Tags
Boba Fett, Daytona Beach, Florida, Halloween, Halloween Costume, Jeremy Bulloch, Mandalorian armor, Return of the Jedi, St. Augustine, Star Wars, Star Wars Fans, Star Wars: Episode V, The Art of Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back
This is the 40th anniversary year of the Star Wars film “The Empire Strikes Back” *(Please see my two earlier posts celebrating the film and score). It is somber and poignant that the S.W. universe has lost at the end of that celebratory milestone an actor who portrayed one of its most iconic personalities.
With the passing of Jeremy Bulloch, the Star Wars character of Boba Fett has truly become legend. I, along with millions of S.W. fans around the world, consider the intergalactic bounty hunter to be one of the coolest characters in the film franchise’s lore, and possibly in all of science fiction/fantasy.
For Halloween of 2001, I visited a military surplus store in Daytona Beach, Florida with a friend to buy a flight suit and accessories so that we could make our own Boba Fett costume. We both agreed that Boba Fett would be the costume to make if we were going to be bold enough to attempt a S.W. costume. My friend was much more adept at such things. I deferred to his expertise on the engineering of the costume (The jetpack that he created from two-liter plastic bottles was astounding). I footed the bill (roughly three hundred dollars after materials and labor) and he created the most awesome non-makeup Halloween costume that I have ever worn. I say ‘non-makeup’ because the very next year his sister did a Darth Maul makeup on me for Halloween 2002. The makeup was black and white rather than the black and red of Maul’s face. It was the first physical manifestation of Marco Dark, the main character of my novel “To Sleep in the Ground.” I accented the amazing makeup job with a black, long-sleeve fishnet shirt, and black leather pants. Marco does not dress as radically in the novel, but I was experimenting with the character back then as only a couple of chapters had been written at that point. Anyway, I digress.
