STAR WARS MEMORIES

 It's funny (not funny ha-ha, but funny odd, funny strange, funny weird) some of the things I can remember with absolute certainty and conviction from my past. Here's a for instance.

I know for a fact that I went to see SILVER STREAK (1976), a comedy starring Gene Wilder, Richard Pryor, Jill Clayburgh and Patrick McGoohan at the old Highland Mall Twin Cinema sometime around Christmas of 1976. I remember seeing a teaser one-sheet poster in the lobby for a new movie that was to be released in the summer of 1977. The film was, of course, STAR WARS and the teaser read either "coming to your galaxy next summer" or "a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away..." I know now that it must have been one of those two. Had to be. They're the only possible choices as there was only copy on the poster, no artwork of any kind.

But for some unknown reason, for the longest time, I misremembered the poster as reading "somewhere this may all be happening." Where in the world did I come up with that? And how did I connect that phrase, which, to the best of my knowledge, has never been associated with STAR WARS in any way, shape or form, over the far more memorable and immortal "a long time ago...". Heck, even "coming to your galaxy next summer" (which I do know was used on the one-sheet teaser for EMPIRE STRIKES BACK because I own one), is better. But "somewhere this may all be happening"?

My only explanation is that I liked that phrase as a title for a science-fiction short story I was planning to write, back in the days when I was trying to write (not too successfully) short fiction. Somehow my brain took the title which I had come up with and linked it to the poster, which I know I did see.

So there you have it, one of my first (incorrect) STAR WARS memories. More (correct) memories to come.