Bill Whitaker, correspondent for 60 Minutes, tried to record a Force Awakens scoring session with his iPhone:
So, this is John Williams, and I’m here; let me record some of this. So I took out my cell phone. …. These two representatives of Disney came racing over and kind of demanded that I cease and desist.
When they first came over and asked me to delete it, I did. And then, as we were leaving, they asked, “So… did you delete the delete?” I said, “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
It’s incredible how little anyone actually knows about The Force Awakens’ plot. The trailers reveal very little actual story. The actors promoting the movie have remained tight-lipped (citing brutal non-disclosure agreements). Even John Williams’ soundtrack won’t drop until premiere day (usually, film scores are released weeks before the movie itself hits theaters).
As another 60 Minutes producer explains, “Disney has a very tight grip on this film; they don’t want anything to get out. There are people whose full-time job it has been to make sure that nothing leaks to the Internet, or that nothing gets sent out to the world at large.” Judged by how little we know, those censors did good work.[1]
Contrast Disney’s secrecy to how The Phantom Menace was handled, back in 1999. Two months before Episode I premiered, Weird Al had written “The Saga Begins”, a parody song that accurately summarizes the film’s entire plot. His lyrics even mention never-before-seen characters like Jar-Jar Binks and Boss Nass, along with exotic locales like Naboo and Coruscant. It’s spot-on.
How’d he do it? Weird Al received no exclusive sneak peeks from Lucasfilm. No one snuck him a pre-release script. Instead, as Yankovic explains:
The song was entirely based on Internet rumors. I gathered all the leaked info I could about the movie from all the various Star Wars websites… and was able to piece together the basic plot.
Matt Hauger 