Happy Bday Star Wars

I saw Star Wars at the Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood when it came out 30 years ago today, in 1977. To be honest, I don’t think I saw it on its initial release date, but we did see it about a month later. I seem to recall going into Hollywood with some friends to see Sorcerer, a fantastic remake film by William Friedkin, but it was too crowded to get in. We bailed out, but we discovered that Star Wars was playing at Grauman’s in an hour or so, so we went to a bar to wait a bit for the movie time to come around (double shot of Jack Daniels, nine dollars thank you - no problem remembering that kind of data when you’re not exactly flush with cash and 22 years old. Holy crap!) Sorry about my memory lapses here, by the way. I can probably Google my way to memory recovery, but I don’t feel like making the effort at this time.

What is etched in memory is this: seeing the first visuals in Star Wars, where the gigantic Imperial ship is blasting away at the rebel ship carrying Princess Leia, all flying in a starscape above a wonderful realistic planetary tableau of grandeur and beauty, and all I could do was happily stare with my mouth open, thinking about all the science fiction books I’d read, and all the fantastic worlds of wonder they envisioned, and here it was, in real life, right there before my eyes. Right there on the big screen.

So my thanks go out to George Lucas and his team for their cinematic gift to dreamers everywhere. And happy birthday to the first Star Wars flick.