But back to presuming the worst about Disney’s intentions (usually a safe bet): I can’t imagine that this tryout/publicity-stunt gambit was super successful. People basically waited five hours to be told to go to a website. Sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself. After sitting in this one ballroom for about two hours, people were told to shuffle into another ballroom. Then the casting director, a remarkably unflustered woman, explained to participants that she and her staff had been carefully trained to pick out personality traits or something, and that after talking with each person for a few seconds, they would maybe pull a few out of the line to sign their name in some notebook and stay in touch.

“This is so intense right now,” says the girl from Sacramento, leafing over her headshots and résumé. “I feel like afterwards it’s going to be a little bit more . . . ” Her voice trails off. “This is crazy.”

So the Ballroom #2 part of this process took about an hour, depending on where you were in line. By the time I got to the front, the unflustered casting director pulled me and three others out of line and told us to go to opencastingcall2013.com (hyperlinked for your convenience!), upload a tryout video, and make sure to say in the video that we went to the Austin meet-and-greet. That was it. Quick and dirty. I took that to mean I’m not going to be in Star Wars. National Review editors, you can exhale.

Here’s why Star Wars is dead: First, because they made a huge mistake in not casting me. Second, because it’s no longer in the hands of a bunch of nerds in California and because it’s been entrusted instead to the kind of people who think eight-hour meet-and-greets are a good idea either as A) publicity stunts (or, giving them the presumption of good faith) B) a good way to determine who’s going to be the next Luke Skywalker.