A Disturbance In The Force Directors Uncover The Secrets Of The Star Wars Holiday Special [Exclusive Interview]
There are few if any pieces of "Star Wars" lore quite as infamous as that of the elusive "Star Wars Holiday Special." The made-for-TV special, produced at the height of the franchise's initial wave of popularity after "A New Hope" hit theaters, was created with the cooperation of George Lucas and aired on CBS. But it aired once and only once, gaining a reputation as notoriously terrible — so much so that Lucas did his best to wipe its memory from the face of the Earth. Now, a pair of filmmakers have chronicled the journey of the train wreck that is the "Star Wars Holiday Special" in a new documentary titled "A Disturbance in the Force."
The documentary is making its premiere at SXSW in Austin, Texas this week after years of development. It features interviews with many, many people involved, as well as noted fans of a galaxy far, far away, including writer Bruce Vilanch, Seth Green, Paul Scheer, Kevin Smith, and many more. Directors Jeremy Coon ("Raiders! The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made") and Steve Kozak ("The Tonight Show") seemingly left no stone unturned in their attempt to uncover the secrets of this bizarre totem of '70s pop culture. For those who may know little to nothing about the special, this doc aims to be the tell-all for fans and casual viewers. It also doesn't hurt that noted pop culture lover Adam F. Goldberg ("The Goldbergs") is on board as a producer.
In honor of the documentary's premiere at SXSW, we sat down with both Coon and Kozak to discuss the long-in-the-works look at this odd piece of "Star Wars" history. We discuss how they both discovered the Holiday Special, bad variety television of the '70s, the situation with "Star Wars Detours," and much more.
Note: This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
'Jeremy and I love Star Wars, but we're not obsessive people'
I often say that "Star Wars" is about as close as I get to religion. I don't have memories that go back further than "Star Wars." I have a fascination as anyone does with the Holiday Special, but for you guys specifically, what was your relationship to "Star Wars" in general before taking this on?
Coon: I was born in '79, so I missed the initial boat. But I mean, the first movie I remember seeing in theaters was "Return of the Jedi" when I was four. I've been a big "Star Wars" fan since then. I'm not as fanatical some people, but I definitely love the movies, and the culture, and everything about it. I've always been a big fan.
Kozak: It's interesting. I don't think we ever discussed that. I think what probably helped with this project is that Jeremy and I love "Star Wars," but we're not obsessive people. You would think we would be, but we just brought obsessive people into the project with us to help us out. I'm 60, so I saw it when I was about 13 or whatever. Big studio in Westwood, California. Completely blew my mind. I remember some friends dragged me to it and I insisted that I hated science fiction, but, of course, it was something completely different. It was a completely different brand.
As it relates to the doc, how did you guys come to be aware of the Holiday Special? Because as you go over in the movie, the thing only aired once and it was before VHS and it was before the internet. Some people didn't find out about this until years later. Some people didn't know it existed. What was your first encounter with it?
Coon: I just know everyone has a different entry point, like you said. Mine was 2002. I saw bootlegged VHS. I mean, I think Steve actually saw it, didn't you?
Kozak: I did. I'm ashamed that I was that old to have seen it when it came out. One of the things we discuss in the documentary is this kind of low bar that there is for a variety television. They'd bring in this person for the kids, and this person for the adults. There was a little bit for everyone, so that's what the Holiday Special was to me when I was a kid. I knew that I wasn't going to get more than 10 minutes of Han Solo, but it was enough. We had very low expectations. The media is just so different now. It gives you exactly what you want. "You want Han Solo? I'm going to give you a whole movie of it."
The biggest thing that stood out to me is you guys have quite a bit of footage from the actual special in the doc. George Lucas famously tried to bury this thing for years and there's no official release of it. Did you get permission to put the footage in the documentary, or how did you guys get around that sticky part of it?
Kozak: As you know, there are a lot of films that evaluate, comment on, critique arts and media, certain media. I don't know why there hadn't been a documentary, or even very little reported about the special, but I come from licensing, fair use, and I know that if you're conservative enough, which we very much were, you can use a decent amount of unlicensed footage to make your point. I think, to our credit and Jeremy's credit, we were very conservative. There's not a ton of footage of the special in the doc.
That's actually both for legal reasons, respect reasons of the ownership of it, for Lucas's perspective, and also for the fact that it's just hard to watch. I don't know if we had permission to use a ton of footage if we'd actually have used that much footage. You know what I mean?
'Each one was worse than the next'
Speaking of hard to watch, you include a fair amount of footage from other variety specials from around that time, because one of the points you try to make is that these variety specials that were being produced around that time, most of them were very bad, and some of them were maybe worse than the "Star Wars Holiday Special" itself. How did you decide how much of that variety special stuff to actually include? Because it is brutal to watch.
Coon: I don't know. I mean, part of editing was going through all this. Steve gave me all this footage to go through, so I hadn't seen any of this stuff until I started going through it. I'm just like, "This is gold," because it's just like Wayne Newton at SeaWorld — why was this a thing? Why was SeaWorld a place where people did concerts? There was a whole series of that. Each one was worse than the next. I don't feel like everything is terrible, but things where you just see clips of obscure stuff, those are so much fun. We kind of want to unfold that in the film as a way to basically create a time capsule of the 1970s. This is what it felt like to put it in context, and I think that's what really helped with it.
Kozak: I think it also shows, like Jeremy started to say, that there was far worse stuff than the "Star Wars Holiday Special." I mean, there was the Telly Savalas special. There was the Ringo Starr special, and the Paul Lynde Halloween special, and Wayne Newton and SeaWorld. I mean, how do you beat that?
One of the cornerstones that you point to is this "Donny and Marie" special, and even by some people's own admission, that might have been worse than the Holiday Special. Why do you guys think that "Donny and Marie" special doesn't get quite as much of a spotlight shown on it in terms of hatred from the fan base?
Coon: I think a lot of people don't know about the "Donny and Marie" thing, at least that I've talked to, because they're like, "What's that? That's not the special." I think it's also the fact that it's part of a longer show. I mean, it's probably 10 minutes. I don't know how long the actual finale is, but it's like 10 minutes long. It doesn't feel as offensive as the 96 minute approach they took with the Holiday Special.
One quote that stuck out in this has to do with how this might have come about, which was George Lucas had this meeting with Warner Bros. and they were like, "You'll be forgotten tomorrow," or something like that. I believe Seth Green said, "The Star Wars Holiday Special may well have been created out of spite." Did you have a favorite thing you discovered during the doc? Because for me, that was the thing that stood out the most.
Coon: I mean, that's a big get, because the reason we know about that is from a Charlie Lippincott Facebook post. Because forever, we were like, "Well, there's this meeting. They met with someone, we don't know who." There's actually more to unpack out of that meeting. Frank Wells also was the executive that hacked up "THX 1138," so Lucas already did not have a good relationship with him. To have him go into this meeting, and now he's the president of Warner Bros., to get slighted like that, I'm sure he was just furious coming out of that. That's something we felt was probably the biggest thing that was not understood before we started doing research.
Kozak: That blew my mind. Because first, Lippincott had told me that it was some executive at Warner Bros. I spent hours, total hours just trying to figure out, calling up executives if they knew who that person might be. Then all of a sudden, the name came out. Frank Wells is a really relevant figure in the film industry. I thought that was fascinating.
'It's ridiculous they're not being released'
Seth Green is in this. He worked on "Star Wars Detours," which is something that was finished. There's tons of episodes of it and it's presumably never going to see the light of day, but you guys actually have little bits of "Detours" in here. Did you guys talk to Seth at all about "Detours" during this, or did you guys stay on point in terms of the Holiday Special stuff?
Coon: I mean, I talked to him. Some stuff he didn't want to talk about on camera. He told me there were actually holiday references in "Detours" and some ideas of scripts they never made. But I mean, "Detours" is its own side story I would love to get because Weird Al [Yankovic]'s the guy [who] did all the music for it, so we talked to him briefly about it. I think they have 40 episodes all in the can that [George] Lucas paid for just sitting there. It's ridiculous they're not being released, and, at least according to Seth, doesn't seem ... like you said, it's not going to come out anytime soon.
That's what's nuts to me is it's something like 40 episodes. They're just done. It's just crazy to me that they can't just throw that up on Disney+. It's finished stuff. It's wild.
Coon: Yeah, I mean, I assume it's the leadership. I assume [Lucasfilm President] Kathleen Kennedy's the one that's [stopping it]. I mean, the initial reason they didn't want to do it is because when Disney bought [Lucasfilm], they're like, "We don't want this to be people's introduction to 'Star Wars.' It's like this quirky comedy thing." You think at this point they'd get over it. I would love to check them out. I think I've only seen the one episode that leaked, but it seems like it would be a lot of fun.
So you've been working on the film for a very long time. You're getting this premiere at SXSW, one of the biggest film festivals in the world. How does that feel, and how are you guys feeling leading into that premiere?
Coon: It's a dream coming true. We set out to make this, and we're saying SXSW is the perfect place to premiere this. That's the right audience. That's who we want. To actually have it happen, it's really exciting. I think every film, we have this kind of [feeling of], "Are people really going to like it?" So far, everyone's been really responsive to it, but it's going to be different to actually sit there with an audience and see how they respond. But either way, it's a dream come true.
Kozak: Yeah, the response has been quite amazing. I've said this before, but Jeremy's been through this experience. To just put something out there and have people respond so positively, I just wanted to make a film about it. I wasn't realizing that so many people were going to have a positive experience about it, an experience about it at all, and so it's quite a thrill, quite a thrill.
"A Disturbance in the Force" does not yet have a release date yet.