Growing up in the 1980s, my dad worked for George Lucas. He sat in on daily meetings about visual effects for a slew of what would become blockbuster movies — not to be confused with Blockbuster Video. Most of the time, it was a treat. In 6th, 7th, and 8th grade my friends didn’t believe me. What they didn’t know is everything I told them was true.

We got to see the actual matte paintings from Star Warsand The Empire Strikes Back. We got to see dad’s office, where a Super Star Destroyer from Jedi flew past the newly constructed Death Star, drawn by dad in dry erase marker on a piece of cellophane. We saw the actual DeLorean shot in Back to the Future. We walked the sound stage where they shot elements of one of the two Ewok movies that came out after Return of the Jedi.

Or that one time I saw Jedi for the third time and Jason Livermore pointed out my dad’s name in the credits. We all missed it the first time we watched it at the cast and crew screening.

But there were also times when ILM — Industrial Light & Magic — would obtain illegal merchandise and tell people like my dad to destroy it. All of it.

That’s what this is about. The picture at the opening of this piece.

Raiders of the Lost Ark made Harrison Ford a superstar almost overnight. I know. Me and James went with dad to the cast and crew screening in San Francisco, after dropping off a package at SFO. We were 40 minutes late. Unlike regular movies where you can come in late, cast and crew screenings are like off-Broadway shows. Or a play at the Fox Theater. If you’re late, you don’t get in.

So there we were, two kids and a dad standing outside, trying to get someone to let us in. Dad spent the better part of ten minutes convincing the guy at the door. We made it. There were no more seats. James and me sat in the aisle. Dad stood in the back and watched.

A few months later, twenty copies of a bootleg, unauthorized poster landed at ILM — all of them slated to be destroyed. Budweiser, Lucas, and Spielberg never sanctioned it.

Enter my dad. “Destroy these posters.”

Those were the instructions.

But. How could he let them all go? He’d watched his two boys sit on the floor in that San Francisco aisle a few months earlier, staring up at Indiana Jones for the first time.

So. He kept two.

And now, I have one of them. Two exist. I have one.

How cool is that?