If you don’t want to ruin your happy Star Wars memories, you may want to skip this one.
My fellow patriots, I present the Star Wars Holiday Special, circa 1978.
This is one of the worst things I have ever seen in my life. No, I am not kidding.
I have a vague memory of catching this the one and only time it aired, and as undiscriminating as I was at that tender age, I recall I didn’t care for it.
Over the years, I could not retain the painful memory of Harvey Korman in full drag playing an alien cooking instructor, and I blocked the trauma.
Nearly ten minutes of the opening of this thing is devoid of dialogue because it takes place in a wookie household. So we get to watch big hairy people growl and pantomime at each other.
If you can’t bear to sit through all two hours of this thing, check out this excerpt in which Princess Leia sings the Star Wars theme to celebrate Life Day!
No wonder Carrie Fisher started doing drugs.
Thrill to Bea Arthur in a guest starring role which may actually be the best acting in the show. This RiffTrax vid is much funnier than the actual film. (Hat tip: Brad Parnell.)
The most notable thing about this special is the Nelvana animated sequence that introduced Boba Fett. This may be the most inauspicious intro in Star Wars history, as Lucasfilm considers this story canon. Here is an unofficial fan page dedicated to this holiday treat.
Since the family wee ones are big Star Wars fans, I dug this up to share it. But after watching it again, I can’t bear to ruin their childhood, too.
The wee ones are sort of clueless about what my job is, and don’t really understand that when I make pictures of Star Wars people and whatnot, I don’t just do it for fun.
The other day, I tried to have a discussion about the meaning of intellectual property law (boy, Christmas is fun at my house!) and how film and movie rights get sold, and what makes it to the final screen is not necessarily what the author intended. The point went sailing right over their little heads, crowded out by visions of sugarplums. No kid wants to talk legalese over Christmas, I guess.
Regardless, I will bring this up if we ever have this discussion again.
Terrible things happen to intellectual property when it is not carefully managed.
That said, I hope nice Mr. Lucas doesn’t get mad at me for posting this. I like my Star Wars gigs.
I have nightmares about this sort of thing happening to my work, and of course we’ve all seen creators do terrible things to their cherished works for goodness only knows what reasons.
I promise no A Distant Soil characters will ever be drawn as sexualized children wearing nothing but thongs.
Just sayin’.
