What is with the Holiday Special?

Granted, I was not born when this originally aired on TV, but from the looks of it, it may never be seen in the light of day.
I have seen a few clips on youtube, and yikes, it was horrible. Made Troll 2 look good. How much was Lucas involved in this special? What are the actors' views on it? Why has it garnered the reputation that it has now?

 

CBS produced the special and Lucas and Lucasfilm had little to no involvement with it. Lucasfilm was approached by CBS who asked if they could do what was basically a Star Wars variety special. Not knowing any better, they let CBS do it, much to their regret. Sheppard Smith (from FOX News) pretty much summed up its problems the best. He said it took the worst of Star Wars and combined it with the absolute worst of variety television and made one of the worst TV specials ever. The actors pretty much agree with that. There's a funny video on YouTube of Conan O'Brien asking Harrison Ford about it, and Ford pretty much implied that he thought it was abysmal.

The reason it has the status is has now is because a) it was atrocious, b) Lucas would like everyone to think it didn't happen and has said if he had the time he'd take a sledge hammer and track down every copy of it, c) it was never shown or released again, and d) it was one of those things that was so bad it came back around to good again, giving it a cult following.

 

Watching the Holiday Special actually gave me a headache...

 

Are you sure about that? Good again? I only ever read and hear horror stories.

 

I struggled to watch the first 10 minutes. I've not tried to repeat that feat since.

 

I could barely make it through even with the fellas from Rifftrax mercilessly hammering away at it.

It's just all kinds of bad.

 

Yeah but it's one of those things that has a strange trance over you. You're like, this is the worst thing I've ever seen, and yet I can't turn it off.

 

The cartoon with Boba Fett is pretty cool, actually, in a primitive sort of way.

My favorite bit of trivia about the Xmas Special is how Matt Stone and Trey Parker homaged the "Fighting the Frizzies" news teasers from a heavily bootlegged copy of the special in the "Mr. Hanky's Christmas Classics" episode of South Park.

 

Yeah, when watching more than 10 minutes of it, water-boarding starts to looking like a good alternative pastime.

 

So if water boarding is "advanced interrogation techniques," does that mean the Holiday Special is torture, or just "super duper advanced interrogation techniques?"

Quick, call Cheney! The world must know.

 

I've seen the Holiday Special a few times now. It is definitely an acquired taste, but I feel that all true Star Wars fans should try to watch it at least once. The animated part with Fett isn't so bad.

 

All you need to know about the Star Wars Holiday Special can be found here:

http://www.starwarsholidayspecial.com/

That should answer the question of 'How', 'When' & 'What' it was.

'Why' it was, well, I think we're all still working on that one.

 

Yeah, its a shame. They had good costumes, props, budget etc to make a very good show.

I like the way Lenny Ripps, co-author of the original script, sums it up :

"The ideas were all right but I'm not sure they belonged in the same room."

 

that the holiday special is both uniquely terrifying and a work of unutterable drivel may be the only thing every star wars fan ever agrees on

 

Interstingly enough, I have a memory of sitting down and watching the SW Holiday special as a kid back when it aired on TV in '78, but my memories of what went on in the special are virtually nil. This is probably a good thing, based on everything that I've heard/seen subsequently.

Though I don't have any desire to ever see HS live-action sequences again, I have long had a wish to see the Boba Fett animated segment again. If the mid 1980's Droids/Ewoks cartoon are ever released on DVD in their entirety (a long-shot, I know), it would be great if this animated BF segment was included on one of the sets as a Special Feature. This would be very appropriate, since the same animation company did the work for both the '80s cartoons and the animated segment.

 

From the FAQ page at the site linked to by Darth_Nub, above:

17. How involved was George Lucas with this project?

In Lucas?s own words ?(The Star Wars Holiday Special) really didn?t have much to do with (Lucasfilm)...We kind of let (CBS) do it.?* Lucas did have some involvement, however. According to issue 69/70 of Filmfax magazine, the original story was a collaboration between Lucas and Smith-Hemion Productions. Lucas, (according to Lenny Ripps, who wrote the first draft of the special), "wanted to make a sweet and sentimental vision of a holiday season." Ripps believes the end result did not match Lucas's vision. Also Ripps notes that the initial story was conceived by Lucas. Why his name is not included in the credits is unknown (it is possible that Lucas asked for his name to be removed from the credits after seeing the final result). The Star Wars Holiday Special's original director, David Acomba, stated in that same issue of Filmfax that Lucas's involvement in the production was basically attending a couple production meetings and discussing things he did and did not want to use in the show, but the show was only given his initial attention since he was working on many other projects. Lucas was also somewhat involved with the Boba Fett cartoon. According to the Star Wars Insider issue #27 after Nelvana presented Lucas with their idea for the cartoon, Lucas helped resolve two weak parts of the story. Also, Filmfax 69/70 states that the character of Boba Fett was used in the cartoon because George Lucas liked the design of the Shock Troopers, special "Green Beret" type of Storm Troopers (designed by Joe Johnston) which were originally intended to appear in The Empire Strikes Back, but ended up being cut. The Shock Troopers' uniform was the outfit which Boba Fett wore, but all white.

*http://www.staticmultimedia.com/content/film/features/feature_1115643931

 

I consider the Holiday Special overlong and boring, but I don't hate it. Hell, I'd take it over any of the prequels any day.

 

Ouch. At least the prequels didn't have Wookiee sex machines.

 

Wow....maybe I do need to watch it again....

 

I've seen it, it is incredibly terrible, at most points not so bad it's good, just so bad it's terrible. There are a few parts that are funny, they're not worth it, but in a way, the whole thing is a right of passage. It was on that day i became a man.
Also, the Boba animation is actually pretty awesome in a trippy sort of way.

 

I'm happy to admit I've got a soft spot for the Holiday Special, awful though much of it is. For years I had extremely vague memories of seeing the Star Wars characters in a household setting, but thought I'd either dreamed it all or just confused my memories somehow, much as my sole memory of seeing ANH for the first time at the age of 3 was of the cantina band being all Greedos.

It's very much a trip back in time - while the OT itself hasn't really dated, the Holiday Special is well & truly stuck in 1978, something of a glimpse back at a pre-Saga Star Wars. While there's some rotten musical numbers, heaps of non-subtitled gibberish from Chewie's family, downright pathetic attempts at comedy & a masturbating Wookiee, there's also the real Luke, Han, Leia, Chewbacca, C-3PO, R2-D2 & Darth Vader.

The Boba Fett cartoon is also of genuine interest, being his very first appearance. Unfortunately, Han looks like he's suffering from some sort of hideous deformity in the cartoon, & he's not meant to.

Even more fascinating is some unused footage from ANH - a re-dubbed scene of Vader & Chief Bast on the Death Star, & a brief shot of a couple of aliens in Mos Eisley:

http://www.starwarsholidayspecial.com/swcs/clips/Vader-Bast_1.avi
http://www.starwarsholidayspecial.com/swcs/episode4/Bast.html

http://www.starwarsholidayspecial.com/swcs/clips/Lost_Cut-Mos_Eisley.avi (last shot)

 

Mark Hamill said on the forcecast that he had actually refused to do it. But because george personally called and asked him to for the fans, he agreed, but didn't do everything that cbs had originally wanted. Mark said that he knew it would be terrible and he didn't think Luke Skywalker should sing. I don't blame him haha. His reaction when Jimmy Mac brought it up was hilarious. He said the reason Lucasfilm agreed to it was because the toys weren't ready for Christmas that year, and they wanted fans to be reminded of Star Wars and that more is coming in the future.

 

Watchability increases about a hundredfold whenever any of the Big Three are actually onscreen (okay, except maybe for Leia's song).

The whole appeal of a "Star Wars" special is that you get an extra chance to 'hang out' with the characters from the movies. It could have been full of cheesy song-and-dance schtick, but as long as it we got to see Luke and Han doing it, I don't think it would have been nearly so abysmal.

 

I'm hoping that sometime starwars.com will make the cartoon segment viewable online.

 

Despite GL's somewhat apocryphal comments to the contrary, last I heard, the SWHS master tape(s) do still exist.
Rumours of an official release pop up every couple of years, but I can't see it happening anytime soon. There was a segment about the special in Empire Of Dreams which was cut, which would presumably have included footage. Talk of including the animated segment in some sort of release have been suggested since the early nineties, but, again, nothing's happened.

If you haven't seen it, there's relatively good quality copies all over the Internet on various filesharing networks - just download it, watch it, then breathe a sigh of relief that you didn't spend any money on it. Then mourn the 90+ minutes (plus all the time you wondered about it) that you'll never get back.

There's a reason it's never been released officially on video. A very good reason.