Seriously now. Was that for real?
On the Han Shot First thing, why not just come out and say "Look, folks, I changed my mind. Over the years, it just didn't sit right with me, so I changed it."
I think the thing I find most galling about all this stuff is the continued "I always intended to..." undertone.
It's crap. It's always been crap. He changed his mind. Just man up to it already.
Other than that, none of what he said surprises me. More just confirms what I already believed.
1.) Correct, generally speaking. Could be that he, you know, changed his mind later, but yeah, at least at the time, he seems to have endorsed it.
2.) Not necessarily his ego. Foster hadn't really become the name he is now in sci-fi/fantasy writing at that point, I don't think. Lucas, on the other hand, was arguably a hot new name, so it could just as easily have been a marketing thing to help sell the book.