15 years ago, Ain’t It Cool News posted a story about an “investment trailer” being shot for a movie called 5-25-77 – a film later touted as being “From the Producers of STAR WARS and LOST IN TRANSLATION.” That 2002 news item was sourced from an assistant camera operator… yours truly. In the years since, I’ve written a few times about the semi-autobiographical tale from filmmaker Patrick Read Johnson, both on this site (here’s one from 2012) and at one point, a feature for STARLOG Magazine (archived here) that ran on 5-25-09. Now, after numerous false starts and premature announcements, this film about Star Wars’ “Fan #1” is finally, really coming out… just in time for the 5/25/17 40th Anniversary of Star Wars. Starring John Francis Daley, Coleen Camp, Neil Flynn, Austin Pendleton, and my late friend, Justin Mentell, 5-25-77 will be hitting theaters via Filmio Original Pictures. A new trailer debuted earlier today, appropriately back at AICN with some words from Mr. Harry Knowles. Check this out…
Having seen several different cuts of 5-25-77 over the years, I don’t know what the end result will be as new footage has been added, and some things have been shot and reshot a few different times. At one point, I even spent some time on set popping up as an extra in the high school scenes, but I have no idea if you’ll see me in the finished film. As I detailed in the Starlog piece and this one, my personal involvement with the film was a multi-pronged affair, and seeing it on the big screen in a final form will be bittersweet, particularly due to Justin’s role.
Overall, I’m just really happy for Patrick that 5-25-77 is about to be seen, and I will be there when the film has its long-awaited premiere (Monday, May 22, 2017) at the Genesee Theatre in Waukegan, Illinois.
Keep an eye on the Filmio Facebook page, as I expect a list of theaters where you can see this to pop up shortly.
