From: wang@ibma1.cs.uiuc.edu (Eric Wang)
Subject: The first time (Was Re: I'll get you ...)
Reply-To: wang@ibma0.cs.uiuc.edu
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1992 23:30:54 GMT

mkc@centerline.com (Mark Culotta) writes:
>I would be interested in hearing of other's memories of going to SW the
>first time.

I remember the first (and only) time I saw the TV commercial hyping SW
in the summer of '77.  I don't remember much of it (certainly it didn't
prepare me for the movie itself) -- all I can recall is a vague
impression of blaster bolts flying all over the place.  (Does anybody
remember that far back?  I think it showed a couple of seconds of the
space battle over the Death Star.)  I was only in 6th grade at the time
-- I thought, "Cool!!  I have to see this movie!"  At that age, anything
involving blaster bolts was impressive.

So the movie actually opened in a neighboring college town (Moscow,
Idaho) 8 miles away -- back then, that was a big deal.  My two brothers
and I talked our mother into taking us to see it, and after a couple of
days, she relented.  The line wasn't too bad -- it was only about 20
minutes, I think.  (Word of mouth had just begun to kick in.)  We paid
for the first showing, and sat in slack-jawed amazement for two hours.
I remember when the Death Star finally blew up, the whole audience
started cheering.  Never heard that before (and haven't since).
Naturally, we asked our mother whether we could stay to watch the second
showing -- to our vast surprise, she agreed without complaint.  (Several
years later, I learned during a casual dinner conversation that she
really liked it, and that my father, who finds movies largely
uninteresting unless he's taking us to them, even went to see it twice.)

The most impressive part of the movie (I thought), other than its
amazing special effects, was the music.  It was so perfectly woven into
the movie, it became a part of it -- when I hear the music, I can still
picture the corresponding parts of the movie, and vice versa.  John
Williams really broke into the mainstream with that score -- I could
recognize his touch on the later scores to Superman and even the '88
Seoul Olympics.  (Gosh, he really likes to use his trumpets!)

On another slightly off-topic track (but one inspired by this article),
I remember going to see Steven Spielberg's E.T. on opening night in my
home town.  There was NO line; in fact, the ticket-booth attendant
looked slightly bored.  The theatre was only about 40% full.  It was a
blast.  On the second night, and for the next three months or so, the
line ran around two BIG city blocks and took over a nearby middle
school's parking lot -- average waiting times were 2-3 hours, and many
students at my high school reported going to stand in line immediately
after school let out at 3 in the afternoon.  Local pizza parlors did a
brisk business delivering pizzas to the line -- apparently, you could
call them up and just say you were in "The E.T. line, in the parking
lot", and they'd find you (or somebody nearby who'd buy your pizza --
it was all the same to them :-)).  And to think I missed all that.  Hee
hee hee!

Eric Wang
wang@ibma0.cs.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.starwars