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Long wait in line Photos by Jim Craven Darth Vader greets fans lined up at Tinseltown to buy tickets for next week's opening of the new "Star Wars" movie. Tickets going fast Tinseltown Theatres in Medford had sold 2,520 tickets as of 10 p.m. Wednesday for "Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace," which opens next Wednesday. The show times that were sold out included 12:01 a.m., 12:30 a.m., 4:15 p.m., 4:45 p.m., 7:30 p.m., 8 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. Tickets for the Ashland Street Cinema go on sale at noon today. `Star Wars' fans persist By BILL VARBLE By noon Wednesday the line for "Star Wars" tickets stretched from Tinseltown's ticket windows north through the courtyard past the theater building and back again. Many had waited all night. It was like the Rolling Stones were coming. No, it was better. As wads of $20 bills flashed and tickets flew out the window a dozen at a time, the per-customer limit, 18-year-old Jared Evans of Medford stepped to the front of the throng. "Two for `Never Been Kissed,"' he deadpanned. Not. That's the Drew Barrymore movie that's also playing at Tinseltown. If anybody was interested, they were somewhere in a galaxy far, far away. This was about "Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace." George Lucas' latest opens at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday in two theaters here and will be shown five times Wednesday and four times Thursday in each. It opens at Ashland Street Cinema the same day, also with a midnight show. Tickets at that theater go on sale at noon today. Tinseltown staffer Scott Sawyer said when he got off work a little before midnight Tuesday, the ticket line went to the end of the building. When he came back Wednesday morning it had doubled around the courtyard. At its peak around 12:30 p.m., it was estimated at nearly 300 and was inching forward like an army of C3POs. A Darth Vader wandered through the crowd, ominous but willing to sign autographs. Robin Murray of Talent stayed all night at Tinseltown to buy her dozen tickets. Chris Heinonen, a Southern Oregon University student, said he and his buddies passed the night with playing cards and light sabers -- and running to the 24-hour grocery store for the bathroom. First to score tickets was Jeff Dubois, a reporter at KTVL Channel 10, who spent the night on a mission for himself and his co-workers. Nick Milhoan, 18, admitted to skipping classes at Phoenix High School, where he is a senior. "I know I'm going to graduate," he said. "Missing one day isn't going to matter. And my dad knows. He did the same thing when `Star Wars' first came out." Myles Bostwick, 16, a Phoenix High sophomore sunbathing in a lawn chair, also admitted to ditching classes. "I'm getting tickets for one teacher," Bostwick said. "So he's giving me extra credit." Rob Ford and Shawn Lyon, both of Medford, teamed up to hold a place in line through the long night. "I took the day shift, he took the night," said Ford, 28. Even so, there were nearly 100 people ahead of them. They passed the night playing Star Wars Monopoly. It's like regular Monopoly except instead of landing on, say, Boardwalk, you might land on Tatooine. "My wife got it for me," Ford said. "After we were married and she found out what a `Star Wars' freak I was." As others in line debated the provenance of his board game, Ford said his wife thinks he's pathetic. "She calls me a Star Wars freak," he said. Of course, there is that den he has decorated in Star Wars posters, and there are those Star Wars Pez dispensers on his PC. But he said he doesn't collect the Star Wars figurines. "Just the kind of stuff you see at Taco Bell or someplace, that's probably going to disappear." He said he spends a lot of time at Web sites such as www.starwars.com and www.theforce.net Is Lyon, who is 23, as big a freak as Ford? "Not quite," Lyon says. "That's the first sign of being a freak," Ford says. "You deny it." Alex Vrtiska, 18, of Medford, who also pulled an all-nighter, said he figures "The Phantom Menace," however good it is or isn't on its own merits, is bound to enrich the first three "Star Wars" pictures. The secret of the whole thing is its epic excitement, he said. "The heroes and villains," he said. "People live vicariously." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA