Deleted Vader Scene from A New Hope # 1

Being an uber-nerd, I was sent some clips of deleted scenes from Star Wars: A New Hope. As I'm not able to show you these or I would therefore destroy the confidence which has been placed in me, I will attempt to describe to you a few of these gems. The first of these takes place right after Vader kills Obi Wan and Luke and crew escape.

SCENE I

INT. DEATH STAR HANGAR

The engine sounds of the Millennium Falcon die away. Storm troopers stop firing their blasters and start walking back to their guard posts. Vader leans his back against the blast door and gives a crackling sigh through his respirator. A clean up droid wheels in and begins to sweep up Obi Wan’s robes. As he uses the force to retrieve the other lightsaber, Vader says out loud, to the droid maybe, “(ssssk-shih) This is not the reunion I envisioned with my son. (sssk-shihhh).”

CUT TO:

INT. DEATH STAR HANGAR

Daydream of Luke stepping off one of the Empire transports. Vader is standing imperiously. Luke gets into a dueling stance, turns on his lightsaber. Vader unsheathes his. They circle each other in a ring of Stormtroopers. Suddenly, Luke smiles and Vader opens his arms and they both hug. Stormtroopers cheer. Cue “So Happy Together”.

MONTAGE

Luke and Vader piloting matching Tie Fighters shooting down Rebel ships.

Luke and Vader constructing twin orange lightsabers.

Vader letting Luke push the button to destroy Tatooine.

Luke and Vader standing over the Emperor’s dead body. Whooping.

CUT BACK TO:

INT. DEATH STAR HANGAR

Vader is smashing the clean up droid with both lightsabers. The noises from his helmet could be crying but sound more like a radio slowly dying.

What I Think Andy Does at His Work

So Andy Donkin is taking a test tomorrow to finish his CPA (which I believe stands for Counting Person Associate), and I mentioned to Valerie that maybe a pal of his at his accounting firm might slip him a cheat sheet with all the numbers he needs to know. And Valerie said, "James, I don't believe you know what Andy does."

Of course I do. Here's a typical day for Andy: Accountant. He rides to work in regular clothes but when he gets to work he changes into Old Timey Accounting Gear which consists of Green Visor, Vest, Ear Pencil and Elbow Garters. When he's not licking his pencil and writing numbers into Ledgers, he's pulling away at the Lever on his Adding Maching which makes the Paper Roll spit out with Important Numbers.

Sometimes his Boss comes up to him and says, "Donkin!" and Andy says, "Boss!" and Boss says, "I need ya to balance this checkbook!" So Andy gets out a Scale and puts the checkbook on one side and an equal amount of paper money on the other. When he gets it balanced, Andy cries out, "Eureka!" and all his Fellows, he always calls them Fellows, pat him vigorously on the back.

At Lunch Time, which is on the Company's Dime, Andy tells his Fellows jokes about Numbers. Like a real inappropriate one he heard about "7". Everyone loves that one.

The rest of the day is full of Lever Pulls, Balancing, and listening to the Wireless while his Fellows coat the ceiling in Cigarette Smoke. There's some talk of Dames but Andy is married and he tries to steer the talk back to Numbers or his Beard.

At the end of the day, Andy goes with the boys to Happy Hour where he has a Ginger Ale and tells a new kneeslapper about "12".

It kills.

Something Fun

So I wrote this idea thinking of lies and truths and Valerie. So it's mainly about me and Valerie and whatever it is that fascinates us about each other. Not everything is true because I'm not worried about that. But some of the strangest things are definitely true.



Why We Work

You always smell like a fresh painting
and I like to wear ironic medical braces.
We fish seas without fish
and watch time lapse sunsets backwards.
I have a pet copy of Tron
and you only eat almonds freshly shelled.
When I watch you put on your third pair of socks,
I wonder how summer you’d feel if our carpet was sod,
why I’m obsessed which arm is longer,
why my eyes can only cross in.
I sometimes I think the sky is cloud smattered
but you say my corneas are loose.
You’ll eat chicken and name the animal it tastes like.
You wear my cardigans over your pullovers.
I have a prison of fears you talk me out of.
You have only bright ideas
and only a duck to confide to
and I have too many dreams saving celebrities
and we never have enough time for picnics.
There’s only one bike between us
and you will never ride on my
coattails and I steal all your choicest
observations and when I eat your chipotle chili
I tell everyone you swindled it from a Choctaw woman
for a sock puppet named Wobbles.
You want more bed and I want less belly
and there’s three songs I know with your name
and I’ll sing them for you.
I feel unpathetic when I phone you on my break
and later you pull me over you like a blanket.
We take funny classes together because we love chuckles
and I love walking the late streets and you worry
but you are brave as fire
and you stand up for defenseless trees in Prospect Park
and you have a sewing machine and I have a game machine
and neither of us get it about the other
but I like to lose at cards to you
and you like to have me in bed more
than you like the dishes done
and lemonade soothes your summer heart
and my eyes are gunmetal green to just you
and together we mourn a big dead walrus named Ivac.
You’re semi-fine with me feeding boardwalk squirrels
and I kinda like you angry
and I like the cabs playing in the puddles all night
and you say, “still writing?” and I say, “of course”
and I say, “time to sleep?” and you say, “let’s”

A Mess of Poems

So I've been messing with a few poems for a while, dug up one I never did anything with, and I've been reading a few new poets to expand myself. I'm sorry that all I really ever post now is poetry but I'm trying to keep myself focused and writing. You never know if any poems will make it beyond this blog or if I'll get sick of them and retire them like minor league ball players that never made it. Here's the first poem. It's a major rewrite of something I wrote last year. It may or may not work yet.

Thanks again for putting up with my posting. Like I said, there's really not much to say I suppose on a blog but sometimes it's good to get some positive feedback when I'm not in workshop. I can get the cutting tools on it later.

Cloud

For a summer, you were an island of a boy.
August alone, idling on Shaker Lake,
refuge on an innertube, cataloguing clouds.
July the rains howled around your trailer
and June, your mother said Leukemia,
a word that sounded like a door shutting.

You swore all August the same cloud
was following you, a gray cirrus wolf,
skulking on the skylines, behind the flocks
for your slightest inattention.
You steered your tube to the most middle,
the place you had the clearest vantage
of every approach.

Because you know the ending to Red Riding Hood,
know the wolf will swallow her gone.
I wish I could warn you that this path in August,
this race over the river and through the woods
will define everything you are to become,
will create me.
An endless need to sentry for your family,
a desperate peacemaking, a smile overclocked for everyone,
the morbid humor for release, even that look,
the face you will rearrange to say:
I am not aware the world has weight.
Like fairytales, you will acquire the tools you need
to meet all demands.

I can’t say I want you to choose the other way.
For in a way that is a wish to undo me.
To instead wander the circuitous path home
and not to labor in futility against things invisible and certain
so that when you arrive, you can be surprised at what big eyes
and what big time and what big indifference death has.

Most of that summer, I know you wanted to pull the plug,
sink to the bottom, and depth charge the whole mess.

If you’re heading my way, try this:
when the balance of blistering rubber on your back
and the shiver of thawed lake on your feet feel like something to learn;
on those days, just spin around. Forget what’s overhead.

Gowns and Batsleeves

Hey, that purple dress is my very own graduation gown. It would be redundant to do another post when Valerie has already written one. Go to hers to see me in all my purple drapery.

Valerie Says I'm All Growed Up

Michigan on my Mind

I've heard this story about my great grandfather as long as I can remember. Him coming to America to search for his dad and finding him in less than ideal circumstances. My Nama and Nampa gave me a retelling of it last summer or fall I believe and I've been pondering it ever since.

I was too young to have much of a lasting impression of my great-grandpa. I thought he was a little scary. And it may be a stretch to say I had no affection for him but I just don't have enough memory to retain some fondness. It sounds like a terrible thing to say about your grandpa's father but I barely remember him.

In fact, his funeral was the first funeral ever for me. (Or that I remember.) And the only thing I remember was being intrigued, interested in this new sort of spectacle. I think I even understood death in some small sense and still didn't care. Is that terrible? I'm not sure. This is a poem that came out of it.

Family Crests

My Great-Grandfather was old country,
spoke German, read the Michigan Deutsch papers.
An American Story, finding his way to the auto boom
to sow sons in the palm of the Great Lakes.
Sent to America at twelve by a concerned mother
to find a vanished father, maybe in trouble,
because post cards and money had ceased.
He sailed over, trailed him to the Prohibition wilds of Chicago,
where all he found was a body, a hooker lover,
and a ring etched with old family crests.
This was not the person I knew.
I was a child, and children have no use for context.

At the farm house in Bangor,
I avoided the mushroom of his breath, his flannel hugs.
The rock harsh consonants of his language never sounded doting.
In the must of his den, I’d act polite long enough,
to have him offer a Brach’s and shoo me
to spend the rest of the day petting his old horse,
feeding it crackers and onion grass.
Sometimes I’d show him toys, gifts from my dad,
sent from a far away land called Georgia,
a kudsu stricken state too distant to see me,
or write me on more days than my birthday.

We had no fondness for each other then
and I have less now, but perhaps a question.
If I could be as old as I am and speak to him,
I’d go back to the day we stood over his dead horse,
in the heavy grass of his field, swatting deerflies,
my grandparents inside making arrangements,
just him and me under the din of insects.
Between us, the otherness of the horse,
the awkward impatience of death without grief.
I’d ask him if this is how he felt over his father,
if this is how I’ll feel someday over mine.
And he’d respond in our language, decipherable
to sons lacking shadows.