33 Klassics: April Fools 2005

Long into the night, after I'd wrapped up the March issue and the clock had dragged us all inexorably into a new month, I checked in on the email and found I'd received a long, rambling, and disjointed letter from George Lucas, renowned creator of the Star Wars movie series. There were a lot of asides about the beginner's mind, and a couple times I'm pretty sure that he was quoting directly from The Power of Myth, but the gist of it was this: I've made a lot of movies, and even more money, I've transformed the foundation of cinematic visual effects twice, but now, with the last Star Wars pretty much in the can, it all seems strangely empty.

The director, wrote Lucas, is the artist and author of a movie... but the scriptwriter is its muse and the script is what surrounds and penetrates it, and binds the galaxy of cinema together. It's that spirit that I've lost track of, Jonathan, he wrote, and for a long time I convinced myself that it was because text was a static medium that had come to the end of its significant development in the world of arts. All the so-called new ideas were just the old ideas over again, the hero with a thousand faces, and art must be of its times and this is the time of visual artifice, and I followed that path to its ultimate limits. But then I stumbled across Jonathan Hamlow Presents 33 Magazine and I understood that it was not the text that had stagnated, it was only my mind.

Jonathan, George Lucas wrote, I've stated several times in the press recently that after I was done with the first six Star Wars movies, I was going to go back to my roots, to the small and enigmatic. Jonathan, he wrote, the bottom line is that I want to work with you and I'll do whatever it takes to make that happen. And that was the end of the letter, except for a California telephone number.

Anyway, the practical upshot of all this is that as soon as I'm done with this post I'll be packing up all the archives of 33 in magnetism-proof boxes and getting on a plane, so, this is the end of the magazine: this is my farewell article. I'll work out compensation for the Patrons for whatever entertainment they'll miss, but you know, opportunity only strikes once, so I'm flying the family out to L.A. this weekend and for the next year I'll be working on a series of athletic shoe commercials with George. Again, thank you all so much for your readership and support.





Okay, so, April Fools. See you next week.