Conventions

Arriving into Burbank straight from my recent adventure in Las Vegas the first thing I did was head East out to Anaheim in anticipation of attending my first Star Wars Celebration. Over the next few entries, I will do my best to bring justice to an experience that I will never forget.
Enjoy ?

Star Wars Celebration Anaheim – April 16th-19th – Anaheim Convention Center – Anaheim,CA

You’ve heard of Comic-Con & the like but what about an entire convention dedicated just to Star Wars & the culture & mythology that surrounds it & produced by the creators of the franchise so you know your getting the real deal?

​

Beginning back in 1999, Star Wars Celebration started as a celebration of the return of the franchise that year with The Phantom Menace, the first of the three prequels. Not an annual event, Celebration Anaheim is the first one in two years, the first to be held in the United States in three years, only the seventh one in the US, only the tenth overall, only the second time it’s been held in California and the first time since 2007.


April 18th – Day 3

On the third day I had more time to walk around & check out the showroom floor & investigate some of the more social activities they had scheduled.
When you think of the sheer scope of the Star Wars legacy, you have to ask yourself – “What has been this HUGE for THIS long?” So you know that has to include celebrity fans & I spotted some that were here just as fans & some also in a professional capacity but not to promote their brand but because of their love for Star Wars. Among them were:



Darren Hayes from Savage Garden –

Hayes has been succesful with a second act of podcaster with his “The He Said She Said Show”

Weird Al Yankovich (no big surprise there) (left)
& Jeordie White aka Twiggy Ramirez from Marilyn Manson (right)

I spotted WWE/NXT’s Corey Graves who was here shooting a spot for his new web series for the WWE Network called Culture Shock

Star Wars Speed Dating

Like in Salt Lake City I’m starting to see a theme here – nerds are usually socially awkward so why not give them help with a conceptualized dating game?

Participants, all over the age of 18, were seated in front of each other, and had three minutes to make a lasting impression before moving on to the next person.
Organizers discouraged people from talking about what they did for a living or where they lived. Rather urged them to focus on their common interest – “Star Wars.”

Rancho Obi-Wan Experience

One of the highlights was Steve Sansweet’s Rancho Obi-Wan Experience, which offered visitors just a small glimpse into the variety of sheer passion that goes into the world of Star Wars collecting. Rancho Obi-Wan itself is home to the world’s largest privately-owned Star Wars collection housed in Sonoma County just outside of Petaluma, California. Visiting the mecca of Star Wars collecting museum is not an easy task for most,  but for the thousands of visitors to Star Wars Celebration Anaheim, the Rancho Obi-Wan Experience was part of your daily admission.

Throughout the space, once you’re inside, is an open floor. The treasures are on the walls, from floor to ceiling (or top of the wall actually) and focus on how Star Wars fans have made Star Wars their own through their artwork, sculptures, shrines, custom figures and more. It really is a magical menagerie and what you see here you won’t find anywhere else… at least not likely.  If you want displays of old merchandise, there’s websites and books dedicated to all of that. Here, you’ll find an endless array of inspiration made by the fans.

The highlight of the experience is a rather large oil panting titled The 20th Century Space Opera by Robert Xavier Burden. It’s a masterpiece that only those who grew up with Kenner Action Figures could truly appreciate, but it’s such a magnificent piece of art that anyone who just loves Star Wars will love it as well.

Met with the people behind Rancho Obi-Wan. Steve Sansweet, Anne Neumann were on hand to sign copies of their new book “Inspired by the Force: Star Wars Fan Artifacts & Art”. The 72 page book is just the first volume in a series, “The Treasures of Rancho Obi-Wan”. If you were unable to visit the experience, this book is the next best thing.

Star Wars Rebels Season Two Premier

I felt bad actually because as I mentioned although I’m a huge Star Wars fan, I would rank about 99,000 on the list of this six-figure crowd compared to their enthusiasm. EVERYONE was buzzing about something called Star Wars Rebels – even the press agents were warning me that I had to there early to get my wristband etc and when I did arrive their was such a buzz around it.
Here’s the deal I had no idea until I was inside the screening hall in my seat that this thing even existed let alone that this was the beginning of Season Two.

Vader has a softer look than one might expect, without the almost robotic movements that gave weight to his limbs in the Original Trilogy, but by the end of the episode he is utterly convincing. A tense fight scene establishes Vader’s power & as he stands with his hand raised, surrounded by flames, I can believe in this Vader, and in how much he outclasses half-trained Jedi Ezra and Kanan.

The episodes drives home the fact that this is the end of the Rebel cell’s operations on Lothal, at least for the near future. Ezra has seen not one, but two homesteads destroyed, and Kanan’s efforts to disguise himself could not hide him from the Empire’s strongest enforcer.

Talking to Myself  Mark Hamill & James Arnold Taylor

One of my greatest passions in life is the art of voice acting, some of the people I admire & respect the most in my life are voice actors. I consider Mel Blanc a God & recently visited his gravesite in Hollywood. The actors that have voiced the cartoons I grew up with are some of my greatest inspirations. Sometimes I sigh with regret that I didn’t make it my chosen profession.

In this special panel Mark Hamill & James Arnold Taylor promised a celebration of both men’s careers in voice acting and in the Star Wars franchise, a promise that was certainly delivered.

After Taylor’s show he returned to interview Mark Hamill and discuss both his career in Star Wars and his career in voice acting. One of the first topics was the latest teaser for The Force Awakens. Hamill was one of the first to screen it since he had to record the voiceover and, as it turns out, J. J. Abrams used mostly the original dialogue from Return of the Jedi with the new recording as a slight reverb (something I hadn’t noticed until after hearing this story).

One of the most fun reveals of the interview was the anecdote Hamill told about finding out that George Lucas wanted him back for Episode VII. It happened in what Hamill described as a somewhat offhand request to be in the upcoming movie. While Carrie Fisher exuberantly accepted, Hamill kept his cool while his inner-self freaked out—a moment he describes as being when he knew he was a great actor because he was able to contain his excitement.

Empire Strikes Back/Return of the Jedi Double Feature

Like the two previous evenings, the night concluded with a double-feature playing the six films from both trilogies in order, this time concluding with parts V & VI & what are generally considered the best of the whole series – the Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi




I need not tell you how important & truly timeless these two films are (but I will haha) Empire is widely considered the best of the six films & with good reason.
We are introduced to Yoda, Lando Calrissian & the planet Hoth & just for the Father reveal alone puts this as one of the greatest films ever, regardless of genre.

However, I’m not a revisionist and though I’m able to look at the six films objectively as an adult & probably would consider Episode III to be the best of the films (eat it haters) none of them will ever mean as much to me as Return of the Jedi. I was 9 years old when it hit theaters & the memory of my mother taking me to see it on that unforgettable day will always live as one of my most cherished. Though technically I saw a bit of Star Wars in the theater (my sister was watching Grease for the 30th time and when we went to pick her up I remember us sneaking into see a bit of it while we waited for her) & had the figures from Empire, it wasn’t until Jedi that I was of the age to really get it & get into it and the promotional lead up to the film was the greatest shit ever. Every kid my age clearly remembers collecting the glasses from Burger King like your life depended on it.
Everything about Jedi is iconic, the introduction of the Ewoks, Leia’s Slave Bikini (wait till we get to the Cosplay portion of this series of entries as if any further proof is needed) to the great reveal at the end.

And just like the night before, the crowd in attendance was maniacle in their enthusiasm and thunderous in their delivery. I hadn’t seen either film since the Special Editions came out years ago (& yes the crowd booed LOUDLY at the end of Jedi of Hayden Christiansen’s super imposement).

April 19th – Day 4 (Final Day)

So I get to the Convention Center for the final day that was still loaded with amazing events –

Billie Dee Williams: Baron of Smooth

For his panel, Billy Dee Williams, who played Lando Calrissian in the above mentioned Empire Strikes Back & Return of the Jedi, was billed as the “Baron of Smooth.”

But as he took the stage he insisted that – notwithstanding Calrissian’s undeniable suaveness and those old Colt 45 commercials – his reputation for smoothness was overstated.

“I don’t know why everybody thinks I’m smooth,” said Williams, who turned 78 this month. “I think I’m just a pretty silly person, really.”

Fans listened respectfully throughout an hourlong conversation as Williams talked about his early roles in films such as “Brian’s Song” and “Lady Sings the Blues,” his more recent stint on “Dancing With the Stars” and his love of painting. But this was a “Star Wars” convention, and what they most wanted to hear about, of course, was Lando Calrissian.

Calrissian occupies an ambiguous place in “Star Wars” mythology, not quite an unadulterated hero but not a villain either. On the one hand, the administrator of Cloud City (and original owner of the Millennium Falcon) is a likable, charming rogue. On the other, without his betrayal, Han Solo wouldn’t have ended up frozen in carbonite. Then again, Darth Vader had him over a barrel – and he did later join the Rebel Alliance and lead the attack on the second Death Star so … it’s complicated.

Williams said he hasn’t minded being branded as a traitor by some “Star Wars” fans over the years. In fact, he’s kind of enjoyed it.

“I thought it was fun and amusing – especially when you have a 10-year-old kid threatening your life,” he said. He recalled one young fan who once confronted him with particular ferocity. “I thought, ‘God if this kid had a gun in his hand, I would have been dead.’ ”

The actor debunked longstanding rumors that he had initially auditioned for the role of Han Solo, saying he was drawn from the start to Calrissian’s complexity.

“I had ideas about him – I thought he had a lot of interesting characteristics and idiosyncrasies,” Williams said. He paused, then added dryly, “But the cape was the key.”

Calrissian and his cape continue to live on in the wider “Star Wars” universe. This summer Marvel will release a new comic book titled “Lando,” chronicling Calrissian’s adventures before he ended up in Cloud City. He will also be featured in the next season of the Disney XD series “Star Wars Rebels,” with Williams providing the voice.

Near the end of the panel, at the urging of fans, the new teaser for “Star Wars: Episode VII — The Force Awakens” was shown yet again – despite the fact that Williams does not appear in the film.

When it was done, the actor waited a beat and said, “It’s only missing one element.” The crowd broke into a chant of “Lando! Lando!”

Smooth.

_______________________________________________________________

During the closing ceremony for Star Wars Celebration, Lucasfilm head of fan relations took to the stage to announce the next Star Wars Celebration will be held in London, July 15-17 2016. Tickets for the event will go on sale tomorrow.

The closing ceremony for the weekend in Anaheim was a summary of the entire event, with the trailer for Star Wars Rebels season 2 shown, a brief video synopsis of the sights in and around the event, and ended with one more look at that sweet, sweet Star Wars: The Force Awakens teaser.

There was a fleeting moment where it almost seemed as though the air date for the first episode of Star Wars Rebels season 2 was going to be shown, but host James Arnold Taylor was able to reign it back in. We were there for the premiere of the first episode of the new season of Star Wars Rebels and can say you should probably be excited.

This was such a wonderful experience –  I can’t say enough about how well run this convention was. If you go to alot of cons, you know that isn’t always the case but here it was run as smooth as Billie Dee Williams by a Class A organization. Endless thanks to Jason Bartelstone for inviting me making sure I was taken care of throughout the festival.

There’s still more to come however, stay tuned for the Cosplay of Star Wars Celebration Anaheim coming this week!

Photos – 

Roy Turner
Mark Eades
David Yeh

Arriving into Burbank straight from my recent adventure in Las Vegas the first thing I did was head East out to Anaheim in anticipation of attending my first Star Wars Celebration. Over the next few entries, I will do my best to bring justice to an experience that I will never forget.
Enjoy ?

Star Wars Celebration Anaheim – April 16th-19th – Anaheim Convention Center – Anaheim,CA

You’ve heard of Comic-Con & the like but what about an entire convention dedicated just to Star Wars & the culture & mythology that surrounds it & produced by the creators of the franchise so you know your getting the real deal?

​

Beginning back in 1999, Star Wars Celebration started as a celebration of the return of the franchise that year with The Phantom Menace, the first of the three prequels. Not an annual event, Celebration Anaheim is the first one in two years, the first to be held in the United States in three years, only the seventh one in the US, only the tenth overall, only the second time it’s been held in California and the first time since 2007.

April 17th – Day 2

After a crazy fun filled day yesterday to start the convention with the jaw-dropping Episode VII panel & the showing of the new trailer to uncountable great moments, I was eager to get the second day started.

Ray Park: The Man, The Sith, The Legend – 

So why not start with a panel with the man that played one of the most unforgettable characters, Darth Maul with Martial Arts legend Ray Park.

As Darth Maul in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, Park helped create the most well-known and popular villain in the franchise since fellow
Sith Darth Vader.
Before getting into the role, which was the first acting job for the wushu fighter, there was a lot of talk about training. Park’s prowess as a martial artist is well-known, and he stated that he had practiced the aforementioned wushu, Shaolin techniques and kickboxing before being discovered & as a dedication to his craft, ballet.

When first given the double-sided lightsaber, he realized that the construction would make it hard to do anything with it without slicing himself. So he went to
George Lucas and asked for a change.
“He was cool, though. He just said to go ahead and flip it,” said Park, referring to making the hilt longer and easier to handle. His relationship with Lucas also extended to who Darth Maul was and how he should play him.
“I asked George and he said, ‘Whatever you want him to be.’ He was really open to my interpretation,” said Park.

Park, after showing some training videos & him on set, then went into a demonstration with the host –

The death scene at the end of the film, for a while, effectively ended Darth Maul and Ray Park’s “Star Wars” relationship
Park showed one more video. It was the reworked scene, displaying how the fight should have ended with Obi-won.  In it, a charging Obi-won runs in for the battle and falls into the large pit where Darth Maul eventually met his death.

Questions included the topics of training in the desert, wushu training vs. film training and a last one asking Park to contact Disney and have them make a solo Darth Maul project. Park responded to that final question by saying that he’d not eat, get ripped and be repainted to take on the role again.

Date with a Princess: Carrie Fisher

If Carrie Fisher has anything in common with Princess Leia,  it might be her impulsive attitude.
In this panel, Fisher, 58, told racy jokes, autographed the host’s shoes, took pictures with fans and even made out with a fan in the audience (& apparently it wasn’t even close to the first time).

Not unlike when I attended her brief, last minute panel earlier this year at the Salt Lake City Comic-Con, she came out even a hotter mess, barefoot, again with her dog, again demanding Coca-Cola and again rambling like an insane person.

What she didn’t do was talk much about Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the upcoming seventh installment in the space opera.
Fisher reprises her Leia role in the new film, due out in December, but said she couldn’t “figure out what I was supposed to not tell.”
“I think they keep me away from stuff because they know that I have an inadvertently big mouth,”.

When asked about her reasons for auditioning for the role some three decades ago, Fisher said she couldn’t recall.
“You have a bad memory when you get older and if you do LSD,” she quipped.

She described a raucous night when she was staying at the London home of Monty Python actor Eric Idle during the filming of Empire Strikes Back, Idle had invited members of the Rolling Stones over, and Fisher called her castmates to join them.

“We had a really early call, but you sort of have to measure, Rolling Stones, early call, Rolling Stones, early call … so we decided on both,” she said. “They’re a partying bunch of guys. … We stayed up pretty late , then we got to the set about two hours late & when you watch the movie, it’s one of the few times that Harrison and I are smiling as we arrive in Cloud City.”
Then she added, “Doesn’t that sound like a euphemism?”

It was one of many flirty moments throughout the panel including referring to her character as “quite the space slut” and offering pecks on the cheek for fans who asked questions during the panels Q&A portion. And as I mentioned above, for one audience member who asked for a photograph she impulsively grabbed him and aggressively kissing him.

You can tell she LOVES the attention & enjoys even more the shock value cause apparently this is like a regular thing for her at this types of events.
Nothing wrong with kissing whomever you want for whatever consenting reasons, but I have to add that she just comes off so…trashy.
The way she talks is like a drunk Lucille Ball & she just seems perputually out of it, super hard to take and at time downright painful to listen to.
I hate that because hello? She’s Princess freaking Leia.

Prior to the panel their was a Princess Leia look-alike contest –

Surprisingly not a single slave-bikini in the bunch given how many I saw there (stay tuned for the Cosplay of the Celebration coming in a few days) but I think that these fans were more serious-minded & not to say that the Slave-Leias aren’t serious about their cosplay but the intentions appear to be singular. I know that ‘s a sweeping generalization that could even border being offensive but I’m simply saving it for the later post.

One Big Story: Working Within the Star Wars Canon

Lucasfilm’s quasi-reboot of the Star Wars canon was one of the most controversial decisions in the company’s four-decade history. So, a small group representing Lucasfilm and its largest publishing partners attempted to explain how they work together to tell new stories in the Star Wars universe and how that storytelling proceeds under the direction of the Lucasfilm Story Group.

The panelists were:

Michael Siglain, Director, Creative Franchise, Lucasfilm Publishing
Jennifer Heddle, Senior Editor for Fiction, LucasBooks
Leland Chee, Manager of the Holocron, Lucasfilm (Story Group member)
Pablo Hidalgo, Creative Executive, Lucasfilm (Story Group member)
Shelly Shapiro Editor-at-Large, Del Rey Books
Jordan White, Star Wars Editor, Marvel Comics
C.B. Sebulski, Senior Vice President of Creative & Creator Development, Marvel
Sadie Smith, Managing Editor, DK Publishing

I should disclaim that while not exactly a casual fan, historically I’ve only been interested in just the six (& the upcoming 7th) movies in the main sequence.
I’ve never seen any of the animated tie-ins like The Clone Wars or Rebels, never cared about or read anything in what is referred to as the Expanded Universe & until recently didn’t even know of it’s existence.
Let me make a parallel for a second – I’m also deeply invested in professional wrestling, but again I’m only interested in the main weekly product on WWE.
It was only last year that I started exploring it’s expanded universe that not only has it given me such a better understanding of wrestling but also way more product to enjoy. It was with this mindset that led me to this panel.
Primarily, like with wrestling, I wanna be part of the conversation & I’ve found myself not appreciating certain impacts without knowing the back stories.

The panel did a pretty good job of explaining how they work together that is such a daunting task I was exhausted just listening to the levels of collaboration let alone participating. A cynic could say that the whole thing was just a commercial to sell the upcoming book – The Ultimate Star Wars – that they are touting is an absolute comprehensive guide that holds the whole thing together.

They would be right to an extent but it also doesn’t mean that the book isn’t effective as demonstrated when Chee answered several of the audiences questions by hysterically looking up the answer in the book.

Revenge of the Sith (in 3-D)/Star Wars Double Feature

A major highlight for me at this convention was they were screening all six of the films in order. This is something that I’ve always wanted to do, but have never had the time to sit down or even over a few days and pull it off. At the very least I’ve always wanted to watch Revenge of the SIth, the final film of the prequels with A New Hope, the first film in the original trilogy as a double-feature to experience that quantum leap and that what was happening tonight as they had already began with the first two films the night before. And ROTS (probably my fave of them all) was gonna be in 3-D for the first time!

Before the film aired, both Dennis Muren and Ian McDiarmid took the stage to introduce this premiere screening. McDiarmid spoke shortly about George Lucas approaching him about doing the prequels and how unaware he was that he’d have to polish his lightsaber skills by the final film.
Dennis Muren, who got the 3D conversion rolling with help from Prime Focus, mentioned how the depth they added helped the opening space battle

I was more excited about this double-feature than anything else the Celebration was offering but it was also (thankfully) the only time that the staff almost failed me.
Ask anyone that’s ever been to any convention of any kind & you know that asking for information your going to get an answer from a volunteer that actually knows less than you do, or worse those that suddenly feel they’ve been deputized into an elite squadron that gives them right to treat you like shit.
I can’t say enough about how well this convention was run by it’s producers but on this day minutes before this screening I was about to have to kick some wiseguy volunteer ass. The press office had left a screening pass for me but no one could tell me where to pick it up. After calmly explaining the situation to a particular volunteer that was unwilling to help and was abusive to me, I finally just pushed past him and gave him a look that made it clear to him that he was doing the right thing for himself by not hassling me any further.

Ok, I’m in, have my 3-D glasses on, the room is packed with screaming fans and I’m ready to do this.
I love this movie so much and I think it’s probably the most important of all the different story arcs.
What made it so fun, is sure I’ve seen this movie a dozen times, but never in 3-D and certainly not with such an emotional crowd that would cheer and explode with each classic scene or revelation.

The overall conversion made it easy to really tell the layers of depth the 3D process gives a film.
The lightsabers of Mace and Yoda being held out towards the screen & Force Lightning from Emperor Palpatine really added a jolt to his electrical storm, fizzling and flashing brightly and right up in your face.
Other examples of the added effects were Vader takes his first breath under the mask and when he’s being lifted upright on the surgical table.
& most importantly from the Vader faceplate being lowered down onto his face (my fave scene in any of the six films) as it made it feel like it was being lowered on your actual face.

This was so much fun, and normally I would say that a rowdy crowd would have annoyed me but honestly they made this experience for me this time, their enthusiasm was inspiring & so palpable I would brace myself when I could feel it coming. A very special evening indeed, & holy shit, we only have 10 minutes before we start
Star Wars!

I haven’t seen Star Wars on the big screen since the updated version hit theaters in 1997, so that’s almost 20 years & I’m not sure I’ve seen it all the way through since then either. I know that sounds like blasphemy as most people in this audience watch this movie a dozen times or more a year.
However it made it new again as I’ve realized I’ve seen Revenge of the Sith way more times than the original film and for a guy my age for some that’s grounds for treason. And I couldn’t exaggerate how watching it back-to-back with ROTS helped me understand & appreciate the lineage of the story and really nourished my love of these films.

And again, the crowd hadn’t tired which each classic sequence, a tidal wave of emotion & appreciation would ensue. Has anything ever been this big for this long?

Thanks for following along, much more to come in this series with Days 3-4 + a very large piece on all the Cosplay at the convention with tons of pics.
Stay tuned!

Photos – 

Roy Turner
Celebration Staff
LucasFilm acrchives