Preview 2015
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CELLULOID T H E S TA R WA R S I S S U E
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APRIL 2015 C E L E B R AT I O N W E E K P R O G R A M M I N G W H E N W E ’ R E N O T B U S Y PA R T Y I N G W I T H F E L L O W S TA R WA R S F R E A K Z O I D S , A N D GETTING DRUNK ON JAMESON AND BLUE MILK , WE’LL BE RE-VISITING THE HIGHS A N D T H E L O W S O F T H A T G A L A X Y S O F A R , F A R A W AY. C H E C K D A I LY C E L L U L O I D F O R S H O W T I M E S A N D O F F I C I A L T W E E T C H AT H A S H TA G S .
I A N S A N T E R | A N I M AT R O N I C A C K B A R
4 . 1 1 E W O K S : T H E B AT T L E F O R E N D O R & THE EWOK ADVENTURE 4.12 THE HIDDEN FORTRESS 4.13 FLASH GORDON 4 . 1 5 T H X - 1 1 3 8 & H A R DWA R E WA R S 4 . 1 6 S TA R W A R S E P I S O D E S I & I I 4 . 1 7 S TA R W A R S E P I S O D E S I I I & I V 4 . 1 8 S TA R W A R S E P I S O D E S V & V I 4 . 1 9 E M P I R E O F D R E A M S & S TA R W A R S X M A S S P E C I A L
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Preview 2015
000 T H E S TA R WA R S I S S U E
CELLULOID
CELLULOID Managing Editors Ian Santer Destiny A. Lopez Illustrator Seth Friedman Magazine Layout Klambi Photographers Ian Santer Destiny A. Lopez Marketing See Contributors Editorial Enquiries For advertising inquireies and story pitches: dailycelluloid@gmail.com Published and Distributed by Daily Celluloid Tel : (213) 379-9475 Shout out to Star Wars Celebration, Reed Pop, Comic Bug, JoAnn Jenkins, Arlene Santer, Jett Evans, Monkey Deux, Tom Jenkinson
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In Association with facebook : AnimatronicAckbar instagram : ackbar twitter : animatronicackbr
Contributors Animatronic Ackbar, Seth Friedman, Remington Hayes, Destiny A. Lopez, Ian Santer, and Mike Wellman Printing No paper here...all 1’s and 0’s son. Cover Ian Santer
A Daily Celluloid/Animatronic Ackbar Production all rights reserved copyright © 2015
EDITOR’S NOTE
LETTER FROM THE EDITORS
What started as a movie a day tumblr has evolved into this. What is this exactly? It looks like a zine. But self-publishing is only part of the equation. Celluloid is a film co-op; a collective created by film fanatics for film fanatics, aspiring movie makers and our peers that are so often in and out of “the industry.” Issue 000: The Star Wars Celebration Issue is yet a preview of things to come. With the much anticipated convention coming to Anaheim and the Los Angeles crew being only an hour away, the decision was made for us. Star Wars it is.
Contact Daily Celluloid dailycelluloid@gmail.com www.dailycelluloid.com Tel : (213) 379-9475
Animatronic Ackbar Creative Partner www.animatronicackbar.com
Through the cooperation of writers, illustrators and musicians, a zine will appear 6 times a year. Find it, read it, share it however you can. We’ve got the social media thing covered, so send a message, drop us a line, a tweet, a gram or what have you. We don’t bite, unless you are into that sort of thing.
Enjoy. And May the Force Be With You ALWAYS
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JEFF BERTING | SOUTH BAY MAGAZINE
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CONTENTS No. 000 PREVIEW 2015
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0 1 . T H E 7 -Y E A R O L D F I L M C R I T I C Return of the Jedi was better? Kids say the darndest things, don’t they?
02. THE URBAN REBELLION RUN DMC parodies, dope kicks and sick beats
0 3 . S TA R WA R S & T H E A R T I S T I forgive George Lucas...
0 4 . T H E VA R I A N T C H A S E We talk comics and assorted geeky weirdness with Mike Wellman
05. GALACTIC BOOTLEGS Living the Suckadelic life
0 6 . S H A K E W H AT A N A K I N G AV E YO U Do the Funky Blaster
0 7. A H U N T E R ’ S L I F E F O R M E Snitches get stitches.
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Illustration By Seth Friedman
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01 P R O C L A M AT I O N S O F A 7 -Y E A R O L D F I L M CRITIC Return of the Jedi was the only film from the Original Trilogy that I actually got to see in all it’s glory; as the pioneers of cinema intended.. on a giant screen in a packed palatial movie house (well we’d have to settle for the cineplex at the local shopping mall).
W H AT A R E YO U R EARLIEST MEMORIES OF S TA R WA R S ? G I V E U S THE 411 ON TWITTER A T @ D A I LY _ C E L L U L O I D #SWISSUE000
I can’t remember what I ate for breakfast this morning, but I remember so very vividly waiting in line for hours with the fam. at the old Mid Island Mall in Hicksville, hoping to procure five tickets to the ROTJ screening. Though I was but a mere 7 year old, I was somehow super aware of the significance of this seemingly mundane afternoon outing at the theater. From Jabba’s palace to the battle at Endor where those infamous furry little muppets helped our small rag tag band of heroes bring down the big bad Empire, Jedi proved to be an audo/visual sensory overload that would forever imprint itself on my young mind.
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Witnessing Jedi unfold on that big screen was a rather historic and exhilarating experience. The epic space battles, the roaring of the speeder bikes, Vader turning on the Emperor... The movie we all believed (and in hindsight hoped) would be the glorious final installment of the Star Wars Saga: the closing chapter to our childhood.
FILM WRAP
STRAIGHT TO THE POINT Even as a child, I cut to the chase. No time for Mickey Mouse bullshit. 5
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FILM WRAP
Of course, now looking back on my early critique, I realize how utterly absurd I was to cite Richard Marquand’s space romp as the finest film of the whole Star Wars trilogy. Much like New York Times Reviewer Bosley Crowther’s brutal bashing of Bonnie & Clyde….
L E F T : E A R LY S P A C E B AT T L E S K E T C H | A B O V E : M Y F O L K S AT D I S N E Y L A N D ’ S S TA R TRADER
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02 THE URBAN REBELLION
SUCKADELIC
HIP-HOP From the Sucklord’s og battle breaks cassette tapes, to the Adidas/All terrain vehicle mash ups by the one Billions McMillions, artists and intergalactic space travlelling g -men have been appropriating and mixing Star Wars ephemera into their funky shenanigans for years..
by DESTINY LOPEZ & IAN SANTER
Who are you in the Star Wars universe? Are you the underdog battling impossible obstacles? Or are you the head hardcore mo-fo in charge, who will keep their power at all cost? The universal themes and iconic characters of Star Wars have been reimagined in many art forms. However, the rebels are taking this shit from the streets and into pop culture. 8
ADIDAS
ART At Designer Con 2014, Billions McMillions had only 200 of the above Ad-At figures available for sale. Frantically making our way through the maze of art prints, handmade wares and bootleg figures, we found his table, put our names down along with cold hard plastic, and even got the shizz signed.
KICKS Sneaker headz and assorted imperial scum buckets behold the fresh and super fly footware courtesy of Adidas (all day i dream about Star Wars and such shit). Big time shoe houses understand the universal collectible appeal of not only the sneaks themselves, but of the Star Wars franchise.
The urban art scene has taken many forms since episode 4: street art, sculpture, installations, film, sound mixing and fine art. Degas may not float your boat, but a Star Wars print courtesy of Matt Busch just might.
THREADS The equation is as simple as 2+2. Classic Adidas track jacket plus Darth Vader equates to shut up and take my money. There is no choice but to join the Dark Side. The Star Wars empire has thrived in the clothing business not only among adults, but for children. Companies like Vans, Adidas and, now, Disney offer a wide variety of Star Wars gear for the new generation of fans. The childrens clothing lines have even been known to be more extensive than the big b-boy and b-girl lines. While it is important to practice good parenting and allow your child to be the baddest tot on the block, more adult sizes please.
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VINYL Recently, while attempting to catalog the pletora of platters in the Ackbar arsenal, many obscure Star Wars gems were uncoverd. Once dropped on the 1’s and 2’s, as the hip kiddies say, we were ready to rock the scum and villainy at any local space port.
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DOPE JAMS
THE DARK B-SIDES Tracks Curated by IAN SANTER The Star Wars galaxy is constantly inspiring musicians to create and put their own spin on the epic music of one Sir John Williams. Many disco interpretations and moog records from the 1970s have evolved into more contemporary hip hop and electro tracks with djs sampling assorted dialogue and sounds from these epic films. Click the middle cassette to jam out to Ackbar’s Star Wars Mega Mix.
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I A N S A N T E R | A N I M AT R O N I C A C K B A R
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S TA R W A R S & THE ARTIST
illustrations & profile by SETH FRIEDMAN introduction by IAN SANTER With the use of stop motion photography the crafty craftsman over at ILM brought these giant All-Terrain Armored Transport Walkers or, AT-ATs, to life one frame at a time. The epic battle occurring on the icy Hoth Planet saw the extremely outgunned rebels attempting to defend their secret base against the Empire’s giant walkers with nothing but a bunch of puny guns, harpoons and tow cables. Unfortunately, being too early in the saga, there were no trusty Ewoks around. The Rebel base was overrun and the alliance was forced to retreat into hyperspace.
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We asked illustrator and professional nerd, Seth Friedman, if he would like to contribute to this issue. What he did was reimagine some truly behind the scenes wizardry.
ARTSY FA R T SY
I’m a designer, artist and writer living in NYC who was lucky enough to have been born into The Age Of The OT, a year before the release of Episode 4, and thus forever marked by the effects of mainlining Star Wars into my, then, impressionable young brain-can. Then, I had 16 years to build up the anticipation of the prequels and hopes to be forgiven for grand pronouncements shortly before Episode 1 was released.
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ARTSY FA R T SY
I went from being an in-denial Lucas Apologist to being able to admit that, as an artist, I can appreciate the need for constraints such as ANYONE saying “NO” to any of your various hair-brained schemes; for example explaining The Force by pseudoname-checking mitochondria. However, I can also appreciate that sometimes an artist needs to be allowed to do whatever he wants and create a beautiful mess. I forgive George Lucas for this, as without his original ideas, none of this would be possible. Currently , I work on design by day, art and writing by night, and have completed one novel, “The Pilgrim,” that seeks to do for Medieval myths what Star Wars did for Sci-Fi.
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04 T H E VA R I A N T C H A S E & OTHER COMIC ADVENTURES words by DESTINY A. LOPEZ photography by IAN SANTER i n t e r v i e w c o n d u c t e d b y A N I M AT R O N I C A C K B A R
JEFF BERTING | SOUTH BAY MAGAZINE
GEEK TA L K
fans are on the hunt in record numbers. For Comic Bug store owner Mike Wellman, business is most definitely booming.
THE HYPE IS STONG WITH THIS ONE.
When Star Wars: The Force Awakens accounced its December release date, fans knew that it was just the beginning. That galaxy far, far away would become, yet again, part of our daily geek and pop culture diet. Die hard fans are already getting their fill. As with its previous installments, Episode VII means product: toys, art prints, collectable this and limited edition that. The latest stroke of genius to come out of the Disney/Star Wars union can be described in one word: variants. Januray 2015 saw Star Wars returning to Marvel, unleashing a pop culture double dose of artistic craftmanship and the revival of a beloved scifi franchise. Darth Vader and
PHOTOS: Animatronic Ackbar
Princess Leia comics would follow, leaving no man-child, woman or wallet safe. Star Wars: Issue One was one for the history books.. Aaron is wriring; Cassaday is on cover art duty. With seventy rumored variant covers, endless artist commissions and store exclusives, collectors and
There are very few comic book stores remaining in the Los Angeles area. Comic Bug, previously a South Bay staple, opened a location in Culver City. It took over the former location of Comics Ink, a local stomping ground that recently closed upon the owner’s retirement. Still recovering from the sting of Comic Ink’s abrupt closure. we decided to give Comic Bug a chance. While on a variant chase of our own, Animatronic Ackbar stopped by to visit the the new Culver City location. We were super jazzed with the spot and asked for an interview. This led us to Wellman: a die hard Star Wars and Battle Star Gallactica fan.
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LISTEN TO OUR INTERVIEW WITH COMIC BUG’S MIKE WELLMAN ON SOUNDCLOUD
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GEEK TA L K
P R E V I O U S PA G E : TOYS A N D C O M I C S - T H E U LT I M A T E DOUBLE TEAM | ABOVE: ROWS OF COMICS ON D I S P L AY | L E F T : C U S T O M E R S B R OW S I N G T H E WA R E S | RIGHT: SOMETHING FOR THE KIDDIES
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05 GALACTIC BOOTLEGS words and photography by Ian Santer
It’s often been stated that, “You’re an asshole for buying this shit.” Yet, you dish out the mad green paper for these so-bad-they’re-good custom jobs anyways. Many a rif raff are currently customizing and bootleging action figures and assorted toy pieces. However, Morgan Philips the SuperGenius, aka the Sucklord, is at the top of the sometimes janky, yet always super bad ass bootleg toy game.
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COLLECTIBLE SHIZZ
LEFT: The Emperor Sucklord himself at Comic Con 08 counting them phat stacks. ABOVE: A mish mash r2dfett bad acid bot . Don’t do drugs kiddies!
Your favorite overhyped pop sensation and lovable bootlegger_ presents this riff on the old Han Solo frozen in Carbonite bit. The Suck-Pizza Bootleg comes packaged in a custom pizza box.
First discovered the Suckadelic one while perusing an issue of the Beastie Boys’ now defunct Grand Royal Magazine. The above article contained a write up on his underground mixtape ‘Star Wars Breakbeats’ a work of hip hop and funk instrumentals made up solely of sounds sampled from the original trilogy (referenced previously on page 8.
The Sucklord’s social commentary runs the gamut: from the cheeky pink ‘Gay Empire’ figs to the Suckrealm series of blinged out ghetto fabulous bounty hunters.
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06 S H A K E W H AT A N A K I N G AV E YO U
LUCASARTS
w o r d s b y R E M I N G T O N H AY E S
Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens is coming to theatres this December. No doubt there will be a deafening kerfuffle to make as much money as possible.
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KEEP IT FUNKY
This means heading to a store near you at hyper speed as a slew of craptastic merchandise floods the store shelves. This, *sigh,* includes video games. However, for every Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace the Video game there’s a Star Wars Rogue Squadron. For every Star Wars: Masters of Teräs Käsi there was a Star Wars: The Old Republic. So, with a little hope and luck, we’ll get a great Star Wars game that WILL ACTUALLY COME OUT! I’M LOOKING AT YOU Star Wars 1313! Just add that to the list of bounties Boba Fett incinerated without client approval. Anywho with that nerd rage outta the way, let’s look at the Howard the Duck of the Star Wars game family: Kinect Star Wars.
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Kinect Star Wars has some deep conceptual roots. Initially, the idea likely spawned from the inconceivably unrealized potential of the Nintendo Wii and its “revolutionary� Wii-mote. When we all first saw the Wii-mote, anyone who had ever even heard of Star Wars just knew there was gonna be a game using the Wii-mote as a lightsabre. It never happened. So with that dream frozen in carbonite, we had to continue to pump quarters in that two-decades old Star Wars arcade game. Then it happened. Peter Molyneux, crown prince of false promises, promises a virtual revolution with the Kinect. The X-Box tries to be Luke Skywalker, the Kinect is Lando Calrissian, and Lucas Arts is Leia: all trying to save the Star Wars license from missing one of the most creative times in modern day video games. What we got was a half-baked attempt at several different game types. The most notable was the Dance Central version of Star Wars. Not since the Star Wars Ewok holiday special has anything from the franchise been so horned into something harder than Al Bundy’s story of 4 touchdowns in a single game. Beyond the sub-par pod racing (done better on the N64) and the unresponsive one on one lightsabre duels (done better in the decades old arcade game), lies this dance game. Despite itself, is so egregiously stupid that it has a Forrest Gump like charm. Its lone saving grace is that it never goes full-retard.
LUCASFILMS
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When I first tried this game out years ago, I had a few friends over. We decided to dick around with the dance mode. As I began to move to the beat of what I thought was YMCA, my friends begin to laugh and snicker. I wonder if I really looked as dumb as I felt playing this game. After all, I have this creepy digital Han Solo looking back at me shake my booty. I quickly realized that it wasn’t me they were laughing at. It was the song. It wasn’t “YMCA” playing, but “Empire Today”. When I switched out to let my home girl play, I noticed that all the dance moves had Star Wars themed names: Han Shot First, Lando Fever, Force Push, Jar Jar Rock, Hyper Drive, and my personal fave: the Funky Blaster. It became fun. Not just fun, but funny. Seeing Darth Sidious get his old wrinkly ass up off his throne to get down for the fate of the galaxy was nothing short of lunacy. Somehow, it works. Hearing the sheer maddening genius of Christina Aguilera’s sound-alike sing “I’m a princess in a battle, you gotta join the rebel way, “ is like spending a few moments in a Salvador Dali painting. As this very familiar, yet strangely alien concept take you for a ride into the nonsensical, you begin to appreciate the mad scientist that Frankenstein’d all these things together. So, if you’re ever at a GameStop or a garage sale and there’s a Kinect and Kinect Star Wars, pick it up for shits and giggles. It’ll help you take life and nerd culture less seriously, and allow you just have fun.
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People who
A LT E R
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D ES T ROY
works of art and
are barbarians, and if the laws of the United States conti us as a barbaric society. The preservation of our cultura
issue as “when life begins” or “when it should be appropr the heart of what sets mankind apart. Creative expression e n d e avo r. W e m u s t h av e r e s p e c t f o r i t i f w e -GEORGE LUCAS speaking in front of Congress regar
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our cultural heritage for profit or as an exercise of power
inue to condone this behavior, history will surely classify l heritage may not seem to be as politically sensitive an
riately terminated,� but it is important because it goes to is at the core of our humanness. Art is a distinctly human are to have any respect for the human race. ding the colorization of black and white films | 1988
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07 A HUNTER’S LIFE FOR ME Story & Illustrations By Seth Friedman
No one I know could resist that much money, and certainly not if you had a name that carried a reputation like mine to uphold. Boba Fett didn’t say no to tough jobs. The irony is, at that time I didn’t even need the money, I had enough saved to live high for a decade without working. But now I was flat broke and on my ass; sick as a Wookie and probably dying. Something had happened on Bothawui. It had started with the house pets. Some sort of viral strain had spread fast, causing unfortunate symptoms. First seizures and foaming, then paralysis followed by what could only be described as a change. Anything that contracted the airborne virus eventually became violently aggressive. And it had made the jump from pets to humanoids. The Bothans had succeeded in containing the outbreak without a major loss of life, but there were still holdouts in the cities, and all of the security forces that had been sent in had been infected. So now there were growing pockets of zombified Bothans with armies of rabid housepets. If the Empire found out, they might pull an Alderan and just nuke the planet, so the Bothans had decided to bring in a professional, and along with my sniper-modded EE-3 carbine rifle, I boarded Slave-1 and set a course for Bothawui.
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A BIT OF FA N F I C T I O N
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After a week of killing possessed house-pets and anything else that moved, mostly with fire, I had successfully neutralized the holdouts; but not without a price. First, in the nightmares I would likely have of well fed, fluffy pets that snuck up like ghosts, attacked with uncompromising ferocity and had to be consistently shot in their cute, rabid faces, and second, in what started afterwards as a small rash on my hands and quickly became a fever with familiar symptoms. I had quadruplechecked my suit’s isolation protocols, but somehow, something had gotten through. I didn’t have insurance with what remained of the Hunter’s Guild, primarily because I hated the very concept on principle, and always figured anyways that whatever I needed I’d just buy. It’s funny how one can, at times, completely predict the details of a situation and it can still surprise you in how it plays out. I would end up buying what I needed after all, but the antidote for the virus would cost me everything I had, plus more that I had to borrow. Now I was on the mend, but completely broke, and in dept to Jabba the Hutt and others. He had a job lined up for me to resolve the debt, but first I needed to make some quick money to replace my contaminated equipment which all had to be destroyed. As soon as I was healed, I’d have to hunt again. “ In addition, I’d had to go to a special contact to get the antidote; the highest contact: Vader. We had had dealings in the past, but I preferred to keep my business as far from the entanglements of the Galactic Empire and it’s mysterious, mercurial Emperor as possible. Ever since the rebels had destroyed the Emperor’s greatest hoped-for-triumph, the planet-smashing “Death Star” battle station, the Empire had been jumpy. There were growing rumours overheard in dusty cantinas, whispered in Coruscant backalleys and fretted about in the darkest chambers of the most far reaching Star Destroyers. The rumours said that the pilot that made the dead-lucky shot that destroyed the Death Star was some kinda Jedi messiah.
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A BIT OF FA N F I C T I O N Some rumours even pegged the identity as a child of a high general in the Imperial Navy. The rumours said that the kid had been raised in secret, in the desert on some outer-rim planet, but don’t they always say that about the wanna-be heros. In some circles they spoke of this “Son of the Suns” rising up to challenge the Emperor himself, but no one was that crazy. The Emperor was a Sith, who were like the Jedi only without the good intentions to keep their power in check. Only someone like that could have had the balls to destroy the entire Jedi order, dissolve the Old Republic and convince the entire galaxy to willingly realign under his autocratic control. It was hard to believe that any one person, even a Jedi, could do much to fight back against someone like that. No matter what rumours persisted, the Empire may have lost the battle at Yavin but they would surely strike back to win the war. At that very moment they were raking the galaxy with probes, and from my contacts at the Kuat drive yards I was aware that they were doubling their walker fleets packed with troops that would trample forests and stride frozen tundras to blast-out the rebels, wherever they were hiding. Vader was the one leading the charge, and the less I had to do with him, the better. So not only did it suck to have to pay the rage-inducingly high price for the antidote, but in having Vader source it, I now owed him a favor as well. Once I was healed enough to fight, I hunted a few Jedi for Vader to pay back the favor, but since I was still rebuilding my armory, with my meager equipment stash to depend on, I’d had to resort to disintegration. Vader had stipulated dead or alive but he at least wanted the bodies of the Jedi to broadcast on the feeds as was customary when holdouts from the purge were discovered and neutralized. He hadn’t been happy about not being able to do this, and had, after force-choking me for a few seconds for good measure, told me that I still owed him, and also what he had in mind to settle my balance.
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This was how, by doing a job for Vader and Jabba simultaneously, the chance occurred to settle all debts with one simple hunt; tracking down and capturing alive the Corellian smuggler and pilot Han Solo. Ironically I’d been contacted by a fellow hunter who I’d worked with before, Zuckuss, who was forming a crew for the same job that he hoped would include me and my two frequent co-hunters, Bossk and Dengar. This was perfect timing, as it would allow me to join Zuckuss and his crew and take a cut from Jabba’s payment to Zuckuss without letting Zuckuss know that I’d been hired separately for the same hunt. In what was threatening to be a ridiculous serendipity of interconnected coincidences, Zuckuss originally pitched me for the same job through Vader. Zuckuss was a force-sensitive member of the findsman clan and so he had a habit of swirling everything he did with secrecy and uncertainty to add an air of mysticism, though we all knew that he was full of it. Nevertheless, he was talented, so semi-forgiven for being a little thick about this, when he pitched me on the “second, secret benefactor” of the hunt for Solo, that would allow us to get a double bounty. Everyone knew that he meant the Empire. It didn’t matter; I would now be making two bounties by joining his crew to capture Solo for both the Empire and Jabba, on top of the fact that I had to hunt Solo anyway, separately, for both parties. This was all working in my favor; I’d have extra muscle for the hunt and an influx of cash, and this helped to wash away thoughts of my beloved ship Slave-1 sitting, up-forgrabs to the highest bidder, in the decontamination bay, till I could pay to have it released. It was a one of a kind that had belonged to my dad, and I wanted it back. I chartered a transport to Tatooine to rendezvous with Zuckuss and get details from Jabba in person. We’d all had encounters with Solo as was apt to happen in the underworlds that we hunters traveled in, and none of us was a fan, but I’d never seen one smuggler get such a high bounty from even a Hutt. And standing in front of the grand slug, as he frothed and sweated in anger, I realized that I’d never seen him as mad as this at anyone. He compulsively shoved frog after frog down his gullet, barely taking the time to chew, with little arms and legs dribbling down his chin, disgusting even his pet Kowakian, Salacious Crumb, who had to dive out of the way more than once as a half eaten frog face dropped into his normally clean perch next to Jabba.
A BIT OF FA N F I C T I O N
“I want him dead, you understand? Dead! But it will be ME who does it, and not until I’ve sufficiently inflicted miraculous pain and agony on his Bantha-sucking soul! I will keep him alive if I have to re-hibernate him over and over in carbonite till he’s lost all his senses, so that I can still torture him six centuries from now when I’m old and grey!” Solo had pissed-off Jabba by not only lying to his face on Tatooine but by reneging no less than five times on his bounty payments. Jabba promised to take out a higher bounty on anyone that killed Solo; he wanted the pleasure of torturing him that bad. More so than the grievous insult to Jabba’s reputation, Solo had done something a million-times worse; it was said that he was working with the rebellion. “Snitches get stitches,” as they say, and Solo was no exception.
Read the rest at dailycelluloid.com
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DEAR PRINCESS LEIA, I don’t wish to be presumptuous and call you “Leia,” as it implies a familiarity I don’t wish to presume. And though some might say we resemble one another to the extent that we could be easily mistaken for one another—if we were to inexplicably agree to dress in similar, if unremarkable clothing, and you were to finally, sanely, refuse to submit to the rigors of that foolish focus-pulling hairstyle—simply (and now belatedly) put, I could pass for you with minor adjustments as you might pass for me with ever so slightly more. But would my insides match your outsides?
I’ve spent almost two-thirds of my life walking galaxies in those fucking white leather boots. I’ve even attempted to answer for your actions, to explain your possible motives for choices one of us failed to make. But while you will forever be remembered loitering in star-infested landscapes, existing endlessly in imaginations and onscreen, I putter noisily in that infamous closet of celebrity—expanding, wrinkling, stooping, and far too often, stupid with age. Here we are enacting our very own Dorian Gray conf i g u r a t i o n . Yo u : s m o o t h , c e r t a i n , a n d s t r a i g h t - b a c k e d , f o r e v e r c o n d e m n e d to the vast, enviable prison of intergalactic adventure. Me: struggling more and more with post-galactic stress disorder, bearing your scars, g r ay i n g yo u r e t e r n a l ly d a r k , r i d i c u l o u s h a i r.
Yo u a l w a y s a c t t h e h e r o i n e ; I s n o r t t h e s t u f f i n t h e f e e b l e a t t e m p t t o d i m t h e g l a r e o f y o u r i n t e n s e , i n t e r g a l a c t i c a n t i c s . Yo u t a k e t h e g l o r y ; I g i v e w a y t o a g e . Yo u : s o p h y s i c a l l y w e l l a n d w e l l - m e a n i n g i t m a k e s m e m e n t a l l y i l l — w e l l , s o m et h i n g d o e s , a ny way. W h i l e yo u f i g h t t h e d a r k s i d e w i t h yo u r light, white ways, I’m in the sarlacc pit, covered in Jabba’s vile body fluids. Will it ever end? It probably won’t, but I will. I’m pretty sure I will. My sequels will finally, blessedly stop, while yours will define and absorb an age.
KLAMBI
Though you are condemed to reenact the same seven hours of adventures over a span of now almost four rowdy decades, at least you look good fighting evil. I look lived in. My amused and envious eyes peer out of a face bloated and evil w i t h a g e . Wa s n ’ t I s u p p o s e d t o r e m a i n h a p p i ly c a p t u r e d i n t h e a m b e r o f o u r p r o jected image, fending off water-retention, weight, and wrinkles in the same way you fight for the glory of whatever the fuck all that was about—a universe glowi n g w i t h p e a c e a n d f a i r n e s s , E w o k s c a v o r t i n g i n t h e i r f o r c e - f i l l e d f i e l d s ? Wa s n ’ t I ? C’mon—wasn’t I?
Of our all-but-shared fate (if shared, it’s in an unsanitary way)—whatever Leia’s has been or will be, Carrie’s will be, at least periodically, dwarfed and disappointing, riddled with self-pity, old and over-exposed, rendered sad and irrelevant in comparison with her counterparts’ rich and uninterrupted adventures. P l ay i t a g a i n , H a n ! L e i a p l ays w h i l e I co n t i n u e to p ay a n d p ay a n d p ay. I ’ m C a r r i e F i s h e r f r o m S t a r Wa r s — t h e s o u t h s i d e o f S t a r Wa r s , n e a r t h e Va d e r s ’ f o r m e r c o n -
I fade as you blaze. I stoop while you shoot straight and defend right. Oh, w e l l . T h e r e a r e wo r s e t h i n g s , I k n ow. T h o s e wo r s e t h i n g s g a t h e r a t m y b a c k and haunt my fun-packed future days. But worse gives way to better— D o r i a n O r g a n a g i v e s way to C a r r i e G ray. W e a l l w i n i n t h e e n d , d o n’ t w e? If not utterly, then in a number of cozy, inevitable, and limited days. She’s Leia Organa, from the center of so many humans’ best memories. Shining with the warm glow of sci-fi nostalgia. Our Alderaan, fly us, but wherever you go—over the hill or fucking Cloud City, Jabba’s palace or the emergency room, up, down, or over—do your best to do what I do: make sure you largely enjoy the ride. Skip the hairstyle, but enjoy the ride.
Love, Carrie
“ C A R R I E F I S H E R B I D S FA R E W E L L T O P R I N C E S S L E I A ” W A S
O R I G I N A L LY F E AT U R E D O N B U L L E T M E D I A I N 2 0 1 3
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