Who is Jonathan Hales and why is his name down as a script writer for Attack of the Clones? What is this business of script doctoring?

Given Lucas was directing and there were pressing production duties, Hales was roped into help write the finer details of the movie. He was a writer for Lucas’s Adventures of Young Indiana Jones and clearly had his trust to get the scripting job done.

Production was well advanced and it was in a position that producer Rick McCallum described to as like trying to build a skyscraper without a foundation. Ultimately the final production script was only able to be read by the actors three days before filming!

So what contribution did Hales make? 

The Secret History surmised that given Lucas also re-wrote Hales' last polish, his contribution to the script was “tenuous”.

This may not be all together fair as Hales did a receive a full screen writer's credit and under the Writers Guild of America screenwriting credit system, a screenwriter must contribute more than 50 percent of an original screenplay or 33 percent of an adaptation to receive credit.

Despite the suggestion of Hale’s work being mere polish (well, if that’s the case, how did he not pick up on the Anakin's sand quote business? Or did he write that line into the script himself?) Lucas must have been happy enough with his contribution to the script as Hales continued to do a fair bit of writing of the Adventures of Young Indiana Jones series.

As an aside, some famous film re-writes or script doctoring moments have gone uncredited including Star War's very own Carrie Fisher as a script doctor for Hook, Sister Act, Lethal Weapon 3 but even Fisher couldn't save Last Action Hero.

In such circumstances, script doctors often deliberately go uncredited, even when they do major work.

But what is this business referred to as script doctoring and why is this discussion suddenly taken place?

To answer the latter, it's an interesting tangent and it gives a good reason to talk more about Star Wars. The first part of the question refers to a script writer taking an existing script and giving it 'another go' with a major restructure or simply tidying up some pacing issues, improving dialogue, fixing scene that wasn't quite working or coming up with a more suitable ending.

Did you ever hear of a script writer called Tom Stoppard?

If you've ever had a cup of tea in his living rooming, you'd have probably noticed his big shiny Oscar gathering a fine layer of dust on the mantle piece. He won it for a delightful film called Shakespeare in Love.

Tom Stoppard also has a massive connection to George Lucas which fans will be amused to consider.

George Lucas once asked Stoppard to do a  final re-write of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade - he did the final version of the film but is uncredited - screen writing credit is shared between 5 people but not Stoppard.

Now if we go cast back to Revenge of the Sith, the film turned out a lot different to what was original script - and we're referring to the fall of Anakin Skywalker to the dark side of the Force here. As the film was pieced together Lucas felt Anakin's turn was too abrupt and not logical.

Lucas did two sets of extra pick up filming to ensure his new story line of Anakin turning was in response to his need to save Padme's life.

So who helped Lucas get this very late piece of story incorporated into Sith?

It must have been Stoppard who is credited as being the uncredited script writer that saved the film. This was a secret let out of the bag by Hayden Christiansen in an interview with Playboy.

So there we have it. A small insight into Hale's work on Attack of the Clones lead us to learning that Carrie Fisher is an actual script doctor herself and that one of the most famous script writers in history helped Lucas with Revenge of the Sith.

Hollywood is clearly a who you know industry!