In early December 2015, Dak and Ezra were in New York for WinterCon along with other Star Wars guests, the other three Fetts and the voice of Salacious Crumb, Mark Dodson. On the Friday before the con, Topps had the pair visit their Lower Manhattan headquarters for a box break and podcast. At the very end of the taping, when asked to comment on The Force Awakens by Topps Talk host Alex Birsh, they both demurred and spoke only in clipped platitudes.
Dak had continued to do the right thing for well over a month. Adrift off Scellecc, he played the Phoenician sailor and wrote with alphabets other than Aurebesh. To those who asked about the film, he reduced his comments to mutterings about the Bōjutsu talents of Rey’s doppelgänger Chloe Bruce and being home with Chewie.
He revealed nothing—until that post-con dinner party in Park Slope, around the corner from Artie Bucco’s Food Co-op on Union. All through the breaking of bread, his inquisitive hostess had studied him between the flickering candles on the refectory table that separated them. Through his craggy visage, she had read his anxious and unspoken ruminations. Finally with a mind trick, she occasioned a spoiler of sorts. “Speak to me of the Fisher King.”
Madam Sosostris is a Brooklyn Brazilian, a Jungian analyst, given to Candomblé. After several glasses of jabuticaba, which we and the others had freely consumed, she followed the greater plan. Knowingly she responded by walking him across the narrow catwalk over the fiery chasm beyond good and evil.
“Let me take you down,” she breathed, “‘cause you’re going to where nothing is real.” Peering into the future and its awakening force, she intoned, “There’s nothing to get hung about.”
Madam Sosostris, a most adept Jungian, free associates across scores of worlds with a knowledge that’s remarkably catholic. Where most of us see the random scatter of breadcrumbs, she sees patterns on the table and gives expression to their meaning.
After clearing the crumbs and remains of strawberry tops and place setting before her, she does her own box break. She has a wicked pack of cards. It’s true. All of it. Giving voice to the cards, she tells of a solitary island monastic. The Fisher King is wounded. In his possession is the ace of cups. Perceval climbs to him to present her healing sword. It’s a portent. Another new hope, perhaps?
Madam Sosostris pushes from the table and asks rhetorically whether all the hype is just about a $4 billion franchise. A tale that’s new wine in old wineskins, told by an anointed producer and her clever director, knowing and experienced screenwriters or a storied Story Group. Have you noticed how all the world-weary chit-chat has been only on the technicalities, the narrative, story arcs, diverse casting, the marketing, what will make money, what have you? Reaching forward and turning another card, she relates how this all merely feeds the beast. We could be talking about football—yes, American football. Elections. Who’s winning the debates. Ah, but all these supposed savants are merely conduits for a deeper mythos. On the one hand, they—you—all are cyphers. On the other, you have all become gods who strut and fret for us your hour upon the screen. But a greater power, she allows like Pope Joan, finger pointing upward, plays you all…so we may all apperceive.
Then, catching a deep breath, she looks into the dancing flame of the near candle and exhales with Nietzschean finality, “The time for petty politics is past: this very century will bring with it the struggle for mastery over the whole Galaxy.”
