Interview: Craig Stevens, author of The Star Wars Phenomenon in Britain

  

The Star Wars Phenomenon in Britain by Craig Stevens

There's a great new book coming out about Star Wars mania in the UK. And I don't think you'll even have to be British to like it.

Today, Episode Nothing meets Craig Stevens, the author of The Star Wars Phenomenon in Britain.

The original release of Star Wars: when it was seen and where

Star Wars mania at Mann's Chinese Theater

On the weekend of May 27-29 1977, many thousands of people were enjoying a film that was playing on hundreds of American cinema screens. The film took $2.7million at the box office that weekend. 

It was called Smokey and the Bandit. 

Meanwhile, people in a small number of major US cities had a chance to see a new science fiction movie called Star Wars. 

The world before Star Wars: Six things that suddenly went out of fashion for children of the 1970s

From The Six Million Dollar Man to TV westerns,
a lot of children's obsessions were to be
eclipsed the arrival of Star Wars

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, there lived people who had never heard of Star Wars. Today, Episode Nothing looks at some of the pop culture obsessions of the 1970s that suddenly seemed less important once the adventures of Luke Skywalker came along.   

Review: The Galaxy That Britain Built – a BBC documentary on the making of Star Wars

The BBC's latest contribution to Star Wars documentaries

The BBC has made some pretty good documentaries about Star Wars over the years. I’m thinking in particular of the Omnibus episode George Lucas Flying Solo back in 1997 and its follow-up at the time of The Phantom Menace.

A new show, The Galaxy That Britain Built, was broadcast by BBC4 in the UK on Thursday, December 21, sandwiched between two other Star Wars-related programmes. (Those were a repeat of last summer’s BBC Proms concert devoted to John Williams and Hollywood’s Master of Myth, a documentary about Joseph Campbell.)

Today, Episode Nothing reviews a show that interviewed some of the lesser-known figures in the Star Wars story – including those who really did build that galaxy.