A Force to be Beckoned With

Growing up in San Diego, it was summer’s annual pilgrimage—waking up before dawn and piling in the car so we could arrive in Anaheim by the time the gates opened.  This was back in the time when you literally could do everything in one day, the era of “Mission to Mars”, the People Mover, Bear Country, and the E-ticket ride.  It was the "Happiest Place on Earth" and always represented not just one childhood siren song, but the whole Disney catalog we'd collected on LPs.  By the time I went to Disneyland for Grad Night (a tradition for SoCal high schools), all three Star Wars films had been released and the new ride at the Magic Kingdom was the motion simulator, Star Tours.  Little could I possibly know (or imagine) that 25 years later, I would be a fixture in the park myself, a minuscule part of these two pop culture legacies.

If you Google me, always one of the first things to pop up is my IMDB profile which includes one single acting credit: Rebel Pilot on Star Tours, The Adventures Continue (2011).  I’ve talked about my life on Skywalker Ranch before on this blog, and while many different highlights stand out (some of which I can talk about, some I can’t), that film credit is the one thing about me that the internet will likely remember the longest.  Today is the 40th anniversary of the release of the original Star Wars, so here are some thoughts on that day I spent on the green screen stages of “Kerner Optical” (ILM) in downtown San Rafael and the first time I saw the final product, many years later.

We were only given the sketchiest of outlines: we were in a hangar and we were welcoming back the patrons of the ride, who miraculously survived their thrilling adventure.  Because there were no corrective lenses “A Long Time Ago”, I had to hide my glasses inside my glove take after take, so I could only barely make out the camera as we all collectively whooped and hollered and applauded.  As is often reported, there’s a lot of down time on the set, so after multiple turns at that scene, we wore Hefty trash bag bibs while eating at the craft service tables (all our costumes were original artifacts from the first SW trilogy—see the Return of the Jedi still below).  Then there was lots of hangar B-roll footage: “I want you to walk from here across to there, but not in this area, because that’s where a big spaceship will be”, etc.  I also remember there was an actor from the prequels there (one of Padme’s guards) who had some lines to intro the ride, which we watched being filmed from the wings.  I asked if I could get a SAG card from my stint that day (I had no lines, so the answer was No) and then went back to my regular job the next day.

Years later, and just a few months after the ride opened, I left Lucasfilm.  And while the ride sounded cool (with its multiple randomizing elements, which made every experience a unique one), it hardly was convenient or practical to travel hundreds of miles to see myself for a whole 15 seconds.  But I’d hear from friends once in a while—none of whom had known I was on the new Star Tours but who could clearly pick me out among my rebel band.  I was intrigued but since the ride was in 3D, all the cel phone renditions that popped up on YouTube relegated me to a blur.  And that was part of my past anyway. Even when my mom asked to be taken to Disneyland one last time before leaving California for good, there were a lot of things I knew she wanted to do more (and with the randomizing element, there was no guarantee the herky-jerky ride which she wouldn’t enjoy would even pay off with an appearance from her son).

But then I heard there was going to be an expansion of Disneyland, which would include a huge new Star Wars section.  Would they move the ride?  It is just a flight simulator, easy to relocate.  Would it be closed for a while?  Would the now-expanding universe of new Star Wars films mean the need for constant revisions and updates?  I couldn’t be sure, but I knew I would feel like an idiot if I never saw myself on this thing.  The idea of going down seemed absurd since I had just been there recently (because a campus that big required me pushing her around in a wheelchair, Mom and I were able to go on everything she wanted).  But just around this time last year, I decided to drive down and go.

It only took two turns standing in line to see the module with me in it.  It’s a fun ride, cleverly done and entertaining.  No sign of any of the B-roll footage they shot; all the hangar footage on view as patrons wait in line is now much more CG-oriented.  No sign of Padme’s aide (C-3PO now took over hosting duties).  But sure enough, I was there in what one might call muted exuberance, welcoming myself home.  And the one module I'm in has my favorite music cue ("The Asteroid Field") from the entire series.  I found a single YouTube that shows all the original variations, so now I’m visible for the idly curious: my module (a hybrid of Eps 2 & 6) starts at timecode 19:51; I appear at 21:15.

And like I suspected, they had added a new module that included scenes from Episode 7: The Force Awakens.  Like George before it, the Mouse has the itch it can’t not scratch, this impulse to update, revise, and rebrand.  That’s particularly true of the park where I had so many childhood memories. I remember Nemo’s submarine ride when it was an homage to Jules Verne, Tarzan’s treehouse when it belonged to the Swiss Family Robinson, the Pirates ride before it was polluted by the movie’s score and uncanny valley Johnny Depp.  The reason I went in the spring was so I could ride the Haunted Mansion when it wasn’t taken over by The Nightmare Before Christmas (much as I love that film).  The one time I was on a ride that broke down and we all had to walk through it to exit outside, it was the now-long-gone miniaturization ride "Adventures thru Inner Space" which was in the same spot where Star Tours is now.

Another ride that’s no longer around is America Sings, this strange musical revue of early traditional American music, all performed by animatronic animal characters.  As it happens, most of those characters are now on Splash Mountain, in some ways an even stranger ride since it references a movie, The Song of the South (1946), that I’d wager few Disney visitors younger than I have ever seen.  There’s a perverse form of denial in the Mouse House about that controversial film since there’s no song you’ll hear more often in Disneyland than "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" (it is everywhere), but you won’t find the movie in their gift shops or the title referenced at all.  But it is a great ride and when I was on it, I had an epiphany: I’ll wager that Splash Mountain will be rebranded as a Zootopia variation at some point, since the rabbit and fox are already principal characters.  Plus, it's a safer, fresher property. Disney has little patience for the forgettable, so the regrettable seems even more likely to be casually swept away.

The one thing that made this Disneyland trip most unusual for me was that there was no urgency about lines or access or getting the most bang for my buck.  I had one mission, which I accomplished early, so the rest was active but oddly relaxing.  Some old favorites I revisited, but there was plenty of new stuff to discover: California Adventure is more serene, less congested.  The truly psychedelic Winnie-the-Pooh ride is audacious and bizarre, and the Monster’s Inc. and Little Mermaid rides are in the spirit of the old school Fantasyland storybook rides.  Cars-land is more entertaining than either of the actual movies.  I’m sure I would’ve enjoyed Toon Town as a kid (Who Framed Roger Rabbit? opened the same year as my grad night), but I did find this extraordinary little tidbit.  This is the mailbox outside Goofy's house.  Do you see the manila envelope?  Here's a close-up, upside down.

 

I love this inside joke.  The postmark date--July 17, 1955--was the date that the original park opened, back when Uncle Walt was alive.  And while we know a stork (voiced by one Sterling Holloway, a Disney regular) delivered the famous baby elephant in Dumbo, Roger Rabbit reminds us that in Toon Town, storks also deliver the mail.

 

Had any visitor even noticed that postmark before?  It’s the most incidental of grace notes.  But that’s what’s always been most amazing about the park: its meticulous attention-to-detail, embedding Easter eggs and hidden references everywhere—things you might never notice but whose cumulative impact is undeniable.  But I’ll admit it: it’s weird to be a childless single adult at the park.  It’s saturated In the cult of family and franchising and nostalgia and while it’s all impressive (almost to the point of overwhelming), I really have a hard time imagining myself ever going back.  I’ve seen everything there is to see, in some cases many times over.  Things will change, of course, but while I’ve been a lot of places across several continents, I hope to see much more out there before it’s all over.  The real world is my Tomorrowland.  And it’s even more true now than it was when I first heard the Sherman Brothers song: It is a Small World after all.  And an inviting one.

The day before I went to Disneyland, I hiked through Griffith Park and to the top of the Hollywood sign, something I’d always wanted to do.  I was in no rush, so it took a few hours of just me surrounded by nature, slowly working my way up to this gorgeous vista, a heavenly view of the City of Angels.  That hike was a bigger deal to me than what came the next day.  That was true magic. 

 

 

First, the Disney stamps.  You'll note the California Adventures card has all 5 different Mickeys (one per issue over 5 years).  Note that those postmarks are all Anaheim or Orlando (home of Disney World, which I've never visited).  To summarize:

Mickey, Donald, Goofy - Scott #3865

Bambi - #3866

Pinocchio - #3868

Mickey, Pluto - #3912

Alice in Wonderland - #3913

Snow White - #3915

Mickey, Minnie - #4025

Cinderella - #4026

Fantasia Mickey - #4192

Peter Pan - #4193

Dumbo - #4194

101 Dalmatians - #4342

Steamboat Willie - #4343

Sleeping Beauty - #4344

The two California statehood stamps are #997 and #3438.  The X-wing fighter is #4143m and the planet Neptune #5076.  Joel Chandler Harris wrote the Uncle Remus stories; his stamp (on the Splash Mountain card) is #980.  The Jack-o-Lantern is #5137.  

And at the time the Muppet stamps were released, they had a 3D show at California Adventure (though it's not there now).  The Scott #s are Jim Henson (#3944k), Kermit (#3944a), Fozzie (#3944b), Statler & Waldorf (#3944e), the Swedish Chef (#3944f), and Dr. Honeydew & Beaker (#3944h).

2016 Yearly Wrap

Parakeets, Scott #5124 - part of Pets issue

Shirley Temple, #5060

Sarah Vaughan, #5059 (w/Josh White #3215)

Mercury #5069 - part of The Planets issue

Everglades #5080l) - part of the National Park Service issue

Halloween Jack-o'-lantern #5140

Banana split #5095 - part of the Soda Fountain Favorites issue

Tulips #5049 - part of Botanical Art issue

Quilled Paper Heart, #5036

New Horizons probe #5078, part of the Pluto mini-sheet

Enterprise and planet #5134 - part of Star Trek issue

1953 Chevrolet #5102 - part of Pickup Truck issue (w/Hot Rod stamp #4909)

Wonder Woman (Bronze Age), #5150

Days of Future Past

2011 is the 10^th Anniversary of an event that never happened, when the discovery of an alien monolith on the moon propelled astronaut Dave Bowman to Jupiter and beyond.

I have loved 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968) for as long as I can remember.  There are movies I remember seeing earlier, as a kid, but not many.  It’s always been a part of my cultural memory (I was born two years after it was made), even though I’m not quite sure why—it’s exactly the kind of movie my parents would’ve frowned upon: opaque, irreligious, confusing, slow.

But for me, long before I ever remember stepping into a museum or being exposed to literature (and not just kid books), 2001 was my window into the world of Art.  Most of the movies I talked about were simply rundowns of things we loved, sensory highpoints and greatest hits.  But 2001 sparked debate between me and my nerdier classmates.  Was HAL evil?  What did the room where Dave ends up mean?  What was the Starchild?  Was the movie any good or not?

All films, all stories before 2001 had closure, clarity, unambiguous arcs.  Characters might’ve had complexity, but the final result was fairly clear cut.  But 2001 offered nothing conclusive, no easy answers.  This was a brave new world of observation, interpretation, nuance, and judgment.

My love for classical music started with 2001, and not just in the romantic sweep of the space ballet with Johann Strauss or the thunderous echo of anticipation from the other Strauss, Richard.  For there was nothing sadder than the heartbreaking loneliness of space through Khachaturian or more hypnotic than the atonal fusion of voices and discord as Ligeti took us into another dimension of time and distorted landscape, beyond the monolith.

The best Art changes, evolves with us, but remains both personal and universal.  That so many things about the world of 2001 didn’t come true (yet) is incidental.  For it is fixed neither in time nor location.  I get why not everyone will like it.  The best Art also refuses to placate when it would rather confront.  Some people are never satisfied unless there is an explanation, an answer.  But Art is like Life, and we make of it what we can and what we want.  

There came a tipping point with me quite early when I was OK with having 2001 (and by extension, many more subsequent books and movies and paintings) stay unresolved, even if I couldn’t fully articulate why.   All I knew was that, whatever the Starchild meant, or wanted, or was, it was a beautiful thing.  Transformative, and full of Hope.  Rebirth.  Renewal.  Promise.  An alien observer, it still spoke to the human condition and that’s what made it marvelous and momentous to me.

Years later, when I was in college, I saw 2001 for the first time on the big screen.  It became even more towering then.  The silence of space felt like the TV was on mute in my living room, but in the vastness of Berkeley’s UC Theater, it was unnerving, terrifying.  The most despondent of birthdays, the most clinical of murders, the saddest dirge of a dying computer all became bigger, epic, more visionary.  And that jump cut!  It still makes me gasp in amazement.

I am a theatrical fetishist.  I rarely rent videos and own far fewer DVDs than most people would expect.  I usually operate on the assumption that if I don’t catch a film in the theater, I’m unlikely to ever see it at all (or at least for many years until it migrates to cable).  But there are still my favorites that I return to as comfort food or as a reminder of things I love and care about, even if my cathode ray at home doesn’t do them full justice.

But not 2001.  That’s the one film I never watch at home.  It is not necessarily my favorite film, but it is bigger than life to me, so every time it pops up in a revival theater here, I do my best to go see it.  Because it is the future and the past, man and machine, history and possibility mingling together to sift and to embrace.  There are few things in this world that make me happier.

The X-wing fighter from the Star Wars issue (Scott #4143m) is paired with a spaceship from another scifi issue years earlier (Scott # 2744) and the Australia and Cuba stamps.  Pioneer and Jupiter had three stamps (Scott #s 1556, 2573, and 3189i, the last of which was part of the Celebrate the Century series).  2001 won an Oscar for Special Effects (Scott # 3772i) and the Sound stamp (# 3772j) is also part of the American Filmmaking series.  The Egg Nebula (Scott # 3887) was part of a larger astronomy issue.

My Top 10 Science Fiction films
1. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968)
2. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Spielberg, 1977)
3. Bride of Frankenstein (Whale, 1935)
4. The City of Lost Children (Jeunet/Caro, 1995)
5. The Incredible Shrinking Man (Arnold, 1957)
6. Metropolis (Lang, 1926)
7. Forbidden Planet (Wilcox, 1956)
8. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Gondry, 2004)
9. The Terminator (Cameron, 1984)
10. The Thing (Carpenter, 1982)

Plastics

Toy Story 3 is a triumph.

I, for one, had my reservations.  While I feel the original is about as good as animated films get, I’m one of those people out there who didn’t actually care for the second film very much.  Pixar has prided itself as a brand known for original thinking, but Toy Story 2 seemed larded with the easy type of meta-humor (Star Wars reference? Check; Star Trek reference? Check; etc.) which dates quickly and pulls me out of the film.  The movie has one show-stopper—the heartbreaking “When She Loved Me” flashback song—and plenty of funny energy, but the pervasive resorting to topical gags seemed more in the spirit of Family Guy (and that is not a compliment).

But Toy Story 3 plumbs emotional depths I wasn’t expecting, especially exploring the darker recesses of rejection, resentment, and petty tyrannies that resonate far beyond the playground politics of childhood.  Plus, the film has the courage of its convictions, taking us to the brink of a truly apocalyptic ending that is both terrifying and profoundly moving, while also providing us with one of the best deus ex machinas in recent memory, earning its stripes and never, ever feeling like a cheat.

But the one thing to which I’ve never been able to relate in these films is the emotional attachment Andy has to his toys.  They are not only springboards for his imagination; they are also his Friends, virtual proxies for a social life.  We see through the series the extent to which he personalizes that connection, having his toys as constant companions in his childhood, and caring about their fate practically into adulthood.

I guess that’s what I don’t get.  My toys were just my toys.  They weren’t confidantes, or buddies, or security blankets.  I didn’t invest them with larger personalities, didn’t attach emotional significance to them.  Did anyone?  I honestly don’t know.  I didn’t have a bad childhood by a long shot, but I did have a fairly isolated one.  I didn’t have many friends, rarely went to other people’s houses or got invited places, so I honestly don’t have a frame of reference on what other kids or families did.  My Dad was loving but logical.  An engineer, so empirical.  I never believed in Santa, never had a fantasy life indulged or a creative streak nurtured.

When my mom moved up to the Bay Area, selling the house we grew up in and Dad died in, she had an estate sale, which included all the stuff in my room, from my childhood.  Walking down memory lane that one last time, poring through artifacts, was fascinating but rarely sentimental.  Growing up, for me, was about ostracization, frustrated opportunities, and a singular awareness of how alone I was in the world.  

That’s why movies that are fueled by nostalgia, like Stand By Me or American Graffiti, do very little for me.  Because when it comes to that period of my life, I never look back with fondness or warmth.  It was just passing time until my Life could really start.  And maybe, in that sense, I’m not unusual either.  I just don’t know.

So for me, the first Toy Story (Lasseter, 1995) remains the best, because it doesn’t obsess about that relationship the way the other two films do.  That film is about self-actualization, coming to terms with who or what you are, on your own and in the community to which you’re tied.  It’s that sense of community that carries through all three films and serves as the vital backbone to the series (helped by a marvelous cast). 

As for the estate sale, I did sort through all my toys.  I don’t have any children (and likely never will), but I have two nephews, and I passed on a number of my old toys to them—not because I felt the toys deserved to be played with, but because I thought Josh and Caleb might get a lot of mileage out of them.  That’s the relationship I understand.

OK, maybe a few of the Star Wars action figures I kept.  As collectibles, you know.

Gene Autry (Scott # 4449)was part of the Cowboys of the Silver Screen series, while the flying spacemen (Scott # 2473) was part of a science fiction issue.  Yoda (Scott # 4205) was its own release, separate from the Star Wars issue earlier the same year, which included Boba Fett (Scott # 4143j)