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...