As amazing as it may seem, there was a
time in the history of the world when nobody had put the words “star”
and “wars” together. Really. I know it seems Star Wars has
been around forever, but it hasn't. Prior to May 25th, 1977, the
world was blissfully unaware of what was about to happen. A new
Force, beyond anything we had ever seen before, was about to burst
upon the scene. Our world would never be the same.
I was in the theater the day Star
Wars opened. I think there were lots of people there with me. I
don't know how the others found out about it, but I learned about it
from a friend who went to the movies stoned one afternoon. Afterwards
he described breathlessly “this movie that was coming that had
swords that light up and space ships and little robots.” I had no
idea what he was talking about, and suspected the fact that he was
stoned at the time made him embellish what he saw in the Coming
Attractions (as trailers were called back then.) But it sounded
pretty good. Since we were science-fiction fans, we immediately made
plans to be in the theater on opening night, even though we had heard
nothing else about this film. I know I liked it. I'm not sure I loved
it, at first, anyway. In fact it wasn't clear that it was a hit
until at least the Monday after it opened when the ticket-sales
numbers came in and it was clear that it was a block-buster. It could
have gone either way. I think we assumed it was just another
science-fiction film, for which we were grateful, of course. But a
world-wide cultural phenomenon? No one even dreamed of that. No one
even suspected it was possible. We could not have anticipated how
big it would become.
The rest is history...
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