Watching Skies: Star Wars, Spielberg and Us

by Mark O'Connell

Overview

Mark O'Connell didn't want to be Luke Skywalker, He wanted to be one of the mop-haired kids on the Star Wars toy commercials. And he would have done it had his parents had better pine furniture and a condo in California. Star Wars, Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Superman didn't just change cinema – they made lasting highways into our childhoods, toy boxes and video stores like never before.In Watching Skies, O'Connell pilots a gilded X-Wing flight through that shared universe of bedroom remakes of Return of the Jedi, close encounters with Christopher Reeve, sticker album swaps, the trauma of losing an entire Stars Wars figure collection and honeymooning on Amity Island.From the author of Catching Bullets – Memoirs of a Bond Fan, Watching Skies is a timely hologram from all our memory systems. It is about how George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, a shark, two motherships, some gremlins, ghostbusters and a man of steel jumper a whole generation to hyperspace.**action figures sold separately.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780750970198
Publisher:	The History Press
Publication date:	05/30/2018
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Mark O’Connell is a writer and the author of Catching Bullets: Memoirs of a Bond Fan (Splendid Books, 2012). The book was shortlisted for the 2013 Polari First Book Prize, and has led to him becoming a pop culture pundit for many media outlets across the globe.

Table of Contents

About the Author 8

The Opening Crawl 9

1 The California Express 11

2 The Great Muppet Opener 21

3 Toys. Toys! 28

4 Obi-Wan Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest 50

5 He Came to Me Too 59

6 A Bright Centre to the Universe 76

7 Plastic Fantastic 100

8 The First Last Jedi 116

9 That's Clark, Nice 135

10 Cousins of Steel 158

11 If You've Got It, Haunt It 176

12 The TV People 194

13 Raiders of the Lost Movie Art 201

14 AT-AT on a Hoth Tin Roof 223

15 Dante's Movie Inferno 247

16 Once More with Freeling 263

17 The Sith Element 278

18 Dartb Becomes Him 300

19 In Martha's Vineyard, Not Far from the Car 320

20 To the Spaceship 351

Closing Titles 363

Bibliography 366

Editorial Reviews

"A fantastic personal account of one of the greatest chapters in movie history. An unmitigated delight." —Mark Gatiss


“I thought I was the only person obsessed with every single thing written in this book, but fortunately for the rest of us Mark O’Connell is too. This is the ideal Christmas gift, even if you’re browsing at Easter.” —Mark Millar (X MEN, KINGSMAN, MILLARWORLD)


There’s never been a more perfect storm in pop culture, and O’Connell encapsulates this beautifully in a book that is a love letter to the era, and a reminder of just how lucky we were to have lived through it. ”★★★★★★★★STARBURST
 


“This book is a terrific look at growing up geeky, with touchstones familiar to those of us of a certain age who grew up with the original Star Wars, Spielberg movies– you know. The good stuff. —REVOLUTION SF


“It’s a wonderful rallying point for the Star Wars generation, a book dripping with nostalgia for a genuine golden age of movies. And Superman IV.”—SFX
 


“Love the era of Jaws, Star Wars and Ghostbusters? This book is for you. Remember Look-In, CHiPS and the Why Don’t You gang sitting awkwardly on hay bales? This book is so for you.”—★★★★ TOTAL FILM
 


Watching Skies is another love letter to the cinema of the Seventies/Eighties, written with O’Connell’s excellent command of the English language. —WE ARE CULT


“Mark O’Connell – whose first book, Catching Bullets, described his life as a James Bond superfan – revisits the other films and stories that so obsessed him during his childhood… tracing their impact not just on himself but on a whole generation of space-lovers and cinema-goers”—RADIO TIMES
 

From the Publisher