My family didn't have much money when I was a kid, and as a result we didn't do a lot of the things that most families did. We never went anywhere on vacation (in fact, I don't recall my father ever taking a week off), I wore a lot of hand-me-down clothing from my three older brothers, and so forth. We lived about 23 miles from the nearest real town, and that, combined with our lack of spare cash, meant that going to the movies certainly wasn't on the list of family activities.
However, time went on, and as I got older, went into high school and got a part time job, the combination of a little extra money and the guaranteed ride into town on the school bus meant that a slightly larger world opened up to me. However, not having had access to a lot of the finer things in life as a child left me a little cautious, if not nervous, about taking advantage of some of the new options available to me.
When I was 15, I decided that I would take the proverbial bull by the horns and go to a movie, the very first movie that I would ever see on a big screen. We did have a battered old TV at home, and our makeshift antenna allowed us to get two TV stations, so I had seen movies, albeit marred by poor reception and static, but never at the theatre. As luck would have it, that summer there was a lot of buzz about this new science fiction film that was being released - unhampered by worries of spoilers I had already purchased the novelization and was eager to see the real thing.
Because it was the summer, the option of using the school bus to cover that 23 mile gap wasn't available, but even at the age of fifteen I was a fairly accomplished hitchhiker. (I figured out once that I hitchhiked something over 20,000 miles altogether before I gave it up, including a trip from Ontario to British Columbia.) So I hitched into town, had a banquet burger at Rombo's, and made my way to the theatre. Paid my money (I have no memory of what the movie cost) but didn't get popcorn, you have to go into these things one step at a time. Found a seat, and waited.
The lights went down...
...and another new world opened up, as a desperate little spacecraft fled across the screen in a hail of laser bolts, followed by a gigantic pursuer - what seemed like miles of its underside ponderously filling the view.
It is impossible to describe what it was like to see Star Wars that very first time. I have no idea what other people thought of it, people who had the experience cushioned by years of moviegoing - for me, it was as if the entire movie had been made expressly for my 15-year old science-fiction fan wishes, like some benevolent genie had chosen that moment to fulfill a need that I didn't even know existed. It was an epiphany of teenage experience, and I left that theatre feeling like a different person.
In the thirty years since, a lot has changed: my view of the world is a little less limited, and to a certain extent I've become jaded by repeated exposure to the media's visions of the future. My honest opinion is that as George Lucas has made his way through the series, each movie has been a little worse than the one before.
I stand in awe of the breadth of the vision behind the entire story, but it's not a perfect vision - much has been written about the flaws in the various Star Wars movies that I won't bother repeating here. Star Wars is now an entire industry of action figures, toys, movies, games, TV shows, comics, novels and web sites, far removed from the beginnings of the phenomenon.
And all that means nothing to that memory from thirty years ago. Nothing will ever change the magic of that first viewing in the dark of the Parkview Cinema, that first view of a galaxy far, far away. Thank you, Mr. Lucas - nothing else has ever been better.
- Sid
To my mild pleasure, this month I made my way into print for the first time. A locally published magazine of children's fiction saw fit to accept a submission from me, and I received my two author's copies in the mail on Friday. The magazine is Crow Toes Quarterly, and although only two issues in, is making a strong attempt to position itself as a source of unconventional fiction for children.
