In the East Room, Return of a Jedi

President Bush gives the National Medal of Technology to George Lucas and Chrissie England. (Photos By Gerald Martineau -- The Washington Post)

The wizard was all bundled up in a topcoat, looking wise and Yoda-like. He materialized outside the West Wing yesterday just minutes after President Bush gave the wizard's special-effects company the nation's highest award for technology.

"Star Wars" guru George Lucas's last visit to the White House was during the Carter years, but it took the Bush administration, which could've used some of his razzle-dazzle yesterday, to get him back this week.

Lucas's Industrial Light & Magic has captivated and terrified millions with tripod aliens, monster tornadoes and a wall of water, and here he was in a city fearful of rogue nations' nuclear aims and still demanding answers from that real monster, Katrina. Lucas said he was honored to get the National Medal of Technology, but observed there was a surreal quality to the East Wing ceremony.

"Being in Washington is more fictional than being in Hollywood," he observed.

Awardees -- mostly aging men in gray suits -- strode across a stage in the East Room framed by forced daffodils, heralding a nonexistent spring. Along with Lucas, they included scholars who broke ground in "general equilibrium theory" and "non-mass-dependent isotopes," not to mention the guy whose research in real spacecraft tracking resulted in the global positioning system.

In his remarks, the president made no mention of light sabers (or safety methods to employ when hunting with light sabers).

"The work we honor today has improved the lives of people everywhere," Bush said. He called for more funding for research and for flagging eighth-grade math and science programs. "Gotta change that . . . we want young kids to think math and science are cool subjects," Bush said.

Lucas, 61, founded Industrial Light & Magic in 1975, when he was filming "Star Wars" and few people were doing visual effects in Hollywood. They began their work by creating something called "motion control," which allowed filmmakers to steady a camera to create more lifelike special-effects scenes, like that movie's final dogfight.

Later, they created the computer-animated graphics division that was ultimately sold and became Pixar Animation and achieved a slew of other industry firsts in computerized graphics and digital high-definition video. They now have 800 employees housed in tony new digs at Lucas's $350 million headquarters at the Presidio in San Francisco.

"We started out with 50 people making visual effects. Now there are thousands all over the world," said Dennis Muren, ILM's senior visual effects supervisor. "It's something people like to see. It's a graphic world and we've tapped into that."

Muren has eight visual effects Oscars, for his work creating the dinosaurs in "Jurassic Park," the silvery evildoer in "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" and, of course, "E.T." He's up for another one this year for "War of the Worlds."

After the ceremony, having repaired to a hotel room, Muren, Cliff Plumer, ILM's chief technology officer, and Chrissie England, ILM's president, made nice about the medal, which glinted in its blue-satin-lined wood box on the table before them.