Darth Vader and the Boy

When it comes to Star Wars, I've been very careful about what I've told my son. As a general and admittedly somewhat loose rule, Jenifer and I have tried to limit his media exposure. No need to dunk his head in a bath of high-energy imagery just yet, so the theory goes. For the most part we stick to books, and for all of us the evening ritual of lighting the fire fairy and reading stories is one of the high points of the day.

So when I opened the package from America that contained our Christmas gifts and I pulled out a hefty hardcover, J.W. Rinzler's The Making of The Empire Strikes Back, Hawk immediately and irrevocably saw both my unrestrained excitement and the power of one of the world's great iconic characters: Darth Vader.

Hawk gasped and covered his face. "Who's that guy?" he asked, peeking.

I told him he was Darth Vader and demonstrated his idiosyncratic breathing technique, and that was all he needed to produce his assessment: "Darth Vader is pretty scary, because he's pretty scary." Luke was named, appropriately, the Boy.

For days Hawk would tell the story of Darth Vader and the Boy, and soon we were recreating the climactic duel on Bespin in sidewalk chalk on the path outside our house. I was charged with the task of drawing the Boy, but the rollerskates are all Hawk.

Around the same time we came across the Volkswagen commercial, "The Force," and I just had to share it with my young apprentice. The pint-sized Sith Lord soon came to be known as Funny Darth Vader, and sure enough Hawk incorporated this version into his own mythology.

"Come here, Dad! I made Darth Vader! I will show you. You'll like it." See for yourself.

The Sequel

The time is now. At last I can reveal the New Project. I know, you’re thinking, What about that sweeping Norse epic? and Where did I place my grocery list? A mere ruse, the Blue Harvest of spec scripts. No, the project whose very name I tremble with pleasure to utter, the script with a concept most high, is not the Viking-laden cleave-fest I mutter about from time to time but in fact the follow-up to American Jedi, a script I wrote with my friend Tom. The working title is I’m Killing Mr. Lucas Because He Hasn’t Released a Film on My Birthday: Being the Second Part in a Planned Trilogy of Assassination Comedies. I’d give you a synopsis, but I’m still working on the logline.

Thing is, George has a thing for Memorial Day weekend. It’s been good to him. And I understand that. You gotta make a living. So episode by episode, trilogy by trilogy, he sends his newborn films into the world, goes to Hawaii, and counts his money. That’s cool. But what’s not cool is that now, with the release of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, George has skunked me again. He’s had no less than 10 chances to get it right.

Ten opportunities to release a new film on my birthday, May 23. But no. Out trots Indy on May 22 and down goes another birthday in flames of bipolarity. He’s toying with me, George is. After all, these are the films that really mattered, the Lucasfilms of the Star Wars and Indiana Jones series. These were Movies, and they were the ones that fired the imagination, the ones that produced that scary pounding in your chest.

At least, this is the announcement I had planned to make. It turns out that someone had the audacity to invent these Internets and, checking my facts, I discover that Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was released on Wednesday, May 23, 1984. My twelfth birthday.

Huh. That was the night—a school night—that my dad took me to see the new adventures of Indiana Jones. Opening night. How could I have forgotten? Worse, it seems that Raiders was released in June. June! I sure hope George is happy. Now he’s stolen my thesis.

Tom called me the other day, and he didn’t say so, but I think he was disappointed I’d already seen the new Indy. I explained that I had taken the Kid to see his first Indy movie. (The Kid is a really cool 13-year-old I’ve been training in the ways of iron.) My own kid is on the way, of course, and I can only imagine that 12 or 13 years from now the Jones boys will still be trotting the globe in search of mystical artifacts. We'll be there.

And, yeah, it was great. Thanks, Dad.

***Note to Lucasfilm lawyers: No need to follow up on this one. Everything’s perfectly all right here. We’re fine. We’re all fine here now, thank you. How are you?

The Ways of the Force

My mom likes to say that I went through several phases in my childhood, based on the things I drew. First there were superheroes, then knights, and then Star Wars. And that phase pretty much didn't end until I woke up sometime in the spring of 2000.

I was a huge Star Wars fan. I was about as big a Star Wars fan as you could be before this monstrosity that is the Internet came along. Nowadays, I’m completely outclassed by the likes of Darth_Chocolate32, Grand Moff WampaLoverr, and Ted the Hutt.

Still, I appreciate what George gave to the world, and from time to time fragments of memory combine with experience to produce moments of genuine understanding. For example, I’m mulling over the hows and wherefores of setups and payoffs, done particularly well in current offerings like 3:10 To Yuma and Eastern Promises, and this idea, this insight, pops into my little noggin, and suddenly two seemingly innocuous dots in the rich tapestry that is Lucas’s elegant script slam together with a huge, a gigantic, amount of . . . well, force.

Let’s look at the original Star Wars film. At the end of Act I, Luke has decided to follow old Ben on his “damned-fool idealistic crusade” and become a Jedi Knight like his father. At some point, Ben is going to provide some instruction. You know the scene. While in hyperspace en route to Alderaan, Luke is training with the remote seeker and getting zapped in the process. Han laughs, dismissing the Force, but Ben places a helmet on Luke’s head that completely covers his face.

LUKE: (laughing) With the blast shield down, I can't even see. How am I supposed to fight?

BEN: Your eyes can deceive you. Don’t trust them.

And thus one of the film’s themes is articulated. Luke relaxes and, trusting the Force, succeeds in blocking the remote’s laser bolts. The scene itself might have worked with just Ben and Luke, and that’s how a novice writer might have constructed the scene. But Han’s doubt provides the contrast necessary to highlight and embolden Luke’s lesson: “Ancient weapons and hokey religions are no match for a good blaster at your side.” In fact, his words echo those of Admiral Motti, proud architect of the Death Star, to Darth Vader: “Don’t try to frighten us with your sorceror’s ways, Lord Vader. Your sad devotion to that ancient religion has not helped you conjure up the stolen data tapes or given you clairvoyance enough to find the Rebel’s hidden fort . . .”

Here, in the conflict between the ways of the Force and the ways of technology, lies the key to Luke’s journey and the resolution of the story. This theme is located in at least two other instances. The first occurs when Luke uses his macrobinoculars to spy on the Sand People. His recklessness and reliance on technology actually prevent him from seeing the danger right in front of him. The second takes place in the Death Star detention area, when Luke, disguised as an Imperial stormtrooper, complains, “I can’t see a thing in this helmet.”

If we jump to the climax of the film, the Death Star battle, we find Luke making what will certainly be his only trench run. All his comrades have fallen prey to enemy fighters. Vader—in whom the tension between faith and technology resides most dramatically—is closing in. The impossible target of the thermal exhaust port looms ever closer. And then Luke, prompted by Ben’s disembodied voice, makes a simple but critical choice. He switches off his targeting computer—to the consternation of Rebel strategists—and, guided by the Force, releases the torpedoes that destroy the Death Star and save the Rebellion.

Looking back to the training scene, which occurs just prior to the midpoint, we see that its structural function is to set up this climax. To prepare Luke (and the audience) for the task he will need to perform at the very end. Let go your conscious self and act on instinct. In a simple scene, complete in itself, Lucas has planted the seed for one of the most joyous and satisfying conclusions in film history.

George Lucas . . . prepare to be toormahnated.

I am not a cyborg from the future. Honest. And I wish nothing but light and goodness for George. I swear. But all the pics from the Austin pitch competition suggest that behind those glowing red eyes, lurking beneath that grainy facade, is the endoskeleton of a T-101 (or is it T-800?). Of course, the script Thomas and I pitched, American Jedi, is about an obsessed fan who sets out to kill George for ruining Star Wars. You know, a light assassination comedy.

In fact, as Thomas I were wrapping up the fourth draft last spring, we received a curious phone call. Seems Lucasfilm had hired a local private investigator to make sure we were on the up and up. The short we had made to promote the script had worked its way around Los Angeles. The letter we sent George about the short had not yet been returned to us unopened -- that would happen a few days later. So within the hour our intrepid gumshoe arrived at Thomas's house and we had a nice chat in the living room.

We played the video for her on Thomas's widescreen TV, and she laughed. She pointed out her favorite part. We agreed. She admitted that she wasn't really into the whole Star Wars thing, but that her son really dug the video. We pointed out that the web site's URL was displayed in the video's background and that anyone in the target audience would be in on the joke.

Of course, she expressed Lucasfilm's desire for us to take down the web site, cease distributing the video file, and presumably move on to more George-friendly subject matter. Of course, none of this was in writing. Now, admittedly, we were slightly intimidated, not knowing how far this would go, so we did take the video down -- for awhile. But the site itself stayed up, and in a matter of days we had thousands of hits from within the Lucasfilm empire: LucasArts, Skywalker Sound, ILM. Someone was watching and not just a bunch of lawyers.

Time passed and we never once noticed armed thugs trailing us. Our P.I. did call us once more -- this time to request that we take down my pen-and-ink wash of George (which incidentally was part of a dream journal I did for an art class nine years prior) and that we change the name of the web site and presumably the script. But again, nothing in writing.

Several months later, at the Minnesota Men's Conference, I had the good fortune of meeting the amazing Doug von Koss. He worked in the art department on several of George's movies. I told him about our project and how we were interested in holding a mirror up to fan culture. I relayed how our protagonist was a firm believer in the widespread AICN Talkback-type sentiment "George Lucas raped my childhood. " Doug was appalled: "That's the most awful thing I've ever heard." I asked him about George. And he said that George is one of the most genuine people he's ever met. An inspiration.

And that's what I had hoped to hear. That's why we wrote American Jedi. So, yeah, I'm not a cyborg from the future. And I'm pretty sure Thomas isn't one, either.