The Dystopian Film That Inspired David Paich’s Toto Hit ’99’

George Lucas’ imagination might have taken you along on a ride through far, far-away galaxies as a child. After all, when the brave young Jedi, Luke Skywalker, realized that he was the son of Darth Vader after relentless hand-to-hand combat, this hidden truth was as much as surprising for the generation that was lucky enough to get into the movie theaters and learned about the Skywalkers’ family secrets firsthand.

However, long before Lucas came up with ‘Star Wars’ and built an impressive universe and fortune on it, he was just another aspiring filmmaker, trying out his chances with different ideas and scripts. He was determined to create something unique, a new reality to engulf the audience and never let go.

One day, the young director thought that he had the perfect script when he scrambled down a few ideas about a dystopic reality where the government forbade its citizens of any humanly pleasure while poisoning the people with mind-altering drugs so that they wouldn’t riot and fight against the totalitarian regime.

So, George Lucas put out his ideas and finally convinced a film studio to accept him and shoot a movie based on this script. It was 1971, and the film would be his first-full-length cinematic release. However, against all his expectations, ‘THX 1138’ wasn’t commercially successful and received not-so-nice reviews from viewers and critics.

However, somebody was so impressed by the film that they had to write a song about it. That’s how the movie inspired a young David Paich to write Toto’s hit ‘99’ from their second record, 1979’s ‘Hydra.’ Paich, after watching Lucas’ film, ‘THX 1138,’ was impressed by the script and decided to put out a few lyrics about it, and luckily, ‘99’ would be a major hit.

Paich also discussed ‘THX 1138’ while writing a few words about the song on the band’s website and pointed to Lucas’ script as a source of inspiration. The keyboardist summarized the film and disclosed how the then-young director had come up with the film’s name.

David Paich on writing ‘99,’ inspired by a George Lucas dystopia:

“This movie is set in the 25th century in a totalitarian state where mankind is stripped of any individuality. People are numbered drones, and a government-enforced program of sedation controls the populace. [George] used THX as the name for his movie theater sound system.”

The idea for a dystopian reality from a then-unknown young director inspired a rock band to create a hit and, possibly, paved the way for their future commercial successes. So, it might be safe to say that if art imitates life, then, in some cases, music imitates the endless universe of cinema.