A Disturbance in the Force, 2023.
Directed by Jeremy Coon and Steve Kozak.
Featuring Bruce Vilanch, Kevin Smith, “Weird Al” Yankovic, Mick Garris, Donny Osmond, Jason Lenzi, Seth Green, Taran Killam, Steve Binder, Craig Miller, Gilbert Gottfried, Lenny Ripps, Brian Ward, Paul Scheer, Kyle Newman, Matthew Robbins, Miki Herman, Marc Pevers, Jonathan Rinzler, Anthony Caleca, Larry Heider, Bob Mackie, Bonnie Burton, Beverly Abdurahmen, Alisa Abdurahmen, Scott Kirkwood, Steve Schuster, Gus Lopez, and Steve Sansweet.
SYNOPSIS:
Forty-five years ago, many Star Wars fans found themselves intrigued, perplexed, and often agitated when they watched the Star Wars Holiday Special during its only airing. How did such an oddball TV show come about? The great new documentary A Disturbance in the Force, out now on DVD, Blu-ray, and streaming, answers that question.
I know, I’ve said it before, but this is a reason why I love watching and reviewing a documentary like A Disturbance in the Force: It’s so much fun to push those Gen X nostalgia buttons. As someone born in 1970, I’m in the demo, as they say, for this one.
If you’re a Star Wars fan, you’ve likely heard about the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special, which had a single airing on CBS on November 17, 1978 and afterwards went straight into a box labeled “Things George Lucas Really, Really Doesn’t Want to Talk About.”
If you’re curious how the Holiday Special came about, this is the documentary for you. (And if you want to know how A Disturbance in the Force came about, check out my interview with Jeremy Coon, who co-directed and co-produced it.)
Assembled from interviews with some of the folks who worked on the show, as well as Kevin Smith, Patton Oswalt, Seth Green, and other well-known Star Wars fans, this documentary opens by examining the media environment in which Star Wars existed in 1977 and 1978.
The movie was a huge hit, of course, but unless you watched TV on a regular basis back then, you probably don’t fully understand how it fit into a landscape full of sitcoms, cop shows and other dramas, and variety shows. I know people like to say that what comes around goes around, but I don’t think variety shows will ever be due for a revival.
To prove that point, A Disturbance in the Force serves up a series of clips from variety shows of that era, including an episode of the Donny & Marie show (that one was on the TV pretty much every week in my home) that incorporated the Star Wars characters in a way that was even more wacko than the Holiday Special.
Thankfully, Donny Osmond is able to look back on that part of his life and laugh. He and others who were part of variety specials on TV at the time, most of whom worked on the Holiday Special, then set the stage for how the Holiday Special happened. Unsurprisingly, the main folks involved in it were well-versed in doing variety shows but woefully inadequate in their Star Wars knowledge.
Lucasfilm’s involvement is a big part of the proceedings, of course, and the sentiment regarding whether or not Lucas can be blamed for the resulting mess is decidedly mixed. The foundation of the Holiday Special was based on George Lucas’s ideas, but it seems that cut a deal and hoped for the best, since he was more focused on moving Lucasfilm north and pre-production on The Empire Strikes Back.
There are plenty of great anecdotes from all of the participants, including, of all people, Bob Mackie, who did a lot of the costume design. (I did not know that. (Yes, I say that in Johnny Carson’s voice in my head.)) The end result is a pretty thorough examination of something that’s one of the oddest pop culture artifacts in existence.
Yes, my eight-year-old self was in front of the TV for the Holiday Special. Like Kevin Smith, I eagerly anticipated a show that I thought would maybe continue the story from the movie. It didn’t, but I enjoyed it anyway, since the variety format didn’t phase me, having seen a zillion such shows during the 70s, and I was thrilled to be able to see anything that gave me a little more Star Wars.
I revisited the show about twenty years ago, courtesy of an Internet download, and, like Jeremy Coon said during my interview with him, I found it to be rough viewing. The Boba Felt cartoon is a wonderful diamond in the rough, though, and I’ve revisited it a few times since Disney+ made it available.
Will the Star Wars Holiday Special ever see an officially sanctioned release of some kind, whether on physical media or just streaming? Plenty of interviewees in A Disturbance in the Force would like to see that, and I’ll admit I would too, even just to have a weird bit of Star Wars history preserved.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Brad Cook
Originally published December 20, 2023. Updated April 22, 2024.
