May 25, 2005

200 Posts, 0 Emoticons. Modest, but respectable.

MF.com is the only Star Wars-based messageboard I've ever read, or contributed to... minus a small stint for about 10 minutes a year ago on TFN. (Forgive me, Lord, I knew not what I did.) But it's time to move on.

Thanks Tern, SI, DP, and all our benefactors, for everything. Conspicuous thanks to CoGro, and others who shall remain nameless.

And with your indulgence, one final set of thank yous:



Dear George,

Thank you for Star Wars. Thank you for that memorable day in 1977, when I realized I was to spend my life pursuing music and filmmaking. Thank you for the clarity of purpose I've known every day since. You taught me the power of film.

Thank you for documenting the early days of ILM - those wonderful videos of matte artists rotoscoping hundreds of frames on celluloid by hand, painstakingly, one at a time. You taught me dedication to my craft.

Thank you for taking on the Hollywood system, and beating them at their own game. You did it your way, and the world is better for it. You taught me independence, and defiance.

With your rebelling British crew, your make-up man taken ill, and your dwindling money, Star Wars was never what you wanted it to be - fortunately for the rest of us. Thank you for teaching me that as artists, we may not know everything about what moves people. You taught me to set my ego aside, and listen to my audience.



And thank you, George, for abandoning so much of what once made Star Wars great.

With every lingering establishing shot and ship fly-by, I remembered your words about how little was needed to set a story. When the enlightenment of the Force was traded in for a blue-blood aristocracy; when glorious set design traded for sterile CG backdrops; when the riveting charisma of Harrison Ford was traded for the slapstick antics of Jar Jar Binks, you reminded me of the fundamentals of drama. You taught me to remember the basics.


Thank you, George, for bowing to the pressure of being a visonary... of doing visionary-type things, whether they were a good idea or not. Thank you for seeding a generation of apologists with impossibly low expectations. Thank you for believing your own press, and surrounding yourself with the most talented people on Earth, who publicly laughed at all your jokes, and privately wondered what the fuck had happened. You taught me the danger of success.


With your destruction of the original versions of the films that got you here, that changed the world and entertainment forever, thank you for showing me the perils of revisionism. Thank you for teaching me the true nature of artistic contribution; that my art is not for my own indulgence, but for those whose lives would be affected by it. If nothing else, you reminded me, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." You taught me to let go.



For 28 years, I have lived every day of my life connected to, or affected by Star Wars in some way. In my art, which is my life, you began by teaching me what to do, and ended up showing me exactly what not to do. You are the Light Side, and you are the Dark Side. So be it... that, in the end, is balance.

As I type this, I have in my office two life-size stormtroopers, a life-sized Darth Vader and two life-sized R2-D2s. I have replicas of seven lightsabers, a Jedi training remote, a thermal detonator, the Emperor's cane, a stormtrooper rifle, Princess Leia's gun, and the gun Han Solo used to shoot Greedo first. My walls are adorned with 6-foot-by-8-foot, first generation movie posters for Star Wars, Empire and Jedi, rescued from an Italian movie theater. The soundtracks for the Original Trilogy exist in every media format I have access to, and the piano bench is literally overflowing with Williams scores. These are the icons of my inspiration and my passion, and they're with me every day of my life. One day, they will be shared with my children, not only as a reminder of their father, but as part of an ongoing legacy... the passing down from generation to generation of one of the great stories of popular culture now permanately imbedded in the annals of world cultural history.

For 28 years of all that is Star Wars...

Thank you.

Farewell...

_Mike Verta

Apparently not well enough.

just another internet personality that felt the egocentric need to number his posts as a countdown before he left. how charming.