James Kahn’s Jedi Memoir Q&A

James Kahn’s Jedi Memoir Q & A

1.     Q: The subtitle of your Jedi Memoir is “A Double Life.” What’s up with that?

A: The main thrust of the book is about my career in Hollywood, from the early 1980’s to the early 2000’s. That was mostly writing novelizations, like Return of the Jedi, along with various television series. But that was also a period when I was working as an emergency room doctor, primarily the 70’s into the 90’s, and I write about that too. That’s the Double part. But I was – am – also a husband and father, which has always been a really meaningful part of my life, so I probably should have titled the memoir “A Triple Life.” Maybe I should just start the whole thing all over and hope I get it right this time.

2.     Q: So if you didn’t get it right, why should anyone read this book now?

A: There’s a lot of entertaining Hollywood stuff in it, some behind the scenes stories, a bunch of bizarre emergency room stories. Some of the memories are funny, some sad, some creepy, some about the meaning of life; and I do a deep dive into all the details of my novelization of Return of the Jedi, with a scene by scene commentary, explaining why I wrote some of the things I wrote, what my thought processes were, photocopies of some of my original handwritten manuscript pages, and a couple never before revealed plot details that never made it to the screen.

3.     Q: Such as what?

A: If I told you here, you wouldn’t need to buy the book.

4.     Q: What if I’m not a Star Wars nerd like it sounds you are? Is there anything else of interest in the book?

A: That’s two questions. 1. You should ask someone who knows you better than I do, regarding your feelings for Star Wars, and other issues related to self-identity, and 2. As I already said, there’s lots of cool stuff in the book. The ER stories are all true, eye-opening, and not the kind of thing you’ll read about anywhere else. But I also go into detail about how I came to write the Poltergeist novelization, and all the poltergeisty things that happened to me while I was writing it. I also wrote the novelizations of The Goonies, and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and I share some interesting tidbits about them as well. Some anecdotes about writing for Star Trek and other television series, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Also, I briefly died once, that was kind of interesting.

5.     Q: Did you see The Light, and all your ancestors?

A: No.

6.     Q: What else have you written for television?

A: Aside from writing and producing the last season of Star Trek: Voyager, I wrote and produced Melrose Place (probably before your time), wrote for Xena: Warrior Princess, William Shatner’s TekWar, and a bunch of shows you’ve never heard of. I also made a lot of music videos – oh yeah, I’m a singer-songwriter too, so maybe I should have titled the memoir “A Quadruple Life.” That doesn’t flow as nicely, though, and would come off sounding like I’m trying too hard, or possibly it sounds twee; possibly not. In any case, you can see the music videos on my YouTube channel, https://www.youtube.com/c/JamesKahnEntertainments (Please Like and Subscribe). I also tell some of my strange life stories on the channel, some of which I wrote about in the memoir, so you get to see what I was like if you’d ever run into me at a dinner party and someone coaxed a story out of me.

7.     Q: You probably have some other social media URL’s you want to promote.

A: Is there a question in there? Never mind, I’ll help you out.

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0434851/?ref_=fn_all_nme_1

https://thatjameskahn.com/

https://www.facebook.com/jameskahnwordsandmusic

https://jameskahn.hearnow.com/by-the-risin-of-the-sea

That last one is my latest album, a compilation of original sea shanties about climate change, refugees, species die-offs, identity crises, and other laff riots. That site also links the album to all the usual streaming channels, and if you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you get to hear all my albums.

8.     Q: How do you crack a chest?

A: Good question. Insert the scalpel between the 4^th and 5^th ribs, just to the left of the left sternal border. Go to a depth of about an inch, and then bring the blade down the entire length of the ribs, all the way to the back. Make sure you keep the scalpel close to the top of the 5^th rib, so as not to damage the intercostal nerve, artery and vein that run in the groove beneath the 4th rib. After you’ve gone the first few inches with the incision, it’s useful to stick your finger inside the chest cavity and touch the lung, to make sure the incision is deep enough. The lung feels a little like a liver, which you might have touched when your mom brought a beef or calf liver home from the butcher shop.

After you’ve opened the space between the entire length of those ribs, introduce the flanges of a rib-spreader, and crank the handle that spreads the flanges apart, widening the space between the two ribs until it’s big enough to allow your hands to enter the thoracic cavity. This will inevitably break some ribs, but if you’ve gone down this road, that’s the least of your worries. Or the patient’s.

Now you simply address the problem. If the heart isn’t beating, squeeze it manually, closing your fist around it, one squeeze per second, until you’ve got the small, metal cardiac paddles charged up and can apply the shock directly to the heart. If there’s a laceration in the heart, as from a knife or bullet, ask a nurse to suction all the gushing blood out of the thorax to clear the field, and clamp the hole to stop the bleeding, until you can throw in a couple silk sutures, while definitive care is being prepped up in the Operating Room. If the aorta has been torn from the heart – not uncommon with sudden deceleration injuries, as in a car crash, or falling from a tall building – cross-clamp the great vessel just proximal to the tear, using a scissors-like tool with rubberized clamps instead of blades, that ratchet-lock shut. This will stop the exsanguination until, again, definitive care can be rendered up in the OR.

That’s the way to crack a chest. And if you want to end the answer on a more cheerful note, here’s the punchline to an old joke that my cousin Mitch tells so well: “And that’s the way to wave a towel. (Extra credit for knowing the joke.)

9.     Q: This was teed up to be a Hollywood tell-all. You seem confused about your audience.

A: Also not a question. I will say I’m at an age where my memory is leaking all over the place, so I wanted to get these recollections down on paper before they evaporated entirely. I’m going to be dead sooner rather than later, and I’d like my grandchildren and great grandchildren to know the stock they came from. I always loved hearing my grandparents’ stories of the Old Country, and their flight from it, so I thought my descendants might like to know my tales of woe and adventure. In fact, from the very beginning of this project, I always meant to dedicate the memoir to my grandkids, and then it completely slipped my mind by the time I was done, and now it’s too late. Kind of a metaphor for life, I guess.

10. Q: Will there be a sequel?

A: Only if I’m reincarnated, which, after you read some of these stories, you might be more inclined to ponder. Or at least entertain the concept of consciousness not being necessarily entirely tied to a physical body. After all, the Force, right?