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Star Wars Minutiae
Class Act Dynamo writes "CNN does a story on some of the finer points of making the Star Wars flicks. I like the part where Mark Hamill discusses the theoretical logistics of employing janitorial staff for the entire Death Star. Enjoy."
Randal: So they build another Death Star, right?
Dante: Yeah.
Randal: Now the first one they built was completed and fully operational before the Rebels destroyed it.
Dante: Luke blew it up. Give credit where it's due.
Randal:And the second one was still being built when they blew it up.
Dante: Compliments of Lando Calrissian.
Randal: Something just never sat right with me the second time they destroyed it. I could never put my finger on it-something just wasn't right.
Dante: And you figured it out?
Randal: Well, the thing is, the first Death Star was manned by the Imperial army-storm troopers, dignitaries- the only people onboard were Imperials.
Dante: Basically.
Randal: So when they blew it up, no prob. Evil is punished.
Dante: And the second time around...?
Randal: The second time around, it wasn't even finished yet. They were still under construction.
Dante: So?
Randal: A construction job of that magnitude would require a helluva lot more manpower than the Imperial army had to offer. I'll bet there were independent contractors working on that thing: plumbers, aluminum siders, roofers.
Dante: Not just Imperials, is what you're getting at.
Randal: Exactly. In order to get it built quickly and quietly they'd hire anybody who could do the job. Do you think the average storm trooper knows how to install a toilet main? All they know is killing and white uniforms.
Dante: All right, so even if independent contractors are working on the Death Star, why are you uneasy with its destruction?
Randal: All those innocent contractors hired to do a job were killed- casualties of a war they had nothing to do with. (notices Dante's confusion) All right, look-you're a roofer, and some juicy government contract comes your way; you got the wife and kids and the two-story in suburbia-this is a government contract, which means all sorts of benefits. All of a sudden these left-wing militants blast you with lasers and wipe out everyone within a three-mile radius. You didn't ask for that. You have no personal politics. You're just trying to scrape out a living.
(The Blue-Collar Man (Thomas Burke) joins them.)
Blue-Collar Man: Excuse me. I don't mean to interrupt, but what were you talking about?
Randal: The ending of Return of the Jedi.
Dante: My friend is trying to convince me that any contractors working on the uncompleted Death Star were innocent victims when the space station was destroyed by the rebels.
Blue-Collar Man: Well, I'm a contractor myself. I'm a roofer... (digs into pocket and produces business card) Dunn and Reddy Home Improvements. And speaking as a roofer, I can say that a roofer's personal politics come heavily into play when choosing jobs.
Randal: Like when?
Blue-Collar Man: Three months ago I was offered a job up in the hills. A beautiful house with tons of property. It was a simple reshingling job, but I was told that if it was finished within a day, my price would be doubled. Then I realized whose house it was.
Dante: Whose house was it?
Blue-Collar Man: Dominick Bambino's.
Randal: "Babyface" Bambino? The gangster?
Blue-Collar Man: The same. The money was right, but the risk was too big. I knew who he was, and based on that, I passed the job on to a friend of mine.
Dante: Based on personal politics.
Blue-Collar Man: Right. And that week, the Foresci family put a hit on Babyface's house. My friend was shot and killed. He wasn't even finished shingling.
Randal: No way!
Blue-Collar Man: (paying for coffee) I'm alive because I knew there were risks involved taking on that particular client. My friend wasn't so lucky. (pauses to reflect) You know, any contractor willing to work on that Death Star knew the risks. If they were killed, it was their own fault. A roofer listens to this... (taps his heart) not his wallet.
So that's what he's doing these days...
This isn't the first post you're looking for...
Luke just said that Chewbacca is a monkey, not a Wookie. That makes it cannon! Oh man, I'm gonna have to go rewrite my fanfic, now that I know he was born on Earth and not on Kashyyyk.
As Johnnie Cochran once said, "If Chewbacca is a monkey, you must acquit!"
You do realize of course, Hamil was discussing the fictional janitors in the fictional world, and in fact NOT janitors that cleaned up the movie set.
Jesus Christ...
All I know is that there are people we all know (generally male) who claim to have a large wookie, but when the time of truth comes it ends up looking like Yoda, small stout and green. Let's see if the not so hidden meanings sneek past the moderators!
--
Try Nuggets , the mobile search engine. We answer your questions via SMS, across the UK.
Now we can all cross the phrase "naked wookie" off the list of possible GoogleWhacks, though it might be interesting to see the GoogleAds served op to match this phrase in a few days.
i wanna hear harrison ford tell me who shoots first :p
> it's 'minutiae' not 'minutae'
That's where we stole the extra 'i' for use in "virii".
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I have never in my life heard the word "minutiae" used where it didn't sound contrived. And I haven't ever heard the word "minutae" in my life, period ("minutia" is the singular and "minutiae" is the plural; "minutae" is not a word).
"That's no set!"
My Photography - http://ian-x.com
The Deathlings (comic) - http://thedeathlings.com
[The documentaries have] the added advantage of being true.
One of the featurettes features a whole bunch of directors acting as if George Lucas invented the whole concept of making sci-fi films, singlehandedly invented computer graphics, and a whole bunch of other things. OK, maybe ey did come up with the idea of producing a lot of merchandise for a film, but I wouldn't say that's such a good idea anyway...
Those documentaries are more like big ego trips than true stories. The main one even starts with a line about how it's "hard to remember a time before Star Wars." Please!
Having said that, the films have been retouched very well, and certainly look a lot cleaner and more modern than the Laserdisc rips floating around online.
That's why R2-D2 is shaped like a trash can.
Okay, this makes it official: we're fast approaching the end of the universe.
We can have a Starbucks right across the street from another Starbucks. We can sue fast food chains for our own gluttony.
And now, a comment on janitorial logistics for a fictitious planet-killing deathship in a thirty-year-old movie has been rated "Insightful" by the Slashdot illuminati because it makes note of another fictitious element used ealier in the same plot.
This is way beyond pathetic.
Clearly Chewbacca needed a nice Hawaiian print pair of bermuda shorts. :-) Or maybe some dockers...
Leia: "Could somebody get this walking carpet out of my way... Hey, nice pants." ;-)
~*~ ~*~ ~*~
yes, girls read /. too...
I don't know what scares me more: that someone would know this, or that it gets modded "+4 insightful"...
You will live in your mother's basement. You will never kiss a girl. The only girls you will ever see will be prOn on the internet. You will have no outlet but playing with your own light saber.
Don't cross over to the dork side.
How ya like dat?
William Shatner: I already told them that. It doesn't work...
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
* The Death Star plans were secret, but rebels managed to obtain them anyway.
* Windows is closed source, but people keep managing to steal bits of code anyway.
* The Empire was confident that The Death Star was secure and couldn't be compromised.
* Microsoft is confident that Windows is secure and cannot be compromised.
* Occassionally, rebellious hackers stumble across Windows vulnerabilities that nobody noticed before or thought was important.
* The rebels discovered a vulnerability into the Death Star that nobody noticed before or thought was important.
* Windows slowly positions itself to wipe out the competition.
* The Death Star slowly positions itself to wipe out the competition.
* Microsoft analyses virus attacks and discovers that there is some danger... albeit too late.
* The Empire analyzed the rebel attack and discovered that there was some danger... albeit too late.
* Script kiddies sometimes take devastatingly accurate shots at these backdoors and weaknesses.
* Luke Skywalker took a devastatingly accurate shot at the Death Star's exhaust port.
* Microsoft is attempting to rebuild Windows from the ground up, promising to make it better than before although it looks pretty much the same.
* The Empire tried to rebuild The Death Star from the ground up, promising to make it better than before although it looks pretty much the same.
Therefore... we can conclude the following:
* Luke Skywalker is a script kiddie.
* The Apple switcher campaign should feature Harrison Ford shouting, "Great shot kid, that was one in a million! Let's blow this thing so we can go home!"
* When Windows explodes... oooohhh... pretty.
* Hackers should have medals presented to them by Carrie Fisher.
* Bill Gates is Linus Torvald's father.
* And finally: Microsoft should not put too much faith in this technological terror they've constructed... the ability to destroy the competition is insignificant next to the power of open source.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."