Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self. - Cyril Connolly
Friday, May 25, 2007
Where were you?
If you're of a certain age, you remember exactly where you were and what you were doing when certain big events occurred: The day John Lennon was assassinated, when Reagan was shot, the last episode of M*A*S*H, when the Challenger Shuttle exploded, September 11th, and of course, the day Anna Nicole Smith died (joking!).
So - where were you when you first saw Star Wars thirty years ago? If you weren't old enough to see the original release when it was in theaters - it doesn't count.
I was in Iowa City visiting my cousins that summer. My uncle took all six of us to the movie theater on the University of Iowa campus and dropped us off. We were ages 13 - 16. It was amazing. The theater was packed, and it was a largely college age crowd. Therefor, they cheered for the good guys, booed Darth Vader, and generally made the movie all that more exciting to watch, because everyone was so engaged in it.
I think it was the first movie I saw in surround sound, and the fight scenes over the Death Star with all the swooping in and out made you nauseous. It was the best ride ever.
Totally remember it. I was in a (then) large cinema in Marble Arch, in London, with my father. I don't remember anything else as exhilarating as that Death Star sequence before or since. Not only that, the pressure of them having to make it and thus save Alderan really has you on the edge of your seat. I feel sorry for the poor kids nowadays who had to settle for a brat in a podracer!
I didn't get to see it in the theater until almost a year after it was released. I was still in kindergarten and went with my dad and my brother to the Jumper's Hole Theater in Pasadena. It was probably one of the most exciting moments of my childhood. They just don't make bad guys like Darth Vader anymore!
I saw the first STAR WARS at the Eric Pennsauken in Pennsauken, NJ. I was 10 years old and on the swim team. On Fridays we weren't supposed to do anything too tiring (seriously, though, we were 10, we had nothing BUT energy) so I had my mom take a bunch of us to the theater to see it. That first shot of the spaceships coming onto the screen and that amazing Darth Vader theme let me know I was seeing something I had *not* seen before.
A few years later my father actually let me skip school for the opening of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK!
Totally remember it. I was in a (then) large cinema in Marble Arch, in London, with my father. I don't remember anything else as exhilarating as that Death Star sequence before or since. Not only that, the pressure of them having to make it and thus save Alderan really has you on the edge of your seat. I feel sorry for the poor kids nowadays who had to settle for a brat in a podracer!