2007-07-19

My involvement with HP fandom is limited to watching the movies on DVD, laughing at the badfic summaries at Summary Executions, and skimming through HP-related posts on the friends list. I believe three or four other people on LJ as a whole are also non-fans.

Now that it's the home stretch for our HP-addicted friends, there are some rules of etiquette non-fans should follow over the coming days. If you're a non-fan, don't:

10. Try to sound like you know what you're talking about in the HP universe when you don't. (If I had a dollar for every newspaper article that refers to HP fans as "muggles"…)

9. Tell your HP fan friends that with the book series ending, "you'll get a life now."

8. Say, "Harry Potter? Why the hell are you reading kids' books?"

7. Mock fans camping out in line when you camped out for an iPhone three weeks ago.

6. Protest at your local bookstore that HP is an agent of Satan and the books teach witchcraft.

5. Print up copies of some "erotic vampire" Draco/Harry fan fic, get them professionally bound, then try selling them on the street as "the new Harry Potter book."

4. Send out fake press releases to your HP fan friends announcing that "The Deathly Hallows" has been cancelled by the publisher.

3. Get in line at your local bookstore and start telling the little kids there that you heard Harry dies in the most horrible way possible.

2. Go to your local bookstore at midnight on the 21st, pick up a copy of the book, flip through it, and yell at the top of your lungs, "OMG, (blank) AND (blank) DIE!!!"

1. Get a job at the New York Times and post a spoilerific review of the book on the front page two days before the book comes out.

Finally I've finished the behemoth of a book, over 300 pages in length, especially if you splurged for the hardcover edition like I did. So it took me a little while to get through it all. J.W. Rinzler chronicles in detail the arduous and troublesome path ANH took from its inception in the early 1970s through its insane box office run years later. He managed to dig up never-before-published interviews with many of the key players that were recorded back in the day, capturing impressions from people who had little idea of what they were a part of. Who could've known, anyway? The making of ANH was filled with logistical problems, corporate meddling, personality conflicts, creative differences, and a real lack of faith on the part of Hollywood insiders who didn't understand what this bizarre project was about. And in the end, even with ANH's success, Lucas still wasn't entirely happy with the end result. He was happy that audiences liked it but knowing what he wanted to accomplish with the film, he apparently felt efforts fell short. Little wonder he tinkered with it years later.

Rinzler writes most of his book in the present tense, as though he'd been working on this thing since 1973. It's consistent with the style of "The Making of Revenge of the Sith," a book he started working on in 2002 just as production on the film was underway. He chronicles Lucas's many drafts, clarifying what was in each draft, what changed, what was dropped, etc.. Over the years, people have gotten a little mixed up over what was in those drafts and when. The mythical "Journal of the Whills" isn't anything more than a short background summary. What is rather interesting is how Lucas's radical '60s politics played into some of his concepts. It's one of those things we all sort of knew was there but it's here in print what exactly he was thinking at the time. One can headdesk over how Lucas could've naively bought that the VietCong were just innocent folk of the wood while totally ignoring the real evil Empire that was funding them, but it also goes to show you that sometimes a great story can transcend almost anything.

Some true stories are elaborated upon; Alec Guinness was initially okay with being killed off but for some reason he changed his mind by the time the production moved on to London and it was at that point, Lucas had to talk him into not leaving the project. Other interesting tidbits are revealed. Carrie Fisher almost missed her chance to audition for the film due to play obligations at her drama school in London. Various ILMers were battling each other, particularly with John Dykstra. The reason why Lucas saw limos outside of the Chinese Theater on that famous day he watched from the Hamburger Hamlet across the street was that Hugh Hefner had come out with his entourage to see ANH. (So Hef's been on the bus since day one.) Phone operators in Los Angeles were getting 100 calls an hour for the numbers of the two theaters in town showing the film.

The book seems to cure any fanboy notions that producer Gary Kurtz was Lucas's discipliner who somehow managed to whip ANH into shape. Interestingly enough, the person who comes across as perhaps the biggest hero aside from Lucas is Fox's Alan Ladd, Jr.. He stood by the project all along even though he probably would've had the boot had ANH failed, doing whatever he could to keep it alive and get the support of the suits (Ladd left a few years later over DGA fining TESB director Irwin Kershner).

There are also scores of rare and never-before-published photographs that for some reason haven't been iconned yet. What's wrong with you people?

The hardcover edition features pages of storyboard and what's called Lucas's ideas for the "expanded universe." The latter is a misnomer; it's really background info he was using to develop the characters and the filmed story, not ideas for books and comics. Still, it's a very fascinating read. Some of it has made it into "secondary sources" and spinoff fiction, some of it has become part of the later chapters or even the PT, and some of it doesn't fit at all into what the saga has evolved into. For example, Han being raised for a few years by space gypsies who were sometimes cruel to him and made him panhandle ended up in the "Han Solo Trilogy" published 10 years ago. Threepio was "reassembled by a young boy who worked for a junk dealer," background that ended up in TPM. Leia's background states she worked on relief efforts and was directing mercy missions at age 7, info that turned into Padmé's background in the AOTC novelization as well as in a short deleted scene from the film. At the point these character studies were created, Vader and Annikin, Luke's father, were written as two separate people, which we all know changed.

Oh, and one has to wonder if Lucas has some psychic abilities when in his earliest drafts he doodled with using characters named "Ford" and "Hayden." I swear to God it's true.

All in all, required reading for all SW fans. After years of urban legends, misinformation, fuzzy memories, misconceptions, and rumors, it's nice to see something that gives us the straight dope as well as stuff we haven't read before. It also chronicles how the making of any film is difficult, especially one that was so different for its time.

2007-07-19

OT: Top 10 Don'ts For Harry Potter Non-Fans

At last...a review of "The Making of Star Wars"

"Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed" Scores Three Emmy Nominations