Nineteen Eighty-Two

I don’t remember seeing Star Wars: A New Hope at the movies, though for years it was my go-to answer anytime the question of ‘what movie did you see in theaters first?’ would arise in conversation - and it’s not dishonest. That was my first attendance to the wonderful world of cinema, and I did see it in the strictest definition of the word, but I did not 'see' it, savvy? True, those frames danced across the screen and were reflected in what I can only assume were my ever-widening little peepers, but it was late May of 1977 and the guy typing this into a laptop keyboard was barely 3. I think my recollection of that event, an event whose details I would have sworn to even last week, has been wholly adopted from my mother’s own accounting.

It’s her memories I’m speaking from and about.

If I dig through the garbage dump contained between my own two ears, what Kurt Vonnegut so aptly once referred to as ‘dog’s breakfast,’ my first true recollection of seeing Star Wars was on a much smaller screen. One of the big three, ABC, CBS, or NBS broadcast it one evening years later and I sat in front on the couch, my finger resting anxiously on the pause button of the remote used to control the record function of the top-loading VHS player my step-father had brought home a few weeks previous. I had been given the job of making sure to cut the commercials from the movie, and I failed on more than one program break. Blame it on my bladder, or wanting to supervise my sister making some Jiffy-Pop popcorn on the stove top, or just plain old absent-mindedness, but I do know that video tape ended up with a few advertisements stuck between scenes along with a couple of minutes missing from it’s actual run time because I forgot to un pause as well.

My mind wanders even in the face of laser-blasters and space wizards.

No, the first memory, my own actual memory of seeing a movie in the theater, wouldn't plant itself permanently in my mind for another 5 years.

I don’t have children of my own, or I’d ask them their opinion, but has there been a more magical span of 12 months for movies than 1982? I know I’m operating from a biased position, but I have spent some time with this query, done plenty of research concerning the subject and I haven’t found another year that released so much fantastic cinema, at least from the perspective of a very imaginative child. Just to mention a handful: E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, The Secret of Nimh, Tron, Blade Runner, The Thing, Creepshow, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Conan the Barbarian, The Man from Snowy River, Poltergeist, Sorceress, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, The Last Unicorn, Cat People, Swamp Thing, The Beastmaster, Zapped!, Rocky III, The Sword and the Sorcerer, Basket Case, Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, Barbarosa, and The Dark Crystal. This is the year that both of my eyes opened wide and my brain turned into a very thirsty sponge, at least from what I can remember. Two of the films mentioned up there, some 38 years later, are still in my top 5. I enjoy all of them to one degree or another as they’ve all informed what I love about filmed story-telling and served as seeds to the garden of my imagination. My mom has said that “maybe I should have been more cautious about what I let you watch,” but I’m glad of all that exposure. Aside from a few nightmares, they’ve all added fuel to a fire that’s still keeping me warm. Genre may be a dirty word to some, but they’re all represented by the movies in that list up there. Science fiction, fantasy, horror, drama, and romance all make an appearance within that list, and I’ve never shied from their intermingling. I prefer it, actually.

I want my burrito bulging at the seams, ya dig?

The first movie I can clearly recall seeing inside the comfy confines of a movie theater, pardon my long-winded detour getting to the answer of, was The Dark Crystal. From the moment the curtains parted, all the lights were extinguished and the first few notes of Trevor Jones’s score crashed down upon my ears like a breaking wave, I was transported into a world I wouldn’t have believed existed. I was swept out to sea. The score swelled and receded, swelled again, and the sand of this world was pulled from between my toes. My feet slipped out from beneath me and I began to swim in the waters of this new world. The narrator’s voice floated like a buoy in and out of the waves of music that filled the theater. I was awestruck. What are these things? I wasn’t unfamiliar with Jim Henson as The Muppet Show was a staple of my weekly television diet, and I knew that this was his movie, but these creatures… These creatures were strange. Eerie. Some were even scary. Jen, Kira, Fizzgig, and the Podlings, sure, they were recognizable as muppets, but the rest of the inhabitants of this beautiful and frightening land were completely alien to the very concept of what I believed muppets to be. What kind of movie was this? It wasn’t live action and obviously wasn’t a cartoon, though it seemed to have elements of both weirdly weaved within it. How was this even possible, I wondered as I watched the plot of this film blooming before me like some bizarre flower on-screen. These questions, asked once the final credits rolled, would become an obsession with me, and would inevitably drive my mother cuckoo-for-cocoa-puffs with my inability to just accept her answer of “They’re just puppets and I don’t know how they hid all the strings.”

A few years ago I bought the 25th anniversary edition of this classic, and it contained a ‘making of’ featurette with commentary from both Jim Henson and Frank Oz. For those who don’t already know, without much change to their normal voices, Henson was the voice of Kermit the Frog, and Oz was the voice of Fozzy Bear. So, to my absolute delight, all those questions I had as a goofy little kid - the answers were being bestowed upon my ears by none other than Kermit and Fozzy!

Sitting there in the theater, by the time that I was introduced to Aughra by the way of her disembodied eyeball, I had forgotten all about my popcorn and coke. From that point I existed only on the first few inches of my seat until the very end of the film. Wild horses couldn’t have dragged me away - or Landstriders, for that matter. The Skeksis, with their bird-like heads, skeleton thin, lanky and taloned fingers that, when they weren't creepily reaching, were always stuffing still-quivering food into their beaks, were both frightening and compelling. When they weren’t speaking with their raspy voices, they vocalized a single note that felt like a question that if not answered correctly would lead to something quite unkind. It was the Garthim, however, that would inhabit my nightmares for years to come: a contingency of hulking black beasts that seemed part beetle, part crab and wholly terrifying. They’re still there, hiding in the deepest, darkest recesses of my subconscious, only revealing their presence with the insistent clicking and clacking of their claws. Years later, reading the second installment of The Dark Tower, I wondered if those creatures responsible for Roland’s disfigurement weren’t themselves a distant cousin of the Garthim. It was Aughra, though, that I loved the most. She was the Yoda of this film, if Yoda were female, sharp-tongued and bestowed with a detachable eyeball. She was just as apt to bequeath you with a line of knowledge as she was to verbally disembowel you, and you would be deserving of whichever she decided upon. No space wizard, she, but a terrestrial witch wielding magic with smart-ass commentary.

This movie had me laughing, clapping, gritting my teeth and crying all within its 93 minute runtime, and all those emotional reactions are what I feel are a requirement now. That concrete, mixed in your year of whichever lord you pray to 1982 is solid in the foundation of this guy. For whatever reason I attend a film, be it for a specific writer, director, actor, composer, or director of photography, I want to experience the range of all those emotions. I need to. I need to be filled up and then wrung out and filled back up again. I need a movie to beat me up and then nurse me back to health. I need stories that teeter on the precipice of being a religious experience. It's a lot to ask for and is rarely fulfilled, but I ask nonetheless. To quote a writer far more adept than I:

"The telling of a story is nothing more, or less, than the process of the viewer coming to experience what has seemed to be separate entities as informed by a single unity. In that context all of these abstract qualities such as plot and character are subsumed in what is really a religious construct." -David Milch

If that isn't magic, then what is?