Family Guy: Blue Harvest Writer Channels the Force

Turning off all the lights and battling co-workers armed with lightsabers in the office late at night is a great way to fend off writer's block, especially if you happen to be "Family Guy: Blue Harvest" writer/producer Alec Sulkin.

"When the Master Replica lightsabers first came out, Seth MacFarlane and our executive producer David Goodman and I each got one," Sulkin says. "This girl who's married to a friend of mine saw me at a dinner party and she asked, 'Do you guys work at ...?' -- and she gave our exact address. And I said, 'Yeah we do, why?' She said, 'I was driving home late one night and the whole building was dark and all I could see was a lightsaber battle high up on the third floor balcony.' And I was like, 'Yup that was our office.' We'd be sitting around quietly waiting to pitch around a joke and then all of a sudden one of us would snap our lightsaber on and the other person would snap theirs on too."

It's no surprise that Sulkin's been collecting lightsabers, and many other Star Wars toys, since he first laid eyes on A New Hope in the theater as a kid. "A New Hope was the first movie I ever saw in a theater," Sulkin recalls. "My dad took me and I sat on his lap in a very crowded theater in Boston. Growing up, I had the crappy lightsabers that were like the flashlights with the flimsy plastic tube that when you hit it against something hard it would wrap around it. Now, of course, I have five of the really awesome Master Replica lightsabers."

"I also had the Han Solo blaster that had a button you could press that made sort of a screeching noise that didn't really sound like the laser but it was kinda cool," Sulkin continues. "I remember having that Millennium Falcon that was the size of your arms if you're wrapping them around something. And it had the back that opened. I also had the C-3PO carrying case for putting all my characters in there and it had little compartments inside. And I had all the figures for Luke, Leia, Han, Darth Vader, Obi-Wan, C-3PO, Greedo and all those characters."

While some fans with impressive collections kept them in mint condition, Sulkin couldn't help but play with each and every toy he had. "I was not one of those guys who preserved their toys," Sulkin says. "I actually liked to play with them. But I know so many people who are like, 'I never took it out of the case and I still have them.' There's still a basket in my childhood home piled with Star Wars toys. My mom didn't throw anything away. I also had the Star Wars bedsheets. And I have Star Wars wallpaper on my wall that's still there to this day. I think my mom's best friend's husband was in the wallpaper business and so when the Star Wars wallpaper came through his office I think we were first on a list. Now it's even more of a badge of pride. I always joke that we're going to have to get it steamed off to preserve it."

Growing up in Boston, Sulkin remembers not only playing with toys and staring in awe at his droid decor, but also jumping into a van on birthdays to see clips of Star Wars. "When I was just a kid, it may have been 1980, in our town -- a suburb if Boston called Westin -- there was a guy called The Great Nerog," Sulkin recalls. "It took me awhile to realize it was just his name backwards -- Goren -- and I was a classmate of his daughter's. He would go around for kids' birthday parties, which sounds kind of sketchy now, but he had a van that all these kids would cram into the back and he would play on a reel-to-reel projector a version of Star Wars that was basically seven minutes long projected on a sheet. It was very short and I'm sure it was totally unlicensed and illegal, but it had the highlights of Star Wars. If you had this guy at your birthday party then you were cool. In retrospect that seems kind of hilarious and very illegal since he had some weird cut of Star Wars, but even weirder for cramming a bunch of 10-year-old kids into the back of a van. I don't think that would fly today."