Interview: Shannon Baksa

In Timothy Zahn’s 1991 Star Wars novel Heir to the Empire, Luke Skywalker and friends returned for more adventures in that long ago galaxy far, far away. But the book’s most popular character was a new one: a hotter-than-a-lightsaber redhead called Mara Jade.

The Force was strong in Mara, a Sith agent trained to kill Luke Skywalker. Mara didn’t kill Luke but she did eventually fall in love with and marry him; the nuptials occurred in Union, a four-issue Dark Horse comic written by Michael A. Stackpole. Mara also got her own six-issue series, By the Emperor’s Hand, written by Stackpole and Zahn.

Like her beloved husband, Mara became a powerful Jedi. Decipher — makers of the Star Wars card game — chose accomplished model Shannon Baksa to portray the character on their Mara cards.

“My grandmother sent me to charm school when I was twelve,” the lovely Texas native explains in her warm, soft voice. “We lived in the South, and I needed to learn what was proper and not for a young lady. A fashion editor at the local paper stopped by and thought I had pretty eyes, and she asked me to do a shoot for the paper. I had never thought of it before that.”Shannon later became a makeup artist. “I love showing women how to look and feel stunning, or taking a photographer’s or stylist’s idea of the way a show or a photo shoot should look and making it happen. It’s fun, always new and exciting. When I got pregnant with my daughter, Willow, and couldn’t handle the stress of modeling, I needed to keep busy with something. It was an easy transition.”

The transition from model to Star Wars icon wasn’t so immediately obvious. “No one explained the depth of it to me,” Shannon says. “It was supposedly just another photo shoot.”

But Lucasfilm made Decipher’s choice official: Shannon Baksa is Mara Jade. She has her own page on the official Star Wars website, and her likeness appears on official Star Wars products. There’s even a Mara Jade action figure.

Shannon remembers the moment she became a Star Wars fan. “When Han Solo walked onto the screen 24 years ago!” she enthuses. “He was my first crush as a young girl.”

But there’s more to Shannon’s appreciation of Star Wars than Harrison Ford. “There’s something in it for all of us,” she says with a thoughtful flash of her bright gray eyes. “It may be a galaxy far, far away, but it mirrors all of the struggles and successes of life as we know it today.”

“And,” she adds playfully, “it doesn’t hurt that the good guys win and kick butt!”

Shannon’s favorite film is The Empire Strikes Back. “I don’t think there’s a moment I don’t love in the first two. They are so perfect, and naming a favorite moment would be like asking what my favorite experience being Mara has been. There have been so many!”

Though she was nervous at her first convention in 1999, she quickly became a pro. “I know what to expect now,” Shannon says, “and how to be prepared. Star Wars fans are very dedicated and smart.”

Being Mara has taken Shannon around the world. “I have been to conventions in Germany and Japan. The Germans are very much like us. The Japanese are more taken by the whole thing, and the crowds are a little overwhelming, but they are incredibly kind and polite. They bring little gifts to show you how much they like you.”

Both Star Wars fans and Mara’s creator, Timothy Zahn, have overwhelmingly given Shannon their approval. “Tim is a wonderfully sweet and very talented man,” she says. “He put a lot of his heart into Mara, and you can tell when you read about her.”

Since Mara didn’t appear in the films, Shannon had to create the character entirely by herself. She credits Zahn’s words with making it so easy. “Tim did all the work. I just had to show up, read a lot, and hope that the fans who already loved Mara would accept me.”

Mara Jade is as courageous as she is beautiful, and as lethal as she is loyal. Filling her boots would not be an easy task, so Shannon went to Zahn’s books for inspiration. She liked what she found. “Mara is strong, quiet unless something needs to be said, and all woman,” she explains. “She doesn’t try to be someone she’s not. She’s herself, good or bad.”

The character has made a positive impact on young female Star Wars fans. “They look up to Mara the same as I do. She’s the best in all of us, even at her worst. She gets where she is going no matter what the obstacles.”

She’s also mindful of Mara’s role model status. “I’m careful about how I react to things in the world of Star Wars fandom. I want to be a good example: honest, friendly, kind, thoughtful, helpful. I want fans to like me as Mara and myself. They are why I am here.”

Shannon thinks Mara’s journey symbolizes “the occasional heartache of finding where you are supposed to belong.”

For Mara Jade, that meant coming to terms with Luke Skywalker. “Often our feelings are misguided because of someone or something else,” Shannon says of Mara’s original intentions toward Luke. Though Shannon is “a Han fan, tried and true,” she definitely approves of Mara’s marriage to Luke. “She sees strength, kindness and honesty in him.”

In the recent novel Rebirth, Mara and Luke welcomed their first child, Ben, into the galaxy. “As a mother, Mara would be beyond excellent. I think she would think of a child the way I do. Giving and receiving love is part of being human. Children are everything: our future, our past, and the perfection of all that two people are, inside and out.”

Shannon, a single mother, knows exactly how Mara feels. Her 3-year-old daughter, Willow, is the center of her own universe. “My daughter is the reason God gave me life,” Shannon says. “She is the most perfect thing I have ever done or ever will do.”

In fact, Willow is sometimes more used to all the excitement than Shannon herself. “It’s very normal to her. She was hardly walking when it started. She’s also been on many fashion shoots and calls and to shows. She’s even done TV with me.”

Shannon stays busy in her spare time. “I love my dog, Tequila. I work on my house and yard quite a bit. I bake, go to the beach, and spend every free moment with my daughter.” And like Mara Jade, Shannon combines beauty with brains; she has a degree in public relations from the University of Nevada Las Vegas.

If Shannon were a Jedi, she says her teachings would be influenced by her own positive attitude and her daughter’s love: “Don’t give up. One day, everything will make sense. Love hard, waste no moments and appreciate everything you experience. It makes you who you are, good stuff and bad. It molds you into the person you become and gives you whatever it is that you leave behind.” Mara Jade would be proud.

DVD Review: Big Trouble in Little China

“I’m not sayin’ that I’ve been everywhere and I’ve done everything, but I do know it’s a pretty amazing planet we live on here, and a man would have to be some kind of fool to think we’re all alone in this universe!”

You’ve gotta love it.

Jack Burton and the Pork Chop Express have finally hauled ass to DVD with a release that’s sure to shake the pillars of the format, Wang. John Carpenter’s 1986 action-comedy classic Big Trouble in Little China stars Kurt Russell as a very American trucker named Jack Burton who stumbles into malevolent, magical mayhem in San Francisco’s Little China district after agreeing to help his friend Wang (Dennis Dun) rescue his kidnapped fiancée. This involves losing his truck and asking “Where are we?” a lot.

The all-star cast includes venerable Chinese character actors James Hong as the evil 2,000-year-old magician David Lo Pan and Victor Wong as bus-driving wizard Egg Shen. Kim Cattrall and Suzee Pai star as the green-eyed damsels in distress. Kurt Russell and Dennis Dun share cracker-jack comic chemistry as Jack and Wang battle the film’s numerous and almost always hilarious threats, with Wang doing most of the fighting. Jack just runs around like he doesn’t know what he’s doing, probably because he doesn’t. The movie moves at a fast and fun pace with lots of martial arts action that includes a flying Matrix-style showdown with swords instead of guns. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon? More like Big Trouble, Little China!

This two-disc DVD is a 6.9 on the Richter scale. The first disc includes the movie in a sparkling new anamorphic transfer at the film’s original 2.35:1 aspect ratio. For a movie made in 1984 on a low budget, the restoration looks fantastic. The sound is just as good. Options include Dolby Digital 4.1 Surround, Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround, and Dolby 5.1 DTS tracks in English and a 2.0 Surround mix in French. But the real treat on the first disc is the feature-length commentary by John Carpenter and Kurt Russell. Russell admits that he hasn’t seen the movie since 1986, and he and Carpenter obviously had as much fun recording the commentary as they had making the movie, making the commentary at least as entertaining as the movie and well worth the price of admission. The film is split into a mind-boggling 44 chapters, which is pretty amazing for a film that’s only an hour and 40 minutes long.

The second disc is the most massive Big Trouble in Little China archive ever assembled. First up are the two American theatrical trailers and the Spanish theatrical trailer, along with six TV spots. They all spend so much time talking about how “Jack Burton is coming” that you’d think it was another Indiana Jones franchise. At the very least, the trailers capture the spirit of the movie. You can scan through 25 pages of production notes, view a huge photo gallery and read magazine articles about the movie.

An extended ending and eight deleted scenes also appear on the second disc, with the option of viewing them in their rough work-print versions or in a cleaned-up presentation. An 8-minute featurette about the making of the movie includes interviews with the cast and Carpenter. Also included on disc two is a 13-minute presentation by Richard Edlund about the film’s special effects, which can be viewed with the special effects shown full screen or in a small box in the corner of the screen with Edlund explaining things in the foreground.

The funniest (though not intentionally) special feature is the music video for the film’s theme song, performed by Carpenter and his band, The Coupe De Villes. Carpenter always does the musical scores for his films but this time he sings, too, and the results are … pretty much what you’d expect from something associated with Big Trouble in Little China. The usual cast and crew biographies round out the supplements. If that’s too many features for you, just watch what you want and leave the rest, like a salad bar.

It’s hard to find an action movie that’s more fun to watch than this one. But does the DVD pay its dues, Jack? Yes, sir. The check’s in the mail. So take my advice on a dark and stormy night, when the lightning’s crashing and the thunder’s rolling and the rain’s coming down in sheets. Buy Big Trouble in Little China on DVD and prepare to have a wonderful time with one of the most entertaining movies ever made. I’d put my destiny in this DVD’s capable hands any day.

ALL ABOUT CHEMISTRY, by Semisonic

Semisonic’s new album starts off good and just keeps getting better. Buoyed by a bouncy piano riff and the slinky one-two punch of Dan Wilson’s vocals and guitars, “Chemistry” is a luscious slice of guitar pop heaven that compares the perils of modern relationships to the lessons we learned (or didn’t) in chemistry class. “But we found out that the two things we put together had a bad tendency to explode,” Wilson sings, as Slichter and bassist John Munson keep things deliciously tight in the rhythm section.

Blending introspection with a healthy sense of wonder has always been a Semisonic trademark. So when Wilson ends the thoughtful chorus with an “oh, oh oh, oh oh oh,” he’s inviting us not only to sing along but to feel along, too. Wilson’s earnest delivery makes even “Get a Grip,” a Caribbean-tinged pop rock anthem about playing with yourself when you’ve got no one else to play with, sound as thoughtful and poetic as the sweet and simple “Follow,” which begs his lover to “take me wherever you go, help me forget tomorrow, love me your best and I know, all of the rest will follow.”

Munson provides a fine lead vocal on the atmospheric rocker “Who’s Stopping You,” while the eight-minute “I Wish” feels only half as long thanks to tight playing and Wilson’s soulful vocals. The most beautiful moment comes two minutes into the gorgeous piano ballad “One True Love,” as Wilson and co-writer Carole King bounce harmonies off each other like the equals they are, just before a lovely string break arranged and conducted by Slichter pulls you even deeper into the song’s heartbreaking beauty. “Act Naturally” is so good it hurts, chronicling a public appearance by a couple shattered by their rapidly unraveling relationship. “I’ll be me before the fall, and you be you before this all came down.”

The synthesizers that occasionally accent the album’s proceedings, such as those on the dreamy stunner “She’s Got My Number,” add layers without distracting. ALL ABOUT CHEMISTRY is a glorious pop record, combining the all the best elements of songwriting and songcraft. True love might be hard to find, but these guys definitely get an “A” in chemistry.