by Simon Pegg
I remember being annoyed at my mum for interrupting my viewing of Fabulous Animals one winter evening, then promptly forgetting about griffons and centaurs, as she informed me that my grandfather had died. I was six years old at the time and that memory will always be inextricably linked to David Attenborough’s soft, breathy voice. It’s interesting that I should recall so precisely what I was watching on TV at the time. I’m not sure whether it was the shock of my first bereavement that imprinted the moment so vividly in my memory or the sharp contrast between the fantasy of the show and the reality of my mother’s tears. I certainly didn’t understand the concept of death, and as such, I didn’t truly experience a great sense of loss, I just remember feeling guilty that I had complained about missing my show, as I witnessed Mum struggling to give me the news, a sight far scarier than the Abominable Snowman or the Fiji Mermaid.
A much happier monster memory involved going to see Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger at the ABC on St Aldate Street with my dad. We walked the five or six doors down from our shop to the cinema, where two years later I would see Star Wars and where five years before I had entered my first ever theatre. Witnessing Ray Harryhausen’s marvellous animations on the big screen was amazing and I watched open-mouthed, even more than I had done at my grandmother’s house a year or so before, when Dad had introduced me to Jason and the Argonauts. I look back at both films as seminal moments in my development towards geekdom. Jason and the Argonauts had a particularly significant effect on me, becoming the focus of much of my art and stories for some time afterwards. Dad and I would re-enact scenes from the film with me as Jason and Dad as the bronze giant Talos. He would kneel very still then crane his neck round making a loud creaking noise, at which point I would erupt into giggling screams and attack him with a plastic sword. Earlier this year, director John Landis invited Ray Harryhausen to cameo in Burke and Hare. Ray signed a copy of his book for me and gave it to John to pass on. To be honest, I’m quite relieved he didn’t give it to me in person: I probably would have erupted into giggling screams and attacked him with a plastic sword.
My other nerdy pre-Star Wars interests included the television series of Planet of the Apes, Lost in Space (for which John Williams provided the score), The Invaders, Gerry Anderson’s marionation classics, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and Joe 90, Jon Pertwee as Doctor Who and the animated series of Star Trek. The cartoon version of the classic live-action TV series ran from 1973 to 1974 and featured original cast members providing their voices. As a pre-schooler, I found the live-action show a little scary and I much preferred the animated adventures. It wasn’t until after Star Wars, as my interest in the genre became more sophisticated, that I started to lap up the live-action adventures of Kirk, Spock and that Scottish guy. Even then some of the episodes would give me a serious case of the creeps.
An episode called ‘The Corbomite Maneuver’, in which Clint Howard, star of Gentle Ben and brother of the more famous Ron, plays an alien child, who uses a terrifying alter ego to put the shits up the Enterprise crew, gave me an equal if not more intense case of the space willies. The scary proxy’s name was Balok and his appearance was deeply troubling to me as a child. A dome-headed, blue-tinged humanoid with piercing slanted eyes, his glare was so intense it forced me to hide behind my hands and make squeaking noises. It was a triumph of model-making at the time and the programme-makers made good use of it by featuring his image in the closing-credits stills montage of the show, so that even if I hadn’t been frightened by the episode, I’d get a dose of Balok all the same. The montage wasn’t always the same though, so watching it would amount to a game of visual Russian roulette. Would it be the green Orion slave girl caught in the middle of her sexy dance, or would it be Balok with his terrifying death stare? Interestingly my daughter makes the same face now, when she’s filling her nappy. Maybe that’s what Balok was doing.
By the time Star Trek: The Motion Picture rolled round, I considered myself a proper fan and felt abuzz with excitement when my Uncle Greg picked me up and took me to the ABC. The movie was criticised for its solemnity and for being a little wordy and grown-up, but I don’t remember being disappointed at all. With the absence of a weekly budget big enough to afford spell-binding effects, the series had compensated by concentrating on character rather than setting. The stories, though fantastic, often boiled down to basic conflicts of emotion and morality. The Motion Picture did the same, only with the aesthetics the series never had. By the second and arguably best Star Trek movie instalment, the film-makers had got the mix right for commercial success, but the first movie remains an enjoyable cinematic outing for the characters.
Star Trek: The Motion Picture came with a lot of pre-existing mythological weight, having already established itself culturally. Although not a massive success on its first airing, the series had proved a cult favourite in syndication and found fans around the world. The film-makers exploited this familiarity, reintroducing us to the characters and settings as if they were old friends. Seeing the Enterprise for the first time on the big screen felt special because we knew it so well from the television. The sight of Spock with long hair gave me a thrill as a kid because he had always been so immaculately groomed in the TV show, so seeing him all unkempt was very cool.
In some respects, this was my first experience of intertextuality, something that would become very important to my own creative output in later life. Although basic scene-setting to the untrained eye, these dramatic touches in Star Trek: The Motion Picture were gifts to the faithful and could be truly appreciated only by them. That frisson of enjoyment at seeing scruffy Spock could not possibly be experienced without a pre-existing knowledge of his spirit-level fringe. One might have simply thought, ‘Who is that scruffy guy with the pointy ears?’, not ‘Wow, Spock’s really let himself go’ or ‘Hey, Leonard Nimoy looks good with a shoulder-length bob’.
As I sat there in the darkness of the ABC, I was of course totally oblivious to the personal significance the event had for me. I was witnessing the commencement of a series of cinematic adventures that would one day include me. As I witnessed Spock step from his shuttle on to the Enterprise, I was unaware that one day that character, not just the actor but that character, would look me in the eyes and say, ‘You are Montgomery Scott.’ It’s a little indulgent, I know – though a memoir is after all the height of indulgence – but it blows my mind to consider the circularity of these events. It is hard to describe being in your late thirties and acting with a character you have known almost all your life. It’s exciting enough to meet actors you have long admired, but to be transported into a fictional universe that you have witnessed countless times from afar is really something else.
The first time I set foot on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise,7 I tapped director JJ Abrams on the shoulder and smiled, knowing as a fellow fan he would appreciate the significance as I took my one small step on to the impressive set housed in one of the sound stages at the Paramount Studios lot in Los Angeles. This was the culmination of a lifetime’s fandom. A journey which had started with a cartoon, continued through the gaps in my fingers as I waited for Balok’s terrifying face to appear, and had drawn ever closer the day JJ sat down to watch Shaun of the Dead. Eventually, as I touched down in London, having spent a month in New York shooting the exteriors for How to Lose Friends & Alienate People, I switched on my phone and noticed I had received an email from JJ. We had become friends a couple of years earlier after he had telephoned me at my London office and asked outright if I wanted to be in Mission: Impossible III. Of course I said yes;8 I knew JJ from his hit show Alias and was extremely flattered that he had contacted me so forthrightly. Eighteen months later I opened the email from JJ and found it to be similarly forthright. ‘Do you want to play Scotty?’
A Long Time Ago . . .
S
tar Wars was released in the UK in December 1977 and it’s fair to say, like the peaceful planet of Alderaan, I was totally blown away.
It wasn�
��t just the effects either, far from it in fact. The chemistry between the actors was genuine and irresistible, the comic touches were subtle and well pitched, and John Williams’s brilliantly emotive score was a hair-raising stroke of genius in an age when orchestration was unfashionable. The caption that preceded the first orchestral blast of score was hugely intriguing and immediately hinted at the story’s mythic weight: ‘A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away . . .’ A frown flickered across my face in the darkness of the ABC cinema in Gloucester, that same building that until a few years earlier had been the venue for the annual GODS musical production. So this is science fiction but it isn’t the future? Also, whether it was intended to do so or not, the fact that this first outing for the franchise was billed as Episode IV gave it instant historical presence, as though the story was already a classic tale, we just hadn’t been aware of it.
I left the cinema in a daze of excitement, deliriously enthused by what I had just witnessed. I wanted to go back and see it again immediately and I envied the long line of people waiting to go in as we left.
I bought a poster at a merchandise stand in the foyer and brandished it like a light sabre, all the way back to the car, which became a landspeeder and X-wing fighter as we drove home. I can distinctly recall the sensation I experienced directly after seeing the film. I had entered the cinema in daylight buzzing with excitement and re-emerged into the night charged with joyous satisfaction. Everything had changed, not just the fact that the sky was now a deep blue but that it seemed bigger and more full of potential than ever before.
My first intimation of Star Wars in any shape or form was at a friend’s birthday party in 1977. He had received a Star Wars Letraset9 action transfer kit, which consisted of a cardboard diorama depicting what I later learned to be the Death Star hangar bay and two sheets of dry transfers to be rubbed on at your discretion. I had no idea who these characters were but they fascinated me.
There was an old man in a cloak carrying a glowing blue sword, a man dressed entirely in black with a helmet like a dog’s face and a glowing red sword, a young blond boy in pyjamas, a cool-looking guy in a waistcoat firing a big pistol, a similarly armed girl in a white dress, a gorilla, a dustbin with legs and a gold homosexual. There were also loads of guys in white suits, all carrying guns and in varying action poses. I had no idea who was who, although apparently the blond boy was called Han. Already, even before I had seen the film, I found myself seduced by a marketing campaign based heavily on merchandising. I was playing with these characters and growing ever more desperate to actually meet them.
The film was not released in the UK for a full seven months after its release in the US, so that by the time it reached our shores, it was already being heralded by an awesome juggernaut of extraordinarily positive pre-publicity. Seven months earlier, in the States, it had been a completely different matter. The inside word on Star Wars was extremely negative and a nervy Twentieth Century Fox even moved the release to avoid a trouncing from other summer movies. When it was released, it opened on only about forty screens. To give you an idea of how few that is for such a significant film, in 2004 Shaun of the Dead, a small, low-budget comedy horror film from the UK, opened on eight hundred screens across the USA. Lucas had, however, been extremely smart in his personal efforts to promote the film, having retained the merchandising rights (an act of stupendous short-sightedness on the part of the studio) and taking on genre whizz Charles Lippincott as marketing director. Lippincott was able to establish a core buzz about the movie with the science-fiction fan base at events such as the San Diego Comic-Con.
At that time, the event was nothing like the industry behemoth it is today, but it was still a nexus for the film’s key audience and Lucas and Lippincott cannily identified that these enthusiasts could be the touch paper required to set Star Wars alight. A novelisation of Lucas’s original story was released in 1976 and by the time the movie was released on 25 May 1977, half a million copies had been sold. Despite uncertainty about the film’s potential, even from those within Lucasfilm itself, Star Wars smashed the house box-office record in every theatre it played at and started a chain reaction which would propel it into the history books and make it one of the most successful films of all time.
The enthusiasm was contagious. The American cinema-going public, desperate for some positive, life-affirming entertainment, embraced it with hysterical enthusiasm. Not only did it entertain and amaze, it promised something the nation had been reluctant to address: a future. A future that was bright and exciting and full of good-looking young Americans.
Ground zero was the famous Grauman’s Chinese Theatre at 6925 Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles, where the premiere for the movie took place. As news stories filtered across to the UK about the success of the movie, TV reports often featured shots of the ornate building, with crowds of fans wearing Star Wars T-shirts and ‘May the Force be with you’ badges lined up outside waiting to see the film. It seemed so magical and exciting to me, sat in front of the television. It may have been happening there before my eyes but it seemed like a galaxy far, far away to me then, like something other-worldly and untouchable. If there was a bright centre to the universe, Gloucester was the town it was farthest from, particularly for a young enthusiastic country boy, dreaming of escape to a place of excitement and adventure.
You see what I’m doing here, right? I’m comparing myself to Luke Skywalker. Interestingly, I did always assume the role of of Luke when playing Star Wars on the fields and building sites of my youth, and not the infinitely cooler Han Solo. Maybe I identified with him a little more, maybe his predicament as a dreamer in a quiet uneventful place did strike a chord with me, even at that tender age. Maybe it was just because I had the same haircut. Whatever the reason, it was a powerfully poetic and ESTB-craving event, when, thirty-two years later, I pulled up outside Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in a big black limousine to attend the premiere of a different science-fiction blockbuster. Sure the T-shirts and badges read ‘Trek’ and not ‘Wars’, but I have my own affectionate history with that other most famous of space sagas, so the poetry of the moment was layered with several boyhood dreams.
What’s interesting about Star Wars is that although now we regard it as the ultimate expression of dumb moneymaking cinema, at the time space-based science fiction was regarded as esoteric, with such films as Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Douglas Trumbull’s Silent Running and John Carpenter’s Dark Star leading the field. The most successful science-fiction story thus far had been the Planet of the Apes series which was very pointedly Earthbound, even if at first it appeared to be somewhere out of this world. (You didn’t know it was Earth? I am so sorry.) Despite the crowd-pleasing theatrics and the classic story implicit within the film, from the outside Star Wars probably looked to most like another highbrow, space-based nerd fest. The trailer was certainly very po-faced and portentous without any of John Williams’s rousing score and only partially finished special effects. Nevertheless, the word of mouth generated by those early showings, and the infectious sense of well-being with which its filled its audiences, sent a positively virulent wave of elation through the populace, so that by the time the film reached other shores, it was supported by awesome box-office statistics and tales of audience hysteria. It was the marketing momentum every film-maker dreams about and it hit Britain like a tsunami.
The explosive impact of Star Wars was thus a combination of a number of factors, the coalescence of which created a blast wave that engulfed much of the globe. The holy grail for every film-maker is an effective marketing campaign. Rubbish films regularly do well with the force of aggressive exposure, and though they evaporate in the memory and contribute nothing to the medium of cinema or anyone’s life, they make the requisite amount of cash to justify their being made in the first place and possibly again, at least for the people that put up the investment.
Studios are reluctant to get behind films that don’t have obvious mainstream appeal because the risk of lo
sing money is too great. But audiences are generally more sophisticated than they are given credit for and respond to smarter fare if they are exposed to it. Generally, though, we are given fireworks rather than theatre because ultimately the mainstream audience will avoid challenge if they can help it. Life’s too short. Occasionally, a Little Miss Sunshine or Napoleon Dynamite will slip through the net and gather a head of steam through word of mouth. Strange to think that Star Wars once had more in common with these hopeful little indies than with the monuments to profitability it now stands beside.
For me, as a seven-year-old boy, the hype and the hysteria were only a small part of it. It was fun to be swept up in and be part of the thing that everyone was talking about, but its true effect on me went beyond the social and economic forces that brought it so keenly into my consciousness. I have no doubt my interest was nourished and maintained by all the toys and books and paraphernalia that accompanied the release and defined the very concept of merchandising thereafter, but my love of Star Wars was also incredibly personal. It inspired my imagination, increased my vocabulary, encouraged an interest in film production and music, it was in many ways my childhood muse. This wasn’t to do with it providing any sort of psychosocial release for me. I was unaware of America’s bleak mood in the early seventies or how it affected the rest of the world, and was oblivious to any of the anxieties to which Star Wars was an antidote. I loved it for what it was, a great story, told well with relatable, lovable characters and the added attraction of awe-inspiring visuals, even if George Lucas insisted Carrie Fisher suppress her boobs with gaffer tape.
