The Celebrity Encounters of Koko the Gorilla. For Her 43rd Birthday Today.

in Biology, Film, Life, Television | July 4th, 2014

Koko the Goril­la, who cel­e­brates her 43rd birth­day today, keeps pret­ty down-to-earth com­pa­ny for a celebri­ty. While oth­ers court the paparazzi with their pub­lic canoodling and high pro­file Twit­ter feuds, Koko’s most com­fort­able hang­ing with non-mar­quee-name kit­tens and pals Pen­ny Pat­ter­son and Ron Cohn, the human doc­tors who’ve head­ed her care­giv­ing team for the past 41 years.

Her pri­va­cy is close­ly guard­ed, but there have been a hand­ful of times over the years when her name has been linked to oth­er celebs…

Above, actor William Shat­ner recalls how, as a younger man, he called upon her in her quar­ters. He was ner­vous, approach­ing sub­mis­sive­ly, but deter­mined not to retreat. “I love you, Koko,” he told her. “I love you.”

She respond­ed by grip­ping a part of his anato­my that just hap­pens to be one of the thou­sand or so words that com­prise her Amer­i­can Sign Lan­guage vocab­u­lary. One that takes two hands to sign…

Their time was fleet­ing, but as evi­denced below, the con­nec­tion was intense.

Come­di­an Robin Williams also claims to have shared “some­thing extra­or­di­nary” with Koko. Their flir­ta­tion seems inno­cent enough, despite Williams’ NSFW descrip­tion of their encounter, below. (He under­cuts his cred­i­bil­i­ty by refer­ring to her as a “sil­ver­back”.)

leokoko1

Leonar­do DiCaprio is yet anoth­er famous admir­er to be caught on cam­era with Koko. Is it any won­der that she embod­ies all of the qual­i­ties he claims to look for in a poten­tial love inter­est: “humil­i­ty, a sense of humor and not a lot of dra­ma”? No word as to how the Titan­ic hunk mea­sures up against the qual­i­ties Koko looks for in a mate, though footage of their one and only meet­ing has been known to get fans fan­ta­siz­ing in the com­ments sec­tion: “I wish I was that goril­la ;) lol I looooooooooooooooove u Leo”

From the lady’s per­spec­tive, Koko’s sweet­est celebri­ty encounter was almost cer­tain­ly with her favorite, the late chil­dren’s tele­vi­sion host, Fred Rogers. She removed his shoes and socks, he stud­ied her lips, love was a pri­ma­ry top­ic and yet their time togeth­er does not invite pruri­ent spec­u­la­tion. I can’t think of anoth­er human male as deserv­ing of her affec­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Plan­et of the Apes: A Species Mis­un­der­stood

Ayun Hal­l­i­day invites you to read her thoughts on anoth­er July 4 birth­day on Rewire Me. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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The Lodger: Alfred Hitchcock’s First Truly ‘Hitchcockian’ Movie (1927)

in Film | July 3rd, 2014


Before Alfred Hitch­cock freaked out audi­ences every­where by killing off the pro­tag­o­nist halfway through Psy­cho, before he was praised as a great mas­ter of cin­e­ma by a bunch of French crit­ics who would them­selves go on to become cin­e­mat­ic mas­ters, before the adjec­tive “Hitch­cock­ian” entered the lan­guage, Hitch­cock was sim­ply a guy strug­gling to make a go of it as a direc­tor.

He start­ed his career in film when he was bare­ly out of his teens in 1919. Hitch­cock soon found him­self work­ing in the largest and most influ­en­tial stu­dio in Europe, Germany’s Uni­ver­sum Film AG (UFA). There he not only watched Fritz Lang and F. W. Mur­nau direct, but he also worked as a writer, art direc­tor, assis­tant direc­tor on a num­ber of silent films includ­ing The White Shad­ow (1924) and The Black­guard (1925). Though Hitch­cock got his first director’s cred­it with the 1926 movie The Plea­sure Gar­den, the first movie to tru­ly feel Hitch­cock­ian was The Lodger: A Sto­ry of Lon­don Fog (1927). You can watch it above.

Based on a nov­el by Marie Bel­loc Lown­des, The Lodger opens with a blonde woman scream­ing in ter­ror. She is the vic­tim of a shad­owy Jack the Rip­per-like ser­i­al killer who leaves a call­ing card announc­ing him­self as ‘The Avenger.’ Cut to Daisy, a blonde mod­el whose par­ents are jubi­lant over final­ly find­ing a board­er for their spare room. The guy is hand­some, mys­te­ri­ous and has a weird thing for blondes. You think he might have some­thing to do with the mur­ders?

For a film that came out decades before Ver­ti­go and Rear Win­dow, The Lodger has just about all of Hitchcock’s cin­e­mat­ic ticks. A fetishis­tic obses­sion with blondes? Check. An unset­tling min­gling of sex and death? Check. A man wrong­ly accused? Check. The only thing it real­ly lacks is a nation­al land­mark as the back­drop of a showy action set piece.

On the oth­er hand, The Lodger feels decid­ed­ly Ger­man. The claus­tro­pho­bic light­ing, the grotesque shad­ows and the gen­er­al­ly mor­bid sto­ry­line all would be per­fect­ly at home at Uni­ver­sum Film AG. In fact, The Lodger, in terms of sto­ry, tone and looks, feels like a cin­e­mat­ic cousin to Fritz Lang’s 1931 ear­ly sound mas­ter­piece M.

Of course, Hitch­cock was just a young direc­tor in 1927. And like many young film­mak­ers, he had a hard time with his pro­duc­ers. While the book leaves it ambigu­ous whether or not the lodger is the killer, the han­dlers of the movie’s star Ivor Nov­el­lo couldn’t pos­si­bly have the actor play a vil­lain and demand­ed a change to the end­ing. When Hitch turned in the final movie, Michael Bal­con, the movie’s main pro­duc­er, was unim­pressed and almost shelved the flick, and, with it, Hitchcock’s career. But after a lit­tle bit of tin­ker­ing, the movie was final­ly released. And when The Lodger became a huge box office hit, Hitchcock’s career was assured.

You can find The Lodger on our list of 23 Free Hitch­cock Movies Online, as well as in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch The White Shad­ow, the Recent­ly-Dis­cov­ered and Ear­li­est-Sur­viv­ing Hitch­cock Film

23 Free Hitch­cock Movies Online

The 39 Steps: Hitchcock’s 1935 Clas­sic Online

37 Hitch­cock Cameo Appear­ances Over 50 Years: All in One Video

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

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Wim Wenders Reveals His Rules of Cinema Perfection

in Film | July 2nd, 2014

Does Wim Wen­ders, one of my favorite direc­tors, make per­fect films? Hard­ly — and there­in, at least for me, lies the appeal. Per­fec­tion strikes me as a sin­gu­lar­ly unin­ter­est­ing goal for art, and Wen­ders has made some of the most inter­est­ing pieces of motion pic­ture art going for the past thir­ty years: Wings of Desire; Paris, Texas; Note­book on Cities and Clothes; Tokyo-Ga. Per­haps, it occurs to me, he has achieved his own kind of very spe­cif­ic, inim­itable per­fec­tion. But if you seek to imi­tate it nev­er­the­less, have a look at “Wim Wen­ders’ Rules of Cin­e­ma Per­fec­tion” above. In this video (actu­al­ly a kind of spot for Stel­la Artois, a brand with which the auteur has worked before), we see humor­ous­ly revealed sev­er­al of Wen­ders’ best film­mak­ing prac­tices: “You need a good title from the begin­ning,” “Con­ti­nu­ity is clear­ly over­rat­ed,” “Try to wel­come and incor­po­rate” the unex­pect­ed, and “If you like foot­ball, don’t shoot dur­ing the world cham­pi­onship.”

If you’ve done your read­ing on Wen­ders, you can prob­a­bly tell that the clip draws from a pub­lished list of the direc­tor’s “50 Gold­en Rules of Film­mak­ing.” Oth­er help­ful rec­om­men­da­tions include “Before you say ‘cut,’ wait five more sec­onds,” “A ‘beau­ti­ful image’ can very well be the worst thing that can hap­pen to a scene,” and “There are no rules.” Will fol­low­ing these if-n0t-rules-then-guide­lines turn you into the next Wim Wen­ders? Unlike­ly. Will drink­ing Stel­la Artois do it? Cer­tain­ly not. But it could hurt none of us, what­ev­er our cre­ative endeav­or of choice, to emu­late his will­ing­ness on dis­play here to learn from his mis­takes (based on his list, I’d say he’s tak­en his share of hard knocks hir­ing cou­ples, adapt­ing nov­els, and work­ing with ani­mals); to share his wis­dom; and (maybe most impor­tant­ly of all) to learn not to take our­selves too seri­ous­ly. Sure, his detrac­tors tend to accuse him of pre­ten­tious­ness, but we true fans (who pay close atten­tion even to his com­mer­cial act­ing gigs) know the truth.

via No Film School

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wim Wen­ders Cre­ates Ads to Sell Beer (Stel­la Artois), Pas­ta (Bar­il­la), and More Beer (Car­ling)

Wim Wen­ders and Cel­e­brat­ed Direc­tors Talk About the Future of Cin­e­ma (1982)

Wim Wen­ders Vis­its, Mar­vels at a Japan­ese Fake Food Work­shop

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Coudal’s Kubrick Collection: An Online Treasure Trove of Kubrick Ephemera

in Film | July 2nd, 2014

Last year, the Los Ange­les Coun­ty Muse­um of Art wrapped up a bril­liant, exhaus­tive exhi­bi­tion about Stan­ley Kubrick. It was a ver­i­ta­ble cor­nu­copia of Kubrick mem­o­ra­bil­ia, rang­ing from grainy black and white pho­tographs he took for Look mag­a­zine as a youth, to a creepy plas­tic Star Child from 2001: A Space Odyssey, to the blood soaked dress­es of those hol­low-eyed twins in The Shin­ing. The exhib­it was a mas­sive suc­cess. It’s hard to imag­ine any oth­er direc­tor, with the pos­si­ble excep­tion of Alfred Hitch­cock, who would not only get an exhib­it in a major art muse­um but also be able to pack the hall week after week.

Part of his allure, no doubt, is Kubrick’s care­ful­ly-honed pub­lic per­sona – a reclu­sive genius who con­trolled every ele­ment of his movies, from the font on the open­ing titles to the design of the poster. His movies, espe­cial­ly his lat­er ones, are dense, deeply-lay­ered works of such com­plex­i­ty that they con­tin­ue to unpack them­selves after mul­ti­ple view­ings. Heck, there’s an entire doc­u­men­tary, Room 237, that presents nine stark­ly dif­fer­ent inter­pre­ta­tions of The Shin­ing.

Kubrick’s movies seem designed to appeal to a cer­tain breed of obses­sive film geek. So if you count your­self a mem­ber of this tribe (as I do) and you didn’t hap­pen to catch LACMA’s exhib­it, you’re in luck. The Chica­go design firm Coudal Part­ners has cre­at­ed a whole online trea­sure trove of Kubrick ephemera. We’ve culled a few cool things from their site.

Above is a cheesy, behind-the-scenes movie for 2001. The 20-minute pro­mo sets up the movie as if it were an episode of The Out­er Lim­its. “It is the year 2001, you’re on your way to a space sta­tion for busi­ness,” intones the nar­ra­tor. “This is but one exam­ple of what life would be like in 2001.” What fol­lows is a series of inter­views with the sci­en­tists, experts, and crafts­men involved in cre­at­ing Kubrick’s vision of the future with only fleet­ing footage of the film­mak­er him­self at around the 18-minute mark­er. Though it does give you a lot more infor­ma­tion on the nuts and bolts of the astro­nauts’ space­suits, the short movie, one can’t help but think, is set­ting up the audi­ence for dis­ap­point­ment. It does lit­tle to help view­ers under­stand that the first half of 2001 is about the strug­gles of ape men on the plains of Africa and does even less to address the psy­che­del­ic freak­out of the movie’s last reel.

clockwork-orange-poster-title

shining-poster-title

Also found in Coudal’s col­lec­tion is a site that has com­piled all the fonts that Kubrick, a not­ed typog­ra­phy enthu­si­ast, used in his movies. We’ve post­ed a cou­ple. He liked Futu­ra and Goth­ic a lot, appar­ent­ly. The title card for The Shin­ing was designed by Saul Bass.

237_Cardigan_emma1

And on this site, some genius has cre­at­ed sweaters, ski masks, and door­mats from that odd, geo­met­ric car­pet pat­tern from The Shin­ing. Pre-orders have sad­ly closed, but hope­ful­ly they’ll start sell­ing them again. I want the cardi­gan.

kubrick set

And then there’s this behind-the-scenes shot of the direc­tor and Sue Lyon on the set of Loli­ta accom­pa­nied by a quote from Kubrick about the actress.

“From the first, she was inter­est­ing to watch—even in the way she walked in for her inter­view, casu­al­ly sat down, walked out. She was cool and non-gig­gly. She was enig­mat­ic with­out being dull. She could keep peo­ple guess­ing about how much Loli­ta knew about life.”

kubrick subway

And speak­ing of pho­tos, here’s a few pic­tures Kubrick took of the New York sub­way sys­tem back in 1946 for Look mag­a­zine. Com­pare these pho­tos to his ear­li­est movies like Fear and Desire and Killer’s Kiss. Both his ear­ly flicks and these pic­tures have the same grit­ty imme­di­a­cy.

There is much, much more there at the Coudal Part­ners to keep any film nerd and Kubrick maven occu­pied. Check it out.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Fear and Desire: Stan­ley Kubrick’s First and Least-Seen Fea­ture Film (1953)

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Daugh­ter Shares Pho­tos of Her­self Grow­ing Up on Her Father’s Film Sets

Stan­ley Kubrick’s List of Top 10 Films (The First and Only List He Ever Cre­at­ed)

4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

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The Internet’s Own Boy: New Documentary About Aaron Swartz Now Free Online

in Current Affairs, Film, Life, Web/Tech | June 29th, 2014

On Boing­Bo­ing today, Cory Doc­torow writes: “The Cre­ative Com­mons-licensed ver­sion of The Inter­net’s Own Boy, Bri­an Knap­pen­berg­er’s doc­u­men­tary about Aaron Swartz, is now avail­able on the Inter­net Archive, which is espe­cial­ly use­ful for peo­ple out­side of the US, who aren’t able to pay to see it online.… The Inter­net Archive makes the movie avail­able to down­load or stream, in MPEG 4 and Ogg. There’s also a tor­rentable ver­sion.”

Accord­ing to the film sum­ma­ry, the new doc­u­men­tary “depicts the life of Amer­i­can com­put­er pro­gram­mer, writer, polit­i­cal orga­niz­er and Inter­net activist Aaron Swartz. It fea­tures inter­views with his fam­i­ly and friends as well as the inter­net lumi­nar­ies who worked with him. The film tells his sto­ry up to his even­tu­al sui­cide after a legal bat­tle, and explores the ques­tions of access to infor­ma­tion and civ­il lib­er­ties that drove his work.”

The Inter­net’s Own Boy will be added to our col­lec­tion, 285 Free Doc­u­men­taries Online, part of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

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Steve Buscemi’s Top 10 Film Picks (from The Criterion Collection)

in Film | June 28th, 2014

steve-buscemi

Ah, sum­mer sun­shine. It’s love­ly, but so is the idea of draw­ing the drapes while Steve Busce­mi schools me in some of the dark­er cor­ners of cin­e­ma and the human psy­che.

The man who’s met his onscreen end so fre­quent­ly (and hor­ri­bly) as to mer­it a Youtube trib­ute titled The Many Deaths of Steve Busce­mi is one of dozens of lumi­nar­ies who’ve com­piled top 10 lists from the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion’s film cat­a­log.

What do Buscemi’s 10 picks reveal?

A fond­ness for black-and-white, a doc­u­men­tary sen­si­bil­i­ty, and an appre­ci­a­tion for any­thing deft­ly strad­dling the divide between hor­ror and humor…

If, like me, you’re unfa­mil­iar with some of his picks, take a look at the trail­ers. I would­n’t be sur­prised to find him crop­ping up in any one of them.

Bil­ly Liar

This shin­ing exam­ple of the British New Wave can be referred to as a kitchen sink dra­ma, but Busce­mi calls it a com­e­dy, with “one of the sad­dest end­ings” he’s ever seen.

Brute Force

Pic­ture a remake with Busce­mi fill­ing the shoes of sadis­tic prison guard Hume Cronyn.

The Hon­ey­moon Killers 

Buscemi’s home­town gets the nod in one of his favorite-ever film lines: ‘Val­ley Stream. Val­ley Stream. What a joke!’”

Man Bites Dog 

Not hard to imag­ine the Coen Broth­ers enlist­ing Busce­mi to hold forth on the bal­last ratio for corpses. Those with the stom­ach for it can watch the whole dis­turb­ing thing here, though as Busce­mi him­self warns, it’s not for every­body.

My Own Pri­vate Ida­ho

Buscemi’s favorite Riv­er Phoenix flick.

Sales­man 

Won­der­ing how Albert Maysles will feel when he reads that fel­low direc­tor Richard Lin­klater fixed Busce­mi up with a boot­leg of his doc about door-to-door Bible ped­dlers.

Short Cuts 

Looks like there’s an Alt­man fan in the house of Busce­mi.

Sym­biopsy­chotax­i­plasm (whole film)

This unscript­ed, nev­er the­atri­cal­ly released faux-doc­u­men­tary from the sum­mer of ’68 was res­ur­rect­ed by Buscemi’s neigh­bor, the Brook­lyn Muse­um.

The Van­ish­ing 

If some­thing gives Steve Busce­mi night­mares, it’s like­ly to do a num­ber on you too. Watch the whole film here if you dare.

A Woman Under the Influ­ence  

Buscemi’s appre­ci­a­tion is so ardent, I’m hop­ing he’ll con­sid­er hip­ping us to his Top 10 Cas­savetes films!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Quentin Taran­ti­no & Steve Busce­mi Rehearse Scenes for Reser­voir Dogs in 1991 (NSFW)

Quentin Taran­ti­no Lists the 12 Great­est Films of All Time: From Taxi Dri­ver to The Bad News Bears

A Young Jean-Luc Godard Picks the 10 Best Amer­i­can Films Ever Made (1963)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, home­school­er and the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of The East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Watch 1990s Video of Sacha Baron Cohen Playing Christo, the Proto Borat (NSFW)

in Comedy, Film, Television | June 27th, 2014

In 2005, a hir­sute Kaza­kh jour­nal­ist named Borat Sagdiyev ven­tured to Amer­i­ca to make a doc­u­men­tary about “the Great­est Coun­try in the World.” Along the way, he had extreme­ly awk­ward con­ver­sa­tions with politi­cians Bob Barr and Alan Keyes, unwit­ting­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in a Gay Pride parade, and acci­den­tal­ly destroyed a gift shop filled with Con­fed­er­a­cy mem­o­ra­bil­ia. When he vis­it­ed a Vir­ginia rodeo, he near­ly caused a riot. Pri­or to the event, he praised the War on Ter­ror — which got cheers — and then wished that “George W. Bush will drink the blood of every man, woman and child in Iraq,” which got few­er cheers. He then sang the lyrics of the Kaza­kh nation­al anthem to the tune of the “Star Span­gle Ban­ner.” That got boos.

Borat is, of course, a fic­tion­al char­ac­ter played by British come­di­an Sacha Baron Cohen, made famous in his huge­ly suc­cess­ful 2006 movie Borat: Cul­tur­al Learn­ings of Amer­i­ca for Make Ben­e­fit Glo­ri­ous Nation of Kaza­khstan. While his brand of gonzo com­e­dy might not be everybody’s cup of tea, you have to admit he’s brave and weird­ly ded­i­cat­ed to his craft. The cops were called over 90 times dur­ing the pro­duc­tion of Borat and Baron Cohen nev­er broke char­ac­ter once.

Of all of Baron Cohen’s char­ac­ters – the dim-wit­ted wannabe gang­ster Ali G and the equal­ly obliv­i­ous gay fash­ion­ista Bruno, Borat is per­haps his most like­able, and there­fore his most dan­ger­ous, char­ac­ter. He’s so naive­ly igno­rant, so benight­ed by provin­cial prej­u­dices that he evokes a tone of kind­ly con­de­scen­sion from just about every­one he encoun­ters – at least before they call the cops on him. And that con­de­scen­sion can prove to be a trap. Borat’s casu­al, jar­ring­ly overt homo­pho­bia, sex­ism and anti-Semi­tism can often lead inter­vie­wees to say things out loud that they wouldn’t nor­mal­ly say in front of a cam­era. When Borat stat­ed, “We hang homo­sex­u­als in my coun­try!” Bob­by Rowe, the pro­duc­er of that rodeo quipped: “That’s what we’re try­ing to do here.”

The first incar­na­tion of Borat was a Mol­da­vian jour­nal­ist named Alexi who appeared on the Grana­da TV show F2F in the mid-90s. For the BBC Two show Com­e­dy Nation, Baron Cohen turned Alexi into Chris­to from Alba­nia. You can see a cou­ple of his ear­ly skits as Chris­to. In the one up top, he tries the patience of famed socialite Lady Col­in Camp­bell by insist­ing on car­ry­ing the train of her haute cou­ture dress. Below that, Chris­to stum­bles uncom­pre­hend­ing­ly into the world of S&M. Both videos, as you might expect, are NSFW.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ali G at Har­vard; or How Sacha Baron Cohen Got Blessed by America’s Cul­tur­al Estab­lish­ment

George Car­lin Per­forms His “Sev­en Dirty Words” Rou­tine: His­toric and Com­plete­ly NSFW

Lenny Bruce Riffs and Rants on Injus­tice and Hypocrisy in One of His Final Per­for­mances (NSFW)

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

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Hardware Wars: The Mother of All Star Wars Fan Films (and the Most Profitable Short Film Ever Made)

in Film | June 26th, 2014

Back in 1977, San Fran­cis­co film­mak­er Ernie Fos­selius had the brain­wave to make a spoof of a movie that had just come out. It was a risky move. Nobody had any sense that Star Wars would become the world­wide cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non that it did. And just as George Lucas’s space opera earned stag­ger­ing amounts of mon­ey, so did Fosselius’s par­o­dy, Hard­ware Wars. You can watch it above. Made for a mere eight grand, the 13-minute movie became a pre-inter­net viral hit and a sta­ple on the fes­ti­val cir­cuit, ulti­mate­ly earn­ing over $1,000,000 – an unheard of haul for a short film. In fact, in terms of mon­ey spent ver­sus mon­ey earned, Hard­ware Wars end­ed up being far more prof­itable than Star Wars. And it’s con­sid­ered the most prof­itable short film ever made.

“I think a lot of the charm of that movie is the fact that we didn’t real­ly know what we were doing,” said Scott Math­ews, who donned a blonde wig to play the movie’s lead, Fluke Star­buck­er. The movie’s pro­duc­tion is so glee­ful­ly cheap and half-assed that you can’t help but be charmed by it. Irons, toast­ers, and tape play­ers are used in place of space­ships.

A can­is­ter vac­u­um clean­er stands in for R2D2, and Chew­bac­ca appears to be a Cook­ie Mon­ster pup­pet dyed brown. At one point, while on a desert plan­et of Tatooine, you see a beach-goer saun­ter­ing in the back­ground. And Star Wars’s famous can­ti­na scene is in this movie sim­ply a stroll through a crowd­ed tav­ern. If you know any­thing about the bar scene in 1970s San Fran­cis­co, you know that it was at least as weird as any­thing George Lucas man­aged to put up on the screen.

The often liti­gious Lucas report­ed­ly real­ly liked the movie, called it “cute.” He even invit­ed Fos­selius to voice the incon­solable sobs of Jab­ba the Hut­t’s ani­mal train­er after his beloved Ran­cor gets killed by Luke Sky­walk­er in Return of the Jedi.

Hard­ware Wars end­ed up launch­ing an entire sub­genre of movie – the Star Wars fan film. And with the advent of Youtube and dig­i­tal film­mak­ing tech­nol­o­gy, the abil­i­ty of nerds and mavens to make increas­ing­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed takes on Lucas’s uni­verse became eas­i­er and eas­i­er. One of the bet­ter, and old­er, ones is Troops. A mash up of Star Wars and the real­i­ty TV series Cops, the short shows the chal­lenges and the strug­gles of being an Impe­r­i­al Stormtroop­er. Check it out below.

via Film­mak­erIQ

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How Star Wars Bor­rowed From Aki­ra Kurosawa’s Great Samu­rai Films

Frei­heit, George Lucas’ Short Stu­dent Film About a Fatal Run from Com­mu­nism (1966)

Watch the Very First Trail­ers for Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back & Return of the Jedi (1976–83)

Joseph Camp­bell and Bill Moy­ers Break Down Star Wars as an Epic, Uni­ver­sal Myth

Hun­dreds of Fans Col­lec­tive­ly Remade Star Wars; Now They Remake The Empire Strikes Back

4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

 

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