Most of this is true.
The rest is even truer.

That's how filmmaker Patrick Read Johnson (Dragonheart, Angus) opens his semi-autobiographical script 5-25-77, and it's a telling choice of phrase. The script is a snapshot of Patrick's youth, three years worth of events collapsed into a single day of screen time. The script mixes fact and fiction, memory and fantasy, but true to the spirit of the story, it doesn't matter if this is how things really happened. It's the way it should have happened. It's the way it happens in the movies, or, perhaps more to the point, in dreams.

Oh, and it's sort of about Star Wars, but not really.

It's the story of Patrick Johnson, sort-of-but-not-really the same Patrick Johnson who wrote the script. If you're reading this, you've almost certainly known someone like him; hell, you may very well have been someone like him. He's a kid in love with movies. He's the one with the dog-eared cinematography magazines spread across his bedroom floor, instead of Rolling Stone or Sports Illustrated. He's the one who spends his time shooting elaborately scripted movies on his parents' camcorder. He's the one who converted his garage into a soundstage (which makes for one of the script's more amusing, and purportedly true, sequences).

More importantly, in Waukegan, Illinois, 1977, he's the kid in town who's actually heard of Star Wars before it opens, and who prophesies its coming to hallways of disinterested high school students. This story's about that kid: the one that wants to make movies. The one that's either nuts . . . or just crazy enough to succeed. More than that, it's about the choices we all have to face: whether to settle, to take the safe and comfortable road; or to take the more difficult path, the one that just might lead us to our dreams. The story is, at its core, a love letter to dreams, both the ones we chase after ourselves and the ones that have come before, that inspire us to the chase.

Patrick agreed to spend a half-hour or so chatting about the film, his career, and the Holy Trilogy that has shaped his path as a filmmaker.

David Michael Wharton: With this movie being so much based on the central event of Star Wars and its influence on you as a filmmaker, what did you think of the last two Star Wars movies? Is Lucas carrying on the tradition or has he lost his way?

Patrick Read Johnson: You know, when I first saw Episode One, I was really disappointed, and for reasons that it took me a long time to understand. I was looking at Episode One as a nearly 40 year-old guy with kids, who had forgotten what it was to be 16, 17, 18, a teenager in a movie theater. A kid science fiction nut, hungry for entertainment. And I was looking at it through very cynical eyes, and I also realized what George was trying to do with that movie was, in many ways, to have someplace to go.

In other words, you can't start out the first episode of a saga leading to Star Wars, Empire, and Return of the Jedi doing the exact same thing. It can't be the same cast of characters or the same signature. You don't want a roguish space pilot and a hotheaded princess and a young . . . you don't want the archetypes to be the same as the last three. But that's the expectation, of course, because even though they were prequels on paper, in the mind of the average filmgoer they were still sequels of a kind. And so the expectations, I think, and even my own, were colored by that. Even my own experience was colored by the expectation that I would be in familiar territory, but it's completely unfamiliar.

But what the older audience doesn't realize is that the kids that are seeing this, that are seven to nine years old, ten, eleven, [that] are seeing Episode One as their first Star Wars experience, are seeing something just as completely amazing to them. Just as . . . completely unknown territory as when Star Wars came out and I was 14. So it was a completely new experience full of, well, very old ideas, but saying new things. A lot of the kids that are seeing it now, they won't even see . . . Episodes Four, Five, or Six until after Episode Three.

George is a big fan of the Japanese samurai films, Kurosawa films -- Throne of Blood, Seven Samurai -- and these are what he drew upon for the situations in the Star Wars films. And Rashomon, I think, was one of his favorite films. And Rashomon is all about, who's really duping whom? What's going on here? What is truth? Is perception more important that reality? And I think George . . . I think Episode One is layer upon layer of people fooling each other. We're getting a hint of it in Episode Two.

I don't know if I should say it in print . . . maybe I will, I don't know. There should -- there needs to be -- in the third film, coming up, a great reversal of dramatic fortune again, like there was in Empire. The "Luke, I'm your Father." This first trio of films needs that thing, that revelation, and I'm sure there will be. And I pretty much have blocked in my mind exactly what that revelation is going to be. It's about treachery and someone we trust going much farther into the Dark Side than anyone else has already gone. And you can draw your own conclusions from that, but I think we're going to see one of the main characters turn out to be much more hideously evil than any of the villains we've seen so far.

DMW: It's an interesting theory.

PRJ: And one other thing: it is in no way, shape, or form ever said that Count Dooku is Sith. And if that's the case, then he's simply another pawn in the game, and as there are always two, we know there has to be another Sith. Once you start thinking along those lines, it becomes obvious who's going to be the traitor. So, I've said too much! And this is based on no foreknowledge of any kind, other than just being a huge, huge, huge Star Wars fan, and a bit of wishful thinking.

DMW: Sure. Gary Kurtz is attached to 5-25-77 as a producer. How did that come about?

PRJ: Well, Gary and I have known each other for a number of years. He's an old friend. We actually met when we were both trying to do a science fiction novel called Santiago, by Mike Resnick. We were both simultaneously working on adapting it for the screen, and we did option it, but it didn't come about. The technology just wasn't there, and this would have been one of the most expensive science fiction works ever.

At any rate, we became friends, and began developing products together, and when I pitched him the idea of 5-25-77, he was very enamored of it, because it's not really about Star Wars. He said that's one reason many people beyond the Star Wars universe would like it, as well as Star Wars fans. And a reason George Lucas will like it, because it's not truly about Star Wars at all. Star Wars just happens to be what I call the "Wolfman Jack" of this particular American Graffiti. Star Wars is a catalyst to another story here. It isn't all about trying to get to see the movie Star Wars. It's just the shell to hold the story.

But the real issue for this boy is not Star Wars. It could just as easily have been Close Encounters for this particular boy. Close Encounters is as beautiful, wonderful, and touching a film as Star Wars to me, but it's not the same cultural touchstone as Star Wars. It doesn't have the same universality to it in the popular perception. And for better or worse, every generation has something that's sort of the most amazing moment of their childhood. For some it's the Kennedy assassination. For me, you know, I landed somewhere between the moon landing and Star Wars. And the moon landing was incredibly influential on me. For my generation it's either the moon landing or Star Wars. That's our legacy.

And I think Star Wars is a terrific legacy, because in spite of what cynical adults and some young people who aren't informed about it, who haven't actually seen or experienced the whole saga yet, may think, it's reenergized classical storytelling. The non-cynical form of storytelling. What got me to love Episode Two so much was I finally just sat back and remembered what it was like to be a 15-year-old or a 13-year-old. And I remembered that George was extremely enamored of Flash Gordon. He's always said, all I'm doing here is making a glitzy version of Flash Gordon. If you look, especially in Episode One, the design of--

DMW: Everything's fins.

PRJ: It's fins and it's sleek and, you know, and it's that 1920s House Beyond, the utopian society that's going to fall afoul of evil. It's the flying cars we were all promised as kids. It's the 1929 World's Fair. The whole Republic is basically the 1929 World's Fair grown to galactic proportions. It's that great, big, beautiful tomorrow we were promised at Disneyland. We all wanted that as kids, and I'm sure George really wanted it.

In the '50s, that postwar environment promised all of that and didn't deliver, and that pulled the rug out from under the entire generation. He now is telling the story of what was, of that sort of 1920s vision of utopia. It's kind of a beautiful homage to all of that great old belief that the future was supposed to be bright and shiny and wonderful. But he just happened to start his saga at a time when it was at its worst, when the shiny utopia was falling apart, when it was just a bunch of cobbled-together, beat-up, old space ships trying to fight for freedom again. Which was basically the '60s and '70s for you. So, you know, it's really the ultimate expression of the anti-war film, but in a fun way, or the anti-establishment film.

So anyway, going back to watching Flash Gordon, they had terrible sets! They had cardboard-cutout characters and arch lighting from below and dialogue that rolled around in your mouth like a bad carburetor. There's a line in Episode Two that is my favorite pulpy line ever: "I can see that this will not be settled by our use of the Force . . ."

DMW: I know exactly the one.

PRJ: ". . . but by our skill with the lightsaber." That is a perfect Emperor Ming line.

DMW: Yeah, and I love that Christopher Lee is the one delivering it. There's just something perfect about that.

PRJ: Exactly! And that, well, I was already onboard long before, and I had fun for the first 90 minutes as well. And me knowing John Knoll, who is the visual effects supervisor, for many years -- John was the best man at my wedding, I was the best man at his, I mean there are a lot of connections, tenuous though they may be. But, outsiders they aren't.

And knowing the catalyst Star Wars has been on my life -- it's not that I grew up to name my children after them. I don't own all the action figures. I just appreciate it for having brought back non-cynical filmmaking at a time when the only means of success was to be extremely dark. Films that held out no hope for the better virtues of the killer ape known as man.

You know, I kind of live my life straddling the fences between Kubrick and Spielberg. Actually, I think George might be right in the middle between Kubrick and Spielberg. Kubrick thinks of man as the killer ape that will never, ever evolve, that he's incapable of rising above his baser instincts. Steven has always been, or particularly in his early career, has been paternal and "when you wish upon a star," and that man had better potential and could reach it. George kind of has it both ways in Star Wars.

DMW: Taking into account your negative experiences on Dragonheart, what is it like -- and I realize you've done other stuff since then, but having had that experience -- what is it like now being able to work on something that's on a smaller scale, but also so intensely personal for you?

PRJ: Well, with Dragonheart, it was personal, but it was personal on a different level. The personal part was the code we invented for the Dragonslayers, the knights. Again, it was an attempt to tell, in a classical sense, a story, and factor in some comedy. But it wasn't like this new film, which is basically about, well, myself.

You know, in 5-25-77, the lead character is Pat Johnson; his best friend is Bill Holmes, who is one of my best friends to this day. My girlfriend, who lived down the street, still lives in Illinois. It's basically three years worth of events collapsed into one day. And every event in the screenplay actually occurred in one form or another. The only real artifice of the script is dialogue in the scenes to bridge things together.

But I wrote it from memory -- this is interesting -- because I then shared it with all the individuals who are portrayed, to get their permission and their thoughts on it, and it was fascinating because they actually recalled these moments. They actually recalled the dialogue, for the most part. They'd say, "My God, that's exactly what happened! I can't believe you remembered that."

Now, a lot of these are old friends, and they all have their own feelings about how they're portrayed, and that's part of the reworking process of the script is to workshop, play it out, rehearse it, make slight changes. Most of it to Bill's character. It's not that they're not drawn fairly accurately there; it's just that there were other sides to Bill that weren't covered in the original draft. And that's partly because I wanted to get out what I thought and what I specifically remembered, [get it] on paper, and then have my friends react to it and find out whether I was right or wrong about my perceptions of them at the time, and their memories of it. By getting that, I can then say, okay, the alternate perspective is not really telling a story that's all that different from my point of view. It gives it a bit more of a God's-eye perspective, and therefore Pat's misinterpretation, occasionally, of what's going on is just as important as his interpretation.

So it's making a more complex and richer screenplay to go back with my friends and say, "So . . . here's what I thought was happening at this moment when we were kids; what are you thinking?"

DMW: When is your target date for wrapping?

PRJ: We're not really doing any shooting at all right now. The teaser trailer is . . . we're making it out of whole cloth. It's sort of a magical combination of visual effects elements, footage we've shot specifically for the purposes of the teaser, and some bits and pieces from other sources that I don't want to talk about right now. <laughs> But it is meant to be a complete -- it's a pre-production teaser is what it is. To sort of whet everyone's appetite. So principal photography, hopefully, will begin May 25, 2003. That's the goal.

DMW: Are you hoping to get it released around the time, or maybe a little before, the next Star Wars movie? The last Star Wars movie?

PRJ: Well, that would be appropriate, wouldn't it? That's kind of my fond wish. I believe that Episode Three is coming out in 2005. So, I don't know that we'll wait a whole year. That having been said, there's nothing wrong with waiting for the right time. I certainly don't want to give anyone the impression -- least of all George -- that we're trying to piggyback off his success. That having been said, it's not like our movie's going to get in the way of any audience members for Star Wars. <laughs> At all.

I think it would be wonderful if somehow, some way, we ended up close enough to Episode Three -- even to be one year ahead -- where expectation's growing like crazy, where we'll have no effect for or against, other than to celebrate Star Wars. You know, in a really fun and homage-oriented way. To be coming out close to the end of the saga with a film that's so evocative of the time in which the saga began. I think it is a nice bit of symmetry. And with Carrie Fisher being in it, there's also nice symmetry in that respect, and with Gary Kurtz being involved.

It all feels right to come out on or around May 25 of 2004. So, you know, my hope is to do something that fits nicely in that window. Here's how it all began, right before you see how it's all going to end.

5-25-77 is a funny script with a heart and what looks to be shaping up into an extremely solid cast and crew. Both Joe Pantoliano and Carrie Fisher (yes, that Carrie Fisher) are attached, playing Patrick's father and mother, respectively. Alan Parsons will be providing original music and industry veteran John Knoll will be the visual effects supervisor. To top it off, Patrick is pursuing Frankie Muniz of Malcolm in the Middle fame to play the lead, schedule permitting.

Say what you will about Lucas and the direction he's taken the franchise -- and many have said much, at great length -- there's no denying the impact it's had on an entire generation. It's no surprise that people like Patrick Johnson find the urge to explore that impact.

David Michael Wharton is a freelance writer from Texas. He spends his days picking grammatical nits as a copyeditor for a publishing company in Fort Worth, and fills his free time writing short stories, essays, scripts and the like. His work has appeared in Dark Moon Rising and The Circle, and he also writes audio scripts for the Texas Radio Theatre Company.