Somewhere between the fame and the glory of being a well-known film maker, we disconnect people like J. J. Abrams into another reality. But, indeed, they are as human as we are. They wake up, have shopping errands to run, and are deathly afraid of showing their bosses their work.
On The Howard Stern Show, as reported by Entertainment Weekly, Abrams stated that he was “nervous beyond words” when he had to display a finished cut of Star Wars: The Force Awakens to Alan Horn and Bob Iger and Alan Bergman, three high-ranking officials at Disney.
We showed the first cut — which was still incomplete, a complete version of the movie but not the finished version — and we showed it to Alan Horn and Bob Iger and Alan Bergman, the three people at Disney who sat with me in the theater, and we screened the movie. And it was horrifying.
This also helped when they finished watching the film, where Abrams said that their response was “the biggest relief of my life.”
I left and all I could think was, ‘What do they know, they spent $4 billion, they have to love it. Their response was so kind, I’m like, ‘They’re just being nice.’
Star Wars: The Force Awakens opens in theaters on December 18th.