Submitted by mojo on
...She goes and blows $40 at Costco to get the Star Wars DVD boxed set!
Of course everyone in the special features is talking about the primal significance of myth and Joseph Campbell and blah blah blah to explain its popularity. But I for one will never forget seeing it for the first time in State College....
Grandpa was in the hospital for the last time, I was taken out of school early to babysit, The Weasel and I were holding down the fort at Grandma's house, Mom was tending to Grandma and reading Watership Down at my teenaged insistence (which my husband is now rereading even as we speak) and every once in a while the rest of the family would make the car trip to spend a few days with us. I think I was fourteen?
My brother had to practically drag me to go see it...I complained all the way (it got decidedly mixed reviews; Gene Shalit didn't much care for it) and when I saw the lines I was ready to kill him. We barely got into a packed house....and that opening shot of the ships flying overhead is something I will never forget. I bought it hook line and sinker and spent the rest of the movie mouth agape.
I also remember we got The Weasel (aka my Favorite Younger Sister) to go see it--I think we lied to her and told her we were getting ice cream. At some point during the long wait in line she said something like "This is an awful long line for ice cream." I think she was seven? It was in 77, I remember that much....
I also remember my Favorite Older Sister and I playing "laser light sabers" while camping in Greenwood Furnace with sticks that summer, or was it the next one? I had to explain it to her, who HAD NEVER SEEN THE MOVIE. Did you ever see it, I wonder? Or to this day do you remain a Force HEATHEN?
While it's definitely more convenient nowadays--they'll open a popular movie on a billion screens--I sort of miss the excitement of waiting in line for hours to go see a movie. But maybe it's just the teenager talking.
Just reminiscing. It wasn't such a good summer--Grandpa was my first Major Death--and Star Wars was such a wonderful escape for two hours. So it's always had a soft spot in my heart for that reason, regardless of Joseph Campbell.
If you are now staring at a beautifully wrapped Christmas gift in the shape of a Star Wars boxed set and silently cursing me, you will have to give it to someone else and instead give me Robert Lang's latest origami book, called Origami Design Secrets:
I want. But not enough to want to spend money on it right now.
Mojo
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