ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, January 30, 1997 TAG: 9701300009
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RICHARD FOSTER
Mike McGee still remembers the exact date ``Star Wars'' premiered in Roanoke - June 17, 1977. "There was nobody there. Nobody knew it would have the impact it did," he said. But that changed fast, as word-of-mouth spread and theater lines grew exponentially.
"I saw it 29 times that summer," McGee recalled, and by the time the movie left theaters in 1979, he had seen it nearly 50 times. He remembers the ``Star Wars'' posters with birthday cakes marking the movie's anniversaries in theaters.
"`Star Wars' has followed me all my life," said McGee, now a 31-year-old independent filmmaker and special-effects producer in Salem. Inspired by ``Star Wars'' creator George Lucas, he started making his own movies as early as 1979, when he shot an 8 mm film that he describes as "something like King Kong attacks a bunch of plastic Army men. I made the feet out of one of my mother's fur coats."
Some of McGee's ``Star Wars'' models, including a 5-foot-long Imperial Star Destroyer, will be on display Friday at Salem Valley 8 for the opening of the new special edition of ``Star Wars.'' He also will appear in Richmond at the Science Museum of Virginia on Feb. 15 to demonstrate special-effects techniques similar to those used in "Star Wars," and some of his models will be on a monthlong display there.
As a 15-year-old, McGee got his picture in the newspaper when he was waiting in line for "The Empire Strikes Back." He skipped school and had his dad drop him off before work so he could be the first in line. Three years later, as a high school senior, McGee was first in line again when "Return of the Jedi" came out.
"I saw it three times that day at the Terrace," he recalled. "The manager had seen me there and he let me sit through. I even picked up trash for him after the second showing."
After high school, when McGee joined the Army, he was stationed with a guy who had played a stormtrooper in "Return of the Jedi." In Germany, when the sound broke down during a showing of "Jedi," McGee remembers supplying dialogue for the film from memory.
McGee made his own sci-fi movie in 1995, "Sentinel 2099" - a low-budget direct-to-video B movie about aliens and robots filmed entirely in the Roanoke area. He's worked on many other B movies, as well as big-budget films such as "What About Bob?" and "The Hunt for Red October," for which he says he did miniature model work. He makes most of his models from scratch in a garage shop with a partner in Roanoke.
Selling his old Star Wars toys to help finance ``Sentinel 2099'' was probably the hardest thing he'd ever done, McGee said. "I saved my lunch money every week as a kid to buy `Star Wars' figures," he said. "I'd save just enough. I'd forgo ice cream money to get my `Star Wars' figures every week."
As for the new, improved versions of the ``Star Wars'' trilogy, McGee says he's not bothered by the idea of changing something that's been such a big part of his life. He still plans to be among the first to see them.
"I'm a director, and there's things I want to fix about my film," he explained. "I can understand not having the money or the resources to do it at the time."
He even hopes one day soon to raise enough money to fix some of the effects problems in his own film, he said. "It won't come out as a special edition, though."
LENGTH: Medium: 67 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ERIC BRADY STAFF. Mike McGee, an independent filmmakerby CNBand special-effects producer, says that ``Star Wars'' had a profound
influence on his life and career. color.