December 21, 2019 • 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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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey everyone, it's me Josh and it's that time of
year again. It's time for our annual Stuff You Should
Know selects release of How these Star Wars Christmas Special Worked. Um.
I hope that by now this is a tried and
true American night world tradition, Uh, prior to Christmas, that
(00:22):
everyone will stop and bask in the glory of the
Star Wars Christmas Special. Technically our episode on the Star
Wars Christmas Special. I hope you enjoy it and happy holidays.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
(00:50):
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
(01:10):
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 you into it? Oh? Yeah,
(01:32):
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,
(01:54):
Yeah you go dark I do. I make myself go
to sleep face, you go to the dark side. I've
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.
(02:15):
Are they celebrating 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.
(02:38):
May we just missed and then again in twenty seventeen. Okay,
so seventeen we'll celebrate Life Day. We'll 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
(02:59):
that Wookie in the Star Wars universe have every three years. Yeah,
it's like their Christmas. Yeah, their tent Supposedly, it's sort
of like Earth. They two. They celebrate the diversity of
their ecosystem and also remembrance of the dead, and they
also give gifts there like the Finns. Basically, Yeah, it's
a it's a very interesting part of the Star Wars canon.
(03:21):
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, this galaxy. Yeah,
(03:45):
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. Uh,
then again this week, and you watched it twice this week. Yeah,
I watched it last night and this morning. There's something
(04:07):
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
(04:28):
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 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
(04:50):
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 dub VHS tapes, but there's one really pretty good
version of it in full UM brought to you by
(05:12):
w 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,
(05:36):
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 nine money,
so they're 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 need to
(06:00):
shout out some articles that we use 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 someone we kind of know,
Alex Pasternak. Uh from Motherboard, yeah, which is uh not wired,
(06:22):
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. Yeah, basically when there 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, uh
(06:45):
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 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
(07:07):
much he hated the Space Show. Alright, 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.
(07:29):
I am I've just turned one. Yes, you don't know
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 it was in his first movie,
(07:50):
it was his first huge, huge breakout hit. Oh yeah,
for sure, talk I mean talk about a breakout hit
like no one had ever seen anything like it before
two thousand one had come out in the late sixties.
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
(08:11):
basically swashbuckling on the screen, but you know, in a
galaxy far far away. Star Wars just changed everything and
it came on just like a hammer um and 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
(08:33):
or any tickets yet, give me a break, 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
(08:54):
Murray singing about how much Star Wars is awesome. Right.
So by the fall allowing 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, so um
(09:16):
he I think he was approached by some 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,
(09:40):
we're working over at CBS, and 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 to. 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,
(10:04):
sitting around family like waiting to 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 veteran writers and producers and directors
whatever genre you think is appropriate. And those are the
(10:26):
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 Kizuok or wookie planet. See
is that how you say kazuk. That's how it's pronounced
in the episode the Holiday Special. But it's also pronounced
(10:48):
different ways. Other times, I would have pronounced that cashy
E got spell it k a s h y y
y k, which I mean, I guess that's sounds like
Chewbuck's planet sure also called G five Wookie planet see
or Eaton is a mid rim planet. Right. So the
whole reason apparently that George Lucas was interested in featuring
(11:11):
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 the cut. Uh. Even prior to this,
(11:34):
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 Doom. Right,
So he's like, I've got this thing already, you know,
established I love Wookies. Um, they didn't make the cut.
(11:55):
I'm a little sad about that. They're not gonna kazuok
is not going to show up in an Empire strike back.
Let's let's build the entire special around wookies. It's basically
the one demand me, George Lucas hash 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
experience that apparently taught him to be the very hands
(12:17):
on a person that he is famous for being. It
came out of this Christmas special. Absolutely he was burned,
and um, you had an iron grip after that on everything.
So here's some some of the folks behind it. Bruce Valanche,
famous TV writer. You probably seen him on Hollywood Squares.
Wasn't he suspected of being Thomas pinch On for a while?
(12:38):
So I don't know, or was Thomas pinch On on
Hollywood Squares? I have no idea. I maybe 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 has some great quotes in that Vanity Fair article
(12:59):
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 of folk singer Gillian Welch. I'm a big fan
of and I had no idea that her parents they
(13:22):
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 our records on effect. Okay, thanks Jerry,
So Chuck, you just said singer songwriters. Yeah, what would
(13:44):
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 Corporation was
(14:05):
what it was called um On. The idea of doing
this TV special was that everyone would love a variety
show 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 shows had dominated television for
(14:28):
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 probably think still on solid golden
(14:50):
yet to come on and take up the mantel that
that would a variety show. Oh, it was a little
bit and there was talking in between the songs. Remember
the Mandrell's Sister's show. I never watched that one. Well
that's with that country chic thing that happened. Yeah, it
was a big deal in the it's kind of happening again.
I think, Oh because of that dude, the guy who
(15:12):
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 he means Chris was something. Yeah,
he's he's come along and been like, what are you
guys doing? Well, there's a revival in like good country
music again, that's great, like in the tradition of Merle
Haggard and and I guess that's probably where the country
(15:35):
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.
Was actually pretty good. There's some like really great performances.
Do you know how many nerds are like, get back
to Star Wars? I know, I'm so sorry. All right,
So the Variety Show is is dying sort of, and
(15:58):
so they figured 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 edge
of an axe until it mashes into that crevice, you know,
(16:19):
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 came along. Just
escape as television is what they called it was was
starting and it was the hip new thing. So basically,
(16:40):
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 in the business,
like they was there was. There was a quote from
(17:01):
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. He there. 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
name for Welcome to the Fillmore East. It was a
(17:22):
concert documentary with Van Morrison Van Morrison and the Birds
in ninety 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
let go, but we'll get to him in a minute
(17:44):
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
(18:14):
established most of the main players. Well, we'll get to
a few more. We should point out that um, Mark
hamill And and Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher, 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
(18:35):
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 clear really
(19:00):
on drugs? Uh? Was she on drugs at this point?
She If you watch it, she's she's on drugs. Especially
the ending scene. Mark Campbell, 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
(19:20):
there would have been even more painful. Um. But they
everybody who was 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
(19:40):
the people, and you see Harrison Ford as if he's
flying the Millennium Falcon, and you can you can just
hear the guy off 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.
(20:02):
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, it's Harrison Ford'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
(20:23):
because they decided not to subtitle any of the Wookie dialogue,
and they literally started after a brief opening scene setting
it up here. 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
(20:44):
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 the delay is happening back on kaz Back
on Kazook, because you hear, like, okay, well, Han Solo
and Chewbacca eating the Imperial Guard and all that stuff
for two hours. I would watch that. I would too.
(21:06):
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 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.
(21:27):
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
join it for a second, shall we. Let's all enjoy it.
(22:26):
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 Wookie'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 dada. That's a little brother. And
(22:48):
I don't find out until later when Mark Campbell shows
up via skype call and says, he really explains everything
that had just happened, Like you're Chewbacca's father, your Chewbacca's son. Uh, Lumpy,
Lumpy and you're Chewbacca's wife. Oh, Malaya, thank you. So
before everybody starts like freaking out, we know that that's
(23:11):
actually their nicknames. Their real names are. His father is
a Ti chick cook, a Ti chick cook, it's really
hard to pronounce. Mulatto Buck is his wife, and his
son is Lumpo or rump but as named by Lucas.
But yeah, but Lucas also named him Lumpy Itchy and
Mala so um. They're all back there wringing their hands,
(23:35):
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, kazook kazook um, just like ketchup,
ketchup or cats up if you're fancy um. But Chewbacca
is having trouble getting back to Katchuk because there's kazook,
(23:58):
because there's a block had 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,
we're seeing like, you know, these people's view of the universe.
What about back on book. Yeah, he might have just
(24:21):
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. Alright, So he realizes there's
a problem. Valanche. He goes to Lucas and it's like,
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.
(24:44):
And he says he was met with a glacial stair. 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
talking 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
(25:06):
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 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,
(25:28):
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.
The cantina players in the band had appeared on other
variety shows at that point, and I think it went
over a fairly well, just as a short segment on
(25:49):
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,
like the break 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
(26:11):
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 Yarnell, which I hadn't heard
of it. 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
(26:32):
used to working without words, right, So, and so there
is a certain logic to the variety show. It's not
that's just that variety shows were popular at the time.
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 and Yard, Now, yeah,
that that's a perfect choice. That that makes complete sense.
(26:54):
You can see this whole, this whole process of leading
up to the point where it was produced in and everything, Yeah,
a series of like, oh we have this problem, well
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
(27:14):
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
seventy eight, a Friday, at eight pm Eastern time. That's right.
And according to Nielsen ratings, it um attracted thirteen million
(27:36):
viewers 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 around the internet, you know. Uh. It finished second
to the Love Boat in the second I'm sorry from
eight to nine, and in the next hour actually finished
behind part two of a mini series about Pearl Harbor
(27:57):
starring Angie Dickinson. So it didn't even win their respective
hours thirty million. That's that's not bad. The thing is,
apparently if you look at the Nielsen ratings graph for
the first hour, yeah we know about that graph, It's okay, yeah,
we do. And then after a very important part, which
we'll talk about soon. Um, it just drops off at
(28:18):
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 that they extended it to two hours. And it
shines through you can totally tell that this thing was
(28:39):
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 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. I don't want to call
(29:01):
it content, but it is content in the strictest definitions.
Right after this, George, all right, so the show itself,
(29:29):
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
(29:49):
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 sure.
Apparently he too, was like the only one on set
that was bringing levity. He was joking around and kind
(30:10):
of kept spirits up. Good for him, that's what I say.
And he had three different 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
(30:32):
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 childlike uh TV chef And
I think it's Gormanda. Is her name Gormanda? That makes
total sense. He also plays Um. There's this one weird
(30:56):
bit where Chewbacca's son tries to figure out a way
to trick the stormtroopers that 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
(31:18):
instruction video which was Harvey Kitel as a robot. Oh,
it would have been wonderful, little big Harvey Kitel. Harvey Carvey,
Oh many murder 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.
(31:40):
He has a hole in the top of his head
like a volcano, where he pours his drinks and that's
how he drinks. And he he loves be 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 theodnotes to everyone she manages or maybe owns.
The owner. Yeah, the what's the mos? What mos deaf cantina?
(32:02):
Uh no, most deaf is 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 Maud, 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
(32:22):
her song comes because um, 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 Chew Bacca's house while his family waits for it.
So all this takes place as part of a public
(32:45):
service announcement 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,
(33:05):
so they're in it. There's also Art Carney. Yes, he's
the Honeymooners family, 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
(33:27):
on the way. It's all good. Yeah, a trade or
not trade tour. Yeah, traders in trades humans for you know, money. No,
he he sells goods. Yeah, a trader. He isn't trade humans. Yeah,
he's in the human trade. He No, he isn't. Really
he trades humans like he sells humans. Looked it up
(33:49):
in the Star Wars Encyclopedia said that he was in
the human trade. So in this Christmas special, apparently they
sanitized his his background because he's basically just sell like
gadgets and novelties 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,
(34:12):
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
(34:34):
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
(34:55):
it's innuendo. It's too obvious in overt for innuendo. Instead,
it's just it 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,
(35:16):
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, now, I
can see you're really excited. Yeah, it's pretty rough to watch. Yeah,
So then you've got another musical number because also again
(35:38):
he shutters, 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 flow not like this is pretty much like
blow for blow. Um. Actually I forgot earlier on in
the in the special, um, there's one of my favorite
sequences is when Grandpa Itchy goes over to Lumpy and
(36:02):
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 acid
trip um gymnast routine happens in front of the kid's eyes.
(36:28):
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 ransacking their house. Um, Art Carney apparently,
(36:52):
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 Spaceballs 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
the time. So anyway, our Carny's distracting this uh Imperial leader. Um,
(37:17):
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
play Light the Sky on Fire, which apparently is about UFOs.
It's a little music video. Basically, it's a pretty Yeah,
(37:40):
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 in our house, let's go into the video world.
It not just and they don't cut back and forth.
(38:03):
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
and some cocaine. Well probably, so we said, yeah, chuck.
I think though, um, there yet another segment like this
(38:26):
is actually widely regarded as the high point of the
whole thing. So there is a cartoon actually yeah that
Lump Lumpy watches. Yeah, Lumpy's like the Imperial Guard is
still 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
(38:49):
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
introduces Boba Fett. It's the first time Boba Fett ever
makes an appearance in the 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
(39:09):
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
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
(39:29):
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 they're 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 Darth Vader, it's the first
time we see Boba Fette and that he is, uh,
that he is just doing whatever he can do for money.
Like Luke trusts him at first, C three bos like
(39:50):
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 Fette is
an allegory for George Lucas himself. Um, so the cartoon
comes and goes, and that was the thing that came
at about the end of the first hour mark, and
(40:11):
after that everybody just turned off their television sets. Yeah,
I don't remember. Did you watch this when it came U? 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,
you're probably disturbed. Who knows, I just remember that. I'll
(40:33):
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 tin at that point. So cynicism had,
you know, become a thing in his life probably by then,
sure didn't that one? Cynicism kicks into n Hes Scott
holding out the fourteen fift Yeah maybe so so um chuck,
(40:53):
the whole thing finally does in. And actually there's a
guy his name Nathan RayBan, 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 the special is that it does eventually end. Yeah,
you know what the first part of the quote is,
I'm not convinced the special wasn't ultimately written and directed
by a sentient bag of cocaine. And like, go read
(41:16):
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
even more. It takes this bizarre two hours and wraps
it up in just a nice bizarre bow. Yeah, so
(41:38):
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 Chewy good, so they have to hike
over there. They eventually make it back home. Uh they
find a storm the stormtroopers at their house. Um, their
(42:02):
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. 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 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,
(42:26):
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
first with Grido, but they couldn't even have him like
wrestle the storm trooper and throw him off. He trips
over a log and Han Solo has his hands thrown
(42:47):
up like wasn't me It might as well have been
a banana peel, you know. But again, uh, this is
basically produced by vaudevillians starring vague villians. Why not have
the one death take ace from basically what amounts to
somebody slipping on a banana feel it's a perfect way
to end it. So that's uh that that guy basically
(43:08):
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 of wookies
assembling in what looks like a giant Olan Mills portrait. Um,
and all of them are wearing red robes. And I
(43:31):
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 O is
Mark Hamill there, the whole gang zerof Okay, the whole
gang there, And then they all gather around to hear
a great quote from Princess Leia, which we will read
(43:51):
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 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
(44:13):
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
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 Leiah starts singing. Yeah.
And apparently that was one of the big contingencies on
(44:36):
Carrie Fisher being involved. She's going through a phase where
she's like, I kind of like singing. Bruce Valanche calls
it her Joni Mitchell period. Yeah, and she somehow 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
(44:56):
writers who have written reviews of this. It's really obvious
that she possibly smoked a decent amount of pot before
she shot this. Shot this scene, but she sings, Oh, okay,
it's fine. It's just the fact that um, Princess Leigh
is singing. And actually, Bruce Valanche had a really great
(45:17):
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
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 Star Wars theme. Uh.
(45:39):
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 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
(46:01):
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 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. Um, you've been Harvey Corman secretly hated it.
Even Harvey Kitel hated Actually he loved it. But Lucas
(46:24):
has been asked over the years about it a lot,
and he doesn't talk about it much. But in two
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
(46:46):
doesn't know that was CBS. Uh. We kind of just
let them do it. I believe that it was done
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 probably wasn't the smartest thing to do, but you
learned from those experiences. I think they even use some
of the footage from the movie. At the end, it
(47:09):
looks like some of the space like a highlight reel.
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,
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,
(47:31):
go see the movie. Well, and also that means it
doesn't match the look of the rest of it at all. Yeah,
that's true. It'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,
(47:53):
you just read where he's like, I don't even know
what you're talking about. Basically, Um. He apparently considered releasing
the christ Special is a bonus on the UM 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
(48:14):
want a clean, original copy of the Holiday Special, So
why go ahead? So I can play at parties when
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,
(48:35):
was removed due to copyright 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. Those are always fun GM ads where
one of the guys who's in quality control is he says,
(48:56):
did you watch it? I don't think I saw that.
He goes, um, we really care about these cars and
that's no job man, a GM man, and he's like
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 does not taint my Star Wars experience or my
love for the franchise, and I'm glad it is out
(49:19):
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 I
(49:40):
wouldn't have made it through the first time. I let
me take that back, as I'm a pro, so I
would have made it through the first time. I wouldn't
have watched it a 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.
(50:02):
She like her responses and everything is just awesome. I
think my favorite parts are, uh, well, there's a great
Wilhelm scream trips over the law. Jerry would not have
noticed it. Uh And then there's a part where all
the wikie dialogue you can't understand, but there's clearly one
part where we're Itchy and Lumpy. Are have any exchange
(50:25):
where Lumpy you can make it out goes I love you. 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 said I love you. Should we have
them redo it? And the 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. The
(50:49):
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. Hadn't 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. So it's
(51:12):
this whole additional element that it is weird. I never
thought about that. There's just weird moments of silence all
throughout it. Ye, like when Art Carney's doing his thing, Yeah,
telling jokes, Yeah, okay, I agree with you, Chuck. Don't
take things too seriously. I think that's the great lesson
in this. Yeah, and then it's the lesson of life.
It is. And in two thousand seven, Riff tracks The
(51:32):
Great Mystery 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. So you can. 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,
(51:55):
you got anything else? No, No, I think we did this.
There's some good stuff. Go read the Vanity Fair article.
Uh 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
(52:16):
website dedicated to its Star Wars Holiday Special dot com. Yeah,
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
(52:39):
star Wars in the search bar. How stuff work, Stop
com and it 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 Voyage Manuscript podcast.
Found it's super interesting, especially the theories on its definition
or origin. No Josh Minchin Chuck sire, but being drug
induced is somewhat surprising or even unlikely given language in
(53:01):
the 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'd
(53:22):
contribute that to the conversation. Thanks 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 as
a way to get through traffic on my commutet home
from work. You guys are far more interesting and enjoyable
than television and YouTube videos. Sure, I've listened to hundreds
(53:45):
and will continue to listen to hundreds more. Keep on
keeping on. That is from Amy J. Moffett. Thanks a lot,
Amy in San Diego. Does that mean like place of
the whales in 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
(54:06):
you Should Know. You can send us an email The
Stuff podcast at how Stuff Works dot com and has
always joined us at a home on the web Stuff
you Should Know dot com. Stuff you Should Know is
a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more
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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey everyone, it's me Josh and it's that time of
year again. It's time for our annual Stuff You Should
Know selects release of How these Star Wars Christmas Special Worked. Um.
I hope that by now this is a tried and
true American night world tradition, Uh, prior to Christmas, that
(00:22):
everyone will stop and bask in the glory of the
Star Wars Christmas Special. Technically our episode on the Star
Wars Christmas Special. I hope you enjoy it and happy holidays.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
(00:50):
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
(01:10):
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 you into it? Oh? Yeah,
(01:32):
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,
(01:54):
Yeah you go dark I do. I make myself go
to sleep face, you go to the dark side. I've
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.
(02:15):
Are they celebrating 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.
(02:38):
May we just missed and then again in twenty seventeen. Okay,
so seventeen we'll celebrate Life Day. We'll 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
(02:59):
that Wookie in the Star Wars universe have every three years. Yeah,
it's like their Christmas. Yeah, their tent Supposedly, it's sort
of like Earth. They two. They celebrate the diversity of
their ecosystem and also remembrance of the dead, and they
also give gifts there like the Finns. Basically, Yeah, it's
a it's a very interesting part of the Star Wars canon.
(03:21):
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, this galaxy. Yeah,
(03:45):
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. Uh,
then again this week, and you watched it twice this week. Yeah,
I watched it last night and this morning. There's something
(04:07):
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
(04:28):
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 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
(04:50):
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 dub VHS tapes, but there's one really pretty good
version of it in full UM brought to you by
(05:12):
w 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,
(05:36):
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 nine money,
so they're 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 need to
(06:00):
shout out some articles that we use 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 someone we kind of know,
Alex Pasternak. Uh from Motherboard, yeah, which is uh not wired,
(06:22):
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. Yeah, basically when there 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, uh
(06:45):
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 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
(07:07):
much he hated the Space Show. Alright, 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.
(07:29):
I am I've just turned one. Yes, you don't know
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 it was in his first movie,
(07:50):
it was his first huge, huge breakout hit. Oh yeah,
for sure, talk I mean talk about a breakout hit
like no one had ever seen anything like it before
two thousand one had come out in the late sixties.
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
(08:11):
basically swashbuckling on the screen, but you know, in a
galaxy far far away. Star Wars just changed everything and
it came on just like a hammer um and 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
(08:33):
or any tickets yet, give me a break, 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
(08:54):
Murray singing about how much Star Wars is awesome. Right.
So by the fall allowing 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, so um
(09:16):
he I think he was approached by some 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,
(09:40):
we're working over at CBS, and 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 to. 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,
(10:04):
sitting around family like waiting to 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 veteran writers and producers and directors
whatever genre you think is appropriate. And those are the
(10:26):
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 Kizuok or wookie planet. See
is that how you say kazuk. That's how it's pronounced
in the episode the Holiday Special. But it's also pronounced
(10:48):
different ways. Other times, I would have pronounced that cashy
E got spell it k a s h y y
y k, which I mean, I guess that's sounds like
Chewbuck's planet sure also called G five Wookie planet see
or Eaton is a mid rim planet. Right. So the
whole reason apparently that George Lucas was interested in featuring
(11:11):
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 the cut. Uh. Even prior to this,
(11:34):
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 Doom. Right,
So he's like, I've got this thing already, you know,
established I love Wookies. Um, they didn't make the cut.
(11:55):
I'm a little sad about that. They're not gonna kazuok
is not going to show up in an Empire strike back.
Let's let's build the entire special around wookies. It's basically
the one demand me, George Lucas hash 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
experience that apparently taught him to be the very hands
(12:17):
on a person that he is famous for being. It
came out of this Christmas special. Absolutely he was burned,
and um, you had an iron grip after that on everything.
So here's some some of the folks behind it. Bruce Valanche,
famous TV writer. You probably seen him on Hollywood Squares.
Wasn't he suspected of being Thomas pinch On for a while?
(12:38):
So I don't know, or was Thomas pinch On on
Hollywood Squares? I have no idea. I maybe 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 has some great quotes in that Vanity Fair article
(12:59):
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 of folk singer Gillian Welch. I'm a big fan
of and I had no idea that her parents they
(13:22):
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 our records on effect. Okay, thanks Jerry,
So Chuck, you just said singer songwriters. Yeah, what would
(13:44):
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 Corporation was
(14:05):
what it was called um On. The idea of doing
this TV special was that everyone would love a variety
show 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 shows had dominated television for
(14:28):
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 probably think still on solid golden
(14:50):
yet to come on and take up the mantel that
that would a variety show. Oh, it was a little
bit and there was talking in between the songs. Remember
the Mandrell's Sister's show. I never watched that one. Well
that's with that country chic thing that happened. Yeah, it
was a big deal in the it's kind of happening again.
I think, Oh because of that dude, the guy who
(15:12):
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 he means Chris was something. Yeah,
he's he's come along and been like, what are you
guys doing? Well, there's a revival in like good country
music again, that's great, like in the tradition of Merle
Haggard and and I guess that's probably where the country
(15:35):
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.
Was actually pretty good. There's some like really great performances.
Do you know how many nerds are like, get back
to Star Wars? I know, I'm so sorry. All right,
So the Variety Show is is dying sort of, and
(15:58):
so they figured 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 edge
of an axe until it mashes into that crevice, you know,
(16:19):
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 came along. Just
escape as television is what they called it was was
starting and it was the hip new thing. So basically,
(16:40):
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 in the business,
like they was there was. There was a quote from
(17:01):
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. He there. 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
name for Welcome to the Fillmore East. It was a
(17:22):
concert documentary with Van Morrison Van Morrison and the Birds
in ninety 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
let go, but we'll get to him in a minute
(17:44):
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
(18:14):
established most of the main players. Well, we'll get to
a few more. We should point out that um, Mark
hamill And and Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher, 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
(18:35):
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 clear really
(19:00):
on drugs? Uh? Was she on drugs at this point?
She If you watch it, she's she's on drugs. Especially
the ending scene. Mark Campbell, 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
(19:20):
there would have been even more painful. Um. But they
everybody who was 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
(19:40):
the people, and you see Harrison Ford as if he's
flying the Millennium Falcon, and you can you can just
hear the guy off 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.
(20:02):
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, it's Harrison Ford'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
(20:23):
because they decided not to subtitle any of the Wookie dialogue,
and they literally started after a brief opening scene setting
it up here. 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
(20:44):
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 the delay is happening back on kaz Back
on Kazook, because you hear, like, okay, well, Han Solo
and Chewbacca eating the Imperial Guard and all that stuff
for two hours. I would watch that. I would too.
(21:06):
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 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.
(21:27):
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
join it for a second, shall we. Let's all enjoy it.
(22:26):
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 Wookie'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 dada. That's a little brother. And
(22:48):
I don't find out until later when Mark Campbell shows
up via skype call and says, he really explains everything
that had just happened, Like you're Chewbacca's father, your Chewbacca's son. Uh, Lumpy,
Lumpy and you're Chewbacca's wife. Oh, Malaya, thank you. So
before everybody starts like freaking out, we know that that's
(23:11):
actually their nicknames. Their real names are. His father is
a Ti chick cook, a Ti chick cook, it's really
hard to pronounce. Mulatto Buck is his wife, and his
son is Lumpo or rump but as named by Lucas.
But yeah, but Lucas also named him Lumpy Itchy and
Mala so um. They're all back there wringing their hands,
(23:35):
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, kazook kazook um, just like ketchup,
ketchup or cats up if you're fancy um. But Chewbacca
is having trouble getting back to Katchuk because there's kazook,
(23:58):
because there's a block had 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,
we're seeing like, you know, these people's view of the universe.
What about back on book. Yeah, he might have just
(24:21):
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. Alright, So he realizes there's
a problem. Valanche. He goes to Lucas and it's like,
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.
(24:44):
And he says he was met with a glacial stair. 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
talking 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
(25:06):
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 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,
(25:28):
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.
The cantina players in the band had appeared on other
variety shows at that point, and I think it went
over a fairly well, just as a short segment on
(25:49):
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,
like the break 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
(26:11):
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 Yarnell, which I hadn't heard
of it. 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
(26:32):
used to working without words, right, So, and so there
is a certain logic to the variety show. It's not
that's just that variety shows were popular at the time.
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 and Yard, Now, yeah,
that that's a perfect choice. That that makes complete sense.
(26:54):
You can see this whole, this whole process of leading
up to the point where it was produced in and everything, Yeah,
a series of like, oh we have this problem, well
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
(27:14):
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
seventy eight, a Friday, at eight pm Eastern time. That's right.
And according to Nielsen ratings, it um attracted thirteen million
(27:36):
viewers 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 around the internet, you know. Uh. It finished second
to the Love Boat in the second I'm sorry from
eight to nine, and in the next hour actually finished
behind part two of a mini series about Pearl Harbor
(27:57):
starring Angie Dickinson. So it didn't even win their respective
hours thirty million. That's that's not bad. The thing is,
apparently if you look at the Nielsen ratings graph for
the first hour, yeah we know about that graph, It's okay, yeah,
we do. And then after a very important part, which
we'll talk about soon. Um, it just drops off at
(28:18):
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 that they extended it to two hours. And it
shines through you can totally tell that this thing was
(28:39):
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 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. I don't want to call
(29:01):
it content, but it is content in the strictest definitions.
Right after this, George, all right, so the show itself,
(29:29):
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
(29:49):
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 sure.
Apparently he too, was like the only one on set
that was bringing levity. He was joking around and kind
(30:10):
of kept spirits up. Good for him, that's what I say.
And he had three different 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
(30:32):
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 childlike uh TV chef And
I think it's Gormanda. Is her name Gormanda? That makes
total sense. He also plays Um. There's this one weird
(30:56):
bit where Chewbacca's son tries to figure out a way
to trick the stormtroopers that 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
(31:18):
instruction video which was Harvey Kitel as a robot. Oh,
it would have been wonderful, little big Harvey Kitel. Harvey Carvey,
Oh many murder 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.
(31:40):
He has a hole in the top of his head
like a volcano, where he pours his drinks and that's
how he drinks. And he he loves be 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 theodnotes to everyone she manages or maybe owns.
The owner. Yeah, the what's the mos? What mos deaf cantina?
(32:02):
Uh no, most deaf is 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 Maud, 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
(32:22):
her song comes because um, 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 Chew Bacca's house while his family waits for it.
So all this takes place as part of a public
(32:45):
service announcement 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,
(33:05):
so they're in it. There's also Art Carney. Yes, he's
the Honeymooners family, 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
(33:27):
on the way. It's all good. Yeah, a trade or
not trade tour. Yeah, traders in trades humans for you know, money. No,
he he sells goods. Yeah, a trader. He isn't trade humans. Yeah,
he's in the human trade. He No, he isn't. Really
he trades humans like he sells humans. Looked it up
(33:49):
in the Star Wars Encyclopedia said that he was in
the human trade. So in this Christmas special, apparently they
sanitized his his background because he's basically just sell like
gadgets and novelties 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,
(34:12):
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
(34:34):
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
(34:55):
it's innuendo. It's too obvious in overt for innuendo. Instead,
it's just it 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,
(35:16):
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, now, I
can see you're really excited. Yeah, it's pretty rough to watch. Yeah,
So then you've got another musical number because also again
(35:38):
he shutters, 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 flow not like this is pretty much like
blow for blow. Um. Actually I forgot earlier on in
the in the special, um, there's one of my favorite
sequences is when Grandpa Itchy goes over to Lumpy and
(36:02):
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 acid
trip um gymnast routine happens in front of the kid's eyes.
(36:28):
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 ransacking their house. Um, Art Carney apparently,
(36:52):
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 Spaceballs 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
the time. So anyway, our Carny's distracting this uh Imperial leader. Um,
(37:17):
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
play Light the Sky on Fire, which apparently is about UFOs.
It's a little music video. Basically, it's a pretty Yeah,
(37:40):
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 in our house, let's go into the video world.
It not just and they don't cut back and forth.
(38:03):
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
and some cocaine. Well probably, so we said, yeah, chuck.
I think though, um, there yet another segment like this
(38:26):
is actually widely regarded as the high point of the
whole thing. So there is a cartoon actually yeah that
Lump Lumpy watches. Yeah, Lumpy's like the Imperial Guard is
still 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
(38:49):
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
introduces Boba Fett. It's the first time Boba Fett ever
makes an appearance in the 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
(39:09):
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
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
(39:29):
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 they're 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 Darth Vader, it's the first
time we see Boba Fette and that he is, uh,
that he is just doing whatever he can do for money.
Like Luke trusts him at first, C three bos like
(39:50):
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 Fette is
an allegory for George Lucas himself. Um, so the cartoon
comes and goes, and that was the thing that came
at about the end of the first hour mark, and
(40:11):
after that everybody just turned off their television sets. Yeah,
I don't remember. Did you watch this when it came U? 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,
you're probably disturbed. Who knows, I just remember that. I'll
(40:33):
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 tin at that point. So cynicism had,
you know, become a thing in his life probably by then,
sure didn't that one? Cynicism kicks into n Hes Scott
holding out the fourteen fift Yeah maybe so so um chuck,
(40:53):
the whole thing finally does in. And actually there's a
guy his name Nathan RayBan, 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 the special is that it does eventually end. Yeah,
you know what the first part of the quote is,
I'm not convinced the special wasn't ultimately written and directed
by a sentient bag of cocaine. And like, go read
(41:16):
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
even more. It takes this bizarre two hours and wraps
it up in just a nice bizarre bow. Yeah, so
(41:38):
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 Chewy good, so they have to hike
over there. They eventually make it back home. Uh they
find a storm the stormtroopers at their house. Um, their
(42:02):
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. 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 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,
(42:26):
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
first with Grido, but they couldn't even have him like
wrestle the storm trooper and throw him off. He trips
over a log and Han Solo has his hands thrown
(42:47):
up like wasn't me It might as well have been
a banana peel, you know. But again, uh, this is
basically produced by vaudevillians starring vague villians. Why not have
the one death take ace from basically what amounts to
somebody slipping on a banana feel it's a perfect way
to end it. So that's uh that that guy basically
(43:08):
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 of wookies
assembling in what looks like a giant Olan Mills portrait. Um,
and all of them are wearing red robes. And I
(43:31):
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 O is
Mark Hamill there, the whole gang zerof Okay, the whole
gang there, And then they all gather around to hear
a great quote from Princess Leia, which we will read
(43:51):
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 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
(44:13):
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
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 Leiah starts singing. Yeah.
And apparently that was one of the big contingencies on
(44:36):
Carrie Fisher being involved. She's going through a phase where
she's like, I kind of like singing. Bruce Valanche calls
it her Joni Mitchell period. Yeah, and she somehow 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
(44:56):
writers who have written reviews of this. It's really obvious
that she possibly smoked a decent amount of pot before
she shot this. Shot this scene, but she sings, Oh, okay,
it's fine. It's just the fact that um, Princess Leigh
is singing. And actually, Bruce Valanche had a really great
(45:17):
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
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 Star Wars theme. Uh.
(45:39):
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 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
(46:01):
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 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. Um, you've been Harvey Corman secretly hated it.
Even Harvey Kitel hated Actually he loved it. But Lucas
(46:24):
has been asked over the years about it a lot,
and he doesn't talk about it much. But in two
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
(46:46):
doesn't know that was CBS. Uh. We kind of just
let them do it. I believe that it was done
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 probably wasn't the smartest thing to do, but you
learned from those experiences. I think they even use some
of the footage from the movie. At the end, it
(47:09):
looks like some of the space like a highlight reel.
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,
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,
(47:31):
go see the movie. Well, and also that means it
doesn't match the look of the rest of it at all. Yeah,
that's true. It'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,
(47:53):
you just read where he's like, I don't even know
what you're talking about. Basically, Um. He apparently considered releasing
the christ Special is a bonus on the UM 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
(48:14):
want a clean, original copy of the Holiday Special, So
why go ahead? So I can play at parties when
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,
(48:35):
was removed due to copyright 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. Those are always fun GM ads where
one of the guys who's in quality control is he says,
(48:56):
did you watch it? I don't think I saw that.
He goes, um, we really care about these cars and
that's no job man, a GM man, and he's like
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 does not taint my Star Wars experience or my
love for the franchise, and I'm glad it is out
(49:19):
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 I
(49:40):
wouldn't have made it through the first time. I let
me take that back, as I'm a pro, so I
would have made it through the first time. I wouldn't
have watched it a 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.
(50:02):
She like her responses and everything is just awesome. I
think my favorite parts are, uh, well, there's a great
Wilhelm scream trips over the law. Jerry would not have
noticed it. Uh And then there's a part where all
the wikie dialogue you can't understand, but there's clearly one
part where we're Itchy and Lumpy. Are have any exchange
(50:25):
where Lumpy you can make it out goes I love you. 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 said I love you. Should we have
them redo it? And the 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. The
(50:49):
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. Hadn't 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. So it's
(51:12):
this whole additional element that it is weird. I never
thought about that. There's just weird moments of silence all
throughout it. Ye, like when Art Carney's doing his thing, Yeah,
telling jokes, Yeah, okay, I agree with you, Chuck. Don't
take things too seriously. I think that's the great lesson
in this. Yeah, and then it's the lesson of life.
It is. And in two thousand seven, Riff tracks The
(51:32):
Great Mystery 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. So you can. 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,
(51:55):
you got anything else? No, No, I think we did this.
There's some good stuff. Go read the Vanity Fair article.
Uh 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
(52:16):
website dedicated to its Star Wars Holiday Special dot com. Yeah,
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
(52:39):
star Wars in the search bar. How stuff work, Stop
com and it 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 Voyage Manuscript podcast.
Found it's super interesting, especially the theories on its definition
or origin. No Josh Minchin Chuck sire, but being drug
induced is somewhat surprising or even unlikely given language in
(53:01):
the 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'd
(53:22):
contribute that to the conversation. Thanks 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 as
a way to get through traffic on my commutet home
from work. You guys are far more interesting and enjoyable
than television and YouTube videos. Sure, I've listened to hundreds
(53:45):
and will continue to listen to hundreds more. Keep on
keeping on. That is from Amy J. Moffett. Thanks a lot,
Amy in San Diego. Does that mean like place of
the whales in 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
(54:06):
you Should Know. You can send us an email The
Stuff podcast at how Stuff Works dot com and has
always joined us at a home on the web Stuff
you Should Know dot com. Stuff you Should Know is
a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more
podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
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