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The power of smell is an extraordinary thing. Sometimes the memory of fragrances and scents once tasted are our most powerful, our most intense.

One fragrance I will never forget, because it bore upon it such a momentous and complex mixture of emotions and meanings. Although I inhaled this fragrance many times, and my memories are peppered over with specific remembrances of it, one particular moment is more powerfully associated with it than any other.

I was six. We were living in a quiet, tree-lined neighborhood in a suburban valley town near the San Francisco Bay Area. Summers were hot, winters mild. As my mother drove me home from school, she casually let slip that a little surprise awaited me, somewhere in my parents’ bedroom.

Racing inside, I lighted upon a neat little pile of perhaps six pristine, gorgeous Star Wars action figure packages, laid out in a little pile on my parents’ tidy, well-made bed. I can still remember the puzzlement mixed with the utter delight as I groped for the packages. It was not my birthday. I had not performed any particularly saintly act recently of which I was aware. Why the surprising act of generosity? I would ask my mom years later, and she could only shrug; she can’t remember.

Cracking the plastic shell off the cardboard backing: that waft of fresh plastic, sealed inside at the factory, like so much perfume for 3.5-inch sized people. I drank that smell in, sweet and fresh — it seemed to be the smell of wondrous imagination, of family, of comfort, of moving generosity. That fragrance seemed to punctuate, personify the excitement and the pleasure of these wondrous gifts, to tantalize with the promise of all the adventures to come.

Thereafter, drinking in the fresh smell would become an integral part of the ritual of a new toy for me, an important part of the thrill of its newness. But it was that one occasion, that sleepy day and the surprise which awaited me at home, with which I most associate the fragrance.

Of course, plastic fumes are probably toxic, and the fragrance was probably equal parts plastic outgassing and chemical paints, but it’s hard for me to look at it negatively, not through the prism of my scent memories.

Yesterday I updated my little “current reading” list on my pathetic and in-desperate-need-of-improvement sidebar. Here’s a micro-blurb on each of those three and why they’re there:

“Hero in the Shadows” — I did a post a couple of weeks back about how David Gemmell rescued the fantasy genre for me. At the time, I’d just begun reading this particular entry in the non-series of Drenai tales, and having finished it quite quickly, I can wholeheartedly recommend it. As ever. Waylander the Slayer, a supernaturally gifted assassin, who found his way at least partway back to the path of good after years as a killer, makes his third appearance in this one. While all Gemmell books are designed to be read independently, “Hero” is the third in a series of books about Waylander. Reading the other two (”Waylander” and “In the Realm of the Wolf”, the latter published in the UK as “Waylander II”) will increase your enjoyment of this novel immeasurably, though it’s not a requirement. In all of Gemmell’s books, good people often do bad things, sometimes for good reasons; and bad people wind up doing good things, for reasons they sometimes cannot fathom. Gemmell writes in gray areas, exploring heroism and the costs of fighting evil in thought-provoking and sometimes disturbing ways.

There is a character in “Hero” — a ditchdigger whose sole ambition in life is to have enough coin to gorge on food, liquor, and whores — who finds himself a “chosen one”, destined to lead a band of ancient warriors against a foe, and in the process become a hero, while a disciplined, deeply religious warrior monk, who has spent his entire life in training to combat this very evil, finds himself marginalized, as a simple ditchdigger fulfills a role he himself spent his entire life training to face. Gemmell uses these kinds of surprise upsets and turns of role as a way to explore the complexity and confusion of good versus evil, and the roles individuals find themselves playing in the conflict.

“Droidmaker” — having just bought this yesterday, I am already completely engrossed. This book, by a former employee and member of Lucasfilm’s crack team of computer engineers, deftly segues from a biography of Seventies film rebels George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola (and friends) into a chronicle of the thinktank of computer pioneers who would develop revolutionary technologies such as Non-Linear Editing systems, and initiate the spark that would eventually become Pixar, THX, even Adobe. “Droidmaker” in a sense represents the ideal book to me, the ideal subject matter, and the ideal biographical approach, meshing personal biography with technical history, and company lore.

It also represents a period in film and computer history which is of huge interest to me. For whatever reason (don’t laugh), the sagas of film and computers in the late Seventies and early Eighties hold a great deal of romanticism for me. I could watch the documentaries on the Tron Special Edition DVD over and over, re-read Alan Arnold’s journal of the making of Empire Strikes Back over and over; the early years of Atari are hugely fascinating. One of my very favorite books ever is “Industrial Light and Magic: the Art of Special Effects”, which chronicles the first ten years of ILM. “Droidmaker” fits perfectly into this space, filling in dots and fleshing out shadowy areas, and it covers so much territory so seamlessly that the mind boggles.

Check out this excerpt from the dust jacket flap to see what I mean:

Droidmaker is an insider’s chronicle of Lucas’ uneasy role between business, technology and entertainment—with parts played by Francis Ford Coppola, Walt Disney, The Grateful Dead, Akira Kurosawa, Steven Spielberg, Michael Crichton, Stanley Kubrick, Ross Perot, Robert Moog, Steve Jobs, The Doors, Steven Soderbergh and many others. Their stories woven into a tapestry of backdrops: USC, Atari, Sun Microsystems, CBS, America Online, Amadeus, the Univeristy of Utah, Tron, Xerox, Twilight Zone, Pixar, Jurassic Park, and, of course, Skywalker Ranch.

If this sounds hopelessly overambitious, fuzzy in its direction, be assured that it is very focused and clear. But the involvement of individuals in Lucasfilm’s computer research, and then the scope of influence this computer research then brought to bear on the entertainment industry, is extraordinarily broad.

Magnificent stuff.

“The Britons” — I confess to being something of a history fan, especially of medieval and ancient European history. I slogged through the 1200 pages of “Europe: A History” without complaint. “Britons”, part of a series about European peoples, is about that fuzziest and elusive of all ethnic groups, the Briton, who may or may not be Celtic, may or may not be transplanted European, did not have a written language as such … in other words, mysterious and tantalizing. Loosely, Britons are the people who were living in England, Wales, and parts of Scotland when the Romans arrived. Sort of. Kinda. They were a network of tribes who shared a common language and customs. We think. Sorta. Modern Welsh is one the modern descendants of their language. Anyway, we know very little about them, and this slim and very direct book looks at the most contemporary archaeological and historical evidence to shed as much light on them as possible. And it does a damn good job of it. It then goes on to discuss what survived throughout subsequent millennia of these ethnic “Britons”, when the Isles were repeatedly conquered by Anglo-Saxons, Danes, Normans. It also discusses the historical/mythological figure of Arthur, most famous Briton of all.

And it begins with the following quote:

“I am Arthur, King of the Britons.”
“King of the who?”

Any book which begins with a quote from Monty Python and the Holy Grail has got to be good.

So. Three current/recent books. Good stuff to be had by all.

As David Markland pointed out to me, and which is now all over the web, the much-anticipated original theatrical editions of the Star Wars trilogy to be released in September (in two-disc editions with the 2004 versions on disc one and the original editions on disc two), should be anything but anticipated.

The grim details can be read here.

This also makes my very early post about fan editions (read it here) all the more poignant, even ironic, for me.

I still maintain the statement in my recent post that being a Star Wars fan has become a political thing, making something which once was pure entertainment and imagination now complicated and partisan (love the prequels/hate the prequels, love Lucas/hate Lucas, etc). The dismissive and unsympathetic treatment we fans now almost daily get at the hands of Lucasfilm only makes the politics more intense, more upsetting.

Lucas has complained in recent years (sorry, can’t provide a citation offhand) that he feels he’s become the very disembodied corporate tyrant he once rebelled so passionately against.

George, I couldn’t agree with you more.

It’s been two days now since the rumor-then-official-statement debuted that Lucasfilm will be releasing the original Star Wars trilogy in an original theatrical version on DVD in September (read the official, brief statement here).

I’ve read a variety of responses to this. There’s a kind of deflation, though, that I see in a lot of places, a kind of sense of anti-climax. A kind of feeling of “okay, it’s happened, at last. We got what we wanted. Right? Didn’t we?”.

I had some conversations with fellow-fan friends who loathe the altered versions, and all they expressed was cynicism and resentment that Lucasfilm was finally doing what they had originally been resentful they hadn’t done. Honestly, at this point, Lucasfilm has alienated these people enough that there’s nothing they can do to make them happy.

This led me to wonder what my own thoughts really were on this whole situation. I found the cynicism of my friends repellant, annoying, wasteful, at the same time that I couldn’t help but sympathize with the idea that Lucas’s whole empire has grown into something essentially mercenary and unpleasant. Where do I stand? Am I delighted, or am I jaded?

People, let’s be honest for a moment here. Although we like to think we do, we don’t own Star Wars. It’s owned by a corporation, a corporation called Lucasfilm, a division of Lucas Digital, Ltd. And while Lucas Digital may be a privately-owned corporation, not subject to the same level of manipulations that a publicly-owned company with a large board of directors is, it’s still a big corporation with mid-level management, with lots of people staring at spreadsheets, and thinking of their holdings as commodities, not as art. At the end of the day the Star Wars trilogy is a commodity that the Lucas companies are compelled to use to make money, like all corporations are supposed to do.

Javier Grillo-Marxuach, who’s on my blogroll (and should be on yours), wrote a piece about the news here. (Well, sort of; read it and you’ll see). His most insightful comment was this:

seriously, they are now selling “han shot first” at the official star wars shop: which is like having pol-pot selling “give peace a chance” buttons. it’s the classic corporate attitude of packaging rebellion and selling it right back to the same people who invented it. the orgy of double-speak, double-thought and double-dipping makes these guys the halliburton of sci-fi (whereas the folks who ran star trek into the ground are merely the ike turners of sci-fi - eventually many of us just got fed up, kicked the crud out of them in a limo and crossed the highway to hide out at the doctor who ramada).

“Han Shoots First” tee-shirts at the store? Jesus, that is taking things a bit far. And it’s true that, after the time I’ve spent at the forums of originaltrilogy.com, and the genuine passion for Star Wars that those guys who hand-build the special edition-free DVDs share, Lucasfilm’s version just feels so … mercenary. More like Boba Fett than Han Solo. It really does feel that Lucasfilm, seeing how much people were digging these homemade pieces of nostalgia fostered by a rebellious group who didn’t like digital stormtroopers, got out those trucks like in Soylent Green, scooped up the rebels, and drove them off to the Soylent manufacturing facility to end up as officially released DVDs with a barcode on their butts.

And yet, while originaltrilogy.com and elsewhere really do have this wonderful community of people, originaltrilogy.com is also the place where you go to sign this petition pressuring Lucas to release the theatrical versions of the trilogy on DVD. Which he’s now done.

Isn’t that what we’ve all been pressuring Lucas to do anyway? Is he not doing what we’ve asked? In what way does this make him evil? Is it hard to feel glee and happiness now, because this should have happened in the first place, two years ago, when he released the first DVD set that featured versions of the films even more altered than the 1997 versions? Is there the sense that our pockets are being stripped bare?

There’s also a certain wait-and-see from people: the 2004 releases were met with dismay when it was discovered that the sound mix had been inexplicably altered, as well as other technical issues that Lucasfilm maintained were intentional artistic decisions. Most glaring of these “artistic decisions” was flipping the rear channels on the score during the Death Star run finale of the first movie, which many found extremely unnatural and distracting. Is that the kind of mix we can expect to get with these new releases in September? We just don’t know.

I realize that at this point in time, and after all we’ve been through with our relationship with Lucasfilm, that we can never again enjoy Star Wars with the same pure sense of pleasure and idealism that we did in 1980, or 1977, or even during those lean years when we only had the West End Games role-playing books to keep us company. There’s been lots of water under the bridge. Star Wars is no longer just this film to waken our imaginations; it’s become an empire, guarded by a large corporation, and kept alive by an enormous body of fans, some of whom have clouded up the pure enjoyment of the movies just as much as the company has.

It’s all become so big, so much a “lifestyle”. People camping on sidewalks, people arguing on internet forums, billions of dollars in merchandise, this whole outsized “expanded universe” nonsense. And contention, disagreement, disappointment, confusion, and complication laced through it all. My idea of Star Wars is not necessarily her idea of Star Wars anymore, which in turn is not necessarily his idea. And each is ready to slam the others’ idea as “wrong”, put their nose in the air, feel that he or she is the “superior one”, the “purist”.

When I was a kid, Star Wars meant just one thing to me: a fabulous universe to explore that fired my imagination like nothing before or sense. I was overwhelmed with all the possibilities for adventure. I wore out action figures exploring worlds only hinted at onscreen.

And as I was writing that last paragraph something dawned on me: it was better then because Star Wars wasn’t political. When I heard the cynicism in my friends’ voices, when I saw the mixed reaction online, I realized that that was exactly what made me feel so uncomfortable, so sad: Star Wars has become a political thing.

Guess what? Come September, I’m going to go out and buy the new releases, and I’m going to bring them home and watch these films for one thing only: to fire my imagination.

That’s what Star Wars used to be about. I’m determined to make that all it’s about once again. The politics of it be damned.

Technorati Tags: star wars, original trilogy, dvd

I was browsing the Star Wars page at the IMDb and was surprised to discover that only George Lucas is credited as the writer of the film. He’s the only official writer, but the IMDb is supposed to be about more than official credits.

Now, it’s an open secret that Lucas’ friends, Willard Huyck & Gloria Katz, punched up the dialogue for the revised fourth draft of Star Wars, and in the process lent the movie some of its famous banter, particularly that between Han Solo and Princess Leia.

Remember the following exchange?

LEIA
Listen, I don’t know who you are, or where you came from, but from now on you do as I tell you.

HAN
Listen, your holiness … let’s get something straight! I take orders from one person … me.

LEIA
It’s a wonder you’re still alive.

Those three lines were written (or rather, rewritten) by husband-and-wife team Huyck & Katz (sounds like a 1930s comic strip). Much of the wisecracking in the script which has earned comparisons with Howard Hawks and his ilk is directly attributable to Huyck & Katz, and I think the movie would be the lesser without their contribution.

Yet it’s rarely discussed or commented on, which I find a shame. By WGA (Writer’s Guild of America, the screenwriter’s union) rules, you have to rewrite at least 50-percent of a screenplay in order to earn film credit. It is not at all uncommon for many more writers to have their fingerprints on a produced script than those which appear in the credits. Still, given Star Wars‘ immense legacy and enduring popularity, I would have expected more references to these contributions, which are, to my eyes, extremely valuable.

Lucas has often stated that he does not think he’s a good writer, that the process does not come easily to him. He is, I think, a magnificent plotter, and even the largely-disappointing prequel trilogy is, if nothing else, deeply-layered in its plotting and thematic development, even if much of that is lost onscreen. But, to be blunt, he’s not a magician at conjuring fabulous dialogue. So it was with tremendous foresight, I think, that he called on his USC friends to do what essentially amounted to a production rewrite, giving zip to a number of scenes that are quoted every day by a bazillion Star Wars fans.

Though not credited for their work on Star Wars, Huyck & Katz do appear in the credits on American Graffiti, sharing them with their director. Things kind of go down hill after that. They wrote what is generally considered the worst Indiana Jones film (Temple of Doom), the dreadful Radioland Murders, and reached their creative nadir with the execrable Howard the Duck (which Huyck also directed), often cited as one of the worst movies ever made.

But it’s not these blemishes for which I happen to remember them. It’s for those little moments of zip in Star Wars, those little moments of banter and repartee, moments so glaringly absent from the prequel trilogy. And at those moments, I always give a little nod to the Huyck-Katz writing duo. Credit where credit’s due, IMDb be damned.

Technorati Tags: Star Wars, movies, films, screenwriting, Willard Huyck, Gloria Katz, George Lucas

Given my age, it’s little surprise that Star Wars is beyond a movie (or trilogy of movies) to me, but something that’s an inextricable part of my existence. I grew up with it all around me, I expected it all around me, I needed it all around me.

And like so many others who grew up with Star Wars, I’m so intimately familiar with the original versions of the movie that I have a hard time watching the ever-changing Special Editions, the latest iteration of which can be seen in the officially released DVD boxed set. Sure, the films are good enough that I can look past the changes and still have a great time, and man is the transfer good on my HD set, but I would much rather see the Star Wars I remember rather than one which has the fingerprints of an increasingly out-of-touch director who can’t let something go all over it.

Enter the Fan Edits™.

For those of you who don’t know about this wonderful world, basically what’s happened is that there are tons of others out there who love Star Wars but maybe don’t love Lucas’s tinkering and tweaking. So, instead of bitching about it (well, maybe after bitching about it) they went off and found laserdiscs and other archive material and put together their own DVD versions of the original trilogy, the original original trilogy, the original one they originally remember watching originally.

Let’s be honest. Even the best enhanced DVD made off a laserdisc is going to look, well, like an enhanced DVD made off a laserdisc. But one of my favorites of the Fan Edits is ocpmovie’s “Classic Edition” of the original trilogy, where he used a hell of a lot of digital trickery to basically take the 2004 DVD release of the trilogy and then insert, paint, or wrangle in any material off other non-Special Edition source material wherever necessary, in essence brushing out the tamperings done by George and Co. in 1997 and 2004.

The effects are, by and large, fabulous. Because ocpmovie is relying primarily on sleight of hand, most of the time you can’t actually tell that you’re watching anything but the 2004 DVDs, only you never have to wince when Han is so amazingly stupid that he would allow someone sitting opposite him to fire at him before he shoots. At point blank range. Or when computer-generated puppets of stormtroopers clambering up these computer-generated puppets of their mounts (which look like they’ve been sprayed with shiny latex) look so fake and awkward that you have to turn away. Or that embarrassing “expanded” musical number in Return of the Jedi which induces uncontrollable vomiting because you know that the Ewoks weren’t enough, George just hadda go back and put more cutesy funny misery into the thing, so we could watch a reject from Fraggle Rock doing a blues routine like David Coverdale.

You don’t have to wince because all that shit has been flushed down the toilet, where it belongs.

Ocpmovie has gone a step farther with A New Hope and even done all these insanely obscure tweaks to things like the soundtrack, mixing back in the first, first bits from the Summer 1977 mix (like the original Aunt Beru), and other madness.

It’s not perfect, of course. Sometimes the poor source material stands out (though that never bothers me). He did miss one computer-generated 1997 edition shot in the final battle, but it’s quick. And a number of the altered scenes suffer from a stutter that can happen when, say, video is transcoded awkwardly from 25 fps PAL to 29.97 fps NTSC. It’s possible that he had to take the 23.97 fps rate of the 2004 DVD material and knock it up to 29.97 fps to mix in the other material, I don’t know. I haven’t heard others complain about this but it’s certainly noticeable on my system.

And Empire and Jedi, being as they are much less tampered with, are much finer jobs, more professional, more confident. There’s very little of the stuttering issue mentioned above.
It’s funny, I never bought the 2004 official boxset. I guess I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it. Maybe I was waiting for George to wake up and listen to his own comments about the preservation of films the way we remember them.

But if any of you out there don’t care for the tweaks and changes of recent years, and want the Star Wars trilogy as you remember them, stop by originaltrilogy.com, read up on the discussion, then torrent the Classic Editions or get them off alt.binaries.starwars.

I sure as hell am glad I did.