Bruce Vilanch

As weird, bad, and awkward as The Star Wars Holiday Special is to watch, apparently, it was just as terrible to film. That’s evident from an exclusive excerpt io9 has acquired from the new book A Disturbance in the Force: How and Why the Star Wars Holiday Special Happened by Steve Kozak.Spoilers of the Week | June 3rdKozak is the co-director of a documentary by the same name but chose to expand on it with the written word. The 288-page result is set for release on November 15 (pre-order a copy here), but what follows is a…

The phrase “good movie” and “Star Wars Holiday Special” are not regularly in the same sentence, but there’s a first time for everything. Here goes: A Disturbance in the Force, a new documentary about The Star Wars Holiday Special, is in fact a good movie.Directed by Jeremy Coon and Steve Kozak, the documentary uses new interviews, jaw-dropping archival footage, and, yes, the Holiday Special itself, to not just explain how and why the special happened, but how and why it’s so weird, the reputation it got, its eventual…