TRaFoSW: Part 3

THE RISE AND FALL OF STAR WARS, BLOG #3

6/26/2017



A Kid at Universal Studios

My dad wrangled a developmental deal to produce Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, so they gave him and his partner Paul Aratow a bungalow at Universal Studios. On subsequent trips down south between the years 1975 and 1977, he brought me with him and I was able to wander around the lot on my own. The experience of being surrounded by actual movies and TV shows being filmed increased my knowledge about how they were actually made, the process. I completely fell in love with movies, which I’d already had a big crush on.
During one self-guided “tour,” I saw actor Raymond Burr, walking, which was a shock, for his character was always in a wheelchair on TV’s Ironside (only later did I realize he’d played the heavy in Hitchcock’s Rear Window). Outside a soundstage, I saw Robert Conrad from Wild, Wild West seated in the cockpit section of a WWII fighter plane in front of a painted cloud backing being rocked sideways and up and down by a crew for TV’s Black Sheep Squadron. On another day, my father snuck me onto a sound stage where I saw a cast of black and white actors in an unusually radical film called Car Wash written by Joel Schumacher (a friend of my father’s) and starring Richard Pryor, among many others.
My biggest thrill came on a sunny southern California day circa 1976. It must have been lunchtime or something, for I was able to saunter through huge sliding doors onto a soundstage where, lit half in the sun, half in shade, I saw the mechanical shark for Jaws. Either the original or a modified one. It was on two or three saw horses, probably being prepared for the Universal Studio Tour (during which it would eventually surge out of a lake to terrify visitors seated in two-car open trams). A crew or someone must have been working on the shark, because a large section of its synthetic skin had been taken off; the discarded segments, like irregular pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, were stored in a wooden crate on the ground. Consequently I could stare in wonder at the mechanical beast’s complex entrails—and that was mind-boggling. I was face-to-face with the monster that had completely terrified and traumatized me only a year before (see “The Jaws Blog” on this site for an interpretation of that film).
Little did I know that Lucas’s tiny production office for “The Star Wars” was across the street from Universal in a trailer parked on a lot, for he’d directed his previous film, American Graffiti, for that studio. In fact my father was friendly with Verna Fields, one of its editors, who’d also edited Jaws. I could have crossed the street and knocked on the door to Lucas’s trailer, and perhaps glimpsed Ralph McQuarrie’s paintings for the movie to come, because at that time no one knew about it and no one cared.
Oddly enough, a few months later, my father and his partner Paul drove Carrie Fisher from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, where she was singing and performing with her mother, Debbie Reynolds. “She was a real honey, a sweetheart,” Alan told me later. “No airs or pretensions, which was unusual for Hollywood, especially with her star power, but scandalous parents.”
When Lucas departed for England and Tunisia to shoot his film about a farm boy named Luke who leaves home and discovers the Force, I was stuck at Berkeley High School. High School wasn’t all bad, but like Luke Skywalker and a million other teenagers, I couldn’t wait to get out.
A year later, in 1977, I did not want to go see Star Wars. My mother and her live-in boyfriend of several years, Jerry Graham, had tickets to a preview showing at the Coronet Theater in San Francisco. Jerry was the manager of KSAN, a popular radio station, and often received free passes to events. One of his DJs, Terry McGovern would come over to the house and he was another connection. McGovern had played the high school principal in American Graffiti; even earlier, in a voice-over for THX 1138, McGovern had invented a word—“I think I ran over a Wookiee”—that Lucas had later used to describe a giant furry alien.
Jerry told Peter and I that Star Wars was a science-fiction movie, which was, for me, the wrong genre. Not too long before, I’d been obliged by my father to see Solaris, a Russian art-house sci-fi movie, and had sat there in mute incomprehension for what seemed a very, very long time.
But my brother and I went along to the Coronet. After the lights went down in the old movie palace, my brother has always claimed that Lucas stood up and was applauded. When the movie started—in mind-popping 70mm and the best sound system in the city—we were blown away. As it did for nearly all kids, Star Wars felt unique, unlike anything before or since. I loved it. However, I was a little bit too old to really dive into the whole thing as deep as those who were eight or nine or younger.
Peter was more into it than I was. He saw The Empire Strikes Back first and told me I had to go see it. I stood in line, saw it, and liked it. But by the time Return of the Jedi came out in 1983, I was going to New York University, living in the East Village, dating, going to hear The Ramones and Gang of Four, and thought that the Ewoks were beyond stupid.
Star Wars was over.

Next: Star Wars Wasn’t Over…