“I was impressed with his love of dramatic, almost melodramatic films like “High Noon” and “Dr. Strangelove.” I think those two films had to do with this issue of moral courage. “High Noon” was one man standing up for what he believed and being deserted by the townspeople. I think that is part of what Bob Gaudino was trying to achieve through his teaching, to create people who when out in the world would be able to evaluate situations, make a judgment about right and wrong and then act on it.

What came to my mind is that it would have been wonderful if Bob Gaudino could have seen the “Star Wars” movies because I think they would have appealed to him as a simple good versus evil, kind of hokey science fiction and a lot of great one dimensional characters that would have been great fodder for him to use: Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, the robots. And I think his favorite character would have been Chewbacca, the Wookie who was always saying things but all you heard was growls. You never heard any words out of his mouth. It always was being interpreted by Han Solo. You had this big ape looking character being credited with saying all these things and doing all these things without actually saying a word. He would have loved that character.

You have the evil emperor, you have his blackguard who goes out and does all the bad things for him in his name in Darth Vader, and you have young Luke Skywalker trying to find his way in the world. Maybe Luke is the Williams student or something. I’m not sure where I put Han Solo in that, swashbuckling, in-it-for-himself. But he has some kind of moral core also. I think Bob would have played off all those things. It was that ability to take almost any medium or any event or any mundane experience even and be able to interpret it in a more classical way—a lot of students were attracted to him because of his ability to do that.

Sometimes talking about a movie was easier than talking about what Plato was trying to say, or Hobbes.

–Paul Peterson '73