Confessions of a Star Wars geek - By N.L. Belardes
I was 8 or 9 nine years old. Even though I thought Close Encounters was the movie to end all movies (because of its cerebral aspects of alien-influenced psychological mind games on humanity) Star Wars still took a place all its own in my childhood dreams; and in the end, had a far longer lasting impact.
Yes, I was a cerebral kid. I was reading novels at a young age. But then, I was also trying to take over the planet ala an imaginary Spaceman Spiff comic book style. And that’s because Star Wars had its influence on my sense of daring and adventure. The power of its story on young boys was in its Western shoot-em-up adventure style and epic villains. I could relate on a social make-believe playtime scale that was out of this world (I hate clichés). Yet it was much easier to play Luke vs. 10,000 screaming stormtroopers and Darth Vaders than it was to pretend I was Richard Dreyfus running to Devil’s Tower like the mountain itself were some kind of fat Buddha poised on the landscape to banter about the mothership.
The clay armies I made back in 1977 were of a massive Star Wars scale of vast battles and epic cinematics in imaginary warfare. I had to do it. Just what else does a young boy do when he’s tired of throwing rocks at squirrels in dirt fields, or when he tires of building vast armies out of plastic armymen, where marbles were laser blasts that came rolling and bouncing over hapless rebel warriors (who all happened to look like WWII soldiers). The plastic blue-grey Germans were fine. They were already the evil Empire. But the clay armies. I would spend hours creating those… and the epic battles that resulted… at the very least were much more messy than today’s more painful Lego Star Wars battles, where pieces of galactic ships or snap-together Jedi body parts get lost on carpets, only to be stepped on in the middle of the night by some unsuspecting parent who might scream, “Ow! Damn it, Luke’s head!” The clay just gets squished into the carpet. A whole epic problem in its own…
I remember the old UA Six theatres in Bakersfield, now low budget sound system dollar theatres that may still be haunted. Did you ever hear the ghost stories of the old man with the cigar? Another time perhaps. I was still just a young boy of 13 or 14 when I went to the first showing of Empire Strikes Back. I showed up early, maybe 8 am, and already there was a long line. We waited for hours. Finally, my mother, brother and I squeezed into the second row, far along the right side of the theatre. But that didn’t matter. We were there for what was possibly the greatest movie viewing of all time.
Forget today’s age of movie trailers and spoilers. It wasn’t like that in 1981. There were no video game spoilers, no online teaser trailers, no Hyperspace buy-ins for exclusive photos and videos, no mega-media campaigns that gave away the secret color of Luke’s diaper pins. Which reminds me of the greatest movie trailer moment of all time: The Empire Strikes Back. I was sitting in a theatre in LA somewhere and suddenly there was a snowy scene followed by the cold metal stomping of At-Ats. Whoah! What’s this? An 11-year-old boy’s dream come true? Space battles, robot assault craft, and Star Wars, again?? I couldn’t wait. And there I was, finally in the theatre to watch Empire… And yet I didn’t know what was about to happen… because secrets then were just that: secrets.
The light saber duel: pure magic. Who knew light sabers and flying Jedi tricks could be so cool? This wasn’t your typical tale of fallen knights. I can still hear the gasp of the audience as Darth echoed, “I am your father.” I was horrified myself. And the appearance of Yoda. The laughter, the giggling of fathers, grandfathers, boys and girls, and my own mother who never lived to see the saga complete. But then, she didn’t live to see the horrors of 2001… or another war of lost servicemen.
And when Yoda says, “There is another…” whoah… what did that mean at that moment in that theatre to a young child? An amazing movie where secrets were only revealed on the screen in front of you as you saw them.
And so years later the philosophy of Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth infected me. It was me who gave Brad Alexander, Star Wars lead animator my own copy of the Power of Myth, complete with notes that he read again and again as he worked on Episode’s II and III. I educated him on the theory of the tragic fallen hero and the idea that Han was really an isolated ego-philosopher much like the Han dynasty’s introspective look at itself as the center of the universe. In a way, I had my own impact on two of the films because I helped one of their creators create with a deeper passion.
Such works of popular culture infected me further… into my very own literature. In Lords: Part One, Star Wars is mentioned only as a popular culture homo-erotic reference “…the hard nails on those hands digging in during the flick, this time Star Wars: Chewbacca humping that cowboy Han amongst the tumbleweed stars against the reality of Minstrel’s soft flesh.” What am I thinking? Am I blaspheming the very essence of Star Wars? Or am I just taking advantage of their sense of popular culture to a protagonist who couldn’t see the adventure in imagination that most of us saw?
But even before that in my 1998 novel, The Citrus Girl, the character of Ms. Fin is likened to C3PO as she belt’s out “We’re doomed!” because she has an obsessive compulsive disorder and an uncanny knack of regurgitating green burritos from Taco Bell so she can continue looking thin and robot-like. In Diva, the space opera singer main character I write about has two robotic sidekicks, both like over-sized C3POs, but with paisley skirts and rosy holographic make-up. These would be the fem-bot freaked out Star Wars versions that can only pour from a mind like mine: still obsessed with Star Wars from such a young age.
Tonight’s premiere is just a continuation of such popular culture dreams. When the Phantom Menace came out, a whole new generation began to experience the theatre geekness of the ‘first showing’. You might even remember one of my kids as the ‘Infamous Jedi who tried to lop off a newscaster’s head with a light saber’ during the first night’s showing of Attack of the Clones. I’ll never forget. I wasn’t looking and I was talking to this guy who had a portable TV. He suddenly says, “Hey, is that your kid? He’s on TV trying to kill the newscaster!” And I suddenly see my kid pretending to chop off the newscaster’s head on live TV! It was a proud papa moment for sure…
Oh yes, I could confess to even more. But why do that? You have plenty of Star Wars episodes in your own life to confess to… Feel free to write them down for me and I will share them as further confessions of Star Wars geeks… But only if you’re willing to tell…
May the Force be with you tonight at the Midnight showing…
Yes, I was a cerebral kid. I was reading novels at a young age. But then, I was also trying to take over the planet ala an imaginary Spaceman Spiff comic book style. And that’s because Star Wars had its influence on my sense of daring and adventure. The power of its story on young boys was in its Western shoot-em-up adventure style and epic villains. I could relate on a social make-believe playtime scale that was out of this world (I hate clichés). Yet it was much easier to play Luke vs. 10,000 screaming stormtroopers and Darth Vaders than it was to pretend I was Richard Dreyfus running to Devil’s Tower like the mountain itself were some kind of fat Buddha poised on the landscape to banter about the mothership.
The clay armies I made back in 1977 were of a massive Star Wars scale of vast battles and epic cinematics in imaginary warfare. I had to do it. Just what else does a young boy do when he’s tired of throwing rocks at squirrels in dirt fields, or when he tires of building vast armies out of plastic armymen, where marbles were laser blasts that came rolling and bouncing over hapless rebel warriors (who all happened to look like WWII soldiers). The plastic blue-grey Germans were fine. They were already the evil Empire. But the clay armies. I would spend hours creating those… and the epic battles that resulted… at the very least were much more messy than today’s more painful Lego Star Wars battles, where pieces of galactic ships or snap-together Jedi body parts get lost on carpets, only to be stepped on in the middle of the night by some unsuspecting parent who might scream, “Ow! Damn it, Luke’s head!” The clay just gets squished into the carpet. A whole epic problem in its own…
I remember the old UA Six theatres in Bakersfield, now low budget sound system dollar theatres that may still be haunted. Did you ever hear the ghost stories of the old man with the cigar? Another time perhaps. I was still just a young boy of 13 or 14 when I went to the first showing of Empire Strikes Back. I showed up early, maybe 8 am, and already there was a long line. We waited for hours. Finally, my mother, brother and I squeezed into the second row, far along the right side of the theatre. But that didn’t matter. We were there for what was possibly the greatest movie viewing of all time.
Forget today’s age of movie trailers and spoilers. It wasn’t like that in 1981. There were no video game spoilers, no online teaser trailers, no Hyperspace buy-ins for exclusive photos and videos, no mega-media campaigns that gave away the secret color of Luke’s diaper pins. Which reminds me of the greatest movie trailer moment of all time: The Empire Strikes Back. I was sitting in a theatre in LA somewhere and suddenly there was a snowy scene followed by the cold metal stomping of At-Ats. Whoah! What’s this? An 11-year-old boy’s dream come true? Space battles, robot assault craft, and Star Wars, again?? I couldn’t wait. And there I was, finally in the theatre to watch Empire… And yet I didn’t know what was about to happen… because secrets then were just that: secrets.
The light saber duel: pure magic. Who knew light sabers and flying Jedi tricks could be so cool? This wasn’t your typical tale of fallen knights. I can still hear the gasp of the audience as Darth echoed, “I am your father.” I was horrified myself. And the appearance of Yoda. The laughter, the giggling of fathers, grandfathers, boys and girls, and my own mother who never lived to see the saga complete. But then, she didn’t live to see the horrors of 2001… or another war of lost servicemen.
And when Yoda says, “There is another…” whoah… what did that mean at that moment in that theatre to a young child? An amazing movie where secrets were only revealed on the screen in front of you as you saw them.
And so years later the philosophy of Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth infected me. It was me who gave Brad Alexander, Star Wars lead animator my own copy of the Power of Myth, complete with notes that he read again and again as he worked on Episode’s II and III. I educated him on the theory of the tragic fallen hero and the idea that Han was really an isolated ego-philosopher much like the Han dynasty’s introspective look at itself as the center of the universe. In a way, I had my own impact on two of the films because I helped one of their creators create with a deeper passion.
Such works of popular culture infected me further… into my very own literature. In Lords: Part One, Star Wars is mentioned only as a popular culture homo-erotic reference “…the hard nails on those hands digging in during the flick, this time Star Wars: Chewbacca humping that cowboy Han amongst the tumbleweed stars against the reality of Minstrel’s soft flesh.” What am I thinking? Am I blaspheming the very essence of Star Wars? Or am I just taking advantage of their sense of popular culture to a protagonist who couldn’t see the adventure in imagination that most of us saw?
But even before that in my 1998 novel, The Citrus Girl, the character of Ms. Fin is likened to C3PO as she belt’s out “We’re doomed!” because she has an obsessive compulsive disorder and an uncanny knack of regurgitating green burritos from Taco Bell so she can continue looking thin and robot-like. In Diva, the space opera singer main character I write about has two robotic sidekicks, both like over-sized C3POs, but with paisley skirts and rosy holographic make-up. These would be the fem-bot freaked out Star Wars versions that can only pour from a mind like mine: still obsessed with Star Wars from such a young age.
Tonight’s premiere is just a continuation of such popular culture dreams. When the Phantom Menace came out, a whole new generation began to experience the theatre geekness of the ‘first showing’. You might even remember one of my kids as the ‘Infamous Jedi who tried to lop off a newscaster’s head with a light saber’ during the first night’s showing of Attack of the Clones. I’ll never forget. I wasn’t looking and I was talking to this guy who had a portable TV. He suddenly says, “Hey, is that your kid? He’s on TV trying to kill the newscaster!” And I suddenly see my kid pretending to chop off the newscaster’s head on live TV! It was a proud papa moment for sure…
Oh yes, I could confess to even more. But why do that? You have plenty of Star Wars episodes in your own life to confess to… Feel free to write them down for me and I will share them as further confessions of Star Wars geeks… But only if you’re willing to tell…
May the Force be with you tonight at the Midnight showing…
This entry was posted by N.L. Belardes, on
Wednesday, May 18, 2005.
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I love Star Wars. Always have, always will. There are obsessions that come in to loving sooooo much. Lets name some: Pretending you're a Jedi and going on missions, when those sliding glass doors at Target open up, you pretend that you are using the force to open them. A lot of little thing like that. If you do that, don't be embarrased, there are plenty of us all. May the force be with you!
This Star Wars movie is a must-see for everyone that can handle graphic scenes. I wouldn't recommend this movie for young children, which is one the main reasons why I enjoyed the film.
Waiting in line for the movie was an incredible experience; there were many more people than there were in Episode II.
Jordan
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