Mark Hamill – Saturday Night Movie Sleepovers

Star Wars, 1977

Welcome! In the midst of holiday madness, Dion Baia & J. Blake have decided to open a gift just a tad early – a special bonus, intergalactic episode of Saturday Night Movie Sleepovers! With 2017 coming to a close, the boys take a deep-dive into a 40-year-old film that forever changed popular culture, the motion picture industry, the lives of millions of people and the world – 1977’s Star Wars!

Written and directed by George Lucas and starring Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford, Star Wars-mania swept the world in the late-1970s and early-1980s and became the quintessential blockbuster and landmark film for an entire generation of movie-goers. With time working against Blake and Dion for a topic so immense, the boys get right to business, discussing how the socially and politically turbulent decades of the 1960s and 70s, as well as what was going on in Hollywood at the time, led to Star Wars becoming the ultimate cinematic phenomenon. Among the many other topics at hand, they chat about its young filmmaker, speculate as to why the film appeals universally to so many people and of course, get into the radio drama that hit the airwaves in 1981. So, what was it about the 1970s that made Star Wars so special? How did George become Hollywood’s “great and powerful” Lucas? Why didn’t anybody working on the film, besides George Lucas, take it seriously? What the heck is a “parsec” and why is Han Solo’s use of the term actually not incorrect in the film? Why can’t Darth Vader get any respect? The boys attempt to answer all of these questions and more on this particularly dense…yet only scratched the surface…edition of Saturday Night Movie Sleepovers!

Extras!

Here’s the original theatrical trailer!

Take a listen to The Star Wars Radio Drama…as discussed in this episode.

Check out the documentary “From Star Wars to Jedi: The Making of a Sage,” as discussed in this episode.

Take a gander at some deleted scenes from Star Wars.

And here is a funny video that Dion brings up – the Throne Room scene “Minus Williams.”

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December 9

Star Wars Holiday Special, 1978

Happy Life Day and welcome back to an all new episode of Saturday Night Movie Sleepovers! Well with Christmas time here, Dion Baia and J. Blake have decided to cover maybe their most controversial topic to date and the most anticipated event of the 1978 Holiday season: the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special, that aired Friday November the 17th, of that year.

So to cut right to the chase, why is this television special so controversial for the boys at SNMS? Well probably because of the stance Blake and Dion take on this almost universally-panned time capsule from ’78. After the boys chat about last week’s podcast with guest host Mike Vanderbilt, and a dive into Dion‘s food allergies, the fellas get right into the seasonal topic at hand. They set the table and interject the context of the latter half of 1978, a year after the original Star Wars had been released and almost a year and change before the sequel Empire Strikes Back would come out in 1980. Along with a ‘variety show’ template and the majority of the original cast of 1977 film reprising their roles, we get some pretty astounding cameos by such stars as Art Carney, Harvey Korman and Bea Arthur, performances by Diahann Carroll, the rock band Jefferson Starship, and even a pint-raising song by Ms. Arthur herself. The television audience was also treated to a 9+ minute cartoon that introduced one of the most legendary Star Wars characters of all time, the mysterious bounty hunter Bobba Fett. So why is this special so universally hated by critics and fans alike? How involved was George Lucas really (especially since afterward he completely disavowed himself and completely berated the special)? Why was the aforementioned Bobba Fett introduced in cartoon form, in this holiday special anyway? Another dirty little secret, was Han Solo actually supposed to be married to a wookie?! And to get right to the most controversial question: in the context of the era, was this special really as bad as everyone likes to remember…considering what else was going on in 1978? Well it could be a very interesting podcast to say the least for some hardcore Star Wars fans, as SNMS delivers another all new, holiday edition of Saturday Night Movie Sleepovers!

EXTRAS!

An indispensable asset for any fans of the Holiday Special, here is an amazing website directly solely to the 1978 TV Special.

Check out this Black & White footage of the first screen test from 1978 of Bobba Fett.

Take a look at one of the BEST QUALITY versions of the Star Wars Holiday Specials SNMS has ever seen, in it’s entirety, courtesy of YouTube.

And here are all the original commercials that aired during the Holiday Special.

And speaking of rotoscoping, here is the ultra-rare and never released pre-MTV 1979 music video Tom Waits did for his song “The One that Got Away” with director John Lamb (who would go on to do American Pop with Ralph Bakshi). It was done as a test, using the pioneering ‘video rotoscope’ technology and then converted to animation, a technique that producers then brought to Bakshi to sell him on the concept for his next film, which audiences would see 2 years later in 1981, in the aforementioned, American Pop. The short ended up winning an Oscar in 1980 for Scientific and technical achievement. More information about this story can be found here.

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November 11

Batman: The Animated Series; Heart of Ice and Feat of Clay , 1992

Welcome once again to another all new installment of Saturday Night Movie Sleepovers! They boys were up really, really late the other night looking through their collection of old VHS tapes, deep down in the SNMS archive, and came across something that made them stop in their tracks. J. Blake and Dion Baia decided to call an audible, taking a left turn with the podcast to break new ground and cover a subject to that helped shape their preteen years- something they both consider not only one of the best animated series of all time but one of the best television shows of all time, Batman: The Animated Series, which debuted September 5, 1992.

The boys realize that a task like this would produce a truly epic podcast, so for their purposes here they’ve picked two stories that are not only some of their favorites episodes, but also exemplify the ‘lightning in a bottle’ that was captured when this show came together, entitled Heart of Ice and Feat of Clay, Parts 1 & 2. Dion and Blake start off by remembering back in the day when kids would hang out with other kids just to play with those kid’s toys, and also Blake‘s recent trip to England and what he did on Halloween day, over across the pond. Then they get into Batman and set up the various factors brought together to bring to the small screen not only a unique take on the Dark Knight character, but also how this union of the minds brought us one of the most unique cartoons in animation history. They discuss the influences as well as the tone of the show, and particularly in these two episodes, the fact that even though these were installments in a children’s cartoon show, we have two stories that end up setting the bar, changing and even inventing some of the cannon for the entire franchise as it moves forward. So, how about the amazing performances given not only in these two stories, but throughout the entire series by the legendary actors brought in to voice the various characters in the show? Why does the animation in Heart of Ice and Feat of Clay in particular stand out from the rest of the series? How do these episodes showcase what is to come in this groundbreaking series? Well these are just some of the topics the fellas get through on this all new, and fun edition of Saturday Night Movie Sleepovers!

EXTRAS:

As discussed in this episode, take a look that this rare and completely awesome limited-run vinyl record box set of the score to some of the best installments of Batman:The Animated Series, courtesy of Mondo.

Take a look some of the artwork from the box set saluting some of the various episodes, like Heart of Ice, and the Clayface episode Mudslide.

And since we’re here, have a look at another sweet Clayface art for Feat of Clay, Part 2.

Check out this re-envisioning of the iconic opening of the series, all done here with Legos!

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October 17

“The Flash ” TV Pilot, 1990

With the recent premiere in the fall of 2014 of yet another beloved DC Comics property The Flash, the boys had the idea of instead going back in time and giving another shot to the original series, 1990‘s The Flash pilot, starring the great John Wesley Shipp.

So… are they crazy? Or are they onto something? How big of an influence did Tim Burton‘s 1989 epic Batman film and Warren Beatty‘s 1990 hit Dick Tracy have on this franchise? And more importantly, what influences if any, was this show on the forthcoming iconic Batman the Animated Series from 1992? Well it’s an action packed, fast-paced, special edition of Saturday Night Movie Sleepovers. Come on down and have a listen today!

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