For those unfamiliar, Star Wars Uncut was a massive, collaborative, hilarious and amazing on-line interactive art project from last year. The brainchild of former Vimeo and Boxee employee Casey Pugh, the project had the lofty goal of remaking the original Star Wars comprised entirely of 15 second segments created by different volunteers. Several different people/groups could claim the same “scene,” and people were invited to choose up to three scenes to remake. These scenes could be as high-tech as computer animation, or as Be Kind Rewind low-tech as dudes with bowls on their heads crouching in their dorm room. These submissions were then voted on by regular folk such as ourselves, and then Pugh and team edited them together into a feature length film. If this sounds unwatchable to you, then you have no soul, because the end result was sublime – a loving ode to both Star Wars and to the filmmaking process.

Well, sometimes it seems that good things do happen to good people, because Pugh and team won an Emmy for Uncut. How exactly is that possible? Apparently “Creative Achievement In Interactive Media – Fiction” is an award. Star Wars Uncut is the first non-TV related project to win. I’m not sure how exactly they managed to win a TV award with a non-TV related film, but I don’t really care either. Happy to see them getting some recognition beyond just the love of millions of goobs like me.

As for Star Wars Uncut itself, Pugh talked with The Wall Street Journal (who else?), revealing that the official finished product is still awaiting approval from Lucas. “LucasFilm had called me and said, ‘Hey, we love your project. We want to treat you as a fan project’ … Unfortunately to be an actual fan film it still has to go through a legal process. … We’re working with them to get it out there soon.”

Pugh says he plans to do an Empire Strikes Back, but for the meantime is focusing on finding paying work. Godspeed, brother. While we wait for Lucas the Hutt to approve Uncut, you can still watch a roughly assembled version of the film or just random scenes on their website (linked above). I would love to see this get shown on the big screen when it is all said and done. If “Wizard People, Dear Reader” can get shown on the big screen, I have faith.

Here’s a taste…