For financial and family reasons, I never was able to see Empire Strikes Back in the theaters. I was seven, a perfect age to view it, but we couldn’t swing it. We couldn’t afford it at the time and the one time we went to the movies we took a family member who wasn’t feeling well to see Airplane. Now, Airplane is a great movie but has a seven year old, I only remembered the jiggling. Anyone that has seen the movie knows exactly what I’m talking about. Worse, I could hear the big action scenes through the walls of the cinema.
Fast forward to the car ride to Return of the Jedi. My dad drove and we took my best friend. I didn’t read the novelization at the time, even though I probably owned it, so my friend did a retelling of the story. He tried to be cool but do a dramatic retelling of the story at the same time. Memory can’t always be trusted, but I remember him telling it with amazing accuracy. Even my dad who is not a huge movie person was intrigued. In fact, that car ride is everything I love about Star Wars.
Fast forward to 2014. We are in London and attending the London Comic Con. We are meeting David Prowse and Kenny Baker. But there is another star there, Robert Hayes of Airplane. I’m so excited I make the Mrs. come with me (we normally split up on autographs that are just for us or at huge cons like the London one). When we meet him, I tell him how I didn’t want to see Airplane and wanted to see Empire. I literally said “The only part I remember.”
He interrupted and said, “the boobs going across the screen.”
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