Seventeen in '77: Memories of Star Wars' Initial Run

This is a very personal post, no business tips to be offered, or gained.  But with the new Star Wars movie, The Force Awakens, less than a month from exploding onto cinema screens, it seems an opportune time to think back to the release of the original in 1977. 

This was a time when a “little” sci-fi movie would quaintly open in just 32 theaters across the country, on May 25th, and those had to be coaxed by Fox under threat of withholding Sidney Sheldon’s expected blockbuster, The Other Side of Midnight later that summer.  There were no toys, books, or movie tie-ins to herald its arrival on screens.  In fact, so mystified was I when my dad showed me the ad for Star Wars in the Sunday paper, saying he thought I might like it, I actually asked “Is that a cartoon?” 

We had zero foreknowledge of who or what Darth Vader was, other than that he or it appeared villainous, choking some poor soldier with a single hand, threatening a pretty damsel in distress with a nasty-looking syringe.  Was Vader a robot?  A human?  Some twisted cross between the two?  And what’s up with the hair on that woman?

I was 11 years old in 1977.  Without a driver’s license, I had to rely on the kindness of parents and others to see this strange-looking movie.  And there were many kindnesses. I felt no need to see it opening day, but got dropped off with a friend outside the Stanley Warner Triplex in Paramus, N.J., on Day Four, Saturday. It was sunny, and I waited in a buzz-fueled line for about an hour to get in.  That theater had a main screening room with about 1,200 seats – palatial by today’s standards – and every one was filled.

I came out a changed person. It’s hard to lay a finger on how I had changed, but a sense of wonder was awakened in me. This was, in my scant 11 years, the most thrilling, entertaining thing I’d ever seen.  I had to have more of it.

So I saw it the following day with a different friend. And I saw it again that week with yet another buddy.  The viewings began racking up, each a notch on my gun belt.

My friend Sean, with whom I’d seen it during the first week, wanted his mother to see it. I tagged along that afternoon.  That evening, Randy, with whom I’d also seen it, was going with his family to the Paramus drive-in.  Yup, I was in the car.  We listened to the soundtrack on a specified station on the car radio.  It felt so decadent to see Star Wars twice in the same day.  It remains the only movie I’ve ever seen in a drive-in.

One evening in early June, I planned on “taking” my parents to see it for the first time.  I was really excited to introduce Star Wars to the man who first introduced it to me.  That afternoon, I was playing Frisbee tag with friends in the street in front of my house.  I landed badly after jumping to avoid getting nailed, and I could barely walk.  Not to be disappointed, I hobbled into the Hi-Way Theater in my hometown of Fair Lawn, N.J., supported on my parents’ shoulders.  What's an ER and x-rays, compared to space dogfights and lightsabers, after all?  The next day, I was put in a plaster cast for five weeks, for a fractured bone.

I saw this wondrous film on large screens and modest ones, indoors and outdoors, ambulatory and not-so, with friends of all stripes, but never alone.  Seventeen times in all, counting only the version in which Han shoots Greedo first.  I tell people like it’s my red badge of courage. 

Later, we marveled at a silent, black-and-white, 8mm highlights reel in Randy’s basement.  Then, around 1982, I watched it on his Betamax, awed by the fact I was actually seeing Star Wars outside a movie theater.

Like many, I’ve since owned multiple home video versions, notably Laserdisc, DVD and Blu-ray (never VHS!).  The hefty Laserdisc collector box of the Special Editions has a place of honor on my shelf.  And I own a rarity indeed: the gatefold Laserdisc edition of the original version.  I will never part with this, as it was signed by David Prowse, Darth Vader himself, at the Starlog Store in Ridgewood, N.J.

It’s unlikely I’ll ever again see anything more than twice on the big screen.  Star Wars wasn’t just a movie. It was a phenomenon, a drug, eye-candy in the most wonderful sense.  For this boy, it was a life-altering experience. 

J.J. Abrams, you have a lot to live up to. 

Gary Frisch is founder and president of Swordfish Communications, a full-service public relations agency in Laurel Springs, N.J.