In an earlier post I mentioned that I was recently interviewed at the Star Wars: The Force Awakens premiere by Mario Diaz of WPIX channel 11. The story that didn’t make the final segment edit is that this wasn’t the first time I had played hooky to see a Star Wars film. You see near the end of my senior year of high school my best friend Jeff and I hatched a plan to be the first people to see Return of the Jedi without having to brave the insane lines that were forming in Manhattan prior to the opening day. During that time the world had gone Star Wars crazy. People had been lining up nearly a week in advance of the premiere of Jedi to guarantee that they would be among the first to see the final episode of the original trilogy. However while Jeff and I were both hardcore Star Wars fans, we knew that neither one of our moms would let us miss that much school for a movie.
So Jeff and I came up with the brilliant plan to ditch only one day of school and drive to the suburbs the night before to camp out in front of the theater. Since the multiplexes in the ‘burbs were always deserted in comparison to the city, the plan made perfect sense. Drive 30 minutes outside of the city, stay up most of the night, and then causally walk up and be the first people on line to buy tickets for the flick as the box office opened. The problem was that we fell asleep in my mom’s station-wagon about two hours before the first showing. We woke up about 10 minutes before the movie started and freaked out because there was already a line outside the theater. Luckily the line was modest compared to the lines in Manhattan and we were able to get tickets. So even though we weren’t the first people on line, we did make it in to the first screening.