Star Wars

After waiting on a very long line for about an hour, I finally made my way into the IGN Theater for the Star Wars and Indiana Jones panel. The festivities had already gotten underway, and so the theater was packed, dark and hard to navigate. Additionally, I had walked in while they were screening footage for the upcoming video game Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, which hits shelves in September. The footage looked great (from what I could tell), and I'm looking forward to a game that's set in between Episodes III and Episodes IV as there's so much room to play with there. For more on the game, check out StarWars.com.

From there, Steve Sansweet introduced two guys who had just graduated with a doctorate in Star Wars from New York University. It's funny, too, because right before their names were announced the guy next to me leaned over to his girlfriend and said, "Holy crap, I didn't know you could get a doctorate in Star Wars! Why didn't I do that!? Then Sansweet played their senior thesis: a documentary that, in reality, turned out to be the trailer for Robot Chicken's Star Wars episode. Of course, the two guys were Seth Green and Matt Senreich. They, in turn, talked about how that episode is arriving on DVD in July. This will include all sorts of stuff, like the deleted scene they screened featuring George Lucas on a therapist's couch complaining about how other people messed up Star Wars when Lucas let them play in that world (ie: Robot Chicken). Funny stuff.

Steve Sansweet has probably one of the best and worst jobs related to the Star Wars empire (get it? empire?) -- he's the Director of Content Management at Lucasfilm, as well as the Head of Fan Relations. It's that second half of his title that we're a bit more interested in, and presents some of the more fun, and more strenuous parts of the job, I imagine. We caught up with Steve while he was in Los Angeles for something he really enjoys doing; meeting the Star Wars fans in person.

Today marks the 30th anniversary to the day that Stars Wars: A New Hope came out in theaters and sparked the big sci-fi revolution, and not coincidentally, the massive fan pleasing Star Wars Celebration IV is taking place at the Los Angeles Convention center from now through Monday. There's a lot going on, ranging from "An Hour With Carrie Fisher" (she won't be wearing that slave-girl outfit, we'll bet) to a massive amount of material from the Lucasfilm Archives on display, including some things "That haven't been unpacked for 30 years" according to Steve.

Getting to know the man behind / in front of the fans, Steve is the author of ten books about the Star Wars universe (soon to be eleven when his 'Inside the Star Wars Vault' is published) and he is a genuine Star Wars nut. He owns a staggering amount of Star Wars memorabilia (including one of the original Darth Vader costumes from The Empire Strikes Back), knows the films inside and out, and sports a George Lucas-esque salt and pepper beard. I asked him if Lucasfilm had a beard requirement policy, to which he replied, "Of course!"