Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
My friend Bob says that Star Wars has replaced the western in cinematic culture, and I suppose he’s right.
Bob and I have been using the video walkie-talkie (as we call it) iPhone application Marco Polo to stay in touch, conversing about deep and quotidian subjects just as we did when we first met as freshman-year roommates, and then again as we drove across the country during the summer before our junior year, each of us eager to visit California for the first time after reading Kerouac and giving into our automobile wanderlust.
As a communication tool, Marco Polo offers certain advantages, such as the understanding that you won’t catch your friend at a bad time – he will decide when to watch your video – and the understanding that you won’t be interrupted. One downside that I am used to from 22 years on the radio is that you won’t hear your audience laughing at your jokes. I guess I sometimes also experience that sort of silence in the classroom.
Recently I made a Star Wars allusion to Bob in a Marco Polo video, and Bob responded with a series of exclamations and anecdotes about his own love of everything Star Wars. For example, Bob saw the first Star Wars movie when he was about ten years old in 1977, and then when George Lucas re-released A New Hope20 years later in 1997, Bob got to take his younger brother, who was then also ten years old, to see Star Warsin the theater and experience through the young man’s eyes the magic that so informed Bob’s childhood. Bob’s brother complained that they had to wait two weeks before the sequel would be released. Bob explained that the rest of us had to wait three years for The Empire Strikes Back.
In response, I told Bob that I had three Star Wars stories (one for each of the first three films) to offer him in a subsequent Polo. Even though Bob and his lovely wife Susi are two of my most devoted newsletter readers in New Hampshire, I will represent the stories here even before I get to them in Polo form. I present them in reverse chronological order and reversed order of importance (at least to me).
In 1983, when Return of the Jedi came out, I had two summer jobs: I was working as an usher at the Tenley Circle movie theatre, and I was still babysitting a young man named Micah (now Mical). Micah’s mom Miraa, a Rolfer, was highly protective of the sort of content her seven-year-old son saw at the movies, but she approved of the latest Star Wars film, so the young man and I saw that film together at least a half-dozen times. And because of my movie theatre connections, the tickets were always free. We had to pay for our own popcorn.
As an aside, I haven’t spoken to Mical since the mid-1980s, and, prompted by this reminiscing, I just looked him up and now have a phone number. Mical may even live in California! Perhaps I will update you in a future newsletter on the resulting phone call if anything comes of it.
So that covers Jedi. My Empire Strikes Back story (which I have previously shared in this forum) was more momentous and more memorable. Because my father, Davey Marlin-Jones, was the film and theatre critic for the local CBS affiliate in Washington DC, he was invited to openings, screenings, and gala events of all sorts. He was still seen on TV several nights a week at the time that that The Empire Strikes Back had its U.S. premiere (May 17th, 1980) at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Of course my dad was invited, and he brought his two sons along. Now that I think of it, he probably attended primarily for his sons, and to catch up with a friend from his days as the Artistic Director at the Washington Theatre Club.
As soon as we arrived, Oliver and I saw an opportunity. Each of us grabbed a Star Wars paper plate from the buffet and proceeded to pester all the celebrities attending that event for autographs. Minus Sir Alec Guinness and Anthony Daniels, who was sick, the entire cast was there, and we got to meet them all, including Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford, Billy Dee Williams (my dad’s theatre friends), and Kenny Baker. I especially enjoyed chatting with Mark Hamill and Frank Oz, both of whom I have corresponded with subsequently.
You would think I couldn’t top that, but actually my first Star Wars story is my favorite. Jack Valenti, then President of the Motion Picture Association of America, took my dad aside at some function and told him that he thought his son Andrew would really enjoy this new space opera which would be released soon, so my dad took me to the critics’ screening room at the American Film Institute to see it. Just as the room was darkening and the curtains were parting, I asked my dad this question: “Dad, what’s the name of this movie again?” He responded, “Son, I don’t remember.” Then I looked up at the screen and saw these words:
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away . . . .
My youthful imagination could not easily process everything I experienced in that film, but I do know that I had never felt more enthusiastically about a film. That said, because I was likely the first child in America to see the film Star Wars, I had no one but dad to talk to about it. None of the kids at school had any patience for my talk of Wookiees, “Luke Skywalker,” or “Darth Vader,” whatever that was, but they would.
Star Wars, Marvel, and to a lesser extent, The Muppets, came to dominate cinematic culture for the coming four decades. Disney bought up all these foundational intellectual properties of my youth (they thankfully haven’t yet acquired Dungeons and Dragons), and because the folks at The Walt Disney Company are experts at creating sequels and other forms of narrative repackaging, Bob and I, our siblings, and youthful enthusiasts of subsequent generations will likely continue to turn to Star Wars stories for the rest of our lives.
I hope you get to see this week’s Pub Quiz. It’s a bit easier than usual. Expect questions on topics raised above, and on the following: kumquats, sinners, airplanes, words that start with Q, literary genres of politicians, eggplants, countries on different continents, bayonets, peaks and changelings, films from the 1970s, subway stations, Saturday Night Live, towns that may be in California, state capitals, iris elements, actresses that appear in songs, subtitles, world capitals, car insurance, stolen cars, Connecticut stories, cello standouts, lovely rivers, famous islands, candles, catalysts, deadpan comedians, infatuations, mottos and slogans, news of the world, and Shakespeare.
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Be well!
Dr. Andy
P.S. Here are three questions from last week’s Pub Quiz:
- Maritime Boundaries. What P country shares maritime boundaries with Denmark and Sweden?
- Pop Culture – Television. What part did the late Efrem Zimbalist Jr., the son of renowned Russian-born concert violinist Efrem Zimbalist Sr., play in 54 of the 85 episodes of the TV show Batman: The Animated Series?
- Another Music Question. What Frank Sinatra 1964 recording became closely associated with NASA’s Apollo space program?
P.P.S. “The point of a knighthood for British actors is to enable them to play butlers.” Sir Alec Guinness