USA. 2023.
Crew
Directors – Jeremy Coon & Steve Kozak, Producers – Jeremy Coon, Steve Kozak & Kyle Newman, Photography – Quinn Hester, Tim Irwin & Jay P. Morgan, Music – Karl Preusser. Production Company – September Club.
With
Alisa Abdurahmen, Beverly Abdurahmen, Steve Binder, Paul Bond, Bonnie Burton, Anthony Caleca, Mick Garris, Bobcat Goldthwait, Gilbert Gottfried, Seth Green, Larry Heider, Miki Herman, Mike Irwin, Taran Killam, Scott Kirkwood, Jason Lenzi, Gus Lopez, Bob Mackie, Craig Miller, Kyle Newman, Donny Osmond, Patton Oswalt, Marc Pevers, Jonathan Rinzler, Lenny Ripps, Matthew Robbins, Larry Ross, Steve Sansweet, Paul Scheer, Steve Schuster, Pete Sears, Kevin Smith, Yuchi Sukiyama, Bruce Vilanch, Rick Wagner, Brian Ward, ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic
The Star Wars Holiday Special (1978) is something legendary in the history of Star Wars fandom. It was produced in the interim between when Star Wars (1977) came out and The Empire Strikes Back (1980) went into production, apparently to keep up interest in the franchise. The bizarreness of the special was that the all the principals from Star Wars – Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Peter Mayhew and characters like R2D2, C3P0 and Darth Vader were harnessed into making what is essentially a variety show with song and dance numbers set around the Mos Eisley cantina, along with a series of extended scenes with Chewbacca’s family back on his home planet. I am one of the few who actually say that they saw the original special when it aired – I was young, naive and could think of nothing else but Star Wars at the time.
A Disturbance in the Force: How The Star Wars Holiday Special Happened is a Documentary about the phenomenon. I had initial misgivings about the film as soon as it started and we see a bunch of faces usually associated with comedy – Gilbert Gottfried, ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic, Bobcat Goldthwait, Seth Green, Kevin Smith – turn up. There was the sinking feeling that what we would be in for is little more than the documentary equivalent of a Riff Track film a la Mystery Science Theater 3000 (1988-99, 2017-8) with the assorted making snarky one-liners at the various gaffes and shortcomings – a type of comedy I really, really hate.
However, beyond the introductory sections, this does not turn out to be the case. In fact, A Disturbance in the Force interviews an admirable number of personnel associated with the production. These include everything from the two directors (one only by audio interview), two of the five writers, the costume designer, the cameramen, even extras who wore the cantina costumes, members of Jefferson Starship and the actors who played the holographic dancers. Not interviewed are some of the principal figures such as George Lucas, Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford, although we do get archival footage of Hamill, Ford, Carrie Fisher and others like Bea Arthur, Harvey Korman, Anthony Daniels and Peter Mayhew talking about the show. Aside from that there are a bunch of people of dubious associations – the aforementioned comics and others who at most might have once asked George Lucas what his opinion was. Although we do we get screen time with the interviewer who gleaned the much repeated quote from George Lucas that he would like to take a sledgehammer to every bootleg copy of the Holiday Special.
A Disturbance in the Force makes an admirable effort to dig into the history of the special. It begins its story with Charles Lippincott, a publicist who was hired by Lucasfilm to market Star Wars before it opened. It was he that came up with ideas like the toy lines, promoting the film at conventions and appearance of the characters at the premiere and elsewhere. The problem then became after the film went massive of how to maintain momentum and audience interest until the release of The Empire Strikes Back.
This desire to keep awareness in the public eye led to Lucas lending the characters out into some bizarre settings. Donny Osmond talks about the surreal experience of he and his sister dancing with stormtroopers on Donny and Marie (1976-9). Elsewhere, we had Richard Pryor mingling with the cantina and denizens on The Richard Pryor Show (1977) and Mark Hamill makes an appearance in character on The Bob Hope All Star Christmas Comedy Special (1977). This is placed in the context of the bizarreness of some of the other variety specials made during this era – examples are cited of The Paul Lynde Halloween Special (1976) and Wayne Newton at Seaworld (1979). Mentioned also is the fact that George Lucas was still working out some of the mythos of the Star Wars universe and things were not fixed in place yet.
The problems of the holiday special are laid at the feet of producers Ken and Mitzie Welch. This is perhaps unfair in that both passed away in the 2010s and are not around to present their side of the case, although we do get very brief audio interview with them made in the 1990s. The two had worked on The Carol Burnett Show (1967-1978) and produced specials for the likes of Burnett, Barbra Streisand, Barry Manilow, Dolly Parton and others, winning five Emmies. It is observed that the Welches were people who did not understand the appeal of Star Wars fandom and immediately conceived the show in terms of what was familiar – old-time comedy and musical guest stars. There is the probably apocryphal story told that someone brought in a young, unknown Robin Williams for consideration and that he was rejected in favour of established talent.
Behind the scenes, the special was a mass of production problems. It ended with director David Acomba, George Lucas’s representative, quitting after three days. Acomba is briefly interviewed by audio but basically declines any involvement. His replacement director Steve Binder, a specialist in musicals, is interviewed and talks about various aspects but laments the fact that the holiday special was the only work he was involved on where he did not oversee editing, which was handed over to the Welches who had no editing experience.
Some argument is made that George Lucas intended the special in a different light than it ended up being. A treatment for it was uncovered from the papers of the late Ralph McQuarrie, the production illustrator for Star Wars, along with some of McQuarrie’s designs for the production. These seem to indicate a better story, still set around the Wookie homeworld, and bizarrely enough involving the proposed idea of Raquel Welch as a singing hostess. However, it is not clear if this treatment actually comes from Lucas’s own hand.
A reasonable portion of A Disturbance in the Force deals with the legendary bizarreness of the production – how the cuddly cuteness of the cantina sequence with songs and Bea Arthur dancing with the patrons is the complete antithesis of the “hive of scum and villainy” portrayed in Star Wars; the bizarreness of lengthy scenes set on the Wookie homeworld with dialogue that come only in growls (which is blamed on 1970s tv’s aversion to subtitles); Harvey Korman in drag as a four-armed cooking instructor; the proto-Virtual Reality sequence where the Wookie grandfather sits in the living room looking at what amounts to VR porn of Diahann Carroll; Mark Hamill’s caked-on makeup; the end musical sequence (which director Steve Binder confesses was conducted because they had run out of money for sets and covered a soundstage in candles) – one interviewee rather hilariously likens to the Star Wars equivalent of the Heaven’s Gate cult going off to join the Halle-Boppe comet.
The one aspect of the special that does get some praise – and which I will happily defend – is the animated Boba Fett segment. People speak of the originality of the animation artwork and of the segment giving some decent stature to the character of Boba Fett. Jon Favreau appears to have been a fan and there is even archival footage of him talking to George Lucas about how he incorporated Fett’s two-pronged gun as the weapon used by the title character in The Mandalorian (2019- ) – and of Lucas naturally denying that he had anything to do with creating it.
This segues into some attempts to offer a revisionist take on the Holiday Special – the question of whether George Lucas is justified in wanting all trace or if erased or whether he should own up to it. The filmmakers include some material of people who have conducted homages and callbacks to the special and of its quasi-inclusion in Star Wars canon subsequently – of Chewie’s family dolls and of the celebration of Life Day (which is taken as being November 17, the date that the special originally aired) at the Disney Star Wars exhibit.
Trailer here