Note to 22

Joseph Campbell often said that George Lucas was his greatest student. Lucas used Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces as the structure for all six Star Wars films. This structure is rendered in a more readable form in Christopher Vogler’s fantastic screenwriting guide The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers 3^rd Edition (Michael Wiese Productions, 2007). The classic set of interviews with Campbell on the major patterns that repeat across all the major world religions, The Power of Myth (Anchor, 1991), was filmed in the library at Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch. Journalist and ordained Southern Baptist minister Bill Moyers conducted these interviews during the late 1980s, shortly before Campbell’s death. The Wachowski Brothers, creators of The Matrix series, also drew very heavily from Campbell’s insights. Both film series—their main plotlines and most subplots—are modern retellings of stories from the major world religions.