Two events of note

[dewline]

1. The seventh game of the playoff series between the Ottawa Senators and Pittsburgh Penguins starts tonight shortly after 8 PM EST.

2. Today is the 40th anniversary of the launch of Star Wars (Episode IV: A New Hope) at the movie theatres.

The phrase "Do, or do not. There is no 'try'" comes to mind, and I expect I'm not alone in that.

Comments

[mmcirvin]

My first inkling of the existence of Star Wars would have been sometime after that--I remember seeing an ad for it in a newspaper that my parents were using to cover a picnic table, and thinking it sounded cheesy. And then the excited word of mouth in kid society slowly began to build.

I think I didn't see it until the fall (and I was a bit apprehensive, because by then I'd heard a lot about it and thought it might be too scary). Of course, it was still running.

As to Star Wars

[dewline]

The whole thing creeped up on me too in terms of the growth of its popularity. But movies' popularity was built up differently back then, wasn't it?

Re: As to Star Wars

[mmcirvin]

Star Wars (along with, arguably, Jaws a couple of years earlier) invented the summer blockbuster as we know it. So it didn't have a big opening weekend with massive advance hype and product tie-ins and such. For the first few months, it was usually playing at one or two theaters in a metropolitan area, and people started noticing that viewers were making pilgrimages from far away and lining up around the block to see this movie.

Months later Kenner started making the tie-in toys and they couldn't even get them out by Christmas--they were actually selling certificates promising eventual delivery of Star Wars action figures.

Re: As to Star Wars

[mmcirvin]

...of course, by the time The Empire Strikes Back came out, Everything Had Changed.

Re: As to Star Wars

[dewline]

Your position re: Jaws being as much an influence on that change as Star Wars works for my own understanding of US movie industry history.