Tears of a Wook­iee – The Star Wars Hol­i­day Spe­cial at 40

This year marks the 40^th anniver­sary of The Star Wars Hol­i­day Spe­cial, and it’s time we gave it a break. A sea­son­al show hasti­ly green­lit by CBS to push mer­chan­dise and keep fans thirsty for The Empire Strikes Back, this hodge­podge pro­duc­tion was nev­er going to live up to the ground­break­ing suc­cess of Star Wars even before its doomed jour­ney to the small screen began.

The script was revised with­in an inch of its life, actors in full Wook­iee attire dropped like flies on set in the LA sum­mer heat, direc­tor David Acom­ba walked away after film­ing just a hand­ful of scenes. George Lucas, his name point­ed­ly wiped from the pro­duc­tion, has not only pub­licly con­demned the show but called for the destruc­tion of its now strict­ly boot­legged existence.

And yet, decades lat­er, The Star Wars Hol­i­day Spe­cial is cel­e­brat­ed as a dis­as­trous but fas­ci­nat­ing smudge on the fran­chise, a right-of-pas­sage watched from behind the lat­ticed fin­gers of long-suf­fer­ing fans and the mor­bid­ly curi­ous alike. ​“There has nev­er been any­thing else like it,” says Bruce Vilanch, a six-time Emmy win­ner and for­mer head writer for the Oscars, who was brought on to help write the show ear­ly in his career. ​“This thing has lin­gered large­ly because the Star Wars fran­chise has endured through gen­er­a­tions of kids who dis­cov­ered it on video and grew up to see the new movies in the­atres. Some­where in there, the inter­net came along and they dis­cov­ered this bizarre hybrid whatever-it-is.”

Film­ing of the Hol­i­day Spe­cial began in the sum­mer of ​’78, at the same time that The Empire Strikes Back was being shot and self-financed by Lucas. At a time when sequels were not only unusu­al but risky, the Hol­i­day Spe­cial need­ed to be a hit. Vilanch was hired to tack­le the vari­ety show aspect of the script. ​“My agent – now resid­ing on the Death Star – told me it was going to be all the Star Wars char­ac­ters singing ​‘Jin­gle Bells’ and ​‘God Rest Ye Mer­ry Impe­r­i­al Stormtroop­ers’, but I had a feel­ing that wasn’t the case. He said Lucas was going to be involved and it was going to be shot like a movie, but with lots of guest stars and pro­duc­tion num­bers. It sound­ed insane. But once I lit the pipe, it made a lot more sense. This was the ​’70s.”

The film’s con­cept – a Wook­iee nation­al hol­i­day sim­i­lar to Earth Day – wasn’t com­plete­ly implau­si­ble; A New Hope focus­es so intent­ly on Luke’s ori­gins and the intro­duc­tion of Han, Leia and Ben that there was the free­dom to cre­ate an entire­ly new back­sto­ry for Chew­bac­ca. Here­in lies the show’s biggest dis­ap­point­ment; instead of an excit­ing and dis­tant new world for the char­ac­ters to play in, fans were pre­sent­ed with a mod­est home plucked straight out of sub­ur­bia, com­plete with an apron-wear­ing Wook­iee housewife.

It’s only when the show leans into its vari­ety for­mat that it real­ly starts to have some fun, spin­ning Lucas’ galaxy far, far away into a flam­boy­ant, psy­che­del­ic play­ground for mis­fits and per­form­ers. A camp cook­ing show has Har­vey Kor­man in drag rustling up some­thing called Ban­tha Sur­prise, and a musi­cal num­ber set in the Mos Eis­ley Can­ti­na unites its shady patrons in a spir­it­ed act of rebel­lion against an Impe­r­i­al-enforced cur­few. For some rea­son Jef­fer­son Star­ship per­form, singing into what look like neon corn dogs – and they slay.

The most impres­sive seg­ment though is a short ani­ma­tion com­mis­sioned by Lucas from Nel­vana, an inde­pen­dent stu­dio co-found­ed by Clive A Smith, a fre­quent col­lab­o­ra­tor of the Bea­t­les. Instruct­ed by Lucas to mim­ic the style of Jean Giraud, the stu­dio cre­at­ed a mini-sto­ry with­in the Star Wars time­line that intro­duced Boba Fett for the first time. The sketch, with its pop punk palette and flu­id, dreamy land­scapes gave the most bor­ing boun­ty hunter in the uni­verse a daz­zling entrance into the fran­chise that the films sim­ply couldn’t provide.

Inevitably, The Star Wars Hol­i­day Spe­cial suf­fered from aban­doned hope. Every­one involved want­ed it to be over, from the writ­ers and pro­duc­ers to its cen­tral cast, whose sparky charis­ma in A New Hope mor­phed into bare­ly sti­fled dis­dain as they paced the stage. If Simon Pegg’s jilt­ed Star Wars fan Tim Bis­ley in Spaced is to be believed and ​“Jar Jar Binks makes the Ewoks look like fuck­ing Shaft,” The Star Wars Hol­i­day Spe­cial makes Jar Jar look like Snake Plissken. But who wants cool and tough when you can have com­mu­nal, cringe-induc­ing fun instead?

The show aired just once in North Amer­i­ca, at 8pm on 17 Novem­ber, 1978, to one mil­lion view­ers (many of whom pre­sum­ably switched off around the halfway mark), but its lega­cy lives on in the far cor­ners of fan forums, in the howls of cult cin­ema­go­ers the world over, and in the mem­o­ries of those who made it. Vilanch, even with the show now years behind him, is fol­lowed by it to this day.

When asked what lessons he took from The Star Wars Hol­i­day Spe­cial into his forth­com­ing career, it’s regret at not savour­ing the expe­ri­ence more that over­rides any regret of work­ing on the show in the first place. ​“If I’d known I was going to be asked this ques­tion 40 years lat­er, I would have paid more attention.”