BEFORE: Really, I have not seen a week of movies like last week's ever before. From Yacht Rock to the California Raisins, and everything in between. An actress left Hollywood and became a nun, the "South Park" guys came to Colorado and became renovators and restaurateurs. Two hippies founded an animation festival, and a white rapper had his dad buy him an animation studio. Luther Vandross became a superstar, and Bill Watterson became a recluse. Some crazy, crazy stuff - but I'm not finished with documentaries just yet.
I'm kicking off another crazy week with a doc about the "Star Wars" holiday special from 1978. If you know, you know. If you don't know, watch this doc. You may recall my claim to (near-) fame is appearing in a doc myself, one called "The People vs. George Lucas", as a self-proclaimed "expert" who found himself getting interviewed one year at the San Diego Comic-Con. The filmmakers really wanted to interview my boss, who ended up knowing very little about "Star Wars", and he said, "Well, you guys should be talking to my booth-mate here, he probably knows a lot more about this than me." which is code for "He knows a lot about Star Wars and rarely ever shuts up about it."
I gave them an hour of my best stuff, and what 30 seconds of it ends up in their movie? My discussion of the infamous Star Wars post-Thanksgiving holiday nightmare, how insane it is and how it belongs "in a museum". I might have been riffing on Indiana Jones there, but since they HAD footage of the special being screened at the Museum of TV & Radio, I had accidentally given them the best segue possible, I said just what they needed, and didn't even know it. So, umm, why wasn't I called when somebody else made a whole doc JUST about the special?
Seth Green carries over again from "Dear Mr. Watterson".
THE PLOT: In 1978, George Lucas is persuaded to turn over Star Wars to the world of the TV variety hour, culminating in "The Star Wars Holiday Special", often cited as one of the worst forms of entertainment of all time.
AFTER: Another coincidence, and you just HAVE to believe this one, because there's just no way I could have predicted this, George Lucas was at San Diego Comic-Con this weekend, for the first time EVER. I just found about this yesterday, and I've had this film programmed here for months, so you tell me, what are the odds against that? Now, sure, Lucas is not there to talk about the Star Wars holiday deal or even anything related to "Star Wars" - besides, he got out of the "Star Wars" deal years ago, and I should know, it was right around SDCC time in July 2012, and I was supposed to visit the Skywalker Ranch that week, right after San Diego. But because of his surprise announcement, the Ranch was on lockdown and I was not able to visit. So George still owes me for that one - I had a great two days in San Francisco but that's beside the point, I was supposed to visit the Ranch, I guess you can't win 'em all.
Anyway, George is supposed to appear TODAY in Hall H, this will be one for the ages, and please, please, PLEASE somebody ask him about the Holiday Special - it's the equivalent of asking Donald Fagen how he feels about the term "yacht rock". The skinny is that some people will be waiting in line for Hall H for 24 or even 48 hours. Hey, if that's how you want to spend two days of your life, go ahead but I'll take a pass. I always had better things to do with my time in San Diego than trying to get into Hall H. Like going out for BBQ or beer floats, just a couple of reasons why I miss that giant, wacky, confounding Comic-Con.
Despite what you might have heard about the "Star Wars Holiday Special" in the past, this doc proves that it's NOT really the "Poop Cruise" of TV specials, this was all kind of normal (?) for 1970's variety TV. To prove this, they air a few seconds of shows like "The Paul Lynde Halloween Special" and "Wayne Newton at Sea World", two specials that apparently really existed and were more terrible. I fondly recall watching "The Circus of the Stars" on CBS when I was a pre-teen, also "Battle of the Network Stars", and these were probably also very low-art, the early attempts at reality TV and were also terrible, but I think I was just watching for the tight-fitting clothing, or to see actresses in swimsuits coming out of the dunk-tank. (Really, how some of that got by the network censors, I'll never know...)
Still, it's by far the worst "Star Wars" product ever put on the market, and there were no safeguards yet to ensure QC coming out of Lucasfilm, in fact the only reason any safeties were put into place are because the holiday special was SO BAD. Well, we only have air bags in cars because so many people died in crashes, and we only have emergency exits in buildings for similar reasons. Once we're aware of the problem, we can take steps to try to ensure it never happens again. The reins were given over to people who knew nothing about writing or producing science-fiction, they had experience doing music & comedy variety shows, so that's the direction this went in. The cast list alone is a head-scratcher, with Art Carney, Bea Arthur and Harvey Korman topping the bill, and the cast of "Star Wars" putting in what were essentially cameo appearances, except for Carrie Fisher, who got to sing a song at the end. At every step of the way, it's like somebody was saying "What could POSSIBLY go wrong?" and that's how you tempt fate.
Really, there's about 5 minutes of story in a 90-minute special, so the majority of it is filler, filler, filler - a cooking show with Harvey Korman as a four-armed female alien (femalien?) and Bea Arthur as the owner of the famous Star Wars cantina, singing a song to all the costumed freaks in the style of a Kurt Weill number. Chewbacca's son watching a holographic routine of circus tumblers, and Chewbacca's father-in-law watching a VR experience that satisfied his secret fantasies, and based on what the human character was saying, is perhaps best described as "Wookiee porn". And a full 10 minutes (!) of Chewbacca's family getting ready for their LifeDay holiday but speaking ONLY in grunts and growls with no subtitles. And let's not forget special guest Jefferson Starship, in another hologram, performing their song "Light the Sky on Fire".
Simply NONE of this advances the storyline, it all takes place while Han & Chewie are on their way to the Wookiee homeworld, Kashyyyk - and while this story might have been more interesting if told from Han & Chewie's perspective, that's not how this thing goes. They only had Harrison Ford for five minutes of screen-time, and they had to make the most of that. So we're waiting, waiting, waiting for them to arrive, it's a bit like hosting Thanksgiving and you're waiting hours for your relatives to arrive because there's so much traffic in the Outer Rim. OK, well, let's watch a cartoon, that will kill some time - and while the animation seen here was very crude, it did feature the first appearance of Boba Fett, who was very important in the next movie, and so those of us who watched the TV special all had a leg up on the normies.
This documentary also reveals the REAL reason that the Holiday Special exists, back in those days we didn't even have VHS tapes yet, so really the ONLY place you could watch a "Star Wars" product was in a movie theater, and we only had the ONE movie, not 12 of them, like now. So George Lucas and 20th Century Fox knew it would be THREE long years before another movie could be made, and they also wanted to re-re-release the first movie in theaters again, so they figured a TV special might stir up some more interest, after all there were a few teens out there who had only seen the movie 7 times and not 10. Also, there was the matter of the toy sales for Christmas, and 1978 was really the first holiday season where toys were available - nobody realized how successful this movie was going to be, so the action figures were NOT ready for the 1977 Christmas season, but you could buy an empty stand to hold the first 12 figures, and a certificate that allowed you to receive FOUR of those figures some time between February and June. Hey, if you were looking to teach your kids a lesson about patience, that's one way to do it.
So a Holiday Special that aired after Thanksgiving, hmm, the timing now makes a lot of sense because that was when people started their holiday shopping. And a few ads during the "Star Wars" Holiday special for the action figures, spaceships and board games seemed like the best way to promote those productes, and boy, did it work. Remember yesterday when we learned that Bill Watterson didn't allow any merchandise to be made with his Calvin & Hobbes characters? Yeah, George Lucas was kind of the opposite of that. If a character was in "Star Wars" for more than a second and a half, it got an action figure. Movie grosses had to be balanced against the cost of making the film, but toy and merchandise revenue was almost pure profit. Really, who gives a shit about the quality of the TV show if it makes kids buy the toys?
The weird thing was, if you were 8 to 12 years old at the time, and you made it home that night to watch the Holiday Special (and remember, it only aired once, and we didn't have VCRs or DVRs or DVDs just yet) you probably thought it was the greatest thing in the world. But then most of those people grew up and kind of forgot about it, and then like 20 years later somebody mentioned it and Star Wars fans collectively kind of said, "Oh, yeah, I sort of remember that. Whatever happened with that?" and there were a FEW copies out there on VHS somehow, only you could only buy bootlegs that were a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy, and the tracking was off and the colors were all weird, so it kind of became this thing of legend, like did it really exist? I had a copy that my wife tracked down, and so I ended up making copies for people who didn't believe it existed, and then there came a time when my DVD recorder just WOULD NOT copy from that tape, and I joked that the special was so bad, that the machine refused to dub it.
Yes, time is a fickle mistress, if you watched the special when you were young and then watched it again as an adult, well, with different eyes you could really see how corny and stupid it all was, and you realized that they made the 57 Wookies in the finale scene wear traditional robes, because making 50 Wookie masks was cheaper than making 50 full-body fur costumes, and other stuff like that across the board. Or you realized that Mark Hamill was wearing WAY too much make-up, or that Carrie Fisher was probably high as a kite. Also there was a fair amount of clips that looked like they were out-takes from the first film, and costumes during the Cantina scene that, umm, just didn't look right. So this was all made "on the cheap" and kind of thrown together, and maybe some memories from childhood probably should have stayed there.
Still, there was that Boba Fett animation - and because Lucas spoke out about the Holiday Special, and said he'd never release it, and a quote got attributed to him about how if he had enough time and a hammer, he would smash every copy of it he could find. Well, shit, now people just HAD to get a copy of it somewhere - I'd find it on YouTube every once in a while but I don't think it would stay there very long, before someone at Lucasfilm would get it un-posted. It not only attained legendary status, but when you denounce something, that makes it all the more desirable, like it was naughty to watch this somehow, when in fact it's not unsavory at all, except for the Wookiee porn.
Surprisingly, this didn't destroy anyone's career, everyone who worked on it lived to tell the tale and many of them continued to find work, even the band Starship. And George Lucas learned a valuable lesson about maintaining control of his own properties, so maybe we all understand a bit more now about why he wouldn't release the original cuts of the first trilogy of SW films ever again. Honestly, I'm just glad to cross this one off, the cast list posted on IMDB was so incomplete at first that I just didn't see how I was ever going to link to it, but I really shouldn't have worried, there were a lot of ways to get here - but really only ONE when I programmed it.
Anyway, the Comic-Con is over now and so is my little mini-chain of hardcore geek stuff that reminds me of it. No lie, there are SEVEN people in this film's cast (including archive footage) who are people I met at Comic-Cons or tangential related activities. Yes, Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill are two of those people. If I hadn't kept going to SDCC, that wouldn't have happened. I'm sorry I haven't been out there in 8 years, but that includes the pandemic so I'm thinking I really haven't missed all that much. George, I hope you enjoyed your first time there.
Directed by Jeremy Coon (director of "Raiders! The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made") & Steve Kozak
Also starring Alisa Abdurahmen, Beverly Abdurahmen, Steve Binder (last seen in "Elvis Presley: The Searcher"), Bonnie Burton, Anthony Caleca, Mick Garris, Bobcat Goldthwait (last seen in "Destiny Turns on the Radio"), Gilbert Gottfried (last seen in "Yogi Berra; It Ain't Over"), Larry Heider, Miki Herman, Taran Killam (last heard in "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse"), Scott Kirkwood, Jason Lenzi, Bob Mackie, Craig Miller, Kyle Newman, Donny Osmond (last seen in "Little Richard: I Am Everything"), Patton Oswalt (last seen in "Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire"), Mark Pevers, Jonathan Rinzler, Lenny Ripps, Matthew Robbins, Steve Sansweet (last seen in "Fanarchy"), Paul Scheer (last seen in "Slice"), Steve Schuster, Pete Sears, Kevin Smith (last seen in "Clerks III"), Rolland Smith, Yuichi Sugiyama, Bruce Vilanch (last seen in "I Am Divine"), Rick Wagner, Brian Ward, "Weird Al" Yankovic (last seen in "Animation Outlaws"),
with archive footage of J.J. Abrams (last seen in "Spielberg"), David Acomba, Bea Arthur (last seen in "Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed"), Carol Burnett (ditto), David Bowie (last seen in "Luther: Never Too Much"), Art Carney (last seen in "Becoming Mike Nichols"), Diahann Carroll (last seen in "Valerie"), Shaun Cassidy, Cher (last seen in "Billie Jean King: Portrait of a Pioneer"), Tim Conway (last seen in "Betty White: First Lady of Television"), Howard Cosell (last seen in "Ali & Cavett: The Tale of the Tapes"), Bing Crosby (last seen in "Sid & Judy"), Kaley Cuoco (last seen in "The Wedding Ringer"), Anthony Daniels (last heard in "Jim Henson: Idea Man"), Roger Ebert (last seen in "Faye"), Jon Favreau (last seen in "Deadpool & Wolverine"), Dave Filoni, Carrie Fisher (last seen in "If These Walls Could Sing"), Harrison Ford (last seen in "Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story"), Mark Hamill (ditto), Robin Williams (ditto), Jeff Garlin (last seen in "Daddy Day Care"), Sean Giambrone (last heard in "The Secret Life of Pets 2"), Fred Grandy, Alec Guinness (last seen in "Spielberg"), Simon Helberg (also carrying over from "Dear Mr. Watterson"), Kunal Nayyar (ditto), Bob Hope (last seen in "Beatles '64"), Bernie Kopell (last seen in "Get Smart"), Harvey Korman (last heard in "The Flintstones"), Kris Kristofferson (last seen in "Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary"), Elvis Presley (ditto), Gary Kurtz (last seen in "Jodorowsky's Dune"), Ted Lange, Jay Leno (last seen in "Tom Hanks: The Nomad"), Charlie Lippincott, George Lucas (last seen in "Join or Die"), Paul Lynde (last seen in "Say Hey, Willie Mays!"), Gavin MacLeod (last seen in "Being Mary Tyler Moore"), Ann-Margret (last seen in "Queen Bees"), Peter Mayhew (last seen in "Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi"), Wayne Newton (last seen in "Class Action Park"), Conan O'Brien (last seen in "Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple"), Marie Osmond (also last seen in "Little Richard: I Am Everything"), Richard Pryor (last seen in "Albert Brooks: Defending My Life"), Robert Shields, Clive A. Smith, Kevin Sussman (last seen in "Ira & Abby"), Ken Welch, Mitzie Welch, Raquel Welch (last seen in "Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story"), Jill Whelan, Barry Williams (last seen in "The Brady Bunch Movie"), Henry Winkler (last heard in "Scream" (2002)), Lorene Yarnell,
RATING: 7 out of 10 Lifeday gifts
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