Here's How I Wound Up Doing The Final Interview With The Director Of My Favorite Movie, 'The Empire Strikes Back'

Today is Star Wars Day, because it is May the fourth and "fourth" sounds a little bit like "force." It is also the day before Cinco de Mayo, a day celebrating the 1862 Mexican victory over the French in the Battle of Puebla, in which a lot of Americans who do not know this drink margaritas. (In the long run, this is not a bad thing because supporting local Mexican restaurants is good.)

The concept of May the Fourth used to annoy me because, if anything didn't need another day to be discussed at length, it was Star Wars. I have changed my mind because, since 2019, Star Wars ... maybe isn't quite where it used to be in popular culture, and maybe it now does need its own day. To the point I now tolerate May the Fourth enough to somehow write two posts in celebration. One of them is the one you are reading. In the other I went through every instance of "the force" being used in the original 1977 version of Star Wars and I make a case the force does not exist, which you can read here.

So, I've never written about this before at length and I, strangely, still find it all a little overwhelming. To try and put this in perspective: imagine your favorite movie of all time. This is a movie you've loved since you were five years old. Then, quite a few years later, you find yourself interviewing the director of that movie in celebration of that very movie's anniversary. Shortly after the interview, that director would die. Then you get an email from Lucasfilm telling you that you did the final interview with that director. This is what happened to me with Irvin Kershner, who is the director of my favorite movie of all time, The Empire Strikes Back...