First Things First....

A visit to my favorite hot dog place (Arbetter's Hot Dogs) in my home town of Miami, FL

Hello, there.

Welcome to A Certain Point of View, my new blog here at Blogger.com. My name is Alex Diaz-Granados and I'm a (a) writer, (b) budding screenwriter, (c) single guy, (d) online reviewer and (e) die-hard Star Wars fan of the "1977 Generation" who still remembers when the first movie was simply titled Star Wars and not, as it has been known since 1981, Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope.  (I also seem to be a rarity among Star Wars fans from the '77 Generation because I like the Prequels and the digitally-retouched versions of the Classic Trilogy as much as I love the original editions that I watched in 1977, 1980 and 1983.)

How die-hard of a Star Wars fan am I, you ask?  For starters, this blog's title is derived from a line of dialogue spoken by Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars - Episode VI: Return of the Jedi:

Your father... was seduced by the Dark Side of the Force. He ceased to be Anakin Skywalker and "became" Darth Vader. When that happened, the good man who was your father was destroyed. So what I told you was true... from a certain point of view.

I don't know how many times I've watched the movies either in theaters or at home, nor do I know how many books, action figures, soundtrack albums and other collectibles I own, at least not off-hand. 

I do know, however, that I enjoy the much-maligned Prequel Trilogy (warts and all) a lot more than many other Star Wars aficionados do, and that I do not think George Lucas is a sellout or insensitive to his fans' wants and needs, especially regarding the ticklish issue of whether the original versions of the Classic Trilogy should be automatically reissued with the newer, digitally enhanced Special Editions that Lucas considers to be more faithful to his artistic vision.

I also have to point out that I wasn't always a big Star Wars fan, at least not at the very beginning.

If you were to read just a fraction of my thousand-plus reviews online (be it at Amazon, Epinions or Viewpoints), you’d probably be left with the impression that I was one of the first persons to become a Star Wars fan from the day of its theatrical premiere (May 25, 1977).

After all, since many of those reviews are about either the six live-action Episodes, one animated feature, the 2003-2005 Cartoon Network “micro-series” of 2D cartoons, or any of the tie-in products (soundtracks, novelizations, original novels, graphic novels, and other collectibles), you would be entitled to say to yourself, “Geez, this guy was such a sci-fi geek in his teens that when he heard that Star Wars was going to be in theaters, he probably camped out by the box office to be one of the first to see it.”

However, you’d also be very wrong.

Although memory is one of those terribly fickle human senses and can’t be totally relied upon, I believe the first time I ever heard of Star Wars was when I went with my mom to a mall in Westchester where there was a Cozzoli’s Pizza and a few other stores she liked to browse in. Of those, Cozzoli’s was the only place that I liked, so normally what my mother would do after we’d eat a slice of pizza for lunch was to hand me a $5 or $10 bill and allow me to go to the big Lionel Play World to look around while she went to such stores as Richard’s or Jackson Byrons.

This must have been in late 1976: I was in sixth grade and beginning to fret about junior high. And for a boy of 13 I was reasonably happy; I had a girlfriend, I was mostly in regular classes at Tropical Elementary, and I had my share of good friends in my neighborhood.

I also had a modest allowance - $1 a day if I did my chores (made bed, helped vacuum the house, and didn’t make too much a mess) and didn’t misbehave. And of course I – being 13 – didn’t do a hell of a job at saving money back then; either I’d spend it on a movie date with my girlfriend at the time or I’d buy miniature tanks (think Matchbox-sized ones) or small replicas of World War II combat aircraft.

I don’t remember if I bought anything on that day in December of 1976, but I do remember seeing one of those book display racks standing in a corner just beyond the cash registers.

Being the avid reader that I’ve always been. I ambled up to the rack and saw that it was full of paperback copies of just one book: Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker, by George Lucas.

(Again, this is where memory fails me. My brain tells me this book more than likely was the black paperback with the Ralph McQuarrie conceptual art on the cover but sometimes I wonder if it was the tie-in edition with John Berkey’s more familiar cover painting.)

It might surprise readers – particularly those who know me well – to know that not only did I not buy it, I also thought it was not going to be something I would ever be interested in. Its depiction of a boy and girl (Luke and Leia) in white, juxtaposed with that bizarre looking giant robot-thing in back (Darth Vader) looked like something out of a bad Japanese sci fi flick, and I was not interested in those, thank you very much.

I gave the book a somewhat dismissive glance, then walked out of the store, probably with a small replica of a P-40 Tomahawk fighter plane or something along those lines in a Play World bag.

Five Months Later…..

When Star Wars next entered my consciousness, I was then a somewhat different person and my life was being turned upside down by several events.

In March, a few days after my 14^th birthday, I made the decision to break up with my girlfriend after a four-year “puppy love” relationship. Because of a one-year difference in our ages, she was one grade ahead of me in school. While this was no problem while we attended Tropical Elementary, her promotion to seventh grade during the 1976-77 school year meant she went to the junior high next door while I was still in elementary school. For both of us, this “separation” shouldn’t have been too problematic, but we were both now exposed to attractive members of the opposite sex who were not disabled. There were, I believe, several girls I would have said I liked were I not “taken,” and I never gave my girlfriend any reason not to trust me during that school year we were “apart.”

She, on the other hand, had other ideas. Being a bit older and perhaps wanting to see what other guys had to offer, my soon-to-be ex started seeing this other guy in one of her classes…without breaking up with me first. She probably didn’t love him or ever thought that the dalliance would get serious, but she did consider him her “other boyfriend” – or so the rumor mill had it.

To make a long story short, shortly after my 14^th birthday, I decided to end the relationship. I didn’t do it nicely or correctly – I just stopped calling her or taking her calls until she got the idea that I didn’t want anything to do with her.

Two months passed, and life came at me with more nasty surprises. First, in April of 1977, my maternal grandfather died. Then my grandmother, still in mourning, came up to Miami from Bogota to try and escape from all the aftereffects of the funeral. She’d stay with us for a few months, and somewhere along the line she convinced my mom to sell our home and buy a new one in Fountainbleau Park.

At around this time, 20^th Century Fox was beginning to promote Star Wars in 15 and 30-second commercials on television.

I had forgotten all about Star Wars since I had disdainfully turned up my nose at the paperback book at Play World several months earlier, but those early commercials did nothing to grab my imagination. I thought the title “Star Wars” sounded silly. I thought Darth Vader was a robot straight out of a bad Japanese science fiction movie. I did not like the names “Luke Skywalker” or “Princess Leia.”

Now, there was a movie coming out around the same time that I did want to go see: United Artists’ big budget war drama : A Bridge Too Far, an adaptation of Cornelius Ryan’s best-selling account about a failed attempt by Allied forces to capture a bridge over the Lower Rhine River during World War II. They premiered, I believe, within one week of each other, and though I’m sure I could have seen both then, I airily dismissed Star Wars as a second-rate kids’ movie and swore I’d never watch it.

My friends were astonished. Yes, they knew I was into “real world” stuff more than they were, and they knew that lots of the science fiction films I had seen (often in their company) sucked, but they saw Star Wars on opening weekend or soon thereafter, and they were buzzed. “Wow! That movie is fun,” they’d say. “It has heroes. It has villains. It has spaceships. It has adventure. It has cool effects.” (The only thing they did not mention was the music – they were 12, 13 and 14 at the time and soundtrack music was the least of their interests.)

“I don’t know, guys,” I’d invariably reply. “I hear what you’re saying, but I’d rather go see A Bridge Too Far. It has planes, tanks, paratroopers, and it’s about a real event.”

And so it went. While my peers were True Star Wars Fans from the very first, there I was, sitting in an almost empty screening room and watching an incredibly well-made but not-too-popular movie about a battle the “good guys” end up losing.

The Force – finally – is with me…..

By the time I entered the hallways and classrooms of Riviera Jr. High in the fall of 1977, Star Wars mania was sweeping my age group as nothing else in my memory had. Kenner still hadn’t started producing the soon-to-be-revolutionary action figures yet, but my friends had Star Wars books, Star Wars buttons, Star Wars comics, Star Wars T-shirts, Star Wars Pez dispensers, and even Star Wars Meade Organizers. Sometimes people would say “May the Force be with you” to others as they passed each other in the halls, or they’d get into esoteric discussions about which was cooler, Luke’s X-Wing Fighter or the Millennium Falcon?

Of course, I felt left out, but I was also a stubborn little cuss and still didn’t feel any need to go see Star Wars. I was still coping with the Big Breakup (and not well, especially since I saw my ex every day in school), plus we were in the process of moving from one house to another.

Worse still, in an attempt to seem cool and “with it,” I even lied about having gone to see Star Wars once. This did not fool anyone, much less my best friend Raul Fonseca, who – in private, bless his soul – found the truth when he quizzed me about some of the characters and I said the big hairy creature’s name was “Tobasco.”

It wasn’t until the fall of 1977 that I finally succumbed to Star Wars mania and had my mom drop me off at the Twin Gables Theater. Partly it was Raul’s gentle prodding. He knew I was still unhappy about my breakup with my ex and the other changes in my life, and he intuited that I needed a little escapism to forget all my troubles. He also did not want to spoil the movie for me by telling me the plot, but when he heard that ABC was going to air The Making of Star Wars in October of 1977, he said something along these lines.

“Alex, I know you said you don’t like science fiction movies much, but listen. They’re going to do a show on how they made the movie and it will be hosted by the two robots from Star Wars. Try and watch that. It might have scenes from Star Wars and maybe you’ll see what we are all talking about. If you don’t like it, okay. But if you do like it, go see it this weekend and tell me how it was. All right, Goofy?”

Had this plea come from anyone else, maybe I’d have said no and that would have been that, but this was coming from my best friend in the world. I gave him a still-skeptical smile but said “Okay.”

“Oh, and Goofy….I won’t tell anyone you said Chewbacca’s name is Tobasco.”

When ABC aired the “Making of…” special, I watched it from beginning to end. I was intrigued by some of the behind the scenes stuff (the use of models and blue screens, location shooting in Tunisia and London, and the stunts involved), but what grabbed me (really) was hearing Anthony Daniels’ “overly nervous” British butler voice coming out of C-3PO’s “mouth.” I guess I had a strange sense of humor back then and thought it was a clever device.

Clever or not that fussy protocol droid and his interaction with R2-D2 intrigued me enough to go see Star Wars the following weekend. Released several years before videocassettes revolutionized the home video market, the movie had an extremely long first run, so I managed to see it in theaters even though Star Wars had premiered five months before. Incredibly, there were still long lines at the box office even in the fall of 1977, so when I sat in that darkened theater and the house lights went all the way down as the 20^th Century Fox Fanfare played through the mono speaker, I did so with a roomful of fans who were still excited beyond belief when the Fox logo faded away and was replaced by the now famous card of “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away….”

By the time the house lights came up again over the end credits sequence, I realized that I’d taken my first step into a larger universe. Not only did I now understand what “May the Force be with you" meant or know why Darth Vader was a true movie badass, but I had been carried off, at least for 121 minutes, to a place where good and evil were clearly defined, where it didn’t matter if your friends were aliens or robots or smugglers with hearts of gold, and where farmboys were heroes-in-the-making.

More important, Star Wars was FUN, which to us in those post-Watergate, post-Vietnam War days was something positive on which we could all hang our hats on.