It’s too long. That opening sentence is too long. Right here, look. I’ve made it so the words appear individually. LUKE. SKYWALKER. HAS. RETURNED. TO. HIS. HOME—you probably don’t need me reading it out loud. But do you see how tedious? I’m asleep already. I’m drooling on my wife’s shoulder. People are throwing popcorn at the screen. What you need is something short, something like, oh, I don’t know, let me bring up the next slide here—Bam! IT IS A DARK TIME FOR THE REBELLION. Where did that come from? You don’t know, I don’t know, but there you go, filled with dread right from the start. And they fired me. They threw me out. Lucas was calling me all kinds of names—are you serious? Because I was high? Because I smoked the joint in the Millennium Falcon with the guy who played Chewbacca? Because they were filming? We had tons of blank film. Rolls and rolls stacked ten feet high. We were swimming in it. Look at this slide—Lucas built a fort of blank film in his office!

Okay, moving on, moving on—you ever just say something till it loses all its meaning? Moving on moving on moving on moving on moving on moving on moving on. Just kind of runs together. Anyway. Oh, okay, the list of clichés. They swoop in, watch, it’s kind of cool. CLUTCHES OF THE VILE GANGSTER. LITTLE DOES LUKE KNOW. ULTIMATE WEAPON. SPELL CERTAIN DOOM. SMALL BAND OF REBELS. He’s ass deep in them. This is the best Lucas could get to replace me? Really?

But I’m not bitter. I’m not bitter. See—happy slide. Look at my smile. And Julie, that’s my wife, or was, when the picture was taken—she’s hot, right? You guys find her attractive, right? Oh my god, the things she could do, in the bedroom, on the couch, the dining room table. I remember once—but, here, just take a look. The cockpit of the Millennium Falcon. Look at her balance!

Next slide. The letters cascade backwards in this one. Can’t quite make it—oh. Imagery. Okay. When you’re reading the floating text in Return of the Jedi—in the business, we call it crawling text, but tomato-tomahto—you’re reading the text and nothing’s popping into your head. It’s because he’s not using concrete details. Example: HOME PLANET OF TATOOINE. Now, if you’ve seen the first movie, you know what it looks like. But what if you haven’t? What does the home planet of Tatooine look like? I’ll bet you a million dollars you’d think Earth. Natural reaction. In a counter example, take my description: REMOTE ICE WORLD OF HOTH. Short, succinct, and you have a pretty good idea—isolated, desolate, snowy. People underestimate the complexity of the blurb. They do. For example, George Lucas. That’s him on the can. Don’t ask me how I got that picture. It was a different time back in the 80s. And that’s him renting porn. Oh, and that’s him at the grocery store. He bought cereal if I remember correctly, and paid for it in pennies. And I guess it just goes on like… no, wait, that seems to be… no, no. Never mind.

Um, hey, how much time do I have left? Oh, wow, time really creeps around here, huh? Listen, you guys want to just ask me some questions? Anyone? No? How about I tell you how I came up with the opening for Empire Strikes Back? Crazy story, really, involving an orgy, some Storm Trooper costumes, a pinch of acid, and the Millennium Falcon set. Or, how about some poetry? I have one of my poems right here, I think… yeah, final slide… see, how cool that is? The text bouncing into place? I told Lucas once, I said, we should experiment with the text. The floating is nice and all, but it comes in at a weird angle, kind of hard to see. You know what he did? True story, I swear, true story: he forced me into R2-D2. You know how small that compartment is?

But I’m not bitter. I’m not. I hocked a loogie in his coffee and he drank it.