December 17, 2015 • 53 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):
Welcome to you stuff you should know Frondhouse Stuff Works
dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Clark with Charles W. Chuckers Bryant and Jerry Jerome Role.
And uh, it was the Wookie mother. Yeah, Mala, that
(00:24):
was the Wookie wife. Oh and mother. Yeah sure, Chebacca's
mom is not with them any longer. She left. She
was not about to appear in that. She went out
the window. I'm excited about this. I have to say
we should say Happy Star Wars Day. Yeah, today is
um December. Um, I have my opening night tickets? Do
(00:48):
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
got I'm 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
(01:11):
still going fresh. I'm an ostrich. Yeah you black yourself out, Yeah,
you go dark. I moved myself go to sleep, faith,
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
(01:34):
missed Life Day though, so happy belated Life Day. Are
they celebrating it this year? No? Yeah, but it's every
three years. Mm hmm our cane man, nice job. Okay,
so it's every three years, started in nine eight. Let's
do the math, shall we? Mm hmmm, quick math break.
(01:55):
I believe that two thousand fourteen was the last Life Day. Man,
we just missed, and then again in seventeen. Okay, soeen
we'll celebrate Life Day. Will put on our red robes,
are ultralong, straight ironed wigs, and we'll celebrate Life Day
the way it was meant to. And if you have
no idea what we're talking about, we are talking about
(02:18):
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 their Quanta. Supposedly, it's sort of
like Earth Day too. They celebrate the diversity of their
ecosystem and also remembrance of the dead, and they also
give the gifts the fins. Basically, yeah, it's a it's
(02:41):
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 is become derided as
like one of the worst things that ever happened to
the Star Wars galaxy. Well, not only that, one of
(03:03):
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 who say that
haven't seen even a second of it. Yeah, however, I
watched it, uh when I was a kid, then again
(03:24):
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 mesmerizing, it really is. It's one of
those things that you start watching it and you want
to turn it off, but you want to see just
how absurd it can get. Almost Yeah, and it starts absurd,
it stays absurd. In the middle, it's increasingly more absurd,
(03:46):
it's a little less absurd, finishes super absurd. Yeah, it's
just a train wreck in every single sense of the
word to bottom. It's extraordinarily difficult to overstate how bad
this is. And some people have, you know, in researching this,
you read about it, you read descriptions of these things,
and it just can't possibly be gotten across until you
(04:07):
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 the years,
there have been many segments of it on YouTube from
badly VHS tapes, but there's one really pretty good version
(04:30):
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 basically be the
copy that the actual UM affiliate broadcast. It's like that
(04:50):
that quality compared to the other stuff floating around on YouTube,
clearly recorded on the r which we're really expensive, very expensive.
I did some calcula aiding on west Egg okay, UM,
so the average VCR went for about a thousand dollars.
There were brand new it's amazing thousand dollars in nine money,
so they're about thirty eight hundred dollars in two thousand
(05:10):
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. We need to
shout out some articles that we used for this. There's
great a great article in Vanity Fair called the Han
Solo Comedy Our exclamation Point by Frank did Jacomo. And
(05:33):
then there's uh, the Star Wars Holiday Special was the
worst thing on television ever by so when we kind
of know Alex Pasternack uh from Motherboard, yeah, which is
uh not wired, it's uh vice. We wrote a little
bit for Motherboard back then, and we had a call
that like we're like old Motherboard vets basically, and when
(05:53):
they're one more, there was another one and I don't
know who wrote this one, chuck Uh, Yeah, it's the
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. He didn't ever say that. No,
Okay that that sounded like something that people made up. Yes,
(06:16):
but if you go on the internet, you will quickly
believe that he did better. Apparently didn't. So let's I'm
sure he felt that way though, clearly because he did
appear on Robot Chicken and I think two thousand five
on the therapist couch talking about how much he hated
this special. Alright, so let's set the background, shall we
Shall we go back to summer, getting the old way
(06:37):
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. I
please forgive me if I urinate myself, no problem. Okay,
(07:00):
So what has happened is Star Wars has become a huge,
huge hit, seemingly out of nowhere, establishing George Lucas is
one of the brilliant young minds and filmmaking, even though
when his first movie it was his first huge, huge
breakout hit. Oh yeah, for sure, talk I mean talk
about a breakout hit like no one had ever seen
anything like it before. Two thousand one had come out
(07:22):
in the late sixties, but it wasn't it's still it
still isn't accessible to all audiences. You know, it's 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 Wars just changed
everything and it came on just like a hammer. Um,
(07:43):
there's a new hope by the way, yes, and then
then we're gonna get stuff wrong, nerds, So yes, just
go ahead and get your little fingers ready to email us,
like if it wasn't driven home that I'm not a
nerd by the fact that I don't have opening night
tickets or any tickets yet, give me a break, and
by proxy chuck to Okay. So, um, it's it's hard
(08:04):
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, George Lucas was he
(08:26):
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
(08:46):
all the rage right now. We have a we have
a graphic that's really awesome that we set aside just
for TV specials here at CBS. Why don't you let
us let's get together and do a Star Wars special.
That's right. Producers Gay R. Smith and Dwight him me on, Uh,
we're working over at CBS, and they said, this is
a great way to keep the spirit alive while you're
(09:08):
making your other movie. Maybe move some more toys, yeah,
which George Lucas got. So it was right before Thanksgiving,
and he said, there'll be a lot of people watching
TV um pre holiday season or I guess in the
holiday season. Well, the weekend before Thanksgiving, it's like everybody's shopping,
sitting around family like waiting to actually do stuff. That's right,
(09:30):
perfect time to broadcast something on TV. So Lucas says,
all right, let's do this. I don't have a ton
of time, but how about this. I'll get I'll get
a story together, and then you can go hire a
whiz bang team of of veteran writers and producers and
directors whatever genre you think is appropriate. And those are
the words that will haunch on George Lucas to his grave. Yeah,
(09:52):
so Lucas said, here's my idea. I wanted to be
based um on Wookies, and I wanted to take place
on home planet of Kazook or Wookie planet. See. Is
that you say ka zook? 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
(10:16):
got spell it k A s h y y y k,
which I mean. I guess that sounds like Chewbuck's planet sure,
also called G five Wookie planet see or Eaton is
a mid rim planet. Right. So the whole reason, apparently
that George Lucas was interested in featuring the Bookies was
it is what we in show business call low hanging fruit.
(10:39):
The reason why it was low hanging fruit was because
they had just established the different scenes that would make
the cut for Empire Strikes Back, and uh, what how
did you pronounce it? Again? Kazook. Kazook had not made
the cut. Uh. Even prior to this, apparently for a
new hope, George Lucas had whipped up a forty page
what's known is the Wookie Bible. It's like a forty
(11:02):
page supplement that's all about Kazook and Wookies and Chewbacca
and his family and everything about wookie. Um. Right, so
he's like, I've got this thing already. You know established
I love Wookies. Um, they didn't make the cut. I'm
a little sad about that. They're not gonna Kazook is
not gonna show up in an Empire Strikes Back. Let's
(11:23):
let's build the entire special around Wookies. It's basically the
one demand me George Lucas has. That's it. I'll be
totally hands off from this point on which 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 of
this Christmas special. Absolutely he was burned, and um, he
(11:46):
was iron grip after that on everything. So here's some
some of the folks behind it. Bruce Balanche, famous uh
TV writer. You've probably seen him on Hollywood Squares. Wasn't
he suspected of being Thomas pinch On for a while,
So I don't know, or was Thomas pinch On on
Hollywood Squares? I have no idea. I may be confabulating
(12:07):
some stuff confounding. Yeah, there's some con of some sort
going on that sounds like it. So Valanche was hired
as a writer. A guy named Lenny RiPPs 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 is Star Wars. How could
it lose? Famous last words? Who else was hired? There
(12:31):
was a husband and wife team, the welch Is, who
are the parents of of folk singer Gillian Welch. I'm
a big fan of and I had no idea that
her parents. They were producers slash songwriters of the day.
They were big on the variety show scene, which would
turn out to be a really key cog in this
(12:52):
whole experience. So I feel like, right about here, Jerry
should insert a needle coming off of our record sound effect. Okay,
thanks Jerry, So Chuck, you just said singer songwriters. What
would that have to do with Star Wars. Yeah, well, actually,
in this Star Wars holiday special for those of you
(13:12):
hadn't seen it, there are musical numbers. They decided from
the outset that there should be musical numbers. And the
reason that they decided that there should be musical numbers
is because the people who sold George Lucas, and at
the time it was started, the Star Wars Corporation was
what it was called um On. The idea of doing
this TV special was that everyone would love a variety show.
(13:35):
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 had come to an end. It was getting stale. Yeah,
(13:56):
we're talking to Carol Burnett show. One of my favorite
had just been canceled for eleven season. Sunny and Chair
had just had its last season. Yeah, I mean what else,
like he Hall was he I was still going on
probably think still on solid golden yet to come on
and take up the mantel that that would never write
(14:16):
a show. Oh, it was a little bit and there
was talking in between the songs. Remember the Mandrell's Sister show.
I never watched that one. Well, it was with that
country chic thing that happened. It was a big deal
in the It's kind of happening again. I think, oh,
because of that dude, the guy who won all the
c m A Awards. I don't know, he's like, he's
(14:38):
he came along. He's like, actually country. His dad's like
a coal miner for real from Kentucky. I think something. Yeah,
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 and I
guess that's probably where the country sheet came from, because
there was actually good country going on. Yeah, Johnny Cash
(15:01):
at a variety show. I knew they did like a
Sunday singing thing like out in Virginia. Yeah, he had
his own variety show. Was actually pretty good. There's some
like really great performances. Do you know how many nerds
are like get back to start war? I know, I'm
so sorry. Alright, So the Variety Show is is dying
sort of, and so they figured, what a great time
(15:21):
to take the biggest movie property on the planet and
wedge it into the Variety show milieu. I don't know
if wedge is the right word. I think maybe uh
nestle it in there and then start hitting it with
the blunt edge of an axe until it mashes into
that crevice. You know. That's because this is the time
(15:42):
when Fantasy Island had just started, um Mork and Mindy
was about to change things. Charlie's Angels was getting huge.
It basically television as we knew it from two whenever
the real world came along. Just escape as television is
what they called it was was starting and it was
the hip new thing. So basically, if they had turned
(16:04):
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 a quote from I think Lenny RiPPs, who
(16:24):
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, uh for Welcome to
the fillmore East. It was a concert documentary with Van
(16:46):
Morrison Van Morrison and the Birds in nineteen seventy one,
and he actually was at usc Film School at the
same time as Lucas, even though they didn't know each other.
And um, he only ended up directing about three segments
of the thing before he quit, yea, before he walked off.
Some say he was actually let go, but we'll get
to him in a minute and who replaced him. As
(17:08):
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, okay, alright,
(17:36):
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 Fischer, Peter Mayhew,
they had no grounds to refuse to be on this basically, yeah,
pretty much. They were not huge, huge stars, yet they
could throw their weight around and say this is terrible
(17:57):
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. Uh.
(18:24):
Was she on drugs at this point? She? If you
watch it, she's she's on drugs. Especially the ending scene.
Mark Campbell, it looks like he's happy to be there.
Actually he was fine, but apparently he said no, I'm
I'm not doing a musical number. And if you watch
his part, wedging a musical number in there would have
been even more painful. Um. But they everybody who was
(18:47):
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. Yeah. In fact,
in the opening uh credit sequence, they're showing the picture
that you know the faces of the people, and you
see Harrison Ford as if he's flying the Millennium Falcon,
and you can you can just hear the guy off
(19:08):
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 to what he's doing. Yeah,
it's pretty awesome. I felt bad for him so early
on Valanche and others did. Did you feel bad for him? Though? Really?
(19:30):
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
(19:53):
it up here. Here's the basic plot is Han Solo
is trying to get Chewbacca back to Kazook time for
life day so we can celebrate with his family. That's
the basis of the entire two US bases. The entire
two hours. They encounter a space battle and they're delayed,
and the next two hours are kind of what's going
(20:14):
on while the delay is happening. Back back on Kazook
because you hear, like, okay, well, Han Solo and Chewbacca
evading the Imperial Guard and all that stuff for two hours.
I would watch that. I would too. That's not what
they show. Killing time at the Wookie household, that is
what they show. That's what they do. It's people hanging
(20:35):
out waiting for Chewbacca, worrying about him, and then killing
time while they wait for him to come back. Literally,
so um and so hold on. So you say there's
a setup, right, Yeah, that's the initial setup and then chuck.
That's followed by this. Yeah, it's followed by literally ten minutes,
ten solid minutes of incomprehensible Wookie speak. So let's let's
(21:00):
join it for a second, shall we. Yeah, let's all
enjoy it. And again, you said ten minutes, and you're
(21:51):
not exaggerating, you're not being hyperbolic. You can time it.
That's it's ten minutes. Of Bookie's talking to each other
with no subtitles. Fortunately, I couldn't follow it at first,
Like I didn't even know who it was. I thought
it was might have been Chewbacca's mom and dad. Oh yeah,
that's a little brother. And I don't find out until
(22:11):
later when Mark Campbell shows up via skype call and says,
he really explains everything that had just happened, Like, you're
Chewbacca's father, Itchy, you'r Chewbacca's son, uh Lumpy Lumpy, and
you're Chewbacca's wife. Oh yeah, thank you. So before everybody
starts like freaking out, we know that that's actually their nicknames.
(22:35):
Their real names are. His father is h a ti
chick cook, a tchick cook, it's really hard to pronounce.
Mulatto Buck is his wife, and his son is lump
O war Rump but as named by Lucas. But yeah,
but Lucas also named him Lumpy Itchy and Mala so um.
(22:55):
They're all back there wringing their hands, trying to figure
out ways to pass the time until they get word
from Chewbacca that he's made it to uh what is it,
ketchuck kaz kazook Um just Ketchup, Ketchup or cats up
if you're fancy. Um. But Chewbacca is having trouble getting
(23:16):
back to Ketchuk because there's Kazook, 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, but we're seeing, like,
(23:36):
you know, these people's view of the universe. What about
back on Kazook. 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. Alright, So he realizes there's a problem Valanche.
He goes to Lucas and it's like, I don't know, man,
(23:58):
this is your world, but may not be the strongest
thing to do to set this in wookie Land and
have all this comprehensible 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
(24:21):
sounds like fat people having an orgasm. He goes, if
you want, you can set up a tape recorder in
my bedroom and I'll do all of the follying for it. Yeah.
He's a large guy, he is, so uh that's what
got the glacial stare. But Valanche later said that from this,
there was one development meeting that Lucas attended and it
was here's the Wookie Bible, tell me what you got.
(24:42):
And Valanche said he and the other writers and producers
and director were just kind of throwing ideas and George
Lucas would either say like, no, that doesn't work, give
him a glacial stare, or say yes, that's exactly it. Yes,
let's make this a variety show. Yeah. And there was
a little bit of um background there. The cantina players
(25:02):
in the band had appeared on other variety shows at
that point, and I think it went over fairly well,
just as a short segment on like the Richard Pryor
Variety Show or Donnie Marie um Man. There were a
lot of variety shows. But that's what I'm saying. It
was that was television. That's what you did. Like them.
(25:24):
The the show had its course and then it became
a variety show. It was just everybody love variety shows. Yea.
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.
(25:44):
It was creepy, this mind couple who had their own
variety show, and they figured these two will be great
because they are used to working without words, right, So,
and so there is a certain logic to the variety show.
It's not just all over the such, just that variety
shows were popular at the time. Somebody was like, well,
(26:04):
Wookie's you don't understand what they're saying. So this is
all going to be very physical. So these people who
who did what is it Shields in 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,
(26:25):
Well here's a fix, but that leads to another problem. Well,
we'll fix it with this, and and no one stepping
back and being like, all we've done is create a
series of problems that are going to come together and
make one extraordinarily large problem that will become legendary. No
one did that, and so the whole thing was was made.
That's right, and eventually airs on November seventy eight, a Friday,
(26:51):
at eight pm Eastern Time, and Nielsen ratings it attracted
thirteen million viewers, lost the set an hour just in
the US. It aired in six or seven countries total. Yeah,
but no one cares about that, I guess not because
none of those are on the internet. Uh. It finished
second to the Love Boat in the second I'm sorry
(27:12):
from eight to nine, and in the next hour actually
finished behind part two of a mini series about Pearl
Harbor starring Angie Dickinson. So it didn't even win their
respective hours. No, thirty million, that's that's not bad. The
thing is, apparently, if you look at the Nielsen ratings
graph for the first hour, Yeah we know about that graph.
It's okay, Yeah, we do. And then after a very
(27:36):
important part which we'll talk about soon. Um, it just
drops off at the end of the first hour, and
that actually probably made the executives at CBS cringe for
a number of reasons. Number one is this special was
originally supposed to just be an hour, but so many
advertisers wanted to sign on that they extended it to
two hours. And it shines through. You can totally tell
(28:00):
that this thing was never supposed to be. 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 in two hours it becomes one of
the worst things that was ever put on television. All right,
well let's take a break and then we'll talk a
little bit more about the actual Um even I don't
(28:22):
want to call it content, but it is content in
the strictest definitions. Right after this, alright, so the show itself,
(28:50):
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 it again we almost barely see Chewy. Yeah. The
rest is his family on because waiting for him to
come back for a life Day. Yeah. So, um, some
(29:10):
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. Apparently, he too was
like the only one on set that was bringing levity.
He was joking around and kind of kept spirits up.
(29:32):
Good for him, that's what I say. And he had
three three different parts. Yeah, he played uh well, I
don't even know the names. Actually, we could look him up,
but he played a He played a Julia child like cook.
There's an actual cooking segment, a long one, a very
long cooking segment where Chewbacca's wife Um makes Banta stew
(29:56):
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 forearmed Julia
childlike uh TV chef and I think it's Gormanda. It's
her name, Gormanda. That makes total sense. He also plays Um.
There's this one weird bit where Chewbacca's son tries to
(30:20):
figure out a way to trick the stormtroopers that the
Empire had come and kind of because of the blockade,
raided the house and other properties. So he tries to
trick them by I think rigging a calm link. Uh
to speak in a different voice. So he has to
watch the instruction manual. He watches an instruction video which
(30:41):
was Harvey Kitel as a robot. Oh, it would have
been wonderful of big Harvey Kitel. Did say, Harvey Carvey
Corman many murders someone in the middle of the instruction,
Great Harvey Corman. And then the final role he had
was as a a bar patron in the cantina that drinks.
(31:01):
He has a hole in the top of his head
like a volcano where he pours his drinks in. That's
how he drinks. And he he loves be Arthur. Did
we mention b Arthur was in it? Be Arthur is
not only in it, Chuck. She sings a song. She
does she is then to everyone she manages or maybe
owns the owner. Yeah, the what's the mas what Moss
(31:21):
def cantina? Uh? No, most def is a rapper. Oh, yeah,
I think you mean Moss Eisley. Yes, yes, that cantina.
She's the owner. Be Arthur is the owner, the Uthur
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,
(31:43):
and her song comes because um, they basically say, there's
a lockdown, so you gotta call last call um at
your bar. So she calls last call by singing a
song to everyone. Right, and again, we can't possibly have
the script lead anywhere else but Chewbacca's house while his
family waits for it. So all this takes place as
(32:05):
part of a public service announcement basically broadcast by the
Empire about how immoral life on tattooing is. So let's
go see what's going on in the mos Eisley Cantina
as it's being shut down for curfew. Alright, this is incomprehensible,
but it goes on. Um, so they're in it. There's
(32:27):
also Art Carney, yes, of the Honeymooners family, the star
of the whole thing. Really, he has the most lines,
I would say, the most comprehensible line, right, So he
plays a trader, a human trader. Um that is uh,
recently been with Han Solo and Chewy and actually gets
to Kazuok and says they're on the way. It's all good. Yeah,
(32:49):
a trade or not trade tour. Yeah, traders in trades
humans for you know, money. No, he he sells goods, yeah, trader.
He isn't trade humans. Yeah, he's in the human trade.
He No, he isn't. Really he trades humans like he
sells humans. I looked it up in the Star Wars
(33:11):
Encyclopedia said that he was in the human trade. So
in this Christmas special, apparently they sanitize his his background
because he's basically just selling like gadgets and novelties and
stuff like that to the Wookies and the Empire who
were occupying the area. Yes, he comes bearing gifts because
he's a friend of Chewbacca's family. Yeah, so he comes
(33:33):
bearing gifts. One of the gifts he gives is a
UM sort of like a little digital insert to a Oh,
I guess you would call it a virtual reality hair
dryer hair dryer, like a beauty shop hair dryer. Right.
He gives it to Grandpa Itchy. Grandpa Itchy um sits
(33:54):
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 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 you can't even say it's innuendo. It's too obvious
(34:17):
in overt for innuendo. Instead, it's just it's just it's
just gross. It's really gross. Um. Diane Carroll, yes she is, Um,
a Vegas staple shows up and starts basically tantalizing. Um.
Grandpa Itchy, who again, this is Chewbacca's elderly father, who
(34:40):
now engages in some sort of well he's he's watching
virtual reality pornography now, and this is a pretty lengthy
segment in and of itself. Well yeah, and she literally
says to him, now, I can see you're really excited. Yeah,
it's pretty rough to watch. Yeah, so then you've got
another musical number because also again he shutters, yeah, it's
(35:02):
really strange. All right, So there's also ah, I know,
it seems like we're jumping around, but it's it's 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
(35:25):
the hologram chessboard that they played in a New Hope,
basically kind of sets that up and says, here, just
play this. He pushes the button which is clearly a
nineteen seventies cassette recorder, and another uh like it's like
a circue to sol acid trip um gymnast routine happens
(35:47):
in front of the kid's eyes. And again this all
just it's not like it shows a snippet. They show
the entire segments, like five, six ten minutes long of
all of these things. So you would think, Okay, they've
gone to this hologram well a couple of times, why
not go to it again? Well they do. They do
to kill more time while the Imperial Guard is ransacking
(36:09):
their house. Um Art Carney apparently, I guess it's trying
to get one of the Imperial Guard, the leader, I think,
or one of the leaders who looks like somebody from
Space Balls by the way, very much so. Um and
the writer of the Vanity Fair article, by the way, said, um,
this this is so incomprehensible. The specialist George Lucas didn't
even have the Schwartz with him at the time. So anyway,
(36:33):
Art Carney's distracting this uh Imperial leader. Um while they're
ransacking the Wookiees 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
(36:55):
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 started
can tell um and again it is the whole lengthy song,
the whole thing. So every time that somebody's like we
need to escape mentally from what's going on here in
(37:17):
our house, let's go into the video world, it's not
just there and they don't cut back and forth. It's okay,
here's five minutes of Jefferson Starship performing this song. And
even the Jefferson Starship guys um were like, yeah, that's
sort of a weird trip, like we didn't get it,
but we did it right. They gave us some money
(37:38):
and some cocaine. Well probably, so we said, yeah, chuck.
I think though, um, there yet another segment like this
is actually widely regarded as the high point of the
whole thing. So there is a cartoon actually that lump
watch Yeah lumpies, like the Imperial Guard is still ransacking
(38:00):
my house. I think I'll entertain myself by watching a
cartoon on my little Um, I don't know what. I
guess it was an iPad and uh. He watches this
cartoon and it's it's actually remarkable for a number of reasons.
It's the best part of the whole special generally agreed
upon as such, but not just us. And it introduces
(38:20):
Boba Fett. It's the first time Boba Fett ever makes
an appearance in Star Wars Universe. Yeah, it's actually not
a bad And you can't find it in the the
one version I told you to watch. They removed it
for copyright, but they 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 key man or something even even
(38:41):
but it's even a little more artsy than that. Yeah,
but it does have a plot that you can follow
that makes sense as a Star Wars thing, And it
introduces Boba Fett like you said, and um, it's actually
not bad. It's like Luke and R two and C
three p O. Yeah, and there's like they crash on
a planet or something. Yeah, and Han and Jewry you're
in it. And it's the first time we see in
(39:01):
Darth Vader. It's the first time we see Boba Fett
and that he is uh, that he is just doing
whatever he can do for money, Like Luke trusts him
at first. C three p I was like, you're 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
(39:22):
allegory for George Lucas himself. Um. So the cartoon comes
and goes, and that was the thing that came at
about the end of the first hour mark and 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,
(39:43):
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 probably disturbed. Who knows. I just remember that. I
let 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 that cynicism had, you know,
(40:03):
become a thing in his life. Probably by then, didn't
that when cynicism kicks into Scott holding out the fourteen
fifteen Yeah maybe so so, um, Chuck, the whole thing
finally does in. And actually there's a guy. His name
is Nathan Raban, he writes over at the A V. Club.
He had a great quote. He basically said that one
of the great redeeming values of this um this special
(40:26):
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
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
(40:49):
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
is eventually Han Solo should we say spoiler alert? Eventually
Han Solo and Chewi make it to the planet. They
park on the far side of the planet because they
(41:10):
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
tree hut. Yeah, which way by the paintings that set
this up, I don't think we mentioned I don't even
(41:30):
call him Matt paintings. It looks like someone painted something
on the wall and they just like put a camera
in front of it. Yeah. So they get back and um, Chewbacca,
Han Solo hides around the corner. Chewbacca steps in front
of his son to protect them. Han Solo jumps out,
and the stormtrooper trips over a pile of logs and
(41:52):
falls over the balcony and special so they wouldn't even
have not only could he not shoot first with Grido,
but they couldn't even have him like wrestle the stormtrooper
and throw him off. He trips over a log and
Han Solo has his hands thrown up like wasn't me?
It might as well have been a banana peal, you know.
(42:12):
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.
It's a perfect way to end it. So that's uh
that that guy basically represents the end of the Imperial
threat for the rest of Life Day. And um. We
(42:35):
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 because my mind is still having trouble like wrapping
(42:56):
around this and then um, Princess Leah comes out with
C three p O is Mark Hamill there, the whole
gangs there, if okay, the whole gangs there. And then
they all gather around to hear a great quote from
Princess Leiah, which we will read um verbatim. This holiday
is yours, but we all share with you the hope
(43:18):
that this day brings us closer to freedom, into harmony,
and to peace. No matter how different we appear, we're
all the same in our struggle against the powers of
evil and darkness. I hope that this day will always
be a day of joy in which we can reconfirm
our dedication and our courage, and more than anything else,
our love for one another. This is the promise of
the Tree of Life que Song, right, And we should
(43:41):
also point out the Tree of Life has never been
mentioned up to this point. It's a sudden appearance at
the end. And when you say queue song by que Song,
you mean Princess Leia starts singing, yeah. And apparently that
was one of the big contingencies on Carrie Fisher being involved.
She's going through as where she was like, I kind
of like singing. Bruce Valanche calls it her Joni Mitchell period. Yeah,
(44:04):
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've written reviews
of this. It's really obvious that she possibly smoked a
(44:24):
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 Leiah is singing. And actually, Bruce
Valanche had a really great quote too. He says that, um,
she very much wanted to show this side of her talent,
and there was general dismay because this was not what
(44:45):
we wanted Princess Leia to be doing. 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. So along the way, the director
original director quit, a new director, Steve Binder, was hired
to finish the job and bring it in uh, and
(45:07):
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 travesty, obviously, if you haven't noticed
(45:30):
that by now, Critics hated it. Star Wars fans really
hated it. Everybody hate The people who were in it
hated it. Lucas hated it. Even Harvey Corman secretly hated it.
Even Harvey Kitel hated Actually he loved it. But Lucas
has been asked over the years about it a lot,
and he doesn't talk about it much. But in two
(45:50):
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 CBT. Uh. We kind of just
let them do it. I believe that it was done
(46:12):
by I can't even remember who the group was, but
they were variety TV guys. I'm sure he remembers a
few of them. We let them use the characters and stuff,
and that probably wasn't the smartest thing to do, but
you learn from those experiences. I think they even used
some of the footage from the movie. At the end,
it looks like some space like a highlight reel the
(46:33):
gang well, and during the UM it looked like some
of the they had some insert shots of like Imperial
cruisers and Thai fighters and stuff that remember when when
Chewbacca like leans back and puts his hands behind it, Yeah,
that's in there. It's it's like a it's just a
highlight reel from the movie. Saying like I feel like this,
go see the movie. Well, and also that means it
(46:55):
doesn't match the look of the rest of it at all. Yeah,
that's just sort of inserted. They tried, definitely try um
and George Lucas is totally full of it, because in
seven he told star Log magazine that the Christmas Special
would be out on video cassette very soon, and in
two thousand seven, two years after that quote, you just
read where he's like, I don't even know what you're
(47:15):
talking about basically. Um. He apparently considered releasing the Christmas
Special as a bonus on the UM the DVDs of
the first three right, but did not did and apparently
Carrie Fisher told Lucas that if you want me to
do U DVD extras, commentary commentary, then I want a
(47:36):
clean original copy of the Holiday Special, So why go
ahead so I can play at parties when I want
people to leave. It's pretty great. It is so uh
and there is one of those clean copies is floating
around out there, so you can watch this in it
in its entirety. Some of it, like the cartoon, was
(47:56):
removed due to copyright infringement and that kind of stuff,
but as is the case with the rest of the Internet,
you can just go find it elsewhere and piece it together.
There's also the original ads that aired in Baltimore. Yeah,
that are just fascinating. Those are always fun GM ads
where one of the guys who's in quality control is
(48:16):
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 and he's like,
that'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
(48:39):
it is out there because it it's a it's a
fun little stain that shouldn't be taken too seriously. I
think it adds to it actually, because it's campy and awful,
and I don't know somehow that enriches the rest of it.
I'm with you. Do you like it? Oh? Yeah? I
mean I watched the twice. Someone to't watched it a second,
(49:01):
I wouldn't have made it through the first time. Let
me take that back. I'm a pro, so I would
have made it through the first time. I wouldn't have
watched it the second time if I wasn't. There wasn't
something about it, and I figured out. I think the
thing that I liked 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.
(49:23):
She like her responses and everything is just awesome. I
think my favorite parts are uh, well, there's a great
Wilhelm screams 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
(49:44):
Itchy and Lumpy are have any exchange where Lumpy you
can make it out, goes yeah, yeah, yeah, but it's
covered up. But someone was like, we have to have
at least one exchange where you sort of know what
they're saying, 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.
(50:05):
There's one other thing that I figured out from watching this.
What's that it's not readily apparent the whole thing is
made all the more odd, and that there's situation after
situation after situation where we, as normal audiences, were trained
to expect the laugh track, but there's not a laugh track.
Had there been a laugh track, it what it might
(50:25):
have been less bizarre, But the fact that it's missing
just makes your agitates the mind. So it's this whole
additional element that it is weird. I never thought about that.
There's just weird moments of silence all throughout it. Yea,
like when Art Carney's doing this thing telling jokes. Okay,
I agree with you, Chuck. Don't take things too seriously.
(50:45):
I think that's the great lesson in this and then
that's the lesson of life day it is. And in
two thousand seven, Riff tracks Great Mystery Science Theater three
thousand guys Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, and Kevin Murphy uh
provided audio momentary for the full version of the special.
So try and go grab that if you can as well,
So you can't. It's on the site because it's great.
(51:06):
I think it's like eight bucks. And those guys are awesome,
and they are at least I think Corbett listens to us. So, hey, Corbett,
you got anything else? No, No, I think we did this.
There's some good stuff. Go read the Vanity Fair article
uh Han Solo Comedy Hour. There's a book called How
(51:26):
Star Wars Conquered the Universe that has a very interesting
chapter about this. That's where we found it asserted that
George Lucas never said that he would smash this thing
with a sledgehammer. Um. And there's also an entire website
dedicated to its Star Wars Holiday special dot com and
if you want to know more about the Star Wars
holiday special, we have a ton of heart Star Wars
stuff on how stuff Works by the way, Yeah, we
(51:48):
have cool, um sort of fun articles about the Death
Star and Lightsabers videos with the Holly Fry from stuff
you missed in history class. Yeah. Who she knows her stuff?
She does. Um. So you can just type Star Wars
in the search part how stuff works dot Com Andy
will bring up some cool stuff for you. Since I
said search bar, it's time for listener mail. Hey guys,
(52:09):
just finished listening to the Voytage Manuscript podcast. Found it's
super interesting, especially the theories on its definition or origin.
No Josh mention Chuck's theory, but being drug induced a
somewhat surprising or even unlikely given the language in the
manuscript follows linguistic laws only founded in the past one years.
But if you think about it, it's a tough. It's
tough to stray away from familiar structures, especially for something
(52:33):
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 to the conversation big thanks for all you guys do.
I found the podcast after moving to San Diego in
the last few years for some noise around my apartment,
(52:53):
so basically we were blocking out noise. We do that
from Jill 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 listen to hundreds and will continue
to listen to hundreds more. Keep on keeping on. That
is from Amy J. Moffett. Thanks a lot. Amy in
San Diego doesn't mean like place of the Whales and
(53:16):
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 Should Know.
You can send us an email The Stuff podcast at
how stuff Works dot com has always joined us at
at home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
(53:42):
Is it how Stuff Works dot Com
Welcome to you stuff you should know Frondhouse Stuff Works
dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Clark with Charles W. Chuckers Bryant and Jerry Jerome Role.
And uh, it was the Wookie mother. Yeah, Mala, that
(00:24):
was the Wookie wife. Oh and mother. Yeah sure, Chebacca's
mom is not with them any longer. She left. She
was not about to appear in that. She went out
the window. I'm excited about this. I have to say
we should say Happy Star Wars Day. Yeah, today is
um December. Um, I have my opening night tickets? Do
(00:48):
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
got I'm 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
(01:11):
still going fresh. I'm an ostrich. Yeah you black yourself out, Yeah,
you go dark. I moved myself go to sleep, faith,
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
(01:34):
missed Life Day though, so happy belated Life Day. Are
they celebrating it this year? No? Yeah, but it's every
three years. Mm hmm our cane man, nice job. Okay,
so it's every three years, started in nine eight. Let's
do the math, shall we? Mm hmmm, quick math break.
(01:55):
I believe that two thousand fourteen was the last Life Day. Man,
we just missed, and then again in seventeen. Okay, soeen
we'll celebrate Life Day. Will put on our red robes,
are ultralong, straight ironed wigs, and we'll celebrate Life Day
the way it was meant to. And if you have
no idea what we're talking about, we are talking about
(02:18):
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 their Quanta. Supposedly, it's sort of
like Earth Day too. They celebrate the diversity of their
ecosystem and also remembrance of the dead, and they also
give the gifts the fins. Basically, yeah, it's a it's
(02:41):
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 is become derided as
like one of the worst things that ever happened to
the Star Wars galaxy. Well, not only that, one of
(03:03):
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 who say that
haven't seen even a second of it. Yeah, however, I
watched it, uh when I was a kid, then again
(03:24):
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 mesmerizing, it really is. It's one of
those things that you start watching it and you want
to turn it off, but you want to see just
how absurd it can get. Almost Yeah, and it starts absurd,
it stays absurd. In the middle, it's increasingly more absurd,
(03:46):
it's a little less absurd, finishes super absurd. Yeah, it's
just a train wreck in every single sense of the
word to bottom. It's extraordinarily difficult to overstate how bad
this is. And some people have, you know, in researching this,
you read about it, you read descriptions of these things,
and it just can't possibly be gotten across until you
(04:07):
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 the years,
there have been many segments of it on YouTube from
badly VHS tapes, but there's one really pretty good version
(04:30):
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 basically be the
copy that the actual UM affiliate broadcast. It's like that
(04:50):
that quality compared to the other stuff floating around on YouTube,
clearly recorded on the r which we're really expensive, very expensive.
I did some calcula aiding on west Egg okay, UM,
so the average VCR went for about a thousand dollars.
There were brand new it's amazing thousand dollars in nine money,
so they're about thirty eight hundred dollars in two thousand
(05:10):
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. We need to
shout out some articles that we used for this. There's
great a great article in Vanity Fair called the Han
Solo Comedy Our exclamation Point by Frank did Jacomo. And
(05:33):
then there's uh, the Star Wars Holiday Special was the
worst thing on television ever by so when we kind
of know Alex Pasternack uh from Motherboard, yeah, which is
uh not wired, it's uh vice. We wrote a little
bit for Motherboard back then, and we had a call
that like we're like old Motherboard vets basically, and when
(05:53):
they're one more, there was another one and I don't
know who wrote this one, chuck Uh, Yeah, it's the
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. He didn't ever say that. No,
Okay that that sounded like something that people made up. Yes,
(06:16):
but if you go on the internet, you will quickly
believe that he did better. Apparently didn't. So let's I'm
sure he felt that way though, clearly because he did
appear on Robot Chicken and I think two thousand five
on the therapist couch talking about how much he hated
this special. Alright, so let's set the background, shall we
Shall we go back to summer, getting the old way
(06:37):
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. I
please forgive me if I urinate myself, no problem. Okay,
(07:00):
So what has happened is Star Wars has become a huge,
huge hit, seemingly out of nowhere, establishing George Lucas is
one of the brilliant young minds and filmmaking, even though
when his first movie it was his first huge, huge
breakout hit. Oh yeah, for sure, talk I mean talk
about a breakout hit like no one had ever seen
anything like it before. Two thousand one had come out
(07:22):
in the late sixties, but it wasn't it's still it
still isn't accessible to all audiences. You know, it's 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 Wars just changed
everything and it came on just like a hammer. Um,
(07:43):
there's a new hope by the way, yes, and then
then we're gonna get stuff wrong, nerds, So yes, just
go ahead and get your little fingers ready to email us,
like if it wasn't driven home that I'm not a
nerd by the fact that I don't have opening night
tickets or any tickets yet, give me a break, and
by proxy chuck to Okay. So, um, it's it's hard
(08:04):
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, George Lucas was he
(08:26):
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
(08:46):
all the rage right now. We have a we have
a graphic that's really awesome that we set aside just
for TV specials here at CBS. Why don't you let
us let's get together and do a Star Wars special.
That's right. Producers Gay R. Smith and Dwight him me on, Uh,
we're working over at CBS, and they said, this is
a great way to keep the spirit alive while you're
(09:08):
making your other movie. Maybe move some more toys, yeah,
which George Lucas got. So it was right before Thanksgiving,
and he said, there'll be a lot of people watching
TV um pre holiday season or I guess in the
holiday season. Well, the weekend before Thanksgiving, it's like everybody's shopping,
sitting around family like waiting to actually do stuff. That's right,
(09:30):
perfect time to broadcast something on TV. So Lucas says,
all right, let's do this. I don't have a ton
of time, but how about this. I'll get I'll get
a story together, and then you can go hire a
whiz bang team of of veteran writers and producers and
directors whatever genre you think is appropriate. And those are
the words that will haunch on George Lucas to his grave. Yeah,
(09:52):
so Lucas said, here's my idea. I wanted to be
based um on Wookies, and I wanted to take place
on home planet of Kazook or Wookie planet. See. Is
that you say ka zook? 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
(10:16):
got spell it k A s h y y y k,
which I mean. I guess that sounds like Chewbuck's planet sure,
also called G five Wookie planet see or Eaton is
a mid rim planet. Right. So the whole reason, apparently
that George Lucas was interested in featuring the Bookies was
it is what we in show business call low hanging fruit.
(10:39):
The reason why it was low hanging fruit was because
they had just established the different scenes that would make
the cut for Empire Strikes Back, and uh, what how
did you pronounce it? Again? Kazook. Kazook had not made
the cut. Uh. Even prior to this, apparently for a
new hope, George Lucas had whipped up a forty page
what's known is the Wookie Bible. It's like a forty
(11:02):
page supplement that's all about Kazook and Wookies and Chewbacca
and his family and everything about wookie. Um. Right, so
he's like, I've got this thing already. You know established
I love Wookies. Um, they didn't make the cut. I'm
a little sad about that. They're not gonna Kazook is
not gonna show up in an Empire Strikes Back. Let's
(11:23):
let's build the entire special around Wookies. It's basically the
one demand me George Lucas has. That's it. I'll be
totally hands off from this point on which 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 of
this Christmas special. Absolutely he was burned, and um, he
(11:46):
was iron grip after that on everything. So here's some
some of the folks behind it. Bruce Balanche, famous uh
TV writer. You've probably seen him on Hollywood Squares. Wasn't
he suspected of being Thomas pinch On for a while,
So I don't know, or was Thomas pinch On on
Hollywood Squares? I have no idea. I may be confabulating
(12:07):
some stuff confounding. Yeah, there's some con of some sort
going on that sounds like it. So Valanche was hired
as a writer. A guy named Lenny RiPPs 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 is Star Wars. How could
it lose? Famous last words? Who else was hired? There
(12:31):
was a husband and wife team, the welch Is, who
are the parents of of folk singer Gillian Welch. I'm
a big fan of and I had no idea that
her parents. They were producers slash songwriters of the day.
They were big on the variety show scene, which would
turn out to be a really key cog in this
(12:52):
whole experience. So I feel like, right about here, Jerry
should insert a needle coming off of our record sound effect. Okay,
thanks Jerry, So Chuck, you just said singer songwriters. What
would that have to do with Star Wars. Yeah, well, actually,
in this Star Wars holiday special for those of you
(13:12):
hadn't seen it, there are musical numbers. They decided from
the outset that there should be musical numbers. And the
reason that they decided that there should be musical numbers
is because the people who sold George Lucas, and at
the time it was started, the Star Wars Corporation was
what it was called um On. The idea of doing
this TV special was that everyone would love a variety show.
(13:35):
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 had come to an end. It was getting stale. Yeah,
(13:56):
we're talking to Carol Burnett show. One of my favorite
had just been canceled for eleven season. Sunny and Chair
had just had its last season. Yeah, I mean what else,
like he Hall was he I was still going on
probably think still on solid golden yet to come on
and take up the mantel that that would never write
(14:16):
a show. Oh, it was a little bit and there
was talking in between the songs. Remember the Mandrell's Sister show.
I never watched that one. Well, it was with that
country chic thing that happened. It was a big deal
in the It's kind of happening again. I think, oh,
because of that dude, the guy who won all the
c m A Awards. I don't know, he's like, he's
(14:38):
he came along. He's like, actually country. His dad's like
a coal miner for real from Kentucky. I think something. Yeah,
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 and I
guess that's probably where the country sheet came from, because
there was actually good country going on. Yeah, Johnny Cash
(15:01):
at a variety show. I knew they did like a
Sunday singing thing like out in Virginia. Yeah, he had
his own variety show. Was actually pretty good. There's some
like really great performances. Do you know how many nerds
are like get back to start war? I know, I'm
so sorry. Alright, So the Variety Show is is dying
sort of, and so they figured, what a great time
(15:21):
to take the biggest movie property on the planet and
wedge it into the Variety show milieu. I don't know
if wedge is the right word. I think maybe uh
nestle it in there and then start hitting it with
the blunt edge of an axe until it mashes into
that crevice. You know. That's because this is the time
(15:42):
when Fantasy Island had just started, um Mork and Mindy
was about to change things. Charlie's Angels was getting huge.
It basically television as we knew it from two whenever
the real world came along. Just escape as television is
what they called it was was starting and it was
the hip new thing. So basically, if they had turned
(16:04):
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 a quote from I think Lenny RiPPs, who
(16:24):
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, uh for Welcome to
the fillmore East. It was a concert documentary with Van
(16:46):
Morrison Van Morrison and the Birds in nineteen seventy one,
and he actually was at usc Film School at the
same time as Lucas, even though they didn't know each other.
And um, he only ended up directing about three segments
of the thing before he quit, yea, before he walked off.
Some say he was actually let go, but we'll get
to him in a minute and who replaced him. As
(17:08):
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, okay, alright,
(17:36):
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 Fischer, Peter Mayhew,
they had no grounds to refuse to be on this basically, yeah,
pretty much. They were not huge, huge stars, yet they
could throw their weight around and say this is terrible
(17:57):
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. Uh.
(18:24):
Was she on drugs at this point? She? If you
watch it, she's she's on drugs. Especially the ending scene.
Mark Campbell, it looks like he's happy to be there.
Actually he was fine, but apparently he said no, I'm
I'm not doing a musical number. And if you watch
his part, wedging a musical number in there would have
been even more painful. Um. But they everybody who was
(18:47):
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. Yeah. In fact,
in the opening uh credit sequence, they're showing the picture
that you know the faces of the people, and you
see Harrison Ford as if he's flying the Millennium Falcon,
and you can you can just hear the guy off
(19:08):
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 to what he's doing. Yeah,
it's pretty awesome. I felt bad for him so early
on Valanche and others did. Did you feel bad for him? Though? Really?
(19:30):
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
(19:53):
it up here. Here's the basic plot is Han Solo
is trying to get Chewbacca back to Kazook time for
life day so we can celebrate with his family. That's
the basis of the entire two US bases. The entire
two hours. They encounter a space battle and they're delayed,
and the next two hours are kind of what's going
(20:14):
on while the delay is happening. Back back on Kazook
because you hear, like, okay, well, Han Solo and Chewbacca
evading the Imperial Guard and all that stuff for two hours.
I would watch that. I would too. That's not what
they show. Killing time at the Wookie household, that is
what they show. That's what they do. It's people hanging
(20:35):
out waiting for Chewbacca, worrying about him, and then killing
time while they wait for him to come back. Literally,
so um and so hold on. So you say there's
a setup, right, Yeah, that's the initial setup and then chuck.
That's followed by this. Yeah, it's followed by literally ten minutes,
ten solid minutes of incomprehensible Wookie speak. So let's let's
(21:00):
join it for a second, shall we. Yeah, let's all
enjoy it. And again, you said ten minutes, and you're
(21:51):
not exaggerating, you're not being hyperbolic. You can time it.
That's it's ten minutes. Of Bookie's talking to each other
with no subtitles. Fortunately, I couldn't follow it at first,
Like I didn't even know who it was. I thought
it was might have been Chewbacca's mom and dad. Oh yeah,
that's a little brother. And I don't find out until
(22:11):
later when Mark Campbell shows up via skype call and says,
he really explains everything that had just happened, Like, you're
Chewbacca's father, Itchy, you'r Chewbacca's son, uh Lumpy Lumpy, and
you're Chewbacca's wife. Oh yeah, thank you. So before everybody
starts like freaking out, we know that that's actually their nicknames.
(22:35):
Their real names are. His father is h a ti
chick cook, a tchick cook, it's really hard to pronounce.
Mulatto Buck is his wife, and his son is lump
O war Rump but as named by Lucas. But yeah,
but Lucas also named him Lumpy Itchy and Mala so um.
(22:55):
They're all back there wringing their hands, trying to figure
out ways to pass the time until they get word
from Chewbacca that he's made it to uh what is it,
ketchuck kaz kazook Um just Ketchup, Ketchup or cats up
if you're fancy. Um. But Chewbacca is having trouble getting
(23:16):
back to Ketchuk because there's Kazook, 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, but we're seeing, like,
(23:36):
you know, these people's view of the universe. What about
back on Kazook. 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. Alright, So he realizes there's a problem Valanche.
He goes to Lucas and it's like, I don't know, man,
(23:58):
this is your world, but may not be the strongest
thing to do to set this in wookie Land and
have all this comprehensible 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
(24:21):
sounds like fat people having an orgasm. He goes, if
you want, you can set up a tape recorder in
my bedroom and I'll do all of the follying for it. Yeah.
He's a large guy, he is, so uh that's what
got the glacial stare. But Valanche later said that from this,
there was one development meeting that Lucas attended and it
was here's the Wookie Bible, tell me what you got.
(24:42):
And Valanche said he and the other writers and producers
and director were just kind of throwing ideas and George
Lucas would either say like, no, that doesn't work, give
him a glacial stare, or say yes, that's exactly it. Yes,
let's make this a variety show. Yeah. And there was
a little bit of um background there. The cantina players
(25:02):
in the band had appeared on other variety shows at
that point, and I think it went over fairly well,
just as a short segment on like the Richard Pryor
Variety Show or Donnie Marie um Man. There were a
lot of variety shows. But that's what I'm saying. It
was that was television. That's what you did. Like them.
(25:24):
The the show had its course and then it became
a variety show. It was just everybody love variety shows. Yea.
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.
(25:44):
It was creepy, this mind couple who had their own
variety show, and they figured these two will be great
because they are used to working without words, right, So,
and so there is a certain logic to the variety show.
It's not just all over the such, just that variety
shows were popular at the time. Somebody was like, well,
(26:04):
Wookie's you don't understand what they're saying. So this is
all going to be very physical. So these people who
who did what is it Shields in 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,
(26:25):
Well here's a fix, but that leads to another problem. Well,
we'll fix it with this, and and no one stepping
back and being like, all we've done is create a
series of problems that are going to come together and
make one extraordinarily large problem that will become legendary. No
one did that, and so the whole thing was was made.
That's right, and eventually airs on November seventy eight, a Friday,
(26:51):
at eight pm Eastern Time, and Nielsen ratings it attracted
thirteen million viewers, lost the set an hour just in
the US. It aired in six or seven countries total. Yeah,
but no one cares about that, I guess not because
none of those are on the internet. Uh. It finished
second to the Love Boat in the second I'm sorry
(27:12):
from eight to nine, and in the next hour actually
finished behind part two of a mini series about Pearl
Harbor starring Angie Dickinson. So it didn't even win their
respective hours. No, thirty million, that's that's not bad. The
thing is, apparently, if you look at the Nielsen ratings
graph for the first hour, Yeah we know about that graph.
It's okay, Yeah, we do. And then after a very
(27:36):
important part which we'll talk about soon. Um, it just
drops off at the end of the first hour, and
that actually probably made the executives at CBS cringe for
a number of reasons. Number one is this special was
originally supposed to just be an hour, but so many
advertisers wanted to sign on that they extended it to
two hours. And it shines through. You can totally tell
(28:00):
that this thing was never supposed to be. 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 in two hours it becomes one of
the worst things that was ever put on television. All right,
well let's take a break and then we'll talk a
little bit more about the actual Um even I don't
(28:22):
want to call it content, but it is content in
the strictest definitions. Right after this, alright, so the show itself,
(28:50):
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 it again we almost barely see Chewy. Yeah. The
rest is his family on because waiting for him to
come back for a life Day. Yeah. So, um, some
(29:10):
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. Apparently, he too was
like the only one on set that was bringing levity.
He was joking around and kind of kept spirits up.
(29:32):
Good for him, that's what I say. And he had
three three different parts. Yeah, he played uh well, I
don't even know the names. Actually, we could look him up,
but he played a He played a Julia child like cook.
There's an actual cooking segment, a long one, a very
long cooking segment where Chewbacca's wife Um makes Banta stew
(29:56):
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 forearmed Julia
childlike uh TV chef and I think it's Gormanda. It's
her name, Gormanda. That makes total sense. He also plays Um.
There's this one weird bit where Chewbacca's son tries to
(30:20):
figure out a way to trick the stormtroopers that the
Empire had come and kind of because of the blockade,
raided the house and other properties. So he tries to
trick them by I think rigging a calm link. Uh
to speak in a different voice. So he has to
watch the instruction manual. He watches an instruction video which
(30:41):
was Harvey Kitel as a robot. Oh, it would have
been wonderful of big Harvey Kitel. Did say, Harvey Carvey
Corman many murders someone in the middle of the instruction,
Great Harvey Corman. And then the final role he had
was as a a bar patron in the cantina that drinks.
(31:01):
He has a hole in the top of his head
like a volcano where he pours his drinks in. That's
how he drinks. And he he loves be Arthur. Did
we mention b Arthur was in it? Be Arthur is
not only in it, Chuck. She sings a song. She
does she is then to everyone she manages or maybe
owns the owner. Yeah, the what's the mas what Moss
(31:21):
def cantina? Uh? No, most def is a rapper. Oh, yeah,
I think you mean Moss Eisley. Yes, yes, that cantina.
She's the owner. Be Arthur is the owner, the Uthur
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,
(31:43):
and her song comes because um, they basically say, there's
a lockdown, so you gotta call last call um at
your bar. So she calls last call by singing a
song to everyone. Right, and again, we can't possibly have
the script lead anywhere else but Chewbacca's house while his
family waits for it. So all this takes place as
(32:05):
part of a public service announcement basically broadcast by the
Empire about how immoral life on tattooing is. So let's
go see what's going on in the mos Eisley Cantina
as it's being shut down for curfew. Alright, this is incomprehensible,
but it goes on. Um, so they're in it. There's
(32:27):
also Art Carney, yes, of the Honeymooners family, the star
of the whole thing. Really, he has the most lines,
I would say, the most comprehensible line, right, So he
plays a trader, a human trader. Um that is uh,
recently been with Han Solo and Chewy and actually gets
to Kazuok and says they're on the way. It's all good. Yeah,
(32:49):
a trade or not trade tour. Yeah, traders in trades
humans for you know, money. No, he he sells goods, yeah, trader.
He isn't trade humans. Yeah, he's in the human trade.
He No, he isn't. Really he trades humans like he
sells humans. I looked it up in the Star Wars
(33:11):
Encyclopedia said that he was in the human trade. So
in this Christmas special, apparently they sanitize his his background
because he's basically just selling like gadgets and novelties and
stuff like that to the Wookies and the Empire who
were occupying the area. Yes, he comes bearing gifts because
he's a friend of Chewbacca's family. Yeah, so he comes
(33:33):
bearing gifts. One of the gifts he gives is a
UM sort of like a little digital insert to a Oh,
I guess you would call it a virtual reality hair
dryer hair dryer, like a beauty shop hair dryer. Right.
He gives it to Grandpa Itchy. Grandpa Itchy um sits
(33:54):
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 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 you can't even say it's innuendo. It's too obvious
(34:17):
in overt for innuendo. Instead, it's just it's just it's
just gross. It's really gross. Um. Diane Carroll, yes she is, Um,
a Vegas staple shows up and starts basically tantalizing. Um.
Grandpa Itchy, who again, this is Chewbacca's elderly father, who
(34:40):
now engages in some sort of well he's he's watching
virtual reality pornography now, and this is a pretty lengthy
segment in and of itself. Well yeah, and she literally
says to him, now, I can see you're really excited. Yeah,
it's pretty rough to watch. Yeah, so then you've got
another musical number because also again he shutters, yeah, it's
(35:02):
really strange. All right, So there's also ah, I know,
it seems like we're jumping around, but it's it's 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
(35:25):
the hologram chessboard that they played in a New Hope,
basically kind of sets that up and says, here, just
play this. He pushes the button which is clearly a
nineteen seventies cassette recorder, and another uh like it's like
a circue to sol acid trip um gymnast routine happens
(35:47):
in front of the kid's eyes. And again this all
just it's not like it shows a snippet. They show
the entire segments, like five, six ten minutes long of
all of these things. So you would think, Okay, they've
gone to this hologram well a couple of times, why
not go to it again? Well they do. They do
to kill more time while the Imperial Guard is ransacking
(36:09):
their house. Um Art Carney apparently, I guess it's trying
to get one of the Imperial Guard, the leader, I think,
or one of the leaders who looks like somebody from
Space Balls by the way, very much so. Um and
the writer of the Vanity Fair article, by the way, said, um,
this this is so incomprehensible. The specialist George Lucas didn't
even have the Schwartz with him at the time. So anyway,
(36:33):
Art Carney's distracting this uh Imperial leader. Um while they're
ransacking the Wookiees 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
(36:55):
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 started
can tell um and again it is the whole lengthy song,
the whole thing. So every time that somebody's like we
need to escape mentally from what's going on here in
(37:17):
our house, let's go into the video world, it's not
just there and they don't cut back and forth. It's okay,
here's five minutes of Jefferson Starship performing this song. And
even the Jefferson Starship guys um were like, yeah, that's
sort of a weird trip, like we didn't get it,
but we did it right. They gave us some money
(37:38):
and some cocaine. Well probably, so we said, yeah, chuck.
I think though, um, there yet another segment like this
is actually widely regarded as the high point of the
whole thing. So there is a cartoon actually that lump
watch Yeah lumpies, like the Imperial Guard is still ransacking
(38:00):
my house. I think I'll entertain myself by watching a
cartoon on my little Um, I don't know what. I
guess it was an iPad and uh. He watches this
cartoon and it's it's actually remarkable for a number of reasons.
It's the best part of the whole special generally agreed
upon as such, but not just us. And it introduces
(38:20):
Boba Fett. It's the first time Boba Fett ever makes
an appearance in Star Wars Universe. Yeah, it's actually not
a bad And you can't find it in the the
one version I told you to watch. They removed it
for copyright, but they 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 key man or something even even
(38:41):
but it's even a little more artsy than that. Yeah,
but it does have a plot that you can follow
that makes sense as a Star Wars thing, And it
introduces Boba Fett like you said, and um, it's actually
not bad. It's like Luke and R two and C
three p O. Yeah, and there's like they crash on
a planet or something. Yeah, and Han and Jewry you're
in it. And it's the first time we see in
(39:01):
Darth Vader. It's the first time we see Boba Fett
and that he is uh, that he is just doing
whatever he can do for money, Like Luke trusts him
at first. C three p I was like, you're 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
(39:22):
allegory for George Lucas himself. Um. So the cartoon comes
and goes, and that was the thing that came at
about the end of the first hour mark and 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,
(39:43):
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 probably disturbed. Who knows. I just remember that. I
let 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 that cynicism had, you know,
(40:03):
become a thing in his life. Probably by then, didn't
that when cynicism kicks into Scott holding out the fourteen
fifteen Yeah maybe so so, um, Chuck, the whole thing
finally does in. And actually there's a guy. His name
is Nathan Raban, he writes over at the A V. Club.
He had a great quote. He basically said that one
of the great redeeming values of this um this special
(40:26):
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
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
(40:49):
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
is eventually Han Solo should we say spoiler alert? Eventually
Han Solo and Chewi make it to the planet. They
park on the far side of the planet because they
(41:10):
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
tree hut. Yeah, which way by the paintings that set
this up, I don't think we mentioned I don't even
(41:30):
call him Matt paintings. It looks like someone painted something
on the wall and they just like put a camera
in front of it. Yeah. So they get back and um, Chewbacca,
Han Solo hides around the corner. Chewbacca steps in front
of his son to protect them. Han Solo jumps out,
and the stormtrooper trips over a pile of logs and
(41:52):
falls over the balcony and special so they wouldn't even
have not only could he not shoot first with Grido,
but they couldn't even have him like wrestle the stormtrooper
and throw him off. He trips over a log and
Han Solo has his hands thrown up like wasn't me?
It might as well have been a banana peal, you know.
(42:12):
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.
It's a perfect way to end it. So that's uh
that that guy basically represents the end of the Imperial
threat for the rest of Life Day. And um. We
(42:35):
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 because my mind is still having trouble like wrapping
(42:56):
around this and then um, Princess Leah comes out with
C three p O is Mark Hamill there, the whole
gangs there, if okay, the whole gangs there. And then
they all gather around to hear a great quote from
Princess Leiah, which we will read um verbatim. This holiday
is yours, but we all share with you the hope
(43:18):
that this day brings us closer to freedom, into harmony,
and to peace. No matter how different we appear, we're
all the same in our struggle against the powers of
evil and darkness. I hope that this day will always
be a day of joy in which we can reconfirm
our dedication and our courage, and more than anything else,
our love for one another. This is the promise of
the Tree of Life que Song, right, And we should
(43:41):
also point out the Tree of Life has never been
mentioned up to this point. It's a sudden appearance at
the end. And when you say queue song by que Song,
you mean Princess Leia starts singing, yeah. And apparently that
was one of the big contingencies on Carrie Fisher being involved.
She's going through as where she was like, I kind
of like singing. Bruce Valanche calls it her Joni Mitchell period. Yeah,
(44:04):
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've written reviews
of this. It's really obvious that she possibly smoked a
(44:24):
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 Leiah is singing. And actually, Bruce
Valanche had a really great quote too. He says that, um,
she very much wanted to show this side of her talent,
and there was general dismay because this was not what
(44:45):
we wanted Princess Leia to be doing. 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. So along the way, the director
original director quit, a new director, Steve Binder, was hired
to finish the job and bring it in uh, and
(45:07):
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 travesty, obviously, if you haven't noticed
(45:30):
that by now, Critics hated it. Star Wars fans really
hated it. Everybody hate The people who were in it
hated it. Lucas hated it. Even Harvey Corman secretly hated it.
Even Harvey Kitel hated Actually he loved it. But Lucas
has been asked over the years about it a lot,
and he doesn't talk about it much. But in two
(45:50):
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 CBT. Uh. We kind of just
let them do it. I believe that it was done
(46:12):
by I can't even remember who the group was, but
they were variety TV guys. I'm sure he remembers a
few of them. We let them use the characters and stuff,
and that probably wasn't the smartest thing to do, but
you learn from those experiences. I think they even used
some of the footage from the movie. At the end,
it looks like some space like a highlight reel the
(46:33):
gang well, and during the UM it looked like some
of the they had some insert shots of like Imperial
cruisers and Thai fighters and stuff that remember when when
Chewbacca like leans back and puts his hands behind it, Yeah,
that's in there. It's it's like a it's just a
highlight reel from the movie. Saying like I feel like this,
go see the movie. Well, and also that means it
(46:55):
doesn't match the look of the rest of it at all. Yeah,
that's just sort of inserted. They tried, definitely try um
and George Lucas is totally full of it, because in
seven he told star Log magazine that the Christmas Special
would be out on video cassette very soon, and in
two thousand seven, two years after that quote, you just
read where he's like, I don't even know what you're
(47:15):
talking about basically. Um. He apparently considered releasing the Christmas
Special as a bonus on the UM the DVDs of
the first three right, but did not did and apparently
Carrie Fisher told Lucas that if you want me to
do U DVD extras, commentary commentary, then I want a
(47:36):
clean original copy of the Holiday Special, So why go
ahead so I can play at parties when I want
people to leave. It's pretty great. It is so uh
and there is one of those clean copies is floating
around out there, so you can watch this in it
in its entirety. Some of it, like the cartoon, was
(47:56):
removed due to copyright infringement and that kind of stuff,
but as is the case with the rest of the Internet,
you can just go find it elsewhere and piece it together.
There's also the original ads that aired in Baltimore. Yeah,
that are just fascinating. Those are always fun GM ads
where one of the guys who's in quality control is
(48:16):
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 and he's like,
that'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
(48:39):
it is out there because it it's a it's a
fun little stain that shouldn't be taken too seriously. I
think it adds to it actually, because it's campy and awful,
and I don't know somehow that enriches the rest of it.
I'm with you. Do you like it? Oh? Yeah? I
mean I watched the twice. Someone to't watched it a second,
(49:01):
I wouldn't have made it through the first time. Let
me take that back. I'm a pro, so I would
have made it through the first time. I wouldn't have
watched it the second time if I wasn't. There wasn't
something about it, and I figured out. I think the
thing that I liked 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.
(49:23):
She like her responses and everything is just awesome. I
think my favorite parts are uh, well, there's a great
Wilhelm screams 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
(49:44):
Itchy and Lumpy are have any exchange where Lumpy you
can make it out, goes yeah, yeah, yeah, but it's
covered up. But someone was like, we have to have
at least one exchange where you sort of know what
they're saying, 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.
(50:05):
There's one other thing that I figured out from watching this.
What's that it's not readily apparent the whole thing is
made all the more odd, and that there's situation after
situation after situation where we, as normal audiences, were trained
to expect the laugh track, but there's not a laugh track.
Had there been a laugh track, it what it might
(50:25):
have been less bizarre, But the fact that it's missing
just makes your agitates the mind. So it's this whole
additional element that it is weird. I never thought about that.
There's just weird moments of silence all throughout it. Yea,
like when Art Carney's doing this thing telling jokes. Okay,
I agree with you, Chuck. Don't take things too seriously.
(50:45):
I think that's the great lesson in this and then
that's the lesson of life day it is. And in
two thousand seven, Riff tracks Great Mystery Science Theater three
thousand guys Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, and Kevin Murphy uh
provided audio momentary for the full version of the special.
So try and go grab that if you can as well,
So you can't. It's on the site because it's great.
(51:06):
I think it's like eight bucks. And those guys are awesome,
and they are at least I think Corbett listens to us. So, hey, Corbett,
you got anything else? No, No, I think we did this.
There's some good stuff. Go read the Vanity Fair article
uh Han Solo Comedy Hour. There's a book called How
(51:26):
Star Wars Conquered the Universe that has a very interesting
chapter about this. That's where we found it asserted that
George Lucas never said that he would smash this thing
with a sledgehammer. Um. And there's also an entire website
dedicated to its Star Wars Holiday special dot com and
if you want to know more about the Star Wars
holiday special, we have a ton of heart Star Wars
stuff on how stuff Works by the way, Yeah, we
(51:48):
have cool, um sort of fun articles about the Death
Star and Lightsabers videos with the Holly Fry from stuff
you missed in history class. Yeah. Who she knows her stuff?
She does. Um. So you can just type Star Wars
in the search part how stuff works dot Com Andy
will bring up some cool stuff for you. Since I
said search bar, it's time for listener mail. Hey guys,
(52:09):
just finished listening to the Voytage Manuscript podcast. Found it's
super interesting, especially the theories on its definition or origin.
No Josh mention Chuck's theory, but being drug induced a
somewhat surprising or even unlikely given the language in the
manuscript follows linguistic laws only founded in the past one years.
But if you think about it, it's a tough. It's
tough to stray away from familiar structures, especially for something
(52:33):
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 to the conversation big thanks for all you guys do.
I found the podcast after moving to San Diego in
the last few years for some noise around my apartment,
(52:53):
so basically we were blocking out noise. We do that
from Jill 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 listen to hundreds and will continue
to listen to hundreds more. Keep on keeping on. That
is from Amy J. Moffett. Thanks a lot. Amy in
San Diego doesn't mean like place of the Whales and
(53:16):
German or something like that. Uh Yeah. If you want
to get in touch of this, you can tweet to
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You can send us an email The Stuff podcast at
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(53:42):
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