Thursday, December 25, 2008

Ah, the Star Wars Holiday Special. It was pretty bad.

It will never receive a proper DVD release, and I think (even) if I showed it to my nephew, who loves Star Wars, he would burn his Star Wars Lego video game.

But it's a strange memory in the minds of those of us who grew up in the '70s playing with the old Kenner Star Wars figures that are now worth a lot of money.

It's generally reckoned to be the most ill-conceived Star Wars product ever made. Worse than the (not-so) "special editions," worse than the dialogue in Episode III...well, no...Nothing is worse than the dialogue in Episode III :

[After the massacre at the Jedi temple]
Obi-Wan Kenobi: Not even the younglings survived!


But it was so bad, in fact, that many of us have oft-times wondered...just how did it get so bad?

Vanity Fair wondered that too.

Excerpts:

Although Lucas has subsequently had the special disappeared from American television—it has never again been officially aired or released in any video format—Star Wars geeks have not let the world forget that, even more than Jar Jar Binks, this is the one true embarrassment attached to the mostly superlative Star Wars universe.


While flipping through a book of production stills, [writer Bruce] Vilanch says, the Star Wars creator came across a particularly provocative-looking creature. “Lucas, who had been pretty stolid the whole time, turned to me and said: ‘Oh yes, we call him Cuntface.’ And that’s what it looked like, actually. I noticed in a later movie”—Return of the Jedi—“that Lucas had, like, a huge vagina in the desert that sucked things in. So, I think this is one of his leitmotifs.”


Twenty-eight years later, [writer Lenny] Ripps says he still hears from fans and fanzines that want to know about the special. “I think in a bigger sense, it’s nice to know that Star Wars does have feet of clay,” he says. “Ultimately, when all is said and done, it’s an outer-space movie. It’s not sacred. And what has amused me the most is that somehow people think the special discredits the image of this sacred text.”


Thanks hâi jor nôk dtam-raa yiw, Corey Klemow.

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