Lucasfilm
Per an obituary published in Berkeleyside, author Jonathan “J.W.” Rinzler died on July 28, following an 11-month battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 58 years old. Rinzler, the former executive editor of Lucasfilm’s Lucasbooks division, was best known for writing 2007’s New York Times bestseller The Making of Star Wars, as well as The Making of The Empire Strikes Back, and The Making of Return of the Jedi. He also created the 2013-14 Dark Horse Comics series “The Star Wars,” which adapted George Lucas’s original draft of the script, with artist Mike Mayhew.
Rinzler was born in Lakewood, New Jersey, on August 17, 1962, and grew up in New York City and Berkeley, California (where he attended high school.) He studied painting as an undergraduate at the Parsons School of Design, and then earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in comparative literature at New York University. He joined Lucasfilm in 2001, editing the Attack of the Clones tie-ins, before writing the behind-the-scenes books for Revenge of the Sith.
As well as the comic, and the lavish trio of books on the making of the original trilogy, Rinzler wrote The Complete Making of Indiana Jones, The Sounds of Star Wars, Star Wars: The Blueprints, and The Clone Wars two-parter “The Disappeared.” He was set to write a book on The Force Awakens, but it was canceled because (as he put it), “there were a lot of things that were known to the public that I think Disney and Kathleen Kennedy just didn’t want to rehash.”
Rinzler left Lucasfilm in 2016, and subsequently wrote The Making of Planet of the Apes, The Making of Alien, and Aliens. At the time of his death, he was working on a book about Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. His first prose novel, the space race-themed All Up, was published in 2020. He also wrote and directed the animated short film Riddle of the Black Cat, which was shown at several festivals, including the Montreal World Film Festival.
He is survived by his wife Genevieve, their daughters Judith and Sarah, and a grandson, Henry. He is also survived by his parents, Alan and Marilyn, and siblings Ben, Peter, Ari and Daniel. The family requests any donations be made to the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network.
You can revisit Rinzler’s work for the official Star Wars site, and learn about his favorite aspects of the series, here.
