WARNING: this contains scenes of grisly Ewok violence. If you are sensitive to this, please forget what you just saw. Just in time for Friday 13th, Yahoo Underground featured the Star Wars photo collection of Bonnie Burton of Lucasfilm.
BRAD:
So. . . what’s up with those photos?
BONNIE:
The photos are taken at my desk at Lucasfilm. I generally like to take “toy breaks” when I need to walk away from a story that I’m writing.
I do that so I don’t go brain dead in the middle of the day. I think anyone who has a desk job, or who works inside staring at a computer all day, seriously needs a few childish diversions to keep them sane. . . So I play with the endless action figures that dominate my workspace.
If I don’t buy them myself, I steal the Star Wars toys from my coworkers’ desks. The bloody stormtrooper action figures came from our diorama specialist at ILM. The George Lucas stormtrooper action figure was given away to all employees here at LFL, so I had to make him the hero of my photos, of course.
BRAD:
Did you pose them?
BONNIE:
I sure did!!! I love posing my action figures to do funny things. In the case of the Stormtroopers vs. the Ewoks, I wanted to recreate a scene from “300” and “Saving Private Ryan” (that’s why the series is called “Saving Private TK-421”). You should see what I did with them after I saw “Grindhouse!”
BRAD:
You’ve done a lot of Sci-Fi-related work, is Sci-Fi a passion of yours? (Passion’s maybe a weird word—interest—you know what I mean.)
BONNIE:
Even before I started working at Lucasfilm, I had a love for sci-fi and horror films, TV shows, comics and toys. I’m a big Gothy nerd who loves all things Bettie Page, Anne Rice and Edward Gorey. I even have an embarassing crush on the ultimate nerdy fictional character—Sherlock Holmes.
Luckily, I can express my Star Wars fandom at work. I like to “out” celebs and rock stars about their love for Star Wars, too. I’ve interviewed everyone from Seth Green to Nine Inch Nails about their appreciation for the dark side in a section on starwars.com called Star Wars Rocks. I also have about 50% of my personal site Grrl.com dedicated to all things geektastic.
BRAD:
Is there anywhere else I should send people to find out more about you?
BONNIE:
People can always learn more about me on my site, or tune in to this podcast interview I did with the folks at Boingboing.net.
If people want to stalk me, they’ll find me at Star Wars Celebration IV in Los Angeles, May 24-28. It’s a gigantic Star Wars convention with not only tons of fans, the 501st members and movie cast and crew members—but also guys who build their own droids, lots of talented artists and enough stuff to gawk and stare at to make any Star Wars fan die happy.
