On my way to Baltimore today, with three hours to kill in the company of a giddy Southwest Airlines crew (if you’re not familiar with their antics, such as auctioning their “desperately single” hostesses to the highest bidder, I suggest you give them a try), I decided to bring my HOWARD THE DUCK DVD along as my flick pick. I hadn’t seen the film in years, and I thought it was high time for me to brush up on my knowledge of anthropomorphic ducks–with Comic Con around the corner and all.

Howard the... oh, you must be f***ing kidding me..!

I only managed to sit through the first 28 minutes. Was the Southwest crew that entertaining..? I’ll do my best to finish it on the return flight. Highlights so far include a full frontal of a buxom female duck enjoying a bubble bath as Howard crashes through her bathroom window, and the establishing shot of the twin moons over New Stork City (hmm… did the Executive Producer have any say in this..?)

It’s bad all right, but its unmistakable 80s flavor is hard to resist (I’m a sucker for FRIGHT NIGHT, MANNEQUIN and just about every John Carpenter flick of the period), and I have mixed feelings about the fact that it’s still getting such a bad rap to this day. If George Lucas hadn’t executive produced it, wouldn’t we remember that movie with a tad more fondness in our hearts? Would we perhaps have forgotten it? Would it still be the conversational piece that it is today?

Of course, it’s hard to talk about HOWARD THE DUCK without mentioning CAPTAIN EO. For months, I was actually wondering how that profoundly weird and disturbing Coppola/Lucas collaboration would organically earn its way into our doc–until the creator of a puppet by the name of Skippy sent me a rant about the film that literally made me fall off my chair, brilliantly tying our collective childhood to both George and Michael Jackson. Disturbing? Oh, yes. A wonderful little skit that will, no doubt, make the final cut.

AOP

In accordance with the digi-revolutionary nature of our doc, we’ve recently been blessed with the participation of numerous faneditors. If you’re not familiar with the form, the first thing you ought to do is read the FAQ page on the following website:

Fanedit.org

In a nutshell, fanedits are reinventions, fresh interpretations of popular films made by talented, often professional editors with a passion for the craft obviously exceeding their desire to profit from it. There are three kinds of fanedits out there: True Fanedits (an alteration to an existing film that is considerably different from the original version), Extended Editions (self-explanatory), and Special Editions (click on the link above for the exact definition). Some of the most extraordinary fanedits we’ve received to date include BUILDING EMPIRE and RETURNING TO JEDI by Jambe Davdar, STAR WARS: EPISODE IV 2004 SPECIAL EDITION REVISITED by Adywan, and The Man Behind the Mask’s 6-hour epic STAR WARS 30s SERIAL EDITION–a black & white silent version of the STAR WARS saga, harking back to the old serials that inspired George Lucas to make these films in the first place, in a style akin to Fritz Lang’s METROPOLIS (Natalie Portman gains an eerie Brigitte Helm-like silent star quality when seen through that lens).

Fritz Lang's Queen Amidala

In case you haven’t noticed, these guys operate exclusively under “noms de plume”. Coupled with the fact that THE PHANTOM MENACE apparently started the trend (an interesting bit of trivia that is certainly relevant to our doc), the participation of esteemed faneditors in PvsG truly raises the bar, as far as I’m concerned. These are mightily talented editors who dedicated months or years of their lives to the reinvention of George Lucas’s films, because they loved or hated them enough (or both) to show the world how they would have done it, or how George “should” have done it. You know… the old debate.

What fascinates me about fanedits is that they’re at once homages to and critiques of the original works they refer to. From a filmmaking perspective, they make for fascinating studies. From a cultural standpoint, the fact that the overwhelming majority of available fanedits out there happen to be reinterpretations of George’s body of work is of obvious interest to me. Would the thriving fanedit movement be around if George hadn’t released THE PHANTOM MENACE? Can George possibly be responsible for this, too? There’s a fascinating correlation between what many filmmakers have told us (namely, that George inspired them to make films for a living) and the sheer amount of SW fanedits in existence. Whatever their true intents are, filmmakers and faneditors alike continue to be inspired by George Lucas, to take that extra step that makes them different from other fans. Because of George, thousands of fans were inspired to take matters into their own hands. The fact that fanedits can (unjustly, I might add) be perceived as the Dark Side of the Atom STAR WARS fan movie challenge is almost irrelevant to the great George Lucas debate. But they undeniably provide another compelling ingredient to the mystery that we, at Exhibit A Pictures, are working day and night to deconstruct and wrap our heads around: the unique chemistry between George and his fans that continues to morph our cultural landscape in bizarre and unexpected ways.

AOP

After a short 3-day vacation in Napa (yes, lots of wine, and practically no George-related work, discussions or phone calls), I’m now heading to Geneva for a week. I’ll update the blog from there. In the meantime, here’s a sketch I simply couldn’t resist sharing with you all: