Inside the Star Wars Empire

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.

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.

I love reading anything that gives insight and personal stories into the process of how larger movies are made. However, I'm not quite familiar with all the terms or how the process works, so some explanation would have been helpful, but I understand that maybe going into this book the author excepts those interested to have knowledge of the subject at hand.

Some of the stories are hard to place on the time line as it seems to jump around a bit, but I do like the author's style. Some memoirs can be so bland, but this was fun and enlightening.

**I think it's worth noting that you should not go into this book thinking it's completely about the making of Star Wars; there may be some misconception there.

Great read for folks interesting in Star Wars, well-written and interesting!

Go behind the scenes of Star Wars, Back to the Future, Roger Rabbit, Jurassic Park, and more with the former visual effects director of ILM.

Call me a geek but I do love Star Wars. So when I see a book written by someone who worked on the movies it was a no-brainer I needed to read it. Inside the Star Wars Empire by Bill Kimberlin details his time working for LucasFilm as part of ILM.

Maybe I went into the is book expecting too much but it left me feeling a bit lacking. Don’t get me wrong I am happy I had the opportunity to read it. Overall for something with Star Wars in the title it did not talk all that much about Star Wars.

As a teen, I worked in a movie theater so overall I am a bit of a film buff. I always read movie trivia on IMDB soon after seeing a film. Bill’s book is loaded with insights on a number of movies that ILM did special effects on.

However, in talking about various movies the author would go off on some odd tangents about his childhood or family history. For some of the tangents, it became clear why that story was applicable to the movie production. Others not so much.

Personally, some of the insights about Jurassic Park, Who Framed Rodger Rabbit, Forrest Gump and The Back To the Future movies was fascinating. Other readers if not fans of these movies may not find these parts of the book as interesting.

Overall if you are looking to find out more about the movie industry I would recommend this book. Anyone looking to read about Star Wars this may not be the book you are looking for.

Excellent perspective of the movie industry from an actual employee. He provided his point of view and his experience. I would like to see some pictures about the author during his experience.

You probably don't know Bill Kimberlin's name, but it's almost a certainty that you have seen his work. Kimberlin, a special effects artist at Industrial Light and Magic for many years, was behind many of the memorable scenes of the Star Wars movies, Jurassic Park, and many more. In Inside the Star Wars Empire: A Memoir, Kimberlin reflects on his career in the movie business, telling story after story about movies and the people who make them.



Lest you get distracted by the title and cover illustration, Inside the Star Wars Empire isn't all about Star Wars. Fans of that great movie franchise will find plenty to love, but Kimberlin writes more broadly about ILM, George Lucas's Skywalker Ranch, and the many other Lucas films and side projects Kimberlin worked on. In addition, Kimberlim tells lots of anecdotes about movie history, and reflects on his own life and his family's history. At times, these subjects mix and mingle in a rambling way, but mostly they are fun to read.



The strongest thread through Inside the Star Wars Empire is Kimberlin's love of movies and joy he has experienced from being a part of the process. He's in love with the "magic to make it all happen--that rare mix of technology, money, business acumen, talent, and luck." In his role producing special effects, he "wanted to take temporary control of the viewer's brain and convince him or her that we were telling the truth, when we obviously were lying." And as he points out, we in the audience are coconspirators. We "love being fooled and scared."



While many of his stories have him rubbing shoulders with big-name stars, flying on private jets, or hanging out in cool locations, he also captures the day-to-day of the business. He writes, "if you could just get past the well-advertised but largely absent glamour of working in the movie business, it could be a hell of a lot of fun." The fun he experiences in the world of movies is contagious and his narrative of it is fun to read. If you love movies, especially George Lucas's many hits, you will enjoy this book.





Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!

This is for the Star Wars junky. If you live and breath that world you'll absolutely love everything to do with this book. I'm not one of those people, but still, I respect the level of attention and love put into this effort. If I can dig it, hardcore SW fans will adore it.

A nice, personal insight into what it was like working at Lucasfilm. I always find biographies like this interesting. As a child, you wonder what it's like to work for places like this.

If you Google Bill Kimberlin, you will find out that he has credits for special effects for a number of well known movies including Return of the Jedi, Mars Attacks, Back to the Future II & III, among others. You would also find out that he directed/produced/edited/filmed American Nitro, a documentary on drag racing. But that is not all to his life.

Inside the Star Wars Empire: A Memoir is a story of Bill Kimberlin's life told in short, wandering, non-sequential chapters. In a major way, the subtitle is the important term in defining the book's purpose since he is telling his story, not a history of Star Wars, or Industrial Light & Magic (ILM).

Bill Kimberlin opens with chapters on his first job at ILM, doing the special effects for the space battles on Return of the Jedi, so we learn what life was like working at ILM. But he also intersperses chapters on his life before and outside ILM to the mix. We learn about the movies he made (American Nitro and Jeffries-Johnson 1910), his family background (bootlegging and Pretty Boy Floyd included), and his life ambitions/goals. He is not afraid to name-drop along the way as he tells about various movies he worked on and the effects he helped create.

If the reader is wanting the inside scoop on Lucasfilm and Industrial Light & Magic, he may be disappointed, but if he or she is looking for a life story spent in the trenches of film magic, Inside the Star Wars Empire: A Memoir may just be the ticket!

Awesome book learned so much about t5he behind scenes you never get to read about. I cant wait for more books from Kimberlin