Times Union columnist Fred LeBrun wrote this 2005 remembrance of his experience on the press junket for "Star Wars," which was released 40 years ago this week.

My first encounter with "Star Wars" was a doozie.

It was a Friday morning in early June 1977, and I was running late as usual. There was still work to be done on the Sunday arts section of the paper, which was my responsibility, and a plane to catch to the best coast for a late-afternoon screening of some idiotic movie or other to satisfy one of my other hats at the paper, as the film reviewer.

In that era, movie studios routinely picked up the tab for critics on junkets, just tacking the expenses onto the cost of making and marketing the picture. Consequently, I saw a lot of California back then, or at least small slivers of it over and over. I came to detest in a serious way everything about Los Angeles, I must confess, because of being subjected to the same phony baloney repeatedly.

Which was the reason I tried to pick the very latest flight I could out of Albany, and at the other end of the weekend usually caught the quickest flight back. On this particular Friday I remember careening into the Albany airport at the last second for an American Airlines departure. Predictably, we were late out of O'Hare as well. That resulted in landing at LAX about 40 minutes before the screening was set to begin in a segment of Los Angeles called Westwood.

So luggage in hand, I ran into the screening room panting and sat down just as the screen was coming alive with the opening scenes of "Star Wars."

Arguably this was not the most positive frame of mind a reviewer could have for seeing something we had been told practically nothing about in advance except it was going to be revolutionary and over-the-top wonderful. Then again, we were told that all the time. How could we know that this time it would be true beyond anything any of us could imagine?

After the first 15 minutes, my reaction - mumbled out loud - was: "What is this (expletive)?"

By the end of the movie, though, I got it. That night, I dreamt "Star Wars." I guess I really got it.

While nearly 30 years later it seems absurd not to have gotten it right away, now that we take for granted the stratospheric success of George Lucas' "Star Wars" films, let me suggest that at the time there wasn't huge optimism by the studio, or the main players, that America would be bowled over by this film. Quite the opposite.

A good example of that was Mark Hamill, who was about as much a gee-whiz young pretend actor as I'd ever interviewed, eager to talk to the press about what a thrill it was to be in motion pictures. It was pretty clear from our conversation, though, that he was not banking on a sequel - either the existence of one, or his involvement in it. Confidence in his abilities was not his strong suit.

Bear in mind, when "Star Wars" came out, Hamill was a nobody, and he wasn't alone among the cast. The best-known actors were Alec Guinness, who was quite ill, and the disembodied voice of James Earl Jones. Neither was present for the initial promotion. Carrie Fisher had enjoyed a little celebrity two years earlier after her small role in "Shampoo," but only a little.

Harrison Ford was most uncomfortable with the media, even one-on-one. Sour and scowling. It was clearly work for him. He shrugged his shoulders a lot when asked if he liked the movie. "If you try to analyze 'Star Wars,' " he finally offered, "it falls apart. You either take it whole, or leave it alone. As far as how the public will respond? I haven't the faintest idea."

At that point in his career, Ford was spending as much time framing out houses as a carpenter as he was acting. By the time I spoke to him again six years later when the third chapter, "Return of the Jedi," was being touted, he had already ascended into hyperspace as a superstar, and he has stayed there. No more one-on-one interviews. Only a brief classroom appearance for perfunctory questions, and no mention of hammering nails. Only of turning down scripts.

By far the most illuminating in terms of uttering their candid frustration was the trio of Brit actors who went entirely unseen in "Star Wars."

David Prowse, a charming but huge 6-foot-7 weightlifting champion, was the body of Darth Vader. His scenes were shot in a London studio without his having even the faintest idea what words James Earl Jones would later dub in, or what the storyline was. Lucas was obsessed with keeping his project under cover.

Even bigger than Prowse was the shy and reclusive Peter Mayhew, a 7-foot-2 English hospital orderly who was talked into becoming the Wookiee Chewbacca. Of the three, only classically trained Anthony Daniels, the voice and body of C-3PO, could rightly be called an actor. He was in a West End production of Tom Stoppard's "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" when Lucas interviewed him for the tin man job. (In a tidy bit of closure, Stoppard is widely rumored to have tuned up Lucas' script for the final "Star Wars" chapter, which opens today.)

To a person, this trio didn't expect much in terms of public recognition, or a film future. And they've been proved half-right. Their names and faces are known only to rabid fans. But their characters? They are embedded in our culture. Who would have guessed? Certainly not the people who made "Star Wars" at the time.

And most assuredly not an always-late, luggage-toting reviewer who expected the same-old, same-old. Although in my own defense I will say this: More than half my fellow reviewers on that first junket didn't think Lucas was going anywhere with this concept.

But by time I was in the air coming back home, I was already a true believer in The Force. And I have been ever since.

Fred LeBrun can be reached at 454-5453 or by e-mail at flebrun@timesunion.c­om.