I was at a good age for Star Wars to have a huge impact on me when it was first released. Then again, I was in preschool, so I probably didn’t understand as much of it as I thought I did. But I vividly recall how much I loved my Boba Fett action figure. I remember how you couldn’t buy it in stores, and instead had to mail in proof-of-purchases from other action figures to get one. And then there was the character itself. Since we were a couple of years away from seeing his first appearance in the movies in The Empire Strikes Back, we were left wondering if this a good guy, a bad guy, or what. Maybe that’s not even a guy under that face mask.
What I didn’t know at the time was his very first appearance was in an animated segment of The Star Wars Holiday Special. That bit seems to be the only part of that special which is genuinely and unironically enjoyed by fans, at least judging from the interviews conducted in the 2023 documentary about that show, titled A Disturbance in the Force. It certainly is one of the few elements which feels like it has any input from Lucas, and I was not surprised to learn he wanted the animation styled after the illustration work of Moebius in Heavy Metal magazine.
Something I was far more surprised to learn in this documentary is Lucas had occasionally expressed in the past a desire to show Chewbacca’s family. I can’t imagine why he ever thought that would be a good idea, but it is documented he discussed the idea with others a couple of years before it became the central plot driver of the holiday special. Then again, he seems pretty obsessed with those goddamn Ewoks, and what are those except midget Wookies?
You see, the plot (to use the term very loosely) has Chewy trying to get back to his family on his home planet in time for “Life Day”. We are given no real background about this holiday, the importance of it, or how it is celebrated. All we really see directly related to it is the end sequence, where robe-clad beings from around the universe apparently astral project themselves to a rock where Carrie Fisher sings the Star Wars theme—a piece of music previously not known to have lyrics.
If this is already sounding insane, it doesn’t begin to cover the sheer amount, variety and intensity of weirdness to be found. And that’s because the holiday special was a variety show, that uniquely 70’s flavor of garbage. The general consensus is Lucas only approved of making any holiday show because of fear the Star Wars juggernaut would lose momentum before the next movie could be finished. Then he basically walked away from the thing, leaving others to find ways to fill the time.
And they had a lot of time to fill. What was initially a proposal for a half-hour special eventually bloated out to two hours. A few of the film’s actors were contractually obligated to appear in it. The remainder is one rather brief animated segment, a couple of bizarre musical performances and a great many suspect comedy bits, the latter of which were written and acted by show biz veterans who seemed to be confused about this newfangled Star Wars business these kids are into these days.
Lucas would not communicate with the creative team, instead appointing David Acomba as his liaison. Acomba eventually gave up on the project, and so control passed to TV veteran Steve Binder, who helmed the Elvis comeback TV special. Even Binder gave up at the editing stage, leaving Ken and Mitzie Welch to handle that task. Imagine handing off the editing of anything Star Wars to two writers for The Mary Tyler Moore Show. My impression of the production is it was like a strange game of Jenga, where it started with too many people in charge, but then each drifted away until all that remained were two sitcom writers.
Needless to say, there was a great deal of behind-the-scenes intrigue. Much of this is relayed in the documentary by Bruce Vilanch and Leonard Ripps, two of the writers for the special. Ripps seems to be especially hard on Lucas and his subsequent disowning of the program. As this writer puts it, he never had his name removed from anything, even the things he knew were total crap. He provides a surprisingly concise assessment of the flawed creative process leading up to the special: “When Lucas walked away, he said, ‘Do whatever you want’. Then he got upset when we did whatever we wanted”.
The writers are as confused by fans today as to why the celebrities in this were chosen. Acomba had wanted Robin Williams, only to be shot down by executives. Instead, you get variety show staples such as Art Carney as a friend of the Wookie family, who sets granddad up with a VR helmet so he can watch what is essentially porn right there in the living room–even if it is just Diahann Carroll doing a musical number. I’m not sure if that is more or less weird than if it had been conventional porn. Bea Arthur does a cabaret number as she shuts down her alien bar for the night, a public house that is like a Sesame Street version of the Mos Eisley cantina. There’s Harvey Korman in drag, and with four arms, riffing on Julia Child in a kind of alien cooking show. There’s Jefferson Airplane as…Jefferson Airplane.
Almost as strange as the guest star appearances are the brief glimpses of the original film’s stars. Mark Hamill phones-in (well, videophones-in) a bizarre bit where he calls the Wookie family. The make-up on him is so extreme that his eyes look like they’re about to pop out of his skull. I’ve read where Carrie Fisher was coked out of her gourd during her appearance, and Hamill looks like he dipped into her stash.
In recent years, Harrison Ford has seemingly been the most regretful of the cast to have been in the special. And yet, he really seems to have given it his all at the time. He definitely has more screentime in the special than either of his co-stars.
Many comedians and filmmakers appear in the documentary to provide the perspective of viewers from when this originally aired, as well as those who have only discovered it since then. Among those interviewed include Gilbert Gottfried (“The Star Wars special sucked so badly, I was amazed I wasn’t in it”), Kevin Smith, Paul Sheer, Bobcat Goldthwait (“I like to watch bad stuff but it’s a hard watch, making it through the holiday special”) and Seth Green.
Patton Oswalt, as expected, has some of the more trenchant insights, such as, “In a weird way it would be a prep for what I would experience years later with the prequels, where I sat down—could not have been more excited, could not have been more jazzed—then it took time, as I was watching it, to realize something’s wrong.”
Of the interviewees here, I was most surprised to see Donny Osmond, and was more surprised by his insight. This is somebody who has come to terms with everything in his past, including a sketch on his own variety show that riffed on Star Wars even before the special. He was stunned Lucas had allowed them to do that but, then again, the filmmaker had been pressured by executives to believe he had to do everything possible to maintain public awareness. To the credit of Lucas, viewers who saw the sketch on the Osmond show went back and saw the movie in theatres again.
There is some discussion about whether or not the special should be given a legitimate rerelease. There is much said about the appeal of trying to find it on the bootleg circuit, in hopes of scoring a fourth-, fifth-, sixth-generation VHS copy. I can understand how seeing a pristine new blu-ray of the special might not have the same allure. I kind of felt the same way when Prince’s The Black Album was finally (albeit, briefly) released in the mid 90’s.
I wouldn’t have thought it necessary to have a documentary on The Star Wars Holiday Special, but I had a very good time watching A Disturbance in the Force. The special was terrible, and that is acknowledged here, but it is still a curiosity worthy of examination. The final moments in the documentary concern the importance of owning your mistakes, and I think that’s a lesson everybody should take to heart.
Dir: Jeremy Coon and Steve Kozak
Documentary