“A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away,” a Northeast Ohioan traveled to “space, the final frontier” and ended up being part of cinematic history.
David Lester was born on the West Side of Cleveland and grew up in North Olmsted. While he got a taste of TV production in the ‘60s in Cleveland, he developed a career behind the scenes in Hollywood. Although he’s now retired in Southern California, he’ll be coming home this weekend to share his expertise with students among a series of events with the Greater Cleveland Film Commission.
“I got into the movies to tell stories,” he said, looking back on a career that included overseeing the production of sci-fi classics such as “Star Trek: The Motion Picture,” “TRON” and “Star Wars.” The climax of the 1977 film wasn’t easy to create in the era before computers and CGI.
“It was a specialty that I had developed quite by accident,” he said. “[Director George] Lucas had to pick from a menu of explosions we created. Then we had to figure out how to shoot them, which was complicated by the fact that you had to be underneath it so that gravity wouldn't show up in any of the explosions. And then they were so bright, they were lighting up the backing. So, there wound up being real physical world things to get the shots that everybody knew we needed."
Lester began his career in the mid-1960s at WEWS in Cleveland. During summers off from college, he’d run studio cameras for the kids’ show “Captain Penny,” news legend Dorothy Fuldheim and even the weekly music showcase “Upbeat.”
“James Brown came by one time,” he said. “[Producer Herman] Spero would put together as many acts as he could get for the actual show, but many of the acts that he wanted couldn't come on that time, so we would tape whenever they could come by the studio. That's when my partner and I got busy in the scene shop figuring out what sets we could slap together. James Brown did 'It's a Man's Man's [Man's] World' and man, it was cool.”
By 1967, Lester headed for Hollywood, studying at the University of Southern California alongside burgeoning New Hollywood filmmakers like George Lucas and John Milius. He later worked on Francis Ford Coppola’s “Band of the Hand” and a number of writer-director Ron Shelton’s movies, such as “Bull Durham” and “Tin Cup.” The James L. Brooks comedy “Broadcast News” gave Lester a new appreciation for cinematic auteurs.
"I loved working on a movie where the writer was the director, because then there was no conflict," he said. "Milius was the same way. Lucas, they liked what they wrote. They're not going to be changing it on you all the time, and you can really bear down on the work. If I was going to be a midwife, I really needed to be real careful about who I was helping with the birth. And I wanted people who weren't ambivalent about the script."
In 1993, Lester came home to Ohio to supervise production of the film adaptation of Stephen King’s “The Shawshank Redemption.” He loved the story, but not the Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield.
“It was just about as horrifying as something could be,” he said. “That penitentiary was the most foreboding place I had ever been in. You can't keep that many souls captive in a space like that, for as long as that thing was a penitentiary, and not have it leak into the walls. I mean, I'm not New Age-y, but there was a vibe there that was absolutely real."
Lester will discuss his career with WJW’s Stefani Schaefer during an appearance at the Western Reserve Historical Society on Friday night. A free workshop at Cuyahoga Community College follows on Saturday.
