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By Tgreen, June 13, 2010 9:38 pm

Star Wars was a great movie, but it was The Empire Strikes Back that turned the franchise into a religion. Think about it. The original Star Wars was cool, it told a story, and it had a nice, neat ending where the good guys won and the bad guys got their asses kicked. You can have a lot of fun with that, but you don’t make a bazillion dollars and create a nerd army ready to kill for you. No, to do that, you need a sequel. And not just any sequel. If the first Star Wars sequel had been less Godfather II and more Caddyshack 2, I would not be sitting here writing this and you would not be wearing your Ewok Underoos while reading it. So a sequel. A good sequel. And that’s what we got with The Empire Strikes Back.

Though not right away. The Empire Strikes Back wasn’t actually the first Star Wars sequel. Not really. Before we got that, we got this:

Okay, maybe not strictly a sequel, but it was the first time our characters appeared on film since the movie, so I think we have to count it. Even if George Lucas would probably trade all the money he made off of those boxes of C3PO cereal he sold in the 80s to get us to forget the sight of Bea Arthur singing in the cantina, this thing happened and so we’re counting it.

In fact, The Empire Strikes Back isn’t even the second sequel. That honor goes to this book:

I remember seeing this book in the library in 1978 or 1979, reading it dozens of times, and eventually buying my own copy, which I also read dozens of times. Still probably have it in storage somewhere. But this book was an honest to goodness continuation of the Star Wars story, with Luke and Leia and Darth Vader and a lightsaber duel. Couldn’t ask for much more than that if you were a prepubescent Star Wars geek whose only other contact with Star Wars at the time was the Marvel Comics series, which occasionally featured a 6′-tall green rabbit (see previous Star Wars post for more of the gory details).

No, Splinter of the Mind’s Eye was a real sequel, and only recently did I find out how true that is. Apparently, when George Lucas was making Star Wars, he had no idea if it would be a hit or a flop so he commissioned 2 sequels in book form that, if necessary, could be turned into low-budget movies if there was no big money to make sequels. Obviously, the first movie was a hit, big budget sequels were a given, and so Splinter was released as a book that pretty much was contradicted by everything filmed afterwards (uh, yeah, Luke and Leia really seemed to have the hots for each other in this one and as we know, that would turn out to be really inappropriate). It was fun, but it was doomed to be a tiny footnote in the overall Star Wars saga. Which brings us to the first real, big deal, not a Golden Girl in sight Star Wars sequel, which I first saw in theaters some time in June, 1980, and which I then spent a whole summer reliving with this:

I think I may have bought the book before seeing the movie, but I’m not sure. I know for sure the book cover was the first time I ever saw the poster for the movie in color. And I know I didn’t read the book until seeing the movie and I doubt I had the self-control to own the book and not take a peek, so maybe I just missed the poster entirely while at the theater to see the movie. I know for sure I loved the book. I interacted with these movies so much more with the books back in these pre-VCR or -DVD years. And so after seeing the movie in the theaters twice, the book let me go back to the story whenever I wanted. The book, and this:

Yes, the movie in all its big glossy comic book glory. I read the hell out of this thing. Copied that picture of Darth Vader many times as it turned out to be the only thing I could do as a kid that could impress girls. Sad, but a Star Wars geek will take what he can get, and for me it was Darth Vader pictures. It’s facts like this that make me wonder how I ever got a girl to let me see her naked.

Odd little side note to that Marvel comics adaptation. It came out in 3 versions. The big magazine whose cover I copied, as monthly installments of the regular comics series, and a small paperback with the same cover as the magazine. Marvel did the adaptation while the movie was being made, so it worked with early drafts of the script and concept art, without being able to see the actual movie. So given how things change during a movie’s production, and how the paperback version of the adaptation went to press earlier than the other 2 versions, the paperback version has Luke being trained by a Yoda you might not recognize:

They managed to redraw Yoda in time for the magazine and comic books, to save our childhood heads from exploding. I didn’t own the paperback book, but I did own all 6 issues of the comic book in addition to the magazine, because even at that young age I needed to find as many ways as possible to throw my money at George Lucas. Another way I found was by getting this:

Star Wars music on cassette tape. That was the way to go back in 1980. I think I had to get it twice, because the first one was defective. Ever get a cassette tape that played to the end and the tape came loose so you could never play it again? This was one of those. I’ve owned a couple of versions of the music from all of these movies over the years, but I think The Empire Strikes Back had my favorite soundtrack of them all. Not sure why, but I think it’s the best one. Sounds way better on CD than it did on cassette tape, too. But crack open one of the comics, crank the cassette player, and you could pretty much guarantee someone bigger than you would want to kick your ass before the afternoon was over. Good thing I knew how to fight back.

There was one other way to keep up with a Star Wars movie back in the day, and it’s a way that’s pretty much disappeared by now. I’m talking about the official satire of the movie, as you might find here:

Mad Magazine still exists, barely, as a quarterly magazine, so if you really want to catch a spoof of a movie you liked, you might be able to even a decade deep into the 21st Century. But back in 1980, there was actually competition for such things, and if you really wanted to, you could drop a couple of bucks to compare and contrast:

Crazy Magazine was done by the same people who ran Marvel Comics, so not only were they first to the newsstand, but they had the wrong Yoda in their spoof. In the 30 years since I’ve forgotten if any of these were any good, but I’m sure I laughed my 12-year-old butt off at the time.

So, there it is, The Empire Strikes Back, named by some one of the better sequels in movie history, and often considered the best of the Star Wars movies. And I can understand why. It was bigger, faster, and louder than the first movie. It introduced a bunch of new stuff to the saga and threw in a twist and a downer ending that almost anyone knows even if they don’t care about these movies.

But what it also did was take the first step into a larger saga that, if you really look at it, doesn’t have a whole lot of room for the original movie. Five sequels later and the movies all more or less fit together into one neat story, except for the original Star Wars. There’s stuff in there that doesn’t quite match the layers of extra story George Lucas ladled onto it over the years. So while The Empire Strikes Back is easily the best Star Wars sequel, it loses many points because of what it did to the original. Though if I could dig out a copy of the comics adaptation tonight, I’d probably read it.

See you back here, or somewhere, in 3 years as we celebrate 30 years of The Return of the Jedi. Might take me that long to come up with enough positive things to write about it.

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By Tgreen, April 4, 2010 12:21 am

Okay, so against my better judgement I did in fact start up my script for Script Frenzy. It was not a trouble-free process. If you recall back in November when I started up Nanowrimo, my main point, other than the fact that it was a bad idea, was that I went in with nothing. No idea as to what I was going to write. No characters, no setting, no plot, no nothing. And this did not worry me, because I’ve been writing fiction for years and feel that if nothing else, I know how to work my way into a story even when I’m starting on fumes.

Turns out script writing is different, at least for me. Probably because I’m not used to the format, when I sat down on the night of April 1st to write, it was awkward. Maybe not quite “oh crap, I think I’m accidentally writing an episode of According to Jim” awkward, but it was pretty awkward. I dutifully banged out my 4 pages of script, powered down the computer for the night, and went to sleep. The thing is, though, I wasn’t itching to start working on page 5, and one thing I’ve learned from my several attempts at Nanowrimo, once I get started I can usually at least keep myself interested for the first few days or longer. If my script was boring me on day 1, how was I going to get through something like day 20, when no doubt I’d be several pages behind with a half dozen work deadlines kicking my ass?

Now, if you’ll hang on for just a second — a side trip. I mentioned the other day that I knew going into this thing that there was no way I’d be able to write 100 script pages in April. This is because I’ll be headed down to Disney World for a week, and I don’t expect to get a whole lot of writing done while I’m down there. But since I wasn’t going to let 4 lame script pages sink my month before it had even started, I looked for a way to get some writing done while on vacation. Since I wrote some of my Nanowrimo story on my iPhone, I went looking for a script-writing app and sure enough, I found several. One of them offered a free trial version, so on Friday I downloaded it and gave it a try. I didn’t pick up on page 5 of the script I was working on. Instead, I just started a second script and wrote about a page or so. It was no better than the other 4 pages, with no big prospects to get better.

If you’re keeping score at home, by day 2 of Script Frenzy I had 2 different scripts that I didn’t like, with barely a plot between them. What could I do? Would I have to give up on the 2nd day? I thought about it, sure. But then while I was at work another idea came to me. I did have one particular story kicking around the back of my head the last 2 years or so. It’s heavily music-based and most of the climax involves a singing performance, and from back when I first thought of it I knew that if the story were ever going to survive outside the confines of my brain, it would only work if people could hear the song, watch it being sung, and experience what the characters experience as it happens. This meant screenplay, which explains why the story got exiled to the back of my brain, called forward only when I played a particular sequence of songs on my iPod.

But I was thinking, maybe I’m not good enough to try and crank out a script by starting from zero. Maybe if I’m writing a script, I need the comfort of some pre-considered ideas to get me over the unfamiliar terrain of script writing. So I went home the second day of Script Frenzy, planted ass in seat, and instead of picking up the script from the night before, or the script on my iPhone, I decided to start my 3rd script in less than 48 hours and I wrote this:

INT. HOLLY’S WORLD STORE #8, NIGHT
BRIAN JONES, late 20s and dressed in business casual attire gone wrinkled and sloppy after a 12+ hour day, walks the empty floor of the store one last time, scanning up and down aisles for any activity as he heads for the bank of light switches past the checkout counters near the front door. NEIL, mid-20s and dressed in shabby jeans and a Holly’s World smock, slouches by the front door waiting for Brian. Brian hits switches in sequence as he passes, and a click is audible as a bank of lights goes out each time. When no light remains but the emergency lights pooled near the front door, he shoos Neil out the door and follows him.

CUT TO:

EXT. HOLLY’S WORLD PARKING LOT, SECONDS LATER
Brian and Neil walk to opposite sides of the wide entrance area and wrestle down the metal security grating. Brian closes the padlock on his end, then walks to Neil’s end and closes the padlock there as well. He blows a small cloud of steam into the cool night air as he and Neil survey the parking lot, empty except for Brian’s car and a minivan that just finished pulling up several spots away from them.

NEIL:
Oh Jesus, this isn’t a customer, is it? It’s like 2 in the morning.

BRIAN:
This is what happens when you cut back from 24 hours. People forget but they still need stuff.

NEIL:
It’s not our problem this dumb bastard showed up after the store closed. C’mon, let’s go.

BRIAN:
Let’s at least wait until we find out what he wants. We can point him toward the 24-hour store by the Interstate.

NEIL:
If we don’t freeze to death first.

Nothing Oscar-worthy, to be sure. But all of a sudden, I was writing a script for a story I’d thought up maybe 2 years ago. I’m on page 14 or 15 right now, and while I’m not even up to the first scene I’d imagined for this story, I’ve already introduced a character I never imagined lived in this story and who turns out to be pretty cool. And I’m looking forward to sitting down and writing this one every day, to see if I can make it to that last scene with that last song. I’m going all in on this one, and I hope it pays off.

Expect to see more script excerpts throughout the month, and also soundtrack listings, since for once I’ll be completely justified in making a soundtrack for a story. Thanks to my vacation I doubt I’ll make it to page 100 before April 30. But if it all works out, I’ll find a way to get this whole story down. Thanks for stopping by and indulging a more-than-slightly-burned-out writer wannabe.

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By Tgreen, November 17, 2009 1:07 am

Things are getting weird as the month rolls on. Weird, or just worse? Let’s go with weird for now, with the option to change later if need be.

So traditionally, Friday is a rough day at work because by the time I show up I’ve already worked close to 40 hours for the week and my energy and motivation are quite low. As it turns out, dropping 2 or more hours of writing per day into that schedule doesn’t make things better. It makes them, what did we agree on again? Oh yes, weird. Like how last Friday I started the day getting called up to see my boss. And how, totally unprovoked, he tried to explain how the company’s default setting is not “Screw Tgreen”. And how later that day the company did, in fact, screw Tgreen once again.

Friday basically helped me discover the exact amount of sleep deprivation that takes away my creativity and replaces it with exhaustion. I banged out maybe 1,000 words that night, half of what I schedule myself to write every day, and I passed out. Not to worry, though, because it’s the weekend now and there’s always extra time over the weekend to catch up. Except not when I’m taking a long-overdue trip up to my dad’s and I don’t want to spend the entire day being an antisocial writing prick. So Saturday I bang out zero words, which is considerably less than the 2,000 words I schedule myself to write every day, and go to sleep wondering if I was too tired to even enjoy the beers I was drinking, because I didn’t enjoy them very much.

Which brings us to Sunday. I was back home that evening with plenty of time to write. Except I still hadn’t slept enough the past two nights and there was stuff to watch on TV and maybe the idea of writing 50,000 words in a month is as stupid as it sounds. Quitting sounds like so much fun. Sleep, TV, reading, relaxing, no stumbling around like a zombie — just some of the things open to anyone smart enough to quit this contest. But I decided I wasn’t ready for that and my excuses were lame.

The thing is, that mind-fuck I mentioned last week? It taught me a quick and hard lesson. If you’re gonna try to pull a fast one on your audience, you’d better be ready to follow through on it. I wasn’t, and so after busting ass to get to that point, I had no idea what to do next. It was almost like Day 1 all over again, but worse because for several days I’d been craning away without any problems, and then suddenly I was at a dead stop. That’s why quitting seemed so attractive. Sure, I was tired and stressed out and the idea of some relaxing sounded so nice. But the truth was I was scared that I’d written myself into a corner and wouldn’t be able to get out of it. That’s why quitting seemed so attractive. And yet that night I stumbled to the keyboard, banged out another 1,000 words, and then stopped when I realized I was falling asleep sitting up, and also continually referring to one of my characters as “Ray,” which was weird since there’s no Ray in this story. Not yet, but maybe there should be. But I digress.

So the final score after the second full weekend of NaNoWriMo was that I was officially 4,000 words off schedule. Still at the halfway point for the contest and still technically ahead of a schedule that would get me to exactly 50,000 words in 30 days, but behind the schedule I’d set for myself. This sure felt like the Lost Weekend I was worried about last week. I needed to make a comeback and I wasn’t sure how that could happen.

Cut to Monday. Monday’s are hard to predict in my job. Sometimes there’s such a mad rush to get things out the door after a weekend that the day starts of like the beginning of Saving Private Ryan, and sometimes I could almost slip into a boredom coma due to lack of projects. Today, despite the fact that my official schedule said I’d be busy as hell, turned out to be a boredom coma day. This could be the comeback I was looking for.

Small problem — I’ve never found a way to write much while at this job. Our desks are all out in the open and a piece of fiction doesn’t resemble the work I do at all. Plus, I didn’t even know if I could write any extended amount while sitting at that desk waiting for a project to appear. But I figured I had to at least try. And 4,000+ words later, I have to say I succeeded. By writing more than twice my scheduled word count, I made up half the Lost Weekend. And even better, I managed to write myself out of the corner, pull a second mind-fuck out of the hat, and set myself up for at least a couple of days of writing where I know more or less what I should be doing. Not bad for a Monday.

Things took an ugly turn at the end of the day. The “Screw Tgreen” policy was once again in full effect, and I ended the day on a bad note that may come back to bite me in the ass. I’m sure I’ll find out early Tuesday if that’s the case. For now, I’ll bask in the glory of a word count that’s only 1 day off schedule, not two.

Coming next, another excerpt. Probably no less crappy, but hope springs eternal.

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By Tgreen, August 14, 2009 12:31 am

Hello and welcome to Happy Friday, the weekly blog post that’s just a city boy, born and raised in South Detroit.

This week Bob Dylan announced that he’ll be releasing a Christmas album this holiday season. It’s possible that this will be Dylan’s first album of Christmas songs in his long career, but given the murky vocals on many of his recordings, no one can know for sure.

A recent survey claims that women who drink two glasses of wine a day have better sex lives than women who don’t drink anything. The same survey revealed that women who drink six glasses of wine a day are more likely to have their sex lives turn up on YouTube than women who don’t drink anything.

And as always, the survey said that women who drink two six-packs of Schlitz a day can’t even give it away.

The NYPD is investigating a police officer who told a subway passenger trying to report a man masturbating on the train that it was not a police matter. The officer instead told the passenger to call the city’s information hotline and either report the incident as performing in the subway system without a proper license if the man didn’t complete the act, or littering if he did.

This week Best Buy’s website accidentally listed a $1,799 52-inch flatscreen TV for $9.99. The error was discovered quickly, but not before thousands of people had placed orders. Best Buy said it will honor the price on the website, but only if buyers also purchase a 2-year extended warranty for $1790.

Which is actually only about 20 bucks more than those warranties usually go for, so it’s still not a bad deal at all.

According to a recent study, 70% of American’s think that women should take their husband’s name when they marry. Hanging strong in the other 30%? The future Mrs. Dixon Cox, the future Mrs. Buster Cherry and the future Mrs. Nescobar Aloplop.

Reports are leaking out this week that in an upcoming memoir, former Vice President Dick Cheney will express his disappointment with George W. Bush’s behavior over the last couple of years of his Presidency. This makes it unanimous now, right?

Scientists said this week that based on the results of a study of rats, 10 days of eating a high fat diet can lead to laziness and stupidity. And in a relattnkqelnnflqe….oh, screw it, these keys are sooooo heavy and I don’t remember what I was going 2 say anyway.

Secret White House memos revealed an $80 billion deal with the pharmaceutical lobby designed to move President Obama’s health care reform plan forward. The bad news? Drug prices will continue to be high no matter what kind of health care deal ultimately passes. The good news? Free Flintstones vitamins for every American citizen. But there won’t be any Dinos, because the President was traumatized as a child when he saw the episode where Dino spoke.

In sports news, the Philadelphia Eagles this week signed quarterback Michael Vick to a 2-year contract. Vick has missed the last 2 seasons because he was in jail for several charges related to dogfighting. Vick had originally hoped to be signed by the Cleveland Browns, but everyone involved thought that might be a little inappropriate.

Because their fans are called The Dawg Pound.

See what I did there?

Wal-Mart is taking some heat for releasing cookies that people say are a direct copy of a couple of popular Girl Scout cookies, Thin Mints and Tagalongs. A spokesperson for Wal-Mart said the cookies are not copies and are completely original creations, just like their Walritos Cool Ranch Tortilla Chips, their Wal Whip dessert topping, and the new Big Mart burger available for purchase at their new McMart’s fast food chain.

Former Presidential candidate John Edwards is expected to admit that the daughter born to his former mistress is in fact his child. He’s apparently been ready to admit this for awhile, but he’s just waiting for a really busy news day to do it on so that maybe it gets lost in the shuffle. He’s also considering doing it on his wife’s birthday. He hasn’t decided yet.

There have been reports this week that the Spider-Man musical has run out of money and will not, in fact, be premiering on Broadway next February as planned. This is actually good news, as it will allow the producers plenty of time to mount a production of something from…

Tgreen’s Top Ten Musicals Even Lamer Than A Spider-Man Musical:
10. TV Guide, The Musical
9. Imus!
8. Tiptoe Through The Tulips, The Tiny Tim Story
7. Twitterpalooza
6. My Fair Biz Markie
5. Jersey Boys II, Bon Jovi Boogaloo
4. Celebrity Rehab: Jeff Conaway v Gary Busey
3. Metallica Mia
2. MacGruber!
1. The Phantom of the Top Ten List

And that’s all we have time for this week. Until next time, put your feet on the ground, and keep reaching for the remote, because Mad Men season 3 premieres this weekend.

T “green label” green