Mt. Lebanon native Dave Filoni's first "Star Wars" memories are somewhat hazy. He doesn't remember seeing the 1977 original movie in theaters -- he's 34 now, so he was only 3 or 4 at the time, depending on whether his family saw the movie in 1977 or in its theatrical re-release a year later -- but he does recall the drive home from the theater.
"I was in the back of the car pretending to be Han and Luke with my brother, Mike," he said. "My brother is one year older, so I was always relegated to the Luke role. Mike was more like Han. Being older, it just made sense."
These days, Filoni plays a more active role in the "Star Wars" universe. He directed the new big-screen, computer-animated feature "Star Wars: The Clone Wars," which arrives in theaters today. He's also supervising director of a new half-hour weekly "Clone Wars" TV series that debuts this fall on Cartoon Network (no premiere date has been announced).
Set between the second ("Attack of the Clones") and third ("Revenge of the Sith") episodes of the live-action "Star Wars" movies, "Clone Wars" is a follow-up to the 2003-05 Cartoon Network microseries of the same name. It fills in the blanks of the much-discussed but little-seen battle-strewn period in the "Star Wars" timeline as Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker battle droid armies.
Initially, the new "Clone Wars" was intended just to be a TV series, but "Star Wars" impresario George Lucas liked what he saw enough as the series got off the ground to give it a big-screen premiere before the weekly episodes kick in.
For Filoni, the opportunity to become a master of the "Star Wars" universe was a dream come true. He previously directed episodes of Nickelodeon's "Avatar: The Last Airbender." Before that he did animation work for TV's "King of the Hill," The WB series "Mission Hill" and "The Oblongs," and Disney shows such as "Kim Possible" and "Lilo & Stitch."
"David has always liked science fiction, the whole 'Star Wars' thing, Godzilla," said his father, Albert, president of the Pittsburgh architecture firm MacLachlan, Cornelius & Filoni. "I think we have all the Godzilla movies at home yet. From the beginning he was a fantastic artist, and he loved drawing and using cardboard and materials to make things he would see. He was just fascinated by all of the names, the costumes. The fantasy of it all has always been a part of what he liked."
A 1992 graduate of Mt. Lebanon High School, Dave Filoni majored in applied media arts with a focus in animation at Edinboro University, south of Erie. But he traces his earliest memories of feeling supported in his artistic interests to Mt. Lebanon's Foster Elementary.
"In first grade, Mrs. Rhodina set up an easel in the back of the classroom, and, providing I finished my assignments, she let me go in the back of the room and draw," Filoni said by phone Wednesday from Lucasfilm Animation's headquarters outside San Francisco. "That kind of thinking by a teacher early on was important. When you're young, you can so easily lose confidence about something creative, like drawing, but I found in my school system that creativity was supported and fostered along the way."
After graduating from Edinboro in 1996, Filoni moved to Los Angeles and began working as a layout artist, refining drawings and plotting the movement of characters within a scene. His whole career was spent in hand-drawn, 2-D animation until "Clone Wars."
"This is the first job where I've used a computer at all," he said.
Friends knew he was a "Star Wars" buff and suggested him for "Clone Wars" when Lucas decided to launch an animation division.
"I got a shocking call out of the blue [from someone at Lucas' company]," Filoni recalled. "I almost hung up on her. I thought it was my friends having fun with me. Here I am, three years later. When I got here, the studio had only eight people total. Now there's 75-plus people here, and the company is worldwide with offices in Singapore."
Once a "Star Wars" kid, Filoni finds himself having a hand in creating more "Star Wars" stories for a new generation of toy lightsaber-wielding fans.
"'Star Wars' was this big thing when we were all kids, and now people ask, is ['Clone Wars'] for kids? But I suppose ['Star Wars'] always has been," Filoni said.
"That doesn't mean it's not for adults, but it's an interesting point of view to see come out of the movie. It's interesting to watch as it gets closer to opening day."
First Published: August 15, 2008, 8:00 a.m.
