Going into the fourth quarter of 2012, your ever-faithful eBay Today pencil pusher has already been burning the candle on both ends for some time but hasn't run out of wax just yet. In fact, with all that has gone on leading up until October, it is astounding that the need for sleep has yet to overcome my desire to do cool stuff. As you all know, talking about Star Wars almost always takes a front seat to all other components of life, but that alone isn't all that keeps this guy going. Moving past the fact that I'm just starting the second year of first-time parenthood, my chosen vocation is far more time consuming than most others. Often it means sixteen-plus hours away from home each day. That certainly isn't something most people would want to do, but considering I'm following my childhood dream to contribute my skills to the world of motion pictures I simply don't feel repentant about it. Currently that means I get the pleasure to contribute to the overall efforts that will entertain some of you next year. (IMDB will reveal the facts before I will.) When I have a break from that and my Padawan is asleep, I am busy shooting toys in a studio a full city block away from my cozy bed.
As many of you can guess, a little film released in 1977 encouraged me to follow this path, and I've never looked back with so much as an ounce of regret. Throw in the dirty diapers and other fatherhood bliss, I still can't stop thinking about The 'Wars, and I expect that nothing short of the apocalypse will change that. (Though the insurmountable mountain of toys piling up in my photo studio may temporarily dampen my enthusiasm a touch...) more than anything I want to be writing about today's big news, and as soon as I go through a final edit of this piece I'll get right into that with another editorial (but not one that links to cool collectibles).
Beyond the film I'm working on right now, I was contacted by the set decoration department on another production currently working in Vancouver looking to rent out some of my Star Wars collection to dress a couple of their sets (again, don't go fishing for deets, only time and officially sanctioned press releases will fill in the blanks). After lengthy discussions with the Assistant Set Decorator it was determined that I'd be hired to serve as the Star Wars tech for the show (Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus). Essentially it meant this writer would be responsible for overseeing the set dec in this portion of the film to help create an environment that would ring true to Star Wars collectors but still appease the whims of the producers that don't know the difference between a Midi-chlorian count and a caramel macchiato. Granted, it also meant that over $5000 worth of awesome stuff would ultimately be destroyed, but it was all insured so it was only a matter of looking past the broken 1/4 scale Speeder Bike and the other seven high end pieces that are now destined to Live Star Wars in a landfill. Even though I'll have to replace a lot of stuff in my collection, the experience was a lot of fun, but one thing stood out more than everything else.
One of the people I was working with, a woman within my age group and a born Canadian pretended not to know the name of the Millennium Falcon. It's not that she was obviously fibbing, but come on. Who doesn't know the name of the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs? Considering the fact that there were bootleg toys produced in Turkey and Hungary, I refuse to believe a girl in her mid to late thirties born in the Western World doesn't know the name of the piece of junk that blasted its way out of Mos Eisley and started us on a path that would forever dominate our destinies.