The following is a report from friend of the website and poster collector Ryan Call, who works as one of the programming directors for Salt Lake Comic-Con.
I sat in a restaurant on the coast of Florida last night with three co-workers. “Has that new ‘Star Wars’ movie come out yet,” one asked.
“No, it’s next Thursday evening,” I said.
“Tell them,” my manager said, bemused.
“Wednesday at midnight, I’ll start watching a marathon of the first six movies. Then at 7pm the next night, I’ll see the new movie.” My co-workers sat there staring, wordless.
“And then?” my manager goaded.
“Then I’ll hop in the car, rush to a second screening at a different nearby theater that starts about 10pm, so that will make 24 hours of ‘Star Wars.’ The next day I’ll get to see it in IMAX 3D with my wife and then sometime that weekend we’ll probably take my daughter once we’ve had a chance to make sure it won’t scare her.”
There was a long silence at the table while they digested seafood and their embarrassment for me. One of them finally broke the uncomfortable silence.
“Um…why?” she managed.
Fair question.
My mom and I were alone for the first few years of my life. My dad passed away when I was 18 months old – he dove into a pool and didn’t come back up. I don’t remember him directly, but I do have a clear memory of when I was two or three years old toddling into my mom’s bedroom and finding my mom crying. I hugged her and asked what was wrong, and she said, “Daddy’s gone.” She never seemed hopeless, but I do remember her being profoundly sad.
She met Will and he quickly became a part of our lives. By the time I was five, they were married. One evening they came back to get me from my grandma’s house and were very animated. “We just saw a movie that we really want you to see. We have tickets for tomorrow.”
The Centre Theater in Salt Lake City was a big, old movie palace that opened in 1937. I spotted its art deco tower over the box office not long after we got off the freeway. I’d driven by it but had never been able to see anything there; I’d always been curious. I felt dwarfed by the huge building. I held my mom and new dad’s hand as we walked past the box office and up the sloped red carpet entrance. The walls were trimmed with gold. And along the entrance hallway were costumed characters – one all in black, a big hairy one that looked like a dog, a princess in white.
I found out years later that the BYU theater department saw an early screening of the movie and had immediately gone back to Provo to work on their costumes so that they could express their fandom by hanging out in the lobby of a movie theater for a few weeks; cosplay before the term was even invented.
The auditorium of the Centre was even more opulent and beautiful than the lobby. I really miss that old place. I worshipped there many times. The lights dimmed, the 20th Century Fox fanfare played, the first notes of the John Williams score dropped on my head, and I was gone.
Everything in my life for the next few years was related to “Star Wars.” I got a small piece of cardboard from Santa for Christmas that promised that, just as soon as manufacturing was done, I would get the first Star Wars figures in the mail. They were played with carefully until the next Christmas when my parents had me open a very large box last – the Death Star Playset. I was the king of my block for years to come having that bad boy in my room.
I collected and loved until the day that my dad came home from work, grinning, and showed me passes to the local sneak peek of “The Empire Strikes Back.” He asked if I might want to go with him, and I think I might have promised to keep my room clean and to be good forever. More “Star Wars!” Back to the Centre we headed, to the balcony this time, and off on another adventure with my friends. “Empire” remains my favorite movie ever, thousands of movies in.
Why do I love “Star Wars?” It’s a part of the fabric of my family. Most people don’t get to be there from the beginning of their parents’ relationship, the real start of the family, but I remember it being the time that my mom went from being protective and sad to something much happier. And “Star Wars” was right there at the beginning, too.
The odd nabob of negativism asks me “but what the ‘Episode VII’ sucks?” Truthfully, I don’t care. A new room is being added to my family home. I don’t care if the walls are perfect. I just want new places to explore and take in.
After “Episode III” was released and gone, Steve Sansweet took the podium in Hall H in San Diego and said “Star Wars is forever.” I get to explore a new room next week. There are two more rooms under construction, right now as I type, and many more in the works after that. Star Wars Rebels contains the same sense of wonder and adventure that I felt sitting in the packed audience at the Centre with my new family, and I get to see that weekly at home with my daughters. In a few years when I take them to Disneyland, we’ll be able to visit an entire land devoted to our favorite movie. It’s a good time to be a nerd and a fanboy in general, but especially a “Star Wars” fan.
I cannot wait to hold Ainsley and my wife’s hands, walk into the theater and enjoy the next chapter.