The main thing I remember is if you were a kid you had to get there early to get a seat in the front row. It wasn't stadium seating so you could get stuck behind a tall person and have to peek around their giant head half the movie.
The main thing I remember is if you were a kid you had to get there early to get a seat in the front row. It wasn't stadium seating so you could get stuck behind a tall person and have to peek around their giant head half the movie.
Who's Father? wrote:
???
This was what it was like in the theater I was in when Star Wars was in other theaters:
“Look, there’s a debutante doing cocaine,” said the quasi-awestruck woman who had made it past the ropes and into the inner sanctions of Studio 54 somehow. Definitely a first this one.
The famous half-moon sculpture descended from the ceiling and the spoon seduced its way into the moon’s mouth.
Gloria Gaynor’s I will survive survived, thrived and high-fived as it busted well past “keep the neighbors happy,” volume.
The crowd cheered the spoon on. Confetti came out of nowhere.
The paparazzi clicked into carpe-diem-meets-deadline mode: Halston, Liza, Andy, Calvin, Bianca, all first-name-famous. Who wasn’t there?
A thin woman in a turquoise dress from Bendels with a straw dangling from her nostril was the center of attention. This was Wendy...
I was glad that Billy Dee Williams got a gig after "Mahogany" and "Bingo Long"
I thought the third one was the last time I felt going to a movie that everyone in the nation was compelled to see. It was a phenomenon.
"Jaws" was the first blockbuster American movie by Spielberg. We are talking a phenomenon that never existed before. That showed the potential of big money in movie making when you create a situation where every single person in this country felt they had to pay and see one movie.
"Star Wars" was the next one. I remember seeing tv news spots about people lining up for a quarter mile and some saying they went to see it over 30 times.
Those two movies changed the format (for the worst) and put the last nail in the coffin for studio's promoting films as an art form.
I remember being underwhelmed by "The Empire Strikes Back". It was just not the same. I thought the third one in 1984 or 85 was more fun because of the newer filmmaking technology. Then then the last one I went to see was the one after that over 15 years later. Horrible and boring. Just awful. And special effects were impressive but obviously just commercial crap.
star wars was the transformative event in movie history, a huge event when it occurred with massive lines stretching for blocks and heavy on the special effects, changing the entire way that studios looked to make money, whereas the Empire Strikes Back, which goes deeply into the Freudian details, is probably the better movie.
doo doo wrote:
Lots of dicks in bags of popcorn.
Wrong theatre. You were watching American Gigolo.
As a 5 year old, the Empire Strikes Back was not really a big deal to me. I'm pretty sure I never saw it in the movie theatre.
But when Return of Jedi came out, as an 8 year old, I went APE SHIT. I think I was the perfect age for Jedi.
Bad Wigins wrote:
When the prequels were released you were no longer too young to notice the horrible dialogue and science ignorance, like "Kessel run in 12 parsecs," which the second prequel addressed with "12 parsecs outside the Rishi Maze."
Don't you know that Han was referring to parsecs as a unit of distance? 12 parsecs means that the route he took was that far - he had to get closer to the imperials.
Also since when does a SPACE FANTASY need to be scientifically correct?
I remember thinking that I had to wait several more years to find out what was going to happen next. It was rough!
Also, at the end of the film I seem to remember a note saying that the next movie was to be named "Revenge of the Jedi". I remember hearing later that Lucas changed the name later because he felt that revenge was not a attribute of a Jedi.
Awesome! Shame you missed it!
Oedipus Rexing wrote:
Bad Wigins wrote:When the prequels were released you were no longer too young to notice the horrible dialogue and science ignorance, like "Kessel run in 12 parsecs," which the second prequel addressed with "12 parsecs outside the Rishi Maze."
Don't you know that Han was referring to parsecs as a unit of distance? 12 parsecs means that the route he took was that far - he had to get closer to the imperials.
obi-wan: if it's a fast ship.
han: fast ship? You've never heard of the millennium falcon?
obi-wan: should I have?
han: it's the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs.
I don't think obi-wan would be satisfied that taking the most direct route to Kessel meant the ship was fast. And by using parsecs properly later, Lucas was acknowledging his mistake.
Not an old timer wrote:
The main thing I remember is if you were a kid you had to get there early to get a seat in the front row. It wasn't stadium seating so you could get stuck behind a tall person and have to peek around their giant head half the movie.
I remember this, and really sticky floors. Theaters are a lot nicer now.
I was about 10 and rode my bike to the theatre and watched it alone because all my friends had seen it already. I waited until the last day it was in the theatre. The film was great and I loved the snow scenes, yoda, and Darth telling Luke he was his father.
It was so long ago that riding your bike to the theatre wasn't unusual even at 10 years old.
Why does anyone care?
It was not like Pearl Harbor or Nov. 22, 1963 or 9/11.
Seeing Episode I was more magical...compare to all the crappy space movies except for Kubrick's Space Odessey it was like comparing a smart phone with smoke signal..
But that was then and has little to do with now.
I remember a classic scene while waiting in line for the movie with my parents. As an earlier show was letting out, some guy looks at our line and yells "Darth Vader is Luke's father"! Having already read the novelization (or the comic book, I can't remember which), I already knew the score. But a lot of people in my line were PISSED. A lot of yelling ensued, but I remember thinking it was pretty funny.
It was awesome. Although another poster was correct when he mentioned "Jaws" as a film that changed the movie industry, if you were the right age "Star Wars" (specifically Episode 4, A New Hope) was a movie that changed a kid's life. "Jaws" was the first time that I ever remember standing in line for a movie where the line was almost two blocks long, and I lived in a pretty small valley of about 45,000 people.
I was 9 when "Star Wars Episode 4" premiered and I ended up seeing it 9 times in the theater. For years after that every birthday, Christmas and any other occasions that merited gifts were filled with Star Wars space ships and action figures.
It was a classic story of good vs. evil and the world ate it up. Creatures, spaceships and mythology that the world had never seen the likes of before.
it was a great time to be alive and be 9 years old. I ended up seeing "The Empire Strikes Back" 6 times in the theater and "Return of the Jedi" 3 times in the theater.
I saw The Empire Strikes Back at a drive-in movie theatre. We mounted the big audio speaker inside the car. It made the light sabers and Darth's voice sound freakish.
I miss drive-in movies. They were the best.
While Han solo WAS being a pompous d!ck about his ship doing the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs, he was in fact referring to distance.
Cutting down the distance meant he had to get closer to black holes along the way and because of gravitational pull needed a super fast ship.
Was that in the movie, no, well it's just fangeek baloney then.
I was at the premier in Westwood. There was a Darth Vader hanging out greeting people in front. Kids of all ages were excited. Job Butler and Vickie Cook were trading up Mount SAC.
Nothing but possibility and promise lay ahead.