I was a young lad, living in San Diego and I was hit with Star Wars fever in 1977. I saw it the first showing, the first day it was out and to say the movie changed my life would be an understatement. When I learned the Empire Strikes Back was going to come out I was elated. My turn to the geek side was complete with Star Wars in 1977, which opened up a whole new world for me. I was introduced to Dungeons and Dragons, comics and by the time Star Trek: The Motion Picture came out in 1979; I thought I knew the art of camping out in front of a movie theater to see a film.

I remember the day well when Empire Strikes Back came out. I had convinced a number of friends that we should have a holiday from school for the movie. I got about 30 friends to agree to go to the movie with me. Don’t ask me how but I was able to convince my parents it was a holiday. While I couldn’t convince my parents to let me camp out at the Cinerama Theater on University Avenue, they did allow some friends to stay over at my house and they agreed to take us to the theater by 7am the day of the movie. I had collected money from most of the 30 people and agreed to save a spot for them in the line.

We couldn’t sleep and we spent the night playing D&D. In the morning, about 6am, I got up and made breakfast, which was cereal and, because this was Star Wars Day, had Bantha milk. OK, it was milk with blue dye but it was Star Wars Day and it was Bantha milk to me.

Oh, OK a little shamefulness I must confess to; I dressed up in costume. It wasn’t officially a Star Wars costume but I knew there were bounty hunters in the movie so I dressed up in what I thought would be a bounty hunter. It was modified from a costume I wore at Comicon the year before. I was the only one of my friends who stayed over who dressed in costume.

My father got us to the theater around 6:45am (the showing was at noon) and there was already a 100 person line. The Cinerama was an old styled huge theater that seated 1000 people. This was a time before widespread internet use, so there were no advanced tickets being sold. You got in line and took your chances. Now, we didn’t figure we would be so far back and with people saving spots you would think there might be fights or arguments, but people were really organized about seat saving. I worried if I had tickets for 30 people and the people in front of me were getting massive tickets, would we get into the first showing? What was cool was a lot of the people I recognized from Comicon and from the Star Trek camp out in 1979 were there.

The thing that was astounding back then was the network of geek cool was pretty underground. You couldn’t just get online and get pictures and articles about a film. Even shows like Entertainment Tonight would give little coverage to blockbusters like Star Wars so imagine how cool a lot of us felt going down and seeing people in costumes from the movie. Of the 100 people already in line, probably half were in costume and a good 25 people had costumes from the movie. I remember this one group who were in Hoth rebel costumes and there were a few Lukes and Hans about. Yes, there were Princess Leias with the cinnamon bun hairdo.

We now get to the tragic event that happened at the theater before the movie. There was a McDonalds down the street which had the newspaper bin filled. I and a few other people from the line went to get the paper (to collect the full page ad) and in the paper was a review of the film. There were about 15 of us who were back in line, shuffling through the paper and someone shouted NO! There was another no shout and I could hear people cursing like sailors. Just as I heard someone say “Don’t read the review,” my eye was on the page with the review and it automatically focused on the sentence everyone was screaming about. In the review the newspaper reviewer gave away the big reveal. There was one of the people in the Hoth rebel costumes who was crying because of it. The reviewer wasn’t the regular reviewer and people wanted their head on a platter. Again, this was the time before cell phones, but people dug for change, went to the pay phones and called the newspaper in anger.

Again, just to show the way of the line, when people started trickling in to get in line, people who had seen the article didn’t tell then new folks about the plot reveal. One person who came said he saw the review and you never saw so many people in costume descend upon a human being making sure he said nothing. After a few hours things calmed down but it was an angry crowd of costumed people who were ready for blood.

News crews came around 10:30 because the theater staff showed up at 10, apparently not prepared for the crowd that was now at 500 people with the front of the line filled with costumed folks, and they had called to have the news show the craziness.

They were going to start selling tickets at 11:30 for the noon showing but I think the manager did some quick math with the number of people and concession sales and opened up the ticket sales at 11am. This put a little bit of a mess in our plans because five people hadn’t arrived and they were letting people in. Thankfully some friends offered to wait outside for the five others while the rest of us went in and scouted seats. Amazingly we did get a block of seats in the center and the final people showed up fifteen minutes later.

The mood inside the theater was happy. Despite that some of us knew the big reveal we were ready for Star Wars, even if we were a little uneasy if the film would live up to the hype we gave it. There is something about the energy of seeing a movie with 1000 people you just can’t get in the small multiplex cinemas, especially adding the costume factor. When you’ve got people in costume you know you are with a hardcore bunch of folks.

Here’s how cool it was; when characters were introduced people cheered. When the Star Destroyers were in space people were in awe, when they saw the shadow falling over them and then you saw the Super Star Destroyer, people cheered. When the next shot was of Darth Vader, I haven’t heard so many people boo and cheer at the same time. People were so into the movie NO ONE left the theater when it started. The two moments when you heard any sound in the theater again was just before Han was placed in the carbon chamber and said “I know” to Leia. Women squealed at that line. The second moment was the big reveal the paper spoiled. When Darth Vader made the reveal and Luke yelled No, people in the theater yelled NO. People were crying at that reveal.

When the movie was over, there were local news crews outside, of course talking to the costume people. One of them was telling them about the anger he felt about the newspaper review, but I didn’t hear people telling the folks in line the big reveal. I came out of there stunned, because I wanted to know what happened to Han, what was Luke going to do. I saw the movie a week later and every week for about two months before cutting down to once every three weeks. It was an amazing experience for me.