Stories of a Star Wars Fanboy

Youthful brushes with celebrity while enjoying the space operas of one's youth

A friend recently suggested that Star Wars has replaced the western in cinematic culture, and I suppose he’s right. I told my friend that I had three Star Wars stories to share, perhaps like the yarns spun by cowboys around the campfire. Here they are in reverse chronological order.

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 in Washington, D.C., and I was babysitting a young man named Micah. Micah’s mom 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.

My Empire Strikes Back story was more momentous and thus more memorable. Because my father, Davey Marlin-Jones, was the film and theatre critic for the local CBS affiliate in DC, he was invited to openings, screenings, and gala events of all sorts. When The Empire Strikes Back had its U.S. premiere on May 17th, 1980 at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., my dad offered to bring my younger brother Oliver and me along.  

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. Except for 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, and Kenny Baker. I especially enjoyed chatting with Mark Hamill and Frank Oz, both of whom seemed attentive to my fanboy questions.

You would think I couldn’t top that, but actually my first Star Wars memory is my favorite. Jack Valenti, then President of the Motion Picture Association of America, took my dad aside at some function in the mid-1970s 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 was experiencing, 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 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, and because the folks at The Walt Disney Company are experts at creating sequels and other forms of narrative repackaging, my children and I, and youthful enthusiasts of subsequent generations, will likely continue to turn for entertainment and magic to Star Wars stories for the rest of our lives.