Part of what makes the special such a strange relic is that it was produced before Lucasfilm became an empire in its own right. The documentary was directed by Jeremy Coon, who served as a producer on “Napoleon Dynamite” and the director of “Raiders!: The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made.” It features a cast of notable talking heads that include "Weird Al" Yankovic, Kevin Smith, Seth Green and Gilbert Gottfried, as well as several of the principal producers who worked on the special itself. It’s widely considered a badge of honor for completist fans, but the full story of the abysmal holiday special has never been told - until now. It was broadcast only once and never released on home video, making bootleg copies of it something of a geek currency before the days of YouTube (where bootleg versions lurk in states of nebulous copyright). Over the years, the "Star Wars Holiday Special" became a cult collector's item. When it aired live, viewership dropped like a stone, with “The Love Boat” surpassing it in ratings. The variety show-style special is so strange that it opened with a 10-minute scene showing Wookiee domestic life with no dialogue or subtitles aside from grunts. Premiered at the South by Southwest film festival in Austin, Texas, “A Disturbance in the Force” is a documentary that chronicles the doomed production of the holiday special, outlining how members of the original cast, including Carrie Fisher, Ford and Hamill, ended up singing and dancing alongside Bea Arthur, a reportedly drunken Art Carney and a holographic version of the San Francisco rock band Jefferson Starship. When asked about it on “Late Night with Conan O’Brien,” he denied any memory, declaring that it didn’t exist, and then mock-strangled O’Brien when he threatened to roll the tape. Harrison Ford pleads ignorance to his appearance in the special. “Everybody makes mistakes,” Mark Hamill said in archival footage, describing the special.
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