![\""Crazy](\"http:\/\/rmwhittaker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/crazywatto.jpg\")
<\/a>\nJohn E. Hudgens is the foremost historian of one of the strangest sub-genres of modern cinema: the fan film. He began his career in entertainment making music videos for Babylon 5<\/i>, but found greater success when he created three of the most successful Star Wars<\/i> fan films ever made: “Crazy Watto” (which won the Lucasfilm Official Fan Film Awards in 2000 and was shown at Cannes), “Darth Vader’s Psychic Hotline,” and “Jedi Hunter” (which were runner-up and winner of the Luscafilm fan audience awards in 2002 and 2003 respectively.) As a documentarian, he directed Backyard Blockbusters<\/i>, a history of fan films that played at the Other Worlds Austin Film Festival. I talked to him just before Star Wars<\/i> Day, May the Fourth, in 2016, about the history of fan films, and what the recent fight over who owns the rights to Star Trek<\/i> mean for the genre (parts of this interview previously appeared at www.austinchronicle.com<\/a>.)<\/p>\n
Richard Whittaker<\/b>: As a maker of fan films, hat\u2019s the appeal for you of playing on someone else\u2019s sandbox?<\/i><\/p>\n
John E. Hudgens<\/b>: The great thing about fan films is that there\u2019s a short hand. You don\u2019t have to explain the set-up of Star wars<\/i>. If you\u2019re going to tell your own original story, you have to set up everything, but if you don\u2019t need to explain Darth Vader, you don\u2019t have to explain lightsabers, it\u2019s all already there. It\u2019s all already there, people get it, and that\u2019s one less thing you have to do.<\/p>\n
Of course, I say that talking more about parodies, which is more what I\u2019ve done. I\u2019ve not done anything like Star Trek: New Voyages<\/i>. But a lot of people want to play in that universe, and the only they can get certain things, or see certain things done, is to do it themselves. So \u201cJedi Hunter\u201d was such a great idea, but the only way to see it was to go make it. Luckily, we were able to pull that off.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
RW<\/b>: There\u2019s always that contradiction, that the appeal for a lot of people with doing a short is that they\u2019re cheap and easy, but doing a sci-fi fan film, the costumes aren\u2019t cheap, the props aren\u2019t cheap.<\/i><\/p>\n
JEH<\/b>: But there are so many people out there in fandom who have these things and made them themselves. \u201cCrazy Watto\u201d was just our toys, and that was a complete accident. We weren\u2019t planning on making a fan film, it was just us goofing us. I don\u2019t know if you saw the behind-the-scenes piece, but we were going to do this massive stop-motion battle, but that was too much work. When we got the idea for \u201cDarth Vader\u2019s Psychic Hotline\u201d I\u2019d been doing the convention for years because of Babylon 5<\/i>, so I was very familiar with a lot of people in the convention culture, so I knew there were a lot of people with costumes, so it was a matter of who was available and who would do it. That\u2019s the way it is with a lot of this films, especially now you have the 501st and the Rebel Legion and various Star Trek groups. There are people out there who have the props and will jump at the chance to use them. For the most part, people aren\u2019t in it for the money, they\u2019re just in it for the fun. That\u2019s the way you should do it, because there have been very few fan films that have gotten dinged for money. People get that they can play with this stuff, but they can\u2019t make money off of it.<\/p>\n
Well you hope they get that. That\u2019s part of the problem with Star Trek: Axanar<\/i>. They weren\u2019t trying to make money off of it, but there was a lot of money involved.
\nI don\u2019t know if you\u2019ve kept up with that, but there\u2019s been some fallout from that already. The guys that did Star Trek: Horizon<\/i> were getting ready to launch the Kickstarter this weekend for their follow-up. They didn\u2019t get a C&D, they didn\u2019t get a lawsuit, but they got a call from Paramount saying \u201cDon\u2019t.\u201d So they shut down their follow-up.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m wondering, part of that is Paramount trying to tread a little lighter. Granted, they\u2019re mostly in the right with what they\u2019re doing with Axanar<\/i>, but they\u2019re going about it the wrong way, and they\u2019re getting a lot of bad press.<\/p>\n
RW<\/b>: <\/i>Star Wars has seemed to have a different relationship with fan films than a lot of other properties. Some tolerate them, but Lucasfilm has actively embraced them, even running the competitions.<\/i><\/p>\n
JEH<\/b>: It\u2019s not as big as it was in the last decade, but they\u2019re still doing the Star Wars<\/i> fan film awards. It\u2019s much smaller than it used to be, it\u2019s not as huge, and the films are shorter \u2013 I think there\u2019s a five minute limit. And there\u2019s not as much money as there was: I don\u2019t think the winners get any profit sharing, the way we did with ours. I actually made a profit on all four of my fan films.<\/p>\n