CTV NEWS at NOON: Richard and Ken Shaw talk 40 Years of “Star Wars.”
Richard joins Ken Shaw on the CTV News at Noon to chat about seeing “Star Wars” for the first time. Watch the whole thing HERE! (Starts at 31:43)
Posts Tagged ‘George Lucas’
Metro In Focus: We all remember feeling that first flash of the Force
By Richard Crouse – Metro In Focus
February 3, 1959 and February 9, 1964. The day the music died and the date it was reborn on the Ed Sullivan Show, both days burned into the collective memories of pop culture fanatics everywhere. But what about May 25, 1977?
If you were a teenager then chances are you felt the earth shift. It was the day Star Wars opened, kicking off a cultural phenomenon that continues to this day.
This weekend the universe George Lucas unleashed in 1977 grows to include Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Much-anticipated, the movie is the first of the standalone Star Wars Anthology films and is expected to decimate the competition, Death Star style.
Expect line-ups and packed theatres — box office seers estimate it could pull in somewhere between $130 million to $150 million at the U.S. box office this week — but no matter how wild the weekend gets, nothing will match the pandemonium that greeted Star Wars in May, 1977.
To paint a picture of the first blush of Star Wars mania I asked my Facebookers what they remember about that moment a long time ago, in a galaxy (not so) far, far away…
“I remember being so in awe of that legendary opening scene with the giant spaceship coming into picture from the top and filling up the entire screen… oooo, aaaaah,” wrote Glenda Fordham. “The audience gasped in unison.”
“Upon leaving the theatre, with my little mind totally blown, I was interviewed by the news,” recollected Lesley Mitchell-Clarke, “where I think that I said, ‘Anything is now possible cinematically.’ I was all of 19.”
“My stepbrother, who was seven at the time, was dead set against seeing it,” says Tina Cooper, “and then of course saw it at least 50 times and dressed in Star Wars gear and played with Star Wars toys every single day for the rest of his childhood.”
“The line-up went right around the block and we ended up sitting in the front row of the balcony,” recalled Chris Ball. “I was mesmerized but dad was bored. Part way through I guess he decided he might as well get comfortable. He took his jacket off and in the process knocked his popcorn over the balcony railing. We got a stern lecture from the manager and almost got thrown out. Fast forward 20 years (1997) and I am now the manager of the same theatre and handing out those stern lectures.”
“I was six,” remembered Sue Edworthy. “My Dad took me to see it. I fell asleep halfway through. He took me to see it again. I fell asleep halfway through. The seventh time, I finally saw the whole thing. Clearly he had no problem seeing it again, and again, and again.”
“It was the first film that I went to more than once in its initial run,” said Adrian Gruff. “In the scene where the X-Wings enter the Death Star’s trench, I disengaged from the screen just so I could watch everyone’s heads do the sideways bob and twist that mine had done on first viewing.
“It was the first time that I had a true inkling as to the energy that religion refers to as ‘God.’”
RICHARD’S WEEKEND MOVIE REVIEWS FROM CP24! FRIDAY JUNE 17, 2016.
Richard and CP24 anchor Nneka Elliot talk about the weekend’s four big releases, including “Finding Dory,” the buddy comedy “Central Intelligence” with Duane Johnson and Kevin Hart, and a duo of documentaries, “De Palma,” an unflinching look at the films of Brian De Palma and the self explanatory “Raiders! The Greatest Fan Film Ever Made.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
RICHARD’S CTV NEWSCHANNEL REVIEWS FOR JUNE 10 WITH Todd van der Heyden.
Richard and CTV NewsChannel morning show host Todd Van der Heyden chat up the weekend’s big releases, including “Finding Dory,” the literary bio “Genius” with Jude Law and Colin Firth, and a duo of documentaries, “De Palma,” an unflinching look at the films of Brian De Palma and the self explanatory “Raiders! The Greatest Fan Film Ever Made.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Metro: childhood dream to create shot-for-shot remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark
By Richard Crouse – Metro Canada
“We didn’t know what we were getting into,” says Eric Zala.
Zala, along with Chris Stompolos and Jayson Lamb, spent much of the 1980s, their entire teen years, making a shot-for-shot remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark complete with special effects, car chases and melting heads. Ambitious in the extreme, they stopped at nothing to translate their vision to the screen, almost burning down a family home in the pursuit of their DIY dream.
“You can be surprised at what you accomplish,” says Zala. “As adults you have awareness of your limitations, real or perceived. That was one thing we had on our side when we embarked on this as kids. We didn’t know what we were trying to do was impossible. It’s a damn good thing because we would have been scared to death.”
A new documentary called Raiders!: The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made uses the original home movie as a basis to pick up the story decades after the trio abandoned the project. Zala and Stompolos are front and center to tell the tale of the obsession as they, now as thirty-somethings, try and finish the movie by shooting the one scene that eluded them as children, the exploding airplane sequence.
Stompolos describes seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark for the first time as “lightening in a bottle.”
“For our generation I don’t think we had ever seen such a perfectly crafted, mythologically aligned hero,” he says. “Indiana Jones was human, accessible, smart, macho, academic and flawed and could get hurt. The historical context was interesting and everything was just perfect. This larger than life character just kind of blew my mind. For me I wanted to create a playground for myself and see what it would be like to have those experiences.”
Enthusiasm and chutzpah go a long way, especially when they aren’t tainted by cynicism. The love of Raiders these fans—both as kids and adults—share is pure and respectful and their passion bleeds through the screen.
“We finished it in ‘89 and would have loved for Spielberg to see it but that was a pipe dream,” says Zala. “We certainly didn’t anticipate any kind of fan film movement back then. As far as we knew we were alone in the world. Come to find out, we weren’t. Lots of kids played Indiana Jones in their backyard. We just took it a little further. None of this was supposed to happen, we just did it for ourselves.”
“Eric and I pushed it over the finish line and stayed true to the pure vision,” says Stompolos, “because we simply love the movie.”
For this pair of fan filmmakers Raiders of the Lost Ark isn’t just a childhood fixation. Both have seen it recently, thirty-five years after Zala says it, “split my brain open.”
“It took our breath away,” Stompolos says of his recent viewing. “Even now there is so much detail. We caught so many new things. I can still watch the film and love it. I don’t ever get tired of it. The thing that amazes me to this day is that no matter how many times we’ve seen it, it still has secrets to give.”
RAIDERS! THE STORY OF THE GREATEST FAN FILM EVER MADE: 4 STARS. “chutzpah!”
In recent years fandom has developed a bad name. Gamergate and the kneejerk reaction to “Ghostbusters” have given being a geek a bad name. “Raiders! The Story Of The Greatest Fan Film Ever Made” harkens back to a pure time before twitter trolls gave nerd culture a black eye.
The story begins in 1982 when three eleven year old Indiana Jones obsessed kids, Eric Zala and Chris Stompolos and Jayson Lamb, embarked on a journey that would eat up most of their childhoods. The audacious trio spent seven summers making a shot-for-shot remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark, complete with special effects, car chases and melting heads. Ambitious in the extreme, the boys almost burn down a family home in the pursuit of their DIY dream and it becomes clear that the most astonishing thing about their project isn’t that they attempted it, but that their parents allowed them to continue with it.
The new documentary by Jeremy Coon and Tim Skousen uses the original fan film as a basis to pick up the story decades after the three friends abandoned the project. Zala and Stompolos are front and center to tell the tale of the obsession as they, now as thirty-something men, try and finish the film by shooting the one scene that eluded them as kids, the exploding airplane sequence.
Enthusiasm and chutzpah go a long way, especially when they aren’t tainted by cynicism. The love of “Raiders” these fans—both as kids and adults—share is pure and respectful, and their passion bleeds through the screen. Film geeks will love “Raiders! The Story Of The Greatest Fan Film Ever Made,” but despite its subject, it isn’t just for Indy-heads. It’s for anyone who ever had an impossible dream, anyone who never said no, even when the odds were stacked against them. In the doc no less a fan than Steven Spielberg says he was inspired by their dedication and chances are good you will be too.
DE PALMA: 4 STARS. “a simple film about a complex subject.”
Tracking shots. Split screens. Eighteen-minute Steadicam sequences. Visually spectacular set pieces. All are part of the Brian De Palma canon, but absent from a new, comprehensive look at his career. “De Palma,” a love letter to the director from filmmakers Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow, makes up for its lack of visual pyrotechnics with De Palma’s storytelling prowess.
“Many of movies were considered great disasters at the time,” says the director of “Phantom of the Paradise,” “Dressed to Kill” and “Body Double.” Now, decades after his commercial peak, many of De Palma’s films are considered classics. This new talking head documentary chronicles them all, warts and all.
From his early days as an indie filmmaker, working in the shadow of better known friends like Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola, to his critically reviled (“You are always being criticized against the fashion of the day,” he says.) but commercially successful period to a brief era when reviews and audiences lined up in tandem, he holds nothing back.
We learn how the director kicked “Scarface” screenwriter Oliver Stone off the set for talking to the actors, that in “The Untouchables” Robert De Niro wore the same kind of silk underwear Al Capone wore (“You never saw it but it was there,” says De Palma.) and how the studio loved the controversial “Body Double” “until they saw it.”
There’s more, told in De Palma’s bemused, colourful way—“I love photographing women,” he admits. “I’m fascinated by the way them move.”—but the real meat of the doc comes when he auteur talks about being a square peg trying to fit into Hollywood’s round hole. “The values of the system are the opposite of what goes into making good original movies,” he says.
“De Palma” is a simple film about a complex subject. “The thing about making movies is every mistake is right up there on the screen,” he says. “Everything you didn’t solve. Every shortcut you made. You will look at it for the rest of your life. It’s like a record of the things you didn’t finish.” It’s a master’s class not just in De Palma’s life and career, but also in how movies were made in the latter half of the twentieth century.
RICHARD’S WEEKEND MOVIE REVIEWS FROM CP24! FRIDAY DECEMBER 18, 2015.
Richard’s CP24 reviews for “Star Wars: the Force Awakens”–is it worth your theatre going dollar (even if you could buy a ticket for this weekend)?–or if you should check out the comedy “Sisters” with Tina Fey and Amy Poehler.
Watch the whole thing HERE!
RICHARD’S “CANADA AM” REVIEWS FOR DECEMBER 18 WITH MARCI IEN.
Richard’s “Canada AM” reviews for “Star Wars: the Force Awakens”–is it worth your theatre going dollar (even if you could buy a ticket for this weekend)?–the comedy “Sisters” and the kid flick “Alvin and the Chipmunks: Road Chip.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
