Why the Star Wars Holiday Special was so bad, in the words of the man who made it

It's become something of a tragic holiday tradition for me.  Every year about this time, I watch The Star Wars Holiday Special - considered by many to be the very worst two hours of television ever produced - and do a running commentary about it for my friends on Facebook.  Why do I torment myself like this?  I have no idea apart from the comedy (?) value.  I'll do most anything within reason (emphasis on "reason"!) to make my friends laugh.  And if it takes subjecting myself to this... thing... then it's a minor sacrifice to make each holiday season.

Pic I took of my TV screen while watching The Star Wars Holiday Special,
here depicting the lowest moment of Harvey Korman's career

For whatever reason, I didn't watch the Star Wars Holiday Special when I usually do between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  I wound up setting it to play last night, after I came home from helping some friends catalog and inventory a bunch of Cabbage Patch Kids, Pound Puppies, and Care Bears (do kids still go for things like that?).  I think maybe I did it because I was reminded about lunch time yesterday that I still hadn't seen the special this year.  What jogged that thought was this interview that SlashFilm did with Steve Binder, the director of the special.  This interview was originally published in 2015 but it's so authoritative and enlightening that it should be required reading for anyone who during the holidays is curious enough about the Star Wars thingy to want to watch it.

Long story short: Star Wars, the epic space opera that had thus far only had one entry to establish itself and call its own, something that had already won millions of fans across the globe, was treated like a Seventies-era variety show.  It was two successful genres that enough people thought were compatible with each other as a combined product.  Instead it produced one of the biggest FUBARs in the modern history of all pop culture.  And that's how we got the Jefferson Starship, Harvey Korman (in three different roles!), Art Carney, Bea Arthur, and Diahann Carroll (what was that she was doing?) mushed together with ten minutes (?!?) of Wookiees growling at each other, an overly made-up Mark Hamill (I call him "Mannequin Skywalker"), Leia looking a little tipsy, and a cartoon short featuring Boba Fett (his first ever appearance).

So the holiday special is a collision of Star Wars and variety show.  I can see that.  I can even appreciate that.  It does make sense, in a perverse sort of way.  And now that we've got artificial intelligence wheedling its way into everything, maybe by next year some enterprising youngster will fix the Star Wars Holiday Special by inserting Jim Nabors or Sonny and Cher into it.

Jim Nabors as an Imperial officer?  Well gaw-aaahhh-lee!!

(I almost forgot to note that I did NOT finish watching the special last night.  I got as far as the animated short before deciding my heart just wasn't into this this time.  Maybe it's something better appreciated between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  So I guess there's always next year!)

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THE STAR WARS HOLIDAY SPECIAL aired 37 years ago tonight

It was on this night in 1978 that The Star Wars Holiday Special - arguably the WORST two-hours of television in history - aired on CBS.

Y'all won't buh-LEEEVE what is going on here.

So in honor of this misauspicious occasion and thanks to some poor tortured soul on YouTube, here it is (absent some music for copyright purposes):

It's all here: Chewbacca's son Lumpy, Mark Hamill's make-up overkill, Princess Leia's singing, Boba Fett's first-ever appearance (the special's one redeeming feature), Harvey Korman, Bea Arthur (?!), lots of unused B footage from A New Hope, what can only be described as a porno machine... and about twenty-seven minutes of incomprehensible Wookiee grunting.

One viewing and you'll see why George Lucas has said he would take a sledgehammer to every copy if he could.  But what about you?  Can you endure to the end?

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The night the Star Wars empire almost self-destructed

Today marks an extraordinarily dubious anniversary for the Star Wars saga. Because it was thirty years ago tonight, on November 17th, 1978, that CBS aired the first and last broadcast of The Star Wars Holiday Special.

The two-hour schlockfest is now widely considered by many to be the absolutely worst block of television in the history of anything...

"One of these things is not like the others..."

I'm not even going to try to pretend to make sense of this... thing. If you want to see it, you'll be able to find it all over the 'net and if you don't want to see it well, that's two hours of your life that're your own to spend how you wish. I remember watching this as a way wee lad on the night that it aired, and even then I thought it was pretty terrible. I mean, Harvey Korman as a four-armed alien version of Julia Child?!?

No wonder that George Lucas has strenuously prayed - both privately and publicly - that every copy of The Star Wars Holiday Special might somehow be incinerated. The "special" came to be considered the low point in the careers of everyone involved, including Bea Arthur and Art Carney. Let's not even mention Carrie Fisher singing "What Can You Get A Wookiee For Christmas (When He Already Owns A Comb)?". Or Mark Hamill's post-motorcycle accident "Mannequin Skywalker" plastic-faced visage that reeks of way too much makeup.

Little wonder then that The Star Wars Holiday Special has been branded the worst moment of the entire franchise...

What the hell were they thinking?

But to its credit, The Star Wars Holiday Special did make a few (a few mind ya) decent contributions to the saga. The Wookiee homeworld of Kashyyyk was introduced, though it wouldn't get any more screen time until Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith in 2005. So was Chewbacca's family, which would be cemented in the mythology's canon by way of Expanded Universe literature. And then there is Boba Fett: the most famous bounty hunter in all of fiction made his debut in an animated segment during the special, just in time to whet fans' appetites for more of him a year and a half later when The Empire Strikes Back came out.

And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the fun that I got to have with The Star Wars Holiday Special when I was Humor editor of TheForce.net: it provided plenty of "bantha poodoo" for the Star Wars Captioning feature, like this one and this one and this one and this one.

For what it's worth, I think The Star Wars Holiday Special stands as a curious fixture of not only a successful legend, but of a cultural mindset as well. Something like this is a unique product of the Seventies: there's no way it would have been sanctioned even a few years later. For that at least, I have to render some faint appreciation for The Star Wars Holiday Special.

Anyhoo, if... if... you want to find out more, check out StarWarsHolidaySpecial.com. And if you just want to see how this fiasco begins, here's the opening courtesy of YouTube...

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