The line for the first showing of "Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace" starts behind Daniel Alter, age 17, who set up a folding chair April 7 in front of the Mann Village Theater in Westwood. By now there are a half dozen people behind him.
But that's not the only line going 32 days before the May 19 opening of the most anticipated movie of the year. A kind of cyber-Woodstock atmosphere has descended on a rival line on Hollywood Boulevard, beside the entrance to Mann's Chinese Theater, where 30 people have set up pup tents and laptops in a steadily growing queue for the first screening.
"Just wait until Sunday when the international crowd starts coming," promises Lincoln Gasking, the 22-year-old Australian organizer of this line. Already director George Lucas's "Phantom Menace" -- the first of three planned "prequels" to his blockbuster "Star Wars" trilogy -- appears poised to become a pop culture leviathan, rivaling the box office records of his grand opus about space, evil and the mysterious workings of "the Force."
The first three films, "Star Wars," "The Empire Strikes Back" and "Return of the Jedi," have grossed a staggering $1.8 billion since the release of the first film in 1977. All three were re-released in 1997 as a big-screen refresher course on the exploits of Luke Skywalker and guru Obi-Wan Kenobi, priming a massive fan base for this year's installment.
On Hollywood Boulevard, the line for the series' most avid fans has become a happening of sorts, with participants logging in their hours for a charity (they're calling it a "stand-a-thon") and the whole thing broadcast online, 24 hours a day, at a "Star Wars" Web site, countingdown.com. Lines will be springing up all over the country starting next week.
Sci-fi nerds? Video geeks? Obi-Wan oddballs? Not Gasking, a sunburned, dark-haired real estate rental broker with a winning smile and an entrepreneurial eye. He's been planning this event for a year, and if all goes well, may never go back to Melbourne. Truth be told, he's only seen "Star Wars" "20 or 30 times," he says. "I love movies. I love excitement. It's about getting fans together."
Then there's Stevie Otis, a 22-year-old biochemistry major at Cal Tech, who can only be described as a "Star Wars" babe -- Cindy Crawford looks and ambitions to become a "space doctor," a hitherto-unknown career charted squarely in the future. She rediscovered the Lucas trilogy in junior high school, and "for the next few years I watched it as often as I could. There's a lot in there philosophically -- about the Force, and Yoda and dark and light and conflict."
There are also the classic science fiction devotees such as baby-faced Scott McAfee, 18, who is anchoring the countingdown.com chat room, and who claims to have watched "Star Wars" about 500 times.
A reporter inquires: Just "Star Wars," or "The Empire Strikes Back" and "Return of the Jedi" too? He squints, horror-struck at the very suggestion. "Oh no, I always watch it as a trilogy," he says.
The line-sitters take turns talking to fans who watch the (in)action via the countingdown.com Web camera, perched atop the computer under a plastic tarp on the Hollywood Boulevard sidewalk. That, and a laptop donated by Dell, are used for tinkering with the Web site and near-constant replaying of the "Phantom Menace" trailer and a "South Park"-style spoof made by Gasking and a couple of other countingdown.com fans. Gasking's selling online ads. Traffic? About 100,000 people regularly visit the site.
Dave May, 21, who leaves the line every day to work at Blockbuster, remembers seeing "Return of the Jedi" when he was 5. "I remember, ooooh yeah, I remember," he breathes. He soon launches into a discussion of the religious roots of the "Star Wars" canon, how creator George Lucas took "Hinduism and Christianity and rolled it into one" but also "took King Arthur and the `Odyssey' and combined it into one tale."
May is joined by 30-year-old Mike Harris of West Los Angeles, a part-time actor and bartender who explains that most people don't realize that the word "Jedi" is rooted in an ancient Hebrew caste of religious knights, called the "Jediah." (Most people don't realize this because there was no such thing. But maybe he's referring to the tribe of "Judah"?)
The line is a curious combination of cutting-edge technology and caveman-level subsistence. The only protection from last week's downpour and this week's brutal sun is a swath of blue plastic tied with twine. Energy lines are being supplied by Hollywood Souvenirs, a store across the street that has cables snaking up the boulevard to the sidewalk encampment. Pup tents go up in the evening and stretch around the block. There are cases of bottled water, boxes of Nutri-Grain bars and leftover bags from McDonald's. There's a life-size Darth Vader and storm trooper cutout next to a public phone that has been commandeered for the cause, marked with a sign, "Inbound Calls." It rings constantly. Someone has fiddled with a no jaywalking sign so that it reads "Use the Force."
Meanwhile up at Lucasfilm in Northern California, where the pre-opening frenzy rises on a daily basis, there is cheery surprise at the intensity of the line-sitters' devotion. "It is insane, and I just love it," says "Phantom" producer Rick McCallum. "I didn't think it'd ever go this berserk. I think the real reason behind it is that kids can have that experience at a rock concert, but they've never had that experience at a movie. I really do think that it is part of the phenomenon -- it's a collective fun thing to do." McCallum said he planned to visit the line, incognito, this weekend, but Jake Lloyd, the 10-year-old who plays Anakin Skywalker in "Phantom," beat him to it, making a surprise visit on Wednesday with his family. He distributed lollipops.
It wasn't easy for the Mann theaters to get the film. Lucas held out until exhibitors agreed to Draconian conditions. For example, that "Phantom" must run in the biggest theater of a multiplex, that it must run for a minimum of eight to 12 weeks; and that there must be no more than eight minutes of trailers before the film. No one is expecting any real opposition. (Which Washington theaters will get "Phantom" hasn't been decided.)
But even line-sitting can be a serious business. Daniel Alter wants everyone to know that he, in fact, was the First Person in Line for "Star Wars." In the world. Alter does not fool around when it comes to movies; he often gets in line 10 hours ahead of an opening to make sure he gets the best seat in the house: P 107. When he learned of the stand-a-thon he decided to sit down first. But Alter sat in front of the Mann Village theater in Westwood, not the theater on Hollywood Boulevard, because the THX sound company has declared it the best audiovisual experience anywhere.
"The Chinese may be more famous, but this has the best sound system in the world," says Alter, a pudgy teen with intense green eyes and a don't-push-me-around attitude. He finished high school a year early last year and has been taking the year to "travel" and work on a screenplay.
Says his mother, Deborah Eskow, hovering nearby on her cell phone: "I'm so proud of him. When he was 2 years old, I turned on the TV and `Star Wars' was on, and I said, `Here, Daniel, you might like this.' Little did I know -- but he's always been completely besotted with film."
For fans like Alter, waiting in line for "Star Wars" is an act of homage. He says: "There are two people who are responsible for my wanting to be a filmmaker, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. `Star Wars' is modern-day American mythology, and it uses film to tell the story, which is the most influential medium in the world."
But that's also true for John Wray, a 24-year-old stage director, in line behind Alter. And it's true for 19-year-old Dylan Cole, who has every "The Art of . . ." "Star Wars" book and is studying art and filmmaking. It's true for 36-year-old director Thunder Levin, who is about five chairs back. "I saw it in high school and it affected what I thought would be cool to do with my life," he says.
Some fans -- like a 49-year-old mother of two from La Canada who sleeps out in front of the Chinese -- are diehards. But others just don't want to miss out on what is sure to be one of those landmark moments of the '90s, people like Tim Hollem. He shows up wearing a "Yoda" baseball cap and a T-shirt that reads, "All I need to know from life I learned from Star Wars." In his hand is a copy of his latest entry to his Web site, which is about the doings of the Hollywood line.
In fact, some relative latecomers are disappointed that the 250 spots on Hollywood Boulevard allowed by the stand-a-thon's insurance policy are already spoken for. "There's a whole group of us," says Bruce Seder, a 26-year-old animator who has called the pay phone to find out about joining up. "We've been following it on the Net and wanted to join in. What's the point of camping out if all the spots are already taken?"
Oh, don't be a party poop, says Gasking, who promises to look into expanding the permit. "I'm going to call and see if we can double it."
CAPTION: Lincoln Gasking of Australia, organizer of the moviegoer line, uses a nearby pay phone to field calls from fans and reporters outside Mann's Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard.