🔊 - How 'Metropolis' and silent cinema influenced 'Star Wars' w/ filmmaker Ben Crew (S1/E9)
Super 8 Star Wars, Silent Movie Remixes, Alternate Time Line George Lucas' + more!
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Tim and Jim chat with documentary filmmaker and Mad Men enthusiast about the history of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, the tropes of silent cinema, and how George Lucas utilized the silent movie aesthetic for the Star Wars films.
Ben first caught our attention because of his viral silent film edit of Tim Burton’s Batman (1989).
Episode Credits:
Hosts: Tim Barnes, Jim Fagan
Guest: Ben Crew
Theme Song: Matt Maher
Announcer: Carolina Ravassa
Podcast Art:Joel Jackson
IN THIS NEWSLETTER:
Ben Crew: A Star Wars Story
Ben Crew is a documentary filmmaker and former news production director from Mississippi, now living in Chicago. My passions are horror screenwriting and my documentary archive project "American September" which collects "Where were you on 9/11" stories from all 50 states and around the world.
Ben also has an incredible newsletter dedicated to Man Men!
Check out more of Ben’s work here!
Haven’t seen Metropolis yet? Check it out here!
Discussion Highlights:
Beyond the connection between C-3P0 and the “machine human” in Metropolis we noticed a few other connections the Fritz Lang film and Lucas’ THX, along with characters like Darth Vader.
Metropolis (1927) & Star Wars (1977)…
We do a little time traveling after realizing Metropolis was 50 years old when the original Star Wars released, and the fact that Star Wars is approaching 50 years of age:
“What I find interesting about the time thing, though, is that we're 50 years into Star Wars, essentially, now. And we still know people who were there in 1977. So if you think about 1977, George knows people who were around to see Metropolis, who were of the age where they could have seen Metropolis when it first came out. Which means we're not that far away from the World Wars…” - Tim Barnes (Yub Nub, 2024)
How silent cinema processed the horrors of war…
“The silent film era is so tremendously influenced by World War I, especially in its makeup. You look at Lon Chaney's different makeups as the monstrous of the silent film era, and you compare it to wounds that were received by World War I veterans, and it's remarkably similar with these noses being blown off. missing limbs. And so much of this silent film era was reckoning with this horrific war that none could have possibly imagined. And that was kind of the first moment in film history of processing absolute horror beyond human comprehension through art. And then, you know, every single generation is going to have a horror it has to process.”
- Ben Crew (Yub Nub, 2024)
Read a full thread of silent film insights from Ben here!
The A New Hope Super 8 experience…
Jim points out that Star Wars has actually received the silent movie treatment in an official capacity:
“I found out that in the earliest days of Star Wars, in ‘78, while it was still in theaters, which was unheard of, they released Super 8 black and white versions of Star Wars A New Hope that you could buy at home and put into your Wonder Years style Super 8 projector and project the film.” - Jim Fagan (Yub Nub, 2024)
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Unique Film Scores & Compositions
We got on a roll talking about the power of great movie scores and various ways to compose them — somehow leading us the the ultimate conclusion that Justin Bieber should score an action-thriller!
Thinking About The Modern Power Of Mark Hamill
Since our conversation with Ben Crew dives into how art and politics intermingle — we took a moment to dissect the political power of Mark Hamill — most recently exemplified by his appearance at a White House press briefing.
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