May 4th is Star Wars Day. I’m not sure what people do on Star Wars Day, but I’m keeping an eye out for random light saber attacks and stashing a bottle of air freshener in my pocket just in case.

I’ve always been more interested in the Star Wars phenomenon than the films themselves. The passions and obsessions that the movies generate among their fans is truly mindboggling to me. But I understand the need within the human psyche to dream and fantasize and the power of movie myth to give our world some order and a sense of good and evil, while all the while letting us escape from our own gravity.

From ‘Star Wars’ to ‘Jedi’: The Making of a Saga is a nicely done documentary written and produced by film critic Richard Schickel in 1983. A fascinating behind-the-scenes look at George Lucas’s alternative realities.