a long time ago or how george lucas' filmaking is in a galaxy far far away[and that's bad]

so i've been poking around inside the guts of my special widescreen boxed set of the first star wars trilogy, and i've got some thoughts.

i started out with 'the empire strikes back', which has always been my favorite of the original trilogy. so i popped in the dvd and decided that i would go ahead and listen to the commentary. The voices of Lucas, Director Irvin Kershner, Carriie Fisher and a couple of other great guys you've never heard of.

let me make it clear that irvin kershner is a f*cking idiot. i can't even begin to describe to you the furry inside of me as i listen to his comments about the movie, the characters, the way they did things. he's pandering to the lowest common denominator here. comments like "this is a fairy tale, and the best fairy tales are the ones where the people are believeable" or, "this is dagobah, where we find the philospher-sage yoda!". No shit sherlock, am i an alien in the third grade who doesn't know what cinema is? i hate you irvin kershner

on george lucas's ticket straight to hell

how can a man, so idiotic and full of crap, produce something so beautiful as the original version of star wars, only to miss the anachronistic elegance of the things, to go back and ruin it later. i can not even begin to describe how pandering and silly his comments are in addition to kershner's.

on being a dissapointed man/child

even though they made it, i wont let them ruin it for me. star wars is awesome. it will always be awesome, as long as we don't throw out the beautiful baby of the original trilogy, with the bloated, bearded and fluffy haired billionaire bath water.

the very best parts of the commentary were the hack stuff, the sound stuff, tech garbage and the emotional actress stuff. Ben Burtt, Dennis Murnen and Carrie Fisher are the saving grace of the commentary track, but only the diehard fan can sit through 30 mintues of kershner/lucas gay-fest to enjoy a 20 second comment from fisher, like so:

"i had rented my house from Eric Idle in London, and they were shooting the 'life of brian'. He came home one the nights that we were shooting, so he brought home from there what i believe he called 'tunisian table cleaner' which was a beverage. they gave it to the extras in 'life of brian' to make them be happy. and harrison came over, and the rolling stones came over. i think we stayed up most of the night, and then went to work. so when we arrived in cloud city, we were very happy to arrive there. it's one of the few times in all the films when we are all smiling and smiling and smiling. eric to this day is still proud that he has effected on of the scenes this way"

carrie fisher, if you are out there, i know you're cynical that george didn't let you wear a bra in 'a new hope', and that you had to shoot 'empire' on a glacier in Norway, but it's all been worth it for this last comment. i love you