Bay Curious

This week the Bay Curious podcast is celebrating our one-year anniversary with a lightning round of questions and answers! Is it true that George Lucas was inspired to create the AT-AT because of the cranes at the Port of Oakland? No. Sadly, this is not true. George Lucas told the San Francisco Chronicle’s Peter Hartlaub, “That’s a myth. That is definitely a myth.” Hartlaub also followed up with Phil Tippett, the stop-motion animator who oversaw production of the AT-AT sequence. Tippett allows for a small chance that somewhere in the process someone looked at the cranes, but added that the original vehicles actually looked nothing like container cranes, and more like garbage trucks. Sidenote on Phil Tippett: He was credited as “Dinosaur Supervisor” at the end of “Jurassic Park” and has been the topic of several popular internet memes. Poor guy has spent years now explaining what the “supervision” element of his job actually was. Question submitted by Bay Curious listener Matteen Mokalla. How did the Tenderl