04-20-2007

In the last installment of this column, we featured the first of our readers' memories of the whole Star Wars experience in honor of the saga's 30th anniversary. One of our contributors was Susan Daigle-Leach. Well, this week her husband Gary offers his own look back at the summer of '77:

“I was just ending a stint in the US Army and had seen clips of 'this upcoming science fiction film' on a local TV monster movie show. These clips, one memorably showing dog-fighting action between TIE fighters and the Millennium Falcon, led me to believe that someone had finally found a way to create serious, high-energy action sequences using the intricate spacecraft modeling of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Silent Running and Gerry Anderson's later TV shows and films. I couldn't wait to see the movie, but in the meantime I bought the Marvel comic and the paperback novel and waited for my moment in the theater.”

“This took a bit longer than I expected. By the time I moved on to my initial civilian pursuits in Scottsdale, Arizona, the film was showing only at the Ciné Capri. The theater was practically under siege in the first weeks, with lines circling the entire building several times at any given hour. I didn't manage to penetrate into the inner sanctum until early July. This was a palace with one enormous curved screen, a huge seating section with no center aisle, and an audio system that could blow the roof off the joint. It presented the perfect Star Wars experience bar none; I saw it there four times.”

“I went in expecting an experience and emerged having had 'An Experience.' Star Wars was a film that embraced everything it touched - from the audiences to Alec Guinness to the 20th Century Fox Cinerama fanfare - and made it its own. It held court at the Ciné Capri for nearly two years, and when that run finally wrapped, it felt like the end of an era.”

“And the film did change my life in one very important respect. I met my future wife in 1987, and though she'd only been residing in Arizona for the past three years, she'd also seen Star Wars at the Ciné Capri during a visit with friends in 1978. Years later we made a point of seeing the special editions of both Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back at the original Ciné Capri. There were no long lines on those occasions, and the cinematic experiences could not be what they had been, but being able to do that together will always be among our most treasured memories.”

Thanks to Gary, and remember, I still want to hear about your own personal memories of the Star Wars phenomenon! E-mail your thoughts to me at barnold@geppismuseum.com and we'll keep looking at them in future installments of this column.

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