MidAmeriCon (1976) Worldcon - Star Wars Q&A
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 19 ก.พ. 2017
- MidAmeriCon, the 34th World Science Fiction Convention, was held in Kansas City in 1976. Before the film was released, before Star Wars and George Lucas were household names, producer Gary Kurtz, star Mark Hamill and marketing director Charles Lippincott came to MidAmeriCon to promote Star Wars. This Q&A session is full of fascinating background information about the film, the filming and the attitudes of the Star Wars team. For example, listen to Kurtz talk about the massive $18M gate they would need to break even. This is brought to you by the FANAC Fan History Project, with video from the Video Archeology project (coordinated by Geri Sullivan, with technical work by David Dyer-Bennet).
I hope their movie does well
Ray Palompo Are you crazy?! No theater will show this!
nope, i don t think this movie will work.
No chance in hell they make back that budget on a sci-fi film.
SpongeBob narrator voice *45 years later*
Many Bothans died to bring us this interview.
This is like opening up Al Capone's vault and actually finding ALL THE TREASURE!
But all we found was 2 dudes and 1 kid.
My thoughts exactly.
Especially inspiring for folks who are about to achieve their goals
Mark:" Yeah, everybody go see it twice". If only he knew how many people would see it more than twice.
My thought exactly :p
cisio64123 Nobody knew.
It's interesting to hear how people reacted to Star Wars before they ever saw it. They really did think it was just going to be another cheesy sci-fi movie.
Don't judge a book by it's cover.
How could you not love Mark Hamill?? ❤️ He has (even to this day) such genuine enthusiasm for the genre.
kurtz is the producer, and you can tell, he's the boss
21:03
Hamill: Robots have most of the funny lines.
Crowd: Hahaha! What a story, Mark!
What gets me is needing to describe things like Chewie being an "ape man", how the "laser swords" work, and the droids being "robots". Wookies, lightsabers, and droids are now so deeply entrenched in the pop culture vernacular that the idea of calling Chewbacca an "ape man" is a little hilarious, and the only people who don't know how lightsabers work are the ones writing Kathleen Kennedy's High Republic comic books.
Note that Star Wars was first introduced at the 1976 Westercon: "Publicist Charles Lippincott presents the first public slideshow for A New Hope at LA’s Westercon."
Kurtz was so good at his job and it shows here.
LOL!! It's interesting that even back in the 70's 'fans' were nitpicking throught elements of the story even before they had seen the film!!! Nothing changes!!! If only they knew what they were about to see!!! LOL
This was a science fiction audience. Science fiction back then meant guys like Kubrick, Arthur Clarke and Robert Heinlein who knew science in general and orbital dynamics in particular. Those guys were making high-brow, hard s-f. Star Wars looks very campy in comparison, if you choose to view it through that lens.
Rest In Peace, Charles Lippincott and Gary Kurtz. May the Force be with you both. Always.
I was there and met Mark Hamill, who signed my early STAR WARS poster, which I bought for around $5.00 (I was in the STAR WARS ROOM) and sold ten years ago for $1500.00. I should have kept it and sold it for a lot more today. Oh, well...
Doctor Wind How old were you then?
wow you lived in that time thats so nice! But i think I'd never sold out something like that! unless I'm really scrap for cash
Velvet Evert you know ... those people back then in the 70s still exist today ..
Lucky!!!! I would love to meet Mark, he truly seems like a sweet genuine guy who loves his job and the fans.
This is amazing.....great upload.....I've been trying to explain the mindset of the times to my 26 year old son....and how completely revolutionary Star Wars was when It came out! Thank you 👍👍 👍👍👍💯
5:08 Kurtz: "there is no sound from the explosion"
Ben Burtt sweating right next to the camera.
Gary Kurtz is the man! So refined and eloquent. Plus, he was a Devil Dog in Vietnam! Great vid! THX 4 posting...
Mark Hamill begging the audience to see it twice. lol
This is great. I have a feeling the crowd here was a little disappointed. They were really expecting sci-fi not fantasy. That being said, this is a great conference. Everyone was really relaxed on stage, Gary Kurtz just talking freely and openly about being really respectful to the crowd. There was no hype, all I can gather is they showed them slides from the film and had some merchandise to sell. At this point I wonder if they saw the trailer too.
Oh Garret. Do some research. The trailer came out in Christmas 1976. Rocky was one of the movies that had a Star Wars trailer. This was a summer convention. Hooray for research! Hope this helps.
I'm amazed at some of the knowledge and technical terms used in the questions from the audience. I only know about matte paintings, miniatures and sound in space from watching bonus features on dvd. Home video didn't exist back then so all of this would have probably gone over my head if I had been alive at this time.
They used to read lots of magazines about filmmaking and special effects back then. Famous Monsters, Starlog, Fangoria, etc.
Wow! "You're on mute" 40 years before it became the most used phrase on conference calls and webinars!
Kurtz about making Flash Gordon, good speech about what people think the film must be, some get angry, some will like it, like Last Jedi.
Holy Sh*t!!!....This is pure Gold......
Rest in peace Gary Kurtz.
Thanks for sharing this. I read about this panel a few times - it was nice to finally see it. Mark Hamill supporting the movie before it came out always touched me; it's great to see more of that early enthusiasm.
This is very interesting to see an audience not love Star Wars because they haven not experienced it.
ive seen plenty of audiences not like star wars after disney bought it 🤣
This is really interesting. This audience had no idea what was about to hit them. Love it.
Can't wait to see it.
Mark is so great.
Mark Hamill was and still is a treasure.
Gary Kurtz is really the unsung hero behind Star Wars. Once he left it went downhill..
This is an amazing piece of history! Thanks for sharing.
Imagine Kurtz doing the sequel trilogy WOW!!!!
He would NEVER have lasted unless he could navigate the politics at Disney -- assuming Lucas wasn't stupid enough to put Kathleen Kennedy in charge of Lucasfilm like he did in mainline reality. After their disagreements over The Empire Strikes Back, Lucas would likely not have allowed Kurtz near LFL properties. People hold grudges or decide some relationships just don't work after all. Kurtz and Lucas split like the Beatles and never reunited.
Kurtz never worked with Lucas again after The Empire Strikes Back. Kurtz's own career petered out after a few box office failures through the 1980s. He was attached to Dark Crystal, Return to Oz, Little Nemo (the animated film), and Slipstream. None of those films made much money in theaters. Dark Crystal and Return to Oz are acknowledged classics now but the studios care about THE PRESENT, not receipts collected after 20 years of cable and home video releases.
It's hard to get funding for new films when your most recent films have bombed.
Kurtz was a good story guy and his analysis of the flaws of Star Wars (particularly Return of the Jedi and The Prequels) is spot-on for many people. He just didn't have much luck financially with his films in the 1980s -- outside of The Empire Strikes Back. Kurtz kept working up until the last year of his life but he was not as visible as he was in the 1970s.
@@AvengerII It was strange to hear Marcia Lucas call Gary an "odd duck" in an interview. Mark Hamill said the actors thought Kurtz was an equal contributor on set to George Lucas, and was shocked when he didn't come back for Jedi. It's pretty clear that Kurtz' taste for dark storylines had a huge influence on The Empire Strikes Back, but also clear that Lucas felt that went too far and wanted to swing back hard in the other direction.
I love this! It is so interesting to see what people ask about. This is probably what it is like to introduce star wars to your kids.
"Mark, how would you feel about being only typecast for SciFi films" @ 25:35 😂🤣😂
Listen to how candid the audience were in how they articulated themselves 🥹
Kurtz being the spokesperson for the movie is an interesting footnote
Nobody believed in this film. Nobody. If you've seen the documentary Empire of Dreams you know that the science fiction community was crucial for George and his team to get on board with, since no one else was interested. And after watching this not even the Science fiction community were taking this movie seriously. I can't imagine what that would do to morale, so major props to George and Gary Kurtz for seeing this movie through.
Tony Fierro Disney Corporation doesn't believe in it either.
They definitely promoted it in every venue they could. They had the novelization and the first Marvel Comics out months before the movie came out. The novel came out three months after this panel, and six months before the movie came out. I was surprised to hear in the panel that they were already working on the sequel novel this early, which became Splinter of the Mind's Eye. I had heard the novel was written to be a potential low-budget sequel to the movie, which suggests they weren't too bullish on the movie's prospects at this time in 1976. I'm not sure what did the trick to create lines around the block on opening weekend, but it also had a slow rollout in theaters, so they didn't need to get the entire country interested. At that point, the word-of-mouth certainly took over.
Wow may the force be with us this was a long time ago.1976 I was 1 but thx for sharing and glad+lucky to catch this piece of memory.
Audience member: Have fun with it.
Me:........ Oh you bet we will!!!
$18-19 million to break even. Hope they make it. Go see it twice :)
Crazy that this was already more than 40 years ago.
Man it's a pity this film flopped and was never heard from again.
It had no chance going up against William Friedkin's Sorcerer.
Watching this just one day before the 40th anniversary panel at Star Wars Celebration!
19:05 He makes a great point, which should be taken to heart by Disney+ and several streaming services today. By trying to appeal to everyone at once, you inevitably end up with insubstantial garbage like the recent Peter Pan and Wendy, or Amazon's Rings of Power. Better to tell a story as well as you can with integrity, knowing that some will like it and some won't. That will always be the result no matter the genre.
It replaced Jaws as the highest-earning film in North America just six months into release, eventually earning over $220 million during its initial theatrical run ($869 million in 2016 dollars)
The sequel nearly cost 3 times what the first one cost. Its why Kurtz was fired. Budgeted at 18 million came in at 30.5. And here Gary thought they could make the sequel for 5 million.
RIP Gary Kurtz.
Interesting though, how Gary Kurtz tells the crowd that explosions in space would be flashes of light with no sound, which clearly didn't happen in the film.
I wonder if this answer was given on the account of:
A. An original idea that was dropped
B. A miscommunication with George Lucas
C. Gary Kurtz quickly adapting to his audience and lying to keep these early sci-fi geeks (the ones more into science than fiction) from getting a bad view of the film for not caring about scientific facts, which of course is bad for business considering they were really banking on the sci-fi nerds to sell the movie.
I'm of course inclined to believe C is the answer, considering how they all cheered and applauded his answer, they'd probably have burned down the place if he told them what really was going to happen.
I think it was A. Post-production had not been done yet, so Kurtz wouldn't know for sure what decision was going to be made. He didn't seem shy about disappointing the audience on other questions, including having no explanation for hyperspace. They didn't seem crazy about the idea of the old-fashioned movie score instead of electronic music either.
mark is such a doll!!!
this is priceless! Thanks a lot for posting!
This is fantastic. Thanks a lot for uploading.
Amazing. Thank you.
Wow, some of these people asking questions. I've pointed out many times, trolls are not a modern invention.
I was waiting for, "What proof do you have that your film doesn't suck?"
Dude this is super cool! Thanks for posting this!
Lol so many of the people asking questions come off like the most snobby sci-fi fans, with their arms crossed asking “is this movie gonna be stupid?”
"In episode 2F09, when Itchy plays Scratchy's skeleton like a xylophone, he strikes that same rib twice in succession yet he produces two clearly different tones. I mean, what are we, to believe that this is some sort of a, a magic xylophone or something? Boy, I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder."
Wow, that audience grilled em. I thought they they were gonna sick an Interrogation Droid on them. LOL
This one question would've summed up their attitude, "What proof do you have that your film doesn't suck?"
"A sequel to this picture would probably cost half as much"
Lol
True in the case of Star Trek.
That was the original plan. They intended to recycle many of the props and special effects from Star Wars for a cheap sequel. They even wrote a script for it. Once Star Wars blew up they abandoned those plans in favor of Empire Strikes Back and the script was turned into a novel.
@@Nathan-tz5fr yeah wasnt that Splinter's of the Minds Eye?
@@DarthRelkew Yeah it was
@@Nathan-tz5fr Kurtz mentioned that sequel novel here. It wasn't written as a script, but as a novel. They were going to base the sequel script on it. Lucas even told the writer to cut a space dogfight out of the novel to lower the sequel's potential budget. It's amazing that they had finished the entire shoot and still lacked confidence in the film.
OH MY GOD, IT'S CHARLEY LIPPINCOTT :-D
At the 5:00 mark discussing explosions in the vacuum of space: "You see the light effect of the explosion but there is no smoke and there is no sound from the explosion itself." Would have been nice, but I guess that idea got shot down post-production.
i think he was playing to the sci fi audience to give the film a fighting chance. Sci-Fi fans of that time were very big on science details not fantasy.
Mark Hamill has a long talk with George Lucas, is depressed the rest of the day. Sounds right :)
I predict this obscure “Star Wars” feature will be a hit and cultural phenomenon. 😁
Hamill’s looks were ruined in the car accident - a disaster for an actor - but he survived physically and grew into the icon we know and love (even if he does look bit like a bullfrog).
Way back in 1976 Hamill’s humour and open demeanour; the unabashed enthusiasm for science fiction are refreshing.
Not “Thex Eleven Thirty-Eight”.
I think Kurtz was the brains of this operation.
Gary Kurtz, Marcia Lucas and many others were the honest sounding board that contributed to and improved a lot of Lucas' ideas..... They made Lucas better and stopped him from pushing forward with his dumber ideas that just didn't work... This was the problem with the prequels, Lucas was an Untouchable genius by then, and no one dared speak up when Lucas suggested a Rastafarian Steppin Fetchit character who would step in poo do as a visual gag.... and many other cringe-worthy moments.
That's a lot of hype for the sequel to Rogue One.
Hey, man, I can dig it. Groovy.
Mark is a little bit hyper lol
Hope this John Williams dude does a good job on the score
Pure gold
Thanks Jeff Schalles!
RIP.. Gary Kurtz,
In conclusion, nerds have always thought they new better than filmmakers. "It'll turn a lot of people off if there's a lot of explosions and loud noises in space."
Uh huh. Okay buddy.
@Adam 0202 Right. So Star Trek, Lost in Space, and Space: 1999 totally weren't a thing back then.
I love to work I love star wars I had no idea Lukes homestead that people actually had homes like that living in the ground cool stuff
What a time to be living. Nobody was making good sci fi.
RG P What do you mean by that? In Japan they were in the form of animation.
14:53 Oh if you only knew...
Mark Hamill's 1976 hair is exactly the same as
Dorothy Hamill's 1976 hair. Go figure.
26:16
He claimed in a recent interview he told a cop who pulled him over that he was her brother and agreed to send him an autograph of hers to get out of a ticket, which he did, and faked.
Tough room!
I loved the answer Kurtz gave to the question about appealing to a "diverse" crowd around the 20 minute mark. Although possibly a bit naive, relative to what was to come in the aftermath of such a behemoth cinematic blockbuster, what he said is actually true.
It's naive in the sense that these film corporations have caved into the idiosyncrasies of so-called "diversity", and the soulless, stale product it has produced has been an artistic catastrophe. All the best art, the best music, the best cinema is the result of an uncompromising artistic vision. How else is new ground to be broken?
It's amazing that the advice he gave sounds identical to what a lot of people say and believe now, but the studios have been trying to make movies based on focus groups for 50 years nevertheless.
box checking has destroyed modern movies. just look at what it did to disney star wars. star wars as a brand is nowhere near what it once was
4:44 Nice Save Gary, not true though lol
They've got to make $ 18 million dollars just to break even ? I dunno, sounds a bit shakey ...
"This picture is being financed and distributed by 20th Century Fox"
Oh, how the tables turn.
1976 questions : about science, special effects, technic, music
2021 questions : hope the story is very simple to understand, hope there is trash words and sex scenes, free violence too.
They mention the death of Matt painters, little did they know it wasn’t the death of the movies but the death of the tradesman. Matt painting, models all gone digital. I’m a sculptor now here in 2019 and work commercial for a well known world wide company, soon we will be gone, like the cabinet makers of the past and the artists, technology has took a humans identity. Sad really as the only reason is money and speed
14:29 - First time that I heard some one from Walt Disney was involved with Star Wars here. No wonder that Disney wanted Star Wars for they want creative control of all the movies that people associated in any way with Disney.
How eerily prophetic...
Roy Phillips No, not prophetic, at all.
They wanted it even then huh? Yeesh, that's definitely some for foreshadowing for ya.
Are the people in the audience the parents of today’s internet trolls?
mark hamilll looks younger with the normal nose
If they only knew the power of the Force that was about to be released soon...
Wish I was there. Not to ask questions but get a shit ton of merch signed by Mark and Gary.
There was no merch yet
What was the first question asked - something about the princess' costume?
The closed caption says, "The Princess' costume, have you ever seen any Amazing covers?" I think the fan is referring to how women on pulp book and comic covers would be scantily clad. Just look up how Dejah Thoris from John Carter of Mars is dressed. Much more like Leia in Jabba's palace.
The audience seems to have a lot of familiarity with the movie already. Were they shown footage or screenshots prior to the interview beginning, or something like that?
I don't remember any previews or clips. There was a display of props, including C3PO, and Hamill and co were very willing to talk to anybody at any time about their film. Does anyone remember more?
I was not there but understand Kurtz did a presentation just before this with slides and preproduction art where he pretty much laid out the whole story.
@@Rivercoon, you're right. We have the audio track from the slide presentation. Well, we have the video, too, but it's basically colored blobs in a dark room since the video recording gear from 43 years ago couldn't capture much in low-light circumstances the way our smartphones can today.
I was there (see my note above). Before this session Kurtz did a long presentation telling the plot of the movie, using a slide show of story board drawings of the scenes. So the audience who came to that before had seen a description of the movie.
The novelization had been circulated to what we would now call influencers; the late Baird Searles (co-founder of the Science Fiction Shop, to whom I am grateful for many things) had lent me his copy, knowing my interest in Doc Smith (whom Kurtz mentions at 13:17). I hereby claim to be the obnoxious teenager who responds “It’s space opera!” at 1:57, and perhaps the one who asked about the explanation of faster-than-light travel at 7:14.
Like Marx007100, Mark Hamill kindly autographed my poster (which I have _not_ sold, though I haven’t found it yet either), and was willing to chat quite a bit about the film. (I believe this was before the panel, and I was the only one in the room.)
"R2 is the one that has the wildest language"
Spoilers much Mark?
wow
He called it 'Thex 1138'. I thought you just pronounced the individual letters.
Treasure. +1 Thank you. USA
whats with the ghost at 13:46
Kurtz demonstrating how Obi-Wan will survive as a Force spirit.
Did Star Wars come out in 1976? I thought it came out in 1977.
This interchange took place at the 1976 Worldcon. The Star Wars folk were trying to drum up interest and support before the movie ever came out. It did come out in 1977.
Yes, Star Wars came out in 1977, but the majority of Star Wars was filmed and worked on in 1976
its easy to think that people in the late 70's were not as sophisticated socially as we are now but as we can see from the well thought out questions and eloquent answers that's not the case at all.
"This is a G rated movie."
I thought Star Wars was rated PG.
Either they had no idea before it had come out what rating the film would receive, or they were just kidding around with the audience.
@@umbrumsoldier1544 Gary Kurtz was being wry and the audience got it.
I'm not getting any sound. Has this video been flagged?
Is this still a problem? I'm not aware of any issues with it.
Geez, you couldnt get away with being jerks like that in a panel crowd
Has this been colorized? either way Its fantastic! Thank you for posting!
Nope; original was color. Not very well lit, and somewhat underexposed as well sometimes, and I've done fairly heavy adjustments to make it look sort of okay, and then applied a video noise elimination plugin to squelch the noise that got emphasized by the heavy processing (which in turn has suppressed a bit of real detail as well) -- can't fix one thing without breaking something else! Makes you almost think it might have been worth the trouble to get it right in the first place. (In addition to doing the post-processing restoration work now, I was also on the team that shot the MidAmeriCon video in the first place, so I hope I can make that crack since it's partly about myself).
You did a good job actually. I am amazed it came out this good. You had a sound board feed maybe? This was Sony or Panasonic reel-to-reel color. Dealing with a "random-interlaced" format can be difficult to transfer. I am very pleased and excited to see this. Excellent!
@@davestreicher Yep, 1/2-inch Sony EIAJ reels. Guy Spiller in Midlothian, VA, had the equipment and expertise needed to digitize them, and did a great job, as did David Dyer-Bennet with the editing. guyspiller.com/
@@gerisullivan4473 , hey can I get your contact info? I would like to discuss this transfer.
@@davestreicher gfs at toad-hall dot com should reach me.
Everyone in this room grew up on easy mode.