When it comes to regrettable TV specials, there's one name the stands above the rest . . . yes, I'm talking about the infamous Star Wars Christmas Special. Many thanks to AnneArchy for this link to an article about the holiday menace from Vanity Fair, which gives us a peek into the demented minds that brought you singing stormtroopers.
Interestingly, I think it also gives you glimpses into the causes behind the travesty that would become the new trilogy and the Jar-Jar-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. It has long been my contention that the major problem with the newer movies is George Lucas' ego--in short, that he is either unwilling to listen to those who point out that some of his ideas (ahem, Greedo shooting first, midichlorians, making the main plot line of the new trilogy into an extended intergalactic C-Span) are total crap. Though there is also the possibility that no one is brave enough to tell him that in the first place. And, once it sprialled out of control when Lucas couldn't do as much work on it as planned, the resultant disaster apparently helped teach him that he needed to exercise total control over all of his projects. Anyway, consider this:
"Lucas was intent on building The Star Wars Holiday Special, as it would be called, around Wookiees—specifically, the family of Chewbacca, Han Solo’s shaggy sidekick, as they outwitted Imperial forces to come together on Life Day, the Wookiee equivalent of Christmas. Suddenly, Vilanch says, the special was in danger of looking like “one long episode of Lassie.”
“I said: ‘You’ve chosen to build a story around these characters who don’t speak. The only sound they make is like fat people having an orgasm,’” the 250-plus-pound Vilanch recalls. “In fact, I told Lucas he could just leave a tape recorder in my bedroom and I’d be happy to do all the looping and Foley work for him.”
"Lucas met these comments with a “glacial” look. “This was his vision, and he could not be moved,” Vilanch says. “And of course Star Wars was so gigantic that he had been validated a hundred times over. So he had what a director needs to have, which is this insane belief in their personal vision, and he was somehow going to make it work.”
And somehow they ended up integrating this Bea Arthur. Even the guy from Jefferson Starship (Bea Arthur and Jefferson Starship?) describes the result in terms of a drug hallucination.
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