Dear AFI,
Thank you for honoring "Star Wars" in your 40th anniversary. You obviously
care deeply about honoring the great art of movie-making and its glorious
history. I can only assume that you also value the preservation of movies
as not only a valuable historic record, but as a mirror to our culture and
as priceless windows into the times in which they were made.
To that end, I hope that you can assert whatever influence you might
have in seeing that "Star Wars" (1977) is preserved in its original,
un-modified, un-"improved" form that garnered 7 Academy Awards and changed
movie-making forever. I fear that by presenting the movie in its 1997
altered "special edition" form, or even its 1981 "A New Hope" altered form,
you are in fact condoning the singular neglect and continued failure to
preserve this 1977 American masterpiece. It is unfathomable that an
Academy Award-winning movie has been made unavailable in its original
award-winning form, as it would be unfathomable to alter or "improve"
say, the Mona Lisa. Art is art, and the American Film Institute has an
obligation inherent in its very name to not tolerate the altering of film
history. Movie lovers are looking to you to help preserve, protect, and
honor the cinematic art of the past, and to demand artistic integrity
regardless of any pragmatic obstacles that doing so might face.
Respectfully,
Dr. Scott Gordon