December 23, 2017 • 54 mins
Long ago, in a galaxy not so far away, George Lucas allowed the Star Wars Holiday Special to be made. What happened on the night of November 17, 1978 can never be fully explained, but we make our best effort in a very special edition of SYSK. May the force be with us all.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Happy belated life day everyone. It's me Josh uh, and
I chose for this week's s Y s K selects
the Star Wars Holiday Special episode. It's true this just
came out two years back, but in my opinion, listening
to this episode should probably become a worldwide annual holiday tradition.
(00:21):
So we missed last year, we can just go ahead
and consider this year one of that tradition. I hope
you enjoy it, and Merry Christmas and happy holidays however
you celebrate them. Welcome to Stuff you should know from
how Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
(00:49):
I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuckers Bryant and Jerry
Jerome Roland. Uh. Who's the Wookie mother? Yeah? Mala? That
was the Wookie wife. Oh and mother? Yeah sure, Chewbacca's
momb is not with them any longer. She left. She
(01:09):
was not about to appear in that. She went out
the window. I'm excited about this. I have to say
we should say Happy Star Wars Day. Yeah. Today is
um December. Um, I have my opening night tickets? Do
you really sure? Wow? You know I into it? Oh? Yeah,
(01:31):
well I will definitely go see it in the theater,
But um, why won't be the opening night? Sure, I've
gotten really adept at like ignoring spoilers, people talking about
stuff all like, so I can I could conceivably see
this movie a month after it comes out and still
going fresh. I'm an ostrich. Yeah you black yourself out,
(01:53):
Yeah you go dark. I make myself go to sleep face,
you go to the dark side. Been there a while now?
Uh Well, Happy Star Wars Day though, I'm sure that
I think this pairs nicely with Christmas Star Wars Day.
It's all come together. Yes, Um, we already missed Life
Day though, so happy belated Life Day. Are they celebrating
(02:14):
it this year? Novemb Yeah, but it's every three years.
Mm hmm, our cane man job. Okay, so it's every
three years, started in nineteen seventy eight. Let's do the math,
shall we? Mm hmmm, quick math break. I believe that
two thousand fourteen was the last Life Day, man, we
(02:37):
just missed, and then again in seventeen. Okay, soeen we'll
celebrate Life Day. Will put on our red robes, are ultralong,
straight ironed wigs, and we'll celebrate Life Day the way
it was meant to. Yes, And if you have no
idea what we're talking about. We are talking about Life Day,
which is a celebration, uh that Wookies in the Star
(02:59):
Wars Union first have every three years. Yeah, it's like
their Christmas or the Kanza, their tet. Supposedly, it's sort
of like Earth. They too. They celebrate the diversity of
their ecosystem and also remembrance of the dead, and they
also give the gifts there like the Fins. Basically, Yeah,
it's a it's a very interesting part of the Star
(03:19):
Wars canon. It is, and it's almost entirely made up,
dashed off you could possibly say, by um, George Lucas
in the seventies. Um. And it's the basis of what
is become derided as like one of the worst things
that ever happened to the Star Wars galaxy. Well, not
only that, one of the worst things ever aired on television. Yeah,
(03:42):
with this galaxy. Yeah, at first that sounds like hyperbole, like,
come on, it's because it was Star Wars, we had
high expectations, but it's really that bad. Yeah. The people
who say that haven't seen even a second of it. Yeah. Yeah, However,
I watched it uh, when I was a kid. Then
it again this week, and you watched it twice this week. Yeah,
(04:03):
I watched it last night and this morning. There's something
about it. It's mesmerizing, it really is. It's one of
those things that you start watching it and you want
to turn it off, but you want to see just
how absurd it can get. Almost Yeah, and it starts absurd,
it stays absurd. In the middle, it's increasingly more absurd,
it's a little less absurd, finishes super absurd. Yeah, it's
(04:27):
just a train wreck in every single sense of the word.
Talk to bottom. It's extraordinarily difficult to overstate how bad
this is, and some people have, you know, in researching this,
you read about it, you read descriptions of these things,
and it just can't possibly be gotten across until you
see it. So luckily, as we will see, you can
go onto YouTube and watch it, and you may even
(04:49):
enjoy this episode more if you pause, go spend two
hours watching this thing, and then come back and laugh
along with us. Yeah, there's a great Over the years,
there have been many segments of it on YouTube from
badly VHS tapes, but there's one really pretty good version
of it in full UM brought to you by w
(05:11):
h I O Dayton, Ohio, Channel seven. Because that flashes
up on the screen periodically. Man, it is high quality,
it looks good, and it has to basically be the
copy that the actual UM affiliate broadcast. It's like that,
that quality compared to the other stuff floating around on YouTube,
clearly recorded on a pc R, which we're really expensive,
(05:35):
very expensive. I did some calculating on west Egg okay UM,
so the average VCR went for about a thousand dollars.
There were brand new it's amazing thousand dollars in money,
so they were about thirty eight hundred dollars in two
thousand fourteen money. Luckily, there were some rich people out
there recording this stuff, and the wealthy have saved us
all again yet again, as they always do. Uh. We
(05:58):
need to shout out some art goals that we used
for this. There's great a great article in Vanity Fair
called the Han Solo Comedy Our exclamation Point by Frank D. Jacomo.
And then there's the Star Wars Holiday special was the
worst thing on television ever by So when we kind
of know Alex Pasternack uh from Motherboard, Yeah, which is uh,
(06:20):
not wired. It's uh vice. We wrote a little bit
for Motherboard back then and we had a call with that,
like we're like old motherboard vets basically, and when they're
one more, there was another one and I don't know
who wrote this one chuck. Uh, yeah, it's the titles
the Star Wars Holiday Special. George Lucas wants to smash
every copy of with a sledgehammer, which was a famous quote,
(06:44):
uh supposedly at a convention by Lucas, Yes, which is
not correct. He didn't ever say that. No, okay, that
that sounded like something that people made up. Yes, but
if you go on the internet, you will quickly believe
that he did. Apparently didn't, so that's I'm sure he
felt that way though, clearly, because he did appear on
Robot Chicken and I think two thousand five on the
Therapist Couch talking about how much he hated the special. Alright,
(07:08):
so let's set the background, shall we Shall we go
back to summer getting the old way back machine. All right,
let's do it. All right, here we are, there's Waterson. Yeah,
I'm just a little six year old excited about Star Wars.
I am. I've just turned one. Yes, you don't know
(07:30):
what's up yet. I please forgive me if I urinate myself,
no problem, okay. Uh So what has happened is Star
Wars has become a huge, huge hit, seemingly out of nowhere,
establishing George Lucas is one of the brilliant young minds
and filmmaking, even though when this first movie it was
his first huge, huge breakout hit. Oh yeah, for sure,
(07:52):
talk don't even talk about a breakout hit, Like no
one had ever seen anything like it before two thousand
one had come out in the late sixty but it wasn't.
It's still it still isn't accessible to all audiences. You know,
it's kind of cerebral film. Yeah, it's not an adventure movie.
This was This is like basically swashbuckling on the screen.
But you know, in a galaxy far far away, Star
(08:14):
Wars just changed everything and it came on just like
a hammer. Um, there's a new hope by the way, yes,
and then then we're gonna get stuff wrong, nerds, So yes,
just go ahead and get your little fingers ready to
email us. Like if it wasn't driven home that I'm
not a nerd by the fact that I don't have
opening night tickets or any tickets yet, give me a break,
(08:34):
and by proxy chuck to okay, thank you. So um,
it's it's hard to stay how great Star Wars was
in everyone's mind, right. Bill Murray came out with that
lounge singer Star Wars thing. It was everywhere and if
you if you just listen to the lyrics of it,
it's really it's just Bill Murray singing about how much
(08:55):
Star Wars is awesome. Right. So, by the following year, Um,
George Lucas was he wanted to figure out a way
to keep audiences just engaged with the whole Star Wars
franchise that he was just starting to build. But he
knew the Empire Strikes Back was a couple more years out, sure,
so um he I think he was approached by some
(09:17):
TV executives who said, have you considered doing some sort
of TV special? They're all the rage right now. We
have a we have a graphic that's really awesome that
we set aside just for TV specials here at CBS.
Why don't you let us let's get together and do
a Star Wars special. That's right. Producers Gary Smith and
Dwight him on. Uh, we're working over at CBS, and
(09:41):
they said, this is a great way to keep the
spirit alive while you're making your other movie. Maybe move
some more toys. Yeah, which George Lucas got. So it
was right before Thanksgiving, and he said, there'll be a
lot of people watching TV um pre holiday season or
I guess in the holiday season. Well, the weekend before Thanksgiving,
it's like everybody's shopping, sitting around family like waiting to
(10:04):
actually do stuff. That's right, perfect time to broadcast something
on TV. So Lucas says, all right, let's do this.
I don't have a ton of time, but how about this.
I'll get I'll get a story together and then you
can go hire a whiz bang team of of veteran
writers and producers and directors whatever genre you think is appropriate.
(10:25):
And those are the words that will haunt you, George
Lucas to his grave. Yeah. So Lucas said, here's my idea.
I wanted to be based um on Wookiees, and I
wanted to take place on their home planet of Kazook
or Wookie planet. See is that how you saying Kazuk
That's how it's pronounced. In the episode, the Holiday special.
(10:46):
But it's also pronounced different ways. Other times I would
have pronounced that cashy e e got spell it k
a s h y y y k, which I mean,
I guess that sounds like Chewbuck is plan sure also
called G five Wookie planet see or Eaton is a
mid rim planet. Right. So the whole reason apparently that
(11:08):
George Lucas was interested in featuring the Wookies was it
is what we in show business call low hanging fruit.
The reason why it was low hanging fruit was because
they had just established the different scenes that would make
the cut for Empire Strikes Back and uh, what how
did you pronounce it again? Kazook Kazook had not made
(11:30):
the cut. Uh. Even prior to this, apparently for a
new hope, George Lucas had whipped up a forty page
what's known as the Wookie Bible. It's like a forty
page supplement that's all about Kazook and Wookies and Chewbacca
and his family and everything about wookie um. Right, so
he's like, I've got this thing already, you know established
(11:51):
I love Wookies. Um, they didn't make the cut. I'm
a little sad about that. They're not gonna kazuok is
not gonna show up in an Empire strikes back. Let's
let's build the entire special around wookies. It's basically the
one demand me George Lucas has. Yeah, that's it. I'll
be totally hands off from this point on which he
kind of was. He totally wasn't It was actually this
(12:12):
experience that apparently taught him to be the very hands
on a person that he is famous for being. It
came out of this Christmas special. Absolutely he was burned,
and um he had an iron grip after that on everything.
So here's some some of the folks behind it. Bruce Valanche,
famous TV writer. You've probably seen him on Hollywood Squares.
(12:34):
Wasn't he suspected of being Thomas pinch On for a while.
I don't know, or was Thomas pinch On on Hollywood Squares?
I have no idea. I may be confabulating some stuff confounding. Yeah,
there's some kind of some sort going on. It sounds
like it. So Valanche was hired as a writer. A
guy named Lenny Rips was hired as a writer who
(12:55):
has some great quotes in that Vanity Fair article. He does.
His first quote was, we were really excited because this
is Star Wars. How could it lose famous? Last words?
Who else was hired? There was a husband and wife team,
the welch Is, who are the parents of folk singer
(13:16):
Gillian Welch. I'm a big fan of and I had
no idea that her parents. They were producers slash songwriters
of the day. They were big on the variety show scene,
which would turn out to be a really key cog
in this whole experience. So I feel like, right about here,
Jerry should insert a needle coming off of a record
sound effect. Okay, thanks Jerry, So Chuck, you just said
(13:41):
singer songwriters. Yeah, what would that have to do with
Star Wars. Yeah? Well, actually, in this Star Wars Holiday special,
for those of you hadn't seen it, there are musical numbers.
They decided from the outset that there should be musical numbers.
And the reason that they decided that there should be
musical numbers is because the people who sold George Lucas
and at the time it was started, the Star Wars
(14:03):
Corporation was what it was called um On the idea
of doing this TV special was that everyone would love
a variety show. Yeah, it was the seventies. Great idea,
let's do a variety show. The problem was this, Apparently
George Lucas didn't watch enough TV and he also overly
trusted people who talked to him because by yes, variety
(14:24):
shows had dominated television for over ten years, but it
had come to an end. It was getting stale. Yeah,
we're talking to Carol Burnett show, one of my favorite
had just been canceled after eleven seasons. Sonny and Chair
had just had its last season. Um, I mean what
else like he Hall was he? I was still going on,
(14:45):
probably still on solid golden yet to come on and
take up the mantel that that would never write a show. Oh,
it was a little bit, and there was talking in
between the songs. Remember the Mandrell's Sister show. I never
watched that one. Well, it's with that country chic thing
that happened. Yeah, it was a big deal in the
(15:06):
it's kind of happening again. I think, Oh, because of
that dude, the guy who won all the c m
A Awards. I don't know, he's like he's he came along.
He's like actually country. His dad's like a coal miner
for real. From Kentucky. I think, I know you mean
Chris something. Yeah, he's come along and been like, what
are you guys doing? Well, there's a revival in like
(15:27):
good country music. Again, that's like in the tradition of
Merle Haggard and and I guess that's probably where the
country she came from because there was actually good country
going on. Yeah, Johnny Cash out a variety show, did
he really? Yeah? I knew they did, like a Sunday
singing thing like out in Virginia. Yeah, he had his
own variety show. Is actually pretty good. There's some like
really great performances. Do you know how many nerds are like,
(15:50):
get back to Star Wars? I know, I'm so sorry.
All right, So the Variety Show is is dying sort of,
and so they figure, what a great time to take
the biggest movie property on the planet and wedge it
into the variety show milieu. I don't know if wedge
is the right word. I think maybe uh, nestle it
in there and then start hitting it with the blunt
(16:13):
edge of an axe until it mashes into that crevice.
You know, Because this is the time when Fantasy Island
had just started. Um Mork and Mindy was about to
change things. Charlie's Angels was getting huge. It basically television
as we knew it from two whenever the real world
(16:33):
came along. Just escape as television is what they called
it was was starting and it was the hip new thing.
So basically, if they had turned Han Solo and Princess
Leiah and Luke Skywalker into maybe you know, sexy detectives,
it might have gone over even better. But they went
the other way. They decided to latch onto this extraordinarily
stale um genre of television and they hired the best
(16:57):
in the business, like there was there was. There was
a from I think Lenny RiPPs who was saying, like
we had literally a dream team, a variety show dream team,
and everybody was good, but there were probably no bad
welders on the Titanic eare That's a great quote. Yeah.
The guy they hired to direct it initially was a
dude named David A. Coomba, and he had made his
(17:19):
name for Welcome to the Fillmore East. It was a
concert documentary with Van Morrison Van Morrison and the Birds
in nineteen seventy one, and he actually was at usc
Film School at the same time as Lucas, even though
they didn't know each other, and um, he only ended
up directing about three segments of the thing before he quit.
Yet before he walked off, some say he was actually
(17:40):
let go, but we'll get to him in a minute
and who replaced him. As as we get along down
this uh gross road, well let's let's take a little
break because I'm I'm overly excited. Okay, alright, so we've
(18:13):
established most of the main players. We'll we'll get to
a few more. We should point out that, um, Mark
hamill And and Harrison Ford and Carrie Fischer, Peter Mayhew,
they had no grounds to refuse to be on this basically, yeah,
pretty much. They were not huge, huge stars, yet they
could throw their weight around and say this is terrible
(18:34):
and I'm not doing it. They were. They were big
overnight because of Star Wars, for sure, but they weren't
to the adoring public back at the studio. They could
still be bossed around. And this is the result of it.
And you can tell also, um, just from watching the
actual special, Like Harrison Ford is not happy to be
there at any point. Um, Princess Leiah is clearly on drugs.
(19:00):
Uh was she on drugs at this point she if
you watch it, she's she's on drugs. Especially the ending scene.
Mark Hambell, it looks like he's happy to be there.
Actually he was fine, but apparently he said no, I'm
I'm not doing a musical number. And if you watch
his part, wedging a musical number in there would have
been even more painful. Um. But they everybody who was
(19:24):
part of the actual Star Wars franchise that wasn't wearing
like a full body costume was like, I really wish
I wasn't here, And you can tell, oh yeah. In fact,
in the opening uh credit sequence, they're showing the picture
that you know, the faces of the people, and you
see Harrison Ford as if he's flying the Millennium Falcon,
and you can you can just hear the guy I'll
(19:45):
screen going now look at the camera and just give
a nod. Just look at the camera and give a nod.
And he finally you can tell he's piste off and
he looks up at the camera and just sort of
smirks yeah and points at the camera like okay, I'm
looking at the camera, and then goes back to what
he's doing. Yeah, it's pretty awesome. I felt bad for him.
So early on Valanche and others did you did you
feel bad for him? Though? Really? I mean, like, come on,
(20:09):
it's Harrison Ford, it's Hans Solo. He has to go
do this for like five days. Yeah, I felt terrible
for him. I think it's hilarious that they had to
do this, especially now. Well, early on, Valanche and others
knew that they may be in trouble because they decided
not to subtitle any of the Wookie dialogue, and they
literally started after a brief opening scene setting it up here.
(20:30):
Here's the basic plot is Han Solo is trying to
get Chewbacca back to Kazook in time for Life Day
so we can celebrate with his family. That's the basis
of the entire two the basis the entire two hours.
They encounter a space battle and they're delayed, and the
next two hours are kind of what's going on while
(20:52):
the delay is happening back on Kazoo, back on Kazook.
Because you hear, like, okay, well, Han Solo and Chewbacca
evading the Imperial Guard and all that stuff for two hours.
I would watch that. I would too. That's not what
they show killing time at the Wookie household. That is
what they show. That's what they do. It's people hanging
(21:12):
out waiting for Chewbacca, worrying about him, and then killing
time while they wait for him to come back. Literally,
so um and so hold on. So you say there's
a setup, right, Yeah, that's the initial setup and then chuck.
That's followed by this. Yeah, it's followed by literally ten minutes,
ten solid minutes of incomprehensible Wookie speak. So let's let's
(21:37):
join it for a second, shall we. Let's all enjoy it.
(22:24):
And again, you said ten minutes, and you're not exaggerating,
you're not being hyperbolic. You can time it. That's it's
ten minutes of wook He's talking to each other with
no subtitles. Fortunately, I couldn't follow it at first, Like
I didn't even know who it was. I thought it
was might have been Chewbacca's mom and dad. Oh yeah,
(22:44):
that's a little brother. And I don't find out until
later when Mark Cambell shows up via skype call and says,
he really explains everything that had just happened, Like, you're
Chewbacca's father, Itchy, you'r Chewbacca's son, uh Lumpy Lumpy, and
you are Chewbacca's wife. Oh mama, thank you. So before
(23:06):
everybody starts like freaking out, we know that that's actually
their nicknames. Their real names are. His father is a
ti chick cook, a tchick cook it's really hard to pronounce.
Mulatto Buck is his wife, and his son is lump
O war Ump but as named by Lucas. But yeah,
but Lucas also named him Lumpy Itchy and Mala so um.
(23:31):
They're all back there wringing their hands, trying to figure
out ways to pass the time until they get word
from Chewbacca that he's made it to uh what is it, ketchuck, zuck,
kazook Um. Just say ketchup, ketchup or cats up if
you're fancy. Um. But Chewbacca is having trouble getting back
(23:52):
to Katchuk because there's kazuock, because there's a blockade by
the Empire and they're looking for rebels, specifically Chewbacca. Who
I didn't realize this. He's the most famous Wookie of
all did you know that? Yeah, of course I didn't
know that. Well, I mean, he's the only one that
really appears in the movies I mean that we're seeing, like,
(24:13):
you know, these people's view of the universe. What about
back on book Ye, he might have just been a
fly by night wookie, right, yeah, but not the case
very famous wookie. Yeah, and he really loved it, like
soak in his fame. All right, So he realizes there's
a problem. Valanche. He goes to Lucas and it's like,
(24:33):
I don't know, man, this is your world, but it
may not be the strongest thing to do to set
this in wookie Land and have all this incomprehensible dialogue.
And he says he was met with a glacial stare. Uh. Well,
he put it a little differently than that. Well, he
said glacial stair. He did. The glacial stair that he
got was for this quote. He said, these people just
(24:56):
talk and what sounds like fat people having an orgasm.
He goes, if you want, you can set up a
tape recorder in my bedroom and I'll do all of
the follying for it. Yeah he's a large guy, he is,
so uh that's what got the glacial stare. But Valanche
later said that from this, there was one development meeting
that Lucas attended and it was here's the Wookie Bible.
(25:17):
Tell me what you got, And Valanche said he and
the other writers and producers and director were just kind
of throwing ideas, and George Lucas would either say like, no,
that doesn't work, give him a glacial stare, or say, yes,
that's exactly it. Yes, let's make this a variety show. Yeah.
And there was a little bit of um background there.
(25:37):
The cantina players in the band had appeared on other
variety shows at that point, and I think it went
over fairly well, just as a short segment on like
the Richard Pryor Variety Show or Donnie Marie um Man.
There were a lot of variety shows. But that's what
I'm saying. It was that was television. That's what you did,
(25:58):
Like the bread these um the The show had its
course and then it became a variety show. It was
just everybody love variety shows. By this time, though, everybody
was sick of variety shows and so it really was
a terrible choice. In fact, they even hired a couple
of writers from Shields and yarn l which I hadn't
(26:19):
heard of. Oh yeah, I watched it. It was creepy.
This mind couple who had their own variety show, and
they figured these two will be great because they are
used to working without words, right, So, and so there
is a certain logic to the variety show. It's not
it's just that variety shows were popular at the time.
(26:40):
Somebody was like, well, Wookie's you don't understand what they're saying.
So this is all going to be very physical. So
these people who who did what is it shields in yarn? Now, yeah,
that's a perfect choice. That that makes complete sense. You
can see this whole this whole process of leading up
to the point where it was produced and shot and everything.
It's series of like, oh, we have this problem, well
(27:02):
here's a fix. Yeah, but that leads to another problem.
Well we'll fix it with this, and and no one
stepping back and being like, all we've done is create
a series of problems that are going to come together
and make one extraordinarily large problem that will become legendary.
No one did that, and so the whole thing was
was made. That's right, And that eventually airs on November
(27:24):
sevent Friday at eight pm Eastern time. That's right, and
Nielsen ratings it um attracted thirteen million viewers. Uh just
the second hour, just in the US. It aired in
six or seven countries total. Yeah, but no one cares
about that, I guess not because none of those are
on the internet. Uh. It finished second to the Love
(27:47):
Boat in the second arm, sorry from eight to nine,
and in the next hour actually finished behind part two
of a mini series about Pearl Harbor starring Angie Dickinson.
So it didn't even win their respective hours. No t million,
that's that's not bad. The thing is, apparently if you
look at the Nielsen ratings graph for the first hour, yea,
we know about that graph. It's okay, yeah, we do.
(28:10):
And then after a very important part, which we'll talk
about soon. Um, it just drops off at the end
of the first hour. And that actually probably made the
executives at CBS cringe for a number of reasons. Number
one is this special was originally supposed to just be
an hour, but so many advertisers wanted to sign on
(28:30):
that they extended it to two hours. And it shines
through you can totally tell that this thing was never
supposed to I think an hour might have been stretching it.
To tell you the truth, it's thirty minutes of content,
forty if you're generous an hour and then two hours,
it becomes one of the worst things that was ever
(28:51):
put on television. All right, well, let's take a break
and then we'll talk a little bit more about the
actual um uh even I don't want to call it
content it but it is content in the strictest definitions.
Right after this, sorry gee, alright, So the show itself,
(29:27):
we've given you the main plot line, which again is
that Chewy is trying to get back to his home
planet to celebrate life Day with his family. Right, that's it,
And again we almost barely see Chewy. Yeah, the rest
is his family on because look waiting for him to
come back for a life Day. Yeah. So, um, some
(29:48):
of the various things they did, they were guest stars.
There was Harvey Corman from The Carol Burnett Show, one
of my all time favorites him or Carol Carol Burnett
Show both. He's great. Yeah, he actually if you watch
what he's doing, you're like, this is comedy genius. For apparently,
he too was like the only one on set that
was bringing levity. He was joking around and kind of
(30:09):
kept spirits up. Good for him, that's what I say.
And he had three, three different parts. Yeah, he played
uh well, I don't even know the names. Actually we
could look him up, but he played a He played
a Julia child like cook. There's an actual cooking segment,
a long one, a very long cooking segment where Chewbacca's
(30:31):
wife Um makes Banta stew to kill some time, to
kill some time because waiting on her planet and in
our living room. Yeah, so Harvey Corman is in Drag
is a foe armed Julia child like uh TV chef
And I think it's Gormanda. It's her name, Gormanda. That
makes total sense. He also plays Um. There's this one
(30:54):
weird bit where Chewbacca's son tries to figure out a
way to trick the stormtroopers. The Empire had come and
kind of because the blockade raided the house and other properties.
So he tries to trick them by I think, rigging
a calm link to speak in a different voice. So
he has to watch the instruction manual. He watches an
(31:16):
instruction video which was Harvey Kitel as a robot. Oh,
it would have been wonderful, little big Harvey Kitel did
Harvey Carvey corn Man Haye murders someone in the middle
of the instruction Harvey Corman. And then the final role
he had was as a a bar patron in the
cantina that drinks. He has a hole in the top
(31:40):
of his head like a volcano, where he pours his
drinks in. That's how he drinks. And he he loves
b Arthur. Did we mention be Arthur was in it?
B Arthur is not only in it, Chuck. She sings
a song. She does. She is thenotes to everyone she
manages or maybe owns. The owner. Yeah, the what's the
mas what moss deaf cantina? Uh? No, most of is
(32:02):
a rapper. Oh yeah, I think you mean Moss Eisley. Yes, yes,
that cantina. She's the owner. Be Arthur is the owner
be author of the Golden Girls, but in this case
the Arthur of Maude, because as one of the people
who wrote one of the articles we based this on
points out, she's just basically playing Maud as the owner
of the cantina. Yeah, and her song comes because um,
(32:23):
they basically say there's a lockdown, so you gotta call
last call um at your bar. So she calls last
call by singing a song to everyone. Right, and again
we can't possibly have the script lead anywhere else but
Chewbacca's house while his family waits for it. So all
this takes place as part of a public service announcement
(32:45):
basically broadcast by the Empire about how immoral life on
tattooing is. So let's go see what's going on in
the mos Eisley Cantina as it's being shut down for curfew. Alright,
this is incomprehensible, but it goes on. Um, so they're
in it. There's also Art Carney. Yes, he's the Honeymooners family,
(33:08):
the star of the whole thing. Really, he has the
most lines, I would say, the most comprehensible line. Right.
So he plays a trader, a human trader um that is,
uh recently been with Han Solo and Chewy and actually
gets to Kazook and says they're on the way. It's
all good. Yeah, a trade or not trade tour. Yeah,
(33:30):
traders in trades humans for you know money. No, he
he sells goods. Yeah, a trader. He doesn't trade humans. Yeah,
he's in the human trade. He No, he isn't. Really
he trades humans like he sells humans. I looked it
up in the Star Wars Encyclopedia said that he was
(33:50):
in the human trade. So in this Christmas special, apparently
they sanitized his his background because he's basically just selling
like gadgets and novelty and stuff like that to the
Wookies and the Empire who were occupying the area. Yes,
he comes bearing gifts because he's a friend of Chewbacca's family. Yeah,
(34:10):
so he comes bearing gifts. One of the gifts he
gives is a UM sort of like a little digital
insert to a Oh, I guess you would call it
a virtual reality hair dryer hair dryer, like a beauty
shop hair dryer. Right. He gives it to Grandpa Itchy.
Grandpa Itchy UM sits under this hair dryer pops in
(34:33):
this uh digital cassette, and it can only be described
as softcore porn. Apparently the writers who were interviewed for
this said that was totally the intent. They were trying
to get what amounted to softcore porn that would pass
the sensors. So it's all m you can't even say
(34:53):
it's innuendo. It's too obvious in overt for innuendo. Instead,
it's just it's just it's just gross. It's really gross.
Um Diane Carroll, Yes she is. Um, a Vegas staple
shows up and starts basically tantalizing. Um. Grandpa Itchy, who again,
(35:15):
this is Chewbacca's elderly father who now engages in some
sort of well he's he's watching virtual reality pornography now,
and this is a pretty lengthy segment in and of itself.
Well yeah, and she literally says to him like, now
I can see you're really excited. Yeah, it's pretty rough
to watch. Yeah, So then you've got another musical number
(35:36):
because also again he shudders, it's really strange, all right,
So there's also ah, I know, it seems like we're
jumping around, but it's it's so blow not like this
is pretty much like blow for blow. Um. Actually I
forgot earlier on in in the in the special, Um,
there's one of my favorite sequences is when Grandpa Itchy
(35:59):
goes over to Lumpy and basically sets up remember the
the hologram chessboard that they played in A New Hope,
basically kind of sets that up and says, here, just
play this. He pushes the button which is clearly a
nineteen seventies cassette recorder and another uh like it's like
a cirque de sol ay acid trip. Um gymnast routine
(36:25):
happens in front of the kid's eyes. And again this
all just it's not like it shows a snippet. They
showed the entire segments, like five, six, ten minutes long
of all of these things. So you would think, Okay,
they've gone to this hologram, well a couple of times,
why not go to it again? Well they do. They
do to kill more time. While the Imperial Guard is
(36:46):
ransacking their house. Um, Art Carney apparently, I guess it's
trying to get one of the Imperial Guard, the leader
I think, or one of the leaders who looks like
somebody from space Balls by the way, very much so. Um.
And the writer of the Vanity Fair article, by the
way said, um, this, this is so incomprehensible. The specialist
George Lucas didn't even have the schwartz with him at
(37:08):
the time. So anyway, our Carney's distracting this uh Imperial leader. Um,
while they're ransacking the Wookie's house, Chewbacca's house with a hologram,
and this hologram instead of being an acrobat or Diane
Carroll or any kind of porn or anything like that
is Jefferson Starship and they decide that they're going to
(37:32):
play Light the Sky on Fire, which apparently is about UFOs.
It's a little music video. Basically, it's a pretty Yeah,
it's the predecessor to like video Kill the Radio Storry
you can tell um. And again it is the whole
lengthy song, the whole thing. So every time that somebody's like,
we need to escape mentally from what's going on here
(37:54):
in our house, let's go into the video world, it's
not just and they don't cut back and forth. It's okay,
here's five minutes of Jefferson Starship performing this song. And
even the Jefferson Starship guys um were like, yeah, it's
sort of a weird trip, Like we didn't get it,
but we did it right. They gave us some money
(38:15):
and some cocaine. Well probably, so we said, yeah, chuck.
I think though, um, there yet another segment like this
is actually widely regarded as the high point of the
whole thing. So there's a cartoon. Actually yeah that lump
up watch Yeah, Lumpy's like the Imperial Guard is still
(38:36):
ransacking my house. I think I'll entertain myself by watching
a cartoon on my little Um, I don't know what.
I guess it was an iPad and uh, he watches
this cartoon and it's it's actually remarkable for a number
of reasons. It's the best part of the whole special
generally agreed upon as such, not just us. And it
(38:57):
introduces Boba Fett. It's the first time Boba fat ever
makes an appearance in Star Wars universe. Yeah, it's actually
not a bad And you can't find it in the
the one version I told you to watch. They removed
it for copyright. But he didn't watch a separate version, right,
you can find it on its own. Yeah, And it's Um,
it's very much reminiscent of like the cartoon style of
the day, like a he Man or something even even,
(39:18):
but it's even a little more artsy than that. Yeah.
But it does have a plot that you can follow
that makes sense as a Star Wars thing, and it
introduces Boba Fette, like you said, And um, it's actually
not bad. It's like Luke and R two and C
three p O. Yeah, and there's like they crash on
a planet or something. Yeah, and Han and Jewry you're
in it and it's the first time we see in
(39:38):
Darth Vader. It's the first time we see Boba Fett
and that he is uh, that he is just doing
whatever he can do for money. Like Luke trusts him
at first, C three pos like you sure you should
trust him this quick, and he's like, oh, three p
o you and your non trusting ways, And then it
turns out he's selling them out to the dark side.
So it's it's basically Boba Fett is an al worry
(40:00):
for George Lucas himself. So the cartoon comes and goes,
(40:30):
and that was the thing that came at about the
end of the first hour mark, and after that everybody
just turned off their television sets. Yeah, I don't remember.
Did you watch this when it came up? Yeah? I
remember watching it, but I don't remember much about it,
like if I made it through it all. I mean
it was I was seven and it was on until ten,
so I probably didn't make it through it all. Um,
(40:52):
you're probably disturbed. Who knows, I just remember that. I'll
have to ask my brother. He might have a memory
of this. Oh, Betty does I'm sure he met everybody
afterwards or something like that, you know, it has a picture. Well,
he was ten at that point. Cynicism had, you know,
become a thing in his life. Probably by then, didn't
that when cynicism kicks into he's Scott holding out the
(41:13):
fourteen fifteen Yeah maybe so so um chuck, the whole
thing finally does in. And actually there's a guy his
name is Nathan Raban, he writes over at the A
V Club. He had a great quote. He basically said
that one of the great redeeming values of this um,
this special is that it does eventually end. Yeah, you
know what the first part of the quote is, I'm
(41:33):
not convinced the special wasn't ultimately written and directed by
a sentient bag of cocaine. And like, go read his
his review of the Star Wars Holiday Special, because he
goes on to describe exactly what that must have been,
like the development meeting where the bag of cocaine is
pacing back and forth talking about what should happen. That's
what it feels like. But it doesn't, and it ends
(41:56):
even more. It takes this bizarre two hours and wraps
it up in just a nice bizarre bow. Yeah, so
what happens is eventually Han Solo should we say spoiler alert. Eventually,
Han Solo and Chewy make it to the planet. They
park on the far side of the planet because they
know the uh the Imperial forces are there and the
exercise will do chew we good, so they have to
(42:19):
hike over there. They eventually make it back home. Uh
they find a storm the stormtroopers at their house. Um,
their tree hut. Yeah, which by the paintings that set
this up, I don't think we mentioned I don't even
call him Matt paintings that it looks like someone painted
something on the wall and they just like put a
camera in front of it pretty much. Yeah. So they
(42:40):
get back and um, Chewbacca, Han Solo hides around the
corner of Chewbacca steps in front of his son to
protect him. Han Solo jumps out, and the stormtrooper trips
over a pile of logs and falls over the balcony
and dies in a holiday special. So they wouldn't even
not only could he not shoot for first with Grido,
(43:02):
but they couldn't even have him like wrestle the stormtrooper
and throw him off. He trips over a log and
Han Solo has his hands thrown up Like wasn't me.
It might also been a banana peal, you know. But again, uh,
this is basically produced by vaudevillians starring vaudevillians. Why not
(43:22):
have the one death take place from basically what it
amounts to somebody slipping on a banana peel. It's a
perfect way to end it. So that's uh that that
guy basically represents the end of the imperial threat for
the rest of Life Day. And um, we we then
see Life Day being celebrated, which is celebrated by lots
(43:42):
of wookies assembling in what looks like a giant Olan
Mills portrait. Um, and all of them are wearing red robes.
And I know I'm up talking, and it's because my
mind is still having trouble like wrapping around this. And
then um, Princess Leia comes out with C three P
(44:03):
O is Mark Hamill there, the whole gangs there, I from, Okay,
the whole gangs there. And then they all gather around
to hear a great quote from Princess Leiah, which we
will read um verbatim. This holiday is yours, but we
all share with you the hope that this day brings
us closer to freedom into harmony and to peace. No
(44:24):
matter how different we appear, we're all the same in
our struggle against the powers of evil and darkness. I
hope that this day will always be a day of
joy in which we can reconfirm our dedication and our courage,
and more than anything else, our love for one another.
This is the promise of the Tree of life que song, right,
And we should also point out the tree of life
(44:45):
has never been mentioned up to this point. A sudden
appearance at the end, and when you said que song,
by que song, you mean Princess Leia starts singing. Yeah.
And apparently that was one of the big contingencies on
Harry Fischer being involved. She's going through the phase where
she was like, I kind of like singing Bruce Valanche
calls it, or Joni Mitchell period. Yeah, and she somehow
(45:07):
convinced them to let her sing as Princess Leiah and
she does. And again I've said that she looks like
she's on drugs. This is the point where she really
does look like she's on drugs. And it's not just
me Um other writers who've written reviews of this. It's
really obvious that she possibly smoked a decent amount of
(45:28):
pot before she shot this shot this scene. But she sings, Oh, okay,
it's fine. It's just the fact that um, Princess Leiah
is singing. And actually, Bruce Valanche had a really great
quote too. He says that, um, she very much wanted
to show this side of her talent, and there was
general dismay because this was not what we wanted Princess
(45:48):
Leia to be doing. She did it anyway. So the
whole thing ends with her singing this song about life day,
which is set loosely to the John Williams Starr Worst theme. Yeah.
Uh So along the way, the director original director quit,
a new director, Steve Binder was hired to finish the
job and bring it in. Uh. And he did over
(46:11):
the original one million dollar budget, of course always Uh.
He did bring it in and um at this point
George Lucas had uh. He was he was working on
Empire Strikes Back. He didn't know what was going on.
He wasn't around for the shoot. No, it wasn't until
it aired. I think that he actually saw it. Yes,
and it was a travesty obviously, if you haven't noticed
(46:32):
that by now, Critics hated it. Star Wars fans really
hated it. Everybody hate The people who were in it
hated it. Lucas hated it. Even Harvey Corman secretly hated it.
Even Harvey Kitel hated Actually he loved it. But Lucas
has been asked over the years about it a lot,
and he doesn't talk about it much. But in two
(46:53):
thousand five, and I don't buy this for a second,
he says, um it was an interview he said special
from I really didn't have much to do with us.
You know that part is true. I can't remember what
network it was even on, but it was a thing
that they did. That's a lie. There's no way he
doesn't know that was cvt uh. We kind of just
let them do it. I believe that it was done
(47:15):
by I can't even remember who the group was, but
they were variety TV guys. I'm sure he remembers a
few of them. We let them use the characters and stuff,
and that probably wasn't the smartest thing to do, but
you learn from those experiences. I think they even used
some of the footage from the movie at the end.
It looks like some space like a highlight reel. Yeah,
(47:35):
the gang, well, and during the UM it looked like
some of the they had some insert shots of like
Imperial cruisers and Thai fighters and stuff that. Remember when
when Chewbacca like leans back and puts his hands behind it, Yeah,
that's in there. It's it's like a it's just a
highlight reel from the movie saying like I feel like this,
go see the move well, and also that means it
(47:57):
doesn't match the look of the rest of it at all. Yeah,
that's just sort of inserted. They tried, They definitely tried, UM,
And George Lucas is totally full of it because in
seven he told star Log magazine that the Christmas Special
would be out on video cassette very soon, and in
two thousand seven, two years after that quote, you just
read where he's like, I don't even know what you're
(48:18):
talking about. Basically, UM. He apparently considered releasing the Christmas
Special as a bonus on the the DVDs of the
first three right, but did not didn't And apparently Carrie
Fisher told Lucas that if you want me to do
UM DVD extras commentary commentary, then I want a clean,
(48:38):
original copy of the Holiday Special, So why go ahead?
So I can play at parties what I want people
to leave. It's pretty great. It is so uh and
there is one of those clean copies is floating around
out there, so you can watch this in it in
its entirety. Some of it, like the cartoon, was removed
(48:59):
due to copy right infringement and that kind of stuff,
but as as the case with the rest of the Internet,
you can just go find it elsewhere and piece it together.
There's also the original ads that aired in Baltimore that
are just fascinating. Ye. Those are always fun gm ads
where one of the guys who's in quality control is
he says, did you watch it? I don't think I
(49:21):
saw that. He goes, um, we really care about these
cars and that's no job man, a GM man, and
he's like, it's serious. They're trying to be hip. Yeah. Um,
it's a pretty good stuff. Here's my final thought on it.
I love it. It It does not taint my Star Wars
experience or my love for the franchise, and I'm glad
(49:42):
it is out there because it it's a it's a
fun little stain that shouldn't be taken too seriously. I
think it adds to it actually because it's campy and awful,
and I don't know somehow that enriches the rest of it.
I'm with you, you like it? Oh yeah, I mean
I watched it twice. I wouldn't watched it a second.
(50:03):
I wouldn't have made it through the first time. Let
me take that back. I'm a pro, so I would
have made it through the first time. I wouldn't have
watched it the second time if I wasn't. There wasn't
something about it, and I figured out. I think the
thing that I like the most about it is Lumpy,
Chewbacca's son, played by an actress named Patty Maloney, who
frankly is hands down the best actor in the entire thing.
(50:26):
She like her responses and everything is just awesome. I
think my favorite parts are, uh, well, there's a great
Wilhelm screamed trips over the law. Jerry would not have
noticed it. Uh And then there's a part where all
the Wookie dialogue you can't understand, but there's clearly one
part where where Itchy and Lumpy are have any exchange
(50:49):
where Lumpy you can make it out goes yeah, yeah, yeah,
I noticed that, but it's covered up. But someone was like,
we have to have at least one exchange where you
sort of know what they're saying, or they were like,
I think she just said I love you. Should we
have them redo it? And then directors like no, I
want to go and Chuck. There's one other thing that
I figured out from watching this. It's not readily apparent.
(51:12):
The whole thing is made all the more odd, and
that there's situation after situation after situation where we as
normal audiences, were trained to expect the laugh track, but
there's not a laugh track. Had there been a laugh track,
it what it might have been less bizarre, but the
fact that it's missing just makes your agitates the mind.
(51:35):
So it's this whole additional element that it is weird.
I never thought about that. There's just weird moments of
silence all throughout it, like when Art Carney's doing his
thing and telling jokes. Yeah, okay, I agree with you, Chuck,
don't take things too seriously. I think that's the great
lesson in this and the lesson of life day it
is and in two thousand seven Riff tracks Great Mystery
(51:56):
Science Theater three thousand Guys Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, and
Kevin Murphy uh provided audio commentary for the full version
of the special, So try and go grab that if
you can as well, Oh you can't. It's on the
site because it's great. I think it's like eight bucks
and those guys are awesome and they are at least
I think Corbett listens to us. So, hey, Corbett, you
(52:19):
got anything else? No, no, I think we did this.
There's some good stuff. Go read the Vanity Fair article
h Han Solo Comedy Hour. There's a book called How
Star Wars Conquered the Universe that has a very interesting
chapter about this. That's where we found it asserted that
George Lucas never said that he would smash this thing
with a sledge hammer. Um. And there's also an entire
(52:39):
website dedicated to its Star Wars Holiday Special dot com
And if you want to know more about the Star
Wars Holiday Special, we have a ton of heart Star
Wars stuff on how stuff works by the way, Yeah,
we have cool, um sort of fun articles about the
Death Star and Lightsabers videos with the Holly Fry from
stuff you missed in history class. Yeah, who she knows
her stuff, she does. Um. So you can just type
(53:02):
star Wars in the search part how stuff works up
commony will bring up some cool stuff for you. Since
I said search bar, its time for listener mail. Hey guys,
just finished listening to the Voytage Manuscript podcast. Found it's
super interesting, especially the theories on its definition or origin.
No Josh Menchin Chucks theory, but being drug induced a
somewhat surprising or even unlikely given the language in the
(53:24):
manuscript follows linguistic laws only founded in the past one years.
But if you think about it, it's a tough. It's
tough to stray away from familiar structures, especially for something
like language. I think back to when I was younger
and friends invented their own languages, or even in writing
a song or poetry. Creativity can sometimes be limited by
what we know. Uh So I just thought I contribute
(53:46):
that to the conversation. Than big thanks for all you
guys do. I found the podcast after moving to San
Diego in the last few years for some noise around
my apartment, so basically we were blocking out noise. We
do that, which I love, uh And then it's a
way to get through traffic on my commute at home
from work. You guys are far more interesting and enjoyable
than television and YouTube videos. Sure, I listen to hundreds
(54:09):
and will continue to listen to hundreds more. Keep on,
keeping on. That is from Amy J. Moffatt. Thanks a lot.
Amy in San Diego doesn't mean like place of the
Whales and German or something like that. Uh yeah. If
you want to get in touch with this, you can
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(54:29):
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Should Know dot com For more on this and thousands
of other topics. Does it how stuff Works dot com
Happy belated life day everyone. It's me Josh uh, and
I chose for this week's s Y s K selects
the Star Wars Holiday Special episode. It's true this just
came out two years back, but in my opinion, listening
to this episode should probably become a worldwide annual holiday tradition.
(00:21):
So we missed last year, we can just go ahead
and consider this year one of that tradition. I hope
you enjoy it, and Merry Christmas and happy holidays however
you celebrate them. Welcome to Stuff you should know from
how Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
(00:49):
I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuckers Bryant and Jerry
Jerome Roland. Uh. Who's the Wookie mother? Yeah? Mala? That
was the Wookie wife. Oh and mother? Yeah sure, Chewbacca's
momb is not with them any longer. She left. She
(01:09):
was not about to appear in that. She went out
the window. I'm excited about this. I have to say
we should say Happy Star Wars Day. Yeah. Today is
um December. Um, I have my opening night tickets? Do
you really sure? Wow? You know I into it? Oh? Yeah,
(01:31):
well I will definitely go see it in the theater,
But um, why won't be the opening night? Sure, I've
gotten really adept at like ignoring spoilers, people talking about
stuff all like, so I can I could conceivably see
this movie a month after it comes out and still
going fresh. I'm an ostrich. Yeah you black yourself out,
(01:53):
Yeah you go dark. I make myself go to sleep face,
you go to the dark side. Been there a while now?
Uh Well, Happy Star Wars Day though, I'm sure that
I think this pairs nicely with Christmas Star Wars Day.
It's all come together. Yes, Um, we already missed Life
Day though, so happy belated Life Day. Are they celebrating
(02:14):
it this year? Novemb Yeah, but it's every three years.
Mm hmm, our cane man job. Okay, so it's every
three years, started in nineteen seventy eight. Let's do the math,
shall we? Mm hmmm, quick math break. I believe that
two thousand fourteen was the last Life Day, man, we
(02:37):
just missed, and then again in seventeen. Okay, soeen we'll
celebrate Life Day. Will put on our red robes, are ultralong,
straight ironed wigs, and we'll celebrate Life Day the way
it was meant to. Yes, And if you have no
idea what we're talking about. We are talking about Life Day,
which is a celebration, uh that Wookies in the Star
(02:59):
Wars Union first have every three years. Yeah, it's like
their Christmas or the Kanza, their tet. Supposedly, it's sort
of like Earth. They too. They celebrate the diversity of
their ecosystem and also remembrance of the dead, and they
also give the gifts there like the Fins. Basically, Yeah,
it's a it's a very interesting part of the Star
(03:19):
Wars canon. It is, and it's almost entirely made up,
dashed off you could possibly say, by um, George Lucas
in the seventies. Um. And it's the basis of what
is become derided as like one of the worst things
that ever happened to the Star Wars galaxy. Well, not
only that, one of the worst things ever aired on television. Yeah,
(03:42):
with this galaxy. Yeah, at first that sounds like hyperbole, like,
come on, it's because it was Star Wars, we had
high expectations, but it's really that bad. Yeah. The people
who say that haven't seen even a second of it. Yeah. Yeah, However,
I watched it uh, when I was a kid. Then
it again this week, and you watched it twice this week. Yeah,
(04:03):
I watched it last night and this morning. There's something
about it. It's mesmerizing, it really is. It's one of
those things that you start watching it and you want
to turn it off, but you want to see just
how absurd it can get. Almost Yeah, and it starts absurd,
it stays absurd. In the middle, it's increasingly more absurd,
it's a little less absurd, finishes super absurd. Yeah, it's
(04:27):
just a train wreck in every single sense of the word.
Talk to bottom. It's extraordinarily difficult to overstate how bad
this is, and some people have, you know, in researching this,
you read about it, you read descriptions of these things,
and it just can't possibly be gotten across until you
see it. So luckily, as we will see, you can
go onto YouTube and watch it, and you may even
(04:49):
enjoy this episode more if you pause, go spend two
hours watching this thing, and then come back and laugh
along with us. Yeah, there's a great Over the years,
there have been many segments of it on YouTube from
badly VHS tapes, but there's one really pretty good version
of it in full UM brought to you by w
(05:11):
h I O Dayton, Ohio, Channel seven. Because that flashes
up on the screen periodically. Man, it is high quality,
it looks good, and it has to basically be the
copy that the actual UM affiliate broadcast. It's like that,
that quality compared to the other stuff floating around on YouTube,
clearly recorded on a pc R, which we're really expensive,
(05:35):
very expensive. I did some calculating on west Egg okay UM,
so the average VCR went for about a thousand dollars.
There were brand new it's amazing thousand dollars in money,
so they were about thirty eight hundred dollars in two
thousand fourteen money. Luckily, there were some rich people out
there recording this stuff, and the wealthy have saved us
all again yet again, as they always do. Uh. We
(05:58):
need to shout out some art goals that we used
for this. There's great a great article in Vanity Fair
called the Han Solo Comedy Our exclamation Point by Frank D. Jacomo.
And then there's the Star Wars Holiday special was the
worst thing on television ever by So when we kind
of know Alex Pasternack uh from Motherboard, Yeah, which is uh,
(06:20):
not wired. It's uh vice. We wrote a little bit
for Motherboard back then and we had a call with that,
like we're like old motherboard vets basically, and when they're
one more, there was another one and I don't know
who wrote this one chuck. Uh, yeah, it's the titles
the Star Wars Holiday Special. George Lucas wants to smash
every copy of with a sledgehammer, which was a famous quote,
(06:44):
uh supposedly at a convention by Lucas, Yes, which is
not correct. He didn't ever say that. No, okay, that
that sounded like something that people made up. Yes, but
if you go on the internet, you will quickly believe
that he did. Apparently didn't, so that's I'm sure he
felt that way though, clearly, because he did appear on
Robot Chicken and I think two thousand five on the
Therapist Couch talking about how much he hated the special. Alright,
(07:08):
so let's set the background, shall we Shall we go
back to summer getting the old way back machine. All right,
let's do it. All right, here we are, there's Waterson. Yeah,
I'm just a little six year old excited about Star Wars.
I am. I've just turned one. Yes, you don't know
(07:30):
what's up yet. I please forgive me if I urinate myself,
no problem, okay. Uh So what has happened is Star
Wars has become a huge, huge hit, seemingly out of nowhere,
establishing George Lucas is one of the brilliant young minds
and filmmaking, even though when this first movie it was
his first huge, huge breakout hit. Oh yeah, for sure,
(07:52):
talk don't even talk about a breakout hit, Like no
one had ever seen anything like it before two thousand
one had come out in the late sixty but it wasn't.
It's still it still isn't accessible to all audiences. You know,
it's kind of cerebral film. Yeah, it's not an adventure movie.
This was This is like basically swashbuckling on the screen.
But you know, in a galaxy far far away, Star
(08:14):
Wars just changed everything and it came on just like
a hammer. Um, there's a new hope by the way, yes,
and then then we're gonna get stuff wrong, nerds, So yes,
just go ahead and get your little fingers ready to
email us. Like if it wasn't driven home that I'm
not a nerd by the fact that I don't have
opening night tickets or any tickets yet, give me a break,
(08:34):
and by proxy chuck to okay, thank you. So um,
it's it's hard to stay how great Star Wars was
in everyone's mind, right. Bill Murray came out with that
lounge singer Star Wars thing. It was everywhere and if
you if you just listen to the lyrics of it,
it's really it's just Bill Murray singing about how much
(08:55):
Star Wars is awesome. Right. So, by the following year, Um,
George Lucas was he wanted to figure out a way
to keep audiences just engaged with the whole Star Wars
franchise that he was just starting to build. But he
knew the Empire Strikes Back was a couple more years out, sure,
so um he I think he was approached by some
(09:17):
TV executives who said, have you considered doing some sort
of TV special? They're all the rage right now. We
have a we have a graphic that's really awesome that
we set aside just for TV specials here at CBS.
Why don't you let us let's get together and do
a Star Wars special. That's right. Producers Gary Smith and
Dwight him on. Uh, we're working over at CBS, and
(09:41):
they said, this is a great way to keep the
spirit alive while you're making your other movie. Maybe move
some more toys. Yeah, which George Lucas got. So it
was right before Thanksgiving, and he said, there'll be a
lot of people watching TV um pre holiday season or
I guess in the holiday season. Well, the weekend before Thanksgiving,
it's like everybody's shopping, sitting around family like waiting to
(10:04):
actually do stuff. That's right, perfect time to broadcast something
on TV. So Lucas says, all right, let's do this.
I don't have a ton of time, but how about this.
I'll get I'll get a story together and then you
can go hire a whiz bang team of of veteran
writers and producers and directors whatever genre you think is appropriate.
(10:25):
And those are the words that will haunt you, George
Lucas to his grave. Yeah. So Lucas said, here's my idea.
I wanted to be based um on Wookiees, and I
wanted to take place on their home planet of Kazook
or Wookie planet. See is that how you saying Kazuk
That's how it's pronounced. In the episode, the Holiday special.
(10:46):
But it's also pronounced different ways. Other times I would
have pronounced that cashy e e got spell it k
a s h y y y k, which I mean,
I guess that sounds like Chewbuck is plan sure also
called G five Wookie planet see or Eaton is a
mid rim planet. Right. So the whole reason apparently that
(11:08):
George Lucas was interested in featuring the Wookies was it
is what we in show business call low hanging fruit.
The reason why it was low hanging fruit was because
they had just established the different scenes that would make
the cut for Empire Strikes Back and uh, what how
did you pronounce it again? Kazook Kazook had not made
(11:30):
the cut. Uh. Even prior to this, apparently for a
new hope, George Lucas had whipped up a forty page
what's known as the Wookie Bible. It's like a forty
page supplement that's all about Kazook and Wookies and Chewbacca
and his family and everything about wookie um. Right, so
he's like, I've got this thing already, you know established
(11:51):
I love Wookies. Um, they didn't make the cut. I'm
a little sad about that. They're not gonna kazuok is
not gonna show up in an Empire strikes back. Let's
let's build the entire special around wookies. It's basically the
one demand me George Lucas has. Yeah, that's it. I'll
be totally hands off from this point on which he
kind of was. He totally wasn't It was actually this
(12:12):
experience that apparently taught him to be the very hands
on a person that he is famous for being. It
came out of this Christmas special. Absolutely he was burned,
and um he had an iron grip after that on everything.
So here's some some of the folks behind it. Bruce Valanche,
famous TV writer. You've probably seen him on Hollywood Squares.
(12:34):
Wasn't he suspected of being Thomas pinch On for a while.
I don't know, or was Thomas pinch On on Hollywood Squares?
I have no idea. I may be confabulating some stuff confounding. Yeah,
there's some kind of some sort going on. It sounds
like it. So Valanche was hired as a writer. A
guy named Lenny Rips was hired as a writer who
(12:55):
has some great quotes in that Vanity Fair article. He does.
His first quote was, we were really excited because this
is Star Wars. How could it lose famous? Last words?
Who else was hired? There was a husband and wife team,
the welch Is, who are the parents of folk singer
(13:16):
Gillian Welch. I'm a big fan of and I had
no idea that her parents. They were producers slash songwriters
of the day. They were big on the variety show scene,
which would turn out to be a really key cog
in this whole experience. So I feel like, right about here,
Jerry should insert a needle coming off of a record
sound effect. Okay, thanks Jerry, So Chuck, you just said
(13:41):
singer songwriters. Yeah, what would that have to do with
Star Wars. Yeah? Well, actually, in this Star Wars Holiday special,
for those of you hadn't seen it, there are musical numbers.
They decided from the outset that there should be musical numbers.
And the reason that they decided that there should be
musical numbers is because the people who sold George Lucas
and at the time it was started, the Star Wars
(14:03):
Corporation was what it was called um On the idea
of doing this TV special was that everyone would love
a variety show. Yeah, it was the seventies. Great idea,
let's do a variety show. The problem was this, Apparently
George Lucas didn't watch enough TV and he also overly
trusted people who talked to him because by yes, variety
(14:24):
shows had dominated television for over ten years, but it
had come to an end. It was getting stale. Yeah,
we're talking to Carol Burnett show, one of my favorite
had just been canceled after eleven seasons. Sonny and Chair
had just had its last season. Um, I mean what
else like he Hall was he? I was still going on,
(14:45):
probably still on solid golden yet to come on and
take up the mantel that that would never write a show. Oh,
it was a little bit, and there was talking in
between the songs. Remember the Mandrell's Sister show. I never
watched that one. Well, it's with that country chic thing
that happened. Yeah, it was a big deal in the
(15:06):
it's kind of happening again. I think, Oh, because of
that dude, the guy who won all the c m
A Awards. I don't know, he's like he's he came along.
He's like actually country. His dad's like a coal miner
for real. From Kentucky. I think, I know you mean
Chris something. Yeah, he's come along and been like, what
are you guys doing? Well, there's a revival in like
(15:27):
good country music. Again, that's like in the tradition of
Merle Haggard and and I guess that's probably where the
country she came from because there was actually good country
going on. Yeah, Johnny Cash out a variety show, did
he really? Yeah? I knew they did, like a Sunday
singing thing like out in Virginia. Yeah, he had his
own variety show. Is actually pretty good. There's some like
really great performances. Do you know how many nerds are like,
(15:50):
get back to Star Wars? I know, I'm so sorry.
All right, So the Variety Show is is dying sort of,
and so they figure, what a great time to take
the biggest movie property on the planet and wedge it
into the variety show milieu. I don't know if wedge
is the right word. I think maybe uh, nestle it
in there and then start hitting it with the blunt
(16:13):
edge of an axe until it mashes into that crevice.
You know, Because this is the time when Fantasy Island
had just started. Um Mork and Mindy was about to
change things. Charlie's Angels was getting huge. It basically television
as we knew it from two whenever the real world
(16:33):
came along. Just escape as television is what they called
it was was starting and it was the hip new thing.
So basically, if they had turned Han Solo and Princess
Leiah and Luke Skywalker into maybe you know, sexy detectives,
it might have gone over even better. But they went
the other way. They decided to latch onto this extraordinarily
stale um genre of television and they hired the best
(16:57):
in the business, like there was there was. There was
a from I think Lenny RiPPs who was saying, like
we had literally a dream team, a variety show dream team,
and everybody was good, but there were probably no bad
welders on the Titanic eare That's a great quote. Yeah.
The guy they hired to direct it initially was a
dude named David A. Coomba, and he had made his
(17:19):
name for Welcome to the Fillmore East. It was a
concert documentary with Van Morrison Van Morrison and the Birds
in nineteen seventy one, and he actually was at usc
Film School at the same time as Lucas, even though
they didn't know each other, and um, he only ended
up directing about three segments of the thing before he quit.
Yet before he walked off, some say he was actually
(17:40):
let go, but we'll get to him in a minute
and who replaced him. As as we get along down
this uh gross road, well let's let's take a little
break because I'm I'm overly excited. Okay, alright, so we've
(18:13):
established most of the main players. We'll we'll get to
a few more. We should point out that, um, Mark
hamill And and Harrison Ford and Carrie Fischer, Peter Mayhew,
they had no grounds to refuse to be on this basically, yeah,
pretty much. They were not huge, huge stars, yet they
could throw their weight around and say this is terrible
(18:34):
and I'm not doing it. They were. They were big
overnight because of Star Wars, for sure, but they weren't
to the adoring public back at the studio. They could
still be bossed around. And this is the result of it.
And you can tell also, um, just from watching the
actual special, Like Harrison Ford is not happy to be
there at any point. Um, Princess Leiah is clearly on drugs.
(19:00):
Uh was she on drugs at this point she if
you watch it, she's she's on drugs. Especially the ending scene.
Mark Hambell, it looks like he's happy to be there.
Actually he was fine, but apparently he said no, I'm
I'm not doing a musical number. And if you watch
his part, wedging a musical number in there would have
been even more painful. Um. But they everybody who was
(19:24):
part of the actual Star Wars franchise that wasn't wearing
like a full body costume was like, I really wish
I wasn't here, And you can tell, oh yeah. In fact,
in the opening uh credit sequence, they're showing the picture
that you know, the faces of the people, and you
see Harrison Ford as if he's flying the Millennium Falcon,
and you can you can just hear the guy I'll
(19:45):
screen going now look at the camera and just give
a nod. Just look at the camera and give a nod.
And he finally you can tell he's piste off and
he looks up at the camera and just sort of
smirks yeah and points at the camera like okay, I'm
looking at the camera, and then goes back to what
he's doing. Yeah, it's pretty awesome. I felt bad for him.
So early on Valanche and others did you did you
feel bad for him? Though? Really? I mean, like, come on,
(20:09):
it's Harrison Ford, it's Hans Solo. He has to go
do this for like five days. Yeah, I felt terrible
for him. I think it's hilarious that they had to
do this, especially now. Well, early on, Valanche and others
knew that they may be in trouble because they decided
not to subtitle any of the Wookie dialogue, and they
literally started after a brief opening scene setting it up here.
(20:30):
Here's the basic plot is Han Solo is trying to
get Chewbacca back to Kazook in time for Life Day
so we can celebrate with his family. That's the basis
of the entire two the basis the entire two hours.
They encounter a space battle and they're delayed, and the
next two hours are kind of what's going on while
(20:52):
the delay is happening back on Kazoo, back on Kazook.
Because you hear, like, okay, well, Han Solo and Chewbacca
evading the Imperial Guard and all that stuff for two hours.
I would watch that. I would too. That's not what
they show killing time at the Wookie household. That is
what they show. That's what they do. It's people hanging
(21:12):
out waiting for Chewbacca, worrying about him, and then killing
time while they wait for him to come back. Literally,
so um and so hold on. So you say there's
a setup, right, Yeah, that's the initial setup and then chuck.
That's followed by this. Yeah, it's followed by literally ten minutes,
ten solid minutes of incomprehensible Wookie speak. So let's let's
(21:37):
join it for a second, shall we. Let's all enjoy it.
(22:24):
And again, you said ten minutes, and you're not exaggerating,
you're not being hyperbolic. You can time it. That's it's
ten minutes of wook He's talking to each other with
no subtitles. Fortunately, I couldn't follow it at first, Like
I didn't even know who it was. I thought it
was might have been Chewbacca's mom and dad. Oh yeah,
(22:44):
that's a little brother. And I don't find out until
later when Mark Cambell shows up via skype call and says,
he really explains everything that had just happened, Like, you're
Chewbacca's father, Itchy, you'r Chewbacca's son, uh Lumpy Lumpy, and
you are Chewbacca's wife. Oh mama, thank you. So before
(23:06):
everybody starts like freaking out, we know that that's actually
their nicknames. Their real names are. His father is a
ti chick cook, a tchick cook it's really hard to pronounce.
Mulatto Buck is his wife, and his son is lump
O war Ump but as named by Lucas. But yeah,
but Lucas also named him Lumpy Itchy and Mala so um.
(23:31):
They're all back there wringing their hands, trying to figure
out ways to pass the time until they get word
from Chewbacca that he's made it to uh what is it, ketchuck, zuck,
kazook Um. Just say ketchup, ketchup or cats up if
you're fancy. Um. But Chewbacca is having trouble getting back
(23:52):
to Katchuk because there's kazuock, because there's a blockade by
the Empire and they're looking for rebels, specifically Chewbacca. Who
I didn't realize this. He's the most famous Wookie of
all did you know that? Yeah, of course I didn't
know that. Well, I mean, he's the only one that
really appears in the movies I mean that we're seeing, like,
(24:13):
you know, these people's view of the universe. What about
back on book Ye, he might have just been a
fly by night wookie, right, yeah, but not the case
very famous wookie. Yeah, and he really loved it, like
soak in his fame. All right, So he realizes there's
a problem. Valanche. He goes to Lucas and it's like,
(24:33):
I don't know, man, this is your world, but it
may not be the strongest thing to do to set
this in wookie Land and have all this incomprehensible dialogue.
And he says he was met with a glacial stare. Uh. Well,
he put it a little differently than that. Well, he
said glacial stair. He did. The glacial stair that he
got was for this quote. He said, these people just
(24:56):
talk and what sounds like fat people having an orgasm.
He goes, if you want, you can set up a
tape recorder in my bedroom and I'll do all of
the follying for it. Yeah he's a large guy, he is,
so uh that's what got the glacial stare. But Valanche
later said that from this, there was one development meeting
that Lucas attended and it was here's the Wookie Bible.
(25:17):
Tell me what you got, And Valanche said he and
the other writers and producers and director were just kind
of throwing ideas, and George Lucas would either say like, no,
that doesn't work, give him a glacial stare, or say, yes,
that's exactly it. Yes, let's make this a variety show. Yeah.
And there was a little bit of um background there.
(25:37):
The cantina players in the band had appeared on other
variety shows at that point, and I think it went
over fairly well, just as a short segment on like
the Richard Pryor Variety Show or Donnie Marie um Man.
There were a lot of variety shows. But that's what
I'm saying. It was that was television. That's what you did,
(25:58):
Like the bread these um the The show had its
course and then it became a variety show. It was
just everybody love variety shows. By this time, though, everybody
was sick of variety shows and so it really was
a terrible choice. In fact, they even hired a couple
of writers from Shields and yarn l which I hadn't
(26:19):
heard of. Oh yeah, I watched it. It was creepy.
This mind couple who had their own variety show, and
they figured these two will be great because they are
used to working without words, right, So, and so there
is a certain logic to the variety show. It's not
it's just that variety shows were popular at the time.
(26:40):
Somebody was like, well, Wookie's you don't understand what they're saying.
So this is all going to be very physical. So
these people who who did what is it shields in yarn? Now, yeah,
that's a perfect choice. That that makes complete sense. You
can see this whole this whole process of leading up
to the point where it was produced and shot and everything.
It's series of like, oh, we have this problem, well
(27:02):
here's a fix. Yeah, but that leads to another problem.
Well we'll fix it with this, and and no one
stepping back and being like, all we've done is create
a series of problems that are going to come together
and make one extraordinarily large problem that will become legendary.
No one did that, and so the whole thing was
was made. That's right, And that eventually airs on November
(27:24):
sevent Friday at eight pm Eastern time. That's right, and
Nielsen ratings it um attracted thirteen million viewers. Uh just
the second hour, just in the US. It aired in
six or seven countries total. Yeah, but no one cares
about that, I guess not because none of those are
on the internet. Uh. It finished second to the Love
(27:47):
Boat in the second arm, sorry from eight to nine,
and in the next hour actually finished behind part two
of a mini series about Pearl Harbor starring Angie Dickinson.
So it didn't even win their respective hours. No t million,
that's that's not bad. The thing is, apparently if you
look at the Nielsen ratings graph for the first hour, yea,
we know about that graph. It's okay, yeah, we do.
(28:10):
And then after a very important part, which we'll talk
about soon. Um, it just drops off at the end
of the first hour. And that actually probably made the
executives at CBS cringe for a number of reasons. Number
one is this special was originally supposed to just be
an hour, but so many advertisers wanted to sign on
(28:30):
that they extended it to two hours. And it shines
through you can totally tell that this thing was never
supposed to I think an hour might have been stretching it.
To tell you the truth, it's thirty minutes of content,
forty if you're generous an hour and then two hours,
it becomes one of the worst things that was ever
(28:51):
put on television. All right, well, let's take a break
and then we'll talk a little bit more about the
actual um uh even I don't want to call it
content it but it is content in the strictest definitions.
Right after this, sorry gee, alright, So the show itself,
(29:27):
we've given you the main plot line, which again is
that Chewy is trying to get back to his home
planet to celebrate life Day with his family. Right, that's it,
And again we almost barely see Chewy. Yeah, the rest
is his family on because look waiting for him to
come back for a life Day. Yeah. So, um, some
(29:48):
of the various things they did, they were guest stars.
There was Harvey Corman from The Carol Burnett Show, one
of my all time favorites him or Carol Carol Burnett
Show both. He's great. Yeah, he actually if you watch
what he's doing, you're like, this is comedy genius. For apparently,
he too was like the only one on set that
was bringing levity. He was joking around and kind of
(30:09):
kept spirits up. Good for him, that's what I say.
And he had three, three different parts. Yeah, he played
uh well, I don't even know the names. Actually we
could look him up, but he played a He played
a Julia child like cook. There's an actual cooking segment,
a long one, a very long cooking segment where Chewbacca's
(30:31):
wife Um makes Banta stew to kill some time, to
kill some time because waiting on her planet and in
our living room. Yeah, so Harvey Corman is in Drag
is a foe armed Julia child like uh TV chef
And I think it's Gormanda. It's her name, Gormanda. That
makes total sense. He also plays Um. There's this one
(30:54):
weird bit where Chewbacca's son tries to figure out a
way to trick the stormtroopers. The Empire had come and
kind of because the blockade raided the house and other properties.
So he tries to trick them by I think, rigging
a calm link to speak in a different voice. So
he has to watch the instruction manual. He watches an
(31:16):
instruction video which was Harvey Kitel as a robot. Oh,
it would have been wonderful, little big Harvey Kitel did
Harvey Carvey corn Man Haye murders someone in the middle
of the instruction Harvey Corman. And then the final role
he had was as a a bar patron in the
cantina that drinks. He has a hole in the top
(31:40):
of his head like a volcano, where he pours his
drinks in. That's how he drinks. And he he loves
b Arthur. Did we mention be Arthur was in it?
B Arthur is not only in it, Chuck. She sings
a song. She does. She is thenotes to everyone she
manages or maybe owns. The owner. Yeah, the what's the
mas what moss deaf cantina? Uh? No, most of is
(32:02):
a rapper. Oh yeah, I think you mean Moss Eisley. Yes, yes,
that cantina. She's the owner. Be Arthur is the owner
be author of the Golden Girls, but in this case
the Arthur of Maude, because as one of the people
who wrote one of the articles we based this on
points out, she's just basically playing Maud as the owner
of the cantina. Yeah, and her song comes because um,
(32:23):
they basically say there's a lockdown, so you gotta call
last call um at your bar. So she calls last
call by singing a song to everyone. Right, and again
we can't possibly have the script lead anywhere else but
Chewbacca's house while his family waits for it. So all
this takes place as part of a public service announcement
(32:45):
basically broadcast by the Empire about how immoral life on
tattooing is. So let's go see what's going on in
the mos Eisley Cantina as it's being shut down for curfew. Alright,
this is incomprehensible, but it goes on. Um, so they're
in it. There's also Art Carney. Yes, he's the Honeymooners family,
(33:08):
the star of the whole thing. Really, he has the
most lines, I would say, the most comprehensible line. Right.
So he plays a trader, a human trader um that is,
uh recently been with Han Solo and Chewy and actually
gets to Kazook and says they're on the way. It's
all good. Yeah, a trade or not trade tour. Yeah,
(33:30):
traders in trades humans for you know money. No, he
he sells goods. Yeah, a trader. He doesn't trade humans. Yeah,
he's in the human trade. He No, he isn't. Really
he trades humans like he sells humans. I looked it
up in the Star Wars Encyclopedia said that he was
(33:50):
in the human trade. So in this Christmas special, apparently
they sanitized his his background because he's basically just selling
like gadgets and novelty and stuff like that to the
Wookies and the Empire who were occupying the area. Yes,
he comes bearing gifts because he's a friend of Chewbacca's family. Yeah,
(34:10):
so he comes bearing gifts. One of the gifts he
gives is a UM sort of like a little digital
insert to a Oh, I guess you would call it
a virtual reality hair dryer hair dryer, like a beauty
shop hair dryer. Right. He gives it to Grandpa Itchy.
Grandpa Itchy UM sits under this hair dryer pops in
(34:33):
this uh digital cassette, and it can only be described
as softcore porn. Apparently the writers who were interviewed for
this said that was totally the intent. They were trying
to get what amounted to softcore porn that would pass
the sensors. So it's all m you can't even say
(34:53):
it's innuendo. It's too obvious in overt for innuendo. Instead,
it's just it's just it's just gross. It's really gross.
Um Diane Carroll, Yes she is. Um, a Vegas staple
shows up and starts basically tantalizing. Um. Grandpa Itchy, who again,
(35:15):
this is Chewbacca's elderly father who now engages in some
sort of well he's he's watching virtual reality pornography now,
and this is a pretty lengthy segment in and of itself.
Well yeah, and she literally says to him like, now
I can see you're really excited. Yeah, it's pretty rough
to watch. Yeah, So then you've got another musical number
(35:36):
because also again he shudders, it's really strange, all right,
So there's also ah, I know, it seems like we're
jumping around, but it's it's so blow not like this
is pretty much like blow for blow. Um. Actually I
forgot earlier on in in the in the special, Um,
there's one of my favorite sequences is when Grandpa Itchy
(35:59):
goes over to Lumpy and basically sets up remember the
the hologram chessboard that they played in A New Hope,
basically kind of sets that up and says, here, just
play this. He pushes the button which is clearly a
nineteen seventies cassette recorder and another uh like it's like
a cirque de sol ay acid trip. Um gymnast routine
(36:25):
happens in front of the kid's eyes. And again this
all just it's not like it shows a snippet. They
showed the entire segments, like five, six, ten minutes long
of all of these things. So you would think, Okay,
they've gone to this hologram, well a couple of times,
why not go to it again? Well they do. They
do to kill more time. While the Imperial Guard is
(36:46):
ransacking their house. Um, Art Carney apparently, I guess it's
trying to get one of the Imperial Guard, the leader
I think, or one of the leaders who looks like
somebody from space Balls by the way, very much so. Um.
And the writer of the Vanity Fair article, by the
way said, um, this, this is so incomprehensible. The specialist
George Lucas didn't even have the schwartz with him at
(37:08):
the time. So anyway, our Carney's distracting this uh Imperial leader. Um,
while they're ransacking the Wookie's house, Chewbacca's house with a hologram,
and this hologram instead of being an acrobat or Diane
Carroll or any kind of porn or anything like that
is Jefferson Starship and they decide that they're going to
(37:32):
play Light the Sky on Fire, which apparently is about UFOs.
It's a little music video. Basically, it's a pretty Yeah,
it's the predecessor to like video Kill the Radio Storry
you can tell um. And again it is the whole
lengthy song, the whole thing. So every time that somebody's like,
we need to escape mentally from what's going on here
(37:54):
in our house, let's go into the video world, it's
not just and they don't cut back and forth. It's okay,
here's five minutes of Jefferson Starship performing this song. And
even the Jefferson Starship guys um were like, yeah, it's
sort of a weird trip, Like we didn't get it,
but we did it right. They gave us some money
(38:15):
and some cocaine. Well probably, so we said, yeah, chuck.
I think though, um, there yet another segment like this
is actually widely regarded as the high point of the
whole thing. So there's a cartoon. Actually yeah that lump
up watch Yeah, Lumpy's like the Imperial Guard is still
(38:36):
ransacking my house. I think I'll entertain myself by watching
a cartoon on my little Um, I don't know what.
I guess it was an iPad and uh, he watches
this cartoon and it's it's actually remarkable for a number
of reasons. It's the best part of the whole special
generally agreed upon as such, not just us. And it
(38:57):
introduces Boba Fett. It's the first time Boba fat ever
makes an appearance in Star Wars universe. Yeah, it's actually
not a bad And you can't find it in the
the one version I told you to watch. They removed
it for copyright. But he didn't watch a separate version, right,
you can find it on its own. Yeah, And it's Um,
it's very much reminiscent of like the cartoon style of
the day, like a he Man or something even even,
(39:18):
but it's even a little more artsy than that. Yeah.
But it does have a plot that you can follow
that makes sense as a Star Wars thing, and it
introduces Boba Fette, like you said, And um, it's actually
not bad. It's like Luke and R two and C
three p O. Yeah, and there's like they crash on
a planet or something. Yeah, and Han and Jewry you're
in it and it's the first time we see in
(39:38):
Darth Vader. It's the first time we see Boba Fett
and that he is uh, that he is just doing
whatever he can do for money. Like Luke trusts him
at first, C three pos like you sure you should
trust him this quick, and he's like, oh, three p
o you and your non trusting ways, And then it
turns out he's selling them out to the dark side.
So it's it's basically Boba Fett is an al worry
(40:00):
for George Lucas himself. So the cartoon comes and goes,
(40:30):
and that was the thing that came at about the
end of the first hour mark, and after that everybody
just turned off their television sets. Yeah, I don't remember.
Did you watch this when it came up? Yeah? I
remember watching it, but I don't remember much about it,
like if I made it through it all. I mean
it was I was seven and it was on until ten,
so I probably didn't make it through it all. Um,
(40:52):
you're probably disturbed. Who knows, I just remember that. I'll
have to ask my brother. He might have a memory
of this. Oh, Betty does I'm sure he met everybody
afterwards or something like that, you know, it has a picture. Well,
he was ten at that point. Cynicism had, you know,
become a thing in his life. Probably by then, didn't
that when cynicism kicks into he's Scott holding out the
(41:13):
fourteen fifteen Yeah maybe so so um chuck, the whole
thing finally does in. And actually there's a guy his
name is Nathan Raban, he writes over at the A
V Club. He had a great quote. He basically said
that one of the great redeeming values of this um,
this special is that it does eventually end. Yeah, you
know what the first part of the quote is, I'm
(41:33):
not convinced the special wasn't ultimately written and directed by
a sentient bag of cocaine. And like, go read his
his review of the Star Wars Holiday Special, because he
goes on to describe exactly what that must have been,
like the development meeting where the bag of cocaine is
pacing back and forth talking about what should happen. That's
what it feels like. But it doesn't, and it ends
(41:56):
even more. It takes this bizarre two hours and wraps
it up in just a nice bizarre bow. Yeah, so
what happens is eventually Han Solo should we say spoiler alert. Eventually,
Han Solo and Chewy make it to the planet. They
park on the far side of the planet because they
know the uh the Imperial forces are there and the
exercise will do chew we good, so they have to
(42:19):
hike over there. They eventually make it back home. Uh
they find a storm the stormtroopers at their house. Um,
their tree hut. Yeah, which by the paintings that set
this up, I don't think we mentioned I don't even
call him Matt paintings that it looks like someone painted
something on the wall and they just like put a
camera in front of it pretty much. Yeah. So they
(42:40):
get back and um, Chewbacca, Han Solo hides around the
corner of Chewbacca steps in front of his son to
protect him. Han Solo jumps out, and the stormtrooper trips
over a pile of logs and falls over the balcony
and dies in a holiday special. So they wouldn't even
not only could he not shoot for first with Grido,
(43:02):
but they couldn't even have him like wrestle the stormtrooper
and throw him off. He trips over a log and
Han Solo has his hands thrown up Like wasn't me.
It might also been a banana peal, you know. But again, uh,
this is basically produced by vaudevillians starring vaudevillians. Why not
(43:22):
have the one death take place from basically what it
amounts to somebody slipping on a banana peel. It's a
perfect way to end it. So that's uh that that
guy basically represents the end of the imperial threat for
the rest of Life Day. And um, we we then
see Life Day being celebrated, which is celebrated by lots
(43:42):
of wookies assembling in what looks like a giant Olan
Mills portrait. Um, and all of them are wearing red robes.
And I know I'm up talking, and it's because my
mind is still having trouble like wrapping around this. And
then um, Princess Leia comes out with C three P
(44:03):
O is Mark Hamill there, the whole gangs there, I from, Okay,
the whole gangs there. And then they all gather around
to hear a great quote from Princess Leiah, which we
will read um verbatim. This holiday is yours, but we
all share with you the hope that this day brings
us closer to freedom into harmony and to peace. No
(44:24):
matter how different we appear, we're all the same in
our struggle against the powers of evil and darkness. I
hope that this day will always be a day of
joy in which we can reconfirm our dedication and our courage,
and more than anything else, our love for one another.
This is the promise of the Tree of life que song, right,
And we should also point out the tree of life
(44:45):
has never been mentioned up to this point. A sudden
appearance at the end, and when you said que song,
by que song, you mean Princess Leia starts singing. Yeah.
And apparently that was one of the big contingencies on
Harry Fischer being involved. She's going through the phase where
she was like, I kind of like singing Bruce Valanche
calls it, or Joni Mitchell period. Yeah, and she somehow
(45:07):
convinced them to let her sing as Princess Leiah and
she does. And again I've said that she looks like
she's on drugs. This is the point where she really
does look like she's on drugs. And it's not just
me Um other writers who've written reviews of this. It's
really obvious that she possibly smoked a decent amount of
(45:28):
pot before she shot this shot this scene. But she sings, Oh, okay,
it's fine. It's just the fact that um, Princess Leiah
is singing. And actually, Bruce Valanche had a really great
quote too. He says that, um, she very much wanted
to show this side of her talent, and there was
general dismay because this was not what we wanted Princess
(45:48):
Leia to be doing. She did it anyway. So the
whole thing ends with her singing this song about life day,
which is set loosely to the John Williams Starr Worst theme. Yeah.
Uh So along the way, the director original director quit,
a new director, Steve Binder was hired to finish the
job and bring it in. Uh. And he did over
(46:11):
the original one million dollar budget, of course always Uh.
He did bring it in and um at this point
George Lucas had uh. He was he was working on
Empire Strikes Back. He didn't know what was going on.
He wasn't around for the shoot. No, it wasn't until
it aired. I think that he actually saw it. Yes,
and it was a travesty obviously, if you haven't noticed
(46:32):
that by now, Critics hated it. Star Wars fans really
hated it. Everybody hate The people who were in it
hated it. Lucas hated it. Even Harvey Corman secretly hated it.
Even Harvey Kitel hated Actually he loved it. But Lucas
has been asked over the years about it a lot,
and he doesn't talk about it much. But in two
(46:53):
thousand five, and I don't buy this for a second,
he says, um it was an interview he said special
from I really didn't have much to do with us.
You know that part is true. I can't remember what
network it was even on, but it was a thing
that they did. That's a lie. There's no way he
doesn't know that was cvt uh. We kind of just
let them do it. I believe that it was done
(47:15):
by I can't even remember who the group was, but
they were variety TV guys. I'm sure he remembers a
few of them. We let them use the characters and stuff,
and that probably wasn't the smartest thing to do, but
you learn from those experiences. I think they even used
some of the footage from the movie at the end.
It looks like some space like a highlight reel. Yeah,
(47:35):
the gang, well, and during the UM it looked like
some of the they had some insert shots of like
Imperial cruisers and Thai fighters and stuff that. Remember when
when Chewbacca like leans back and puts his hands behind it, Yeah,
that's in there. It's it's like a it's just a
highlight reel from the movie saying like I feel like this,
go see the move well, and also that means it
(47:57):
doesn't match the look of the rest of it at all. Yeah,
that's just sort of inserted. They tried, They definitely tried, UM,
And George Lucas is totally full of it because in
seven he told star Log magazine that the Christmas Special
would be out on video cassette very soon, and in
two thousand seven, two years after that quote, you just
read where he's like, I don't even know what you're
(48:18):
talking about. Basically, UM. He apparently considered releasing the Christmas
Special as a bonus on the the DVDs of the
first three right, but did not didn't And apparently Carrie
Fisher told Lucas that if you want me to do
UM DVD extras commentary commentary, then I want a clean,
(48:38):
original copy of the Holiday Special, So why go ahead?
So I can play at parties what I want people
to leave. It's pretty great. It is so uh and
there is one of those clean copies is floating around
out there, so you can watch this in it in
its entirety. Some of it, like the cartoon, was removed
(48:59):
due to copy right infringement and that kind of stuff,
but as as the case with the rest of the Internet,
you can just go find it elsewhere and piece it together.
There's also the original ads that aired in Baltimore that
are just fascinating. Ye. Those are always fun gm ads
where one of the guys who's in quality control is
he says, did you watch it? I don't think I
(49:21):
saw that. He goes, um, we really care about these
cars and that's no job man, a GM man, and
he's like, it's serious. They're trying to be hip. Yeah. Um,
it's a pretty good stuff. Here's my final thought on it.
I love it. It It does not taint my Star Wars
experience or my love for the franchise, and I'm glad
(49:42):
it is out there because it it's a it's a
fun little stain that shouldn't be taken too seriously. I
think it adds to it actually because it's campy and awful,
and I don't know somehow that enriches the rest of it.
I'm with you, you like it? Oh yeah, I mean
I watched it twice. I wouldn't watched it a second.
(50:03):
I wouldn't have made it through the first time. Let
me take that back. I'm a pro, so I would
have made it through the first time. I wouldn't have
watched it the second time if I wasn't. There wasn't
something about it, and I figured out. I think the
thing that I like the most about it is Lumpy,
Chewbacca's son, played by an actress named Patty Maloney, who
frankly is hands down the best actor in the entire thing.
(50:26):
She like her responses and everything is just awesome. I
think my favorite parts are, uh, well, there's a great
Wilhelm screamed trips over the law. Jerry would not have
noticed it. Uh And then there's a part where all
the Wookie dialogue you can't understand, but there's clearly one
part where where Itchy and Lumpy are have any exchange
(50:49):
where Lumpy you can make it out goes yeah, yeah, yeah,
I noticed that, but it's covered up. But someone was like,
we have to have at least one exchange where you
sort of know what they're saying, or they were like,
I think she just said I love you. Should we
have them redo it? And then directors like no, I
want to go and Chuck. There's one other thing that
I figured out from watching this. It's not readily apparent.
(51:12):
The whole thing is made all the more odd, and
that there's situation after situation after situation where we as
normal audiences, were trained to expect the laugh track, but
there's not a laugh track. Had there been a laugh track,
it what it might have been less bizarre, but the
fact that it's missing just makes your agitates the mind.
(51:35):
So it's this whole additional element that it is weird.
I never thought about that. There's just weird moments of
silence all throughout it, like when Art Carney's doing his
thing and telling jokes. Yeah, okay, I agree with you, Chuck,
don't take things too seriously. I think that's the great
lesson in this and the lesson of life day it
is and in two thousand seven Riff tracks Great Mystery
(51:56):
Science Theater three thousand Guys Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, and
Kevin Murphy uh provided audio commentary for the full version
of the special, So try and go grab that if
you can as well, Oh you can't. It's on the
site because it's great. I think it's like eight bucks
and those guys are awesome and they are at least
I think Corbett listens to us. So, hey, Corbett, you
(52:19):
got anything else? No, no, I think we did this.
There's some good stuff. Go read the Vanity Fair article
h Han Solo Comedy Hour. There's a book called How
Star Wars Conquered the Universe that has a very interesting
chapter about this. That's where we found it asserted that
George Lucas never said that he would smash this thing
with a sledge hammer. Um. And there's also an entire
(52:39):
website dedicated to its Star Wars Holiday Special dot com
And if you want to know more about the Star
Wars Holiday Special, we have a ton of heart Star
Wars stuff on how stuff works by the way, Yeah,
we have cool, um sort of fun articles about the
Death Star and Lightsabers videos with the Holly Fry from
stuff you missed in history class. Yeah, who she knows
her stuff, she does. Um. So you can just type
(53:02):
star Wars in the search part how stuff works up
commony will bring up some cool stuff for you. Since
I said search bar, its time for listener mail. Hey guys,
just finished listening to the Voytage Manuscript podcast. Found it's
super interesting, especially the theories on its definition or origin.
No Josh Menchin Chucks theory, but being drug induced a
somewhat surprising or even unlikely given the language in the
(53:24):
manuscript follows linguistic laws only founded in the past one years.
But if you think about it, it's a tough. It's
tough to stray away from familiar structures, especially for something
like language. I think back to when I was younger
and friends invented their own languages, or even in writing
a song or poetry. Creativity can sometimes be limited by
what we know. Uh So I just thought I contribute
(53:46):
that to the conversation. Than big thanks for all you
guys do. I found the podcast after moving to San
Diego in the last few years for some noise around
my apartment, so basically we were blocking out noise. We
do that, which I love, uh And then it's a
way to get through traffic on my commute at home
from work. You guys are far more interesting and enjoyable
than television and YouTube videos. Sure, I listen to hundreds
(54:09):
and will continue to listen to hundreds more. Keep on,
keeping on. That is from Amy J. Moffatt. Thanks a lot.
Amy in San Diego doesn't mean like place of the
Whales and German or something like that. Uh yeah. If
you want to get in touch with this, you can
tweet to us at s Y s K podcast. You
can join us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you
(54:29):
Should Know. You can send us an email the Stuff
podcast at how stuff Works dot com and has always
joined us at at Home on the web Stuff you
Should Know dot com For more on this and thousands
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