“Everybody wants to know about the lightsabers,” says Dennis Muren, standing before a full house at the Century Cinema Theater in Corte Madera. Muren—a legendary special effects artist and veteran of Industrial Light & Magic, having worked on all of the original Star Wars films, and many other high-profile projects—is clearly still intensely enthused about the films…

“Why are you wearing those chains?” A pair of small girls, visitors at the Great Dickens Christmas Fair, have just spied actor Tom Westlake, who plays the part of Jacob Marley’s ghost each year at the popular annual Dickens-inspired theater festival. Marley, as should be recalled by anyone who’s caught one of the dozens of…

Twenty years ago, in 1995, I picked up Carol Doda. Literally. The pioneering stripper and “adult” entertainer was waiting for me at the side of the road in the San Francisco, where we’d arranged to meet before going to see the now-notorious movie ‘Showgirls.’ The movie was a hot ticket, freshly landed in theaters, and everyone…