Thanks to John Zipperer's blog, I've been able to time-travel into my past through the articles I wrote for STARLOG magazine in the 1980s. John has been cataloging every single issue of STARLOG's run. Each of his blog posts inevitably brings back memories. There are many interviews that I've done that I've forgotten all about, like the one above with screenwriter W.D. Richter on the set of Big Trouble in Little China and one that I did with George Lucas (how could I forget that?). I am also astonished by how hard I worked. I often wrote three or more articles per month. For instnace, in one issue, I had interviews with Kurt Russell, Martin Landau, and director Tobe Hooper..and in another I interviewed Bob Gale, Ray Bradbury, and Kim Cattrall. It's also interesting to see the wide assortment of people I talked to… directors, actors, producers, screenwriters, novelists, special effects experts. But it's clear to me that I was more interested in the writing of the movies and TV shows that I covered than anything else. No surprise there. It's also amusing for me to see how many of my UCLA Daily Bruin buddies (William Rabkin, Brian Lowry, Marc Weinberg), girlfriends (Karen E. Bender), and family members (my mom!) I talked into working for STARLOG, too.
Oh, I just picked up an issue from the mid 80’s as it had an article about Lou Ferrigno. Will have to see if there is an article you wrote in there.
WD Richter wrote my favorite movie EVAH and its tie-in book too …. The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. Amazing synth soundtrack by Michael Boddicker too.
I think it’s time to watch the movie again.
Richter directed BUCKAROO BANZAI… it was written by Earl MacRauch, who also wrote the novel. I covered that movie for STARLOG, too.
Lee
Wow… this Richter interview was one of the things that helped inspire the then-12-year-old me to want to make movies for a living. Until I saw your blog post, I had completely forgotten that I used that opening BIG TROUBLE excerpt as my model when I tried to write my own scripts at that age — it wasn’t all that easy for a kid in New Jersey to learn screenplay format in the mid-80s. 🙂
Anyway, I used to really enjoy your Starlog articles. Funny to find out now that you were barely more than a kid yourself when you wrote them…
Thanks for the blog post and the link. I of course knew of the large number of Lee Goldberg articles in those issues of Starlog (because I always paid attention to bylines), but I didn’t know you’d brought an entire posse of coworkers along with you … 🙂