But I lament that during the last decade before the pervasive tentacle enreachment of cable and the invasive perversion of our bookshelves and saturday nights by the Beta and then the VHS VTR and VCRs and Video Lazer Disks and whatever that other thing was (oh, yeah, the internet), the movie theatre experience was something you had to experience in the movie theatre. TV wasn't flopping major motion pictures into the shredder and then plopping the mangled result on to the tiny screen within weeks back then. It was at least two to four years before a mmp crawled into your living room, so your memory, fond or otherwise, of a movie stayed with you and you got to tell the story to people who hadn't or shouldn't see the flick.

Back in the bad old days, say, the thirties or forties, "Star Wars" would have been a B picture, or a serial. It would have been memorable until the next one rolled along. But the audiences, particularly the teenage ones of the mid-seventies, had no knowledge of B pictures. Mostly because Hollyweird was pumping out nothing but B pictures and there wasn't even a double bill. Hell, half the time there wasn't even a cartoon! They'd shut down Warner Bros Termite Terrace a long time before... Of course, it has been pointed out, that, in the old studio system system, the systemic rot wouldn't have allowed a systematically subversive film like "Star Wars" to have been made anyway, without a hit song, a hit star, and a known director ( I don't care if he did play Bingo with Scorcese or play backgammon with Coppola)... But there is no punk sensibilitiy to "Star Wars" unless you are thinking about that chap that used to own the "Sex Pistols"... Er, Malcolm something or other, a midget, I think... into leather, safety pins... and overdraughts...