December 16, 2023 • 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 our annual special edition of SYSK. May the force be with us all.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi everyone, It's Josh, and we can officially kick off
the holidays with the annual release of our Star Wars
Holiday special episode. I hope by now it's become an
annual tradition in your home rather than a deepening annoyance,
and I hope it brings you glad tidings rather than
rage listening. I know some of you have been at
it since September, but let the twenty twenty three holidays begin.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Welcome to Stuff you should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with
Charles W. Chuckers Bryant and Jerry Jerome Roland.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Who's the Wookie mother? Yeah, Mala, that was the Wookie wife.
Oh and mother?
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Chewbacca's mom is not with them any longer. She left.
She was not about to appear in that.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
She went out the window. I'm excited about this. I
have to say we should say happy Star Wars Day. Yeah,
today is December seventeenth. I have my opening night tickets.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Do you really sure? Wow?
Speaker 2 (01:17):
You know I you into it? Oh?
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Yeah, I will definitely go see it in the theater.
But well, I won't be their 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. Yeah I'm an ostrich.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Yeah you black yourself out. Yeah, you go dark I do.
I make myself go to sleep face, you go to
the dark side.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
I've been there a while now.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
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.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Yes, I already missed Life Day though, so happy belated
Life Day. Cha.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Are they celebrating it this year?
Speaker 1 (02:04):
November seventeenth?
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Yeah, but it's every three years our Caine. Yeah, man,
weird job.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Okay, so it's every three years. Started in nineteen seventy eight.
Let's do the math, shall we? Quick?
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Math break? I believe that twenty fourteen was the last
Life Day. Man, we just missed it, and then again
in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Okay, So twenty seventeen will celebrate Life Day. We'll put
on our red robes, our ultra long straight ironed wigs, sure,
and we'll celebrate Life Day the way it was meant to.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Yes, and if you have no idea what we're talking about.
We are talking about Life Day, which is a celebration
that wookies in the Star Wars universe have every three years.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Yeah, it's like their Christmas. Yeah, they Celebronica or their Kwanta,
their tet.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Supposedly, it's sort of like Earth Day too. They celebrate
the diversity of their eCos and also remembrance of the dead,
and they also give the gifts.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
They're like the fins basically.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Yeah, it's a very interesting part of the Star Wars cannon.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
It is, and it's almost entirely made up, dashed off
you could possibly say, by George Lucas in the seventies. Yeah,
and it's the basis of what has become derided as
like one of the worst things that ever happened to
the Star Wars galaxy.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Well, not only that, one of the worst things ever
aired on television.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Yeah, with this galaxy.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Yeah, at first that sounds like hyperbole, like, come on,
it's because it was Star Wars and we had high expectations.
But it's really that bad.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Yeah. The people who say that haven't seen even a
second of it.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Yeah. Yeah, However, I watched it when I was a kid,
then again this week. Yeah, and you watched it twice
this week.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Yeah, I watched it last night and this morning.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
There's something about it. It's mesmerizing, it really is. It's
one of those things that you start watching it and
you want to turn it off, but you want to
see just how absurd it can get.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Almost Yeah, and it starts absurd, it stays absurd in
the middle. Yeah, it's increasingly more absurd. It's a little
less absurd. Finish is super absurd.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Yeah, it's just a train wreck in every single sense
of the word, top to bottom.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
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 enjoy this episode more
if you pause, go spend two hours watching this thing,
(04:45):
and then come back and laugh along with us.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Yeah, there's a great Over the years, there have been
many segments of it on YouTube from badly dubbed VHS tapes,
but there's one really pretty good version of it in full.
It brought to you by w HIO Dayton, Ohio, Channel seven, Ohio.
Because that flashes up on the screen periodically.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
Man, it is high quality.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Yeah, it looks good.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
It has to basically be the copy that the actual
affiliate broadcast. Yeah, it's like that. That quality compared to
the other stuff floating around on YouTube, clearly recorded on
a nineteen seventy eight.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
PCR, Yeah, which were really expensive.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Very expensive. I did some calculating on West Egg. Okay,
so the average VCR went for about one thousand dollars.
There were brand new, it's amazing one thousand dollars in
nineteen seventy eight money, So they were about thirty eight
hundred dollars in twenty fourteen money.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Crazy.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Luckily there were some rich people out there recording this stuff,
and the wealthy have saved us all again, yes, yet again,
as they always do.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Yes. And we need to shout out some articles that
we use for this. There's great a great article in
Vanity Fair called the Han Solo Comedy Hour exclamation point
by Frank de Jacomo, and then they're the Star Wars
Holiday Special was the worst thing on television ever by
So when we kind of know Alex Pasternaka from Motherboard, Yeah,
(06:09):
which is not Wired, it's Vice. Yes, So we wrote
a little bit for Motherboard back then and we had
a call with that.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
We're like, we're like old Motherboard vets.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Yeah, basically, wasn't there one more?
Speaker 1 (06:20):
There was another one and I don't know who wrote
this one, chuck, Yeah, it's the titles the Star Wars
Holiday Special. George Lucas wants to smash every copy of
with a sledgehammer.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Which was a famous quote supposedly at a convention by Lucas.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Yes, which is not correct.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
He didn't ever say that. No, Okay, that that sounded
like something that people made up.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Yes, but if you go on the internet you will
quickly believe that he did. Sure apparently didn't.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
So I'm sure he felt that way though, clearly, you know.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Because he did appear on Robot Chicken and I think
two thousand and five on the Therapist's Couch talking about
how much he hated the special. All right, so let's
set the background, shall we Shall we go back to
nineteen seventy seven, Yeah, summer.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Getting the old wayback machine.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
All right, let's do it.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
All right, here we are there's watersn Yeah, I'm just
the little six year old excited about Star Wars.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
I am. I've just turned one.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Yes, you don't know what's up yet.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
I please forgive me if I urinate myself.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
No problem.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
So what has happened is Star Wars has become a huge,
huge hit, seemingly out of nowhere. Yeah, establishing George Lucas
is one of the brilliant young minds in filmmaking, even
though in this first movie it was his first huge,
huge breakout hit.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
Oh yeah, for sure. I don't mean talk about a
breakout hit like no one had ever seen anything like
it before. No, two thousand and one had come out
in the late sixties. Yeah, but it wasn't it killed.
It still is inaccessible to all audiences. You know, it's
prett of a cerebral film.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Yeah, it's not an adventure movie.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
This was Wars. This is like 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.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Yeah, and a new hope by the way, yes, and
then then we're going to get stuff wrong, nerds, So yes,
just go ahead and get your little fingers ready to
email us, like if.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
It wasn't driven home that I'm not a nerd by
the fact that I don't have opening night tickets or
any tickets yet, give me a break, and by proxy
chuck too, Okay, thank you. So it's it's hard to
state how great Star Wars was in everyone's mind. Yea right.
Bill Murray came out with that lounge singer Star Wars thing. Yeah,
(08:38):
it was everywhere and if you if you just listen
to the lyrics of it, he's really it's just Bill
Murray singing about how much Star Wars is awesome.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Right. So by the following year, George Lucas was he
wanted to figure out a way to keep audiences just
engaged with the whole Star Wars franchise that he was
just starting to build. But he knew the Empire Strikes
Back was a couple more years out, sure, so he
I think he was approached by some TV executives who said,
(09:08):
have you considered doing some sort of TV special? They're
all the rage right now. 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.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
That's right. Producers Gary Smith and Dwight Hemion. We're working
over at CBS, and they say, this is a great
way to keep the spirit alive while you're making your
other movie. Maybe move some more.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Toys, yeah, which George Lucas got a cut of all
the toys.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Sure. So it was right before Thanksgiving, and he said
there'd be a lot of people watching TV pre holiday season,
or I guess in the holiday season.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Well, the weekend before Thanksgiving, it's like everybody's shopping, sitting
around family like waiting to actually do stuff. That's right,
perfect time to broadcast something on TV.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
So Lucas says, all right, let's to 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.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Whatever genre you think is appropriate. And those are the
words that will haunt on George Lucas to his grave.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Yeah. So Lucas said, here's my idea. I want it
to be based on wookies and I want it to
take place on their home planet of Kiazuk or Wookie
Planet C.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Is that what he's saying, Kazuk.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
That's how it's pronounced in the episode the Holiday Special,
but it's also pronounced different ways. Other times.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
I would have pronounced it Cashie spell it ka s
h y y y k, Yeah, which I mean.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
I guess that sounds like Chewbuck's planet sure, also called
G five six twenty three. Wookie planet C or Edeon
is a mid rim planet. Right.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
So the whole reason apparently that George Lucas was interested
in furing 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.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Yeah, and.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
How did you pronounce it again?
Speaker 2 (11:17):
Kazuk.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Kazuk had not made the cut. Even prior to this,
apparently for a new hope, George Lucas had whipped up
a forty page that's known as the Wookie Bible. It's
like a forty page supplement that's all about Kazuk and
Wookies and Chewbacca and his family and everything about wookiedom. Right,
so he's like, I've got this thing already. You know
(11:40):
established I love wookies. They didn't make the cut. I'm
a little sad about that. They're not gonna kazuk is
not going to show up in Empire Strikes Back. Let's
build the entire special around wookies. It's basically the one
demand me George Lucas has. That's it. I'll be totally
hands off from this point on which you kind of was.
(12:00):
He totally was. It was actually this experience that apparently
taught him to be the very hands on person that
he is famous for being. It came out of this
Christmas special.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Absolutely, he was burned and he had an iron grip
after that on everything. So here's some of the folks
behind it. Bruce Valanche, famous TV writer. You probably had
seen him on Hollywood Squares.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Wasn't he suspected of being Thomas Pynchone for a while.
I don't know, or was Thomas Pinchon on Hollywood Squares?
Speaker 2 (12:30):
I have no idea.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
I may be confabulating some stuff confounding. Yeah, there's some
con of some sort going on.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
It sounds like it. Yeah, So Valanche was hired as
a writer a guy named Lenny Rips was hired as
a writer who.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Has some great quotes in that Vanity Fair article he does.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
His first quote was, we were really excited because this
is Star Wars. How could it lose?
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Yeah? Famous last words?
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Who else was hired? There was a husband and wife team,
the Welches. Yeah, who are the parents of folk singer
Gillian Welch, who I'm a big fan of, And I
had no idea that her parents. They were producers slash
songwriters of the day. They were big on the variety
show scene, which would turn out to be a really
(13:17):
key cog in this whole experience.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
So I feel like, right about here, Jerry should insert
a needle coming off of our record sound effect. Yeah, okay,
thanks Jerry, So Chuck, you just said singer songwriters.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
Yeah, what would that have to do with Star Wars? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Well, actually, in this Star Wars Holiday special for those
of you who 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 the Star Wars Corporation
was what it was called. Yeah, on the idea of
(13:56):
doing this TV special was that everyone would love variety show.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Yeah, it was the seventies.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Great idea, let's do a variety show. The problem was this,
Apparently George Lucas didn't watch enough TV. Yeah, and he
also overly trusted people who talk to him. Sure, because
by nineteen seventy eight, yes, variety shows had dominated television
for over ten years, but it had come to an end.
It was getting stale.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Yeah, we're talking to Carol Burnett show, one of my favorite.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
Had just been canceled after eleven seasons. Yeah, Big Red.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Flag Sonny and Cher had just had its last season. Yeah,
I mean what else, like he was still going on.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Probably the Kihaw still on Solid Gold, had yet to
come on and take up the mantle.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
That would never write a show.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
Oh, it was a little bit. There was talking in
between the songs.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Yeah. Remember the Mandrel Sisters show.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
I never watched that one. Well it was with that
country chic thing that happened.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Yeah, it was a big deal in the it's kind
of happening again, I think.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Oh, because of that dude, the guy who won All
the CMA Awards. I don't know, he's like he's he
came along and he's like, actually country. His dad's like
a coal miner for real from Kentucky. I think I
know you mean Chris so something. Yeah, yeah, he is good.
He's come along and been like, what are you guys doing?
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Well, there's a revival in like good country music again.
That's great, like in the tradition of Merle Haggard and
Shore Cash.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
And I guess that's probably where the country she came from,
because there was actually good country going on.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
Yeh, Johnny Cash out of a variety show?
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Did he really? Oh yeah, I knew they did, like
a Sunday singing thing like out in Virginia.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
Yeah, he had his own variety show was actually pretty good.
There's some like really great performances.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
Do you know how many nerds.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Are like, get back to star warm? I know, I'm
so sorry. All right, So the Variety Show is dying
sort of, and so they figure what a great time
to take the biggest movie property on the planet and
wedget into the Variety Show. Mill you.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
I don't know if wedge is the right word. I
think maybe nestle it in there. And then start hitting
it with the blunt edge of an axe until it
mashes into that crevice. You know, Because this is the
time when Fantasy Island had just started, Mork and Mindy
was about to change things, Charlie's Angels was getting huge.
(16:16):
It basically television as we knew it from nineteen eighty
to whenever the real world came along. Just escape ast
television is what they called. It was starting and it
was the hip new thing. So basically, if they had
turned Han Solo and Princess Leah and Luke Skywalker into
maybe you know, sexy detectives, it might have gone over
(16:37):
even better. But they went the other way. They decided
to latch onto this extraordinarily stale genre of television, and
they hired the best in the business. Like there was
a quote from I think Lenny Rips who was saying,
like we had literally a dream team, a variety show
dream team, and everybody was good, but there were probably
(16:59):
no bad ways on the Titanic.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
He there, that's a great quote. Yeah. The guy they
hired you directed initially was a dude named David at Coomba,
and he had made his name for Welcome to the
fillmore East. It was a concert documentary with Van Morrison
Van Morrison and the Birds in nineteen seventy one, and
he actually was at usc Film School the same time
as Lucas, even though they didn't know each other, and
(17:23):
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. Who replaced him. Okay, as we
get along down this gross road, well.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Let's take a little break because I'm overly excited.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
Okay, softly, Josh, So.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
All right, so we've established most of the main players.
We'll get to a few more. We should point out
that Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford and Carrie Fischer, Peter Mayhew.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
They had no grounds to refuse to be on this.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Basically, yeah, pretty much. They were not huge, huge stars,
yet they could throw their weight around and say this
is terrible and I'm not doing it.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
They were big overnight because of Star Wars, for sure,
but they weren't to the adoring public.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
Back at the studio they could still be bossed around,
and this was the result of it. And you can
tell also just from watching the actual special like, Harrison
Ford is not happy to be there at any point.
Oh no, Princess Leah is clearly on drugs. Was she
on drugs at this point? If you watch it, she's
(18:55):
on drugs. Especially the ending scene.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
Mark Hamill, it looks like he's happy to be there.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
Actually he was fine, but apparently he said, no, I'm
not doing a musical number. Yeah, and if you watch
his part, wedging a musical number in there would have
been even more painful. Sure, but they everybody who was
part of the actual Star Wars franchise that wasn't wearing
like a full body costume, yeah, was like I really
(19:20):
wish I wasn't here. And you can.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
Tell, oh yeah. In fact, in the opening credit sequence,
they're showing the picture the you know, the faces of
the people, and you see Harrison Ford as if he's
flying the Millennium Falcon, and you can you can just
hear the guy all 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 pissed off, and he looks up at the
(19:42):
camera and just sort of smirks.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
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.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
It felt bad for him so early on Valanche and others.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Did you feel bad before him?
Speaker 3 (19:55):
Though?
Speaker 1 (19:55):
Really? I mean, like, come on, it's Harrison Ford's Han 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.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Well, early on a Valanche and others knew that they
may be in trouble because they decided not to subtitle
any of the Wookie dialogue right, 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 Kazuk in time for Life Day so
he can celebrate with his family.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
That's the basis of the entire two hours I see.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Basis the entire two hours. They encounter a space battle
and they're delayed, and the next two hours are kind
of what's going on while the delay is happening.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
Back on Kazuk. Back on Kazuk, because you hear like, oh, okay, well,
Han Solo and Chewbacca evading the Imperial Guard and all
that stuff for two hours. I would watch that, sure,
I would too. Yeah, that's not what they show.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Killing time at the Wookie household, that is what they show. Yeah,
that's what they do.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
It's people hanging out waiting for Chewbacca, worrying about him. Yeah,
and then killing time while they wait for him to
come back.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Yeah, literally, so and so hold on, So you say
there's a setup, right, Yeah, that's the initial setup.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
And then chuck. That's followed by this.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Yeah, it's followed by literally ten minutes, ten solid minutes
of incomprehensible Wookie speak.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
So let's join it for a second, shall we. Yeah,
let's all enjoy it. And again, you said ten minutes,
(22:17):
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.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
Fortunately, I couldn't follow it at first, Like I didn't
even know who it was. I thought it might have
been Chewbacca's mom and dad. Oh yeah, that's and little brother. Sure,
And I don't find out until later when Mark Camill
shows up via skype call and says, he really explains
everything that had just happened, like your Chewbacca's father, Itchy,
(22:48):
your Chewbacca's son Lumpy Lumpy yeah, and your Chewbacca's wife, oh, Mala, yeah,
thank you.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
So before everybody starts like freaking out, we know that
that's actually their nicknames. Their real names are. His father
is a Tichik cook, a Titchik cook, it's really hard
to pronounce. Mulatto Buck is his wife, and his son
is Lumpo or ump but.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
As named by Lucas.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
But yeah, but Lucas also named him Lumpy Itchy and Mala.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
So they're all back there wringing their hands, trying to
figure out ways to pass the time until they get
word from Chewbacca that he's made it to uh what
is it? Ketchuk Zuk Kazuk. Say ketchup, ketchup or cats
up if you're fancy. But Chewbacca is having trouble getting
(23:42):
back to Kochuk because there's Kazuk, because there's a blockade
by the Empire and they're looking for rebels, specifically Chewbacca,
who I didn't realize this. He's the most famous Wookie
of all. Did you know that? Yeah, of course I
didn't know.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
That. Well, I mean he's the only one that really
appears in the movies, all right, I mean, yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
We're seeing like, you know, these people's view of your universe.
What about back on Kazook.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
Yes, he might have just been a fly by Night wookie, right, yeah,
but not the case very famous wiki.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
Yeah, and he really loved to like soak in his fame.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
All right, So he realizes there's a problem. Valanche. He
goes to Lucas and is like, I don't know, man,
this is your world, but it may not be the
strongest thing to do to set this in wokie land
and have all this incomprehensible dialogue. And he says he
was met with a glacial stare.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
Well he put it a little differently than that.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Well, he said glacial stare. He did.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
The glacial stare that he got was for this quote.
He said, these people just talk and what sounds like
fat people having an orgasm. Yeah, he goes, if you want,
you can set up a tape recorder in my bedroom
and I'll do all of the follying it for it.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Yeah. He's a large guy, he is.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
So 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,
(25:17):
that doesn't work, give him a glacial stare, or say, yes,
that's exactly it. Yes, let's make this a variety show.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Yeah. And there was a little bit of background there.
The CANTEENA players in the band had appeared on other
variety shows at that point, and I think it went
over fairly well, just as a short segment on like
the Richard Pryor Variety Show or Donnie Marie ye Man.
There were a lot of variety shows.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
But that's what I'm saying. It was that was television.
That's what you did, Like The Brady's. The show had
its course and then it became a variety show. It
was just everybody loved variety shows. Yeah, I'll do. By
this time, though, everybody was sick of variety shows and
so it really was a terrible choice.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
In fact, they even hired a couple of writers from
Shields and Yarnell, which I hadn't heard of. I oh yeah,
I watched it. It was at least creepy. This mind
couple who had their own variety show, and they figured
these two will be great because they are used to
working without words.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
Right, and so there is a certain logic to the
variety show. It's not just all over the place. It's
just that variety shows were popular.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
Yea.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
At the time, somebody was like, well, wookies, you don't
understand what they're saying. So this is all going to
be very physical. So these people who who did what
is it shields in yar Now, yeah, that's a perfect choice.
That makes complete sense. You can see this whole, this
whole process of leading up to the point where it
was produced and shot and everything. Yeah, a series of like,
(26:50):
oh we have this problem, well here's a fix.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
Yeah, but that leads to another problem. Well we'll fix
it with this.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
And no one's stepping back and being like all we've
done is cree We ate a series of problems that
are going to come together and make one extraordinarily large
problem that will become legendary. No one did that, and
so the whole thing was made.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
That's right, and it eventually airs.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
On November seventeenth, nineteen seventy eight, a Friday, at eight
pm Eastern time.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
That's right, And according to Nielsen ratings, it attracted thirteen
million viewers lost the second hour just in the US.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
It aired in six or seven countries total.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Yeah, but no one cares about that.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
I guess not because none of those are on the internet.
You know.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
It finished second to the Love Boat in the second arm, sorry,
from eight to nine, and in the next hour actually
finished behind part two of a mini series about Pearl
Harbor starring Angie Dickinson. So yeah, it didn't even win
their respective hours.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
No, thirteen million, that's that's not bad. The thing is, apparently,
if you look at the Nielsen ratings graph for the
first hour.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
Yeah we know about that graph, It's okay, yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:59):
We do.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
And then after a very important part, which we'll talk
about soon, it just drops off at the end of
the first hour, and that actually probably made the executives
at CBS cringe for a number of reasons. Number one
is this special was originally supposed to just be an hour,
but so many advertisers wanted to sign one that they
(28:21):
extended it to two hours, and it shines through. You
can totally tell that this thing was never supposed to be.
I think an hour might have been stretching it to
tell you the truth. Oh yeah, it's thirty minutes of content,
forty if you're generous, an hour and then two hours.
It becomes one of the worst things that was ever
(28:41):
put on television.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
All right, well, let's take a break and then we'll
talk a little bit more about the actual even don't
want to call it content, but it is content in
the strictest definition. Sure, right after this softly jaw.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
So.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
All right, so the show itself, 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.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
Right, that's it, And again we almost barely see Chewy.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
The rest is his family on Kizook waiting for him
to come back for Life Day.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
Yeah. So some of the various things they did there
were guest stars. That was Harvey Korman from the Carol
Burnett Show. Okay, one of my all time favorites.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
Him or Carol Burnett Show both. He's great. Yeah, he
actually if you watch what he's doing, you're like, this
is comedy for sure.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Apparently he too was like the only one on set
that was bringing levity. He was joking around and kind
of kept spirits up.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
Good for him, that's what I say. And he had
three different parts.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
Yeah, he played 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
wife makes banthas stew.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
To kill some time, to kill some time on her
planet and in our living room.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
Yeah, so Harvey Corman is in Drag is a four
armed Julia childlike TV chef, right, And I think it's Gormanda.
It's her name, Gormonda. That makes total sense. Yeah, he
also plays There's this one weird 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
(30:52):
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.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
He watches an instruction video.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
Which was Harvey Kytel as a robot.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
Oh, it would have been wonderful of big Harvey Kitel.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
Oh what did say Harvey Harvey Korm.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
Oh, Man Harvey Kittell murders someone in the middle of
the instruction.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Rade Harvey Korman. And then the final role he had
was as a a bar patron in the cantina that drinks.
He has a hole in the top of his head
like a volcano where he pours his drinks in.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
That's what he drinks, and he he loves b Arthur.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
Did we mention b Arthur was in it?
Speaker 1 (31:38):
B Arthur is not only in it, Chuck. She sings
a song.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
She does. She is the unpronounce to everyone she manages
or maybe owns.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
The owner. Yeah, the what's the mas what Ma's deaf cantina?
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Uh No, most deaf is a rapper? Oh yeah, think
you mean Moss Eisley.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
Yes, yes, that cantina. She's the owner. B Arthur is
the owner b Arthur of the Golden Girls, but in
this case be 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.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
Yeah, and her song comes because they basically say there's
a lockdown, so you gotta call last call at your bar.
So she calls last call by singing a song to everyone.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
Right, and again, we can't possibly have this script lead
anywhere else but Chewbacca's house while his family waits for it.
So all this takes place as part of a public
service announcement basically broadcast by the Empire about how immoral
life on Tattooen is. So let's go see what's going
on in the mas Eisley cantina as it's being shut
(32:46):
down for curfew.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
Yeah, all right, this is incomprehensible, but it goes on.
So they're in it. There's also Art Carney. Yes, he's
a honeymooner, probably the star of the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
Really, he has the most lines, I would say, the
most comprehensible line, right. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
So he plays a trader, a human trader that is
recently been with Han Solo and Chewy and actually gets
to Kazuok and says they're on the way. It's all good.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
Yeah, a trade dour, not trade tour.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
Yeah, traders and trades humans for you know, money.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
No, he he sells goods.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
Yeah, a trader. He doesn't trade humans. Yeah, he's in
the human trade.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
He No, he isn't really, Yeah, he trades humans like
he sells humans.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
I looked it up in the Star Wars Encyclopedia said
that he was in the human trade.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
Huh. So in this Christmas special, Yeah, apparently they sanitized
his background because he's basically just selling like gadgets and
novelties and stuff like that to the Wookies and the
Empire who were occupying the area.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
Yes, he comes bearing gifts.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Yeah, because he's a friend of Chewback's family.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
Yeah, so he comes Barren gifts. One of the gifts
he gives is a 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. He gives it to Grandpa Itchy. Grandpa
Itchy sits under this hair dryer, pops in this digital cassette,
(34:26):
and it can only be described as softcore porn.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
Apparently, the writers who were interviewed for this said that
was totally the intent they were trying to get what
amounted to soft core porn that would pass the sensors.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
So it's all you can't even say it's innuendo. It's
too obvious an overt for innuendo. Instead, it's just it's
just it's just gross. It's really gross. Diane Carroll, great singer,
Yes she is a Vegas staple, shows up and starts
(34:59):
based tantalizing Grandpa Itchy, who again, 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.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
Well yeah, and she literally says to him, now, I
can see you're really excited.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
Yeah, it's pretty rough to watch.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
Yeah, so then you've got another musical number.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
Because also again he shudders, Yeah, it's really strange.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
All right. So there's also a I know, it seems
like we're jumping around, but it's it's so mind blowing.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
Not like this is pretty much like blow for blow.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
Actually I forgot earlier on in the In the special,
there's one of my favorite sequences is when Grandpa Itchy
goes over to Lumpy and basically sets up Remember the
the hologram chessboard that they played in a New Hope. Yeah,
basically kind of sets that up and says, here, just
play this. He pushes button which is clearly a nineteen
(36:01):
seventies cassette recorder, and another like it's like a circ
desole acid trip gymnast routine happens in front of the
kid's eyes. And again this all just it's not like
it shows a snippet. They show the entire segments, like five, six,
(36:23):
ten minutes long. Sure of all of these things.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
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. Art Carney apparently,
I guess it's trying to get one of the Imperial Guard,
the leader, I think, or one of the leaders.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
Who looks like somebody from Spaceballs, by the way.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
Very much so. And the writer of the Vanity Fair article,
by the way said this is so incomprehensible. The specialist
George Lucas didn't even have the schwartz with him at
the time. So anyway, our Carney's distracting this Imperial leader
while they're ransacking the Wookies house Chewbaca's house with a hologram.
(37:10):
In 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.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
It's a little music video.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
Basically, it's a Yeah, it's the predecessor to like video
Kill the Radio Star, you can tell. And again it
is the whole lengthy song. Yeah, 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's not just and they don't
(37:50):
cut back and forth. It's okay, here's five minutes of
Jefferson Starship performing this song.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
Yeah, and even the Jefferson Starship guys were like, it's
sort of a weird trip, Like we didn't get it,
but we did it right.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
They gave us some money, yeah, and some cocaine. Well probably,
so we said, yeah, chuck. I think though there yet
another segment like this is actually widely regarded as the
high point of the whole thing. Oh sure, great, there
is a cartoon actually, yeah, that Lump Lumpy watches. Yeah,
Lumpy's like the Imperial Guard is still ransacking my house.
(38:28):
I think I'll entertain myself by watching a cartoon on
my little.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
I don't know what.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
I guess it was an iPad and he watches this
cartoon and it's it's actually remarkable for a number of reasons.
It's the best part of the whole special.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
Yeah, generally agreed upon as such, right, not just us.
Speaker 1 (38:47):
And it introduces Boba fet. It's the first time Boba
Fet ever makes an appearance in the Star Wars universe.
Speaker 2 (38:52):
Yeah, it's actually not a bad And you can't find
it in the the one version I told you to watch.
They removed it for copyright, but they didn't watch a separate.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Right, you can find it on its own.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
Yeah, and it's it's very much reminiscent of like the
cartoon style of the day, like a he Man or
something for.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
Sure, even even but it's even a little more artsy
than that.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
Yeah, But it does have a plot that you can
follow that makes sense as a Star Wars thing, and
it introduces Boba fet, like you said, And it's actually
not bad.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
It's like Luke and R two and C three po yeah,
and they're like they crash on a planet or something.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
Yeah, and Han and where you're in it. And it's
the first time we see in Darth Vader. It's first
time we see Boba Fett and that he is, that
he is just doing whatever he can do for money,
Like Luke trusts him at first, CE three bos like
you're sure you should trust him this quick? Yeah, and
he's like, oh, three po, you in your non trusting ways.
And then it turns out he's selling them out to
(39:46):
the dark side.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
So it's it's basically Boba Fett is an allegory for
George Lucas himself. So the cartoon comes and goes. And
that was the thing that came at about the end
of the first hour mark and after that everybody just
turned off their television sets.
Speaker 2 (40:04):
Yeah, I don't remember.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
Did you watch this when it came up? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (40:08):
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 till ten,
so I probably didn't make it through it all. Yeah,
Plus you're probably disturbed who knows. I just remember that.
I'll have to ask my brother. He might have a
memory of this.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
Oh, Betty does. I'm sure he met everybody afterward or
something like that. You know, it has a picture.
Speaker 2 (40:28):
Well he was ten at that point, so cynicism had,
you know, become a thing in his life probably.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
All right by then?
Speaker 2 (40:34):
Sure didn't that when centicism kicks in today?
Speaker 1 (40:36):
Jenkinsie Scott holding out to fourteen fifteen. Yeah, maybe so,
so Chuck, the whole thing finally does end. And actually
there's a guy his name is Nathan Raven, he writes
over at the av Club. He had a great quote.
He basically said that one of the great redeeming values
of this this special is that it does eventually end.
Speaker 2 (40:55):
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.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
And like, go read his review of the Star Wars
Holiday Special, because he goes on to describe exactly what
that must have been like. Yeah, development meeting where the
bag of cocaine is pacing back and forth talking about
what should happen.
Speaker 2 (41:16):
That's what it feels like.
Speaker 1 (41:18):
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.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
Yeah. So what happens is eventually Han Solo should we
say spoiler alert, Eventually Han Solo and Chewy make it
to the planet. They park on the far side of
the planet because they know the Imperial forces are there.
Speaker 1 (41:40):
And the exercise will do Chewy good.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
Yeah, so they have to hike over there. They eventually
make it back home. They find a storm the Stormtroopers
at their house right their tree hut. Yeah, which way.
The paintings that set this up, I don't think we mentioned.
I don't even call them matte paintings. It looks like
someone painted something on the wall and they just like
put a camera in front of it.
Speaker 1 (42:03):
Pretty much. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
So they get back and Chewbacca Han Solo hides around
the corner. Chewbacca steps in front of his son to
protect him. Sure, Han Solo jumps out, and the stormtrooper
trips over a pile of logs and falls over the.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
Balcony and dies in a holiday special.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
So they wouldn't even not only could he not shoot
first with Gredo, but they couldn't even have him like
wrestle the stormtrooper and throw him off. He trips over
a log.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
Right, and Han Solo has his hands thrown up like
wasn't me?
Speaker 2 (42:37):
It might have been a banana peel, you know.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
But again, this is basically produced by vaudevillians starring vaudevillians.
Why not have the one death take place from basically
what amounts to somebody slipping on a banana peel exactly.
It's a perfect way to end it. So that's that
guy basically represents the end of the Imperial threat for
the rest of Life Day. And we then see Life
(43:04):
Day being celebrated, which is celebrated by lots of wookies
assembling in what looks like a giant Olin Mills portrait,
and all of them are wearing red robes. And I
know I'm up talking, and it's because my mind is
still having trouble like wrapping around us. And then Princess
(43:26):
Leah comes out with C three po is Mark Hamill.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
There, the whole gang zeraphone, Okay.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
The whole gangs there, and then they all gather around
to hear a great quote from Princess Leah, which we
will read verbatim.
Speaker 2 (43:41):
This holiday is yours, but we all share with you
the hope that this day brings us closer to freedom
and to 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
(44:02):
than anything else, our love for one another. This is
the promise of the Tree of Life Q song.
Speaker 1 (44:08):
Right, And we should also point out the Tree of
Life has never been mentioned.
Speaker 2 (44:11):
Up to this point.
Speaker 1 (44:12):
I had no idea what this takes a sudden appearance
at the end, and when you said Q song, by
Q song, you mean Princess Leah starts singing.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
Yeah, And apparently that was one of the big contingencies
on Carrie Fisher being involved. Yeah, she's going through a
phase where she's like, I kind of like singing.
Speaker 1 (44:29):
Bruce Valanche calls it her Joni Mitchell period.
Speaker 2 (44:31):
Yeah, and she somehow convinced them to let her sing
as Princess Leah. And she does.
Speaker 1 (44:36):
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 other writers
who've 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.
(44:59):
It's just the the fact that Princess Leia is singing.
And actually, Bruce Falanch had a really great quote too.
He says that she very much wanted to show this
side of her talent, and there was general dismay because
this was not what we wanted Princess Lea to be doing. Yeah,
she did it anyway. So the whole thing ends with
her singing this song about life day oh yeah, which
(45:20):
is set loosely to the John Williams Star Wars theme.
Speaker 2 (45:25):
Yeah. So along the way, the director, original director quit,
A new director, Steve Binder was hired to finish the
job and bring it in, and he did over the
original one million dollar budget. Of course, always he did
bring it in and at this point George Lucas said
he was he was working on Empire Strikes Back. He
(45:47):
didn't know what was going on. He wasn't around for
the shoot.
Speaker 1 (45:50):
No, it wasn't until it aired I think that he
actually saw it.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
Yes, and it was a travesty obviously, if you haven't
noticed that by now, critics hated it. Star Wars fans
really hated it.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
Everybody, the people who were in it hated it.
Speaker 2 (46:04):
Lucas hated it.
Speaker 1 (46:06):
Even Harvey Korman secretly hated it.
Speaker 2 (46:08):
Yeah, even Harvey Keitel hated it. Actually he loved it.
But Lucas has been asked over the years about it
a lot, and he doesn't talk about it much. But
in two thousand and five, and I don't buy this
for a second, he says it was an interview He
said especial from nineteen seventy eight. I really didn't have
much to do with us. You know that part is true.
(46:29):
I can't remember what network it was even on, but
it was a thing that they did. That's a lie.
There's no way he doesn't know that was CBS. 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 there were variety TV guys. I'm sure
he remembers a few of them. We let them use
the characters and stuff, and that probably wasn't the smartest
(46:49):
thing to do, but you learn from those experiences. I
think they even use some of the footage from the movie.
At the end, it looks like some of the space like.
Speaker 1 (46:59):
A highlight reel, yeah the Gang.
Speaker 2 (47:01):
Well, and during the it looked like some of the
they had some insert shots of like Imperial cruisers and
tie fighters and stuff that.
Speaker 1 (47:09):
Yeah, like from remember when Chewbacca like leans back and
puts his hands behind it. Yeah, yeah, that's in there.
It's like a just a highlight reel from the movie.
Saying like I feel like this, go see the movie.
Speaker 2 (47:20):
Well, and also that means it doesn't match the look
of the rest of it at all.
Speaker 1 (47:24):
Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2 (47:25):
It's just sort of inserted.
Speaker 1 (47:26):
They tried, They definitely tried. And George Lucas is totally
full of it, because in nineteen eighty seven he told
star Log magazine that the Christmas Special would be out
on video cassette very soon. Yes, And in two thousand
and seven, two years after that quote, you just read
where he's like, I don't even know what you're talking about. Basically,
he apparently considered releasing the Christmas Special as a bonus
(47:49):
on the DVDs of the first three.
Speaker 2 (47:54):
Right, but did not did, and apparently Carrie Fisher told
Lucas that if you want me to do DVD extras commentary, yeah, commentary,
then I want a clean original copy of the Holiday Special. Yes,
so why go ahead so I can play at parties
when I want people to leave. It's pretty great.
Speaker 1 (48:13):
It is so and there is one of those clean
copies is floating around out there, so you can watch
this in it in its entirety. Some of it, like
the cartoon, was removed 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
(48:34):
that aired in Baltimore.
Speaker 2 (48:36):
Yeah, that are just fascinating. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:39):
Those are always fun gm ads where one of the
guys who's in quality control is he says, did you
watch it?
Speaker 2 (48:46):
I don't think I saw that one.
Speaker 1 (48:46):
He goes, we really care about these cars and that's
no jibe man on a gm ad and he's like,
it's serious.
Speaker 2 (48:53):
Oh they're trying to be hip.
Speaker 1 (48:55):
Yeah, it's pretty good stuff.
Speaker 2 (48:58):
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 there
because it's a fun little stain that shouldn't be taken
too seriously. I think it adds to it actually, because
(49:18):
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?
Speaker 1 (49:26):
Yeah, I mean I watched it twice. I wouldn't watched
it a second I wouldn't have made it through the
first time. Let me take that back, as I'm a pro. Yeah,
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 Chewbaca's son Yeah, played by an actress named
Patty Maloney, who frankly is hands down the best actor
(49:49):
in the entire thing. She like her response is and everything.
It's just awesome.
Speaker 2 (49:55):
I think my favorite parts are, well, there's a great
Wilhelm scream.
Speaker 1 (50:00):
Yes, I noticed that troop.
Speaker 2 (50:01):
For trips over the laws.
Speaker 1 (50:02):
Jerry would not have noticed it.
Speaker 2 (50:05):
And then there's a part where all the wokie dialogue
you can't understand. But there's clearly one part where where
Itchy and Lumpy are having exchange where Lumpy you can
make it out, goes I love you. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
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.
Speaker 1 (50:24):
Sure, or they were like, I think she has said
I love you. Should we have them redo it? And
the director's like, no, I want to go and Chuck.
There's one other thing that I figured out from watching this.
What's that it's not readily apparent the whole thing is
made all the more odd, and that there's situation after
situation after situation where we, as normal audiences, were trained
(50:46):
to expect the laugh track. There's not a laugh track,
and there's been a laugh track. It might have been
less bizarre, but the fact that it's missing just makes
your agitates the mind. So it's this whole additional element
that it is weird.
Speaker 2 (51:02):
I never thought about that. There's just weird moments of
silence all throughout it.
Speaker 1 (51:05):
Yeah, like when Ark Carney's doing his thing.
Speaker 2 (51:07):
Yeah I'm telling jokes.
Speaker 1 (51:08):
Yeah, okay, I agree with you, Chuck, don't take things
too seriously. I think that's the great lesson in this.
Speaker 2 (51:14):
Yeah, and then the lesson of life day it is.
And in two thousand and seven, Riff tracks the Great
Mystery Science Theater. Three thousand guys Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett,
and Kevin Murphy provided audio commentary for the full version
of the special. So try and go grab that if
you can as well.
Speaker 1 (51:32):
Oh you can, it's on their site because it's great.
I think it's like eight bucks and.
Speaker 2 (51:35):
Those guys are awesome.
Speaker 1 (51:36):
And yeah, at least I think Corbett listens to us. So, hey, Corbett, you.
Speaker 2 (51:43):
Got anything else?
Speaker 1 (51:44):
No, No, I think we did this. There's some good stuff.
Go read the Vanity Fair article 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 sledgehammer, right, And
there's also an entire website dedicated to it, Star Wars
(52:06):
Holiday Special dot com. Yeah, and if you want to
know more about the Star Wars Holiday Special, we have
a ton of hard Star Wars stuff on how stuff
works by the way.
Speaker 2 (52:15):
Yeah, we have cool sort of fun articles about the
Death Star and Lightsabers.
Speaker 1 (52:19):
Videos with the Holly Fry from Stuff You missed a
history class.
Speaker 2 (52:23):
Yeah, who she knows her stuff.
Speaker 1 (52:24):
She does. So you can just type Star Wars in
the search bar at how stuff works dot com and
it will bring up some cool stuff for you. Since
I said search bar, it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 2 (52:36):
Hey, guys, just finished listening to the Voyage Manuscript podcast.
Found it's super interesting, especially the theories on its definition
or origin. I no Josh mentioned Chuck Siri, but being
drug induced is somewhat surprising or even unlikely given them
language and the manuscript follows linguistic laws only founded in
the past one hundred years. But if you think about it,
it's a tough. It's tough to stray away from familiar structures,
(52:59):
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, So just thought I
contribute that to the conversation.
Speaker 1 (53:12):
Nice.
Speaker 2 (53:12):
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.
Speaker 1 (53:24):
We do that and.
Speaker 2 (53:25):
Joe Love and then as a way to get through
traffic on my commute home from work. You guys are
far more interesting and enjoyable than television and YouTube videos.
I'm sure I've listened to hundreds and we'll continue to
listen to hundreds more. Keep on keeping on. That is
from Amy J. Moffett.
Speaker 1 (53:39):
Thanks a lot, Amy in San Diego. Does that mean
like place of the whales in German or something like that. Yeah. Yeah.
If you want to get in touch of this, you
can tweet to us at s YSK podcast. You can
join us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know.
You can send us an email the Stuff podcast at
houstuffworks dot Com has always joined us at a home
(53:59):
on the Stuff Youshould Know dot Com.
Speaker 2 (54:04):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hi everyone, It's Josh, and we can officially kick off
the holidays with the annual release of our Star Wars
Holiday special episode. I hope by now it's become an
annual tradition in your home rather than a deepening annoyance,
and I hope it brings you glad tidings rather than
rage listening. I know some of you have been at
it since September, but let the twenty twenty three holidays begin.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Welcome to Stuff you should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with
Charles W. Chuckers Bryant and Jerry Jerome Roland.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Who's the Wookie mother? Yeah, Mala, that was the Wookie wife.
Oh and mother?
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Chewbacca's mom is not with them any longer. She left.
She was not about to appear in that.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
She went out the window. I'm excited about this. I
have to say we should say happy Star Wars Day. Yeah,
today is December seventeenth. I have my opening night tickets.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Do you really sure? Wow?
Speaker 2 (01:17):
You know I you into it? Oh?
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Yeah, I will definitely go see it in the theater.
But well, I won't be their 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. Yeah I'm an ostrich.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Yeah you black yourself out. Yeah, you go dark I do.
I make myself go to sleep face, you go to
the dark side.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
I've been there a while now.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
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.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Yes, I already missed Life Day though, so happy belated
Life Day. Cha.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Are they celebrating it this year?
Speaker 1 (02:04):
November seventeenth?
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Yeah, but it's every three years our Caine. Yeah, man,
weird job.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Okay, so it's every three years. Started in nineteen seventy eight.
Let's do the math, shall we? Quick?
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Math break? I believe that twenty fourteen was the last
Life Day. Man, we just missed it, and then again
in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Okay, So twenty seventeen will celebrate Life Day. We'll put
on our red robes, our ultra long straight ironed wigs, sure,
and we'll celebrate Life Day the way it was meant to.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Yes, and if you have no idea what we're talking about.
We are talking about Life Day, which is a celebration
that wookies in the Star Wars universe have every three years.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Yeah, it's like their Christmas. Yeah, they Celebronica or their Kwanta,
their tet.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Supposedly, it's sort of like Earth Day too. They celebrate
the diversity of their eCos and also remembrance of the dead,
and they also give the gifts.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
They're like the fins basically.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Yeah, it's a very interesting part of the Star Wars cannon.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
It is, and it's almost entirely made up, dashed off
you could possibly say, by George Lucas in the seventies. Yeah,
and it's the basis of what has become derided as
like one of the worst things that ever happened to
the Star Wars galaxy.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Well, not only that, one of the worst things ever
aired on television.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Yeah, with this galaxy.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Yeah, at first that sounds like hyperbole, like, come on,
it's because it was Star Wars and we had high expectations.
But it's really that bad.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Yeah. The people who say that haven't seen even a
second of it.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Yeah. Yeah, However, I watched it when I was a kid,
then again this week. Yeah, and you watched it twice
this week.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Yeah, I watched it last night and this morning.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
There's something about it. It's mesmerizing, it really is. It's
one of those things that you start watching it and
you want to turn it off, but you want to
see just how absurd it can get.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Almost Yeah, and it starts absurd, it stays absurd in
the middle. Yeah, it's increasingly more absurd. It's a little
less absurd. Finish is super absurd.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Yeah, it's just a train wreck in every single sense
of the word, top to bottom.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
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 enjoy this episode more
if you pause, go spend two hours watching this thing,
(04:45):
and then come back and laugh along with us.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Yeah, there's a great Over the years, there have been
many segments of it on YouTube from badly dubbed VHS tapes,
but there's one really pretty good version of it in full.
It brought to you by w HIO Dayton, Ohio, Channel seven, Ohio.
Because that flashes up on the screen periodically.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
Man, it is high quality.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Yeah, it looks good.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
It has to basically be the copy that the actual
affiliate broadcast. Yeah, it's like that. That quality compared to
the other stuff floating around on YouTube, clearly recorded on
a nineteen seventy eight.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
PCR, Yeah, which were really expensive.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Very expensive. I did some calculating on West Egg. Okay,
so the average VCR went for about one thousand dollars.
There were brand new, it's amazing one thousand dollars in
nineteen seventy eight money, So they were about thirty eight
hundred dollars in twenty fourteen money.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Crazy.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Luckily there were some rich people out there recording this stuff,
and the wealthy have saved us all again, yes, yet again,
as they always do.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Yes. And we need to shout out some articles that
we use for this. There's great a great article in
Vanity Fair called the Han Solo Comedy Hour exclamation point
by Frank de Jacomo, and then they're the Star Wars
Holiday Special was the worst thing on television ever by
So when we kind of know Alex Pasternaka from Motherboard, Yeah,
(06:09):
which is not Wired, it's Vice. Yes, So we wrote
a little bit for Motherboard back then and we had
a call with that.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
We're like, we're like old Motherboard vets.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Yeah, basically, wasn't there one more?
Speaker 1 (06:20):
There was another one and I don't know who wrote
this one, chuck, Yeah, it's the titles the Star Wars
Holiday Special. George Lucas wants to smash every copy of
with a sledgehammer.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Which was a famous quote supposedly at a convention by Lucas.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Yes, which is not correct.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
He didn't ever say that. No, Okay, that that sounded
like something that people made up.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Yes, but if you go on the internet you will
quickly believe that he did. Sure apparently didn't.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
So I'm sure he felt that way though, clearly, you know.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Because he did appear on Robot Chicken and I think
two thousand and five on the Therapist's Couch talking about
how much he hated the special. All right, so let's
set the background, shall we Shall we go back to
nineteen seventy seven, Yeah, summer.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Getting the old wayback machine.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
All right, let's do it.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
All right, here we are there's watersn Yeah, I'm just
the little six year old excited about Star Wars.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
I am. I've just turned one.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Yes, you don't know what's up yet.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
I please forgive me if I urinate myself.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
No problem.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
So what has happened is Star Wars has become a huge,
huge hit, seemingly out of nowhere. Yeah, establishing George Lucas
is one of the brilliant young minds in filmmaking, even
though in this first movie it was his first huge,
huge breakout hit.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
Oh yeah, for sure. I don't mean talk about a
breakout hit like no one had ever seen anything like
it before. No, two thousand and one had come out
in the late sixties. Yeah, but it wasn't it killed.
It still is inaccessible to all audiences. You know, it's
prett of a cerebral film.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Yeah, it's not an adventure movie.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
This was Wars. This is like 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.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Yeah, and a new hope by the way, yes, and
then then we're going to get stuff wrong, nerds, So yes,
just go ahead and get your little fingers ready to
email us, like if.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
It wasn't driven home that I'm not a nerd by
the fact that I don't have opening night tickets or
any tickets yet, give me a break, and by proxy
chuck too, Okay, thank you. So it's it's hard to
state how great Star Wars was in everyone's mind. Yea right.
Bill Murray came out with that lounge singer Star Wars thing. Yeah,
(08:38):
it was everywhere and if you if you just listen
to the lyrics of it, he's really it's just Bill
Murray singing about how much Star Wars is awesome.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Right. So by the following year, George Lucas was he
wanted to figure out a way to keep audiences just
engaged with the whole Star Wars franchise that he was
just starting to build. But he knew the Empire Strikes
Back was a couple more years out, sure, so he
I think he was approached by some TV executives who said,
(09:08):
have you considered doing some sort of TV special? They're
all the rage right now. 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.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
That's right. Producers Gary Smith and Dwight Hemion. We're working
over at CBS, and they say, this is a great
way to keep the spirit alive while you're making your
other movie. Maybe move some more.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Toys, yeah, which George Lucas got a cut of all
the toys.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Sure. So it was right before Thanksgiving, and he said
there'd be a lot of people watching TV pre holiday season,
or I guess in the holiday season.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Well, the weekend before Thanksgiving, it's like everybody's shopping, sitting
around family like waiting to actually do stuff. That's right,
perfect time to broadcast something on TV.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
So Lucas says, all right, let's to 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.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Whatever genre you think is appropriate. And those are the
words that will haunt on George Lucas to his grave.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Yeah. So Lucas said, here's my idea. I want it
to be based on wookies and I want it to
take place on their home planet of Kiazuk or Wookie
Planet C.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Is that what he's saying, Kazuk.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
That's how it's pronounced in the episode the Holiday Special,
but it's also pronounced different ways. Other times.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
I would have pronounced it Cashie spell it ka s
h y y y k, Yeah, which I mean.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
I guess that sounds like Chewbuck's planet sure, also called
G five six twenty three. Wookie planet C or Edeon
is a mid rim planet. Right.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
So the whole reason apparently that George Lucas was interested
in furing 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.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Yeah, and.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
How did you pronounce it again?
Speaker 2 (11:17):
Kazuk.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Kazuk had not made the cut. Even prior to this,
apparently for a new hope, George Lucas had whipped up
a forty page that's known as the Wookie Bible. It's
like a forty page supplement that's all about Kazuk and
Wookies and Chewbacca and his family and everything about wookiedom. Right,
so he's like, I've got this thing already. You know
(11:40):
established I love wookies. They didn't make the cut. I'm
a little sad about that. They're not gonna kazuk is
not going to show up in Empire Strikes Back. Let's
build the entire special around wookies. It's basically the one
demand me George Lucas has. That's it. I'll be totally
hands off from this point on which you kind of was.
(12:00):
He totally was. It was actually this experience that apparently
taught him to be the very hands on person that
he is famous for being. It came out of this
Christmas special.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Absolutely, he was burned and he had an iron grip
after that on everything. So here's some of the folks
behind it. Bruce Valanche, famous TV writer. You probably had
seen him on Hollywood Squares.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Wasn't he suspected of being Thomas Pynchone for a while.
I don't know, or was Thomas Pinchon on Hollywood Squares?
Speaker 2 (12:30):
I have no idea.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
I may be confabulating some stuff confounding. Yeah, there's some
con of some sort going on.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
It sounds like it. Yeah, So Valanche was hired as
a writer a guy named Lenny Rips was hired as
a writer who.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Has some great quotes in that Vanity Fair article he does.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
His first quote was, we were really excited because this
is Star Wars. How could it lose?
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Yeah? Famous last words?
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Who else was hired? There was a husband and wife team,
the Welches. Yeah, who are the parents of folk singer
Gillian Welch, who I'm a big fan of, And I
had no idea that her parents. They were producers slash
songwriters of the day. They were big on the variety
show scene, which would turn out to be a really
(13:17):
key cog in this whole experience.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
So I feel like, right about here, Jerry should insert
a needle coming off of our record sound effect. Yeah, okay,
thanks Jerry, So Chuck, you just said singer songwriters.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
Yeah, what would that have to do with Star Wars? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Well, actually, in this Star Wars Holiday special for those
of you who 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 the Star Wars Corporation
was what it was called. Yeah, on the idea of
(13:56):
doing this TV special was that everyone would love variety show.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Yeah, it was the seventies.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Great idea, let's do a variety show. The problem was this,
Apparently George Lucas didn't watch enough TV. Yeah, and he
also overly trusted people who talk to him. Sure, because
by nineteen seventy eight, yes, variety shows had dominated television
for over ten years, but it had come to an end.
It was getting stale.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Yeah, we're talking to Carol Burnett show, one of my favorite.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
Had just been canceled after eleven seasons. Yeah, Big Red.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Flag Sonny and Cher had just had its last season. Yeah,
I mean what else, like he was still going on.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Probably the Kihaw still on Solid Gold, had yet to
come on and take up the mantle.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
That would never write a show.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
Oh, it was a little bit. There was talking in
between the songs.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Yeah. Remember the Mandrel Sisters show.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
I never watched that one. Well it was with that
country chic thing that happened.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Yeah, it was a big deal in the it's kind
of happening again, I think.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Oh, because of that dude, the guy who won All
the CMA Awards. I don't know, he's like he's he
came along and he's like, actually country. His dad's like
a coal miner for real from Kentucky. I think I
know you mean Chris so something. Yeah, yeah, he is good.
He's come along and been like, what are you guys doing?
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Well, there's a revival in like good country music again.
That's great, like in the tradition of Merle Haggard and
Shore Cash.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
And I guess that's probably where the country she came from,
because there was actually good country going on.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
Yeh, Johnny Cash out of a variety show?
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Did he really? Oh yeah, I knew they did, like
a Sunday singing thing like out in Virginia.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
Yeah, he had his own variety show was actually pretty good.
There's some like really great performances.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
Do you know how many nerds.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Are like, get back to star warm? I know, I'm
so sorry. All right, So the Variety Show is dying
sort of, and so they figure what a great time
to take the biggest movie property on the planet and
wedget into the Variety Show. Mill you.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
I don't know if wedge is the right word. I
think maybe nestle it in there. And then start hitting
it with the blunt edge of an axe until it
mashes into that crevice. You know, Because this is the
time when Fantasy Island had just started, Mork and Mindy
was about to change things, Charlie's Angels was getting huge.
(16:16):
It basically television as we knew it from nineteen eighty
to whenever the real world came along. Just escape ast
television is what they called. It was starting and it
was the hip new thing. So basically, if they had
turned Han Solo and Princess Leah and Luke Skywalker into
maybe you know, sexy detectives, it might have gone over
(16:37):
even better. But they went the other way. They decided
to latch onto this extraordinarily stale genre of television, and
they hired the best in the business. Like there was
a quote from I think Lenny Rips who was saying,
like we had literally a dream team, a variety show
dream team, and everybody was good, but there were probably
(16:59):
no bad ways on the Titanic.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
He there, that's a great quote. Yeah. The guy they
hired you directed initially was a dude named David at Coomba,
and he had made his name for Welcome to the
fillmore East. It was a concert documentary with Van Morrison
Van Morrison and the Birds in nineteen seventy one, and
he actually was at usc Film School the same time
as Lucas, even though they didn't know each other, and
(17:23):
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. Who replaced him. Okay, as we
get along down this gross road, well.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Let's take a little break because I'm overly excited.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
Okay, softly, Josh, So.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
All right, so we've established most of the main players.
We'll get to a few more. We should point out
that Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford and Carrie Fischer, Peter Mayhew.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
They had no grounds to refuse to be on this.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Basically, yeah, pretty much. They were not huge, huge stars,
yet they could throw their weight around and say this
is terrible and I'm not doing it.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
They were big overnight because of Star Wars, for sure,
but they weren't to the adoring public.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
Back at the studio they could still be bossed around,
and this was the result of it. And you can
tell also just from watching the actual special like, Harrison
Ford is not happy to be there at any point.
Oh no, Princess Leah is clearly on drugs. Was she
on drugs at this point? If you watch it, she's
(18:55):
on drugs. Especially the ending scene.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
Mark Hamill, it looks like he's happy to be there.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
Actually he was fine, but apparently he said, no, I'm
not doing a musical number. Yeah, and if you watch
his part, wedging a musical number in there would have
been even more painful. Sure, but they everybody who was
part of the actual Star Wars franchise that wasn't wearing
like a full body costume, yeah, was like I really
(19:20):
wish I wasn't here. And you can.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
Tell, oh yeah. In fact, in the opening credit sequence,
they're showing the picture the you know, the faces of
the people, and you see Harrison Ford as if he's
flying the Millennium Falcon, and you can you can just
hear the guy all 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 pissed off, and he looks up at the
(19:42):
camera and just sort of smirks.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
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.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
It felt bad for him so early on Valanche and others.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Did you feel bad before him?
Speaker 3 (19:55):
Though?
Speaker 1 (19:55):
Really? I mean, like, come on, it's Harrison Ford's Han 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.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Well, early on a Valanche and others knew that they
may be in trouble because they decided not to subtitle
any of the Wookie dialogue right, 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 Kazuk in time for Life Day so
he can celebrate with his family.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
That's the basis of the entire two hours I see.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Basis the entire two hours. They encounter a space battle
and they're delayed, and the next two hours are kind
of what's going on while the delay is happening.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
Back on Kazuk. Back on Kazuk, because you hear like, oh, okay, well,
Han Solo and Chewbacca evading the Imperial Guard and all
that stuff for two hours. I would watch that, sure,
I would too. Yeah, that's not what they show.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Killing time at the Wookie household, that is what they show. Yeah,
that's what they do.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
It's people hanging out waiting for Chewbacca, worrying about him. Yeah,
and then killing time while they wait for him to
come back.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Yeah, literally, so and so hold on, So you say
there's a setup, right, Yeah, that's the initial setup.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
And then chuck. That's followed by this.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Yeah, it's followed by literally ten minutes, ten solid minutes
of incomprehensible Wookie speak.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
So let's join it for a second, shall we. Yeah,
let's all enjoy it. And again, you said ten minutes,
(22:17):
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.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
Fortunately, I couldn't follow it at first, Like I didn't
even know who it was. I thought it might have
been Chewbacca's mom and dad. Oh yeah, that's and little brother. Sure,
And I don't find out until later when Mark Camill
shows up via skype call and says, he really explains
everything that had just happened, like your Chewbacca's father, Itchy,
(22:48):
your Chewbacca's son Lumpy Lumpy yeah, and your Chewbacca's wife, oh, Mala, yeah,
thank you.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
So before everybody starts like freaking out, we know that
that's actually their nicknames. Their real names are. His father
is a Tichik cook, a Titchik cook, it's really hard
to pronounce. Mulatto Buck is his wife, and his son
is Lumpo or ump but.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
As named by Lucas.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
But yeah, but Lucas also named him Lumpy Itchy and Mala.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
So they're all back there wringing their hands, trying to
figure out ways to pass the time until they get
word from Chewbacca that he's made it to uh what
is it? Ketchuk Zuk Kazuk. Say ketchup, ketchup or cats
up if you're fancy. But Chewbacca is having trouble getting
(23:42):
back to Kochuk because there's Kazuk, because there's a blockade
by the Empire and they're looking for rebels, specifically Chewbacca,
who I didn't realize this. He's the most famous Wookie
of all. Did you know that? Yeah, of course I
didn't know.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
That. Well, I mean he's the only one that really
appears in the movies, all right, I mean, yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
We're seeing like, you know, these people's view of your universe.
What about back on Kazook.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
Yes, he might have just been a fly by Night wookie, right, yeah,
but not the case very famous wiki.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
Yeah, and he really loved to like soak in his fame.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
All right, So he realizes there's a problem. Valanche. He
goes to Lucas and is like, I don't know, man,
this is your world, but it may not be the
strongest thing to do to set this in wokie land
and have all this incomprehensible dialogue. And he says he
was met with a glacial stare.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
Well he put it a little differently than that.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Well, he said glacial stare. He did.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
The glacial stare that he got was for this quote.
He said, these people just talk and what sounds like
fat people having an orgasm. Yeah, he goes, if you want,
you can set up a tape recorder in my bedroom
and I'll do all of the follying it for it.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Yeah. He's a large guy, he is.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
So 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,
(25:17):
that doesn't work, give him a glacial stare, or say, yes,
that's exactly it. Yes, let's make this a variety show.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Yeah. And there was a little bit of background there.
The CANTEENA players in the band had appeared on other
variety shows at that point, and I think it went
over fairly well, just as a short segment on like
the Richard Pryor Variety Show or Donnie Marie ye Man.
There were a lot of variety shows.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
But that's what I'm saying. It was that was television.
That's what you did, Like The Brady's. The show had
its course and then it became a variety show. It
was just everybody loved variety shows. Yeah, I'll do. By
this time, though, everybody was sick of variety shows and
so it really was a terrible choice.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
In fact, they even hired a couple of writers from
Shields and Yarnell, which I hadn't heard of. I oh yeah,
I watched it. It was at least creepy. This mind
couple who had their own variety show, and they figured
these two will be great because they are used to
working without words.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
Right, and so there is a certain logic to the
variety show. It's not just all over the place. It's
just that variety shows were popular.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
Yea.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
At the time, somebody was like, well, wookies, you don't
understand what they're saying. So this is all going to
be very physical. So these people who who did what
is it shields in yar Now, yeah, that's a perfect choice.
That makes complete sense. You can see this whole, this
whole process of leading up to the point where it
was produced and shot and everything. Yeah, a series of like,
(26:50):
oh we have this problem, well here's a fix.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
Yeah, but that leads to another problem. Well we'll fix
it with this.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
And no one's stepping back and being like all we've
done is cree We ate a series of problems that
are going to come together and make one extraordinarily large
problem that will become legendary. No one did that, and
so the whole thing was made.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
That's right, and it eventually airs.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
On November seventeenth, nineteen seventy eight, a Friday, at eight
pm Eastern time.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
That's right, And according to Nielsen ratings, it attracted thirteen
million viewers lost the second hour just in the US.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
It aired in six or seven countries total.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Yeah, but no one cares about that.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
I guess not because none of those are on the internet.
You know.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
It finished second to the Love Boat in the second arm, sorry,
from eight to nine, and in the next hour actually
finished behind part two of a mini series about Pearl
Harbor starring Angie Dickinson. So yeah, it didn't even win
their respective hours.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
No, thirteen million, that's that's not bad. The thing is, apparently,
if you look at the Nielsen ratings graph for the
first hour.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
Yeah we know about that graph, It's okay, yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:59):
We do.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
And then after a very important part, which we'll talk
about soon, it just drops off at the end of
the first hour, and that actually probably made the executives
at CBS cringe for a number of reasons. Number one
is this special was originally supposed to just be an hour,
but so many advertisers wanted to sign one that they
(28:21):
extended it to two hours, and it shines through. You
can totally tell that this thing was never supposed to be.
I think an hour might have been stretching it to
tell you the truth. Oh yeah, it's thirty minutes of content,
forty if you're generous, an hour and then two hours.
It becomes one of the worst things that was ever
(28:41):
put on television.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
All right, well, let's take a break and then we'll
talk a little bit more about the actual even don't
want to call it content, but it is content in
the strictest definition. Sure, right after this softly jaw.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
So.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
All right, so the show itself, 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.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
Right, that's it, And again we almost barely see Chewy.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
The rest is his family on Kizook waiting for him
to come back for Life Day.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
Yeah. So some of the various things they did there
were guest stars. That was Harvey Korman from the Carol
Burnett Show. Okay, one of my all time favorites.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
Him or Carol Burnett Show both. He's great. Yeah, he
actually if you watch what he's doing, you're like, this
is comedy for sure.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Apparently he too was like the only one on set
that was bringing levity. He was joking around and kind
of kept spirits up.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
Good for him, that's what I say. And he had
three different parts.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
Yeah, he played 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
wife makes banthas stew.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
To kill some time, to kill some time on her
planet and in our living room.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
Yeah, so Harvey Corman is in Drag is a four
armed Julia childlike TV chef, right, And I think it's Gormanda.
It's her name, Gormonda. That makes total sense. Yeah, he
also plays There's this one weird 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
(30:52):
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.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
He watches an instruction video.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
Which was Harvey Kytel as a robot.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
Oh, it would have been wonderful of big Harvey Kitel.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
Oh what did say Harvey Harvey Korm.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
Oh, Man Harvey Kittell murders someone in the middle of
the instruction.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Rade Harvey Korman. And then the final role he had
was as a a bar patron in the cantina that drinks.
He has a hole in the top of his head
like a volcano where he pours his drinks in.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
That's what he drinks, and he he loves b Arthur.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
Did we mention b Arthur was in it?
Speaker 1 (31:38):
B Arthur is not only in it, Chuck. She sings
a song.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
She does. She is the unpronounce to everyone she manages
or maybe owns.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
The owner. Yeah, the what's the mas what Ma's deaf cantina?
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Uh No, most deaf is a rapper? Oh yeah, think
you mean Moss Eisley.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
Yes, yes, that cantina. She's the owner. B Arthur is
the owner b Arthur of the Golden Girls, but in
this case be 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.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
Yeah, and her song comes because they basically say there's
a lockdown, so you gotta call last call at your bar.
So she calls last call by singing a song to everyone.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
Right, and again, we can't possibly have this script lead
anywhere else but Chewbacca's house while his family waits for it.
So all this takes place as part of a public
service announcement basically broadcast by the Empire about how immoral
life on Tattooen is. So let's go see what's going
on in the mas Eisley cantina as it's being shut
(32:46):
down for curfew.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
Yeah, all right, this is incomprehensible, but it goes on.
So they're in it. There's also Art Carney. Yes, he's
a honeymooner, probably the star of the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
Really, he has the most lines, I would say, the
most comprehensible line, right. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
So he plays a trader, a human trader that is
recently been with Han Solo and Chewy and actually gets
to Kazuok and says they're on the way. It's all good.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
Yeah, a trade dour, not trade tour.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
Yeah, traders and trades humans for you know, money.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
No, he he sells goods.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
Yeah, a trader. He doesn't trade humans. Yeah, he's in
the human trade.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
He No, he isn't really, Yeah, he trades humans like
he sells humans.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
I looked it up in the Star Wars Encyclopedia said
that he was in the human trade.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
Huh. So in this Christmas special, Yeah, apparently they sanitized
his background because he's basically just selling like gadgets and
novelties and stuff like that to the Wookies and the
Empire who were occupying the area.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
Yes, he comes bearing gifts.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Yeah, because he's a friend of Chewback's family.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
Yeah, so he comes Barren gifts. One of the gifts
he gives is a 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. He gives it to Grandpa Itchy. Grandpa
Itchy sits under this hair dryer, pops in this digital cassette,
(34:26):
and it can only be described as softcore porn.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
Apparently, the writers who were interviewed for this said that
was totally the intent they were trying to get what
amounted to soft core porn that would pass the sensors.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
So it's all you can't even say it's innuendo. It's
too obvious an overt for innuendo. Instead, it's just it's
just it's just gross. It's really gross. Diane Carroll, great singer,
Yes she is a Vegas staple, shows up and starts
(34:59):
based tantalizing Grandpa Itchy, who again, 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.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
Well yeah, and she literally says to him, now, I
can see you're really excited.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
Yeah, it's pretty rough to watch.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
Yeah, so then you've got another musical number.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
Because also again he shudders, Yeah, it's really strange.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
All right. So there's also a I know, it seems
like we're jumping around, but it's it's so mind blowing.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
Not like this is pretty much like blow for blow.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
Actually I forgot earlier on in the In the special,
there's one of my favorite sequences is when Grandpa Itchy
goes over to Lumpy and basically sets up Remember the
the hologram chessboard that they played in a New Hope. Yeah,
basically kind of sets that up and says, here, just
play this. He pushes button which is clearly a nineteen
(36:01):
seventies cassette recorder, and another like it's like a circ
desole acid trip gymnast routine happens in front of the
kid's eyes. And again this all just it's not like
it shows a snippet. They show the entire segments, like five, six,
(36:23):
ten minutes long. Sure of all of these things.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
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. Art Carney apparently,
I guess it's trying to get one of the Imperial Guard,
the leader, I think, or one of the leaders.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
Who looks like somebody from Spaceballs, by the way.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
Very much so. And the writer of the Vanity Fair article,
by the way said this is so incomprehensible. The specialist
George Lucas didn't even have the schwartz with him at
the time. So anyway, our Carney's distracting this Imperial leader
while they're ransacking the Wookies house Chewbaca's house with a hologram.
(37:10):
In 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.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
It's a little music video.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
Basically, it's a Yeah, it's the predecessor to like video
Kill the Radio Star, you can tell. And again it
is the whole lengthy song. Yeah, 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's not just and they don't
(37:50):
cut back and forth. It's okay, here's five minutes of
Jefferson Starship performing this song.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
Yeah, and even the Jefferson Starship guys were like, it's
sort of a weird trip, Like we didn't get it,
but we did it right.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
They gave us some money, yeah, and some cocaine. Well probably,
so we said, yeah, chuck. I think though there yet
another segment like this is actually widely regarded as the
high point of the whole thing. Oh sure, great, there
is a cartoon actually, yeah, that Lump Lumpy watches. Yeah,
Lumpy's like the Imperial Guard is still ransacking my house.
(38:28):
I think I'll entertain myself by watching a cartoon on
my little.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
I don't know what.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
I guess it was an iPad and he watches this
cartoon and it's it's actually remarkable for a number of reasons.
It's the best part of the whole special.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
Yeah, generally agreed upon as such, right, not just us.
Speaker 1 (38:47):
And it introduces Boba fet. It's the first time Boba
Fet ever makes an appearance in the Star Wars universe.
Speaker 2 (38:52):
Yeah, it's actually not a bad And you can't find
it in the the one version I told you to watch.
They removed it for copyright, but they didn't watch a separate.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Right, you can find it on its own.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
Yeah, and it's it's very much reminiscent of like the
cartoon style of the day, like a he Man or
something for.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
Sure, even even but it's even a little more artsy
than that.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
Yeah, But it does have a plot that you can
follow that makes sense as a Star Wars thing, and
it introduces Boba fet, like you said, And it's actually
not bad.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
It's like Luke and R two and C three po yeah,
and they're like they crash on a planet or something.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
Yeah, and Han and where you're in it. And it's
the first time we see in Darth Vader. It's first
time we see Boba Fett and that he is, that
he is just doing whatever he can do for money,
Like Luke trusts him at first, CE three bos like
you're sure you should trust him this quick? Yeah, and
he's like, oh, three po, you in your non trusting ways.
And then it turns out he's selling them out to
(39:46):
the dark side.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
So it's it's basically Boba Fett is an allegory for
George Lucas himself. So the cartoon comes and goes. And
that was the thing that came at about the end
of the first hour mark and after that everybody just
turned off their television sets.
Speaker 2 (40:04):
Yeah, I don't remember.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
Did you watch this when it came up? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (40:08):
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 till ten,
so I probably didn't make it through it all. Yeah,
Plus you're probably disturbed who knows. I just remember that.
I'll have to ask my brother. He might have a
memory of this.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
Oh, Betty does. I'm sure he met everybody afterward or
something like that. You know, it has a picture.
Speaker 2 (40:28):
Well he was ten at that point, so cynicism had,
you know, become a thing in his life probably.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
All right by then?
Speaker 2 (40:34):
Sure didn't that when centicism kicks in today?
Speaker 1 (40:36):
Jenkinsie Scott holding out to fourteen fifteen. Yeah, maybe so,
so Chuck, the whole thing finally does end. And actually
there's a guy his name is Nathan Raven, he writes
over at the av Club. He had a great quote.
He basically said that one of the great redeeming values
of this this special is that it does eventually end.
Speaker 2 (40:55):
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.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
And like, go read his review of the Star Wars
Holiday Special, because he goes on to describe exactly what
that must have been like. Yeah, development meeting where the
bag of cocaine is pacing back and forth talking about
what should happen.
Speaker 2 (41:16):
That's what it feels like.
Speaker 1 (41:18):
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.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
Yeah. So what happens is eventually Han Solo should we
say spoiler alert, Eventually Han Solo and Chewy make it
to the planet. They park on the far side of
the planet because they know the Imperial forces are there.
Speaker 1 (41:40):
And the exercise will do Chewy good.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
Yeah, so they have to hike over there. They eventually
make it back home. They find a storm the Stormtroopers
at their house right their tree hut. Yeah, which way.
The paintings that set this up, I don't think we mentioned.
I don't even call them matte paintings. It looks like
someone painted something on the wall and they just like
put a camera in front of it.
Speaker 1 (42:03):
Pretty much. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
So they get back and Chewbacca Han Solo hides around
the corner. Chewbacca steps in front of his son to
protect him. Sure, Han Solo jumps out, and the stormtrooper
trips over a pile of logs and falls over the.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
Balcony and dies in a holiday special.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
So they wouldn't even not only could he not shoot
first with Gredo, but they couldn't even have him like
wrestle the stormtrooper and throw him off. He trips over
a log.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
Right, and Han Solo has his hands thrown up like
wasn't me?
Speaker 2 (42:37):
It might have been a banana peel, you know.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
But again, this is basically produced by vaudevillians starring vaudevillians.
Why not have the one death take place from basically
what amounts to somebody slipping on a banana peel exactly.
It's a perfect way to end it. So that's that
guy basically represents the end of the Imperial threat for
the rest of Life Day. And we then see Life
(43:04):
Day being celebrated, which is celebrated by lots of wookies
assembling in what looks like a giant Olin Mills portrait,
and all of them are wearing red robes. And I
know I'm up talking, and it's because my mind is
still having trouble like wrapping around us. And then Princess
(43:26):
Leah comes out with C three po is Mark Hamill.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
There, the whole gang zeraphone, Okay.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
The whole gangs there, and then they all gather around
to hear a great quote from Princess Leah, which we
will read verbatim.
Speaker 2 (43:41):
This holiday is yours, but we all share with you
the hope that this day brings us closer to freedom
and to 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
(44:02):
than anything else, our love for one another. This is
the promise of the Tree of Life Q song.
Speaker 1 (44:08):
Right, And we should also point out the Tree of
Life has never been mentioned.
Speaker 2 (44:11):
Up to this point.
Speaker 1 (44:12):
I had no idea what this takes a sudden appearance
at the end, and when you said Q song, by
Q song, you mean Princess Leah starts singing.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
Yeah, And apparently that was one of the big contingencies
on Carrie Fisher being involved. Yeah, she's going through a
phase where she's like, I kind of like singing.
Speaker 1 (44:29):
Bruce Valanche calls it her Joni Mitchell period.
Speaker 2 (44:31):
Yeah, and she somehow convinced them to let her sing
as Princess Leah. And she does.
Speaker 1 (44:36):
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 other writers
who've 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.
(44:59):
It's just the the fact that Princess Leia is singing.
And actually, Bruce Falanch had a really great quote too.
He says that she very much wanted to show this
side of her talent, and there was general dismay because
this was not what we wanted Princess Lea to be doing. Yeah,
she did it anyway. So the whole thing ends with
her singing this song about life day oh yeah, which
(45:20):
is set loosely to the John Williams Star Wars theme.
Speaker 2 (45:25):
Yeah. So along the way, the director, original director quit,
A new director, Steve Binder was hired to finish the
job and bring it in, and he did over the
original one million dollar budget. Of course, always he did
bring it in and at this point George Lucas said
he was he was working on Empire Strikes Back. He
(45:47):
didn't know what was going on. He wasn't around for
the shoot.
Speaker 1 (45:50):
No, it wasn't until it aired I think that he
actually saw it.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
Yes, and it was a travesty obviously, if you haven't
noticed that by now, critics hated it. Star Wars fans
really hated it.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
Everybody, the people who were in it hated it.
Speaker 2 (46:04):
Lucas hated it.
Speaker 1 (46:06):
Even Harvey Korman secretly hated it.
Speaker 2 (46:08):
Yeah, even Harvey Keitel hated it. Actually he loved it.
But Lucas has been asked over the years about it
a lot, and he doesn't talk about it much. But
in two thousand and five, and I don't buy this
for a second, he says it was an interview He
said especial from nineteen seventy eight. I really didn't have
much to do with us. You know that part is true.
(46:29):
I can't remember what network it was even on, but
it was a thing that they did. That's a lie.
There's no way he doesn't know that was CBS. 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 there were variety TV guys. I'm sure
he remembers a few of them. We let them use
the characters and stuff, and that probably wasn't the smartest
(46:49):
thing to do, but you learn from those experiences. I
think they even use some of the footage from the movie.
At the end, it looks like some of the space like.
Speaker 1 (46:59):
A highlight reel, yeah the Gang.
Speaker 2 (47:01):
Well, and during the it looked like some of the
they had some insert shots of like Imperial cruisers and
tie fighters and stuff that.
Speaker 1 (47:09):
Yeah, like from remember when Chewbacca like leans back and
puts his hands behind it. Yeah, yeah, that's in there.
It's like a just a highlight reel from the movie.
Saying like I feel like this, go see the movie.
Speaker 2 (47:20):
Well, and also that means it doesn't match the look
of the rest of it at all.
Speaker 1 (47:24):
Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2 (47:25):
It's just sort of inserted.
Speaker 1 (47:26):
They tried, They definitely tried. And George Lucas is totally
full of it, because in nineteen eighty seven he told
star Log magazine that the Christmas Special would be out
on video cassette very soon. Yes, And in two thousand
and seven, two years after that quote, you just read
where he's like, I don't even know what you're talking about. Basically,
he apparently considered releasing the Christmas Special as a bonus
(47:49):
on the DVDs of the first three.
Speaker 2 (47:54):
Right, but did not did, and apparently Carrie Fisher told
Lucas that if you want me to do DVD extras commentary, yeah, commentary,
then I want a clean original copy of the Holiday Special. Yes,
so why go ahead so I can play at parties
when I want people to leave. It's pretty great.
Speaker 1 (48:13):
It is so and there is one of those clean
copies is floating around out there, so you can watch
this in it in its entirety. Some of it, like
the cartoon, was removed 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
(48:34):
that aired in Baltimore.
Speaker 2 (48:36):
Yeah, that are just fascinating. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:39):
Those are always fun gm ads where one of the
guys who's in quality control is he says, did you
watch it?
Speaker 2 (48:46):
I don't think I saw that one.
Speaker 1 (48:46):
He goes, we really care about these cars and that's
no jibe man on a gm ad and he's like,
it's serious.
Speaker 2 (48:53):
Oh they're trying to be hip.
Speaker 1 (48:55):
Yeah, it's pretty good stuff.
Speaker 2 (48:58):
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 there
because it's a fun little stain that shouldn't be taken
too seriously. I think it adds to it actually, because
(49:18):
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?
Speaker 1 (49:26):
Yeah, I mean I watched it twice. I wouldn't watched
it a second I wouldn't have made it through the
first time. Let me take that back, as I'm a pro. Yeah,
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 Chewbaca's son Yeah, played by an actress named
Patty Maloney, who frankly is hands down the best actor
(49:49):
in the entire thing. She like her response is and everything.
It's just awesome.
Speaker 2 (49:55):
I think my favorite parts are, well, there's a great
Wilhelm scream.
Speaker 1 (50:00):
Yes, I noticed that troop.
Speaker 2 (50:01):
For trips over the laws.
Speaker 1 (50:02):
Jerry would not have noticed it.
Speaker 2 (50:05):
And then there's a part where all the wokie dialogue
you can't understand. But there's clearly one part where where
Itchy and Lumpy are having exchange where Lumpy you can
make it out, goes I love you. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
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.
Speaker 1 (50:24):
Sure, or they were like, I think she has said
I love you. Should we have them redo it? And
the director's like, no, I want to go and Chuck.
There's one other thing that I figured out from watching this.
What's that it's not readily apparent the whole thing is
made all the more odd, and that there's situation after
situation after situation where we, as normal audiences, were trained
(50:46):
to expect the laugh track. There's not a laugh track,
and there's been a laugh track. It might have been
less bizarre, but the fact that it's missing just makes
your agitates the mind. So it's this whole additional element
that it is weird.
Speaker 2 (51:02):
I never thought about that. There's just weird moments of
silence all throughout it.
Speaker 1 (51:05):
Yeah, like when Ark Carney's doing his thing.
Speaker 2 (51:07):
Yeah I'm telling jokes.
Speaker 1 (51:08):
Yeah, okay, I agree with you, Chuck, don't take things
too seriously. I think that's the great lesson in this.
Speaker 2 (51:14):
Yeah, and then the lesson of life day it is.
And in two thousand and seven, Riff tracks the Great
Mystery Science Theater. Three thousand guys Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett,
and Kevin Murphy provided audio commentary for the full version
of the special. So try and go grab that if
you can as well.
Speaker 1 (51:32):
Oh you can, it's on their site because it's great.
I think it's like eight bucks and.
Speaker 2 (51:35):
Those guys are awesome.
Speaker 1 (51:36):
And yeah, at least I think Corbett listens to us. So, hey, Corbett, you.
Speaker 2 (51:43):
Got anything else?
Speaker 1 (51:44):
No, No, I think we did this. There's some good stuff.
Go read the Vanity Fair article 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 sledgehammer, right, And
there's also an entire website dedicated to it, Star Wars
(52:06):
Holiday Special dot com. Yeah, and if you want to
know more about the Star Wars Holiday Special, we have
a ton of hard Star Wars stuff on how stuff
works by the way.
Speaker 2 (52:15):
Yeah, we have cool sort of fun articles about the
Death Star and Lightsabers.
Speaker 1 (52:19):
Videos with the Holly Fry from Stuff You missed a
history class.
Speaker 2 (52:23):
Yeah, who she knows her stuff.
Speaker 1 (52:24):
She does. So you can just type Star Wars in
the search bar at how stuff works dot com and
it will bring up some cool stuff for you. Since
I said search bar, it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 2 (52:36):
Hey, guys, just finished listening to the Voyage Manuscript podcast.
Found it's super interesting, especially the theories on its definition
or origin. I no Josh mentioned Chuck Siri, but being
drug induced is somewhat surprising or even unlikely given them
language and the manuscript follows linguistic laws only founded in
the past one hundred years. But if you think about it,
it's a tough. It's tough to stray away from familiar structures,
(52:59):
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, So just thought I
contribute that to the conversation.
Speaker 1 (53:12):
Nice.
Speaker 2 (53:12):
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.
Speaker 1 (53:24):
We do that and.
Speaker 2 (53:25):
Joe Love and then as a way to get through
traffic on my commute home from work. You guys are
far more interesting and enjoyable than television and YouTube videos.
I'm sure I've listened to hundreds and we'll continue to
listen to hundreds more. Keep on keeping on. That is
from Amy J. Moffett.
Speaker 1 (53:39):
Thanks a lot, Amy in San Diego. Does that mean
like place of the whales in German or something like that. Yeah. Yeah.
If you want to get in touch of this, you
can tweet to us at s YSK podcast. You can
join us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know.
You can send us an email the Stuff podcast at
houstuffworks dot Com has always joined us at a home
(53:59):
on the Stuff Youshould Know dot Com.
Speaker 2 (54:04):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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