Last night I met Lawerence Kasdan

If you just said "who?", WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN???

Lawerence Kasdan is a writer, director, producer, etc. You may have heard of a few of his smaller movies... those little Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi flicks were both written by him. He wrote another popular movie with Harrison Ford... ever hear of Raiders of the Lost Ark? That was him too. He's also done The Big Chill, Body Heat, Grand Canyon, etc.

Quite frankly, he's the man!

Last night I went to a screening of Grand Canyon that promised a personal appearence by Lawerence himself. Not only did he appear, he did a 15 minute interview with renowned film critic Charles Champlin, and then he even took audience questions for about an hour. It was cool.

I got to meet him after it was over which was pretty neat. I was making small talk while he was signing an autograph for me (see below) and I asked him the well thought out, deep, intelligent questions "So, sir, what's your favorite movie you've done?" To which he answered (I think) "I don't have a favorite. Movies are kind of like kids like that..."

Random, yes. But it was cool though. He's a funny guy, very much so. And many of the questions were dumb enough that that made it even funnier of a night all together.... Examples? Okay... I can do that for ya.

• Q: So... uh... what did Chewbaccha really think about the love affair between... uh... Han and Leih?

• After a ten minute explanation on exactly how he felt about the ending of Grand Canyon, and how he liked it but wanted the music to be more downbeat, less optimistic...
  Q: So, you say you wanted to change the ending of Grand Canyon? How so? Elaborate...

• After he just elaborated for five minutes on how it was working with his wife writing the script for Grand Canyon and how that did help create both the feminie and masculine parts of the movie...
  Q: So, how exactly did you get into writing the script for all of the different perspectives? Like the feminine side?

• Lawerence is white, and the movie, for those that haven't seen it, deals with, in part, the friendship between a rich white man and a poorer black family, where the black family's son is involved in a gang and the neighborhood just isn't safe to live in. Also deals with affairs, marital problems, and raising kids in this world...
  The same loser from the last question also asked...
  Q: But how did you get into the roles? Man, you just don't look black enough...

• Another cool part of the evening was when he was talking about the Star Wars trilogy. He said he always thought it was really about the film industry. Luke was the flim writer or director battleing the evil forces of the industry (the Dark Side, the Imperial Guard)... Jaba the Hut represented the evil studio heads, and if you don't tell 'em flat up how it is, you'll never get anywhere. You've gotta tell the guard what's up, set him straight, and then he'll let you speak to Jaba... Random? Yes... But a nice interpritation... (Corey, you want to elaborate here?)

Over all, it was a good night and lots o' fun, in my opinion.

Back to Famous People Page
Back to Laura's Page