It’s one of those Good News, Bad News situations. As part of the annual Star Wars Fan Movie Challenge held last July at San Diego Comic Con, Lucasfilm and Atom Films promised that the winning entries would be shown on Spike TV. In the meantime, however, Atom Films has been bought by Comedy Central, so it should come as no surprise that the winners will instead be screened on the network that brought you The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and, um, Straight Plan for the Gay Man. So the good news is, the winning fan films are airing this week! The bad news is, if you don’t have a DVR or VCR, you probably won’t see them.
They’re airing as an episode of Atom TV on Monday, October 6 at 2AM, with repeat airings Wednesday, 10/8 at 12:30PM; Thursday, 10/9 at 2AM; and·Sunday, 10/12 at 10AM.
Reportedly the show will include:
• George Lucas himself introducing the 2008 “George Lucas Selects” winner, Padme, by Robert Reeves.
• Tarkin N Friends, by Will Carlough: Best Comedy Winner, 2008.
• Chad Vader: Day Shift Manager, by Aaron Yonda and Matt Sloan: George Lucas Selects Winner, 2007.
• SW Grindhouse, by Michael Ramova: Best Parody Winner, 2008.
• Incident At Toshi Station, by Tyler Soper: Best Short Subject, 2007.
• A montage of older fan film winners, including Pink Five, Jar Jar’s Walking Papers and Silent But Deadly, among others.
• And the ever popular “more.”
Given that it’s Comedy Central, it makes sense that the dramatic flicks are apparently MIA, but what are you gonna do? If you dig Pink Five—and really, who doesn’t—you can find out all about its road to glory in the chapter “Witty In Pink,” found in my new fan film book, Homemade Hollywood: Fans Behind The Camera, due out in less than two weeks!
A whole chapter????
Maybe 2/3 of the chapter; a fair amount of the chapter also has to do with the sometimes controversial history of Lucasfilm’s relationship with fan creativity, like fanfic, fan films, websites and so on.
Hey, did anyone TiVo this? I never got to see it (yeah, I know, after I wrote that it’d be hard to catch). If anyone can hook me up with a copy, I’d be grateful!
–Clive, proprietor of Fan Cinema Today.