RECOLLECTIONS
It is
very interesting to recount my Star Wars history, to tell the tale of my
involvement in Star Wars fandom. It's like taking the magic portal back in time
and living sections of my life all over again. I have never told the tale in
full before, and no doubt other letter writers will give you equally
fascinating stories, but I shall give it a go, it's a story that spans 15
years. WOW it's almost an autobiography.
AND
MY MOTHER SAID I'D GROW OUT OF IT
My
life sort of began when I saw Star Wars, although in 1977 I was already
celebrating my own 10th anniversary. It seems difficult to recall anything of
interest in my life before I saw the film but after that my life really began.
My name is Darren Maxwell and in 1977 I was 10 years old, I was living with my
parents at
My
very good friend Desmond "Wossa" Smith was
telling me about a movie that he had just seen and all I could interpret from
his ravings were simply "check it out!" I wasn't long before these
rumblings were being echoed through the school, but with the younger kids it
was lost on them. I came from a poor background and my mother didn't have much
money although I was able to convince her to take me to see Star Wars (the kids
at school would not shut up about it and so I just had to see it for myself, if
only to keep up with their conversations). My mother's opinion was that it
would be a waste of time but a 10 years old kid's insistence made her give in
and so she took me.
I do
not know the exact date but I can imagine it being one to three months after
its Australian premiere that my mother and I rolled up to the cinema only to be
confronted with the "SORRY HOUSE FULL" sign. Well that was a huge
disappointment. Fortunately, another fantasy film was showing at the same time
"Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger" so we went and saw that instead
(and it wasn't bad actually) it was a compromise that couldn't be helped. Lucky
for us, it was only Saturday afternoon so it was rather early when
"Sinbad" had finished, we were heading out of the cinema when we
decided to inquire at the box office as to whether Star Wars had any vacancies.
It did! Well we bought two tickets and hopped in line with me thinking.
"Wow! Two movies in one day, a real treat." I remember we had
allocated seating, we were in the absolute last row, with our heads leaning on
the back wall, everybody was led in, sat down, lights
out, SHOWTIME. No ads, no shorts, nothing, Star Wars was being pumped into as
many sessions as possible to cater for the demand.
Ironically
I have absolutely no memory of the film. I suspect that I died and went to
heaven, and in that instant I became a Star Wars/Science Fiction fan for life.
It was a pretty big impact for a snotty nosed, 10 year old kid, I imagine I
went to school on Monday and went apeshit. Star Wars
had become more than a fad, it was an obsession. It wasn't long before Wossa, myself and Dennis (another
mate of mine) and the other dudes began frequenting the cinemas on a regular
basis. We just couldn't get enough of Star Wars, it
became the 'boys' game at school, a big shoot-em-up,
Rebels v's Imperials. Just shoot and when you get
hit, count to ten and start shooting again. At this time I discovered a
fondness for the Imperial Empire and of course Darth Vader, he became my hero. Wossa was a big Han Solo fan so he was always on the side
of the "goodies" and I the "badies".
In art & craft we tried making Star Wars mobiles. Duncan (an American
exchange student) attempted to build a Death Star out of cane, I mean it was huge, subsequently it didn't
work, Adam built an X-Wing fighter out of straws and it was pretty
good. I created a TIE Fighter out of sticks which was pretty sad.
Football and cricket took a back seat at school in favour
of Star Wars. I still remember Wossa and
Dennis arguing whether Chewbacca was a real alien or not.
"Do
you see any zippers on him?"
"No."
"See
that's because he is real."
Astounding
logic but at the time everything was believable.It
wasn't long before we attempted to do our own story in cartoon
form. But first we had to do a who's who. Luke, Han, Leia, the
old guy Ben "Kenoble" and the baddie Darth
Vader (whom I originally thought was called Earth Raider). A question suddenly
arises.
"Are
Sandpeople and Tusken
Raiders the same thing or are the little babbly things sandpeople?"
There is a pause..."What were those weapons again.......light
swords. Yeah that's it!" As you can guess we didn't seem to
progress very quickly.
"Who
can draw Darth Vader's helmet?" No takers but Wossa gives it a go.".....and there are lines
here and pointy bits there and......." The result was "......ah yeah righto - it'll pass."
"What
about the Stormtroopers huh?" Yours truly, unable to draw the real
thing, creates his own design, the helmets were strangely shoe shaped and hence
forth were referred to as "Bootheaded Stormtroopers."
Very amusing.
For
my 11th birthday Dennis bought me a Chewbacca figure (the little ones) and Wossa got me the Artoo Detoo one (or was it the other way around) my first Star
Wars figures. It was
The
biggest problem our faze caused us was "The Instant Expert Syndrome"
everybody knew everything and there were no end of disagreements between kids
"The
babbly things are Sandpeople."
"No
they're not, they're Jawas."
"I
think you're wrong."
"Look
they say so in the movie, the little things are Jawas."
(pause)
"I'm
still not convinced."
It
took a while to convince me on that one. We were all victims of IES, we were
all experts on Star Wars and were eager to show off our new found knowledge or
any other information that we happened to come across even if it did turn out
to be incorrect, and believe me, we were wrong more often than we were right.
For
us at that time life was good, Star Wars was still in the cinemas, we headed
the top of our school, we each had the set of the 12 figurines, we knew
everything about the movie (so we thought) and things were great.
Then
we rolled into 1979. I left primary school and was promoted from Grade 6
to Year 7 (Form 1 in the old terms) and I changed schools from Rathdowne Street Primary to Princes Hill High, the other
end of the suburb, an eternity away. I was the only one of my friends who went
to Princes Hill, all the others (except Wossa who was now in grade 6) went to University High which
was closer to
At
first I didn't hide the fact that I liked Star Wars, I mean at primary school
it was all the norm. In high school things were
different and as time went on I felt as though I was only fan of the film out
of a population of a thousand. Unlike at
1980,
the year of the Empire.
As with Star Wars, I have no recollection of seeing The Empire Strikes Back for
the first time, maybe I died and went to heaven for a second time. All I do
know is that it strengthened my love for the saga even more. A couple of the
kids at school saw Empire as well and actually liked it, and so they were a bit
more sympathetic to my attitude towards it, which was good. Somewhere during
this year Wossa my closest and best friend under the
Star Wars sky and I parted company. He moved to another high school and I
shifted closer to Princes Hill thus making contact difficult and somewhere
there I lost him and never saw or heard from him ever again. Many years later I
had heard that he was trying to track me down but to no avail. I still wonder
if he is a fan or not, he is not in fandom so I can only assume that he
"grew out of it." Which is a shame. Dennis
and I kept in contact but the distance was taking its toll, at opposite ends of
the suburb, it was long bike ride for a 13 year old and eventually we lost
contact with each other.
Our
Year 8 class was the same as Year 7, so nothing changed in that respect. I
still remained quiet about my Star Wars love because there was nobody there to
listen and that was the problem.
"Am
I the only Star Wars fan left on the planet?" It was a pretty depressing
time for me. A love for Star Wars but with no one to share it
with. I still bought the odd collectable when I could and collected
stuff for my scrap book. I must've read the novelisations
millions of times (including Splinter of the Mind's Eye which in primary school
we all thought was the sequel the Star Wars) and saw just about every Star Wars
rip off movie there was. I mean some were real rubbish, but it was Sci-fi and I
loved it.
In 1981,
things began to change, I moved up to year 9 and the structure of it meant that
I was with different students for different classes, thus I was able to mix
with a lot more other kids. I was still the only Star Wars fan around but the
tension of being with the same class month after month eased. It was about this
time that I met George Chouvardas, a quiet kid who
had a great talent as an artist and as luck has it a Star Wars fan as well,
(now that put a change on things) George had a friend called Tony and his
brother (another George) was also a Star Wars fan. The assemblidge
was getting bigger but it would be another year till things hit a higher gear.
But through all this time I still had no real outlet for my interests, I had
not yet heard of fandom, conventions or fan clubs. I was a 14 year old Star
Wars fan looking for a family.
1982
screamed on in, I was in Year 10 and things really began to prosper. While
other kids were graffitting their school bags with
names of pop groups, I had 'Star Wars Forever' and 'Long Live the Empire' plus
'Darth Vader Rules' etc. on mine. I was becoming more open about my interests
since I was no longer the youngest or the lowest grade kid in the school.
George, Tony, the other George and I became good friends. Tony's George had
acquired a copy of Empire on video, the quality was R.S. but that didn't
matter. George Chouvardas kept drawing Star Wars
pictures and building models with great skill, he even made a 2-3 foot long
Star Destroyer out of cardboard with lights inside which still exists even to
this day. Somewhere during this time I met a kid called Tasman Sanford who
became a good friend of mine and when Star Wars was officially released on
video cassette he hired it for a weekend. I watched it 9 times in 2 days, what
an overload. All around me attitudes appeared to be changing, people were
starting to show an interest in the films and what with Jedi on the way things
could only get better. I suddenly discovered that I had friends who cared
(although differently from people like Wossa and
Dennis). We collected the gum cards and other assorted oddments and although I
had seen stacks of other Science Fiction movies, I was a Star Wars fan first
and foremost and a Darth Vader fan first before that. I also discovered Minotaur
Books in the city, the first real media Sci-Fi book store in
In
1983 my life had a major change, but before that took place a few things
happened. I started painting a mural on a wall at school dedicated to the
Imperial Empire (it is still there today). With Jedi on the way our little Star
Wars clique was blossoming and thriving well and everything was great, except
that Return of the Jedi was not due to be released in Australia until October
28! The only thing we could do was watch all the reports from American news
programs to see how it was doing over there. Then it happened, Tasman suggested
that he and I on behalf of our school newspaper do a report on Jedi at the
film's distribution office in the city in the hope of seeing parts of the film
earlier. I mean nothing ventured nothing gained,
right? So we went straight to the top to Mr. Frank Henley the Director of
Fox/Columbia and conducted our interview. As interviews go it was pretty
mediocre but the bonus was that Mr Henley gave us 30
free passes to a preview of Jedi on August 14th. I almost died, to see the film
2 months before everyone else! Mr Henley also gave us
a few Jedi daybill posters as well. My first poster
collectable, we split the tickets 50/50 and my whole life hence forth with Star
Wars was foretold from that moment because of Tasman and his idea. I will be
forever indebted to him for it. I got all the lads together and handed out the
tickets what a coup, we even brought our parents along as well, but the best
bit was yet to come.
Sunday
August 14th rolled around, I was introduced to some Star Wars fans by a lady I
had invited to join us, I met Marj Miller and Helena
Russell who happened to be involved with HAMILLS the Australian Star Wars
Appreciation Society, I didn't even know that a club existed and they mentioned
about the premiere of Jedi in October and how they were all going to be there
in costume. Well I said yeah straight away and was encouraged to get dressed as
the Lord V. himself, well this was looking really good.
The best was still yet to come, we went into the cinema, Hoyts
Cinema Centre number 1 (where Star Wars and Empire had been shown) the biggest
cinema in
After
the film I was introduced to my now longest friend in fandom. Shane Morrissey who was in charge of the
I
attended a HAMILLS fundraiser in Moonee Ponds a month
later and met up with everybody again. This was my first Star Wars/Science
Fiction social event and all the Star Wars knowledge and trivia I had emassed over the past 6 years was finally put to the test
in the trivia quiz. I had discovered my element. I spent the next month trying
to piece together a Darth Vader suit for the premiere, I already had tickets
bought through HAMILLS (ironically I was never a member of the club). October
26 arrived, the city streets had been blocked off just for the film and there
was a live band playing and dancers as well, pretty impressive really
considering that it was all for a movie. It was here that I wore my first ever
costume. I located the HAMILLS group and the night became one to remember, I
wanted Star Wars and was getting plenty of it and while I lapped it up I made a
critical error in not getting contact names and addresses. When all was said
and done I had no one to call and I did not know how to contact any of the
HAMILLS people and so I was alone again. All was not bad though, our clique
grew larger because of Jedi and we had some great times but as 1983 turned into
1984 things quietened down considerably.
In
1984 my life hit its biggest turning point. I was doing an extra term of Year
11 (my final term of my schooling life), I was now 17,
the mural I had started painting was finished after I had left school and
entered the workforce. Then somewhere on a radio at work I heard that tickets
to the preview of Star Trek III could be obtained from the station. Since I
missed the premiere of Star Trek II, I promptly rang up.
I
attended the screening and ran straight into all the old HAMILLS people. A girl
who I recognised from high school strangely enough
asked me while we were chatting whether I was interested in theatre work. For
some reason, on instinct I said "Yes". A small theatre group called Starforce which was made up of HAMILLS members was in
operation and were looking for people to join, now I
was definitely interested. I was given a place and a time to turn up and that
was that.
The
following Friday night I walked through the door of an old scout hall in Albert
Park and although I was not instantly aware of it, I had just joined Star
Wars/Science Fiction Fandom. My new home, my new family and I have never looked
back.
My
name is Darren Maxwell I am now 26 years old and am currently Executive
Committee member for Star Walking Inc The First
National Star Wars Saga Convention of Australia (Force One). I am also a board
member for Star Walking Inc. Next to the Director Shane Morrissey, I am also a
founding member for this organisation and one of its
longest serving (6 years). I have been on the committees of 4 conventions and
attended 13 others and have been involved in 8 special event banquets.
And
my mother said I'd grow out of it.
Darren
Maxwell