I’ve had a fascination with Leigh Brackett for a while now.
I don’t know why. Probably because her SciFi novels don’t deal with the “far
beyond. ” They don’t even travel very far. A lot of her novels take place on
mars and it has swords and creatures and laser beam pistols. Generic laser beam
pistols. (That’s the best kind.) She’s pretty cool and if you wanted to read
something by her I suggest, The Sword of Rhiannon or The Ginger Star.
Or The Empire Strikes Back.
The story goes, at least from my layman understanding of it,
that George Lucas recruited Leigh Brackett to aid him in writing the original
screenplay. She was in her early 60s at the time and in fact, died before the
movie’s release. George Lucas, being the knightly man he is, gave her credits
post-humorously. And he didn’t even use a lot of the edits she made. Apparently
he didn’t like them very much.
There’s not a lot of difference between the Leigh Brackett
version of TESB and George Lucas’ version. But there’s enough change to make it
worth the read. Names change and one or two pivotal plot points are different. It
got me thinking.
Somebody needs to make film off her script.
I like this idea. As I was reading it I couldn’t help but
feel like I stumbled across a carefully guarded secret. As if the screen play
was buried underground locked in vaults with impassible combinations and the
vaults were guarded by not 1 but 2 Stormtroopers. It was nerdy euphoria.
I’ve seen the movie many times and if I had watched them
recently, would have probably written a blog post about it, too. Knowing the
movie helped me imagine as I was reading the film. Star Wars is so branded now,
unlike novels. Everyone sees characters in novels differently. But there’s only
one way to see Han Solo, one way to see Darth Vader. And so I think watching
the movies before reading the screenplay is the way to go when it comes to Star
Wars. I think this rendition of a movie classic is worth the read.
You know. I kinda prefer Minch.
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