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This Guy Has A Legit Issue With 'The Last Jedi,' And It's Been 40 Years In The Making

This Guy Has A Legit Issue With 'The Last Jedi,' And It's Been 40 Years In The Making
Ernie Fosselius

In a galaxy far, far away, an ominous-looking spaceship prepares for landing. Clouds of smoke pour from exhaust ports as the craft slowly descends, its foreboding features coming into focus. But something’s not quite right. Is that a handle on its hull? Is that even smoke? What kind of alien contraption is this?

Apparently, it’s the clothes-ironing kind.

In a scene transition from the latest “Star Wars” movie “The Last Jedi,” what initially appears to be a spaceship ready for touchdown is soon revealed to be something far less imposing ― an iron ready for household duty. We were watching the First Order press its laundry the whole time.

To most fans, the scene is just an innocuous sight gag. Laundry is hilarious, amirite? But to devotees of a cult 1970s parody called “Hardware Wars,” the iron cameo has a lot more steam.

Director Rian Johnson confirmed last year that the iron scene in “The Last Jedi” is an homage to “Hardware Wars,” the first-ever “Star Wars” parody.

San Francisco-based filmmaker Ernie Fosselius created the trailer-style spoof back in 1978, lampooning the big-budget spectacle of what later became known as “A New Hope” with a 13-minute, intentionally hokey short film. Whereas “Star Wars” features special effects-driven spaceships, droids and stormtroopers, “Hardware Wars” features mundane household appliances like irons, vacuums and steamers buzzing around space.

“May the Farce be with you,” the obscure film beckoned about a decade before “Spaceballs” hit theaters.

But what was initially a small parody project has since grown into an unprecedented tour de Force. Thanks perhaps to its endearing cheesiness, and the persistent popularity of “Star Wars,” “Hardware Wars” became one of the most successful short films of all time, reportedly grossing around $500,000 in the first year of its release. It’s still revered by supporters today.

And that’s why so many fans loved the “Hardware Wars” reference built into “Last Jedi.” It’s just that ... the film’s creator didn’t.

It’s true that reactions to “Last Jedi” have been mixed overall. Some audience members loved Johnson’s update of the franchise, some hated it, and some are just professed members of the “alt-right.” As for Fosselius, he’s decidedly not a fan, and he’s been carrying around his arguably legitimate reason for decades.

Ernie Fosselius at work in the 1970s.
Ernie Fosselius
Ernie Fosselius at work in the 1970s.

A NEW GRUDGE

Over the course of an hourlong interview last month and a few subsequent email exchanges with HuffPost, we attempted to unpack Fosselius’ feelings about Johnson’s “Hardware Wars” reference ― and Fosselius’ broader, “Star Wars”-related grievances.

His story began with a few phone calls.

Following the release of “The Last Jedi,” Fosselius said he was “flooded with calls” congratulating him on the “Hardware Wars” allusion. Many of these admirers even supposedly told him they had no intention of seeing “Last Jedi” until they heard there was a “Hardware Wars” reference in it.

Sounds pretty good, no? Uh, no.

“This is the phrase that got me: ‘Aren’t you happy that you finally got into a “Star Wars” film?’” Fosselius said of the various well wishes he received.

“No, I’m not,” he explained. “I did the parody. Why would I want to get into an actual ‘Star Wars’ film?”

Let’s clear some things up: Fosselius didn’t just get into a “Star Wars” movie. He’s already been in a number of them. According to the filmmaker, “Star Wars” sound designers Ben Burtt and Gary Rydstrom were early fans of his work and they brought him into their studio to do character voices, sound effects and miscellaneous vocal grunts for “Empire Strikes Back,” “Return of the Jedi” and even Lucasfilm’s “Indiana Jones” movies. Fosselius said he wound up rearranging a John Williams piece in “Return of the Jedi,” too. (Burtt and Rydstrom did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.)

Still, Fosselius harbors an even bigger issue. Fans misconstrued his parody as a tribute to George Lucas’ movie, he says, rather than a full-fledged spoof. And as a result, he believes he’s been miscast as “the number-one fan of ‘Star Wars.’”

“That’s how things work,” Fosselius said. “You get absorbed into the thing you’re spoofing because it’s revised. Your intentions are revised.”

So when people told Fosselius they’d spent money on “Last Jedi” tickets just to see the “Hardware” reference, he was annoyed.

“I thought, oh, great. I’m doing business for [‘Last Jedi’]. I’m bringing in customers for their movie,” Fosselius said. “Look, you got to understand. ‘Hardware Wars’ was a parody. It wasn’t a fan film. Oh, god. I’m never going to live it down. It was turned into a fan film.”

“It really sort of pissed me off,” he added, “because I spend my entire life trying to make a name for myself in a very obscure profession, because it’s what came naturally to me, and I consider [my parodies] art. I thought everyone was going to have fun with it.”

THE FARCE AWAKENS

Back in San Francisco in the late 1970s, Fosselius and his team certainly had fun putting together “Hardware Wars.”

Their parody style was simple: create “a really crappy version of something that was huge.” With “Star Wars” being “big budget,” “big box office” and “technically so advanced that you can’t even imagine how they did it,” it was the perfect target.

“I was surrounded by a lot of people who were Trekkies, and [‘Star Wars’ mania] was the next huge leap over ‘Star Trek’ worship, you know?” said Fosselius. “And there were already rumors out about how amazing [‘A New Hope’] was and people had that glazed look in their eyes saying this is the best thing that has ever happened in movies. That’s a call to me. Yeah, let’s put things into perspective.”

The parody’s creator described the project that followed as “a spontaneous group effort.” He delivered the initial pitch to producer Michael Wiese in a Chinese restaurant in 1977.

“For props, he used what was available,” Wiese told HuffPost. “A soy sauce bottle was a spaceship. He just had me on the floor. Of course, the people in the restaurant were like, there’s a crazy person in the booth.”

But the antics worked; Wiese was onboard.

From there, Fosselius recruited an eclectic group of friends and a number of co-workers from the animation company Imagination, Inc., where he worked on “Sesame Street” cartoons.

Their budget was nearly nonexistent, reportedly only $8,000. But that worked for the purposes of mocking a big budget blockbuster with an intentionally chintzy production.

“Everyone said, ’I got the camera’ or ‘Let’s do this and borrow that’ and ‘I work at a place so let’s get in there at night and shoot in there,’” he said. “It was probably the last thing that I know of where that was possible.”

Pretty soon, steam irons and toasters were soaring through space on obviously visible fishing line, while droids 4-Q-2 and Artie Deco traversed desolate landscapes complete with suspiciously earthling-like sunbathers in the background. Heroes like Fluke Starbucker (Scott Mathews), a Luke Skywalker knockoff with a lopsided wig; Princess Anne-Droid (Cinthia Freeling), a Leia wannabe with stale bread buns for hair; and Ham Salad (Bob Knickerbocker), a Han Solo-esque “ace mercenary pilot and intergalactic wise-guy” were teaming up to save the galaxy from evil ne’er-do-wells like Darph Nader.

It was tacky. It was corny. “It was magic,” Fosselius said.