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TauntaunScout
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 Posted: Sun Oct 07, 2018 6:44 pm Post subject: |
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| OuttaWindu wrote: |
Other funny fact, I know at least one way how I am "only" two degrees of separation from the movies. (All people are supposedly connected to eachother by a maximum of 6 or 7 degrees of separation) |
I bumped into Steven Spielberg in the Star Tours gift shop and got his autograph. Does that count? |
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Whill
Dark Lord of the Jedi (Owner/Admin)
Joined: 14 Apr 2008
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Location: Columbus, Ohio, USA, Earth, The Solar System, The Milky Way Galaxy
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| Posted: Sun Oct 07, 2018 7:59 pm Post subject: |
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| TauntaunScout wrote: | | OuttaWindu wrote: | | Other funny fact, I know at least one way how I am "only" two degrees of separation from the movies. (All people are supposedly connected to eachother by a maximum of 6 or 7 degrees of separation) |
I bumped into Steven Spielberg in the Star Tours gift shop and got his autograph. Does that count? |
Cool. How many degrees is Indiana Jones away from Star Wars?
I met and chatted with Peter Mayhew one-on-one for about 10 minutes. It took everything I had to not gush like a school girl. He signed a picture of Han and Chewie that is hanging up in my game room.
I also met and chatted with Timothy Zahn one-on-one for about 10 minutes. I was a lot less excited for that, but he was very nice. I saw Sam Witwer (voice of Mauul) but didn't talk to him. I saw Anthony Daniels, Hayden Christiansen, Rick McCallum and Billy Dee Williams in person at Celebration II but didn't get to talk to any of them. Anthony Daniels came about 10 feet away from me then. I also saw Anthony Daniels at Star Wars in Concert but he was far away that time. I met and talked to the makers of Fanboys at a special premiere event for that movie.
But nothing beats meeting Chewbacca!
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Whill
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Location: Columbus, Ohio, USA, Earth, The Solar System, The Milky Way Galaxy
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| Posted: Sun Mar 29, 2020 5:55 pm Post subject: How did you get into Star Wars? |
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| Whill wrote: | I am a child of the early 70s, born to a father who loved watching movies. Action, adventure, historical, horror, comedy - probably about anything except straight-out "chick flicks". In the late 70s, we still didn't have home video or even cable TV. Besides whatever movies that were broadcast on the three TV channels we had, my dad went to the theater whenever he could. He had no qualms about going to movies by himself and did so. He also had no qualms about going to the theater for half a movie until he had to go to work, and then going back to the theater with his ticket stub another day and talking the manager into letting him back into the same movie without paying for a second ticket, to finish watching it where he had left off. But on occasion he would take the family to the theater for family-suitable films. Those were always special occasions to me.
In 1977, my dad, brother and I all wanted to see Star Wars (what A New Hope was known as in those days). My mom had no interest in it because it has "space" in it (She is biased against sci-fi after going on a bad date with a guy to see 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968). When Star Wars came to our local theater, the three of us guys went to see it. The theater wasn't quite packed to capacity, but it was mostly full.
We were all completely enthralled with the opening sequence, and I remember hearing whoas, oohs and ahs from the surrounding audience showing how much we were all just blown away. When the droids walked through the blaster shoot-out unscathed, the entire audience erupted into laughter like it was the funniest thing we had ever seen. Then all sound from the audience was suddenly extinguished as Darth Vader came aboard the Rebel vessel. At that moment, I became completely oblivious to my dad, brother and the surrounding audience. The theater faded away and I was magically transported to this far away time and galaxy...
...As Obi-Wan's voice was heard guiding Luke in the final battle, I felt like I was the ghost floating in Luke's X-Wing cockpit... No! Luke's friend from back home is blown up! Death Star in range in 30 seconds. Use the Force, Luke. So many Rebels had been shot down, and Red Leader couldn't make the shot with the targeting computer, but I know Luke can if he can only get to the thermal exhaust port in time before Vader gets him. Oh no! Vader blasts Artoo! Luke is totally alone. The Death Star has cleared the planet! Vader has a target lock! What?! Vader's starboard wingman is blasted! Han came back! Yahoo!! Vader's other wingman veers out of control into Vader which causes him to spin out of the trench! You're all clear, kid! Now let's blow this thing and go home! Luke lets the torpedoes go and releases his held breath. They find their mark. Get out of there!! Death Star goes BOOOOM!!!! Great shot, kid! That was one in a million! The Force will be with you, always. Vader gains control and flies away. Artoo gets fixed, and the Rebels have a celebration ceremony to give Luke and Han awards...
As the Rebels begin to applause, suddenly I am transported back to the theater as my dad, brother and the entire audience is also standing up and applauding with the Rebels... The standing ovation continued into the end credits, and then we walked out of the theater and back to the car, humming the score. On the way home we all said we liked it but were mostly quiet, slowly shaking off the aftershock daze of the most unique and fantastic experience.
When we got home, my brother and I started to be kids again, and commenced running around the house as if we were Han and Luke blasting stormtroopers back on the Death Star. I barely heard my mom complain that it was past our bedtime, and my dad said, "Honey, we're going to have to just let them run around for a while. We just had the greatest adventure of our lives."
THAT is how I originally got into Star Wars! I've become something of a movie fanatic myself, and I have never had a cinematic experience anything like seeing the original Star Wars. Best climax and best overall film of all time! Still to this day, I can't even listen the end of "The Battle of Yavin" on the musical soundtrack without tearing up because it always takes me back the first magical time I saw Star Wars in the theater as a child.
We had some action figures, and some other Star Wars items/media. I remember live-action cops-and-robbers-type role playing Star Wars with my friends in the neighborhood in which we created our own Star Wars stories that were decidedly set in an alternate reality of the film(s). My dad took my brother and me to see the two sequel films in the theater in 80 and 83 (also only seeing them once each). After seeing RotJ, my D&D group and I created a makeshift Star Wars RPG based on the Basic D&D game system which we played several times over the summer, but eventually our RPG interests moved back to D&D and on to other games. The Droids and Ewoks cartoons (and the Ewok TV movies) were "below me" so didn't interest me because by junior high I had stopped watching cartoons/kid shows and playing with toys (but I was still into comic books and RPGs).
And in junior high, I got into Star Trek TOS that I began watching in syndication, and soon got into the ST films of the day and books, so Star Trek actually became my first multi-media franchise I truly geeked out over. Then by 87, I had a high school job and bought my own VCR and little TV so I could own my own copies of the Star Trek films and favorite TOS episodes.
My best friend had the Star Wars trilogy on VHS and brought them over one day the summer of 87. We "trilogized" (watched all three SW films back-to-back in one sitting), and my childhood love of Star Wars was rekindled. I saved up and bought my own copies of the three Star Wars films (SW and Star Trek tapes retailed upwards of $100 each in those days, but I got them wholesale through work.) My love of Star Wars has remained active and only grown ever since. |
Anyone else? How did you get into the Star Wars franchise?
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Scots Dragon
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| Posted: Sun Mar 29, 2020 7:06 pm Post subject: |
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| I caught an airing of the original A New Hope on one of the Sky Movie channels back in 1996 when I was about eight, and loved it. I got the VHS boxed set of the Special Edition for my birthday the following year. |
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ThrorII
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| Posted: Mon Mar 30, 2020 12:36 am Post subject: |
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I was whisked away to a Galaxy Far, Far, Away via a movie theater in 1977 at the tender age of 8. I never looked back.
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Yora
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Joined: 29 Jun 2018
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Location: Germany
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| Posted: Sun Aug 23, 2020 12:12 pm Post subject: |
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This is my favorite anecdote from my my mostly unremarkable life:
My family moved to a new city when I was 10, and a few months later I went to visit a friend back from school in Hamburg for a weekend. My dad was still commuting to the university in Hamburg by train, and so he took me with him on Friday and dropped me off at the train station where my friend and his mother would pick me up to drive to his house.
But before we walked back to their car, we did a short detour to the department store next to the train station because my friend wanted to get a new toy. On the way to his house, he was looking at the box, which I think had a stormtrooper helmet on it, and I was curious what it was.
And his reaction was basically "Dude, you don't know Star Wars?"
When we got to his house, we basically went straight to his room to show me all his boxes with Star Wars toys, which we somehow never got out the times we went to his home after school. There was a dude with a cool blue cape. And a big brown yeti with a crossbow. And I was like "What's that robot elephant?" "What's with the face and hands on this black square?"
I had been vaguely aware that Star Wars existed because I've walked past the shelves at toy stores and I think I saw the episode where Luke Skywalker was on the Muppet Show. But I never knew what it really was.
And of course, later he asked his mother "can we watch Star Wars on video later?!" Which we could.
I would be sleeping on a couch in his dad's office, so we were told to watch it there on a small second TV they had (probably 12 inch or something like that). When you lie close enough on the floor, even that is enough to make a Star Destroyer coming into the screen the most awesome thing ever. Because it is.
We watched the thing, it was awesome. After that we went straight to watch The Empire Strikes Back. I don't remember if we asked if we could.
The next morning we watched Return of the Jedi and spend the rest of the weekend playing with Star Wars toys. Best weekend ever!
Later that year I started high school and had a new best friend who also was a big star wars fan, and he had X-Wing on his dad's computer, which we played after school for ages. And only a year later the Special Edition was released and I had my whole family go watch it. My younger brother got into it just as much as I did and by then we had a video player at home and got the movies on video as well. We're still both huge fans and even our mother really quite like the movies. (But only because she is my mother do I forgive her for saying Episode 1 is her favorite.)
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DougRed4
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| Posted: Mon Jan 11, 2021 7:29 pm Post subject: |
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| Whill wrote: | | But nothing beats meeting Chewbacca! |
I might be able to top that (below). 
I also have met Peter Mayhew, and Jake Lloyd, and Kenny Baker. And Ray Park once ran right by us (almost knocking over my friend's small son).
But (to me, at least) beating even the meeting of Chewbacca was getting to hang out with Jeremy Bulloch. After seeing him I think three times in the span of two years (including hanging out and having drinks with him once), he actually recognized me and called me by my first name! It was pretty cool to be able to say "Boba Fett knows my name!", even though I'm sure soon after he would have had no idea who I was. 
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Whill
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| Posted: Tue Jan 12, 2021 12:03 am Post subject: |
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Well to clarify, I meant none of my (few) other 'fanboy encounters' compares to talking to Peter Mayhew one-on-one. I wasn't trying to compare mine with other fans.
Very cool that you've gotten to hang out with Jeremy Bulloch (and he remembered your name). From interviews I've seen, he seems like a funny man and all-around nice guy.
RIP
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DougRed4
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| Posted: Wed Jan 13, 2021 5:25 pm Post subject: |
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I was just having a little fun, Whill.
Most of my 'fanboy encounters' were a direct result of my involvement with the game company Decipher, so I was really blessed and fortunate to be able to attend a number of shows and meet some of the cast.
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MrNexx
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| Posted: Fri Nov 12, 2021 4:23 pm Post subject: |
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Talked with the dad of my kids' friends on Monday1. He got into Star Wars "Watching the water"... farm kid, he and his cousin had the job of sitting and making sure the irrigation system didn't foul up. But that gave them hours to sit and play Star Wars.
1 Running into a family whose kids are the exact same age and gender as your kids is awesome.
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Whill
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Whill
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DougRed4
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| Posted: Tue Dec 19, 2023 5:23 pm Post subject: |
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And we waited in line for it, often! (at least we did)
And the line was uphill the whole way!
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Whill
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| Posted: Tue Dec 19, 2023 8:14 pm Post subject: |
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I'm pretty sure there was no long line, if any, when we went. I didn't see the movie on opening day. Back then, my town had a one-screen theater downtown and a drive-in a little out of town. New movies didn't come to my town until months after they came out. I'm sure it was already a big smash success before I got a chance to see it. I probably saw a lot of TV commercials for it. I probably did see it the first week it came my town.
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DougRed4
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| Posted: Mon Jan 01, 2024 3:52 pm Post subject: |
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I didn't see it when it first came out either. It came out in late May and I first heard about it in August. My first time was with the family at a drive-in.
But by the end of '77 and into '78, it became a big deal to see it at the really nice theater in downtown Seattle (the Cinema 150). Our parents would drop us off and the line was continually many blocks long. IIRC, we would stand in line for multiple showings. The line literally was many, many blocks long and went a long way down one street and then took a 90 degree turn to go multiple blocks in another direction. Literally thousands of people standing in line for many hours, and of course this was long before there were electronics of any kind to entertain us for those hours of waiting.
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