Last night I saw Darth Vader use the Force to choke a giant red talking M&M.
I have seen some stupid shit in my time, but...
Look at me, I’m so confounded I can’t even complete a thought.
Am I the only one who wishes George Lucas would just stop being George Lucas?
There’s this thing called the Star Wars Holiday Special. Back before the Internet was accessible to every late-20s/early-30s sci-fi geek in the world, this Holiday Special seemed more myth than reality. Those of us who were only 5 years old when it aired on TV (in 1978) might have had vague recollections of Bea Arthur hanging around in the cantina and a coked-up Princess Leia singing a horrendous song while the rest of the Star Wars cast stood around looking uncomfortable, but by and large it felt like a false memory implanted by one’s own subconscious desire for more things Star Wars-related (since back in the ’80s we had only the three movies, the mostly bad Marvel comic book series co-starring a big green space rabbit, a couple lame cartoon spin-offs, two godawful Ewok TV specials starring Wilford "Bad Ass" Brimley and a Drew Barrymore circa 1982 look-a-like, and that was it).
But I was at a comic book convention, oh, probably 10 years ago now, and I found a bootleg copy of this Holiday Special for sale (since that’s the only way you can—and will ever be able to—get ahold of this thing) and just had to buy it.
It was even worse than I remembered. Forget all the scenes featuring Bea Arthur, et al. Harrison Ford, future star of a dozen blockbuster movies, is frighteningly bad in this thing. Two things are immediately obvious: First, there didn’t appear to be any written dialogue for him to memorize, because everything he says sounds improvised in the worst way (and, as we learned from his time on the set of Blade Runner, Harrison Ford does not even believe in good improvisation). When he sees Chewbacca’s son, Lumpy (I shit you not—that’s his name), he keeps saying, over and over again, “Lumpy, wow, you’ve gotten so big!” [Harrison hugs midget in wookie costume] “Wow... Lumpy. You’ve gotten so big!” [Harrison tussles fake hair on top of wookie costume worn by midget] “...” [there is a pause; no one seems to have told Harrison what he should do next] which brings me to obvious thing number two: It appears that no director was present on the set. I’ve seen elementary school theater productions better organized than this thing.
[Ooo! Someone has helpfully compiled a few screen shots of Harrison Ford’s worst performance in the history of cinema! Now you can see that I’m not exaggerating.]
Wait, what was my point?
Oh yeah, my point is that George Lucas—for obvious reasons—completely disowned the Holiday Special not long after it aired. Yet last night I saw Darth Vader use the Force to choke a big talking M&M.
The man is already worth 8.4 kazillionwilliondillion dollars. What the hell is he doing?
Oh, right. He’s lost his mind. I forgot.
No comments:
Post a Comment