The History

1975 -- George Lucas conceives of and writes the basic story of Anakin Skywalker's rise, fall and ultimate redemption. This story becomes too large for one film and Lucas divides the story into two trilogies. The first trilogy focuses on the life of a young Anakin Skywalker while the second trilogy focuses on the life of Anakin's son, Luke Skywalker. Lucas chooses to make the second trilogy first since it appears to be the most exciting one to film at the time.

Lucas offers his Star Wars films first to Universal Studios, the film company that financed American Grafitti. Universal passed on Star Wars because they considered it to be an unfathomable and silly movie idea. This decision ended up costing Universal hundreds of millions of dollars. Every single studio in Hollywood passed on the project except for 20th Century Fox. Fox gave Lucas $ 10 million to make what is perhaps the most influential film in the history of cinema. Fox released Star Wars Episode 4: A New Hope in May 1977.

On May 20, 1977 Variety set the tone by stating: "Star Wars is a magnificent film. George Lucas set out to make the biggest possible adventure-fantasy out of his memories of serials and older action epics, and he has succeeded brilliantly. What Lucas lacks in originality is more than made up by enthralling special effects." Star Wars' opening day totaled $ 254,309 from just 32 theaters. By the end of its first theatrical run, Star Wars was the most successful film in North American history with a gross in excess of $ 290 million. Lucas' cut from the box office was more than $ 50 million. Alec Guinness negotiated for 2.5% of net profits, which eventually earned the actor over $ 6 million.

When Lucas negotiated his deal with Fox to make Star Wars, the studio was shocked to learn that the hot director was not asking for a lot of money. Instead, Lucas wanted control. He wanted to have the right to the final cut of the film, 40% of the net box-office gross, all rights to future sequels and ownership of all the merchandising rights associated with Star Wars. At the time, science fiction films were not very profitable. Hence, Fox thought they were ripping Lucas off. Sequel and merchandise rights to science fiction films were worthless at the time. In the end, this deal would eventually make Lucas a billionaire and cost Fox an untold fortune in lost revenues.

1978 -- George Lucas began to discreetly buy up land in San Rafael, California. Lucas purchased the 1,882 acre Bull tail Ranch for $ 2.7 million. Production on the sequel to Star Wars called the Empire Strikes Back was underway. The film was budgeted at $ 18 million to be entirely financed out of Lucas' own pocket. The film encountered severe budget overruns and eventually cost over $ 30 million. Empire hit theaters in May 1980 and grossed $ 222 million in North America. It was the highest grossing film of 1980.

1983 -- Return of the Jedi premieres in theaters in May 1983 and grosses over $ 265 million at North American cinemas. After the release of Return of the Jedi, Lucas retires from making Star Wars movies to pursue other projects. Lucas vaguely promises to make a Prequel Trilogy one day when special-effects technology advances enough and becomes cheap enough so that Lucas can make the films exactly as Lucas envisions them without artistic compromises. True to his word, Lucas walked away from Star Wars and the Prequel Trilogy remained untouched in his five three-ringed notebooks for well over a decade.

For the complete chronological history visitwww.supershadow.com

Darth Vader Living Room

The Interview

What do you Collect?
Star Wars memorabilia cast and crew items, movie props, toys, toy prototypes, cereal items and a few other things.

What do you do for a living?
Software development manager at Amazon.com

How long have you been a collector?
I’ve kept everything since 1977 since I was a kid but I wasn’t active in collecting until the late eighties, the last 12 years or so, about early nineties is really when I started to get very active and strong in collecting.

When did you first encounter Star Wars?
Well it was the summer of 1977 it was hard to miss it just had such a monumental impact at that time so you just kind of ran into it everywhere. On TV I saw ads for it, inside the theatre there were trading cards, just everywhere.

How did you start collecting Star Wars memorabilia?
Originally as a kid I wanted to own everything from the films but when I got into it later on it was mostly a nostalgic thing. I would walk by collectible shops in Seattle where I live that would have each action figure on display and I would frequently just walk by these places and I kept telling myself I should get back into this because I was really actively into the toys when I was a kid so I just decided to start buying from toyshops checking out the magazines and networking with other collectors and then started to build up my collection.

What is the attraction to Star Wars?
Its hard to define it, the films were so revolutionary at the time. I think the reason a lot of collectors who grew up with Star Wars are into collecting now is because it was such an event in their lives. It was revolutionary, the whole special effects, big block buster settings in a whole other world, there are so many aspects to the film that were really novel and the impact was something that I think people still feel nostalgic about.

Why do you think Collectors are so attracted to Star Wars memorabilia?
Well, I think because they love the films, they love the story of Star Wars. Star Wars hits many people in different ways, people also like particular characters. People love Star Wars so much they begin to love the Collecting. Another thing that’s interesting is compared to other life, like Aliens or Star Trek Collecting isn’t as big. One of the reasons I think is because Star Wars from the very beginning was very tied to the merchandise. One of the things that were ground breaking for Star Wars was that they really tied it to merchandise. George Lucas was really a big proponent of having toys and mugs and all sorts of things made for the films that I think from the very beginning engrained Star Wars merchandise with being into the Star Wars films, they really intertwined and so I think that’s why collecting is so big now. The other thing is Star Wars collecting in the 90s had a really active thriving community for a number of reasons. Steve Sansweet’s book Star Wars: From Concept to Screen to Collectible that was very influential because it really talked about the memorabilia aspect of Star Wars and for many collectors it was like, Wow! there are other people like me out there that are really into this stuff, and then you have the emergence of the internet where a lot of the kids who grew up with Star Wars were also internet savvy and for that kind of generation of fan they actually had a very easy way to network unlike say other generations of collectors of GI Joes, they might not be at that kind of critical point so I think that was also a pretty major part why the collecting interest was so strong it was a very strong community.

How would you compare Star Wars Collectors to Star Trek Collectors?
Well, there are many Star Trek Collectors but it’s not anything like Star Wars. It isn’t as active a community, a lot of the fandom of Star Trek is oriented in different ways I would say the Star Trek community is more heavy on the costuming than in Star Wars so you go to a convention doing the costume thing, although that’s pretty strong in Star Wars but Collecting is just not a huge part of the Star Trek experience and I think Star Trek also didn’t have a lot of product, first of all when the show came out there wasn’t any product out there really it wasn’t till like Mego started making action figures later on in the 70s that there were some toys for Star Trek, it wasn’t really as memorabilia oriented as Star Wars.

How many items do you have in your collection?
It’s hard to know, I’m sure over 10,000 items and I know Collectors who have even more. I’m not by any means trying to get everything.

What would you say is your favorite piece?
It always changes there’s no set favorite piece, there are a lot of pieces I love that I never get tired of, it depends. Like I recently picked up a British record award for the Star Wars sound track from 1977 so that kind of thing is really cool and something I haven’t seen before and its one of my favorite pieces now but I don’t think there’s a single favorite piece I have.

Lifesize Jar Jar Binks and Original props	12 inch Figures

What is the most unique item you have acquired?
Well I have many unique items, a lot of one-of-a-kind items so by definition they’re all unique. I also have unusual stuff that shows how Star Wars is everywhere, weird things like for example when I went to visit the Star Wars set in Tunisia they have a souvenir of one of the places they filmed at, this was an underground hotel, Luke’s house. The underground scenes were all shot actually in a real place in Tunisia and they make like a ceramic souvenir of that hotel not associated with Star Wars they just make the souvenir of the hotel, its very cool to have this ceramic play set but its really a Star Wars setting so that kind of thing is very unique, yeah I have lots of things that are one of a kind like art work, prototypes and props.

Do you get invited to these sets?
Well I didn’t go during the filming it‘s all kind of unofficial. I just try to track down where they film and then just try to go find the location, basically they filmed in natural settings, they filmed in real buildings in Tunisia and so you can go there and still see the places and then its almost exactly as it is on screen there’s very little they have to do to the set to give it the Star Wars look they just leave it as is.

So what do you do once you arrive at the location?
Travel around, take photographs, talk to people who were there and see if there’s anything they left behind.

Did you ever get a chance to talk to George Lucas or any of the actors in the movie?
I’ve met many of the actors, I’ve never met Lucas but through various conventions I’ve met many of the actors.

Various movie props from Tunasia

So you say you search to see if anything from the set has been left behind have you ever found anything interesting?
Oh, absolutely from the original trilogy and the prequel so I’ve brought back quite a few things and a lot of them are featured on my website www.toysrgus.com

Do you get hassled about the things that you take?
Well the stuff that they leave, they don’t leave like a R2 unit a Land Speeder or anything like that or a costume, they leave parts of the set, like things that are just set decorations. There are some things I wouldn’t touch like for example they built a set out of the desert of Mos Espa town and I wouldn’t take anything from that location, I wouldn’t want to damage it, it’s all set up there for filming but there’s a lot of the stuff that gets sold off as scrap wood to locals. So there are things that were thrown away basically that are not an issue, I would never buy anything that was taken from the set.

You said earlier that you have very unique and one-of-a-kind items, how did you acquire those?
Most of it is through networking, the majority of the stuff I buy today is not through any kind of public market or anything it’s usually through word of mouth. At this point I have so many contacts, so many people I’m in communication with that everything is usually through referrals and things like that and people I know and then also tracking down people, working hard to find sources for things.

How do you display your collection? Do you dedicate a room for your memorabilia?
There are many rooms with all my stuff, the foyer, the living room, the dining room. There are four rooms on the second floor exclusively Star Wars. There are three rooms in the basement that are all Star Wars and then there’s just random stuff everywhere all over the house.

How do you go about displaying your items all over the house?
There are things framed on walls, so I have a lot of stuff framed I have things in display cases I have custom display cases also so it depends on the items. I put a lot of time into how its displayed, the style of collecting I do is I don’t try to get everything I mostly go for quality not quantity I spend a lot of time trying to make sure it really displays well and I have the space for them. It just depends on the type of item but I have a lot of display cases around the house, I have things framed and so on.

Do you have a favorite room?
Not in particular, there all pretty cool…One of my favorite rooms is the cereal room where I have a room with just cereal boxes, Star Wars cereal boxes from 70 countries, hundreds of boxes in that room.

Cereal Room, North Wall	Cereal Room, East Wall

Cereal Room, South wall	Cereal Room, West wall

When you decorate your Star Wars rooms do you usually get help from someone?
Well, sometimes I’ll ask my wife or a friend to help usually I could pretty much take care of it myself.

So you have been named Star Wars number one fan, how does that feel and how did you earn that title?
Well I don’t know about that I think a lot of people could fit that title, I don’t know. But I’m a big fan but there’s lots of people that are into it equally or more I don’t even know if the titles appropriate.

So how far have you traveled to obtain a new piece? You had mentioned Tunisia.
Well, Tunisia is pretty far out there I mean I’ve gone on vacation and picked up Star Wars things when I was in Australia and several trips to Europe. Pretty much Tunisia, Europe, Australia that’s about as far out as I’ve gone for Star Wars, most of the stuff I pick up is in the U.S. but I do travel quite a bit in the U.S. to find Star Wars things.

So opportunities have been opened to you because you’re such a big Star Wars Collector?
Well it helps a little in that sometimes people contact me if they worked on the films or they worked in Kenner, some people who’ve worked for Star Wars licensees or one of the movies will find the website and then email me and then ask about some item they have so sometimes I find things that way, so that’s kind of a plus and it also helps sometimes when I’m looking for things to just kind of reference work I’ve done because then people really understand that I’m really a collector and visually trying to research things for my collection and so it gives them contacts to what I’m doing in that sense it helps.

Click here for part 2!