A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Album cover art by William Stout. (C) 1983 Varese Sarabande Records On May 25, 1983 – the sixth anniversary of the premiere of Star Wars (aka Star Wars – Episode IV: A New Hope ) – 20 th Century Fox released Star Wars – Episode VI: Return of the Jedi , the third chapter of George Lucas’s Star Wars Trilogy. Written by Lucas with Lawrence Kasdan and directed by Richard Marquand, Return of the Jedi chronicled the beginning of the end of the Galactic Empire at the Battle of Endor, the ascension of Luke Skywalker from Jedi trainee to the last of the Jedi Order, and the redemption of Darth Vader – Anakin Skywalker – whose love for his son was stronger than his loyalty to the evil Emperor Palpatine. Because Jedi marked the end of the Luke Skywalker/Darth Vader story arc and no other Star Wars films were planned for the immediate future, many people, including book publishers and record producers rushed to make merchandise with the “standalone” label The Star Wars Trilogy . In...

(C) 1977 Arista Records Pros:  Interesting mix of atonal post-modern styles and more traditional Romantic melodic material Cons:  The cut-paste presentation of cues. When I first heard the opening bar of the  Main Title and Mountain Visions  from  Close Encounters of the Third Kind  in the late summer of 1978, I didn't know what to make of it. I hadn't seen Steven Spielberg's classic film about mankind's first peaceful contact with another spacefaring civilization (having spent much of my movie allowance on multiple screenings of  Star Wars ), so for me the music was mysterious, strangely atonal, and even ominous. It had none of the 19th Century Romantic era stylings of Williams' music for  Star Wars ; there wasn't a grand overture or march-like opening and there were very few repeated themes or leitmotivs. Indeed, some of the very early tracks on the  Close Encounters,  when heard without the context of Spielberg's movi...