By
Robert Meyer Burnett
A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far, Far Away, the original STAR WARS trilogy changed the way people think about movies. Before movies like JURASSIC PARK and T2 introduced us to the world of digital filmmaking, the original version of the trilogy stood as the landmark for special effects.
In 1997, George Lucas permanently replaced the original films with their SPECIAL EDITION counterparts. While updated sound and many enhanced effects shots added to the trilogy, others, like the "Han Solo/Greedo Scene" and "Jedi Rocks Sequence" upset many fans.
Presented here for the first time on DVD is the original vision of George Lucas, preserved for the digital future.
Introduction to the bootleg STAR WARS - THE ORIGINAL VISION four-disc DVD set.
And now, a brief history lesson.
For those of you too young to remember, in the six years between the release of the original STAR WARS and RETURN OF THE JEDI, the home-video industry came of age. In May of 1977, virtually none of the studios made their films available on home video. Aside from a smattering of porn, one simply couldn't purchase or rent a videotape to enjoy at home. Not enough VCRs existed to support a consumer market. Yet six years later, the brand-new home-video industry was well on its way to outgrossing its theatrical counterpart.
During those six years, a fundamental paradigm shift occurred not only in the Motion Picture Studios' view of their own assets, but more important, in the American Public's understanding of where and how movies fit into their daily lives. No longer did one have to wait for the ABC Sunday Night Movie or the local revival house to play a James Bond film...because one could now pay a couple of bucks and rent it on tape for the weekend. Distant memories of a favorite childhood double feature could now be recreated for the price of two tape rentals.
The origins of this shift began with a fateful moment, somewhere around 1978 I believe, when a private citizen approached 20th Century Fox and asked if he could license 50 of their films to release on home video. These included PATTON and PLANET OF THE APES. This man wanted to do something never considered before; releasing them on prerecorded videotape under his own "Magnetic Video" label. Because the general public owned very few VCRs, Fox didn't quite understand the value of their film library and agreed to the man's request. Magnetic Video continued into the year 1980, even seeing the release of such home video favorites as Don Coscarelli's classic PHANTASM and Ridley Scott's unsurpassed ALIEN. The studio did finally wise up, however, creating 20th Century Fox Home Video later that year.
To their credit, by 1979, Warner Brothers plunged into the home video arena, releasing classics like THE EXORCIST and A CLOCKWORK ORANGE in large, collector-friendly boxes. Other forward-thinking individuals started their own independent video labels, such as schlockmeister Charles Band and his Meda (named after his first wife and later changed to Media) Home Entertainment, releasing gems like John Carpenter's ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 and HALLOWEEN, THE GROOVE TUBE, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and TOURIST TRAP. Companies like Allied Artists joined the fray, releasing horror titles like CRYPT OF THE LIVING DEAD and ALICE SWEET ALICE. By the end of 1980, the home-video era had finally arrived and the studios all had home-video divisions of their own, even as they decried VCRs as spelling certain doom for theatrically released motion pictures. I can even remember the day MCA/Universal released their first titles. At 13, working in Seattle's first video store, Videospace, I remember opening a box of MCA Home Video tapes and thinking how amazing it was that I could take home a cassette of SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT.
Back then, video stores were strange places where every tape sat on a pedestal and some new releases took years between their first theatrical runs and their eventual emergence on home video. Two dudes named Lucas and Spielberg were in no hurry to release the results of their years of sweat and blood on cassettes which could fit into the palm of a hand.
Inevitably, the insane popularity of home video led to the proliferation of the bootleg videocassette market. American consumers buying VCRs simply weren't content with the trickle of titles the studios released on home video. They wanted more. And they had the cash to satisfy their voracious appetites. Specifically, favorite motion pictures the various studios had yet to release to the home market, films like FANTASIA, SNOW WHITE, GONE WITH THE WIND, CASABLANCA, DAWN OF THE DEAD and STAR WARS were coveted not only by collectors, but by those wealthy early-adapters of home video itself.
Industrious individuals, such as yours truly, saw a deep-pocketed market just waiting to be fulfilled. All one had to do was either schlep the cumbersome video equipment, consisting of a separate camera and a VCR, to a drive-in showing the film in question and videotape the giant screen, or, if one lived in a more urban, multiplex-friendly area, bribe a theatre projectionist to run the same film after hours and tape the sound and image off the actual movie screen to the best of one's ability.
Obviously, while the quality of these efforts would never test the limits of one's home theatre, the boots themselves sold for one hundred and fifty dollars a pop, regardless of quality. A great copy of STAR WARS might sell for two bills, no problem. For some minimal effort, a 15-year-old video pirate like myself could make a grand a week selling bootleg video. You wanted E.T., JEDI or SONG OF THE SOUTH? No problem, I'll make you a copy.
My bootlegging career began back in '80. I'd turned 13 a week before EMPIRE opened. I'd already seen the boots of STAR WARS my friends Jennifer Epstein and Jimmy Fiddler had, but they were acquired by rich fathers with connections I could only dream about. One day though, I remember my weekly calls to Bud Warner and Steve Pitcher, who ran Videospace, the second video store in the nation, owned by VSDA founder Weston Nishamura, demanding to know when DAWN OF THE DEAD would hit the streets. After all, the film came out two years before in 1978, so certainly someone had to release it by now.
Bud said "Rob...you don't have to wait for DAWN OF THE DEAD anymore. C'mon down to the store." Thinking some obscure video company I wasn't aware of decided to release my very favorite horror film of all time, I jumped on a Metro bus and headed out to the University District to take possession of Romero's blood-soaked zombie epic.
But instead of a nice, shrink-wrapped box with a lurid cover, Bud handed me two blank cassettes. I'm like, "What's this?" He says "It's DAWN OF THE DEAD. I made a bootleg copy for you."
It turned out Bud had a massive collection of bootleg films on videocassette. Mostly exploitation and horror titles. I'm sure he had a vast collection of other tapes as well, but he just showed me the FANGORIA. He turned me on to films I, at 13, could never see in a theatre. TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, I DRINK YOUR BLOOD, LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, THEY CAME FROM WITHIN and many, many more. He'd never show me SALO though. Had to draw the line somewhere, I suppose.
From that day forward, I became a bootlegger. I made bank selling the wares of major motion picture studios they hadn't yet managed to release to the home market. Mostly, I used the money I made to buy more blank videocassettes, which cost up to 20 bucks a pop back then. This career lasted until I turned 18 in 1985. Grandpa Ralph came through with a graduation gift of the Pioneer CLD-900, the world's first CD-laserdisc combi-player. On that day, I gave up videocassettes forever, slowly turning my collection into beautiful silver platters with stunning digital sound. There were no bootleg laserdiscs.
Which brings me to today.
It's a beautiful Sunday afternoon. Father's Day 2002. As my pappy, Dick (no jokes please), resides a state away, I'm instead at work, taking a lunch break from completing yet another piece for the "Fellowship" DVD. For anyone interested, we DVD content producers (editor in the case of "Fellowship") don't keep banker's hours.
A few of us are in the Kurtti/Pellerin conference room, scarfing some tasty Tommy Tang's delivery. Since we're all too
lazy to get up and grab something to watch, I decide to take action, whipping out a CDV of ATTACK OF THE CLONES and suggest
we take a gander at Yoda once again going after Count Dooku. We all love the way Yoda says "Doo-ku" before he resoundingly
hands Lord Tyrannus his ass. When you live in Los Angeles and work in the entertainment industry, you often come across things
like errant, bootleg copies of ATTACK OF THE CLONES on CDV. No one knows where they come from.
Of course, the images and sound are not up to Fox Video's exacting standards, but they're strangely compelling nonetheless.
Letterboxed even. Certainly watchable. I can't help but be reminded of those heady, early days in home video, when I first saw
STAR WARS on a hazy Betamax cassette. Before this A NEW HOPE nonsense. And I realized, not a whole lot's changed in 20 years.
In the digital age, the only movies worth bootlegging are, as Kevin Smith himself refers to them, "The Holy Trilogy."
The STAR WARS films. Ironically, the very same movies I used to sell 20 years ago. Everything else, from SUSPIRIA to THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW, currently exists on beautiful, remastered DVDs.
The STAR WARS films, however, continue the two-decade-old tradition of the video pirate. Personally, I have two different versions of the original STAR WARS trilogy on DVD. The first set of the SPECIAL EDITION DVDs I bought at the 2001 Festival Internacional de Cinema de Catalunya in Sitges, Spain, from a video dealer specializing in Asian DVDs. They used the laserdiscs to compress the video image from, but they went to the trouble of not only recreating the AC-3, 5.1 soundtracks, but also remastering the sound in DTS. The discs play either audio format. Clever folks, those Asian video pirates. They look and sound damn good.
But nothing compares to the DVDs I picked up a few weeks ago of the ORIGINAL VERSIONS of the STAR WARS trilogy. Created by a few very motivated industry professionals and mastered from the DEFINITIVE EDITION laserdisc box set, this four-disc DVD package contains not only letterboxed versions of all three films, but a fourth disc of supplements! These supplements include everything from deleted scenes from STAR WARS, including Luke and Biggs in Anchorhead and Han Solo's Ho in the Cantina (he actually kisses her), to THE MAKING OF STAR WARS television special and the first animated appearance of Boba Fett from the infamous Holiday special.
Sure, on the films themselves the sound is only two-channel stereo and the video image isn't as stable as studio-mastered product, but heck, it's THE ORIGINAL VERSIONS OF THE STAR WARS MOVIES on DVD! Greedo doesn't fire first! With almost three hours of additional programming! As a young bootlegger in the early eighties, I never dreamed of the level of fanaticism it would take to create such treasures.
Of course, as a DVD producer myself, I can't condone the actions of individuals who so flagrantly break numerous laws, taking money directly out of Fox and George Lucas' pockets. Obviously, as the Global Village gets ever so smaller, bootlegging, especially in other parts of the world, is a real concern facing the studios. Region codes and Macrovision only offer so much protection for them, especially if they can't get their product out day-and date worldwide. The poor motion picture studios are losing money right and left.
However, since Mr. Lucas himself stated he'd never make the original versions of the STAR WARS trilogy available on DVD, I suppose they'll always remain the first, last and best product of the video pirate. The home video age began with them, so it seems rather fitting they continue on a tradition now moving into its third decade. They might not be exactly the discs we're all waiting for, but as long as Bothan spies keep bringing them to me...I'll keep watching them.
Have a better day.
NEXT WEEK:
Fortunately, an exclusive interview with DVD producer Michael Pellerin, who discusses his experience creating, with the full cooperation and approval of Peter Jackson, the four-disc "Fellowship of the Ring" special edition. Unfortunately, Michael's signed a non-disclosure agreement with New Line Cinema, so I don't know how much he can actually tell us about the FELLOWSHIP. He did, however, produce Disney's amazing ATLANTIS double-disc special edition and thinks it's a good indicator of the work he's capable of. I do too.
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In the wake of the revival of MICRONAUTS, GI JOE and THUNDERCATS in comic form, Robert Meyer Burnett would like to appeal to France's Infrogames (no, that's not a typo) and DC Comics to tackle the revival of '80s fave ATARI FORCE for them.
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