We're less that 90 days away from the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens so let's take 12 minutes and look at my favorite Star Wars spoof of all time:
Back when my family first got Showtime - the cable channel followed the traditions of television up to that time - every movie started on the hour or half hour. Of course, some movies have run times that don't fit that prerequisite. Nowadays, they end one movie, identify the channel, tell you what's on that night, and basically start the next movie.
Back in the day, if a movie ran, say, 126 minutes - like the theatrical release of Battlestar Galactica - Showtime would start it at 1:00pm, and when it ended at 3:06pm - they would then show short subjects to fill the time so that the next movie could start at 3:30pm.
And, as a matter of fact, when Battlestar Galactica aired on Showtime, they licensed Hardware Wars to fill half of that 24 minutes - and showed another short and some previews for the channel every time Galactica aired. I watched BG several times that month - but I think I watched Hardware Wars every single time BG was on. I LOVED it.
I still think it's hilarious. I do miss the version that originally aired on Showtime - as the one above is an edited version. Yes, filmmaker Ernie Fosselius pulled a George Lucas on his movie. Originally, in the briefing sequence, it ran longer, and at one point the picture on the screen he points to showed a naked woman. It was very brief and from the distance hard to see any real detail - but the director has taken that out to make the short more family friendly. That bit has been chopped out and the remaining two bits seamlessly blended together.
I memorized EVERY WORD of that briefing scene and still remember it to this day - and the missing chunk in the short now totally throws me off. In order for it to cut back together cleanly - they cut out "Follow that baby down to the spherical decombustion atmospheric helio servo tubes" and then it came back to "and the pneumatic centrifugal antigravity shield deflectors" and went on.
(If we're ever in the same space and you ask, I will recite the whole scene for you.)
Until next post, you Can Poke Me With A Fork, Cause I Am Outta Here!
I'd heard of this, but never seen it all before tonight. That's a nice piece of work! I wonder how much time they invested in it? Luke Starbucker. Wonder if the name was inspired by Starbucks? The coffee shop would have been around about seven years at that time...
ReplyDeleteIt's funny how a cut can throw you when you know a scene. My kids were huge "Friends" fans. They had the dialogue memorized from the DVDs. When they saw it run on TV in syndication, they'd always look a bit perplexed when parts of the show went missing.
I guess no Star Wars films are immune to after-market edits. We'll see if Abrams comes back to TFA...
I think they shot that for a long while - probably nights and weekends while they worked the jobs that kept them fed. Ernie F. made other short films and parodies, including a funny Apocalypse Now spoof about a butcher on a journey to meet another butcher called "Porklips Now."
DeleteFluke Starbucker's name might well have been inspired by the coffee chain as Hardware Wars was made on the West Coast where it originated.