20 Things You Didn't Know About Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope
19. Brian De Palma Helped Write The Title Crawl
Legendary director Brian De Palma was part of a small group of elite filmmakers - also including Steven Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola - who provided feedback to Lucas during post-production on A New Hope.
Curiously, De Palma had an especially significant impact on the film's very first moments, helping Lucas come up with a more concise and attention-grabbing opening title crawl.
Initially, Lucas' crawl was six paragraphs consisting of four sentences each, until an exasperated De Palma insisted he cut the spiel down to a more manageable length.
De Palma, never one to mince words, allegedly called the crawl "gibberish" and helped Lucas ruthlessly cut through the guff to create the crawl used in the final film.
Once again, we have proof that the original genius of Star Wars was Lucas collaborating with talented artists who were unafraid to stand up to him, while in the prequels, most everyone assumed he could simply do no wrong.