By Pete Vilmur & Payton Gauldin
Anyone who was around for the original trilogy back in the '70s and '80s might recall the name Rusty Miller -- you know, that 11-year-old fan prodigy who compiled a list of 425 Star Wars trivia questions for The Jedi Master's Quizbook back in 1982. Don't remember? Maybe this will help jog your memory --
Ah, now you remember. How can anyone forget that smile?
As it happens, a fan named Payton Gauldin wrote us recently asking if we'd put the word out that he'd just posted an all-points bulletin on his blog looking for one Rusty Miller, who apparently hadn't been seen nor heard from in the fan community since the early '80s. Thanks to Payton's tenacity, he was finally able to locate the long lost Rusty (who now goes by Matt -- hence the difficulty in finding him), who we're happy to report has agreed to answer a few questions posed by Payton and starwars.com:
First, do you go by Rusty or Matthew these days?
These days, I go by Matt.
Can you tell us how the Jedi Master's Quizbook deal came about?
Well, the summer of 1981, out of boredom, more or less, I began writing trivia questions about A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back. The number of questions mushroomed and I started to think "Hey, this could be something." My mom and I drafted a letter of inquiry to Del Rey Books. Several weeks later they requested a copy of the manuscript.
The original manuscript, which actually contained 631 questions (some were duplicates, some were deemed too obscure, and a few were factually incorrect) was written by me on an old Smith-Corona manual typewriter, "hunt and peck" style. My mom retyped the manuscript to more or less neaten it up, not changing any of the content, and the manuscript was sent to Del Rey. Del Rey liked what they saw and sent it off to Lucasfilm for them to have a look. Right about the time they received the manuscript, Lucasfilm was in the process of moving from Southern California to Northern California (the present Skywalker Ranch facility), so the manuscript got boxed away for about 8 weeks. After the manuscript was unpacked and read by the folks at Lucasfilm, the "vetting and trimming" process took place, which brought it to its final 425 questions.
In terms of Star Wars fandom, we've pretty much missed you the last 25 years. What are you doing these days?
It has been an interesting 25 years. In the summer of 1983, my parents and I relocated to Atlanta, GA. The book fervor had pretty much died down at that point, so I settled back into relative anonymity. My schoolmates pretty much knew about the book but kind of left me alone about it, which suited me fine. I finished high school and went to college to study history. While in college, I fell into (and fell in love with) something that I never would have expected to be a part of: firefighting and emergency medical services. On top of being a full-time college student, I worked as a firefighter for the small town I went to college in. The college maintained a fire station on the campus that was manned mostly by students at the college.
I got some basic medical training and became eligible to run medical calls as well as fire calls and discovered that I actually enjoyed that end of emergency services more than the burning buildings. I finished college in 1992 and returned to Atlanta, immediately enrolling in Paramedic school. I finished paramedic school in 1994 and worked as a medic around metro Atlanta for several years. In my EMS career, I did non-emergency transport work, critical care hospital-to-hospital transport work, neonatal transport work, and worked in high-volume 911 environments as well. During my time in EMS, I met, fell in love with, and married my wife. We've been married now for almost 10 years and are in the process of adopting our first child.
In late 2000, I went to work for IBM, doing technical support work and continued working part-time in EMS. At the end of 2002, I went to work for the Centers for Disease Control in one of their post-9/11 counterterrorism initiatives. I am still there and am also currently pursuing a master's degree in emergency and disaster management.
As far as hobbies and interests go, I still play guitar, enjoy geocaching, fitness (I've recently gotten into running and ran my first 10k), reading, some movies and television (some favorite TV shows include Lost, Rescue Me (love Dennis Leary), the "reimagined" version of Battlestar Galactica, etc), and am a fan of mixed martial arts and the UFC.
Have you attended any Star Wars events in the last 10 years -- any Star Wars Celebrations?
No I have not. I might be interested in doing so in the future, however.
If/when you run into Star Wars fans and reveal yourself as the guy who penned the Quizbook, what's the typical reaction?
Since the time of the immediate aftermath of the book, I really have not experienced it that much. The friends that I let in on it are usually pretty impressed, but in a low-key way.
Did being a published author at such a young age open any doors for you in your adult life?
Not really. I have lived in relative anonymity, by choice. I would rather have doors open based upon what I have done in my adult life than to have them open solely based upon something I did when I was 11 anyway.
Did you ever consider, or were you ever approached to do a follow-up to the Quizbook?
No. I actually have a couple of concepts for novels that I have toyed with over the years and may eventually finish and attempt to do something with, publishing-wise. I think, at this point, doing the kind of research that would be required to do another quiz book would be daunting at best.
