Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a new weekly column I'm calling This Week In Star Wars. Like many of you, my relationship with Star Wars has had its ups and downs. I was never angry at Star Wars, but the prequels let me down in a big way and I just thought I was going to have to live with the fact that Star Wars lost me. I would always have the original films, but I thought I was done with the series.
But then something magical happened. I reluctantly dipped my toe into The Clone Wars cartoon and quickly found that Dave Filoni and his crew had a grasp of the universe and the characters within that jibed with what I loved about the grand mythology George Lucas created in the mid-70s. That cartoon is a miracle because it not only rekindled my personal love of Star Wars, but also softened me a little bit on the designs and creative choices of the prequel trilogy.
That all happened around the time Disney took control of Star Wars and the newly restructured Lucasfilm, led by regular Spielberg cohort Kathleen Kennedy, began work on a whole new slew of Star Wars movies. It became a perfect storm of optimistic nerdery on my part. The more we see about Episodes 7-9, the more excited I get and I wanted to take that excitement and focus it on the history of Star Wars in some way.
I settled upon this idea, to do a stupid amount of research and note the important days in Star Wars history and go week by week noting them. This could be release dates, news announcements, book releases, casting decisions and other random fun stuff (like bogus rumors).
Some weeks will be busier than others, but no matter what I think it'll be a fun look back at all the little moments that add up to arguably the most influential cinematic series of my generation.
Let's get started, shall we?
MAY 25th, 1977
On this day in 1977, Star Wars was released in 32 theaters, including the famous Mann's Chinese in Hollywood.
That seems like a small amount of theaters for the huge event the film ended up becoming, but it was the best Fox could do. Nobody believed in this film outside of Alan Ladd at Fox and that included theater owners, who wouldn't commit screens to this weird sci-fi thing despite George Lucas' previous success with American Graffiti.
In fact, the only reason Star Wars played a marquee theater like the Chinese was because the release of William Friedkin's Sorcerer was pushed to June and the theater was desperate for any new film.
Famously, Lucas was eating at Hamburger Hamlet across the street when he saw the crowd and a series of limos. He thought it was just a premiere event, having no idea it was actually for his movie. He was still working on the monaural mix (the prints playing theaters were all 70mm 6-track stereo) and it didn't even occur to him that the movie was out. He was so deep into it that he didn't know the movie had been released.
Turns out the limos belonged to Hugh Hefner and his entourage, who loved Star Wars so much they watched it twice in a row. Imagine that crowd!
Star Wars broke the Chinese's opening day records, netting 4,800 asses in seats and $19,358.00 in revenue. The opening day total across all 32 theaters was $254,809, which translates to about $32,638 per theater and well over $1 million total in today's dollars.
MAY 25th, 1983
Return of the Jedi is released in theaters.
Much like its predecessor, Jedi shattered opening day records, cementing $6,219,629 in a single day as the new benchmark. The film opened on 1,002 screens across the US and Canada.
The cast were split on the final product. Mark Hamill noted that it was bittersweet for him because it represented an end of an era, while both Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford just didn't think it was quite up to snuff, Ford famously saying he didn't think it had a successful ending “with that teddy bear picnic.”
MAY 27th, 1976
Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader face off for the first time.
Almost a full year before the release of the picture, the very first lightsaber duel began filming. On May 27th, 1976 Sir Alec Guinness and David Prowse crossed lightsabers in the famous scene which shot over 3 days at EMI/Elstree Studios. They shot the fight stuff first and the beginning face-off last (on June 1st). Word is the shooting took longer than anticipated because Prowse was... let's say aggressive with his swings and kept breaking his and Guinness' lightsabers.
Also of note is that this is Obi-Wan's death scene, which wasn't on the schedule until after they began production.
Lucas toyed with killing either Han or C-3PO, but he knew someone had to go in order to raise the stakes for our heroes at the end of the second act.
Originally Obi-Wan was to get injured in the fight, but live. That's what Alec Guinness signed on to do and a week or two into filming Lucas decided to kill him off, which didn't go over well with Guinness.
Guinness was upset, but seemed to calm down when Lucas explained that as the script stood he'd just have Obi-Wan standing around useless for the last third of the movie. Plus, it wasn't a conventional death. His spirit would still survive in ways that Lucas hadn't quite settled on yet.
Interesting, huh?
MAY 29th, 1973
United Artists passes on producing “The Star Wars” by young filmmaker George Lucas.
In trying to sell his crazy sci-fi/fantasy film, Lucas' top choice of studios was United Artists. He sent them a 14 page treatment as well as ten images to help them understand the look of the picture. These photos included NASA pictures of space, US Army amphibious tanks and a bunch of Fantasy illustrations from pulp magazines. He was asking for $3 million to make the movie.
Oddly enough, UA was actually who registered the title “The Star Wars” with the MPAA as part of a financing agreement with Lucas in 1971 in which the director would give them the option on two pictures, the first being American Graffiti.
However, United Artists passed, which forced Lucas to go to Universal, a studio he had a lot of trouble with on American Graffiti. Contractually he owed them a right of refusal on his next picture, but the contract only gave Universal 10 days to decide. He never got a no, but they missed their deadline. After 10 days, Lucas didn't hear back and sent them a letter saying their time was up and he's moving somewhere else. After they cut 5 minutes out of Graffiti, Lucas was happy to not go into business with them on another picture.
Where he went turned out to be floundering, nearly bankrupt 20th Century Fox. That partnership wasn't exactly heavenly either, but more on that as this series progresses.
I'm still deep in research mode, so I'm constantly adding dates to the master list. If I miss something big feel free to alert me in the talkback below or via email.
So, what do you think? You like this idea? I hope so because I do and I plan to keep them coming along every Monday. It's been fun so far and I'm still combing through Making Of books and internet archives looking for interesting stuff.
Next week brings us more SW anniversaries. Some sad, some relating to future Star Wars stories and some from the Extended Universe. Until then, May the Force be with you. Always.
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
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