Interview with Erik Bauersfeld, voice of Admiral Ackbar and Bib Fortuna

SFGate has a lovely interview (video above) with Erik Bauersfeld, the voice of Admiral Ackbar and Bib Fortuna in Return of the Jedi. The interviewer is Peter Hartlaub (@peterhartlaub), pop culture critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, and he does a great job. From the accompanying article:

I learned through “Star Wars” fans that the voice of “Jedi” characters Admiral Ackbar and Bib Fortuna was Erik Bauersfeld, a longtime fixture at Berkeley’s KPFA radio with a stellar reputation as a prolific radio dramatists. He was a mentor to multiple Academy Award winning sound designer Randy Thom, and at 90 years old is still producing new material.

I exchanged a few very pleasant e-mails with Bauersfeld, and a week later spent two hours with him at KPFA. I wrote an article for the San Francisco Chronicle, presenting a broad retrospective to his career — saving much of his “Star Wars” connection for this video. Bauersfeld was charming, and I liked him more as we continued to talk. To this day he hasn’t seen the original “Star Wars,” but he’s developed a growing fondness for “Star Wars” fans, saving their correspondence in a filing cabinet and writing personal responses to each one.

Even better, in a world where actors with very small connections to science fiction movies can make a lot of money on the convention circuit, Bauersfeld refuses to charge for his autograph. “It’s not so much money,” Bauersfeld told me, adding that he already has enough income for his simple needs.

Mr Bauersfeld is, according to the article, a revered and prolific radio dramatist. 

SFGate: Being Admiral Ackbar: Berkeley man reflects on brush with “Star Wars”

Rebel Alliance glitter shoes

New on Etsy:

These ballet flats are covered in glitter designs, and several layers of clear polyurethane resin to keep the glitter from wearing off. Available in adult sizes 5- 12, in half sizes and wide.

Etsy: Rebel Alliance Star Wars Glitter Shoes

the general policy of the FIPPA is that there is a right of access to any record in the custody or under the control of a public body: FIPPA s. 4(1). This right of access is subject only to exceptions expressly set out in ss. 12 to 22.1 (see FIPPA s. 4(2)).

Hasbro to release Grand Moff Tarkin action figure

I am not a Star Wars toy collector--unless you count the 100+ Kenner action figures and five boxes of Kenner vehicles and playsets taking up space in my basement. What I mean is that I don't collect Star Wars toys actively today, and I haven't done so since I was about 12. But when I first saw Hasbro's Vintage Collection of Star Wars action figures, packaged in 1970s-style Kenner cardbacks, I was sorely tempted. You can read about that here.

Now comes news that Hasbro's next wave of vintage figures will include one I always wanted as a child, but which Kenner for some reason did not produce: Grand Moff Tarkin. Hasbro has made a Tarkin figure once before (see here) but it was pretty crummy. This new version, like all in Hasbro's vintage line, is a much more faithful rendering of the character, judging by the one photo I have seen.

I'm still not a Star Wars toy collector. But how do I resist this?

The HDRoom: Grand Moff Tarkin and Vintage Star Wars Movie Figures Invade Toy Fair 2012

A message from a distant galaxy far, far away: don't smoke

Parents of earth, are your children fully immunized?

So Much Pileup: Star Wars promotional designs

Sorry, one last beating of the dead prequel horse

First, an apology: I have been spending way too much time on this blog whining about the prequels lately. When I started this blog I intended that it be prequel-free. But it is so hard to sit quietly by while The Phantom Menace and whatever the other ones were called intrude upon our collective consciences again. I am going to try to bring this blog back to a pristine, prequel-free state.

But before I do, one last beating on this dead horse...

Death Star PR FAQs the Phantom Menace

Death Star PR has posted a hilarious FAQ on the Phantom Menace. Here are some highlights, but follow the link below to read the whole thing. And don't forget to follow @deathstarpr on Twitter.

Is it a bad sign for a family/kid’s film that the second line of the opening crawl reads, “The taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems is in dispute”?
Are you kidding us? You obviously know nothing about children. Kids love their mobiles, tweeting about Justin Bieber and Facebooking but you know what they love more? INTERGALACTIC TAXATION LAW DISPUTES AND PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE ABOUT SAID LAWS. Today’s average seven-year-old is all like, “Hey Steve, did you see Ben 10 this morning? PSYCHE STEVE, SUPER PSYCHE! I DIDN’T! I WAS WATCHING THE GALACTIC SENATE DISCUSS THE PASSING OF AN ADDENDUM TO SUBSECTION 27(C)(iii) REGARDING SPECIAL DISPENSATION TO TRADE ACROSS INTERGALACTIC BOUNDARIES!”

...

Why is the “Queen” of Naboo an elected position? Doesn’t that defeat the whole purpose of a monarchy? How come she’s only sixteen or whatever? Would any even moderately sane planet really ELECT a teenager to rule them? Have they ever met an actual teenager?
Yes, okay, it would make a lot more sense if she was the hereditary ruler of the planet but seriously, stop nitpicking. This isn’t some stupidly boring movie about intergalactic succession laws and systems of government. It’s about the thrilling world of intergalactic taxation law, remember?

...

Wow… the expository dialogue between Padmé and Anakin is pretty fucking terrible, huh?
A word of advice? Literally the ONE way you are going to survive this movie and NOT rip your own frontal lobe out through your bloody ear holes is to not think about anything anybody says to anybody at any stage.

...

Okay, I’m scared but it’s time… Death Star PR, why are midi-chlorians?
Glad you asked! Midi-chlorians are intelligent microscopic symbiotic organisms that–

No, WHY are midi-chlorians? Why are they in the movie? Why did the concept of “the Force”, which everyone completely understood already, require more explanation?
Weeeell…  they provide a shorthand way for Mr. Lucas to tell the audience that Anakin is REALLY strong with the Force, rather than finding a clever and interesting way to show us that he’s incredibly strong with it.

It’s kind of like if the Harry Potter books had opened with Dumbledore waving his wand at Harry and saying, “Ah, I see you have the highest count of anti-Mugglets the world has ever seen! You will be the world’s GREATEST wizard!” Instead of setting up the whole mystery of who Voldemort was, what really happened to Harry’s parents and what his connection to Voldemort really is, which becomes the central mystery that plays out over seven books.

So … wait … you mean midi-chlorians provide a shorthand way of avoiding telling an actual interesting story in which we get to see Anakin first use, then begin to master his extraordinary powers against all the odds?
That’s it! Added bonus: it completely destroys the notion that the Force is an aspect of individual spirituality, which can be strengthened by one’s faith. Because strength in the Force is no longer about whether you believe enough to make something happen, it’s just whether you have enough midi-chlorians to do it. If you think about it, it negates Luke and Yoda’s entire training session on Dagobah! HOORAY FOR SCIENCE! WHOOO!

...

To recap, by now Qui-Gon has: mind-tricked the Gungan monarch, kidnapped a severely intellectually disabled Gungan for some reason, attempted to mind-trick a junk dealer, used the Force to manipulate a bet against said junk dealer, wagered his only means of transportation on a pod race, allowed (nay, encouraged!) a child to enter that pod race and taken a reading of that child’s DNA/midi-chlorians without parental permission.
That about sums it up. Is there a question here, or… ?

Given Qui-Gon’s complete lack of ANY KIND OF MORAL CODE WHATSOEVER TO THIS POINT, WHY DOESN’T HE JUST SAY, “FUCK YOU, WATTO!” AND TAKE ANAKIN’S MOTHER WITH HIM?
Qui-Gon is a Jedi, bound to a strict code of justice and morality and fuck it, it makes no sense to us either. Probably because it’s easier to just write her out of the story now? Of course, if the SECOND story had become the FIRST story, Mr. Lucas could’ve killed her off near the start, thus setting Anakin on the path to being a Jedi after already taking his first steps to the Dark Side by killing a bunch of Sand People, which would have been incredibly interesting and thus, isn’t even close to what actually happens.

...

I have no questions about the next few scenes, as my brain just genuinely tried to liquify itself rather than be subjected to the boredom contained within the Galactic Senate scenes again.
Man, you are missing out. This is the shit the kids have been waiting for, yo! When Supreme Chancellor Valorum asks Padmé, “Will you defer your motion to allow a commission to explore the validity of your accusations?” the kids go FUCKING MENTAL. To them, it’s like playing a video game inside a jumping castle that you can only win by eating so much candy you EXPLODE.

...

Surely the IMPORTANT thing now is that we’re at the climax! The nail biting and action-packed final act! This is going to be AMAZING!
Yes, the entirely computer generated Gungan VS Droid Army battle certainly promises to be JUST as exciting as the pod race, but better, because there’s a SLIGHT chance Jar Jar might die. But actually, it will be worse, because it contains even less human characters AND Jar Jar doesn’t, in fact, die.

Death Star PR: The Ultimate Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace 3D FAQ

Peter David on his daughter's reaction to the Phantom Menace

Author Peter David has posted about showing his daughter the original three films followed by the Phantom Menace 3D:

We took Caroline to see “The Phantom Menace” in 3D yesterday. She’d seen the commercials for it a few weeks ago and said she wanted to see it; we then insisted she watch what we consider the real “first three movies,” namely episodes 4, 5 and 6. She did so with some reluctance and found them enjoyable in her own way, as I mentioned in an earlier posting.

So we were most interested to see how she would react to a “Star Wars” film that she had not first seen parodied on “Family Guy.” One that is generally reviled as being boring, turgid, poorly acted, badly written, badly directed, and the debut of a character so detested that he actually made people nostalgic for the Ewoks (no small feat, that.)

Personally, watching the film yesterday–the first time I’ve seen it in its entirety since it premiered years ago–I found it as dissatisfying as ever, with 3D effects that were lackluster at best. Even the pod race, which should have rocked in 3D, was unimpressive.

So what did Caroline think of it?

“It was great!” she burbled. “It was better than all three of those other films put together!”

Holy crap. Holy freaking crap.

Follow the link for Peter's thoughts on how his daughter could have gone so far astray...or why Lucas may be right after all.

PeterDavid.net: Brace Yourselves, Star Wars fans

David Chen on the Phantom Menace's racial stereotypes

The racial stereotyping in the Phantom Menace is pretty obvious, I would have thought. The unpleasantness of this is likewise clear, to me at least. But sufferers from prequelitis often overlook or downplay this aspect of the film.

David Chen is understandably frustrated with this and has responded with a worthwhile blog post on the issue. He asks, "Can we please stop pretending that the clearly racist caricatures in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace were a) not racist caricatures, and b) acceptable to our society? Like, at all?" After a review of other commentators' views on the topic, including articles from the time of the film's first release, Chen concludes:

Star Wars: The Phantom Menace clearly invokes imagery and audio from racist ethnic stereotypes. The fact that the recipient of these stereotypical characteristics are non-human aliens does not change this fact (and yes, I realize that in Star Wars, technically ALL the characters are aliens, so no need to point that out). If you want to deny this, we can go back to the movies and do some scene-by-scene comparison. I quite frankly can't believe that I'm still having to even argue this point.

But to me, the question of whether Lucas has invoked these stereotypes (which I think he undeniably has) is much less interesting than the effect of his doing so. Does it make his movie "racist"? Does it lessen the film in any other substantive way? And what are its implications for how we talk about the film with children?

I'm going to try not to ascribe any intentionality to Lucas's actions. I doubt he's a racist at heart. In the above article, Stone suggests that these aliens came out of "suppressed stereotypes" from Lucas's psyche.  What I know is that most of the non-human-appearing aliens are presented as evil, devious, and/or scheming. Their accents and varying demeanors add to their "other-ness," and allow the audience to distance themselves, emotionally, from them.

It's not rocket science, this storytelling method that Lucas employs. There's a long cinematic history of using this type of imagery in this way. But I had hoped it was something that our culture tried to leave behind, not something that we still find defensible. Ultimately, The Phantom Menace is so artistically reviled that most people just throw the baby out with the bath water. Nonetheless, I feel a full accounting of the film's flaws must include this racial footnote.

Having spent a significant amount of time in the past two years studying media and its effect on children, I've learned that there aren't very many causal conclusions that can be drawn from whether or not violent imagery, sex, etc. actually have a concrete effect on child development. But one thing that I can confidently say is this: what we allow our children to watch matters. When they see The Phantom Menace, which features the triumph of (mostly) white characters over those people with the weird accents who talk, dress, and act differently than "us," what message does it send them?

I don't know the answer to that question. But I'm not going to pretend that it's not worth thinking about.

The Life and Times of David Chen: Racism and Ethnic Stereotypes in "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace"

Lucas confirms we were all greatly mistaken: Han *never* shot first

From an interview in The Hollywood Reporter:

THR: People can get fanatical about the movies — how does that make you feel? The puppet vs. CGI Yoda ruckus, and the who-shot-first, Han Solo or Greedo furor come to mind.

Lucas: Well, it’s not a religious event. I hate to tell people that. It’s a movie, just a movie. The controversy over who shot first, Greedo or Han Solo, in Episode IV, what I did was try to clean up the confusion, but obviously it upset people because they wanted Solo [who seemed to be the one who shot first in the original] to be a cold-blooded killer, but he actually isn’t. It had been done in all close-ups and it was confusing about who did what to whom. I put a little wider shot in there that made it clear that Greedo is the one who shot first, but everyone wanted to think that Han shot first, because they wanted to think that he actually just gunned him down.

Well, our mistake. Everyone who saw the movie, i.e. most people living in the free world in 1977, understood that Han had shot Greedo without provocation. But we were confused. In fact, though the film Lucas made showed us one thing that we all saw and understood the same way, something else altogether actually happened.

What Lucas seems to be saying is that a film is not the images and sound presented by the filmmaker to the public. Rather, a film is what the filmmaker later claims to have intended to have shown the public, whether he did in fact show it to the public or not. That is to say that the film has no independent existence; it lives only in George Lucas's mind.

The Hollywood Reporter: 5 Questions with George Lucas