RIP: Gloria Katz, American Graffiti Writer and Star Wars Script Doctor, Dies at 76.

Lucas wanted her husband “to write about cruising for American Graffiti, and I sort of came with the package,” she recalled in a 2017 interview.

She said that Lucas had “a lot of reservations” about his script for his follow-up, Star Wars (1977), as filming was about to begin. “He said, ‘Polish it — write anything you want and then I’ll go over it and see what I need,'” she said. “George didn’t want anyone to know we worked on the script, so we were in a cone of silence.”

Katz noted she and Huyck tried to add as much humor as possible and wrote about 30 percent of the film’s dialogue. They also shaped Carrie Fisher’s Princess Leia to be a woman who “can take command; she doesn’t take any shit … instead of just [being] a beautiful woman that schlepped along to be saved,” she said.

Wait, all the best people told me that the Star Wars franchise didn’t discover feminism until The Last Jedi.