This Thursday, George Lucas comes to Austin.
Before you grab the lightsaber – or pitchfork, depending on your feelings about a certain Gungan – this Lucas isn’t quite the same man who’s spent his retirement years making experimental films he shows to no one. AFS Cinema welcomes, instead, the improv comedy experience The George Lucas Talk Show. Played by comedian and actor Connor Ratliff, Lucas hosts this intimate conversation with his Toydarian companion, The Phantom Menace’s Watto (played by Blank Check co-host Griffin Newman) and the show’s producer Patrick Cotnoir – the three always joined by a special guest or two. Austin’s show features a great trio in filmmaker Andrew Bujalski (Support the Girls), author/critic Matt Zoller Seitz (TV: the Book, Mad Men: The Carousel), and writer Brandon Wainerdi (Star Wars: Insider, Fangoria).
“We’ve created this weird alternate reality comedy version of George Lucas.” – comedian & actor Connor Ratliff
Initiated in the Nineties as an impression Ratliff took up to defend against Star Wars prequel trilogy naysayers, his Lucas character has developed over the show’s 10-year run. “I started having fun with the idea of this guy, George Lucas, [he] does what he wants,” Ratliff tells the Chronicle. “Like he’ll have a movie that breaks all box office records, where the conventional wisdom is it’s a bad movie and people didn’t like it.” His impression of the man is akin to Willy Wonka, as Ratliff puts it, because the Lucas in his mind is as unreal a figure. This fits with the show’s overall levity: Here goes no nerd rage but instead a joyful if ribbing curiosity about the many different projects created by such a tremendous figure. Because, as the man himself is multifaceted, so too is GLTS.
“We’ve created this weird alternate reality comedy version of George Lucas,” Ratliff says, “that you’re actually probably more likely to have an extended conversation about Norman Rockwell [with] because George Lucas and Steven Spielberg are two of the foremost collectors and fans of the paintings of Norman Rockwell and I find that more fun to talk about than Star Wars.”
Interest in Star Wars – or even Norman Rockwell – isn’t a prerequisite for enjoying the talk show, which pivoted during the pandemic to nearly 12-hour-long live streams hosted by the now defunct Planet Scum. According to producer Cotnoir, the show’s actually introduced much of the viewership to Lucas. “The number of you would not believe,” he says, “who have been fans of our shows, sometimes for years, and then they’ll come up to us and say, ‘I just saw a Star Wars movie for the first time.’” These folks come to GLTS for “its own weird comedy reality,” Cotnoir says, which then has them experiencing the movies that changed science fiction film forever as “a collection of references to our show.”
“They have the weirdest reverse-engineered experience,” Cotnoir quips.
Yet what truly makes GLTS worthy of daylong streaming, and a live show ticket price, is how each performance sets itself apart. Cotnoir and Ratliff both point to their special guests as differentiators when it comes to the talk show’s vibe and comedy.
“Some talk shows,” Ratliff explains, “the personality of the talk show stays the same, and the guests slot into sort of a predetermined thing. We treat the guests more like they’re more of an ingredient that affects the what the dish is.” Those guests range from fellow comedy podcaster elites like Paul F. Tompkins – who Ratliff shares once called Bob Odenkirk live onstage at their insistence to say “You’re welcome” in response to Odenkirk naming Tompkins in a show’s special thanks credits – to movie stars like Whoopi Goldberg, who played into the show’s goofs by claiming she dated Watto in the Nineties. “That’s not a conversation that would happen anywhere else besides the weird, specific events of that one live stream that we did with Whoopi,” Cotnoir says.
“It took me a while before I realized that what this show actually was was a weird adult version of what I liked most about Star Wars when I was a kid,” Ratliff says, “which was playing with the toys and making up fun adventures.” Now, rather than bringing out the action figures, Ratliff, Newman, and Cotnoir are becoming them. “Instead of a Star Wars universe play set,” he concludes, “our play set is a talk show venue.”
The George Lucas Talk Show Live on Stage
Thursday 5, AFS Cinema
austinfilm.org
This article appears in November 29 • 2024.
