Welcome to the Man Cave

Men of valor welcome to the “Man Cave” portion of the Epic Tulsa Wedding Photographers website. This portion of the website exists to provide a “Man Refuge” for you as the “dude.” At Epic we realize that when it comes to wedding planning “her” opinion is 100% valid while your opinion is 100% invalid…Thus, this portion of the website will provide you the following pieces of goodness:

  • 1) Tips for maintaining “peace” at home while planning the wedding.
  • 2) Video clips to things that “dudes” like to watch.
  • 3) An abundance of “Chuck Norris Jokes (Facts).”
  • 4) Endless “Star Wars” references.
  • 5) Links to all things related to “Pre-Text-Message” Brett Favre.
  • 6) A tribute to Braveheart, Rambo, Rocky, the Terminator, and various movies that showed their respect for “Man-Kind.
  • 7) Recipes for beef and meat related items.
  • 8) Links to quality power tool makers.

1) Tips for maintaining “peace” at home while planning the wedding.
A. Attend all wedding planning related events and act as though you are “excited” about the opportunity to sample cakes, hang out with florists and to talk about things that would otherwise require you to turn in your “Man-Card.”
B. Never express and opinion that conflicts with that of your “bride-to-be.” She is the boss. You are merely there to show your “emotional support.”
C. Do not throw a “Bachelor Party” that would embarrass your Mom, your “Wife-To-Be” or anyone…It will get discussed in great deal by the Best Man during your wedding reception.
D. Act as though you have strong opinions when meeting with the wedding dj and the wedding videographer, but secretly you must know that she is going to ask for “Wishin’ & Hopin” and “I Had the Time of My Life” to be played.
E. Ask a ton of questions when meeting with wedding vendors and reassure your wife that you do know the wedding date and the correct time to show up numerous times.

2) Video clips to things that “dudes” like to watch.

3) An abundance of “Chuck Norris Jokes (Facts).”

Chuck Norris’s favourite drink is diamond juice, which he squeezes out of raw diamonds with his bare hands.

Chuck Norris can do a wheelie on a unicycle

Chuck Norris can slam a revolving door.

Chuck Norris is the only man to punch a cyclops between the eyes

Chuck Norris hears sign language

Chuck Norris can strangle you with a cordless telephone

Chuck Norris’ calendar goes straight from March 31st to April 2nd – No one fools with Chuck Norris.

Chuck Norris can kill two stones with one bird

When the Boogeyman goes to sleep every night, he checks his closet for Chuck Norris.

Chuck Norris will never have a heart attack. His heart isn’t nearly foolish enough to attack him.

Chuck Norris and Superman once fought each other on a bet. The loser had to start wearing his underwear on the outside of his pants.

Chuck Norris can win a game of Connect Four in only three moves.

If Chuck Norris had performed in 300, the film would be called 1.

Chuck Norris once climbed Mt Everest by accident.

Chuck Norris eats rainbows to taste the Skittles.

Chuck Norris doesn’t need milkshake to bring the boys to the yard

Chuck Norris once gave a man an apple. Today that man is known as Steve Jobs.

When Chuck Norris jumps, gravity pulls a muscle.

Chuck Norris can light a fire by rubbing two ice-cubes together.

Chuck Norris can smash an air guitar

When Chuck Norris does a pushup, he isn’t lifting himself up, he’s pushing the Earth down.

Chuck Norris once kicked a horse in the chin. Its decendants are known today as Giraffes.

4) Endless “Star Wars” references.

Star Wars is an American epic space opera franchise conceived by George Lucas. The first film in the franchise was originally released on May 25, 1977, by 20th Century Fox, and became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon, followed by two sequels, released at three-year intervals. Sixteen years after the release of the trilogy’s final film, the first in a new prequel trilogy of films was released, again released at three-year intervals, with the final film released on May 19, 2005.

As of 2008, the overall box office revenue generated by the six Star Wars films has totalled approximately $4.27 billion,[1] making it the third-highest-grossing film series,[2] behind only the James Bond and Harry Potter films.

The Star Wars film series has spawned other media including books, television series, video games, and comic books. These supplements to the film trilogies comprise the Star Wars Expanded Universe, and have resulted in significant development of the series’ fictional universe. These media kept the franchise going in the interim between the film trilogies. In 2008, Star Wars: The Clone Wars was released to theaters as the first ever worldwide theatrical Star Wars film outside of the main trilogies. It was the franchise’s first animated film, and was intended as an introduction to the Expanded Universe series of the same name, a 3D CGI animated series based on a previous 2D animated series of a similar name.

The events depicted in Star Wars media take place in a fictional galaxy. Many species of alien creatures (often humanoid) are depicted. Robotic droids are also commonplace and are generally built to serve their owners. Space travel is common, and many planets in the galaxy are members of a Galactic Republic, later reorganized as the Galactic Empire.

One of the prominent elements of Star Wars is the “Force“, an omnipresent energy that can be harnessed by those with that ability. It is described in the first produced film as “an energy field created by all living things [that] surrounds us, penetrates us, [and] binds the galaxy together.”[3] The Force allows users to perform a variety of supernatural feats (such as telekinesis, clairvoyance, precognition, and mind control) and also can amplify certain physical traits, such as speed and reflexes; these abilities vary between characters and can be improved through training. While the Force can be used for good, it has a dark side that, when pursued, imbues users with hatred, aggression, and malevolence. The six films feature the Jedi, who use the Force for good, and the Sith, who use the dark side for evil in an attempt to take over the galaxy. In the Star Wars Expanded Universe, many dark side users are Dark Jedi rather than Sith, mainly because of the “Rule of Two” (see Sith Origin).

The film series began with Star Wars, released on May 25, 1977. This was followed by two sequels: The Empire Strikes Back, released on May 21, 1980, and Return of the Jedi, released on May 25, 1983. The opening crawl of the sequels disclosed that they were numbered as “Episode V” and “Episode VI” respectively, though the films were generally advertised solely under their subtitles. Though the first film in the series was simply titled Star Wars, it later had the subtitle Episode IV: A New Hope added to distinguish it from its sequels and prequels.[9]

In 1997, to correspond with the 20th anniversary of the release of Star Wars, Lucas released “Special Editions” of the three films to theaters. The re-releases featured alterations to the original films, primarily motivated by the improvement of CGI and other special effects technologies, which allowed visuals that were not possible to achieve at the time of the original filmmaking. Lucas continued to make changes to the original trilogy for subsequent releases, such as the first ever DVD release of the trilogy on September 21, 2004.[10]

More than two decades after the release of the original Star Wars, the series continued with the long-awaited prequel trilogy; consisting of Episode I: The Phantom Menace, released on May 19, 1999, Episode II: Attack of the Clones, released on May 16, 2002, and Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, released on May 19, 2005.

The prequel trilogy follows the early life of Anakin Skywalker. He is discovered by the Jedi Knight Qui-Gon Jinn, who believes him to be the “Chosen One” foretold by Jedi prophecy to bring balance to the Force. The Jedi Council, led by Yoda, sense that Anakin’s future is clouded by fear, but reluctantly allow Qui-Gon’s apprentice Obi-Wan Kenobi to train Anakin after Qui-Gon is killed by the Sith Lord Darth Maul. At the same time, the planet Naboo is under attack, and its ruler, Queen Padmé Amidala, seeks the assistance of the Jedi to repel the attack. The Sith Lord Darth Sidious secretly planned the attack to give his alter-ego, Senator Palpatine, a pretense to overthrow the Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic and take his place.[4] The remainder of the prequel trilogy chronicles Anakin’s gradual fall to the dark side of the Force as he fights in the Clone Wars, which Palpatine secretly engineers in order to destroy the Republic and lure Anakin into his service.[5] Anakin and Padmé fall in love and secretly wed, and eventually Padmé becomes pregnant. Anakin has a prophetic vision of Padmé dying in childbirth, and Palpatine convinces him that the dark side holds the power to save her life; desperate, Anakin submits to the dark side and takes the Sith name Darth Vader. While Palpatine re-organizes the Republic into the tyrannical Galactic Empire — appointing himself Emperor for life — Vader participates in the extermination of the Jedi Order, culminating in a lightsaber battle between himself and Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan defeats his former apprentice and best friend, severing his limbs and leaving him for dead. However, Palpatine arrives shortly afterward to save Vader and put him into a mechanical suit of black armor that keeps him alive. At the same time, Padmé dies while giving birth to twins Luke and Leia. The twins are hidden from Vader and are not told who their real parents are.

The original trilogy begins 19 years later as Vader nears completion of the massive Death Star space station, which will allow the Empire to crush the Rebel Alliance, which has formed to combat Palpatine’s tyranny. Vader captures Princess Leia Organa, who has stolen the plans to the Death Star and hidden them in the astromech droid R2-D2. R2-D2, along with his counterpart C-3PO, escape to the planet Tatooine. There, the droids are purchased by Luke Skywalker and his step-uncle and aunt. While Luke is cleaning R2-D2, he accidentally triggers a message put into the droid by Leia, who asks for assistance from Obi-Wan. Luke later assists the droids in finding the Jedi Knight, who is now passing as an old hermit under the alias Ben Kenobi. When Luke asks about his father, Obi-Wan tells him that Anakin was a great Jedi who was betrayed and murdered by Vader.[13] Obi-Wan and Luke hire the smuggler Han Solo and his Wookiee co-pilot Chewbacca to take them to Alderaan, Leia’s homeworld, which they eventually find has been destroyed by the Death Star. Once onboard the space station, Obi-Wan allows himself to be killed during a lightsaber rematch with Vader; his sacrifice allows the group to escape with the plans that help the rebels destroy the Death Star.

Three years later, Luke travels to find Yoda and start his Jedi training, but is interrupted when Vader lures him into a trap by capturing Han and the others. Vader reveals that he is Luke’s father and attempts to turn him to the dark side.[7] Luke escapes, and, after rescuing Han from the gangster Jabba the Hutt a year later, returns to his training with Yoda, who by this time is on his deathbed. Before he passes away, Yoda confirms that Vader is Luke’s father; moments later, Obi-Wan’s spirit tells Luke that he must face his father before he can become a Jedi, and that Leia is his twin sister. As the Rebels attack the second Death Star, Luke confronts Vader as Palpatine watches; both Sith Lords intend to turn Luke to the dark side and take him as their apprentice. During the subsequent lightsaber duel, Luke succumbs to his anger and brutally overpowers Vader, but controls himself at the last minute; realizing that he is about to suffer his father’s fate, he spares Vader’s life and proudly declares his allegiance to the Jedi. An enraged Palpatine then attempts to kill Luke with Force lightning, a sight that moves Vader to turn on and kill his master, suffering mortal wounds in the process. Redeemed, Anakin Skywalker dies in his son’s arms. Luke becomes a full-fledged Jedi, and the Rebels destroy the second Death Star and, with it, the Empire.

Star Wars features elements such as knights, witches, and princesses that are related to archetypes of the fantasy genre.[15] The Star Wars world, unlike science-fiction and fantasy films that featured sleek and futuristic settings, was portrayed as dirty and grimy. Lucas’ vision of a “used future” was further popularized in the science fiction-horror films Alien,[16] which was set on a dirty space freighter; Mad Max 2, which is set in a post-apocalyptic desert; and Blade Runner, which is set in a crumbling, dirty city of the future. Lucas made a conscious effort to parallel scenes and dialogue between films, and especially to parallel the journeys of Luke Skywalker with that of his father Anakin when making the prequels.

All six films of the Star Wars series were shot in an aspect ratio of 2.40:1. The original trilogy was shot with anamorphic lenses. Episodes IV and V were shot in Panavision, while Episode VI was shot in Joe Dunton Camera (JDC) scope. Episode I was shot with Hawk anamorphic lenses on Arriflex cameras, and Episodes II and III were shot with Sony’s CineAlta high-definition digital cameras.[17] Lucas hired Ben Burtt to oversee the sound effects on A New Hope.

Burtt’s accomplishment was such that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presented him with a Special Achievement Award because it had no award at the time for the work he had done.[18] Lucasfilm developed the THX sound reproduction standard for Return of the Jedi.[19] John Williams composed the scores for all six films. Lucas’ design for Star Wars involved a grand musical sound, with leitmotifs for different characters and important concepts. Williams’ Star Wars title theme has become one of the most famous and well-known musical compositions in modern music history.[20]

The technical lightsaber choreography for the original trilogy was developed by Hollywood sword-master Bob Anderson. Anderson trained actor Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker) and performed all the sword stunts as Darth Vader during the lightsaber duels in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, wearing Vader’s costume. Anderson’s role in the original Star Wars trilogy was highlighted in the film Reclaiming the Blade, where he shares his experiences as the fight choreographer developing the lightsaber techniques for the movies.

In 1971, Universal Studios agreed to make American Graffiti and Star Wars in a two-picture contract, although Star Wars was later rejected in its early concept stages. American Graffiti was completed in 1973 and, a few months later, Lucas wrote a short summary called “The Journal of the Whills”, which told the tale of the training of apprentice C.J. Thorpe as a “Jedi-Bendu” space commando by the legendary Mace Windy.[22] Frustrated that his story was too difficult to understand, Lucas then wrote a 13-page treatment called The Star Wars, which was a loose remake of Akira Kurosawa‘s The Hidden Fortress.[23] By 1974, he had expanded the treatment into a rough draft screenplay, adding elements such as the Sith, the Death Star, and a protagonist named Annikin Starkiller. For the second draft, Lucas made heavy simplifications, and also introduced the young hero on a farm as Luke Skywalker. Anakin became Luke’s father, a wise Jedi knight. “The Force” was also introduced as a supernatural power. The next draft removed the father character and replaced him with a substitute named Ben Kenobi, and in 1976 a fourth draft had been prepared for principal photography. The film was titled Adventures of Luke Starkiller, as taken from the Journal of the Whills, Saga I: The Star Wars. During production, Lucas changed Luke’s name to Skywalker and altered the title to simply The Star Wars and finally Star Wars.[24]

At that point, Lucas was not expecting the film to become part of a series. The fourth draft of the script underwent subtle changes that made it more satisfying as a self-contained film, ending with the destruction of the Empire itself by way of destroying the Death Star. However, Lucas had previously conceived of the film as the first in a series of adventures. Later, he realised the film would not in fact be the first in the sequence, but a film in the second trilogy in the saga. This is stated explicitly in George Lucas’ preface to the 1994 reissue of Splinter of the Mind’s Eye

The second draft contained a teaser for a never-made sequel about “The Princess of Ondos,” and by the time of the third draft some months later Lucas had negotiated a contract that gave him rights to make two sequels. Not long after, Lucas met with author Alan Dean Foster, and hired him to write these two sequels as novels.[25] The intention was that if Star Wars were successful, Lucas could adapt the novels into screenplays.[26] He had also by that point developed a fairly elaborate backstory to aid his writing process.[27]

When Star Wars proved successful, Lucas decided to use the film as the basis for an elaborate serial, although at one point he considered walking away from the series altogether.[28] However, Lucas wanted to create an independent filmmaking center — what would become Skywalker Ranch — and saw an opportunity to use the series as a financing agent.[29] Alan Dean Foster had already begun writing the first sequel novel, but Lucas decided to abandon his plan to adapt Foster’s work; the book was released as Splinter of the Mind’s Eye the following year. At first Lucas envisioned a series of films with no set number of entries, like the James Bond series. In an interview with Rolling Stone in August 1977, he said that he wanted his friends to each take a turn at directing the films and giving unique interpretations on the series. He also said that the backstory in which Darth Vader turns to the dark side, kills Luke’s father and fights Ben Kenobi on a volcano as the Galactic Republic falls would make an excellent sequel.

Later that year, Lucas hired science fiction author Leigh Brackett to write Star Wars II with him. They held story conferences and, by late November 1977, Lucas had produced a handwritten treatment called The Empire Strikes Back. The treatment is very similar to the final film, except that Darth Vader does not reveal he is Luke’s father. In the first draft that Brackett would write from this, Luke’s father appears as a ghost to instruct Luke.[30]

Brackett finished her first draft in early 1978; Lucas has said he was disappointed with it, but before he could discuss it with her, she died of cancer.[31] With no writer available, Lucas had to write his next draft himself. It was this draft in which Lucas first made use of the “Episode” numbering for the films; Empire Strikes Back was listed as Episode II.[32] As Michael Kaminski argues in The Secret History of Star Wars, the disappointment with the first draft probably made Lucas consider different directions in which to take the story.[33] He made use of a new plot twist: Darth Vader claims to be Luke’s father. According to Lucas, he found this draft enjoyable to write, as opposed to the year-long struggles writing the first film, and quickly wrote two more drafts,[34] both in April 1978. He also took the script to a darker extreme by having Han Solo imprisoned in carbonite and left in limbo.[7]

This new story point of Darth Vader being Luke’s father had drastic effects on the series. Michael Kaminski argues in his book that it is unlikely that the plot point had ever seriously been considered or even conceived of before 1978, and that the first film was clearly operating under an alternate storyline where Vader was separate from Luke’s father;[35] there is not a single reference to this plot point before 1978. After writing the second and third drafts of Empire Strikes Back in which the point was introduced, Lucas reviewed the new backstory he had created: Anakin Skywalker was Ben Kenobi’s brilliant student and had a child named Luke, but was swayed to the dark side by Emperor Palpatine (who became a Sith and not simply a politician). Anakin battled Ben Kenobi on the site of a volcano and was wounded, but then resurrected as Darth Vader. Meanwhile Kenobi hid Luke on Tatooine while the Republic became the Empire and Vader systematically hunted down and killed the Jedi.

With this new backstory in place, Lucas decided that the series would be a trilogy, changing Empire Strikes Back from Episode II to Episode V in the next draft.[34] Lawrence Kasdan, who had just completed writing Raiders of the Lost Ark, was then hired to write the next drafts, and was given additional input from director Irvin Kershner. Kasdan, Kershner, and producer Gary Kurtz saw the film as a more serious and adult film, which was helped by the new, darker storyline, and developed the series from the light adventure roots of the first film.[37]

By the time he began writing Episode VI in 1981 (then titled Revenge of the Jedi), much had changed. Making Empire Strikes Back was stressful and costly, and Lucas’ personal life was disintegrating. Burned out and not wanting to make any more Star Wars films, he vowed that he was done with the series in a May 1983 interview with Time magazine. Lucas’ 1981 rough drafts had Darth Vader competing with the Emperor for possession of Luke — and in the second script, the “revised rough draft,” Vader became a sympathetic character. Lawrence Kasdan was hired to take over once again and, in these final drafts, Vader was explicitly redeemed and finally unmasked. This change in character would provide a springboard to the “Tragedy of Darth Vader” storyline that underlies the prequels.

After losing much of his fortune in a divorce settlement in 1987, Lucas had no desire to return to Star Wars, and had unofficially canceled his sequel trilogy by the time of Return of the Jedi.[39] Nevertheless, the prequels, which were quite developed at this point, continued to fascinate him. After Star Wars became popular once again, in the wake of Dark Horse‘s comic book line and Timothy Zahn‘s trilogy of novels, Lucas saw that there was still a large audience. His children were older, and with the explosion of CGI technology he was now considering returning to directing.[40] By 1993 it was announced, in Variety among other sources, that he would be making the prequels. He began outlining the story, now indicating the series would be a tragic one examining Anakin Skywalker’s fall to the dark side. Lucas also began to change how the prequels would exist relative to the originals; at first they were supposed to be a “filling-in” of history, backstory, existing parallel or tangential to the originals, but now he saw that they could form the beginning of one long story that started with Anakin’s childhood and ended with his death. This was the final step towards turning the film series into a “Saga”.[41]

In 1994, Lucas began writing the first screenplay titled Episode I: The Beginning. Following the release of that film, Lucas announced that he would also be directing the next two, and began working on Episode II at that time.[42] The first draft of Episode II was completed just weeks before principal photography, and Lucas hired Jonathan Hales, a writer from The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, to polish it.[43] Unsure of a title, Lucas had jokingly called the film “Jar Jar’s Great Adventure.”[44] In writing The Empire Strikes Back, Lucas initially decided that Lando Calrissian was a clone and came from a planet of clones which caused the “Clone Wars” mentioned by Obi-Wan Kenobi in A New Hope;[45][46] he later came up with an alternate concept of an army of clone shocktroopers from a remote planet which attacked the Republic and were repelled by the Jedi.[47] The basic elements of that backstory became the plot basis for Episode II, with the new wrinkle added that Palpatine secretly orchestrated the crisis.[5]

Lucas began working on Episode III before Attack of the Clones was released, offering concept artists that the film would open with a montage of seven Clone War battles.[48] As he reviewed the storyline that summer, however, he says he radically re-organized the plot.[49] Michael Kaminski, in The Secret History of Star Wars, offers evidence that issues in Anakin’s fall to the dark side prompted Lucas to make massive story changes, first revising the opening sequence to have Palpatine kidnapped and his apprentice, Count Dooku, murdered by Anakin as the first act in the latter’s turn towards the dark side.[50] After principal photography was complete in 2003, Lucas made even more massive changes in Anakin’s character, re-writing his entire turn to the dark side; he would now turn primarily in a quest to save Padmé’s life, rather than the previous version in which that reason was one of several, including that he genuinely believed that the Jedi were evil and plotting to take over the Republic. This fundamental re-write was accomplished both through editing the principal footage, and new and revised scenes filmed during pick-ups in 2004.

Lucas often exaggerated the amount of material he wrote for the series; much of it stemmed from the post–1978 period when the series grew into a phenomenon. Michael Kaminski explained that these exaggerations were both a publicity and security measure. Kaminski rationalized that since the series’ story radically changed throughout the years, it was always Lucas’ intention to change the original story retroactively because audiences would only view the material from his perspective.

5) Links to all things related to “Pre-Text-Message” Brett Favre.


Link To Brett Favre’s Official Website

6) A tribute to Braveheart, Rambo, Rocky, the Terminator, and various movies that showed their respect for “Man-Kind.

7) Recipes for beef and meat related items.

8) Links to quality power tool makers.