John Golden     Star Whores So, I'm supposed to be writing this post-revisionist article on how George Lucas damn near ruined Star Wars, and my deadline is only 12 hours away, but I'm not getting anywhere because earlier this evening I hit a dog with my car, and all of the cutesy little phrases that I've been concocting in my head for the past week have been driven out of my head and replaced with the slow motion sequence now burned in my memory where the dog runs out in front of my car, turns his head and looks at me, his eyes reflecting the bright yellow of my headlights, and then disappears beneath me as the high-pitched squealing of my brakes almost, but not quite, muffles the sound of the impact. Now, all of a sudden, it occurs to me that the manner in which George Lucas almost ruined his movie is much less important than the reason that he and all of his computer animated hocus-pocus weren't able to. You see, my initial criticisms were obvious ones. All of the computer generated additions, from the blinking lights on R2-D2 to the epileptic jurassic slagathaurs in Mos Eisley were more distracting than anything else, and the added footage seemed to serve no other purpose than to change Han Solo from the shoot-first-ask- questions-later-outerspace-outlaw-Josie-Wales-maverick he was in the original version into a cookie-cutter George Lucas goose like Luke Skywalker or C-3P0. To wit: in the new scene where Han shamelessly kisses Jabba's, er, ass, he should have been saying something to the effect of "Look Jabba, I don't know about you, but where I come from, the fun doesn't even begin until someone loses an eye. Now, I'll get you the money when I get you the money, and if that's not good enough for you, well, then I'll just have to kill you, won't I?" And don't even get me started on the implications of Greedo firing the first shot in the Cantina scene, or the newly agile fancy flying Millenium Pony. The bottom line is this: Han became a weenie. But despite these and a veritable laundry list of other grievances, I can honestly say that seeing Star Wars on its opening night was the best time I've ever had at the movies. Ever. And that's a big deal when you consider that a.) I was surrounded by a legion of obnoxious E-school dorks who were reciting the dialogue (verbatim, of course) along with the characters and b.) I was one of those fortunates who saw 9 1/2 Weeks at the theater. And the reason it was so much fun is that regardless of all the computer schlock and cutting room floor footage, Star Wars remains one of the greatest stories ever told. Its combination of Bilbo Baggins / Narnian-style fantasy and twentieth century totalitarian politik is a refreshing lesson in right vs. wrong in a time when everyone wants to talk about morality, yet no one can seem to get it right. And I'm not talking about the dubious sort of morality advocated by angry yellow William Bennetts, but rather the shiny happy Atticus Finch variety which everyone gets as a kid and subsequently loses sight of once they become, like, jaded, and has recently become an undeserving target for the polemics of misguided hipsters who break out in a rash at the mere mention of the word morality. It was this fundamental notion of right and wrong, which the optimist in me believes exists in everyone (or at least the however many odd million people who seem to like Star Wars as much as I do) that occupied my thoughts while standing in the middle of the road next to the dying dog earlier this evening, as a sad and ironic tragedy of errors unfolded before my eyes. The humanitarians at the S.P.C.A. said it would be two and half to three hours before they could send someone. Um, okay. So I called the police, and in about 15 minutes they arrived at the scene. Fifteen minutes later they were goodly enough to (hark!) actually get out of their police van. All the while some brainy smurf pedestrian (who obviously spent the better part of his evening with some wicked catnip) kept trying to remove the towel I had covered the dog with (it was in shock), and place it under his head, and the motorists who weren't paying enough attention to rubberneck did their best to run me over as I attempted to direct traffic. When the officer finally got out of his van to, like, "handle the situation," he deputized some redneck neanderthal to help him drag the dog to the side of the road. I asked Special Agent Hammerhead what was going to happen, and he said "Well, the city isn't going to pay for this. The dog doesn't have tags. My concern is to get him out of the way of traffic." At this point his trusty deputy asked me, "Boy, are you, you know, sensitive to animals?" To that I could only return a look of absolute dumbfoundedness, which I regret profoundly. I don't even know which color ribbon corresponds to, like, "animal awareness," and I admit that I am often suspicious of the lack of common sense evidenced by so-called activists, but it was utterly beyond me how anyone could be so coldly efficient with a living being in obvious agony. When a concerned onlooker realized that the wonder-twins intended to drag the dog to the side of the road to die in the snow, and that I was catatonic, she asked the officer to shoot the dog to put him out of his misery. The officer's response, which came amidst a flurry of stutters and sideways glances, I cannot recall verbatim. I can paraphrase it, however, and with just one word, even: paperwork. I don't know very much about police protocol and procedure except that there exists a finely woven web of regulations with more angles and loopholes than the grandest Pythagorean clusterfuck. It may very well be that there were real reasons that the cop wasn't able to perform the mercy shooting. I can accept that that wasn't the right answer. But it was closer to the right answer than leaving the dog on the side of the road. This I am sure of. So, the point I'm trying to get at is that I hope that the reason people are flocking to see Star Wars is not the Industrial Light and Magic sponsored weird science (like that twit at the C- ville), but rather, the story of people getting over their bullshit inertia and fighting the good fight. I don't expect Officer Happy to run off with some puritan on a damn-fool P.E.T.A. crusade, and I hope this doesn't sound as hokey and sentimental as I'm afraid it does, but there are situations in life that demand a little compassion. And Officer Happy dropped the ball.

back to Decweb main