusing anecdotes about the filming of Best Defense (which was Eddie Murphy’s first time out of the country) and his brief stint on Mission: Impossible with Brian De Palma (who he described as “a lunatic”). I would’ve liked to have spoken with Mr. Huyck even more, but that he participated to the extent he did was still a major boon to this project.
Who else did you talk to during research?
Writer-director Bill L. Norton and the great Paul Schrader proved useful contacts, each answering questions about their times as UCLA classmates of Gloria Katz. However, it was Miles Chapin—who played a leading role in French Postcards as well as a small part in Howard the Duck—that brought the most insight. Most fans of Howard don’t realize how important to that film Mr. Chapin really was. Sure, he’s in the movie, but he was especially vital behind the scenes, working closely with Huyck and Katz throughout the production and serving as the acting coach for the many talents involved in playing Howard the Duck. His memories of Howard were crucial to my narrative on the making of that film. I also spoke on the phone with Mike Medavoy—Huyck and Katz’s first agent that went on to run United Artists and Tri-Star Pictures on top of co-founding Orion Pictures—on several occasions but we just weren’t able to make an interview happen.
Was Willard Huyck’s directing career a success or a failure?
That’s a great question. On the one hand, Willard Huyck’s time in the director’s chair was a real bust. His directorial debut, Messiah of Evil, was a point of shame for him for many years. He got to direct the highly personal French Postcards a few years later, but it was mostly dismissed by the film press (aside from Roger Ebert, who loved it). In 1984, Huyck got to direct two of the world’s hottest comedic talents in Dudley Moore and Eddie Murphy, but the result was Best Defense, a total disaster and his third strike at the plate. If not for his friend and collaborator George Lucas—the loyalty of which gave Huyck something of a “Get Out of Director’s Jail Free Card”—his fourth and final outing, Howard the Duck, never would have been made. When that blew up in his face, his directing career was finished. Had Willard avoided directing at all in the Eighties, there’s a good chance his and Gloria’s screenwriting careers could have been prolonged.
At the same time, there is much to celebrate within Willard Huyck’s small directorial canon. Messiah of Evil ranks among the most arresting American horror films ever made, with Huyck and Katz, as his producer, seemingly weaving the straw that was their pitiful budget into a golden cinematic experience. It really is mesmerizing and I’m glad it’s caught on as a cult classic. Huyck attended a sold-out screening followed by a Q and A for it just last year. French Postcards is no American Graffiti, but there are enough parallels to Huyck and Katz’s prior work that it maintains interest for Graffiti fans. I won’t attempt to reclaim Best Defense as a hidden gem, but Howard the Duck was unfairly maligned upon its 1986 release. That is a film with personality, care, and a lust for life—far more than I can say for most anything from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
What did Gloria Katz bring to their filmography?
Without the contributions of Gloria, none of these films (other than The Devil’s 8, Huyck’s only credit without her) happen. She and Willard operated as a true team, bringing the best out of one another, both professionally and personally. By all accounts, she was a lot like the women she wrote—headstrong and hilarious, a real Hawksian archetype. Especially of note was the fact she occupied the role of producer on four occasions at a time when that was uncommon for a woman in Hollywood. Messiah of Evil was a low-budget indie, but French Postcards, Best Defense, and Howard the Duck all had her working from a position of power within the major studios of Paramount and Universal. Indeed, she should be remembered as a trailblazer for women in film.
How will history remember Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz?
Time heals most wounds, and that has proven the case for the cinematic legacy of Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz. Despite their participation in stinkers like Lucky Lady and Best Defense and flops like Howard the Duck and Radioland Murders, the duo managed to deliver several hits and earn critical acclaim; they earned an Oscar nomination for American Graffiti, after all. Their contributions to the Lucasfilm canon are now more widely acknowledged, and the two films Huyck was once most ashamed of—Messiah of Evil and Howard the Duck—are now playing to capacity crowds in revival houses. Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz deserve to be remembered not only as valuable collaborators of their era’s finest filmmakers, but also as interesting talents in their own right.