How Humility Serves Creativity

There's a fascinating story behind the genesis of the beginning crawls in the Star Wars movies. George Lucas' openness to a critique and subsequent action has a lesson for all of us--however passionate we may be about our "art," the humility of listening and editing can help us produce something better than we could on our own. There’s a fascinating story behind the genesis of the crawls at the beginning of the Star Wars movies. It’s impossible for most of us to even imagine those movies without the crawls—they became almost as famous as the characters and the music—but the first version (the one the general public never saw) didn’t have one.

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Robert Downey Jr. recounted a conversation with Steven Spielberg[i] about why and how these crawls were created. As was his custom, George Lucas screened the early version of the film in the Bay area in front of a bunch of accomplished filmmakers. Brian DePalma stood up and said, “This doesn’t make sense! Where am I? Is this in the future? Where is it in space?”

Lucas realized he needed to set some context, but he wanted to do so without filming something new or slowing down the beginning.

Thus, the crawl.

Apparently, Spielberg, Lucas, and Francis Ford Coppola had this open forum with their peers where they screened and commented on each other’s movies before the general public saw them.

Who knew?

Are you a creative? People often think creatives need to be brash, bold, arrogant, and not even care what others think as they pursue their art, lest they become “sellouts.” I’ve been writing books and sermons for thirty years now, and I’m growing in my understanding of how humility serves creativity rather than assaulting it.