Thank you to NetGalley, Rowman & Littlefield, and Bill Kimberlin for the opportunity to read and review "Inside the Star Wars Empire: A Memoir".

I unfortunately had a tough time with this book. Ultimately I haven't finished it, but instead read about two thirds of it before becoming too flummoxed by the many bizarre tangents the stories within would go on. Being that I love Star Wars and am a big fan of ILM, this seemed like a great title to get an insider's view of the work that went into some of my favorite movies. 

At times there's some really unique insights into ILM, George Lucas, the film industry at large, and even the author's own work that is fascinating. But more often than not the author sidetracks his stories to a lot of things that have little or nothing at all to even do with the film industry, or jumps from a really interesting story seemingly before it's finished to tell a different anecdote. The stories that do stay focused and on-topic, sadly often seem to fizzle out before they are fully told or at least left me feeling like there was more to hear but didn't get elaborated on.

I also realize this is a review copy before official release, but I've never read a book that felt like it needed an editor's touch as much as this. Unless something is wrong with my copy, stories often flow one from the next, to totally different topics without much in the way of chapters changing or anything that would indicate a particular story had ended and a new one had begun. As an example, one couple page section went from talking about the early days working at ILM into his side interest in acquiring cheap real estate and his missed opportunities therein, into discussing how the computer system Oracle was a large part of ILM's success. None of this with any segue. The other trouble is portions being almost overwritten. At another point in the book he mentions how a screening room was "hot miked so the projectionists could hear instructions from the directors". In the next sentence he stops to explain this already clear idea in essentially the same way, just to expound on the phrase "hot mike".

I think the section that ultimately was the nail in the coffin for me was right in the middle of talking about the location for the train scene from Back to the Future III. I love the Back to the Future movies and was excited to be learning a little about how this famous scene was conceived. But right in the middle of talking about the location, the author jumps ship and starts talking about an aunt who lived in the area who raced horses. At the end of this discursion he doesn't return to talking about Back to the Future and instead jumps into a different story altogether about Steve Job's Porsche, foley and ADR.

I really wanted to like this book and tried to keep forcing myself ahead several times. While there are some diamonds in the rough that gleam here and there (the effects shot SB19, the section on Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and the story of his creating American Nitro in particular stick in my mind) it was just too choppy, and too consistently off the advertised topic to keep going. When you title a book "Inside the Star Wars Empire" you need to dedicate a heck of a lot more time to talking about Star Wars, or at least stick much more to the insider view of ILM. This book would have worked a lot better for me if it was titled "Inside Industrial Light and Magic" and kept just to stories dealing with the many projects worked on during his time there without any of the detours.

I was a little disappointed. I was hoping this whole book was on Star Wars. Had person in mind for it, too, as a gift. Still, for readers interested in the movie industry and this authors insider look  at many popular films he's been involved with, this will be a terrific book!

I may be rating this a bit unfairly, but this is not the book that the publisher is selling it to be.  Kimberlin worked at Industrial Light & Magic, worked on Star Wars, Jurassic Park, and other big name Hollywood films and there are bits about this in the book but it's in no way a "behind the scenes" of the work done or the process of making the special effects for these movies.  This is really just the memoirs of a man who happened to work at ILM.  Had Kimberlin been my grandfather or uncle, this probably would have been more interesting to me. As someone expecting a window into the early special effects done at ILM, a company that literally changed the way we watch movies, this was a huge let down.  There are small tidbits about George Lucas, and chapters with Jurassic Park titles yet they house anecdotes of Kimberlin's life from that time, mentions of random people at ILM or from his side hustle, and other ramblings about how he saw the future coming when no on else did rather than breaking out the work done on such a seminal movie.  
The book is broken up into chapters that one would think would help mark the passage of time and give a natural way to architect the "story" of the book, but Kimberlin jumps back and forth in time, will provide an anecdote sort of related to the chapter, and then jump back to his here and there/this and that disjointed storytelling method.  This lead to repetition of stories and content and a pretty sluggish pacing.
I was just really looking for the book that was being promised to me, a memoir about being inside the Star Wars Empire and its related movies by someone who had a hand in it, not a personal memoir of a man's life who happened to work at ILM with the focus on his own personal history.

When I was a kid, I wanted to work at ILM. I loved learning about the magic behind the movies and ILM was THE place for special effects back then. Bill Kimberlin got to live the dream and writes about it in "Inside the Star Wars Empire." 

Before going any further, it's important to clarify what this book is and is not. The title is a bit misleading. Although Kimberlin worked for ILM, this isn't really about the making of Star Wars or a history of ILM. It's a memoir of one person's time as an employee at the company. Kimberlin worked a bit on the original films and special editions, but most of his work focused on other film projects that had contracted ILM.

Kimberlin's memoir is refreshingly blunt and candid about his former company. There's sometimes a tendency to overly glamorize the industry, and ILM in particular, but one really gets the sense that Kimberlin is just telling it like it is. To a large extent, this was a job, just like any other. Kimberlin talks about some of the creative challenges and opportunities he experienced at ILM, but also the petty office politics and management problems. 

I do wish Kimberlin had spent a bit more time organizing the book. It seems he just collected a number of anecdotes with a loosely chronological organization. The narrative seemed to jump around in time. It was sometimes hard to follow where the it was going. I also wish he'd spent more time actually discussing his work as a film editor for those of us not in the business and not familiar with the equipment he used. 

Recommended for readers interested in cinema history. Not quite as recommended if you're just interested in Star Wars.

If you enjoy the Star Wars world at all this is a wonderful book. It gives you some background on the making of the movies through the eyes of someone that was there. There are some wonderful stories and details provided to the reader. Even if Star Wars isn't your favorite world it is interesting to read to get some details on the making of films. It is an interesting read.

Kimberlin is a Northern California native with a love of movie making and a career that included indie films and a long-standing editor position at ILM.  This memoir is a very personal series of recollections and vignettes of what he saw or experienced while in the movie making industry as well as his own biography.  The book is notable for contrasting the 'outsider' feel of being in the greater San Francisco/San Marino areas as opposed to Los Angeles/Hollywood.  As well, the very insular life of working for decades at the Skywalker Ranch for ILM is a perspective we have rarely seen.  The focus is not on Star Wars but on ILMs work in the movie industry in the 1980s/1990s (Jurassic Park, Cocoon, etc.)

Problematic for me is the writing. Though friendly and conversational, it is a hot mess - jumping around willy nilly with no segues and a lot of confusion. Often, the writer would start talking about one thing in the 1970s and then abruptly be in the 1980s on a completely different topic.  I'm sure the transitions made sense to him but a lot of them were baffling.  And to be honest, for those of us reading, it would have greatly helped put so much into perspective better (especially how special effects changed in the 1980s from analog to digital) had we been given a more chronological presentation.  This stream of consciousness randomness can have its own appeal, I know, but by the end of the book, I felt somewhat cheated out of a good story.  There was too much to reassemble into cohesion and too many meaningful connections lost.  There was absolutely no structure and flow - and that perhaps is the greatest irony considering this was written by an editor.

Because Kimberlin is very much about filmmaking before the solid state era, he has some interesting perspectives as digital overtook celluloid. He was there at ILM through the 1980s all the way up until the move to the Presidio.  This is definitely a book for cinemaphiles since there is so much about the technical side side of the business.  The book feels more like a love letter for cinema romanticists than for those looking for 'juicy gossip' on ILM, Star Wars, and George Lucas.  Indeed, despite the title, the book has very little about Star Wars in it, unless you count editing concerns. He was never in contact with the sets or stars, so we only really get perspective on what the second in the trilogy (and the eventual remasters) did for series.  And about the preservation of the first film and the troubles they ran into when remastering.  Add in a few discussions about how to make the Star Wars vehicles fly realistically.

There are some odd notes.  E.g., talking about how all the interns were white and he was pushing to get a black intern - and then when he did, talked about how the kid couldn't fit in. And a lot of the book talks about his side projects, from real estate to his indie films to finding his family's rich history.  Too much of it did feel like he had a self promotion agenda - almost as if we are watching an infomercial on his side projects to give them visibility in order to 'pay' for the inside information he would present about ILM.

One of the most interesting takeaways, especially in light of what is happening in the movie industry with the Weinstein scandals, is the 'bad boys' man-child mentality of the up-and-coming Silicon Valley computer whiz kids.  Even ILM had the 'geniuses' who could create magic with computers (read: Jurassic Park dinosaurs) but who also caused headaches and unpleasantness with their demands and antics.

Those looking for inside information about Star Wars will be disappointed.  This is really about technical editing at ILM in the 1980s, an indie filmmaker, his quest for his roots, and the changing of filmmaking from analog to digital special effects.  As well, there are interesting observations about George Lucas and how ILM was run, life on the remote and insular Skywalker Ranch, and the development of Silicon Valley/Northern California into a filmmaking town outside of Hollywood.  But be prepared for a choppy, chaotic, and random-feeling read.  Reviewed from an advance reader copy provided by the publisher.

This is an insider's memoir of Lucasfilm and Industrial Light and Magic from the late 1970s onward, probably of far more interest to film industry readers than me.  Kimberlin has seen it all, including the many things that worked because of (or in some cases, despite) George Lucas' personal touch.