one-man star wars trilogy
This week I saw Charles Ross's "infamous" (according to its website) One-Man Star Wars Trilogy, currently playing off Broadway.
By far the oddest thing about the evening was that it wasn't my idea, I swear I hadn't even thought about going before it was suggested.
I memorialize the experience here mainly because following the performance, young Mr. Ross gave a brief monologue, including a nod to Toys r Us, for featuring his show on its Times Sq. billboard (*sigh*, even insane fandom is no longer safe from promotional consideration), and also sharing this surprisingly resonant philosophy of life:
"Success is just an opportunity to have greater and greater looming failures before you."
True that.
It occurs to me that he's created an oral tradition for the great mythic cycle of my generation. It completes the opposite parallel to the Homeric epics, which of course progressed from oral tradition, to written poem, to "Troy." Star Wars went from film to novelization, and now to a form that a single storyteller performs for the tribe.
And, weirdly, there's also a parallel to this within Star Wars itself. During the ewok sequence (which, thankfully, Mr. Ross mostly leaves on the editing room floor), C3P0 tells the entire story in condensed form, with sound effects, to bring the ewoks around to the rebels' side. It stands out as the only time in the entire epic that C3P0 was good for something.
Anyway.
Homage, and satire:
Why hasn't Lucas sued yet?
Fun, frenetic hour.
By far the oddest thing about the evening was that it wasn't my idea, I swear I hadn't even thought about going before it was suggested.
I memorialize the experience here mainly because following the performance, young Mr. Ross gave a brief monologue, including a nod to Toys r Us, for featuring his show on its Times Sq. billboard (*sigh*, even insane fandom is no longer safe from promotional consideration), and also sharing this surprisingly resonant philosophy of life:
"Success is just an opportunity to have greater and greater looming failures before you."
True that.
It occurs to me that he's created an oral tradition for the great mythic cycle of my generation. It completes the opposite parallel to the Homeric epics, which of course progressed from oral tradition, to written poem, to "Troy." Star Wars went from film to novelization, and now to a form that a single storyteller performs for the tribe.And, weirdly, there's also a parallel to this within Star Wars itself. During the ewok sequence (which, thankfully, Mr. Ross mostly leaves on the editing room floor), C3P0 tells the entire story in condensed form, with sound effects, to bring the ewoks around to the rebels' side. It stands out as the only time in the entire epic that C3P0 was good for something.
Anyway.
Homage, and satire:
Why hasn't Lucas sued yet?
Fun, frenetic hour.
