December 22, 2018 • 54 mins
Long ago, in a galaxy not so far away, George Lucas allowed the Star Wars Holiday Special to be made. What happened on the night of November 17, 1978 can never be fully explained, but we make our best effort in a very special edition of SYSK. May the force be with us all.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello everybody. It's that time of year again for our
new annual tradition. This is the second year we're doing it,
of releasing our episode on the horrible, Terrible Star Wars
Christmas Special. By goodness, I am making this a holiday
tradition and I'm cramming it into our s y s
K Selects feed yet again. So enjoy getting the Christmas spirit.
(00:25):
Happy life day, everybody. Welcome to Stuff you should know
from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuckers Bryant
(00:45):
and Jerry Jerome Roland. Uh. Who's the Wookie mother? Yeah? Mala?
That was the Wookie wife. Oh and mother? Yeah? Sure,
Chewbacca's momb is not with them Anymonger she left, she
was not about to appear in that. She went out
the window. I'm excited about this. I have to say
(01:08):
we should say Happy Star Wars Day. Yeah. Today is
um December. Um, I have my opening night tickets? Do
you really sure? Wow? You know? I do you into it? Oh? Yeah,
well I will definitely go see it in the theater,
but um, why won't be the opening night? Sure? I've
(01:28):
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. It's I'm an ostrich. Yeah you black yourself out, Yeah,
you go dark? Do I make myself go to sleep face?
(01:50):
You go to the dark side. I've been there a
while now. Uh well, Happy Star Wars Day though, I'm
sure that I think this pairs nicely with Christmas Star
Wars Day. It's all come together. Yes, Um, we already
missed Life Day though, so happy belated Life Day. Are
they celebrating it this year? November? Yeah? But it's every
three years? Mm hmm our cane man job. Okay, so
(02:16):
it's every three years. Started in nineteen seventy eight. Let's
do the math, shall we? Mm hmmm, quick math break.
I believe that two thousand fourteen was the last Life Day.
May we just missed and then again in twenty seventeen. Okay,
so seventeen we'll celebrate Life Day. We'll put on our
red robes, are ultralong, straight ironed wigs, and we'll celebrate
(02:41):
Life Day the way it was meant to. Yes, And
if you have no idea what we're talking about We
are talking about Life Day, which is a celebration, uh
that Wookies in the Star Wars universe have every three years. Yeah,
it's like their Christmas or the Kanza, their tent supposedly
sort of like Earth. They two. They celebrate the diversity
(03:02):
of their ecosystem and also remembrance of the dead, and
they also give gifts. They're like the Finns basically. Yeah,
it's a it's a very interesting part of the Star
Wars canon. It is, and it's almost entirely made up,
dashed off you could possibly say, by um, George Lucas
in the seventies, um, And it's the basis of what
(03:25):
is become derided as like one of the worst things
that ever happened to the Star Wars galaxy. Well, not
only that, one of the worst things ever aired on television. Yeah,
this galaxy. Yeah, at first, that sounds like hyperbole, Like,
come on, it's because it was Star Wars. We had
high expectations. But it's really that bad. Yeah. The people
(03:45):
who say that haven't seen even a second of it. Yeah. Yeah, however,
I watched it, uh when I was a kid. Then
again this week, and you watched it twice this week. Yeah,
I watched it last night and this morning. There's something
about it. It's as morizing, 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
(04:07):
just how absurd it can get. Almost Yeah, and it
starts absurd, it stays absurd in the middle, it's increasingly
more absurd, it's a little less absurd, finishes super absurd. Yeah,
it's just a train wreck in every single sense of
the word. Talk to bottom. It's extraordinarily difficult to overstate
how bad this is. And some people you know, in
(04:29):
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, and then come back
and laugh along with us. Yeah, there's a great Over
(04:51):
the years, there have been many segments of it on
YouTube from badly dub VHS tapes, but there's one really
pretty good version of it in full um brought to
you by W. H. I. O. Dayton Ohio Channel seven
because that flashes up on the screen periodically. Man, it
is high quality. It looks good, and it has to
(05:13):
basically be the copy that the actual UM affiliate broadcast. Yeah,
it's like that, that quality compared to the other stuff
floating around on YouTube, clearly recorded on a R which
we're really expensive, very expensive. I did some calculating on
west Egg UM, so the average VCR went for about
a thousand dollars. There were brand new it's amazing thousand
(05:35):
dollars in nineteen seventy eight money, so they were about
thirty eight hundred dollars in two thousand fourteen money. Luckily,
there were some rich people out there recording this stuff,
and the wealthy have saved us all again yet again,
as they always do. Uh. We 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
(05:57):
Our exclamation Point by Frank did Jacomo. And then there's
the Star Wars Holiday Special was the worst thing on
television ever by So when we kind of know Alex
Pasternak uh from Motherboard Yeah, which is uh not wired,
it's uh vice. We wrote a little bit for Motherboard
back then, and we had a call with that, like
(06:19):
we're like old motherboard vets basically, and was there one more?
There was another one and I don't know who wrote
this one chuck. Uh, yeah, it's the titles the Star
Wars Holiday Special. George Lucas wants to smash every copy
of with a sledgehammer, which was a famous quote, uh
supposedly at a convention by Lucas, Yes, which is not correct.
(06:41):
He didn't ever say that. No, okay, that that sounded
like something that people made up. Yes, but if you
go on the internet you will quickly believe that he did.
Apparently didn't, So I'm sure he felt that way though, clearly,
because he did appear on Robot Chicken and I think
two thousand five on the Therapist Couch talking about how
much he hated the special. Alright, so let's set the background,
(07:01):
shall we shall we go back to summer, getting the
old way back machine. All right, let's do it. All right,
here we are, there's Waterson. Yeah, I'm just a little
six year old excited about Star Wars. I am, I've
just turned one. Yes, you don't know what's up yet.
(07:23):
I please forgive me if I urinate myself, no problem. Okay.
Uh so what has happened is Star Wars has become
a huge, huge hit, seemingly out of nowhere, establishing George
Lucas is one of the brilliant young minds in filmmaking.
Even though it in his first movie, it was his first, huge,
huge breakout hit. Oh yeah, for sure, talk I mean
(07:45):
talk about a breakout hit like no one had ever
seen anything like it before two thousand one had come
out in the late sixties. But it wasn't it's still
it still isn't accessible to all audiences. You know, it's
kind of cerebral film. Yeah, it's not an adventure movie.
This was This is like basically swashbuckling on the screen,
but you know, in a galaxy far far away. Star
(08:07):
Wars just changed everything and it came on just like
a hammer um and a new hope. By the way, yes,
and then then we're going to get stuff wrong, nerds,
So yes, just go ahead and get your little fingers
ready to email us. Like if it wasn't driven home
that I'm not a nerd by the fact that I
don't have opening night tickets or any tickets yet. Give
me a break and by proxy chuck to Okay, thank you. So, um,
(08:31):
it's it's hard to stay how great Star Wars was
in everyone's mind, right. Bill Murray came out with that
lounge singer Star Wars thing. It was everywhere and if
you if you just listen to the lyrics of it,
he's really it's just Bill Murray singing about how much
Star Wars is awesome. Right. So, by the following year, Um,
(08:53):
George Lucas was he wanted to figure out a way
to keep audiences just engaged with the whole Star Wars
franchise that he was just starting to build. But he
knew the Empire Strikes Back was a couple more years out,
so um he I think he was approached by some
TV executives who said, have you considered doing some sort
of TV special? They're all the rage right now. We
(09:17):
have a we have a graphic that's really awesome that
we set aside just for TV specials here at CBS.
Why don't you let us let's get together and do
a Star Wars special. That's right. Producers Gary Smith and
Dwight Himmi on, Uh, We're working over at CBS, and
they said, this is a great way to keep the
spirit alive while you're making your other movie. Maybe move
(09:39):
some more toys. Yeah, which George Lucas got to. So
it was right before Thanksgiving, and he said, there'll be
a lot of people watching TV um pre holiday season,
or I guess in the holiday season. Well, the weekend
before Thanksgiving, it's like everybody's shopping, sitting around family like
waiting to actually do stuff. That's perfect time to broad
(10:00):
cast something on TV. So Lucas says, all right, let's
do this. I don't have a ton of time, but
how about this. I'll get I'll get a story together,
and then you can go hire a whiz bang team
of veteran writers and producers and directors whatever genre you
think is appropriate. And those are the words that will
haunt you, George Lucas to his grave. Yeah, so Lucas said,
(10:23):
here's my idea. I wanted to be based um on Wookiees,
and I wanted to take place on their home planet
of Kizuk or Wookie planet. See is that how you
say Kazuk. That's how it's pronounced in the episode the
Holiday Special, but it's also pronounced different ways. Other times
I would have pronounced that Cashi e E got spell
(10:46):
it k a s h y y y K, which
I mean, I guess that sounds like Chewbuck is planet
sure also called G five Wookie planets see or Eaton
is a mid rim planet. Right. So the whole reason
apparently that George Lucas was interested in featuring the Wookies
was it is what we in show business call low
(11:07):
hanging fruit. The reason why it was low hanging fruit
was because they had just established the different scenes that
would make the cut for Empire Strikes Back and uh,
what how did you pronounce it? Again? Kazook had not
made the cut. Uh. Even prior to this, apparently for
a new hope, George Lucas had whipped up a forty
(11:28):
page what's known as the Wookie Bible. It's like a
forty page supplement that's all about Kazook and Wookies and
Chewbacca and his family and everything about Wookie Doom. Right,
So he's like, I've got this thing already, you know
established I love Wookies. Um, they didn't make the cut.
I'm a little sad about that. They're not gonna Kazuok
(11:49):
is not gonna show up in an Empire strikes back.
Let's let's build the entire special around wookies. It's basically
the one demand me George Lucas has. That's I'll be
totally hands off from this point on which you kind
of was. He totally wasn't 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
(12:11):
of this Christmas special. Absolutely he was burned, and um
he had an iron grip after that on everything. So
here's some some of the folks behind it. Bruce Valanche,
famous TV writer. You've probably seen him on Hollywood Squares.
Wasn't he suspected of being Thomas pinch On for a while?
I don't know, or was Thomas pinch On on Hollywood Squares?
(12:33):
I have no idea. I may be confabulating some stuff confounding. Yeah,
there's some kind of some sort going on. It sounds
like it. So Valanche was hired as a writer. A
guy named Lenny Rips was hired as a writer who
has some great quotes in that Vanity Fair article he does.
His first quote was, we were really excited because this
(12:54):
is Star Wars. How could it lose famous last words?
Who else was sired? There was a husband and wife team,
the welch Is, who are the parents of folk singer
Gillian Welch. I'm a big fan of and I had
no idea that her parents. They were producers slash songwriters
(13:15):
of the day. They were big on the variety show scene,
which would turn out to be a really key cog
in this whole experience. So I feel like, right about here,
Jerry should insert a needle coming off of a record
sound effect. Okay, thanks Jerry, So Chuck, you just said
singer songwriters. Yeah, what would that have to do with
(13:36):
Star Wars? Yeah? Well, actually, in this Star Wars holiday special,
for those of you hadn't seen it, there are musical numbers.
They decided from the outset that there should be musical numbers.
And the reason that they decided that there should be
musical numbers is because the people who sold George Lucas
and at the time it was Star the Star Wars
Corporation was what it was called um On. The idea
(13:59):
of doing this TV special was that everyone would love
a variety show. Yea, it was the seventies. Great idea,
let's do a Variety Show. The problem was this, Apparently
George Lucas didn't watch enough TV, and he also overly
trusted people who talked to him because by yes, variety
shows had dominated television for over ten years, but it
(14:22):
had come to an end. It was getting stale. Yeah,
we're talking to Carol Burnett show. One of my favorite
had just been canceled after eleven seasons, Big Red Flag,
Sonny and Chair had just had its last season. Um,
I mean what else, like he Hall was he? I
was still going on, probably still on solid golden yet
(14:42):
to come on and take up the mantel that that
would variety show. Oh, it was a little bit and
there was talking in between the songs. Remember the Mandrell's
Sister show. I never watched that one. Well, it's with
that country chic thing that happened. Yeah, it was a
big deal in the it's kind of happening a in
I think, Oh, because of that dude, the guy who
(15:03):
won all the c m A Awards. I don't know,
he's like he's he came along. He's like actually country.
His dad's like a coal miner for real from Kentucky.
I think I know you mean Chris something. Yeah, he's
he is good. He's come along and been like, what
are you guys doing? Well, there's a revival in like
good country music again. That's like in the tradition of Merle,
Haggard and Cash. And I guess that's probably where the
(15:26):
Country Sheet came from, because there was actually good country
going on. Yeah, Johnny Cash out of Variety Show? Did
he really? Yeah? I knew they did, like a Sunday
singing thing like out in Virginia. Yeah, he had his own.
Variety Show is actually pretty good. There's some like really
great performances. Do you know how many nerds are like,
get back to Star Wars? I know, I'm so sorry.
All right, So the Variety Show is is dying sort of,
(15:49):
and so they figure, what a great time to take
the biggest movie property on the planet and wedge it
into the Variety Show milieu. I don't know if wedge
is the right word. I think maybe uh, nestle it
in there and then start hitting it with the blunt
edge of an axe until it mashes into that crevice.
(16:09):
You know. Because this is the time when Fantasy Island
had just started. Um Mork and Mindy was about to
change things Charlie's Angels was getting huge. It basically television
as we knew it from two whenever the real world
came along. Just escape as television is what they called
it was was starting and it was the hip new thing.
(16:31):
So basically, if they had turned Han Solo and Princess
Leiah and Luke Skywalker into maybe you know, sexy detectives,
it might have gone over even better. But they went
the other way. They decided to latch onto this extraordinarily
stale um genre of television and they hired the best
in the business, like there was there was. There was
(16:52):
a quote from I think Lenny RiPPs who was saying,
like we had literally a dream team, a variety show
dream team, and everybody was good. But there were probably
no bad welders on the Titanic. He there. That's a
great quote. Yeah. The guy they hired to direct it
initially was a dude named David A. Coomba, and he
had made his name for Welcome to the Fillmore East.
(17:13):
It was a concert documentary with Van Mortrison, Van Morrison
and the Birds in nine one, and he actually was
at usc Film School at the same time as Lucas.
Even though they didn't know each other, and um, he
only ended up directing about three segments of the thing
before he quit. Yet before he walked off, some say
he was actually let go, but we'll get to him
(17:35):
in a minute and who replaced him. As as we
get along down this uh gross road, well, let's let's
take a little break because I'm I'm overly excited. Okay, alright,
(18:06):
so we've established most of the main players. We'll we'll
get to a few more. We should point out that, um,
Mark hamill And and Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher, Peter Mayhew,
they had no grounds to refuse to be on this basically, yeah,
pretty much. They were not huge, huge stars, yet they
could throw their weight around and say this is terrible
(18:28):
and I'm not doing it. They were. They were big
overnight because of Star Wars, for sure, but they weren't
to the adoring public back at the studio. They could
still be bossed around. And this is the result of it.
And you can tell also, um, just from watching the
actual special, like Harrison Ford is not happy to be
there at any point. Um, Princess Leiah is clearly on drugs.
(18:54):
Uh was she on drugs at this point? She? If
you watch it, she's she's on drugs, Especially the ending
scene Mark Campbell, it was looks like he's happy to
be there. Actually he was fine, but apparently he said no,
I'm I'm not doing a musical number. And if you
watch his part, wedging a musical number in there would
have been even more painful. Um. But they everybody who
(19:18):
was part of the actual Star Wars franchise that wasn't
wearing like a full body costume was like, I really
wish I wasn't here, And you can tell, oh yeah.
In fact, in the opening uh credit sequence, they're showing
the picture that you know, the faces of the people,
and you see Harrison Ford as if he's flying the
Millennium Falcon, and you can you can just hear the
(19:38):
guy off screen going now look at the camera and
just give a nod. Just look at the camera and
give a nod. And he finally you can tell he's
piste off and he looks up at the camera and
just sort of smirks yeah and points at the camera
like okay, I'm looking at the camera, and then goes
back to what he's doing. Yeah, it's pretty awesome. I
felt bad for him so early on Valanche and others
did you did you feel bad for him? Though? Really?
(20:01):
I mean, like, come on, it's Harrison Ford's Hans Solo.
He has to go do this for like five days. Yeah,
I felt terrible for him. I think it's hilarious that
they had to do this, especially now. Well, early on,
Valanche and others knew that they may be in trouble
because they decided not to subtitle any of the Wookie dialogue,
and they literally started after a brief opening scene setting
(20:23):
it up here. Here's the basic plot is, Han Solo
is trying to get Chewbacca back to Kazook in time
for Life Day so we can celebrate with his family.
That's the basis of the entire two ys. The basis
the entire two hours. They encounter a space battle and
they're delayed, and the next two hours are kind of
(20:44):
what's going on while the delay is happening back on Kazoo,
back on Kazook. Because you hear, like, okay, well, Han
Solo and Chewbacca evading the Imperial Guard and all that
stuff for two hours. I would watch that. I would too.
That's not what they show killing time at the Wookie household.
That is what they show. Yeah, that's what they do.
(21:05):
It's people hanging out waiting for Chewbacca, worrying about him,
and then killing time while they wait for him to
come back. Literally, so um and so hold on. So
you say there's a setup, right, Yeah, that's the initial
setup and then chuck. That's followed by this. Yeah, it's
followed by literally ten minutes, ten solid minutes of incomprehensible
(21:29):
Wookie speak. So let's let's join it for a second,
shall we. Yeah, let's all enjoy it. And again, you
(22:19):
said ten minutes, and you're not exaggerating, you're not being hyperbolic.
You can time it. That's it's ten minutes of wook
He's talking to each other with no subtitles. Fortunately, I
couldn't follow it at first, like I didn't even know
who it was. I thought it was might have been
Chewbacca's mom and dad. Oh that's a little brother. And
(22:41):
I don't find out until later when Mark Cambell shows
up via skype call and says, he really explains everything
that had just happened, Like, you're Chewbacca's father, Itchy, you're
Chewbacca's son, uh, lumpy Lumpy, and you're Chewbacca's wife. Oh mama, yeah,
thank you. So before everybody starts like freaking out, we
(23:03):
know that that's actually their nicknames. Their real names are.
His father is a Ti chick cook, a Ti chick cook,
it's really hard to pronounce. Mulatto Buck is his wife,
and his son is Lumpo war Rump but as named
by Lucas. But yeah, but Lucas also named him Lumpy
Itchy and Mala so um. They're all back there wringing
(23:27):
their hands, trying to figure out ways to pass the
time until they get word from Chewbacca that he's made
it to uh what is it ketchuck z kazuok um
just ketchup ketchup or cats up if you're fancy. Um.
But Chewbacca is having trouble getting back to Katchuk because
(23:48):
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 that. Well, I mean he's
the only one that really appears in the movies. I
mean that we're seeing, like you know, these people's view
(24:09):
of the universe. What about back on Zook. Yeah, he
might have just been a fly by night wookie, right, yeah,
but not the case, very famous wookie. Yeah, and he
really loved it, like soak in his fame. All right,
So he realizes there's a problem. Valanche. He goes to
Lucas and it's like, I don't know, man, this is
your world, but it may not be the strongest thing
(24:32):
to do to set this in wookie Land and have
all this incomprehensible dialogue. And he says he was met
with a glacial stare. Uh. Well, he put it a
little differently than that. Well, he said glacial stair. He did.
The glacial stair that he got was for this quote.
He said, these people just talk and what sounds like
fat people having an orgasm. He goes, if you want,
(24:55):
you can set up a tape recorder in my bedroom
and I'll do all of the follying for it. Yeah.
He's a large guy, he is, so uh that's what
got the glacial stare. But Valanche later said that from this,
there was one development meeting that Lucas attended, and it
was here's the Wookie Bible tell me what you got,
and Valanche said he and the other writers and producers
(25:16):
and director were just kind of throwing ideas, and George
Lucas would either say like, no, that doesn't work, give
him a glacial stare, or say, yes, that's exactly it. Yes,
let's make this a variety show. Yeah. And there was
a little bit of um background there. The cantina players
in the band had appeared on other variety shows at
(25:36):
that point, and I think it went over fairly well,
just as a short segment on like the Richard Pryor
Variety Show or Donnie Marie um Man. There were a
lot of variety shows. But that's what I'm saying. It
was that was television. That's what you did, like the breaks,
um the The show had its course, and then it
(25:58):
became a variety show. It was just everybody love variety shows.
By this time, though, everybody was sick of variety shows
and so it really was a terrible choice. In fact,
they even hired a couple of writers from Shields and Yarnell,
which I hadn't heard of. Oh yeah, I watched it.
It was creepy, this mind couple who had their own
(26:19):
variety show, and they figured these two will be great
because they are used to working without words, right, So,
and so there is a certain logic to the variety show.
It's not that's just that variety shows were popular at
the time. Somebody was like, well, Wookie's you don't understand
what they're saying. So this is all going to be
very physical. So these people who who did what is
(26:42):
it shields in yard? Now, yeah, that that's a perfect choice.
That that makes complete sense. You can see this whole
this whole process of leading up to the point where
it was produced and shot and everything a series of like, oh,
we have this problem, Well here's a fix, but that
leads to another problem. Well we'll fix it with the
and and no one stepping back and being like, all
(27:03):
we've done is create a series of problems that are
going to come together and make one extraordinarily large problem
that will become legendary. No one did that, And so
the whole thing was was made. That's right. And it
eventually airs on November seventeen, nineteen seventy eight, a Friday,
at eight pm Eastern time. That's right, and Nielsen ratings
(27:26):
it um attracted thirteen million viewers just the second hour
just in the US. It aired in six or seven
countries total. Yeah, but no one cares about that, I
guess not because none of those are on the internet,
you know. Uh. It finished second to the Love Boat
in the second I'm sorry from eight to nine, and
in the next hour actually finished behind part two of
(27:47):
a mini series about Pearl Harbor starring Angie Dickinson. So
it didn't even win their respective hours. 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,
Yeah we know about that graphic. It's okay, yeah, we do.
And then after a very important part, which we'll talk
(28:08):
about soon. Um, it just drops off at the end
of the first hour, and that actually probably made the
executives at CBS cringe for a number of reasons. Number
one is this special was originally supposed to just be
an hour, but so many advertisers wanted to sign on
that they extended it to two hours. And it shines
(28:29):
through you can totally tell that this thing was never
supposed to I think an hour might have been stretching it.
To tell you the truth, it's thirty minutes of content,
forty if you're generous an hour and then two hours,
it becomes one of the worst things that was ever
put on television. All right, well, let's take a break
and then we'll talk a little bit more about the
(28:50):
actual um uh, even I don't want to call it content,
but it is content in the strictest definitions. Right after this, sorry, George. Alright,
(29:21):
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. Right,
that's it, And again we almost barely see Chewy. H
The rest is his family on because waiting for him
to come back for a life Day. Yeah. So, um.
(29:42):
Some of the various things they did, they were guest stars.
There was Harvey Corman from The Carol Burnett Show, one
of my all time favorites him or Carol Carol Burnett
Show both. He's great. Yeah, he actually if you watch
what he's doing, you're like, this is comedy genius. For apparently,
he too was like the only one on set that
was bringing levity. He was joking around and kind of
(30:03):
kept spirits up. Good for him, that's what I say.
And he had three, three different parts. Yeah, he played
uh uh well, I don't even know the names. Actually
we could look him up, but he played a He
played a Julia child like cook. There's an actual cooking segment,
a long one, a very long cooking segment where Chewbacca's
(30:25):
wife Um makes Banta stew to kill some time, to
kill some time because there was waiting on her planet
and in our living room. Yeah, so Harvey Corman is
in drag is a foe armed Julia childlike uh TV
chef and I think it's Gormanda. Is her name Gormanda?
That makes total sense. He also plays Um. There's this
(30:49):
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 blockade raided the house
and other properties. He tries to trick them by I think,
rigging a calm link to speak in a different voice.
So he has to watch the instruction manual. He watches
(31:11):
an instruction video which was Harvey Kitel as a robot. Oh,
it would have been wonderful of big Harvey Kitel. Harvey
Carvey Corman, Oh man ha murders someone in the middle
of the instruction Harvey Corman. And then the final role
he had was as a a bar patron in the
cantina that drinks. He has a hole in the top
(31:35):
of his head like a volcano, where he pours his
drinks in. That's how he drinks. And he he loves
b Arthur. Did we mention be Arthur was in it?
B Arthur is not only in it, Chuck. She sings
a song. She does. She is thennownst to everyone, she
manages or maybe owns the owner. Yeah, the what's the mos?
What mos deaf cantina? Uh? No, most deaf is a rapper.
(31:58):
Oh yeah, I think you mean Moss Eisley. Yes, yes,
that cantina. She's the owner. Be Arthur is the owner,
the author of the Golden Girls, but in this case,
the Arthur of Maud, because, as one of the people
who wrote one of the articles we based this on
points out, she's just basically playing Maud as the owner
of the cantina. Yeah, and her song comes because um,
they basically say, there's a lockdown, so you gotta call
(32:21):
last call um at your bar. So she calls last
call by singing a song to everyone, right, and again,
we can't possibly have the script lead anywhere else but
Chewbacca's house while his family waits for it. So all
this takes place as part of a public service announcement
basically broadcast by the Empire about how immoral life on
(32:44):
tattooing is. So let's go see what's going on in
the mas Eisley Cantina as it's being shut down for curfew. Alright,
this is incomprehensible, but it goes on. Um, so they're
in it. There's also Art Carney, Yes, the Honeymooners family,
the star of the whole thing. Really, he has the
(33:06):
most lines, I would say, the most comprehensible line. Right.
So he plays a trader, a human trader um that is,
uh recently been with Han Solo and Chewy and actually
gets to Kazuk and says they're on the way. It's
all good. Yeah, a trader, not trade tour. Yeah, traders
in trades humans for you know money. No, he he
(33:30):
sells goods. Yeah, a trader. He doesn't trade humans. Yeah,
he's in the human trade. He No, he isn't. Really
he trades humans like he sells humans. I looked it
up in the Star Wars Encyclopedia said that he was
in the human trade. Huh, So in this Christmas special,
apparently they sanitized his his background because he's basically just
(33:52):
selling like gadgets and novelties and stuff like that to
the Wookies and the Empire who were occupying the area. Yes,
he comes bearing gifts because he's a friend of Chewbacca's family. Yeah,
so he comes bearing gifts. One of the gifts he
gives is a UM sort of like a little digital
insert to a Oh, I guess you would call it
(34:15):
a virtual reality hair dryer hair dryer, like a beauty
shop hair dryer. Right. He gives it to Grandpa Itchy.
Grandpa Itchy um sits under this hair dryer pops in
this uh digital cassette, and it can only be described
as softcore porn. Apparently the writers who were interviewed for
(34:36):
this said that was totally the intent. They were trying
to get what amounted to softcore porn that would pass
the sensors. So it's all m You can't even say
it's innuendo. It's too obvious in overt for innuendo. Instead,
it's just it's just it's just gross. It's really gross. Um,
(34:57):
Diane Carroll singer, Yes she is, Um, a Vegas staple,
shows up and starts basically tantalizing. Um. 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,
(35:17):
and this is a pretty lengthy segment in and of itself.
Well yeah, and she literally says to him like, now
I can see you're really excited. Yeah, it's pretty rough
to watch. Yeah, so then you've got another musical number
because also again he shutters, yeah, it's really strange. All right,
So there's also ah, I know, it seems like we're
(35:40):
jumping around, but it's it's so mind blowing, not like
this is pretty much like blow for blow. Um. Actually
I forgot earlier on in in the in the special, Um,
there's one of my favorite sequences is when Grandpa Itchy
goes over to Lumpy and basically sets up remember the
the hologram chessboard that they played in A New Hope,
(36:01):
basically kind of sets that up and says, here, just
play this. He pushes the button, which is clearly a
nineteen seventies cassette recorder and another Uh, like it's like
a Cirque de sol acid trip um gymnast routine happens
in front of the kid's eyes. And again this all
(36:22):
just it's not like it shows a snippet. They showed
the entire segments, like five six minutes long of all
of these things. So you would think, Okay, they've gone
to this hologram, well a couple of times, why not
go to it again? Well they do. They do to
kill more time. While the Imperial Guard is ransacking their house. Um,
(36:43):
Art Carney apparently, I guess it's trying to get one
of the Imperial Guard, the leader I think, or one
of the leaders who looks like somebody from Spaceballs by
the way, very much so. Um. And the writer of
the Vanity Fair article, by the way said, um, this,
this is so incomprehensible. This sechelis George Lucas didn't even
have the Schwartz with him at the time. So anyway,
(37:05):
our Carney's distracting this uh imperial leader. Um, while they're
ransacking the Wookie's house, Chewbacca's house with a hologram, and
this hologram instead of being an acrobat or Diane Carroll
or any kind of porn or anything like that is
Jefferson Starship, and they decide that they're going to play
(37:27):
Light the Sky on Fire, which apparently is about UFOs.
It's a little music video. Basically, it's a pretty Yeah,
it's the predecessor to like video kill the radio Starr
you can tell um. And again it is the whole
lengthy song, the whole thing. So every time that somebody's
like we need to escape mentally from what's going on
(37:49):
here in our house, let's go into the video world,
it's not just and they don't cut back and forth.
It's okay, here's five minutes of Jefferson stars of performing
this song. Yeah, and even the Jefferson Starship guys um
were like, yeah, that's sort of a weird trip, Like
we didn't get it, but we did it right. They
gave us some money and some cocaine. Well probably, so
(38:13):
we said, yeah, chuck. I think though, um, there yet
another segment like this is actually widely regarded as the
high point of the whole thing. So there is a
cartoon actually yeah that Lump Lumpy watches Yeah Lump, He's
like the Imperial Guard is still ransacking my house. I
think I'll entertain myself by watching a cartoon on my
(38:36):
little Um, I don't know what. I guess it was
an iPad and uh, he watches this cartoon and it's
it's actually remarkable for a number of reasons. It's the
best part of the whole special generally agreed upon as such,
not just us. And it introduces Boba Fett. It's the
first time Boba Fett ever makes an appearance in the
Star Wars universe. Yeah, it's actually not a bad And
(38:58):
you can't find it in the the one version I
told you to watch. They removed it for copyright. But
he didn't watch a separate version, right, you can find
it on its own. Yeah, and it's um, it's very
much reminiscent of like the cartoon style of the day,
like a he Man or something even even but it's
even a little more artsy than that. Yeah. But it
does have a plot that you can follow that makes
(39:19):
sense as a Star Wars thing, and it introduces Boba Fette,
like you said, And um, it's actually not bad. It's
like Luke and R two and C three p O. Yeah,
and they're like they crash on a planet or something. Yeah.
And Han and Chewarry You're in it, and it's the
first time we see in Darth Vader. It's the first
time we see Boba Fette and that he is, uh,
that he is just doing whatever he can do for money,
(39:41):
Like Luke trusts him at first. C three b I
was like, you sure you should trust him this quick?
And he's like, oh three p o you and your
non trusting ways. And then it turns out he's selling
them out to the dark side. So it's it's basically
Boba Fett is an allegory for George Lucas himself. Um,
So the cartoon comes and goes, and that was the
thing that came at about the end of the first
(40:03):
hour mark and after that everybody just turned off their
television sets. Yeah, I don't remember. Did you watch this
when it came up? Yeah? I remember watching it, but
I don't remember much about it, like if I made
it through it all. I mean it was I was
seven and it was on until ten, so I probably
didn't make it through it all. Um, you're probably disturbed.
(40:23):
Who knows. I just remember that. I have to ask
my brother. He might have a memory of this. Oh,
Betty does, I'm sure he met everybody afterwards or something
like that. You know, it has a picture. Well, he
was ten at that point, so cynicism had, you know,
become a thing in his life probably by then, didn't
that When cynicism kicks into he'scott holding out the fourteen
fifteen Yeah maybe so so um chuck, the whole thing
(40:47):
finally does in. And actually there's a guy, his name
is Nathan Raban, he writes over at the A V Club.
He had a great quote. He basically said that one
of the great redeeming values of this um, this special
is that it does eventually end. Yeah, you know what
the first part of the quote is, I'm not convinced
the special wasn't ultimately written and directed by a sentient
bag of cocaine. And like, go read his his review
(41:10):
of the Star Wars Holiday Special, because he goes on
to describe exactly what that must have been, like the
development meeting where the bag of cocaine is pacing back
and forth talking about what should happen. That's what it
feels like. But it doesn't, and it ends even more.
It takes this bizarre two hours and wraps it up
in just a nice bizarre bow. Yeah. So what happens
(41:32):
is eventually Han Solo should we say spoiler alert. Eventually
Han Solo and Chewy make it to the planet. They
park on the far side of the planet because they
know the uh the Imperial forces are there and the
exercise will do Chewy good, so they have to hike
over there. They eventually make it back home. Uh, they
find a storm the stormtroopers at their house. Um, their
(41:56):
tree hut. Yeah, which by the paintings that set this up,
I don't think we mentioned I don't even call him
Matt paintings that it looks like someone painted something on
the wall and they just like put a camera in
front of it pretty much. Yeah. So they get back
and um, Chewbacca, Han Solo hides around the corner of
Chewbacca steps in front of his son to protect him.
(42:17):
Han Solo jumps out, and the stormtrooper trips over a
pile of logs and falls over the balcony and dies
in a holiday special. So they wouldn't even not only
could he not shoot first with Grido, but they couldn't
even have him like wrestle the storm trooper and throw
him off. He trips over a log and Han Solo
(42:40):
has his hands thrown up like wasn't me? It might
also been a banana peel, you know, But again, uh,
this is basically produced by vaudevillians starring vaudevillians. Why not
have the one death take place from basically what it
mounts to somebody slipping on a banana peel? Exactly. It's
a perfect way to end it. So that's uh that
(43:00):
that guy basically represents the end of the Imperial threat
for the rest of Life Day. And um, we we
then see Life Day being celebrated, which is celebrated by
lots of wookies assembling in what looks like a giant
Olan Mills portrait. Um, and all of them are wearing
red robes. And I know I'm up talking, and it's
(43:25):
because my mind is still having trouble like wrapping around this.
And then um, Princess Leia comes out with C three
P O is Mark Hamill there, the whole gang zero
from okay, the whole gangs there, And then they all
gather around to hear a great quote from Princess Leiah,
which we will read um verbatim. This holiday is yours,
(43:48):
but we all share with you the hope that this
day brings us closer to freedom, into harmony, into 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 than anything else, our love for
one another. This is the promise of the Tree of
(44:11):
Life que song, right, And we should also point out
the tree of Life has never been mentioned up to
this point. Takes a sudden appearance at the end. And
when you said que song, by que song, you mean
Princess Leiah starts singing. Yeah. And apparently that was one
of the big contingencies on Carrie Fisher being involved. She's
(44:31):
going through a phase where she was like, I kind
of like singing. Bruce Valanche calls it her Joni Mitchell period. Yeah,
and she somehow convinced them to let her sing as
Princess Leiah. And she does. And again I've said that
she looks like she's on drugs. This is the point
where she really does look like she's on drugs. And
it's not just me Um other writers who have written
reviews of this, it's really obvious that she possibly smoked
(44:56):
a decent amount of pot before she shot this shot
this scene, but she sings, Oh, okay, it's fine. It's
just the fact that um, Princess Leigh is singing. And actually,
Bruce Valanche had a really great quote too. He says that, um,
she very much wanted to show this side of her talent,
and there was general dismay because this was not what
(45:17):
we wanted Princess Leia to be doing. She did it anyway.
So the whole thing ends with her singing this song
about life day, which is set loosely to the John
Williams Star Wars theme. Uh. So along the way, the
director original director quit, A new director, Steve Binder, was
hired to finish the job and bring it in. Uh.
(45:39):
And he did over the original one million dollar budget,
of course always Uh, he did bring it in and
um at this point George Lucas had uh. He was
he was working on Empire Strikes Back. He didn't know
what was going on. He wasn't around for the shoot. No,
it wasn't until it aired. I think that he actually
saw it. Yes, and it was a havsty obviously, if
(46:01):
you haven't noticed that by now, critics hated it. Star
Wars fans really hated it. Everybody hate The people who
were in it hated it. Lucas hated it. Even Harvey
Corman secretly hated it. Even Harvey Kitel hated Actually he
loved it. But Lucas has been asked over the years
about it a lot, and he doesn't talk about it much.
(46:22):
But in two thousand five, and I don't buy this
for a second. He says, um it was an interview
he said special from I really didn't have much to
do with us. You know that part is true. I
can't remember what network it was even on, but it
was a thing that they did. That's a lie. There's
no way he doesn't know that was cvt uh. We
kind of just let them do it. I believe that
(46:44):
it was done by I can't even remember who the
group was, but they were variety TV guys. I'm sure
he remembers a few of them. We let them use
the characters and stuff, and that probably wasn't the smartest
thing to do, but you learned from those experiences. I
think they even used some of the footage from the
movie at the end. It looks like some space, like
a highlight reel the Gang Well, and during the UM
(47:08):
it looked like some of the they had some insert
shots of like Imperial cruisers and Thai fighters and stuff that.
Remember when when Chewbacca like leans back and puts his
hands behind it, that's in there. It's it's like a
it's just a highlight reel from the movie. Saying like
I feel like this, go see the movie. Well, and
also that means it doesn't match the look of the
rest of it at all. Yeah, that's true. It's just
(47:30):
sort of inserted. They tried. They definitely tried UM, and
George Lucas is totally full of it because in nine
seven he told star Log magazine that the Christmas Special
would be out on video cassette very soon, and in
two thousand seven, two years after that quote, you just
read where he's like, I don't even know what you're
talking about. Basically UM. He apparently considered releasing the Christmas
(47:53):
Special as a bonus on the the DVDs of the
first three right, but did not it. And apparently Carrie
Fisher told Lucas that if you want me to do
UM DVD extras commentary commentary, then I want a clean
original copy of the Holiday special, So why go ahead
(48:13):
so I can play at parties when I want people
to leave. It's pretty great. It is so uh and
there is one of those clean copies is floating around
out there, so you can watch this in it in
its entirety. Some of it, like the cartoon, was removed
due to copyright infringement and that kind of stuff, but
as as the case with the rest of the Internet,
(48:34):
you can just go find it elsewhere and piece it together.
There's also the original ads that aired in Baltimore that
are just fascinating. Those are always fun gm ads where
one of the guys who's in quality control is he says,
did you watch it? I don't think I saw that.
He goes, um, we really care about these cars and
that's no job man, a GM man, and he's like,
(48:57):
it's serious. They're trying to be hip. Yeah. Um, it's
a pretty good stuff. Here's my final thought on it.
I love it. It does not taint my Star Wars
experience or my love for the franchise, and I'm glad
it is out there because it it's a it's a
fun little stain that shouldn't be taken too seriously. I
(49:21):
think it adds to it actually, because it's campy and awful,
and I don't know somehow that enriches the rest of it.
I'm with you. Do you like it? Oh? Yeah? I
mean I watched it twice. I wouldn't have watched it
a second I wouldn't have made it through the first time.
Let me take that back, as I'm a pro, so
I would have made it through the first time. I
wouldn't have watched it a second time if I wasn't.
(49:41):
There wasn't something about it, and I figured out. I
think the thing that I like the most about it
is Lumpy, Chewbacca's son, played by an actress named Patty Maloney,
who frankly is hands down the best actor in the
entire thing. She like her responses and everything. It's just awesome.
I think my favorite parts are, uh, well, there's a
(50:03):
great Wilhelm scream trips over the law. Jerry would not
have noticed it. Uh And then there's a part where
all the wikie dialogue you can't understand, but there's clearly
one part where where Itchy and Lumpy are ha any
exchange where Lumpy you can make it out goes I
love you, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I noticed that, but it's
(50:24):
covered up. But someone was like, we have to have
at least one exchange where you sort of know what
they're saying, or they were like, I think she just
said I love you. Should we have them redo it?
And then directors like, no, I want to go and Chuck.
There's one other thing that I figured out from watching this.
It's not readily apparent. The whole thing is made all
the more odd, and that there's situation after situation after
(50:47):
situation where we as normal audiences, were trained to expect
the laugh track, but there's not a laugh track. Had
there been a laugh track, it what it might have
been less is are but the fact that it's missing
just makes your agitates the mind. So it's this whole
additional element that it is weird. I never thought about that.
(51:08):
There's just weird moments of silence all throughout it. YEA
like when Art Carney's doing his thing, Yeah, telling jokes. Yeah, okay,
I agree with you, Chuck. Don't take things too seriously.
I think that's the great lesson in this. Yeah, And
that's the lesson of life day it is and in
two thousand seven, Rift Tracks Great Mystery Science Theater. Three
thousand guys Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, and Kevin Murphy. Uh
(51:31):
provided audio commentary for the full version of the special.
So try and go grab that if you can as well.
Oh you can't. It's on the site because it's great.
I think it's like eight bucks and those guys are awesome,
and you are at least I think Corbett listens to us. So, hey, Corbett,
you got anything else? No, No, I think we did this.
(51:53):
There's some good stuff. Go read the Vanity Fair article.
Uh Han Solo Comedy Hour. There's a book called How
Star Wars Conquered the Universe that has a very interesting
chapter about this. That's where we found it asserted that
George Lucas never said that he would smash this thing
with a sledge hammer. Um. And there's also an entire
website dedicated to its Star Wars Holiday Special dot com. Yeah,
and if you want to know more about the Star
(52:15):
Wars Holiday Special, we have a ton of heart Star
Wars stuff on how stuff works by the way. Yeah,
we have cool, um sort of fun articles about the
Death Star and Lightsabers videos with Holly Fry from stuff
you missed in History class. Yeah, who she knows her stuff.
She does. Um, so you can just type star Wars
in the search bart how stuff works dot com and
it will bring up some cool stuff for you. Since
(52:36):
I said search bar, its time for listener mail. Hey guys,
just finished listening to the Voytage Manuscript podcast. Found it's
super interesting, especially the theories on its definition or origin.
No Josh Menchin Chuck siory, but being drug induced somewhat
surprising or even unlikely given the language in the manuscript
follows linguistic laws only founded in the past one years.
(52:58):
But if you think about it, it's a tough. It's
tough to stray away from familiar structures, especially for something
like language. I think back to when I was younger
and friends invented their own languages or even in writing
a song or poetry. Creativity can sometimes be limited by
what we know. Uh So I just thought I contribute
that the conversation nice. Thanks big, thanks for all you
(53:18):
guys do. I found the podcast after moving to San
Diego in the last few years for some noise around
my apartment. So basically we were blocking out noise. We
do that chi love uh 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. Sure, I've listened to hundreds and will
(53:38):
continue to listen to hundreds more. Keep on Keeping on.
That is from Amy J. Moffatt. Thanks a lot, Amy
in San Diego. Does that mean like place of the
whales in German or something like that? Uh? Yeah. If
you want to get in touch of this, you can
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can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff you
(53:59):
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Hello everybody. It's that time of year again for our
new annual tradition. This is the second year we're doing it,
of releasing our episode on the horrible, Terrible Star Wars
Christmas Special. By goodness, I am making this a holiday
tradition and I'm cramming it into our s y s
K Selects feed yet again. So enjoy getting the Christmas spirit.
(00:25):
Happy life day, everybody. Welcome to Stuff you should know
from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuckers Bryant
(00:45):
and Jerry Jerome Roland. Uh. Who's the Wookie mother? Yeah? Mala?
That was the Wookie wife. Oh and mother? Yeah? Sure,
Chewbacca's momb is not with them Anymonger she left, she
was not about to appear in that. She went out
the window. I'm excited about this. I have to say
(01:08):
we should say Happy Star Wars Day. Yeah. Today is
um December. Um, I have my opening night tickets? Do
you really sure? Wow? You know? I do you into it? Oh? Yeah,
well I will definitely go see it in the theater,
but um, why won't be the opening night? Sure? I've
(01:28):
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. It's I'm an ostrich. Yeah you black yourself out, Yeah,
you go dark? Do I make myself go to sleep face?
(01:50):
You go to the dark side. I've been there a
while now. Uh well, Happy Star Wars Day though, I'm
sure that I think this pairs nicely with Christmas Star
Wars Day. It's all come together. Yes, Um, we already
missed Life Day though, so happy belated Life Day. Are
they celebrating it this year? November? Yeah? But it's every
three years? Mm hmm our cane man job. Okay, so
(02:16):
it's every three years. Started in nineteen seventy eight. Let's
do the math, shall we? Mm hmmm, quick math break.
I believe that two thousand fourteen was the last Life Day.
May we just missed and then again in twenty seventeen. Okay,
so seventeen we'll celebrate Life Day. We'll put on our
red robes, are ultralong, straight ironed wigs, and we'll celebrate
(02:41):
Life Day the way it was meant to. Yes, And
if you have no idea what we're talking about We
are talking about Life Day, which is a celebration, uh
that Wookies in the Star Wars universe have every three years. Yeah,
it's like their Christmas or the Kanza, their tent supposedly
sort of like Earth. They two. They celebrate the diversity
(03:02):
of their ecosystem and also remembrance of the dead, and
they also give gifts. They're like the Finns basically. Yeah,
it's a it's a very interesting part of the Star
Wars canon. It is, and it's almost entirely made up,
dashed off you could possibly say, by um, George Lucas
in the seventies, um, And it's the basis of what
(03:25):
is become derided as like one of the worst things
that ever happened to the Star Wars galaxy. Well, not
only that, one of the worst things ever aired on television. Yeah,
this galaxy. Yeah, at first, that sounds like hyperbole, Like,
come on, it's because it was Star Wars. We had
high expectations. But it's really that bad. Yeah. The people
(03:45):
who say that haven't seen even a second of it. Yeah. Yeah, however,
I watched it, uh when I was a kid. Then
again this week, and you watched it twice this week. Yeah,
I watched it last night and this morning. There's something
about it. It's as morizing, 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
(04:07):
just how absurd it can get. Almost Yeah, and it
starts absurd, it stays absurd in the middle, it's increasingly
more absurd, it's a little less absurd, finishes super absurd. Yeah,
it's just a train wreck in every single sense of
the word. Talk to bottom. It's extraordinarily difficult to overstate
how bad this is. And some people you know, in
(04:29):
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, and then come back
and laugh along with us. Yeah, there's a great Over
(04:51):
the years, there have been many segments of it on
YouTube from badly dub VHS tapes, but there's one really
pretty good version of it in full um brought to
you by W. H. I. O. Dayton Ohio Channel seven
because that flashes up on the screen periodically. Man, it
is high quality. It looks good, and it has to
(05:13):
basically be the copy that the actual UM affiliate broadcast. Yeah,
it's like that, that quality compared to the other stuff
floating around on YouTube, clearly recorded on a R which
we're really expensive, very expensive. I did some calculating on
west Egg UM, so the average VCR went for about
a thousand dollars. There were brand new it's amazing thousand
(05:35):
dollars in nineteen seventy eight money, so they were about
thirty eight hundred dollars in two thousand fourteen money. Luckily,
there were some rich people out there recording this stuff,
and the wealthy have saved us all again yet again,
as they always do. Uh. We 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
(05:57):
Our exclamation Point by Frank did Jacomo. And then there's
the Star Wars Holiday Special was the worst thing on
television ever by So when we kind of know Alex
Pasternak uh from Motherboard Yeah, which is uh not wired,
it's uh vice. We wrote a little bit for Motherboard
back then, and we had a call with that, like
(06:19):
we're like old motherboard vets basically, and was there one more?
There was another one and I don't know who wrote
this one chuck. Uh, yeah, it's the titles the Star
Wars Holiday Special. George Lucas wants to smash every copy
of with a sledgehammer, which was a famous quote, uh
supposedly at a convention by Lucas, Yes, which is not correct.
(06:41):
He didn't ever say that. No, okay, that that sounded
like something that people made up. Yes, but if you
go on the internet you will quickly believe that he did.
Apparently didn't, So I'm sure he felt that way though, clearly,
because he did appear on Robot Chicken and I think
two thousand five on the Therapist Couch talking about how
much he hated the special. Alright, so let's set the background,
(07:01):
shall we shall we go back to summer, getting the
old way back machine. All right, let's do it. All right,
here we are, there's Waterson. Yeah, I'm just a little
six year old excited about Star Wars. I am, I've
just turned one. Yes, you don't know what's up yet.
(07:23):
I please forgive me if I urinate myself, no problem. Okay.
Uh so what has happened is Star Wars has become
a huge, huge hit, seemingly out of nowhere, establishing George
Lucas is one of the brilliant young minds in filmmaking.
Even though it in his first movie, it was his first, huge,
huge breakout hit. Oh yeah, for sure, talk I mean
(07:45):
talk about a breakout hit like no one had ever
seen anything like it before two thousand one had come
out in the late sixties. But it wasn't it's still
it still isn't accessible to all audiences. You know, it's
kind of cerebral film. Yeah, it's not an adventure movie.
This was This is like basically swashbuckling on the screen,
but you know, in a galaxy far far away. Star
(08:07):
Wars just changed everything and it came on just like
a hammer um and a new hope. By the way, yes,
and then then we're going to get stuff wrong, nerds,
So yes, just go ahead and get your little fingers
ready to email us. Like if it wasn't driven home
that I'm not a nerd by the fact that I
don't have opening night tickets or any tickets yet. Give
me a break and by proxy chuck to Okay, thank you. So, um,
(08:31):
it's it's hard to stay how great Star Wars was
in everyone's mind, right. Bill Murray came out with that
lounge singer Star Wars thing. It was everywhere and if
you if you just listen to the lyrics of it,
he's really it's just Bill Murray singing about how much
Star Wars is awesome. Right. So, by the following year, Um,
(08:53):
George Lucas was he wanted to figure out a way
to keep audiences just engaged with the whole Star Wars
franchise that he was just starting to build. But he
knew the Empire Strikes Back was a couple more years out,
so um he I think he was approached by some
TV executives who said, have you considered doing some sort
of TV special? They're all the rage right now. We
(09:17):
have a we have a graphic that's really awesome that
we set aside just for TV specials here at CBS.
Why don't you let us let's get together and do
a Star Wars special. That's right. Producers Gary Smith and
Dwight Himmi on, Uh, We're working over at CBS, and
they said, this is a great way to keep the
spirit alive while you're making your other movie. Maybe move
(09:39):
some more toys. Yeah, which George Lucas got to. So
it was right before Thanksgiving, and he said, there'll be
a lot of people watching TV um pre holiday season,
or I guess in the holiday season. Well, the weekend
before Thanksgiving, it's like everybody's shopping, sitting around family like
waiting to actually do stuff. That's perfect time to broad
(10:00):
cast something on TV. So Lucas says, all right, let's
do this. I don't have a ton of time, but
how about this. I'll get I'll get a story together,
and then you can go hire a whiz bang team
of veteran writers and producers and directors whatever genre you
think is appropriate. And those are the words that will
haunt you, George Lucas to his grave. Yeah, so Lucas said,
(10:23):
here's my idea. I wanted to be based um on Wookiees,
and I wanted to take place on their home planet
of Kizuk or Wookie planet. See is that how you
say Kazuk. That's how it's pronounced in the episode the
Holiday Special, but it's also pronounced different ways. Other times
I would have pronounced that Cashi e E got spell
(10:46):
it k a s h y y y K, which
I mean, I guess that sounds like Chewbuck is planet
sure also called G five Wookie planets see or Eaton
is a mid rim planet. Right. So the whole reason
apparently that George Lucas was interested in featuring the Wookies
was it is what we in show business call low
(11:07):
hanging fruit. The reason why it was low hanging fruit
was because they had just established the different scenes that
would make the cut for Empire Strikes Back and uh,
what how did you pronounce it? Again? Kazook had not
made the cut. Uh. Even prior to this, apparently for
a new hope, George Lucas had whipped up a forty
(11:28):
page what's known as the Wookie Bible. It's like a
forty page supplement that's all about Kazook and Wookies and
Chewbacca and his family and everything about Wookie Doom. Right,
So he's like, I've got this thing already, you know
established I love Wookies. Um, they didn't make the cut.
I'm a little sad about that. They're not gonna Kazuok
(11:49):
is not gonna show up in an Empire strikes back.
Let's let's build the entire special around wookies. It's basically
the one demand me George Lucas has. That's I'll be
totally hands off from this point on which you kind
of was. He totally wasn't 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
(12:11):
of this Christmas special. Absolutely he was burned, and um
he had an iron grip after that on everything. So
here's some some of the folks behind it. Bruce Valanche,
famous TV writer. You've probably seen him on Hollywood Squares.
Wasn't he suspected of being Thomas pinch On for a while?
I don't know, or was Thomas pinch On on Hollywood Squares?
(12:33):
I have no idea. I may be confabulating some stuff confounding. Yeah,
there's some kind of some sort going on. It sounds
like it. So Valanche was hired as a writer. A
guy named Lenny Rips was hired as a writer who
has some great quotes in that Vanity Fair article he does.
His first quote was, we were really excited because this
(12:54):
is Star Wars. How could it lose famous last words?
Who else was sired? There was a husband and wife team,
the welch Is, who are the parents of folk singer
Gillian Welch. I'm a big fan of and I had
no idea that her parents. They were producers slash songwriters
(13:15):
of the day. They were big on the variety show scene,
which would turn out to be a really key cog
in this whole experience. So I feel like, right about here,
Jerry should insert a needle coming off of a record
sound effect. Okay, thanks Jerry, So Chuck, you just said
singer songwriters. Yeah, what would that have to do with
(13:36):
Star Wars? Yeah? Well, actually, in this Star Wars holiday special,
for those of you hadn't seen it, there are musical numbers.
They decided from the outset that there should be musical numbers.
And the reason that they decided that there should be
musical numbers is because the people who sold George Lucas
and at the time it was Star the Star Wars
Corporation was what it was called um On. The idea
(13:59):
of doing this TV special was that everyone would love
a variety show. Yea, it was the seventies. Great idea,
let's do a Variety Show. The problem was this, Apparently
George Lucas didn't watch enough TV, and he also overly
trusted people who talked to him because by yes, variety
shows had dominated television for over ten years, but it
(14:22):
had come to an end. It was getting stale. Yeah,
we're talking to Carol Burnett show. One of my favorite
had just been canceled after eleven seasons, Big Red Flag,
Sonny and Chair had just had its last season. Um,
I mean what else, like he Hall was he? I
was still going on, probably still on solid golden yet
(14:42):
to come on and take up the mantel that that
would variety show. Oh, it was a little bit and
there was talking in between the songs. Remember the Mandrell's
Sister show. I never watched that one. Well, it's with
that country chic thing that happened. Yeah, it was a
big deal in the it's kind of happening a in
I think, Oh, because of that dude, the guy who
(15:03):
won all the c m A Awards. I don't know,
he's like he's he came along. He's like actually country.
His dad's like a coal miner for real from Kentucky.
I think I know you mean Chris something. Yeah, he's
he is good. He's come along and been like, what
are you guys doing? Well, there's a revival in like
good country music again. That's like in the tradition of Merle,
Haggard and Cash. And I guess that's probably where the
(15:26):
Country Sheet came from, because there was actually good country
going on. Yeah, Johnny Cash out of Variety Show? Did
he really? Yeah? I knew they did, like a Sunday
singing thing like out in Virginia. Yeah, he had his own.
Variety Show is actually pretty good. There's some like really
great performances. Do you know how many nerds are like,
get back to Star Wars? I know, I'm so sorry.
All right, So the Variety Show is is dying sort of,
(15:49):
and so they figure, what a great time to take
the biggest movie property on the planet and wedge it
into the Variety Show milieu. I don't know if wedge
is the right word. I think maybe uh, nestle it
in there and then start hitting it with the blunt
edge of an axe until it mashes into that crevice.
(16:09):
You know. Because this is the time when Fantasy Island
had just started. Um Mork and Mindy was about to
change things Charlie's Angels was getting huge. It basically television
as we knew it from two whenever the real world
came along. Just escape as television is what they called
it was was starting and it was the hip new thing.
(16:31):
So basically, if they had turned Han Solo and Princess
Leiah and Luke Skywalker into maybe you know, sexy detectives,
it might have gone over even better. But they went
the other way. They decided to latch onto this extraordinarily
stale um genre of television and they hired the best
in the business, like there was there was. There was
(16:52):
a quote from I think Lenny RiPPs who was saying,
like we had literally a dream team, a variety show
dream team, and everybody was good. But there were probably
no bad welders on the Titanic. He there. That's a
great quote. Yeah. The guy they hired to direct it
initially was a dude named David A. Coomba, and he
had made his name for Welcome to the Fillmore East.
(17:13):
It was a concert documentary with Van Mortrison, Van Morrison
and the Birds in nine one, and he actually was
at usc Film School at the same time as Lucas.
Even though they didn't know each other, and um, he
only ended up directing about three segments of the thing
before he quit. Yet before he walked off, some say
he was actually let go, but we'll get to him
(17:35):
in a minute and who replaced him. As as we
get along down this uh gross road, well, let's let's
take a little break because I'm I'm overly excited. Okay, alright,
(18:06):
so we've established most of the main players. We'll we'll
get to a few more. We should point out that, um,
Mark hamill And and Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher, Peter Mayhew,
they had no grounds to refuse to be on this basically, yeah,
pretty much. They were not huge, huge stars, yet they
could throw their weight around and say this is terrible
(18:28):
and I'm not doing it. They were. They were big
overnight because of Star Wars, for sure, but they weren't
to the adoring public back at the studio. They could
still be bossed around. And this is the result of it.
And you can tell also, um, just from watching the
actual special, like Harrison Ford is not happy to be
there at any point. Um, Princess Leiah is clearly on drugs.
(18:54):
Uh was she on drugs at this point? She? If
you watch it, she's she's on drugs, Especially the ending
scene Mark Campbell, it was looks like he's happy to
be there. Actually he was fine, but apparently he said no,
I'm I'm not doing a musical number. And if you
watch his part, wedging a musical number in there would
have been even more painful. Um. But they everybody who
(19:18):
was part of the actual Star Wars franchise that wasn't
wearing like a full body costume was like, I really
wish I wasn't here, And you can tell, oh yeah.
In fact, in the opening uh credit sequence, they're showing
the picture that you know, the faces of the people,
and you see Harrison Ford as if he's flying the
Millennium Falcon, and you can you can just hear the
(19:38):
guy off screen going now look at the camera and
just give a nod. Just look at the camera and
give a nod. And he finally you can tell he's
piste off and he looks up at the camera and
just sort of smirks yeah and points at the camera
like okay, I'm looking at the camera, and then goes
back to what he's doing. Yeah, it's pretty awesome. I
felt bad for him so early on Valanche and others
did you did you feel bad for him? Though? Really?
(20:01):
I mean, like, come on, it's Harrison Ford's Hans Solo.
He has to go do this for like five days. Yeah,
I felt terrible for him. I think it's hilarious that
they had to do this, especially now. Well, early on,
Valanche and others knew that they may be in trouble
because they decided not to subtitle any of the Wookie dialogue,
and they literally started after a brief opening scene setting
(20:23):
it up here. Here's the basic plot is, Han Solo
is trying to get Chewbacca back to Kazook in time
for Life Day so we can celebrate with his family.
That's the basis of the entire two ys. The basis
the entire two hours. They encounter a space battle and
they're delayed, and the next two hours are kind of
(20:44):
what's going on while the delay is happening back on Kazoo,
back on Kazook. Because you hear, like, okay, well, Han
Solo and Chewbacca evading the Imperial Guard and all that
stuff for two hours. I would watch that. I would too.
That's not what they show killing time at the Wookie household.
That is what they show. Yeah, that's what they do.
(21:05):
It's people hanging out waiting for Chewbacca, worrying about him,
and then killing time while they wait for him to
come back. Literally, so um and so hold on. So
you say there's a setup, right, Yeah, that's the initial
setup and then chuck. That's followed by this. Yeah, it's
followed by literally ten minutes, ten solid minutes of incomprehensible
(21:29):
Wookie speak. So let's let's join it for a second,
shall we. Yeah, let's all enjoy it. And again, you
(22:19):
said ten minutes, and you're not exaggerating, you're not being hyperbolic.
You can time it. That's it's ten minutes of wook
He's talking to each other with no subtitles. Fortunately, I
couldn't follow it at first, like I didn't even know
who it was. I thought it was might have been
Chewbacca's mom and dad. Oh that's a little brother. And
(22:41):
I don't find out until later when Mark Cambell shows
up via skype call and says, he really explains everything
that had just happened, Like, you're Chewbacca's father, Itchy, you're
Chewbacca's son, uh, lumpy Lumpy, and you're Chewbacca's wife. Oh mama, yeah,
thank you. So before everybody starts like freaking out, we
(23:03):
know that that's actually their nicknames. Their real names are.
His father is a Ti chick cook, a Ti chick cook,
it's really hard to pronounce. Mulatto Buck is his wife,
and his son is Lumpo war Rump but as named
by Lucas. But yeah, but Lucas also named him Lumpy
Itchy and Mala so um. They're all back there wringing
(23:27):
their hands, trying to figure out ways to pass the
time until they get word from Chewbacca that he's made
it to uh what is it ketchuck z kazuok um
just ketchup ketchup or cats up if you're fancy. Um.
But Chewbacca is having trouble getting back to Katchuk because
(23:48):
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 that. Well, I mean he's
the only one that really appears in the movies. I
mean that we're seeing, like you know, these people's view
(24:09):
of the universe. What about back on Zook. Yeah, he
might have just been a fly by night wookie, right, yeah,
but not the case, very famous wookie. Yeah, and he
really loved it, like soak in his fame. All right,
So he realizes there's a problem. Valanche. He goes to
Lucas and it's like, I don't know, man, this is
your world, but it may not be the strongest thing
(24:32):
to do to set this in wookie Land and have
all this incomprehensible dialogue. And he says he was met
with a glacial stare. Uh. Well, he put it a
little differently than that. Well, he said glacial stair. He did.
The glacial stair that he got was for this quote.
He said, these people just talk and what sounds like
fat people having an orgasm. He goes, if you want,
(24:55):
you can set up a tape recorder in my bedroom
and I'll do all of the follying for it. Yeah.
He's a large guy, he is, so uh that's what
got the glacial stare. But Valanche later said that from this,
there was one development meeting that Lucas attended, and it
was here's the Wookie Bible tell me what you got,
and Valanche said he and the other writers and producers
(25:16):
and director were just kind of throwing ideas, and George
Lucas would either say like, no, that doesn't work, give
him a glacial stare, or say, yes, that's exactly it. Yes,
let's make this a variety show. Yeah. And there was
a little bit of um background there. The cantina players
in the band had appeared on other variety shows at
(25:36):
that point, and I think it went over fairly well,
just as a short segment on like the Richard Pryor
Variety Show or Donnie Marie um Man. There were a
lot of variety shows. But that's what I'm saying. It
was that was television. That's what you did, like the breaks,
um the The show had its course, and then it
(25:58):
became a variety show. It was just everybody love variety shows.
By this time, though, everybody was sick of variety shows
and so it really was a terrible choice. In fact,
they even hired a couple of writers from Shields and Yarnell,
which I hadn't heard of. Oh yeah, I watched it.
It was creepy, this mind couple who had their own
(26:19):
variety show, and they figured these two will be great
because they are used to working without words, right, So,
and so there is a certain logic to the variety show.
It's not that's just that variety shows were popular at
the time. Somebody was like, well, Wookie's you don't understand
what they're saying. So this is all going to be
very physical. So these people who who did what is
(26:42):
it shields in yard? Now, yeah, that that's a perfect choice.
That that makes complete sense. You can see this whole
this whole process of leading up to the point where
it was produced and shot and everything a series of like, oh,
we have this problem, Well here's a fix, but that
leads to another problem. Well we'll fix it with the
and and no one stepping back and being like, all
(27:03):
we've done is create a series of problems that are
going to come together and make one extraordinarily large problem
that will become legendary. No one did that, And so
the whole thing was was made. That's right. And it
eventually airs on November seventeen, nineteen seventy eight, a Friday,
at eight pm Eastern time. That's right, and Nielsen ratings
(27:26):
it um attracted thirteen million viewers just the second hour
just in the US. It aired in six or seven
countries total. Yeah, but no one cares about that, I
guess not because none of those are on the internet,
you know. Uh. It finished second to the Love Boat
in the second I'm sorry from eight to nine, and
in the next hour actually finished behind part two of
(27:47):
a mini series about Pearl Harbor starring Angie Dickinson. So
it didn't even win their respective hours. 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,
Yeah we know about that graphic. It's okay, yeah, we do.
And then after a very important part, which we'll talk
(28:08):
about soon. Um, it just drops off at the end
of the first hour, and that actually probably made the
executives at CBS cringe for a number of reasons. Number
one is this special was originally supposed to just be
an hour, but so many advertisers wanted to sign on
that they extended it to two hours. And it shines
(28:29):
through you can totally tell that this thing was never
supposed to I think an hour might have been stretching it.
To tell you the truth, it's thirty minutes of content,
forty if you're generous an hour and then two hours,
it becomes one of the worst things that was ever
put on television. All right, well, let's take a break
and then we'll talk a little bit more about the
(28:50):
actual um uh, even I don't want to call it content,
but it is content in the strictest definitions. Right after this, sorry, George. Alright,
(29:21):
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. Right,
that's it, And again we almost barely see Chewy. H
The rest is his family on because waiting for him
to come back for a life Day. Yeah. So, um.
(29:42):
Some of the various things they did, they were guest stars.
There was Harvey Corman from The Carol Burnett Show, one
of my all time favorites him or Carol Carol Burnett
Show both. He's great. Yeah, he actually if you watch
what he's doing, you're like, this is comedy genius. For apparently,
he too was like the only one on set that
was bringing levity. He was joking around and kind of
(30:03):
kept spirits up. Good for him, that's what I say.
And he had three, three different parts. Yeah, he played
uh uh well, I don't even know the names. Actually
we could look him up, but he played a He
played a Julia child like cook. There's an actual cooking segment,
a long one, a very long cooking segment where Chewbacca's
(30:25):
wife Um makes Banta stew to kill some time, to
kill some time because there was waiting on her planet
and in our living room. Yeah, so Harvey Corman is
in drag is a foe armed Julia childlike uh TV
chef and I think it's Gormanda. Is her name Gormanda?
That makes total sense. He also plays Um. There's this
(30:49):
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 blockade raided the house
and other properties. He tries to trick them by I think,
rigging a calm link to speak in a different voice.
So he has to watch the instruction manual. He watches
(31:11):
an instruction video which was Harvey Kitel as a robot. Oh,
it would have been wonderful of big Harvey Kitel. Harvey
Carvey Corman, Oh man ha murders someone in the middle
of the instruction Harvey Corman. And then the final role
he had was as a a bar patron in the
cantina that drinks. He has a hole in the top
(31:35):
of his head like a volcano, where he pours his
drinks in. That's how he drinks. And he he loves
b Arthur. Did we mention be Arthur was in it?
B Arthur is not only in it, Chuck. She sings
a song. She does. She is thennownst to everyone, she
manages or maybe owns the owner. Yeah, the what's the mos?
What mos deaf cantina? Uh? No, most deaf is a rapper.
(31:58):
Oh yeah, I think you mean Moss Eisley. Yes, yes,
that cantina. She's the owner. Be Arthur is the owner,
the author of the Golden Girls, but in this case,
the Arthur of Maud, because, as one of the people
who wrote one of the articles we based this on
points out, she's just basically playing Maud as the owner
of the cantina. Yeah, and her song comes because um,
they basically say, there's a lockdown, so you gotta call
(32:21):
last call um at your bar. So she calls last
call by singing a song to everyone, right, and again,
we can't possibly have the script lead anywhere else but
Chewbacca's house while his family waits for it. So all
this takes place as part of a public service announcement
basically broadcast by the Empire about how immoral life on
(32:44):
tattooing is. So let's go see what's going on in
the mas Eisley Cantina as it's being shut down for curfew. Alright,
this is incomprehensible, but it goes on. Um, so they're
in it. There's also Art Carney, Yes, the Honeymooners family,
the star of the whole thing. Really, he has the
(33:06):
most lines, I would say, the most comprehensible line. Right.
So he plays a trader, a human trader um that is,
uh recently been with Han Solo and Chewy and actually
gets to Kazuk and says they're on the way. It's
all good. Yeah, a trader, not trade tour. Yeah, traders
in trades humans for you know money. No, he he
(33:30):
sells goods. Yeah, a trader. He doesn't trade humans. Yeah,
he's in the human trade. He No, he isn't. Really
he trades humans like he sells humans. I looked it
up in the Star Wars Encyclopedia said that he was
in the human trade. Huh, So in this Christmas special,
apparently they sanitized his his background because he's basically just
(33:52):
selling like gadgets and novelties and stuff like that to
the Wookies and the Empire who were occupying the area. Yes,
he comes bearing gifts because he's a friend of Chewbacca's family. Yeah,
so he comes bearing gifts. One of the gifts he
gives is a UM sort of like a little digital
insert to a Oh, I guess you would call it
(34:15):
a virtual reality hair dryer hair dryer, like a beauty
shop hair dryer. Right. He gives it to Grandpa Itchy.
Grandpa Itchy um sits under this hair dryer pops in
this uh digital cassette, and it can only be described
as softcore porn. Apparently the writers who were interviewed for
(34:36):
this said that was totally the intent. They were trying
to get what amounted to softcore porn that would pass
the sensors. So it's all m You can't even say
it's innuendo. It's too obvious in overt for innuendo. Instead,
it's just it's just it's just gross. It's really gross. Um,
(34:57):
Diane Carroll singer, Yes she is, Um, a Vegas staple,
shows up and starts basically tantalizing. Um. 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,
(35:17):
and this is a pretty lengthy segment in and of itself.
Well yeah, and she literally says to him like, now
I can see you're really excited. Yeah, it's pretty rough
to watch. Yeah, so then you've got another musical number
because also again he shutters, yeah, it's really strange. All right,
So there's also ah, I know, it seems like we're
(35:40):
jumping around, but it's it's so mind blowing, not like
this is pretty much like blow for blow. Um. Actually
I forgot earlier on in in the in the special, Um,
there's one of my favorite sequences is when Grandpa Itchy
goes over to Lumpy and basically sets up remember the
the hologram chessboard that they played in A New Hope,
(36:01):
basically kind of sets that up and says, here, just
play this. He pushes the button, which is clearly a
nineteen seventies cassette recorder and another Uh, like it's like
a Cirque de sol acid trip um gymnast routine happens
in front of the kid's eyes. And again this all
(36:22):
just it's not like it shows a snippet. They showed
the entire segments, like five six minutes long of all
of these things. So you would think, Okay, they've gone
to this hologram, well a couple of times, why not
go to it again? Well they do. They do to
kill more time. While the Imperial Guard is ransacking their house. Um,
(36:43):
Art Carney apparently, I guess it's trying to get one
of the Imperial Guard, the leader I think, or one
of the leaders who looks like somebody from Spaceballs by
the way, very much so. Um. And the writer of
the Vanity Fair article, by the way said, um, this,
this is so incomprehensible. This sechelis George Lucas didn't even
have the Schwartz with him at the time. So anyway,
(37:05):
our Carney's distracting this uh imperial leader. Um, while they're
ransacking the Wookie's house, Chewbacca's house with a hologram, and
this hologram instead of being an acrobat or Diane Carroll
or any kind of porn or anything like that is
Jefferson Starship, and they decide that they're going to play
(37:27):
Light the Sky on Fire, which apparently is about UFOs.
It's a little music video. Basically, it's a pretty Yeah,
it's the predecessor to like video kill the radio Starr
you can tell um. And again it is the whole
lengthy song, the whole thing. So every time that somebody's
like we need to escape mentally from what's going on
(37:49):
here in our house, let's go into the video world,
it's not just and they don't cut back and forth.
It's okay, here's five minutes of Jefferson stars of performing
this song. Yeah, and even the Jefferson Starship guys um
were like, yeah, that's sort of a weird trip, Like
we didn't get it, but we did it right. They
gave us some money and some cocaine. Well probably, so
(38:13):
we said, yeah, chuck. I think though, um, there yet
another segment like this is actually widely regarded as the
high point of the whole thing. So there is a
cartoon actually yeah that Lump Lumpy watches Yeah Lump, He's
like the Imperial Guard is still ransacking my house. I
think I'll entertain myself by watching a cartoon on my
(38:36):
little Um, I don't know what. I guess it was
an iPad and uh, he watches this cartoon and it's
it's actually remarkable for a number of reasons. It's the
best part of the whole special generally agreed upon as such,
not just us. And it introduces Boba Fett. It's the
first time Boba Fett ever makes an appearance in the
Star Wars universe. Yeah, it's actually not a bad And
(38:58):
you can't find it in the the one version I
told you to watch. They removed it for copyright. But
he didn't watch a separate version, right, you can find
it on its own. Yeah, and it's um, it's very
much reminiscent of like the cartoon style of the day,
like a he Man or something even even but it's
even a little more artsy than that. Yeah. But it
does have a plot that you can follow that makes
(39:19):
sense as a Star Wars thing, and it introduces Boba Fette,
like you said, And um, it's actually not bad. It's
like Luke and R two and C three p O. Yeah,
and they're like they crash on a planet or something. Yeah.
And Han and Chewarry You're in it, and it's the
first time we see in Darth Vader. It's the first
time we see Boba Fette and that he is, uh,
that he is just doing whatever he can do for money,
(39:41):
Like Luke trusts him at first. C three b I
was like, you sure you should trust him this quick?
And he's like, oh three p o you and your
non trusting ways. And then it turns out he's selling
them out to the dark side. So it's it's basically
Boba Fett is an allegory for George Lucas himself. Um,
So the cartoon comes and goes, and that was the
thing that came at about the end of the first
(40:03):
hour mark and after that everybody just turned off their
television sets. Yeah, I don't remember. Did you watch this
when it came up? Yeah? I remember watching it, but
I don't remember much about it, like if I made
it through it all. I mean it was I was
seven and it was on until ten, so I probably
didn't make it through it all. Um, you're probably disturbed.
(40:23):
Who knows. I just remember that. I have to ask
my brother. He might have a memory of this. Oh,
Betty does, I'm sure he met everybody afterwards or something
like that. You know, it has a picture. Well, he
was ten at that point, so cynicism had, you know,
become a thing in his life probably by then, didn't
that When cynicism kicks into he'scott holding out the fourteen
fifteen Yeah maybe so so um chuck, the whole thing
(40:47):
finally does in. And actually there's a guy, his name
is Nathan Raban, he writes over at the A V Club.
He had a great quote. He basically said that one
of the great redeeming values of this um, this special
is that it does eventually end. Yeah, you know what
the first part of the quote is, I'm not convinced
the special wasn't ultimately written and directed by a sentient
bag of cocaine. And like, go read his his review
(41:10):
of the Star Wars Holiday Special, because he goes on
to describe exactly what that must have been, like the
development meeting where the bag of cocaine is pacing back
and forth talking about what should happen. That's what it
feels like. But it doesn't, and it ends even more.
It takes this bizarre two hours and wraps it up
in just a nice bizarre bow. Yeah. So what happens
(41:32):
is eventually Han Solo should we say spoiler alert. Eventually
Han Solo and Chewy make it to the planet. They
park on the far side of the planet because they
know the uh the Imperial forces are there and the
exercise will do Chewy good, so they have to hike
over there. They eventually make it back home. Uh, they
find a storm the stormtroopers at their house. Um, their
(41:56):
tree hut. Yeah, which by the paintings that set this up,
I don't think we mentioned I don't even call him
Matt paintings that it looks like someone painted something on
the wall and they just like put a camera in
front of it pretty much. Yeah. So they get back
and um, Chewbacca, Han Solo hides around the corner of
Chewbacca steps in front of his son to protect him.
(42:17):
Han Solo jumps out, and the stormtrooper trips over a
pile of logs and falls over the balcony and dies
in a holiday special. So they wouldn't even not only
could he not shoot first with Grido, but they couldn't
even have him like wrestle the storm trooper and throw
him off. He trips over a log and Han Solo
(42:40):
has his hands thrown up like wasn't me? It might
also been a banana peel, you know, But again, uh,
this is basically produced by vaudevillians starring vaudevillians. Why not
have the one death take place from basically what it
mounts to somebody slipping on a banana peel? Exactly. It's
a perfect way to end it. So that's uh that
(43:00):
that guy basically represents the end of the Imperial threat
for the rest of Life Day. And um, we we
then see Life Day being celebrated, which is celebrated by
lots of wookies assembling in what looks like a giant
Olan Mills portrait. Um, and all of them are wearing
red robes. And I know I'm up talking, and it's
(43:25):
because my mind is still having trouble like wrapping around this.
And then um, Princess Leia comes out with C three
P O is Mark Hamill there, the whole gang zero
from okay, the whole gangs there, And then they all
gather around to hear a great quote from Princess Leiah,
which we will read um verbatim. This holiday is yours,
(43:48):
but we all share with you the hope that this
day brings us closer to freedom, into harmony, into 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 than anything else, our love for
one another. This is the promise of the Tree of
(44:11):
Life que song, right, And we should also point out
the tree of Life has never been mentioned up to
this point. Takes a sudden appearance at the end. And
when you said que song, by que song, you mean
Princess Leiah starts singing. Yeah. And apparently that was one
of the big contingencies on Carrie Fisher being involved. She's
(44:31):
going through a phase where she was like, I kind
of like singing. Bruce Valanche calls it her Joni Mitchell period. Yeah,
and she somehow convinced them to let her sing as
Princess Leiah. And she does. And again I've said that
she looks like she's on drugs. This is the point
where she really does look like she's on drugs. And
it's not just me Um other writers who have written
reviews of this, it's really obvious that she possibly smoked
(44:56):
a decent amount of pot before she shot this shot
this scene, but she sings, Oh, okay, it's fine. It's
just the fact that um, Princess Leigh is singing. And actually,
Bruce Valanche had a really great quote too. He says that, um,
she very much wanted to show this side of her talent,
and there was general dismay because this was not what
(45:17):
we wanted Princess Leia to be doing. She did it anyway.
So the whole thing ends with her singing this song
about life day, which is set loosely to the John
Williams Star Wars theme. Uh. So along the way, the
director original director quit, A new director, Steve Binder, was
hired to finish the job and bring it in. Uh.
(45:39):
And he did over the original one million dollar budget,
of course always Uh, he did bring it in and
um at this point George Lucas had uh. He was
he was working on Empire Strikes Back. He didn't know
what was going on. He wasn't around for the shoot. No,
it wasn't until it aired. I think that he actually
saw it. Yes, and it was a havsty obviously, if
(46:01):
you haven't noticed that by now, critics hated it. Star
Wars fans really hated it. Everybody hate The people who
were in it hated it. Lucas hated it. Even Harvey
Corman secretly hated it. Even Harvey Kitel hated Actually he
loved it. But Lucas has been asked over the years
about it a lot, and he doesn't talk about it much.
(46:22):
But in two thousand five, and I don't buy this
for a second. He says, um it was an interview
he said special from I really didn't have much to
do with us. You know that part is true. I
can't remember what network it was even on, but it
was a thing that they did. That's a lie. There's
no way he doesn't know that was cvt uh. We
kind of just let them do it. I believe that
(46:44):
it was done by I can't even remember who the
group was, but they were variety TV guys. I'm sure
he remembers a few of them. We let them use
the characters and stuff, and that probably wasn't the smartest
thing to do, but you learned from those experiences. I
think they even used some of the footage from the
movie at the end. It looks like some space, like
a highlight reel the Gang Well, and during the UM
(47:08):
it looked like some of the they had some insert
shots of like Imperial cruisers and Thai fighters and stuff that.
Remember when when Chewbacca like leans back and puts his
hands behind it, that's in there. It's it's like a
it's just a highlight reel from the movie. Saying like
I feel like this, go see the movie. Well, and
also that means it doesn't match the look of the
rest of it at all. Yeah, that's true. It's just
(47:30):
sort of inserted. They tried. They definitely tried UM, and
George Lucas is totally full of it because in nine
seven he told star Log magazine that the Christmas Special
would be out on video cassette very soon, and in
two thousand seven, two years after that quote, you just
read where he's like, I don't even know what you're
talking about. Basically UM. He apparently considered releasing the Christmas
(47:53):
Special as a bonus on the the DVDs of the
first three right, but did not it. And apparently Carrie
Fisher told Lucas that if you want me to do
UM DVD extras commentary commentary, then I want a clean
original copy of the Holiday special, So why go ahead
(48:13):
so I can play at parties when I want people
to leave. It's pretty great. It is so uh and
there is one of those clean copies is floating around
out there, so you can watch this in it in
its entirety. Some of it, like the cartoon, was removed
due to copyright infringement and that kind of stuff, but
as as the case with the rest of the Internet,
(48:34):
you can just go find it elsewhere and piece it together.
There's also the original ads that aired in Baltimore that
are just fascinating. Those are always fun gm ads where
one of the guys who's in quality control is he says,
did you watch it? I don't think I saw that.
He goes, um, we really care about these cars and
that's no job man, a GM man, and he's like,
(48:57):
it's serious. They're trying to be hip. Yeah. Um, it's
a pretty good stuff. Here's my final thought on it.
I love it. It does not taint my Star Wars
experience or my love for the franchise, and I'm glad
it is out there because it it's a it's a
fun little stain that shouldn't be taken too seriously. I
(49:21):
think it adds to it actually, because it's campy and awful,
and I don't know somehow that enriches the rest of it.
I'm with you. Do you like it? Oh? Yeah? I
mean I watched it twice. I wouldn't have watched it
a second I wouldn't have made it through the first time.
Let me take that back, as I'm a pro, so
I would have made it through the first time. I
wouldn't have watched it a second time if I wasn't.
(49:41):
There wasn't something about it, and I figured out. I
think the thing that I like the most about it
is Lumpy, Chewbacca's son, played by an actress named Patty Maloney,
who frankly is hands down the best actor in the
entire thing. She like her responses and everything. It's just awesome.
I think my favorite parts are, uh, well, there's a
(50:03):
great Wilhelm scream trips over the law. Jerry would not
have noticed it. Uh And then there's a part where
all the wikie dialogue you can't understand, but there's clearly
one part where where Itchy and Lumpy are ha any
exchange where Lumpy you can make it out goes I
love you, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I noticed that, but it's
(50:24):
covered up. But someone was like, we have to have
at least one exchange where you sort of know what
they're saying, or they were like, I think she just
said I love you. Should we have them redo it?
And then directors like, no, I want to go and Chuck.
There's one other thing that I figured out from watching this.
It's not readily apparent. The whole thing is made all
the more odd, and that there's situation after situation after
(50:47):
situation where we as normal audiences, were trained to expect
the laugh track, but there's not a laugh track. Had
there been a laugh track, it what it might have
been less is are but the fact that it's missing
just makes your agitates the mind. So it's this whole
additional element that it is weird. I never thought about that.
(51:08):
There's just weird moments of silence all throughout it. YEA
like when Art Carney's doing his thing, Yeah, telling jokes. Yeah, okay,
I agree with you, Chuck. Don't take things too seriously.
I think that's the great lesson in this. Yeah, And
that's the lesson of life day it is and in
two thousand seven, Rift Tracks Great Mystery Science Theater. Three
thousand guys Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, and Kevin Murphy. Uh
(51:31):
provided audio commentary for the full version of the special.
So try and go grab that if you can as well.
Oh you can't. It's on the site because it's great.
I think it's like eight bucks and those guys are awesome,
and you are at least I think Corbett listens to us. So, hey, Corbett,
you got anything else? No, No, I think we did this.
(51:53):
There's some good stuff. Go read the Vanity Fair article.
Uh Han Solo Comedy Hour. There's a book called How
Star Wars Conquered the Universe that has a very interesting
chapter about this. That's where we found it asserted that
George Lucas never said that he would smash this thing
with a sledge hammer. Um. And there's also an entire
website dedicated to its Star Wars Holiday Special dot com. Yeah,
and if you want to know more about the Star
(52:15):
Wars Holiday Special, we have a ton of heart Star
Wars stuff on how stuff works by the way. Yeah,
we have cool, um sort of fun articles about the
Death Star and Lightsabers videos with Holly Fry from stuff
you missed in History class. Yeah, who she knows her stuff.
She does. Um, so you can just type star Wars
in the search bart how stuff works dot com and
it will bring up some cool stuff for you. Since
(52:36):
I said search bar, its time for listener mail. Hey guys,
just finished listening to the Voytage Manuscript podcast. Found it's
super interesting, especially the theories on its definition or origin.
No Josh Menchin Chuck siory, but being drug induced somewhat
surprising or even unlikely given the language in the manuscript
follows linguistic laws only founded in the past one years.
(52:58):
But if you think about it, it's a tough. It's
tough to stray away from familiar structures, especially for something
like language. I think back to when I was younger
and friends invented their own languages or even in writing
a song or poetry. Creativity can sometimes be limited by
what we know. Uh So I just thought I contribute
that the conversation nice. Thanks big, thanks for all you
(53:18):
guys do. I found the podcast after moving to San
Diego in the last few years for some noise around
my apartment. So basically we were blocking out noise. We
do that chi love uh 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. Sure, I've listened to hundreds and will
(53:38):
continue to listen to hundreds more. Keep on Keeping on.
That is from Amy J. Moffatt. Thanks a lot, Amy
in San Diego. Does that mean like place of the
whales in German or something like that? Uh? Yeah. If
you want to get in touch of this, you can
tweet to us at s Y s K podcast. You
can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff you
(53:59):
Should Know. You can send us an email The Stuff
podcast at how stuff Works dot com and has always
joined us at our home on the web, Stuff you
Should Know dot com. For more on this and thousands
of other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com
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