A Premiere with Mark

{Tiger Beat, October 1980}

---

For two of Mark Hamill and STAR WARS' biggest fans - Lisa and Teresa - their biggest thrill was meeting Mark and seeing the premiere of The Empire Strikes Back!

It was almost three years to the day since we first saw STAR WARS. For three long years, we'd tried every way possible to meet Mark Hamill and the rest of the STAR WARS gang. We found out that the world premiere of the sequel, The Empire Strikes Back, was going to be held in Washington D.C. on May 17, 1980. The entire cast from the movie was going to be there! We had six months to work on it.

When we heard that the Special Olympics was sponsoring the premiere, we made an infinite number of telephone calls to people to try to buy tickets from them, but no one who had tickets would sell them. We sent in almost 100 entries to a sweepstakes contest. We lost. Then we heard that a radio station was holding a poster-making contest, with a grand prize of two tickets to the world premiere of The Empire Strikes Back. We heard about this only 24 hours before the contest deadline. We worked on our poster from nine o'clock that night until we finished it the next morning. We didn't go to sleep until after we handed the poster in, and that was only for four hours. Guess what? We lost.

The day of the premiere, we went to the Kennedy Center, where it was to be held. They were having a luncheon before the showing of the movie, but we couldn't get in, so we stood outside the luncheon for about one hour, then decided to send a note in to Mark. A girl who worked there took the note in to him.

The luncheon was over and everyone was leaving. We hadn't seen or heard from Mark yet. We tried not to be sad and give up hope, but the tears welled up in our eyes in spite of our courage. The guests had all left, and Mark had, too.

We went down to the Eisenhower Theater where the movie was about to be shown. One of the ladies who worked there came up to us and asked us, "What are your names?"

"Lisa Timchalk and Teresa Perry," we answered.

"Why did you leave?!" she asked. "Mark Hamill requested to see you!"

We were in shock! "He was looking for you, but couldn't find you," she told us. "We thought you were trying to sneak in."

About five minutes later, the girl who had taken the message in to Mark came up to us and said, "Lisa and Teresa, right?"

"Yes," we answered.

"I'm taking you to meet Mr. Mark Hamill."

She took us backstage where we waited while she went in the stage door. We were standing in daze when - lo and behold! - Mark Hamill was coming. He had our note in his hand and he said, "So, you are my two friends who wrote the letter, huh?" We couldn't even answer - we just nodded. It proved everyone wrong who thought Mark wouldn't care enough to answer our letter.

"Well," he said, "I guess you're going to go in and see the movie now."

"Are we?" Lisa asked.

"We don't have any tickets," Teresa said.

"Well.... wait a minute." He swung around and went back to the stage door. He was talking to someone, and when he came back he said, "I hope you don't mind standing room."

"No!" we said.

"Would you like to take a picture?" Mark asked.

Lisa took her camera out and the girl who had brought us back there said she would take the picture. He put his arms around our shoulders, so we put our arms around him, too. Mark said, "Say Wookiee!" and she took our picture.

Now the three of us were just standing there looking at each other. Mark leaned over and kissed us. He was beaming, probably because he knew how happy he had made us. (We were beaming, too!)

Mark said, "Enjoy the show," then he went back through the stage door.

We floated through the hall and into the theater. In fact, we were floating all through the movie, the rest of the day, and we're still floating now!

We would like to thank Mr. Barry, Mr. Robert Lombardi, Nancy Hutson and Marilou York-Hamill for helping to make our most desired dream come true. We would especially like to thank Mark for being himself.