A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

(C) 1977 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation and Lucasfilm Ltd. Poster art by Tom Chantrell Every once in a while I have what I think of as an out-of-the-body experience at a movie. When the ESP people use a phrase like that, they're referring to the sensation of the mind actually leaving the body and spiriting itself off to China or Peoria or a galaxy far, far away. When I use the phrase, I simply mean that my imagination has forgotten it is actually present in a movie theater and thinks it's up there on the screen. In a curious sense, the events in the movie seem real, and I seem to be a part of them. - Roger Ebert, in his 1977 review of Star Wars Star Wars celebrated its 40th Anniversary yesterday.  For those of us who were alive when George Lucas's groundbreaking space-fantasy epic set "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away" premiered, it's hard to remember what the 1970s were like before Star Wars. Because the film (which was renamed Star W

(C) 2008 Dark Horse Comics and Lucas Books, a division of Lucasfilm Ltd. Today is May 25, 2017, and  Star Wars turns 40 today. Wow. A lot of water has flowed under the metaphorical bridge since 20th Century Fox - skeptically, somewhat grudgingly - released George Lucas's space-fantasy film about "a boy, a girl, and a universe" on Wednesday, May 25, 1977. The studio - and even Lucas himself - didn't think that "that space movie" (as some of the suits at Fox referred to Star Wars ) would do well at the box office; it would probably attract young children and teens for a couple of summertime weekends, then vanish before the release of Fox's projected sure-fire hit,  The Other Side of Midnight, which premiered two weeks later.    It is ironic that Star Wars (or, as we know it now, Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope ) succeeded beyond anyone's - including Mr. Lucas's - wildest dreams. I say "ironic" because Fox - believing that scien