What It Was Like Seeing Star Wars in 1977
I was at a tech conference once and was asked this question in a mock-serious-ha-ha sorta way:
So wait a minute. Did you like, see Star Wars in a theater when it first came out?
I’m almost 50 and I’m pretty used to this kind of ham-fisted 30-something tech industry “dude you’re old ha ha” kind of BS. This one was different though, because while the table of 30-somethings gave a bored golf clap, I couldn’t stop giggling. They had no idea!
Seeing Star Wars in the theater as a 9 year old kid was incredible. No: it was life altering. Just being asked this question lit me up and I couldn’t stop chattering about the experience. I think some of the people at the table actually listened to me for a minute or two!
It’s a really fun story. Join me?
A Few Days Ago, On Twitter…
I thought of this whole thing again the other day when my friend Brad tweeted thus:
Oh these kids! Brad and I are friends. In fact I’d say we’re good friends. I’m not going to call Brad out on this (even though I just did) because his opinions are his own blah blah blah.
Brad’s comment is many things, all rolled into one flatulent tweet: he’s a fan of movies and rather forthright (which I value). He doesn’t give himself over to saccarine, fawning nostalgia and he’s also a generation removed from the event that defined my childhood. But hey: can’t blame the guy for being born too late can you?
Now, I don’t need Brad to validate my childhood and my fond memories. Seriously: if he didn’t like the movie I’ll only hate him for a little while.
But: what if being there in 1977 might goose his millennial malaise just a smidge? Or yours? We all have it. It’s that droopy goopy nothing’s on and everything sucks feeling you get when you’ve finished binge-watching Amazing Show and you don’t want to go outside because it’s too far away…
Grab My Hand, Let’s Roll
We’re going to take a small ride into the past and you’re going to see life through my eyes as a 9 year old boy in Los Angeles, CA, in 1977.
You’ll need to have a quiet space for this. Take a second and find somewhere that you won’t be interrupted. It took me hours to write this post, you can give me another few minutes. YES YOU CAN COME ON!
Great. Now: shut your eyes and push the world out. Let the sounds slowly mute, creeping to the edge of aural awareness… we’re going back… back… to a place that is much different than our own yet recognizable… back… back… 40 years… back… 40… years…
Good Morning!
It’s a lovely late spring morning in June of 1977 and you just woke up. It’s 7:30 am and you can’t sleep because your big sister bought tickets last week to Star Wars! She drove down to LA’s newest, most modern theater: the Plitt Century City, the best theaters in LA outside of Mann Chinese in Hollywood. She waited in line for 45 minutes to buy the tickets and now you and her get to go! TO STAR WARS!
The movie came out 12 days ago and 4 of your friends have seen it and won’t stop TALKING ABOUT IT. They already have the album and your one friend (we’ll call him Bruce) has mastered drawing the logo on his PeeChee.
Your clothes are on (hang ten shirt with OP shorts), you brush your hair. You run to the kitchen and look at the clock on the wall: it’s 7:32. The movie is at 3! You call your sister but her line is busy and you just want her to come now because maybe we can trade the tickets to an earlier time?
It’s 7:52am and mom kicked you out of the house. Go get your energy out she insists. You get on your bike not sure where to go but decide to ride over to the jumps at Lucky Busters in the hills. No one will be up yet!
You ride the course … and ride the course again… and again. Up… down… over and crash. Up, down over the big jump and crash. Repeat 100 times then get up, dust yourself off and ride… up… down…
It’s 12:31pm and you’re starving. You wonder if your sister has called (maybe she got earlier tickets?) or if mom is looking for you so you ride home. No cars in the driveway, the back door is locked and you forgot your key. You hate crawling through the window by the garage but you’re starving and have no money so in you go.
No messages written on the pink pad by the phone so it looks like no one’s called. There are still 3 pieces of Wonderbread, some Jiffy and Smuckers so you make yourself a quick lunch and guzzle some minute maid.
Now what? You’re friends have left to summer camp and there’s nothing to do so you grab the green/yellow/orange shag carpet with your toes and stare out the window into the taupe/gray/blue summer sky… up there are star ships waging battle and some super bitchen swords called… night sabers? Light savers? You told Guillermo and Eric that you saw the movie twice already and they quizzed you and caught you in your lie and you said “NO WAY I SAW IT LIKE TWICE” but they knew you were lying and you were wondering to yourself “why am I lying” and you realized you just really really really wanted to see this movie!!!!!
You think about reading the last Fantastic 4 again, maybe playing with your legos. Strands of carpet are coming off between your toes and they look like weird little green pieces of spaghetti and you’re like “What the — ”
“YOU’RE DESTROYING THE CARPET!” your mom yells as she opens the door. The message is clear: go outside.
Honk Honk
You’re sitting outside on the curb waiting for your sister. You’ve been throwing the baseball against the neighbor’s concrete wall where you drew a strike box. Maybe you should play pitcher instead of 2nd? You’ve got a pretty good arm and the coach needs a pitcher.
After playing 5 games of imaginary baseball in your head (in which you threw a no-hitter twice) you get a bit tired and sit in the shade of the big Myrtle tree in front of your house. You wonder what time it is when you hear a sound… a rumbling of an old VW bug that’s all too familiar!
Your sister pulls into the driveway quickly and makes you jump by honking loudly even though she’s looking right at you. You’re up. You’re in the car.
WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN I LIKE CALLED YOU A MILLION ZILLION TIMES AND… AND…
“OK OK! I’m here! Keep your pants on! Why are you so jumpy we have lots of time!”
Lots Of Time
To steal from Dickens: Growing up in 1977 was a good time and it was a bad time (not quite best vs worst.. just go with it). I played baseball in the street with my friends, touch football in the parks and we improvised and banded together out of necessity. There were no play dates, no helicoptering parents, no admonishments to “use your words”. I’m not trying to romanticize this; I just want to paint a clear picture: kids were left to themselves a lot. We made shit up, it’s how we coped.
You left the house at 8 or 9am in the summer time and didn’t come back until dinner time. When our friends weren’t around (which happened a lot), we made it all up on our own. The bulk of my summer days was spent in my head sometimes, dreaming up all kinds of stories and interesting little adventures that I had to rescue myself from.
Coming home at night, I got to watch TV. The rules at my house were simple: TV was allowed after dinner until 9pm, on Saturdays until 10:30am. That was final. Sort of. Both of my parents worked so when I came home from school I could sneak in a few hours of Tom and Jerry, Loony Toons, Johnny Quest or whatever until 4:15.
We had 13 channels, that was it and only 6 of them were worth watching. The others either didn’t tune in or were weird local access channels. You had the network stations on 2, 4 and 7 and then the local stations on 5, 11, and 13. PBS was on 3 and it was OK if there was nothing else on because they would show nature shows and I liked that.
There was no cable (for us). There was no VHS (yet). There were soap operas, Masterpiece Theater, game shows, nature documentaries and very little else.
As a treat you would go to a matinee on Saturday afternoon because it was only $1.00 and if you had already seen the movie playing you would watch it again. If the theater stopped showing the movie that was it, you didn’t see that movie again unless a theater decided to show it again. If you liked a movie you better watch it as many times as you could because it will be a really long time before you can see it on TV.
And then sometimes you would be treated to something special: A really great movie. This was a major, gigantic, universally earth-shattering, life-altering event. I wish I could pivot the story with this point, but there’s just a bit more you need to understand so hang in there.
Disney Ruled
Most movies you would go see as a kid were kind of crappy. No they were gigantically crappy. Gone In 60 Seconds was fun as was Treasure Island, but mostly these were movies that fascinated younger kids than me. I remember really liking Escape From Witch Mountain and the Herbie movies but as I grew older I wanted something more! More adventure and yes! A little bit of suspense and scariness too. We just didn’t have that back then — it was all goofy Disney Dreck.
I loved movies and I still do. The problem with the 70s was pretty simple: there just weren’t any that I liked. We take quite a lot for granted today: Harry Potter, Hunger Games, Star Wars and the million+ amazing shows accessible right damn now. We want for nothing when it comes to visual entertainment and the lack of required effort to watch these videos makes them rather du jour. Solid, well-produced high quality movies are, right now, at your finger tips.
Assuming you grew up with this kind of entertainment right at your fingers, I wonder: how is it possible for you judge a movie from 40 years ago? To loop back to Brad’s comment: from today’s standards sure, Star Wars might have a few holes and yeah, the dialog is a bit wooden. Compared to what I was used to, however, it was epic.
I wonder what Brad would have thought as a 9 year old in 1977?
Movies were a chance to get out and go have wads of popcorn and a giant coke with your friends with a gigantic show playing right in front of you. If you were lucky you could take the bus to your local theater and your paper route funded you the $2.50 for the matinee, or your parents happily helped out to get you out of the house. If it was Saturday afternoon and there was a smog advisory (which happened a lot in LA): into the $1.00 matinee you go.
Or, as was my case, your sister worked in the movie industry and could pull some strings to get tickets to the biggest movie of the decade…
Dark, Crowded, OH MY GOD
We got there 2 hours before the show time and waited in line. My sister knew that the best seats would be taken if we were > 100 in the queue so she made sure we were there with our snacks and hats (it was hot in LA that day — 92 degrees in the shade, which I didn’t even notice).
There were kids in line around us who had already seen the movie — sometimes two or three times! I only knew this because they wouldn’t shut up about it, talking about somebody Solo and Dark Vader and “SHHHHHHHHHHHH” my sister would spit! She didn’t like spoilers, but I was enraptured.
They had seen it. They knew. I wanted to know too so I leaned in, staring…
“Don’t listen to them… we’ll see it soon enough” she urged.
The line’s starting to move. You lean over and look ahead… you have to pee because you’ve had too much soda but you’re so excited you’ve started jumping up and down… your sister musses your hair, tears in her eyes…
You can’t go pee because you have to get good seats. It’s so dark you can’t see so you just watch the person in front of you as you walk down… down… down… ouch! Your sister grabs your arm and pulls you into a row. There are people everywhere but she pulls your seat down and plants your butt in it. It’s soft, with a back that leans! You can even put your coke in the arm rest! This theater is really new.
You remember you still have to pee, but you take a minute to close your eyes tightly so they’ll adjust.
You look up. There’s the screen! IT’S RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU and it CURVES!?!?!?!?!? You’ve never seen a screen curve before!
“This is the best, most modern theater in LA. They have Sensaround” your sister says.
Ooooohhhhhh… something to tell your friends! You saw Star Wars in a rad, new theater with a curved screen and Sensaround! HA! Bruce will be so jealous!
Oh yeah… I gotta pee…
What… The F***
The crowd goes nuts when the previews start and we sit through 10 minutes of goofy comedies and whatever. The the lights go down and it gets quiet…
The 20th century spot plays… and then…
My heart races as the crowd freaks out and I can’t hear and OH MY GOD HOLY SH** WHAT —
WOW. The music was blaring and I could barely think and I’m what…? Supposed to read this? OK something something DEATH STAR (right, heard about that) and Luke Skywalker (heard about him too) and …
WHAT THE F*** IS THAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
My seat is rumbling and everyone is SCREAMING and it’s a HUGE gigantic … something just flying over your head and you plug your ears it’s ripping into you making your head shake and teeth clench and your hand hurts because your sister is laughing her ass off at you because you’re screaming louder than anyone and EVERYONE is screaming and you’re trying not to use bad words and WHAT IS HAPPENING this is biggest baddest starship ever and it’s SHOOTING LASERS how did they do that IS IT REAL????!!!!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!
From that point on I was another person in a galaxy far, far away. A hole appeared in my reality and I was pulled in and, as a good friend once told me:
Star Wars was my reality. There’s a hole in my life that day roughly 2 hours in length where I just wasn’t here… I was there
So well put. I was pulled right through the screen into space and beyond, my imagination absolutely lit on fire. Nothing in my life, to this very day, has ever been the same.
And it all started with that starship roaring in over my head. Good Lord… the art of that.
OK. That’s quite enough. You’re holding my hand a bit too tightly now. Let’s close our eyes and come back to the present…
Good Movie, Bad Movie, Doesn’t Matter.
If we were to wait long enough, I’m sure that every cinematic endeavor of the past would look ridiculous. It’s the same thing when you consider something like Ghiberti’s Gates of Paradise from the Baptistry in Florence. It’s basically a really big door with some over-the-top decoration. In the 15th century, however, artists marveled at this new idea: depicting three dimensional scenes on a two dimensional surface! This was some clever trick of the eye! Artists flocked to Florence to see these doors and many historians cite their creation as the very first work of The Renaissance.
Huck Finn is another example: on the face of it the book is a fun adventure about a boy and his friend rafting down a river until you realize that it was banned only a month after being released because of Twain’s relentless portrayal of racism in America. The heavy use of vernacular was something completely new, and the raw portrayal of white/black relationships was a bit too much for many white Americans to accept.
Without these contexts, the relevance and impact of these works of art can easily be overlooked. Sure, by today’s standards those doors and that novel are kind of ho hum. The primary reason for that? Those doors and that novel defined the art and writing that we take for granted today.
I would argue the same is true for Star Wars. It changed the way movies were made. We’ve just gotten used to this.
There was absolutely nothing like Star Wars when it came out. For me, at age 9, it was the perfect escape event. I’m struggling to come up with some relevant analogy for movies today; some thing that makes you jump up and scream, that alters your life profoundly and makes you believe in space travel, exotic alien planets and The Force.
I honestly can’t. Is this kind of thing even possible any more? We have all the information we’ll ever want or need right in our pockets! Is there anything that can jolt a generation like Star Wars did in 1977?
I sure hope so. As you can tell, this movie meant a lot to me and it still does (see the post above for reference). It came out 40 years ago and I can still remember every bit of it as if it were yesterday.
That, to me, is quite a good fucking movie.
