Home » Film & TV » Star Wars Films » Exploring the Empire with Gamo

Exploring the Empire with Gamo

© Shelly G. Hemig

Three years. Three long years I waited to find out what was going to happen next in the lives of Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia Organa, Han Solo, and even Darth Vader. Did he die when his tie fighter was hurled out into space? Will Leia choose Luke or Han? What threat could possibly match that of the Death Star?

This was back in 1980, before the VHS vs. Beta war. Back when you watched movies at the theater, or waited five years until they showed up on network television. Today if you need a Star Wars fix, you can pop a video into the VCR and you're on your way, but back then you just had to wait.

I was only nine years old when Star Wars came out, an age when the nine months of the school year seemed interminable and the three months of summer seemed to stretch on forever. Three years? I'd practically be grown up by then. Actually, I was 12, but I remember feeling grown up.

My parents had been divorced for several years by this time. My mom lived in California, and my dad lived in Oklahoma, halfway across the country. I spent a few weeks each summer in Oklahoma visiting with my dad and his side of the family, including my paternal grandmother, whom I called Gamo. Don't ask.

One of the highlights of that year's trip to Oklahoma was going to see The Empire Strikes Back with Gamo and my third cousin Paul. I was spending the weekend at Gamo's house, and she agreed to take me to the movie. I didn't get to see it the moment it was released, like I recently did with The Phantom Menace. Empire came out in mid-May of 1980, and I didn't go to Oklahoma until July, well after school was out and well after Empire, began its inevitable domination at the box office that year.

That did not dim my excitement, nor lessen the crowds that day. After lunch at a cafeteria, which is very much like a buffet restaurant, we headed to a movie theater in a nearby mall. The summer air in Oklahoma can be so thick it's hard to breathe, and if you spend more than five minutes outside, especially during the middle of the day, you feel like you need another shower. The air-conditioned interior was refreshing after the short trek from the parking lot.

The line to buy tickets stretched out from the theater entrance and into the mall's walkway. A lot of other people were also trying to escape the heat. We waited anxiously, fearing the worst--the movie would be sold out. It was not. We continued into the lobby, where the ticket-taker handed us each an Empire program. I remember having it in my hands. I remember flipping through the pages and looking at scenes from the movie I was about to see. I don't remember what happened to it after that. I have to assume that as I got older and got more interested in boys and less interested in Star Wars that I probably threw it away. I really don't know. But I have been kicking myself about it ever since the re-release of the original trilogy in 1997.