Watching Skies: Star Wars, Spielberg and Us

Mark O'Connell

May 2018 · The History Press

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368

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About this ebook

Mark O'Connell didn't want to be Luke Skywalker, He wanted to be one of the mop-haired kids on the Star Wars toy commercials. And he would have done it had his parents had better pine furniture and a condo in California. Star Wars, Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Superman didn't just change cinema – they made lasting highways into our childhoods, toy boxes and video stores like never before.

In Watching Skies, O'Connell pilots a gilded X-Wing flight through that shared universe of bedroom remakes of Return of the Jedi, close encounters with Christopher Reeve, sticker album swaps, the trauma of losing an entire Stars Wars figure collection and honeymooning on Amity Island. From the author of Catching Bullets – Memoirs of a Bond Fan, Watching Skies is a timely hologram from all our memory systems. It is about how George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, a shark, two motherships, some gremlins, ghostbusters and a man of steel jumper a whole generation to hyperspace.

Mark O'Connell didn't want to be Luke Skywalker, He wanted to be one of the mop-haired kids on the Star Wars toy commercials. And he would have done it had his parents had better pine furniture and a condo in California. Star Wars, Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T. The Extra Terrestr...

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About the author

MARK O’CONNELL is a writer, author and pop culture commentator. His books Catching Bullets: Memoirs of a Bond Fan and Watching Skies: Star Wars, Spielberg and Us earned critical acclaim, prize shortlisting, and both mainstream and LGBTQ media recognition. He is a frequent voice across all BBC platforms and channels, Sky, The Times and major global news and cultural outlets. More recently he was consultant producer on the acclaimed Bond documentary, The Other Fellow (2023).

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