Day #16 - of the 30 day film challenge

[shadowkat]

Day #16 of 30 Day Film Challenge.

These prompts aren't getting any easier...

A Film that is Personal To You

Watch on YouTube

I saw the film in 1977.

We were the first kids on our block and among my friends to see it. We saw it opening weekend.

I was around 12 years old at the time. A skinny little girl with pig tails and long legs.

And we saw it the summer before we moved to Kansas City from West Chester, PA. It was to be our very last summer in Pennsylvania.

Prior to Star Wars - my idea of science fiction was horror films. There weren't any strong female leads or women I could identify with. The 1970s reboot of King Kong had come out the month before - starring Jeff Bridges and the obligatory damsel (which populated all films at the time), and I'd seen it with my next door neighbor's family, and best bud at the time. I clearly remember her father stating that King Kong would whomp Star Wars ass at the box office. And would become the classic. Her family loved horror movies. As did my grandfather - who used to take my grandmother to all those old 1950s sci-fi horror flicks back in the day.

I disliked horror movies. They gave me nightmares. And I hated sci-fi back then - despised it. I'd leave the house the moment Space 1999 came on, and avoided Star Trek, Doctor Who, and all the others. A little girl of 11 or 12, I wasn't fond of scary monsters. And for me? Sci-Fi = Horror, there was distinction between the two. Outer Limits, Twilight Zone, and the Afternoon sci-fi movie - were all without except horror films.

Then, along came Star Wars - and I fell in love. Star Wars was my first fandom. The damsel wasn't really damsel - she was snarky, and wise-cracking, and could fire a gun. I loved her. She reminded me of me. I could actually identify with the lead female character - with her pudgy cheeks, and brown hair.

The film had a mythology. There was world building. People with superpowers. Characters I could identify with. And, no monsters. Just a really cool villain - Darth Vader. And at that time - amazing special effects - special effects that blew me away. I'd never seen anything like it.

I remember my father pushing us to see the movie. He got it into his head that we needed to see it as quickly as possible - before it magically disappeared. He'd read about it in the New Yorker or the New York Times - and well, at that time, my father was a bit of a movie buff.

My parents were huge science fiction fans back then - they'd watched Star Trek and they also made time to see Space 1999. I remember driving all the way out to Exton, PA - about three hours to see the movie - but it was sold out. So we went the next day and saw it closer in.

We were among the first to see it. And since that time? I've seen it about twenty times. I wrote fanfic in my head about it. I bought the novelizations. We got the action figures for Christmas. We'd NEVER owned action figures before or since. The only action figures I've ever owned were from Star Wars. Our cat used to steal the Princess Leia action figure and dump her in his water dish.

This movie changed how I viewed science fiction. Because of Star Wars - I fell in love with the sci-fi genre, I fell in love with fantasy. I actually bought various books based on the series and asked for them for Christmas.

I know there are people who don't get it. There always are - folks who don't understand why we love what we love. Most of my friends don't - my best friend at the time, preferred King Kong. MD - never got the appeal. Although when Stars was re-released in theaters in 1999 or thereabouts...my friend CW saw it with me - because she adored Star Wars.

So, it was my first fandom - but I tended to keep it to myself for the most part. Oh sure, I met people here and there who loved it. A couple of friends I ran with in junior high. But for most people? It wasn't cool. It had no monsters. Or horror or dystopia. It was ...a positive sci-fi series. It wasn't Star Trek or Doctor Who. It was a space opera, an epic, that mixed Westerns (which my family adored), WWII movies, Science Fiction and Fantasy.
A true mashup of styles.

This is my comfort film, the film of my childhood, it makes me happy, and it gives me hope. My first love affair with movies and cinema. My first flirtation with fan-fiction and with fandom.

When I looked at this selection - the first film that popped into my head was Star Wars. I tried to think of another film, a more obscure, cool film, but no...the only film that came to mind was Star Wars for all the reasons outlined above.

Comments

[cjlasky7]

Leia has always been the coolest princess in movie history. She could have suffered Natalie Portman's fate, reduced to a clothes hanger, stunted by George Lucas's dialogue. Carrie Fisher made her real.

*****************************

Ghostbusters II (1987), dir. by Ivan Reitman

Of course this movie is personal to me--I was in it!

No, I wasn't palling around with Murray and Aykroyd; I was in the crowd shot at the end, when the Ghostbusters triumphantly emerged from the museum after beating the Carpathian.

I was working in the area (Manhattan's Bowling Green) at the time, and the movie's AD gathered some of the lunch crowd to cheer on the Ghostbusters at the old US Customs House (now the Museum of the American Indian). We were told to avoid a certain area (a CGI Statue of Liberty would be inserted later), and generally encouraged to be really, really enthusiastic.

To help put us in the mood, who should emerge from the doorway of the Customs House but Bill Murray himself, in full Ghostbusters gear, serenading the crowd as lounge singer Nick Springs:

"Star Wars
Nothing but Star Wars
I think they should bar wars..."

Properly motivated, we waited for Ivan Reitman to shout "Action!" and the chant of "Ghostbusters! Ghostbusters! Ghostbusters!" rang through the plaza. The quartet and Sigourney (and Rick Moranis!) acknowledged the cheers. And then it was over. And we went back to our lives.

I have often tried to find myself in the crowd scene. To date, I have not succeeded. But I know I was there. And it was (movie) magic.

https://youtu.be/u-wQnisqH0o

[shadowkat]

Also, they enhanced the crowd scene, so you'd never would have been seen. I think they digitially added people. (I saw a thing about how the film was made ages ago, and vaguely remember that.)

I loved the original Ghostbusters. It was fun. Over the top in places, but fun.

[cactuswatcher]

I saw Star Wars at the first showing at my theater, a matinee. I wasn't terribly surprised to see grad students I recognized in the theater before the show started. (Remember, Ohio State University was just across the street.) But it was surprising how big a percent of the totally-packed crowd they were... I spent dinner that night talking the ears off several of my closest friends telling them how good it was. Some of those folks had a difficult time getting a seat that weekend.

A film personal to me? Well, Zorba the Greek meant a lot to the date I took to see it, so it meant a lot to me, because of her.

[shadowkat]

I don't think I've ever seen Zorba the Greek.

Star Wars was incredibly innovative and groundbreaking at that time. It changed the cinema landscape, and the sci-fi genre, which prior to that was pretty much Doctor Who style characters fighting monsters in outer space. This was the first film that made the monsters human...beings who chose to become monsters.

I was told years later that Lucas meant the film to be an allegory on the Vietnam War, with the US in the role of the Empire. I found that to be somewhat interesting. I don't really see it though.

[petzipellepingo]

I'm going for West Side Story , where at age 13 I discovered musicals and the music of Leonard Bernstein. And clearly I haven't gotten over it since I run both the LJ and Dreamwidth appreciation sites.

[shadowkat]

I've never seen it on the big screen...which is a shame. I'm guessing it would be amazing. I saw it on television when I was a kid though and was blown away by it.
The dance numbers alone..

[petzipellepingo]

The last time I saw it on the big screen was 2011 when it was re-released for the 50th anniversary.

[mefisto]

Star Wars was the first time I got called "sir". I was 23, and in the theater to take a break from studying. Kid in front of me turned around and asked me "What time is it sir?".

[atpo_onm]

[shadowkat]

Cool, thanks for sharing.

[atpo_onm]

This film represented a big turning point for me as a film lover, because before I saw it, I... wasn't. Oh, I enjoyed movies, but just casually, like many people do-- whatever the hit film of the moment was. I did particularly like science fiction films, but most of the ones I saw were kind of boilerplate stuff and not terribly involving.

I had started watching this new show on PBS called "At The Movies", with these two Chicago newspaper reviewers-- Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. The more analytical way they talked about movies was new to me... nothing like the marketing hype driven reviews I was used to reading / seeing.

And then on one show, they reviewed this film called The Road Warrior, and spoke highly of it, that it was an exceptional and atypical action movie. I was never all that big on action movies, they mostly seemed silly and over-the-top to me. But, based on this pairs recommendations, I decided to check it out.

Wow. It changed the way I looked at movies. I mean-- an action movie that had something to say, and wasn't just car crashes and explosions and various forms of pointless mayhem? A burned out, shell of a man... who becomes a kind of Christ figure as he emerges from a profoundly self-involved, cynical approach to what's left of his earthly existence?

It was a progenitor of great improvement in actions films to follow it, and is still on my best of all time list, all these years later.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imy1Cs1_qwc

If it's all the same to you... I'll drive that tanker.

Does he ever. And then that great twist of an ending.

An unexpected masterpiece-- the best kind.

[nondenomifan]

You're very lucky. I had to watch my sister and her friends go out to see it while I was stuck at home crying my eyes out with Mom, getting yelled at by Dad to "get over it, or (I'll) never see it." I think Mom ended up taking a few friends of mine and me to see it, or I went to see it with a friend when her mom took her to see it--I can't remember which--I just know I got to see it that year, but much later than my brother and sister did.

Would you believe me if I told you that I was already making up scenarios after seeing it where Han and Leia would eventually be the ones in a relationship, and the one I ultimately settled on (well before the 1983 release of Empire and while I was still reading Splinter of the Mind's Eye several times) Luke and Leia being brother and sister. I hadn't fleshed the how or when, but I'd definitely decided that was the easiest way to get Luke out of the way so Han could have Leia all to himself! :D

Horror gives me nightmares, too. The first Ghostbusters movie gave me nightmares because my grandma went to see it with us, and that night the librarian was my grandmother who turned into a monster. And, my grandmother was a gentle soul who loved me more than life itself.

[shadowkat]

Yeah, Hamil and Fisher had a strong brother/sister vibe going. And...the chemistry between Fisher and Ford was palpable - in part because the actors were having an on-set affair during Star Wars. And they'd had a rocky break-up which only served to increase the chemistry after it. (I read Fisher's The Princess Diaries - which is how I know this.)