Tag: Star Wars

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In Thy Darth Streets Shineth …

Not long ago, Missy and I sat down to watch a classic holiday movie. Plenty of snow, a family reunion, and of course, a figure with a booming voice who’s recognized worldwide.

Man, “The Empire Strikes Back” never gets old.

Now that everyone’s stopped throwing snowballs at me, perhaps I should explain.

A long time ago, in a living room not so far away, I got Missy hooked on Star Wars. It wasn’t intentional. One quiet Saturday afternoon, I just suddenly found that I had company on the couch, watching blasters and bounty hunters with me. And since Missy goes all in on what she loves (partly from her developmental disability, partly from a naturally enthusiastic personality), it wasn’t long before she started pointing out Darth Vaders and Chewbaccas everywhere we went.

“Look-look-look!”

The best part? It was “Empire” that drew her in.

Now Missy’s not a dark and brooding personality. I mean, she cranks up the stereo to house-rocking levels with dance music and Christmas carols. She would go out every night to see holiday decorations if she could (and some years, we’ve come close). She likes bright colors, bright dresses, bright purses of near-infinite capacity.

And yet the movie that set the hook in her is easily the darkest of George Lucas’s original trilogy. It’s not a happy-ever-after fairy tale like the original “Star Wars” or a redemption story like “Return of the Jedi.” It’s a pure curb-stomp trampling of the good guys from beginning to end: the rebels lose their new base, Leia and Chewie lose Han, Luke loses his hand and his certainty. Even C-3P0, the comic relief, gets blasted to bits before everything’s done.

But the more I think about it, the more it fits. “Empire” is the perfect movie not just for our family Christmas Princess, but for the season in general.

Because first and foremost, it’s a story of hope.

The Empire wins victory after victory. But by the end of the story, the Rebellion’s still there. Nearly all of the major heroes have gotten away, including the one Vader wanted most. The light has dimmed – but as long as it’s still shining, the darkness hasn’t won.

Now come back to this season. The time of year where the nights grow darker – and the lights shine brighter. Maybe for Christmas, or Hanukkah, or Yule, or just someone’s own personal persistence. At the darkest times, we shine.

And boy, have we had a lot of darkness to push against lately.

You don’t need me to list all of it. For one thing, I’d need a longer column than this. For another, each of us knows the pains and the strains far too well by now. Violence and death in places that should be safe. Hate and anger driving fractures at a moment when we need everyone’s strength. A world that too often has us under siege, collectively, individually, and even microscopically.

But the light hasn’t gone out yet.

And when any of us add our glow – however flickering it may feel – that light of hope gets just a little stronger.

If that isn’t something to celebrate, I don’t know what is.

So light the lights, on the houses and in the hearts. Reach. Listen. Strengthen. Hope. Especially hope. That’s where it begins and how it endures: believing that the light will come and shining your own until it does.

That’s the beauty of the season and everything behind it. So give it a good look.

And if you want to give it a good Lucas too, Missy won’t complain.

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Bye-bye, Beebs

Justin Bieber has left the building.

No, the Beebs hasn’t died or retired or volunteered for a manned mission to Mars. (Does that count as a homecoming?) I’m speaking a bit more literally than that.

Namely, Missy’s life-sized cardboard standup of the young JB – a historic landmark in Chez Rochat – has taken its final bow.

How the heck did we get a cardboard Canadian pop star in our house in the first place? To make a long story short, Missy gets … well, enthusiastic about things. She has a lot of energy and a very straightforward approach to sharing it, possibly enhanced by her developmental disability. So when she decides she loves something, she doesn’t hold back.

Like shouting “WOW!” to an entire restaurant after one bite of peanut butter pie.

Or pointing gleefully at a Darth Vader magazine cover, like a metal detector locked onto pirate gold.

Or hugging EVERY single member of the Face Vocal Band backstage after a concert. (Pre-COVID, of course.)

So when a certain teenage YouTube sensation hit mainstream success over a decade ago, Missy was all over it. Light, dancy music has an easy time making it onto her playlist anyway, so the house was soon full of the strains of “Baby” and “Never Say Never.”

Heather and I did what parents and guardians through the ages have done – we rolled with it and tried to make it fun while it lasted. That included a birthday party with a standup of the Beebs himself, for laughs and photographs.

And when the party was over, it was clear that Cardboard Justin wasn’t leaving.

He came to occupy a corner of Missy’s room, eventually festooned with a small tiara from one of her prom nights.  Never mind that Bieber Fever had taken a turn for the weird in the rest of the nation; young-and-innocent Justin lived on in that piece of memory and real estate.

And then, like some pop-music version of Puff The Magic Dragon, things shifted.

Missy discovered Harry Potter. And Star Wars. And a whole lot of music from a whole lot of other bands, past and present. She never outright rejected Yesteryear Justin, but the grown-up JB just didn’t have the same appeal. The cardboard star faded into the background, barely noticed except when trying to explain his presence to guests with a chuckle.

Finally, the moment came. Missy’s room needed a reorganization. Her stuffed animals needed Justin’s corner. And Justin himself was starting to … fold. Just a bit.

Yes, it was time to go.

It didn’t take long. And without its extra occupant, the room seemed a little brighter. Ready for a fresh start.

Funny how that works. Some passions prove lifelong, treasured for ages. Others have their time and move on. And it can be challenging to tell the difference. We hold onto a lot of things that just take up space and energy: unused stuff, worn-out ideas, lingering resentments and more.

Some just need to be gone. Others still leave a fingerprint behind, a memory of past joys. Either way, clearing the space can let a little more light in.

So we’ll salute the fun. Look to the future. And wait with interest to see what Missy the Excited embraces next.

Whatever it is, I’m sure it’ll come along Justin time.

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A Place of Peace

“All right, Missy, are you ready?”

Sitting up in bed, Missy grinned her crooked smile and nodded. I set our bedtime book to one side.

“Ok, close your eyes.”

Two hands eagerly went up to her face.

“Take a breath … no peeking now … here we go.”

Carefully, I picked up a tiny photo album of hers, one she loved to page through. And set it with great delicacy on top of her head.

“One … two … three ….”

Missy waited through the count, trembling with excitement as the album balanced precariously … but without falling. On “10,” I removed the book and she broke out in joyful laughter.

“You did it, Miss!”

“Yeah!!!!”

That’s what happens when your nighttime reading takes a turn for the Force-ful.

For about 10 years now, Missy’s bedtime story has been an unbreakable ritual. We’ve journeyed with Bilbo Baggins and studied with Harry Potter. We’ve peeked into The Secret Garden, cracked the riddles of The Westing Game, and laughed loud and long as Anne Shirley broke her slate over a classmate’s head before returning to Green Gables. In the process, my wife Heather and I have seen how engaged Missy becomes and how her developmental disability is no barrier to following the plot or caring deeply about the characters.  

This time around, we’ve been able to mix in something different. The story is a familiar one, a junior-level take on The Empire Strikes Back titled “So You Want to Be a Jedi?” But the take is unusual, placing the reader in the role of Luke Skywalker and offering “Jedi training exercises” in between each chapter.

The first ones simply involve closing your eyes in peace for a few brief moments, learning to quiet yourself and concentrate. Then it adds simple (and often silly) things. Like balancing a book on your head. Or batting aside thrown socks without opening your eyes. Or balancing a book while batting away thrown socks without opening your eyes.

For Missy, it’s a fun way to show off. It also, in disguise, is a neat little lesson in balance, awareness and mindfulness.

And time and again, they start in the same place. Take a moment. Close your eyes. Breathe.

That’s valuable no matter how old you are.

And it’s something that’s oh-so-easy to forget.

We’ve all had a lot more than socks thrown at us lately. From the personal to the national, we’ve had worlds upset, lives overturned, familiar things disrupted and shaken and broken. Stress and worry pile up on every side, and not without reason.

Everything demands our attention and concern, but there’s still only one of us. It’s easy to become a balloon in a hurricane, tossed this way and that before something finally makes everything pop.

In the midst of that, taking a step back sounds impossible. Like Luke trying to lift his own X-wing, the situation just seems too overpoweringly big to get a grip on.

But that’s when a place of peace matters most.

It doesn’t have to be long. But it does have to be. Just for a few moments. Just long enough to set the shouting of the world aside and find your own thoughts again.

It’s hard. We live in a world of urgency and “do it now!” where action is valued over contemplation. And finding that moment doesn’t solve the problem – but it puts us in a better place to understand it, to see rather than just react.

Take that moment. Find that place. It’ll probably take practice. But it may just give a bit of balance in return.

And if that balance involves a photo album, Missy’s got a trick she’d like to show you.

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Unexpected Lives

When I found out that my immunization period would end on May 4, I joked that it was perfect for a geek like me.  International Star Wars Day – “May the Fourth Be With You” – what better time to wrap things up?

But lately, it’s not a John Williams theme I’ve been hearing. And that’s appropriate, too.

You see, while the mainstream world knows this time as the day before Cinco de Mayo and the would-be Jedi flood the internet with Star Wars memes, musicians know that there’s another meaning to 5/4. It’s a rhythm, and  a tricky one for many people to feel. Compared to the steady walk of a 4/4 or the lilting waltz of a 3/4, it sounds offbeat, like there’s a slight hitch in it, even though it’s completely regular.

Only a few 5/4 pieces are well known to the general public. But one of them is very well known indeed.

You know it as the “Mission: Impossible” theme.

“Bum, bum, BUM-BUM; bum, bum, BUM-BUM …”

Heather and I have had a lot of Mission: Impossible on lately – not the Tom Cruise movies, but the old 1960s and ‘70s TV show where a team of sharp-witted agents had to think their way through a sensitive assignment. Instead of the abilities of James Bond, an Impossible Missions Team relied on the skills of the con man: planning, misdirection and an ability to steer an over-eager mark into engineering their own doom.

The structure was completely predictable and easy to parody. The team leader would get the latest assignment, “should you choose to accept it,” on a self-destructing recording. He’d assemble his team of experts – usually the same ones every time, unless a guest star was in store – and then put together an elaborate plot of fake identities, careful timing and a little technological magic.

And every single time – EVERY single time – that careful plot would go off the rails halfway through, if not earlier, requiring the team to improvise.

Does that last part sound familiar?

For more than a year, we’ve been living unexpected lives. OK, it’s fair to say that life is never utterly predictable (John Lennon did say “life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans”), but most of us aren’t used to the disruptions being quite this relentless. We’ve had to rewrite how we work, how we learn, how we live … not just once, but over and over.

It’s dizzying. Even infuriating to some. Certainly tiring. Constant alertness, constant adaptation can exhaust anyone.

But two realities from the old show are also in play for us.

The first is that survival and success require a team. We’re not in a Hollywood world where one superstar can save the day, no matter how powerful or famous that person might be. It needs all of us, looking out for all of us, doing what we need to do together.

The second? Simple. The team’s success was never based on “Did the plan anticipate everything?” It was “Did we accomplish the mission?”

We’ve learned. We’ve adjusted. Sometimes we’ve failed. And we certainly won’t see quite the same “normal” at the other end of the pandemic as we did at the start. But as long as we reach that other end, still together, still finding a way to do what we must … then we’ve succeeded.

It hasn’t been easy. But it can be done. Like a certain theme, we all feel a little offbeat, but we are moving forward.

You might even say we’re heading Fourth.

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Striking Back

When the editor told me I’d be coming back to print, he couldn’t resist teasing me a little about the date.

“For you, that would be May 4, which seems appropriate for your column,” he wrote.

I didn’t even know that he cared about Dave Brubeck Day, with its 5/4 jazz rhythm that celebrates the slightly offbeat and …

OK, who are we kidding?

Cue the John Williams fanfare, please.

Yes, “Rochat, Can You See?” is returning to the Times-Call on International Star Wars Day – as in “May the Fourth Be With You.” For a self-confessed geek with a love of puns, there truly could be no better time to retake the stage.

Especially this year.

What do I mean? OK, let’s have Industrial Light & Magic roll the opening narration …

Like a lot of my generation, I grew up with Star Wars in my blood. My sisters and I frequently re-imagined the backyard swing set as a trio of X-wing fighters, with the two-seater as the sorta-trusty Millennium Falcon. We envisioned new daring tales that would surely leave our action-figure heroes scarred for life. (One time literally, when my youngest sister introduced Han Solo’s hand to the automatic pencil sharpener.)

And always, since its first release 40 years ago, my favorite of the tales has been “The Empire Strikes Back.”

It’s the darkest of the original films, which made it controversial at the time and an enduring classic now. Many of the most memorable images from that galaxy far, far away got their start here. Han Solo spitting out “Never tell me the odds!” The tiny Yoda with his mighty wisdom and his backward syntax. And of course the famous Darth Vader revelation to Luke that spawned three years of arguing among the fans. “Was he telling the truth? Psyching him out? We have to know!”

And in the days of COVID-19, it may be the film that most relates to us now.

No, I haven’t gone batty from too long in isolation. Consider for a minute.

The villain wears a mask and carries out most of his “essential work functions” from a distance. In one case, he even uses a monitor to remotely … ah … keep in touch with an employee.

The main character spends most of the picture isolated from his friends. And when he tries to come back to them too soon, it’s disastrous.

A lot of time is spent hiding, learning, trying to make repairs, trying to get stronger.

But most importantly – and more seriously – it’s a movie about endurance.

There isn’t a solid target to hit this time, no Death Star to destroy for an instant win. The heroes are overwhelmed at every turn, using everything they have just to keep going against a destructive force that isn’t holding back. By the end of the film, one of them has been maimed, a second destroyed and rebuilt, and a third has been taken by the enemy.

It’s a disaster in every sense except one.

Despite everything, the heroes are still standing at the end of it all. Still able to regroup. And still have hope for the future.

That’s huge.

And just maybe, it’s a comfort now.

We’ve been enduring a lot. We’ll be enduring more. It won’t be easy. Finding “normal” again is going to take slow, patient work.

But by enduring, we win.

By caring for each other, we win.

By taking the careful steps needed to protect all of us – especially the most vulnerable – we win.

Someday, there will be a more obvious victory, a moment to celebrate. But for now, it’s about the small moments. There’s still stress, still strain … but we’re still here.

We have hope.

And that’s a Force to be reckoned with.

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Feeling the Force

One thing about visiting a galaxy far, far away. It makes bedtime far, far easier.

“Did you have a good time?”

A vigorous nod came in reply.

Missy’s smile was a mile wide as I pulled up the covers. No surprise. What she loves, she loves without reservation. And when it comes to Star Wars, the passion of our developmentally disabled ward  reaches a force (or even a Force) that would astound George Lucas himself. Just a glimpse of R2-D2, or the mighty Chewbacca, or (especially) Darth Vader is sure to mean a quick tug on my sleeve and a cry of “Da’y, look!”

And so, when the chance came to see it on the big screen, courtesy of a local theater, Heather and I had the same thought: “I have a good feeling about this.”

Needless to say, Missy was in heaven. She laughed, she cheered, she gave huge cries of “whoooooa!” at suitably big moments. Sitting still isn’t always easy for her, and her devotion didn’t entirely change that, but most of the motion was either bouncing with excitement, or turning around in her seat every so often to see if everyone else was having as much fun as she was.

She needn’t have worried. The audience was held in a grip Darth Vader would envy. For many, this was the first time in years they’d seen it in a theater … or even the first time they’d seen it in a theater at all.

The first time to really feel the magic. To live the story.

Some of you know what I mean. These days, we are surrounded by stories, and especially visual stories. It takes only a moment’s thought to binge an entire series on streaming television, to call up favorite clips on our smartphone, to download and immerse and enjoy.

It’s fun. It’s amazing. I don’t deny it.

But it’s also … well … small.

And you don’t realize how small until you step into something larger again.

Understand, I know the original Star Wars films cold. Saw them in the theater, played them endlessly on VHS, practically memorized the script. But when I walked back in with Missy that night, it was like I hadn’t seen them at all.

Suddenly, there were details that had vanished on a television screen or computer monitor. Suddenly, the music was swelling and the explosions were roaring.

But most of all – best of all – was that audience. Large. Absorbed. Laughing and applauding, unafraid to show how much they were enjoying this. I knew that power from live theater many times, but only rarely from modern movies, where multiple screenings often result in smaller, quieter crowds at each individual showing.

Here, the tale and the audience had become one.

And that, ultimately, is what any story is about.

Authors need readers. Actors need audiences. Tales need listeners – to bring their own lives to the story, their own thoughts and experience and wonder that fills in the blanks and makes it whole.

And when you have a lot of those lives in one place, where they can merge and transform and build, it creates a power that carries along everything in its wake. A hundred pieces, suddenly joined into a larger whole.

Inside the movie theater, that’s a powerful metamorphosis. Outside the movie theater, it can change the world.

I don’t mean the mindless conformity of an Imperial stormtrooper unit, though stories have been and will be twisted to do that, too. No, this is the power of the Rebels, bringing together aliens and droids, princesses and smugglers, ancient warriors and naive farm boys, into a cause that’s greater for having all of them. A story that’s richer than any one of them could have done alone.

That’s our story. Our epic.

And one heck of a smile at bedtime.

 

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The Silent Partner

The first time that Peter Mayhew met George Lucas for an audition, Peter rose from his chair in courtesy. And rose. And rose.

Peter Mayhew was 7 feet, 3 inches tall. Lucas stared upward at the towering Englishman, turned to producer Gary Kurtz and said “I think we’ve found him.”

“Him” turned out to be Chewbacca, the mighty Wookiee partner of Han Solo in the Star Wars films. An ape-like wall of muscle and hair, the beloved alien co-pilot was a huge part – literally – of establishing that this was indeed a galaxy far, far away.

Chewie continues to roar, on the screen and in our memories. But his original actor has made the jump to hyperspace. Earlier this week, Mayhew – whose height had been a side effect of Marfan syndrome – died from a heart attack.

And for a moment, many of us felt a disturbance in the Force.

It’s funny, really. This wasn’t an actor who died too soon like Carrie Fisher (though 74 still seems too young these days). He hadn’t accumulated a huge body of work like Alec Guinness.  In an odd sense, the other Star Wars loss that Mayhew had the most in common with was Kenny Baker, the original player of the droid R2-D2, who passed away in 2016.

R2-D2 was a tiny barrel of a robot; Chewbacca a lumbering ape-like figure.  But in both cases, their actors had to bring them to life without a word of dialogue. No English. No subtitles. Just beeps and whirrs from the one, roars from the other, and whatever intention and personality their actions could convey.

That’s hard.

I’ve played a lot of roles in community theatre, and watched still more. One of the most fundamental, and difficult, skills is to carry a scene where you don’t speak or speak very little. An actor’s voice is a powerful thing – no, a human’s voice is a powerful thing – and when you take it away, you find out how well-conceived the character truly is. Does the actor know what they want to do? Does it show on their face and in their body? What do they do to make that clear?

Do it badly, and you’re a cipher, a blank spot on the stage. Do it well and you become part of the audience’s heart. It’s one of the oldest adages: show, don’t tell.

And it applies to a lot more than the stage or the screen.

We spend a lot of time surrounded by words. (And as a writer, I say bless you for it.) But we also live in a world where many of those words are disconnected from action, used to hide motivation rather than show it. And whether you call it spin or hypocrisy, the effect is the same one that any cut-rate actor might expect – an unconvinced audience, skeptical, jaded, and rapidly growing tired of the story.

If you took the words away, or dubbed them over with Chewie-like roars, what story would you see?

It’s one thing to profess love for a country, for a neighbor, for a faith. Do the actions  bear that out? Do they defend, lift up, heal, build? Or is one story playing in the script and another in their life, like someone reciting Winnie The Pooh while playing out a Tarantino movie?

The audience can tell. And we cherish the true ones.

Mayhew, by all accounts, was one of them, a gentle giant on and off the screen with a heart as big as his frame. His intentions were always clear. It’s how we came to love his character, and how some came to love him as well.

Now his running time is done. But what he’s left behind still stands tall.

That deserves a roar of approval.

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Making the Jump

At age seven, I had no doubt about it. Han Solo was the coolest guy in the universe.

OK, Luke Skywalker was the one I wanted to be – I mean, Jedi powers and a lightsaber, right? But Han didn’t need them. He was the guy who could do anything. Fly through asteroid fields. Talk to Wookiees. Ride into savage blizzards just to save a friend. Heck, he even tried to gun down Darth Vader himself. Sure, it didn’t work, but the man knew an opportunity, right?

But even cool guys have their moments. And one of Han’s has stuck with me down the years.

If you’ve seen The Empire Strikes Back (so, most of you), you know exactly what I’m talking about. It was the film’s major running gag. Han and his friends are in a tight spot in the Millennium Falcon, the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy. Han’s gained a little distance, and is ready to jump to light speed and leave trouble behind … and the hyperdrive fails.

Once. Twice. Even a third time, with a friend at the controls.

“It’s not my fault!”

I may have never had to fast-talk space gangsters, or outshoot stormtroopers, or snatch a princess from the Death Star. But I could surely empathize with that one.

You try. You try. And you try again. And it seems like absolutely nothing happens.

My wife Heather is the master of this. Over the years, she’s endured more chronic illnesses than Jabba the Hutt has bounty hunters. Crohn’s disease. Ankylosing spondylitis. Multiple sclerosis. A host of situations and medications that send my spell-checker screaming for help, or at least extra vowels.

Once in a while, we beat one, like the endometriosis that finally submitted to surgery. And sometimes, we get long quiet spells where life is almost normal. But then there are the other nights.

The ones where the current medicines don’t work. And the alternatives are all on the “allergy list.”

The ones where the “MS fog” is too thick to read a book. Or where the pain and fatigue make even ordinary task into Olympian ones.

The ones where you’re doing everything the doctors have said, everything your friends have suggested, everything you can think of yourself – and nothing seems to change.

Oh, yes. We’ve been there.

Most of us have.

Not necessarily with chronic illness. But we’ve all had the situation that refused to yield. Professional frustration. Personal grief. A family situation that seems implacable. Whatever it is, it leaves you running in place, wondering if progress is possible. Wondering if progress even exists. As Shel Silverstein put it, in his dark take on The Little Engine That Could, “If the track is tough and the hill is rough, THINKING you can just ain’t enough!”

Funny enough, George Lucas himself had his own story there. He described his first six years in the film business as “hopeless.” His father had wanted him to go into office supplies instead, and for a little while, George may have been wondering if he was right.

“There are a lot of times where you sit and say ‘Why am I doing this? I’ll never make it,’” he said in an interview. “I’d borrowed money from my parents. I’d borrowed money from friends. It didn’t look like I was going to be able to pay anyone back.”

Then came American Graffiti. And a few years later, Star Wars – a film that almost everyone believed would bomb, including Lucas himself, until it spectacularly didn’t.

Stories change. Without warning.

Not without effort. Not without help – even Han needed a hand fixing the hyperdrive. And not with any guarantee.

But surprising things can happen if you give them the chance.

Heather and I have seen it. Not the magic “happy ever after” that leaves you with a gold medal, a space princess, and a three-picture deal. But victories that have let us grab back pieces of normality, and even become caregivers ourselves.

We dared to hope.

And hope, it turns out, can be a pretty impressive Force.

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Screening the New Year

The lights went dark. The ads went quiet. The familiar words appeared on the screen.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away …

And with that, it was time to hit the holiday hyperdrive into another universe – even if it was without the usual crew.

Once upon a time, this would have been time spent with my Dad. After I graduated college and took my first job in Kansas, I made sure to come back to Colorado for the holidays. That was when our favorite literary universe of Middle-Earth first hit the big screen, so Dad and I always carved out a night to go see it. From there, it became a habit, even after I came back to the Front Range.

The Lord of the Rings. The Hobbit. Jason Bourne. Harry Potter. The Force Awakens. Something big and bold and splashy to wave out the old year and welcome the new one. As a kid, this would have been a summertime adventure, especially since Star Wars movies were always released in May. Now, it was something as brilliant as any string of Christmas lights and as dependable as any Times Square ball dropping.

This year, the count’s off a little bit. This year, with my parents in Washington State, it was my 7-year-old nephew Gil who got to see The Last Jedi with Dad. (Funny enough, that’s the same age at which I saw The Empire Strikes Back with Dad and became a fan for life.) This year, Heather and I watched the movie with friends even while our memories were with an audience far, far away.

And this year, it still felt more right than any countdown with Dick Clark ever could.

I’ve never been much for New Year’s resolutions. Easily made, easily forgotten. But with apologies to Robert Fulghum, everything I do know about New Year’s lessons, I learned from a night at the movies:

The story will go unexpected places. Let it. With the Tolkien movies, it was because Hollywood can never leave a literary adaptation alone, even when it’s done well. With something that’s pure cinema, like Star Wars, the directors will still have something in their back pocket. Maybe several somethings. (“Darth Vader is his what??”) Whatever story you find, take it on its own merits and follow where it goes – arguing about it in your head at the time will just mean you miss the best parts.

Talk with your family. Some of those surprises, of course, fueled many a conversation outside of the theater. The fate of Han Solo. The craftiness of Luke. Talking about them afterward not only drove them in more firmly, they tied us more firmly and created a family story to go with the fictional one.

Never give up hope. OK, this is practically routine for Hollywood, but it still bears remembering. Empire became one of my favorite films because its victory was survival. Nobody blew up a battle station. Everyone came away battered and scarred, sometimes literally. But they did get away. The fight went on, with promises made that friends would not be forgotten. That’s something that I think most of us can identify with.

Remember, and say goodbye. Not everyone gets to finish the story. On screen, we got that memory – and a catch in the throat — as Carrie Fisher performed what would be her last turn as Leia. Off screen … well, we all have our own separations and farewells, none of them at a time we would have chosen. Acknowledge them. They’re part of your tale.

Now it’s time for a new chapter. And whether it enters to the strains of “Auld Lang Syne” or of John Williams, it will be yours to tell. Tell it well.

And don’t forget to bring a few dollars for popcorn.

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Hidden Stories

Not long after Roger Moore passed, a friend sent a clip of him I had never seen before. It had no car chases or amazing gadgets, no beautiful women and hideous henchmen, not even a single utterance of “Bond … James Bond.”

Instead, an older Roger was reciting poetry, his still-charming voice capturing the keenly observant soldier of Rudyard Kipling’s “Tommy Atkins”:

 

“For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ ‘Chuck him out, the brute!’

But it’s ‘Saviour of ‘is country’ when the guns begin to shoot;

And it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ anything you please;

And Tommy ain’t a bloomin’ fool – you bet that Tommy sees!”

 

The poem had always been a favorite of mine. And the time couldn’t be better to bring it back again. Not just because we’re into the Memorial Day holiday, when we remember to remember our own fallen fighters, but because of what it says about ourselves and the stories in our head.

We all have them. Our inner monologues, our lens we see through, the set of expectations that each of us builds from the moment we wake up and fumble toward the shower. It’s not often conscious. In fact, it’s usually a reflex, trained over years, the smooth and invisible way of deciding how to think and what to think about.

And because the assumptions are invisible, we forget they’re assumptions. Or fail to notice when they contradict each other. Or worse, grow toxic.

Sometimes the stories become so compelling, they force themselves into visibility, they have to come out. Sometimes when they do, they add something new and wonderful to the world – a “Star Wars,” say, that enters the world 40 years ago and touches the imagination of millions, teaching them a new way to see.

Other times, the stories that force themselves on the world do so in blood. Smoke rises in Oklahoma City, in New York, in Manchester, carrying panic and pain and death. Why? A thousand reasons and more could be given, but they all start in the human heart and head. No bomber thinks “I’m going to wake up and be evil today,” consciously putting on villainy like Oddjob putting on a hat or Darth Vader donning a mask. Each has internalized a story that seems to justify their anger at the world or a piece of it, to inflame it, to demand retribution.

This is not an excuse. It’s not a call to sympathize with a murderer or make a killer the next guest on “Dr. Phil.” But it does suggest that the problem is one not easily solved with guns and missiles, one that even Kipling’s “thin red line of ‘eroes” would strain to defend against.

We have to look longer and farther and deeper.

Where do stories come from? Any writer would say they come from everywhere. Every piece of day to day life provides another idea, another connection, another piece of fuel. It’s why those who consciously create stories – writers, actors, and more besides – frequently read, frequently experience, frequently get out to learn something new.

Change the seeds, and you change the story.

Step outside the fictional, and it’s still true. Anger and hatred and radicalization can be hardy flowers … but only in a certain soil. A rebuilding Germany had little use for the nascent Nazi party. A desperate Germany was all too susceptible.

Change conditions and you change assumptions. Change assumptions and you change the world.

It will be long. It will be frustrating. It will require constant effort in numerous fields: economics, education, medicine, diplomacy, personal experience and more. And you can’t ignore symptoms while treating causes, so we will still have to defend against and deal with the angry and the evil and the violent.

But down that road waits understanding. And hope. And maybe a greater ability to see past the easy answer.

“We aren’t no thin red ‘eroes,” Kipling wrote, “nor we aren’t no blackguards too/ But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you.”

Remarkable indeed.

So today, let us remember.

Tomorrow, like Tommy, let us see.