Collect All 21! Memoirs of a Star Wars Geek - Expanded Edition

by John Booth

  That spring, Jim went to the first Star Wars Celebration in Denver. He said it was a rain-sopped, poorly-planned crowded mess –and he had a blast anyway, so I was jealous as hell.

  In the mornings, Jenn left for work before I did. I’d get Kelsey ready to go to her grandma’s and drop her off on my way in to the Sentinel. She was a little over a year old, and we made a habit of watching the two videotaped Phantom Menace trailers every day as we sat on the carpeted step between our dining room and our living room putting on our shoes.

  One day, either before or after this little ritual, I quoted part of the trailer out loud to myself: “Wipe them out. All of them.”

  And my daughter, without hesitation, delivered the follow-up line: “Nooooooooooooo!”

  It was gorgeous. Not even two yet and already quoting Star Wars. That moment alone is worth the price of the Prequel Era.

  My job at the Sentinel at this point was to balance the needs of both the advertising and editorial departments and turn them into a layout for the newspaper. By a certain deadline, for instance, the editors would need to send me a guide of how much space they needed for stories, and the advertising sales reps would tell me how many ads they’d sold, and our department would put everything together like a puzzle.

  Assembling the weekly entertainment section was one of my projects, and it was a doozy. Lots of ads, ranging from the big color ads for new movie openings to the one-column, one-inch plugs for dog racing and cheap ocean cruises, and lots of editorial listings that needed specific amounts of space laid out in specific formats.

  Part of the gig, naturally, was dealing with salespeople who’d sell ads past deadline, meaning we’d have to find a way to shoehorn them in, since ads equal dollars. Some of the sales reps were regularly late with sizable color ads, but again, those meant bucks for the paper, so we gave them good-natured grief and made it work, and they’d buy us breakfast or lunch every so often.

  I learned quickly that it paid off to be nice to the reps who handled movie ad accounts, and managed to get advance passes to stuff like U.S. Marshals and James and the Giant Peach.

  Everybody knew I wanted Phantom Menace passes more than anything, especially Loreen, the rep who handled the 20th Century Fox account. She got her late color ads into the entertainment section without so much as a hint of an eye roll out of me.

  One morning, I heard a co-worker taking a call from her. “Really?” he said. “Wow, thanks. That’s pretty cool.”

  He hung up. “Hey John, guess what? Loreen just got me a couple Star Wars tickets!” Now, he was a very nice guy, and deserving of a night at the movies. Older than me, with a half-dozen kids, and an old-school nerd who reminisced about programming in COBOL and was a big Star Trek fan.

  I tried to give him a genuine smile, and I must’ve failed miserably, because he just laughed and said, “No, she didn’t. Just kidding.”

  As the numbers on my computer desktop’s countdown clock to the Episode I opening got smaller, I asked Loreen regularly – but as casually as I could – about the possibility of scoring some passes. And I kept taking her late ads.

  And I never got to see that countdown clock hit zero, because about three weeks before the movie opened, Loreen stopped by my desk with two tickets to an advance screening of the first new Star Wars movie in a generation. A couple days later, she even got me another one so I could get Jenn’s little brother Andy in, too.

  Man, was I ever psyched. The screening was in Altamonte Springs, a full 11 days before the official opening. When that evening finally arrived, we got to the theater about an hour and a half ahead of time, knowing there would be a line of other people who’d gotten tickets.

  About a half-hour before we were let into the theater, I saw the guys from the Orlando-based boy band ’N Sync being shuttled out a side door into a waiting limo, presumably after a private screening. At least two of them were carrying plastic lightsabers. (The newer kind, not the original Kenner versions. Posers.)

  The line moved forward. We handed over our passes, which bugged me, because I thought they could’ve just marked them or punched them or something so that we could keep the tickets themselves as a souvenir. When we went in and sat down, I was just overcome by this surreal feeling because there was going to be a Star Wars movie starting in a few minutes and I had no idea what to expect.

  After that great rush of the 20th Century Fox fanfare and the opening theme and the giant familiar yellow Star Wars logo, the introductory crawl began, and things felt … weird. Oh, I was still excited, but it was a strange sensation to be seeing something new unfolding in that galaxy far, far away which to this point, I felt I knew like my own backyard.

  In an odd way, it reminded me of the day my daughter was born. I’d been imagining and anticipating the moment for so long, but when it actually came, for just a second or two, she seemed like a stranger to me because I’d never actually seen her face.

  Same sort of feeling, watching this younger Obi-Wan and his Jedi mentor staring out the windows of the Trade Federation ship in the first few minutes of the movie.

  I went into The Phantom Menace spoiler-free, but I’d also taken care of a different sort: As giddy as I was, I also made sure I was going into the movie with expectations adjusted. I wasn’t six years old anymore, and walking into that theater with the attitude that I was going to have my world rocked the way it had been two-plus decades earlier would have been a sure-fire recipe for disappointment.

  I went in expecting fun, and I got it. I got Jedi smacking laser bolts like batting practice, podracing that left my eyeballs drying out in the hot wind, and a three-way lightsaber clash to some of the best John Williams music ever. And when we left the theater that night, I was floating and unable to stop talking about the movie.

  (Yes, I also got midichlorians, Jar Jar, poop and fart slapstick, ridiculous plot contrivances, “Yippeeee,” a two-headed sportscaster and a horrifically lame space battle, though, as with Jedi years before, I didn’t really notice the movie’s faults at the time.)

  Of course, I couldn’t say a word about it to Jim, because we were all still planning to go to opening night at Pleasure Island. So for more than a week, the only people I could talk to about the movie were Jenn and Andy and some of my fellow posters in the online Star Wars newsgroups.

  On the real opening night, then, Jenn and Andy and Jim and I queued up outside the Pleasure Island theaters with a couple thousand other people. We had little paper party-favor Episode I masks that hooked over our ears like 3-D glasses. I remember it was odd, being there and having already seen the movie.

  Truth is, on just my second viewing, I fought drowsiness in some of those dragging Tatooine scenes, Jar Jar became a little more grating, the midichlorians turned a little more cheesy, and the whole justification for the pod race felt a little more convoluted and goofy.

  Digression: When my daughter was two years old, just after Phantom Menace came out, someone – I don’t remember who, but you can bet it wasn’t me – got her some pajamas with a big glow-in-the-dark Jar Jar Binks face on the tummy.

  She wore them once, then confessed that she couldn’t sleep because Jar Jar’s face scared her.

  Totally, TOTALLY understandable, kiddo.

  Even with its flaws, Phantom Menace had its moments, and I still saw it a few more times, including once on a big Imax screen and once in the dollar theaters after Jenn and Kelsey and I had moved up to Ohio that July.

  Between The Phantom Menace and the 2002 release of Attack of the Clones, the Star Wars hype tide kind of receded a bit, and it was during this familiar three-year wait, that I finally shared the complete original trilogy with my daughter.

  It’s especially appropriate at this point, I think, because my wife and daughter and I now live in the same neighborhood where I grew up. I built tree forts in the woods behind the house were we live, and the sun sets across the street behind the same cornfield that’s been there since I was six.

  Kelsey had been expose
d to the movies since before she was born, of course, and I watched them fairly regularly, but it wasn’t until she was five – maybe even awfully close to six – that we sat down together intent of watching Star Wars.

  It was a joy and a struggle.

  I loved seeing her get wrapped up in the story and the action and her own concern for the characters. At the same time, I had to fight the urge to point things out or explain them or ask if she understood something or rewind a scene so she could hear some dialogue she’d missed. I didn’t do these things, though, because I wanted her to see it the way I had: Young and wide-eyed and even a little confused but still swept away by the scope and the spaceships and the music. At the same time, I knew it’d probably never hit her quite as deep in the gut as it had me, but God, I wanted her to love it.

  Of course, she didn’t have to go through the whole grow-three-years-while-you-wait-for-the-next-one thing, so she saw Empire and Jedi through very different eyes than I had.

  But she was having fun, and I suddenly had a little Star Wars fan on my hands. Maybe not one as intense or toy-focused as I’d been at that age, but one who started coming with me to gatherings of the Ohio Star Wars Collectors Club (OSWCC) and coming home with some loot of her own.

  Every generation has a legend. Sometimes we’re lucky enough to share it with the next one.

  Part II: In media res

  When the Attack of the Clones trailers were released, Kelsey would sit on my lap at the computer, and we’d watch them over and over and over.

  When we went to see the re-release of E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial, Kelsey was sitting next to me, and when the Episode II preview came onscreen she elbowed me excitedly. She nudged me again during the scene where Elliot was playing with his old Star Wars figures.

  And although this isn’t Star Wars-related: We’re watching E.T., and it’s after they’ve found the little guy dying in the ditch, and he and Elliot are getting sicker by the minute. E.T. is lying all crusty and white on the bathroom floor, and I look over at my daughter, and she is weeping hard, but hardly making a sound, these hot tears just pouring down her still-chubby little cheeks. My heart is absolutely shattering. I put my hand on her arm, and she leans in, still sobbing, and says, barely audible: “Daddy…” >sniff!< “Yes, sweetie?” >chokesob!< “E.T. looks like a Frosted Mini-Wheat.”

  It still makes me almost laugh and cry at the same time.

  When the “Star Wars: The Magic of Myth” exhibit came to the Toledo Museum of Art in the months before Episode II came out, I arranged to cover it for the newspaper where I was working, and Kelsey, Jenn and I made a day trip of it. Seeing my daughter peer at the models and the costumes and props and artwork, I wondered what it was like; what I would have thought at that age, being in a room with the pieces of movie magic under glass right in front of my nose.

  I interviewed Episode I art director Doug Chiang for about 15 minutes at the exhibit, and he talked to Kelsey before I left. I don’t know if she remembers.

  She told him she liked Watto. He said he did, too.

  In spring 2002, I made a solo one-day road trip to Star Wars Celebration II in Indianapolis on a press pass. (I’d actually already paid for an admission badge before realizing that, duh, I was a journalist now and could apply for credentials.)

  I hit the road at about 4 or 5 a.m. on a Friday, passed the time listening to The Star Wars Radio Drama and a book-on-tape of Philip K. Dick’s “The Man in the High Castle” and was in Indianapolis by nine.

  In the 24 hours I was there, I went to the opening ceremony emceed by Anthony Daniels, heard prequels producer Rick McCallum talk about the digital filming of Episode II – I took notes here for a couple short news features back home – wandered and drooled through the main exhibit hall and the fan fair floor, ate lunch at Steak-n-Shake and dinner at Hooters, ran into Temuera (Jango Fett) Morrison, bought some vintage box flats at one of the room sales that had taken over a floor in the hotel where I was crashing with friends from OSWCC, and saw the extended Attack of the Clones preview twice.

  The next morning I hit the road again and was home before dinner, as promised, since it was our wedding anniversary and all. (My wife, while not a huge Star Wars fan, has always been totally supportive of this sickness I’ve got, and God, I love her that much more for it.)

  I saw Attack of the Clones about a week ahead of its release date. The entertainment writer/editor and I sat next to each other in the newsroom, and he asked if I’d want to come see the media screening one morning. (Trick question? Seriously?!?) I figured I could also turn part of this into a movie story using some of those Celebration II notes, which totally justified my taking a chunk out of my workday to go see another Star Wars flick.

  Excited as I was, this was a totally different atmosphere than the Phantom Menace preview: This was specifically a writers’ review screening, so there was only a handful of people in the massive stadium-seating theater, and it was all business. Absolutely no buzz, no energy, no excitement in the air. Geeking hard on the inside, I felt wildly out of place and unprofessional, like everyone could see me thinking, “OhmyGodonlyfiveminutesuntilI’mseeingEpisodeII!!!!”

  It was almost a distraction, being there and knowing that around me, mental notes were being made at every wince-worthy line of dialogue and every action sequence. I think it made me hyper-aware of the movie’s flaws, because when I saw it the next couple times, the parts I had thought were weakest didn’t actually seem quite seem so bad.

  Jenn and I went opening weekend – though not opening night – because I wanted her to see it before I took Kelsey.

  My daughter was five years old when Attack of the Clones came out and we saw a matinee with my mom. As I’m working on this essay, Kelsey’s eleven, so I asked her what she remembered about that day.

  Not much, it turns out. She thinks a little, then: “I remember the guys with the long necks,” she says. “They were creepy. The blue guys, who –” and here she goes into a lilting, dreamy voice – “talked all peaaAAAAceful.”

  Ah, the cloners on Kamino. Anything else?

  “I remember thinking it was pretty funny when Yoda started jumping like eight feet in the air.”

  She didn’t remember much about the beginning of the movie, or whether or not she understood what was going on, but she remembered being there with me, and that’s really all that needs to be kept for the long haul.

  Part III: Closing credits

  When the Episode III: Revenge of the Sith trailer was released, I had recently resumed my journaling habit, and here’s what I wrote on November 9, 2004:

  This is the last Star Wars preview/teaser trailer I will ever get to wait for. Kelsey got off the school bus Thursday, and because I was off work, I met her and said I had a surprise.

  As soon as we sat in front of the computer, she turned around in my lap and said, “Is it a Star Wars – oh! It’s the preview for Episode Three!”

  I hadn’t even clicked open the file or given her any hint at all, and I could only break into a huge grin as she kissed me on the cheek.

  Either that day or the next, they showed it on MTV’s “Total Request Live” – possibly the only thing that could ever get me to watch that show for more than three seconds, unless they sometime decide to bring Martha Quinn back – and I saved the segment on the digital video recorder, watching it pretty much daily and keeping it until after the movie came out months later.

  The biggest, best, craziest part of the Episode III build-up was the trip Jim and I made to Star Wars Celebration III in Indianapolis, just about a month before the movie’s May 2005 premiere. We planned this sonofabitch for more than a year and got ourselves a freelance assignment for four days of web coverage and a print feature on the movie.

  I had just started a new job, and my first few weeks, Jim and I emailed back and forth constantly, ironing out details about what to cover and how, setting up deadlines, checking the event programming to see who was going to be there and figuring out how to dr
ink it all in. We were seriously, ridiculously psyched.

  It was four days of total immersion in Star Wars fandom and there’s not a second of it I’d give up, even those frustrating times fighting deadlines and cramped media quarters and uncooperative laptops.

  Friday evening to Saturday afternoon was particularly packed with “I-can’t-believe-we’re-here” moments. Starting at about 6 p.m. Friday:

  Jim and I met, photographed and interviewed original Star Wars model-maker Lorne Peterson. This was a blast. I’d expected, at most, maybe a five-minute chat. We wound up talking for close to half an hour and it was just a very neat thing, thinking that this was a guy who had, quite literally, helped build part of my childhood.

  I wound up talking to him a couple more times in the months after C3, and those interviews were the basis for a feature that ran in the October/December 2006 issue of Filmfax (“The Magazine of Unusual Film, Television & Retro Pop Culture!”). At 5,000 words, it was easily the longest piece of non-fiction I’d ever written for publication and also my first freelance magazine sale. Seeing it in print accompanied by some ILM-supplied photos and a couple of Jim’s shots from C3 was a total adrenaline rush. That these personal milestones were tied to Star Wars only makes them that much more meaningful.

  On Saturday morning, we woke up at 5 a.m. to secure second-row seats about 25 feet from where George Lucas himself came out for his first fan convention appearance since 1987. Jim shot some amazing photos and got one of George looking right at us. He was only onstage maybe 15 minutes, tops, but the whole thing was kind of stunning.

  I mean, there he was: this guy whose vision almost 30 years earlier had exploded my imagination’s landscape and opened me to seek new ideas and, in ways small and large, seems to have inspired practically every creative thing I’ve ever done. He was right there, with his gray, wavy hair and his jeans and sweater, sitting on a couch looking a little tired but still smiling.