December 24, 2022 • 54 mins
Long ago, in a galaxy not so far away, George Lucas allowed the Star Wars Holiday Special to be made. What happened on the night of November 17, 1978 can never be fully explained, but we make our best effort in our annual special edition of SYSK. May the force be with us all.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ho ho ho, and welcome to the annual Star Wars
Holiday Special Select episode release. It's that time of year again,
and now that we're airing this episode, the holiday season
can officially officially begin as of today. We hope this
select finds you and yours warm and totally overwhelmed by
a tidal wave of glad tidings from us at SYSK
(00:22):
to you. Happy holidays. May they now begin in earnest.
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W.
(00:45):
Chuckers Bryant and Jerry Jerome Roland. Who's the Wookie mother? Yeah? Mala,
that was the Wookie wife. Oh and mother? Yeah? Sure.
Chewbacca's bomb 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
(01:08):
say we should say Happy Star Wars Day. Yeah, today
is um December seventeenth. I have my opening night tickets?
Do you really sure? Wow? You know? I you into it? Oh? Yeah,
well I will definitely go see it in the theater.
But um, why won't be the opening night? Sure? I've
(01:30):
gotten really adept at like ignoring spoilers, people talking about
stuff all like, so I can I could conceivably see
this movie a month after it comes out and still
going fresh. Yeah it's I'm an ostrich. Yeah you black
yourself out. Yeah, you go dark I do. I make
(01:50):
myself go to sleep face, you go to the dark side.
I've been there a while now. Uh well, Happy Star
Wars Day though, I'm sure that I think this pairs
nicely with Chris Smiths Star Wars Day. It's all come together. Yes, Um,
we already missed Life Day though, so happy belated Life Day.
Are they celebrating it this year? November seventeenth? Yeah, but
(02:10):
it's every three years. M hmm, our cane yeah, man job, Okay,
so it's every three years, started in nineteen seventy eight.
Let's do the math, shall we m? Quick? Math break?
I believe that twenty fourteen was the last Life Day. Man,
(02:30):
we just missed it, and then again in twenty seventeen. Okay,
so twenty seventeen we'll celebrate Life Day. We'll put on
our red robes, our ultralong, straight ironed wigs, sure, and
we'll celebrate Life Day. The way it was meant to. Yes,
and if you have no idea what we're talking about,
we are talking about Life Day, which is a celebration,
(02:51):
uh that Wookies in the Star Wars universe have every
three years. Yeah. It's like their Christmas, Yeah, or their
Quanza there. Supposedly, it's sort of like Earth. They two.
They celebrate the diversity of their ecosystem and also remembrance
of the dead, and they also give the gifts. They're
like the Finns basically. Yeah, it's it's a very interesting
(03:12):
part of the Star Wars canon. It is, and it's
almost entirely made up, dashed off you could possibly say,
by George Lucas in the seventies. Yeah, and it's the
basis of what has become derided as like one of
the worst things that ever happened to the Star Wars galaxy. Well,
not only that, one of the worst things ever aired
(03:34):
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. Yeah, However, I watched it when I
was a kid, then again this week. Yeah, and you
(03:55):
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. Yeah, it's increasingly more absurd, it gets a
(04:17):
little less absurd, finishes super absurd. Yeah. It's just a
train wreck in every single sense of the word. Talk
to bottom. It's extraordinarily difficult to overstate how bad this is. Yeah,
and some people, you know, in researching this, you read
about it, you read descriptions of these things, and it
just can't possibly be gotten across until you see it.
(04:38):
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 dubbed VHS tapes,
but there is one really pretty good version of it
(05:01):
in full, brought to you by a w HIO Dayton,
Ohio channel seven. Who because that flashes up on the
screen periodically. Man, it is high quality. It looks good.
It has to basically be the copy that the actual
affiliate broadcast. Yeah, it's like that, that quality compared to
(05:22):
the other stuff floating around ninety two. It's clearly recorded
on a nineteen seventy eight PCR, which we're really expensive,
very expensive. I did some calculating on west Egg. Okay,
so the average VCR went for about one thousand dollars.
There were brand new it's amazing one thousand dollars in
nineteen seventy eight money. So they were about thirty eight
hundred dollars in twenty fourteen money. Crazy. Luckily there were
(05:43):
some rich people out there recording this stuff, and the
wealthy have saved us all again, yes, yet again, as
they always do. Yes, we need to shout out some
articles that we use for this. There's great a great
article in Vanity Fair called the Han Solo Comedy Hour
X Glamation Point Yes by Frank D. Jacomo. And then
(06:03):
there's the Star Wars Holiday Special was the worst thing
on television ever by someone we kind of know, Alex Pasternak. Yeah,
from Motherboard, Yeah, which is not wired. It's a vice. Yes,
we wrote a little bit for Motherboard back then and
we had a call without like we're like old Motherboard vets, yeah, basically,
and when they're one more, there was another one and
(06:26):
I don't know who wrote this one. Chuck uh, yeah,
it's the titles the Star Wars Holiday Special. George Lucas
wants to smash every copy of with a sledgehammer, which
was a famous quote 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,
(06:46):
but if you go on the internet you will quickly
believe that he did. Sure apparently didn't. So I'm sure
he felt that way though, clearly, you know, because he
did appear on Robot Chicken and I think two thousand
and five on the Therapist Couch talking about how much
he hate did the Speci show. All right, so let's
set the background, shall we Shall we go back to
nineteen seventy seven, Yeah, summer getting the old wayback machine,
(07:07):
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. So what has
(07:31):
happened is Star Wars has become a huge, huge hit,
seemingly out of nowhere. Yeah, establishing George Lucas is one
of the brilliant young minds in filmmaking. Even though it
was in his first movie, it was his first huge,
huge breakout hit. Oh yeah, for sure. Don't mean to
talk about a breakout hit like no one had ever
seen anything like it before two thousand and one had
(07:52):
come out in the late sixties. Yeah, but it wasn't
it still isn't accessible to all audiences, you know. Yeah,
it's kind of a rebral 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. Yeah, um, a new hope by the way, yes,
(08:15):
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, okay,
and by proxy Chuck too, Okay, thank you. So um,
it's it's hard to state how great Star Wars was
(08:37):
in everyone's mind. Yeah right. Bill Murray came out with
that lounge singer Star Wars thing. Yeah, 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. Yeah right. So by
the following year, George Lucas was he wanted to figure
out a way to keep audiences just to engaged with
(09:00):
the whole Star Wars franchise that he was just starting
to build. But he knew the Empire Strikes Back was
a couple more years out, sure, so um he I
think he was approached by some TV executives who said,
have you considered doing some sort of TV special? They're
all the rage right now. We have a we have
a graphic that's really awesome that we set aside just
(09:22):
for TV. Specials here at CBS. Why don't you let
us let's get together and do a Star Wars special.
That's right, producers Gary Smith and Dwight Himeon, we're working
over at CBS, and they say, this is a great
way to keep the spirit alive while you're making your
other movie. Maybe move some more toys. Yeah, which George
(09:42):
Lucas got to cut. So it was right before Thanksgiving,
and he said there'd be a lot of people watching
TV pre holiday season, or I guess in the holiday season. Well,
the weekend before Thanksgiving, it's like everybody's shopping, sitting around
family like waiting to actually do stuff. That's right, perfect
time to broadcast something on TV. So Lucas says, all right,
(10:03):
let's do this. I don't have a ton of time,
but how about this. I'll get I'll get a story
together and then you can go hire a whiz bang
team of veteran writers and producers and directors whatever genre
you think is appropriate. And those are the words that
will haunt George Lucas to his grave. Yeah. So Lucas said,
(10:24):
here's my idea. I want it to be based on
Wookie's and I want it to take place on their
home planet of Kizuk or Wookie Planet C. Is that
how you say kazuk? That's how it's pronounced in the
episode the Holiday Special, but it's also pronounced different ways
other times. I would have pronounced that cash E E
(10:46):
got spell it k A s h y y y
k yeah, which I mean. I guess that sounds like
Chewbacca's planet sure also called G five six twenty three.
Wookie Planet C or edon is a mid rim planet. Right.
So the whole reason apparently that George Lucas was interested
in featuring the Wookies was it is what we in
(11:06):
show business call low hanging fruit. The reason why it
was low hanging fruit was because they had just established
the different scenes that would make the cut for Empire
Strikes Back. Yeah, and how did you pronounce it? Again?
Kaz Kazuok had not made the cut. Even prior to this, apparently,
(11:26):
for a new hope, George Lucas had whipped up a
forty page what's known as the Wookie Bible. It's like
a forty page supplement that's all about Kazuok and Wookies
and Chewbacca and his family and everything about wookieedom. Right.
So he's like, I've got this thing already. You know
established I love Wookies. They didn't make the cut. I'm
(11:48):
a little sad about that. They're not gonna kazuk is
not gonna show up in an Empire strikes back. Let's
let's build the entire special around wookies. It's basically the
one demand me, George Lucas y. Yeah, that's it. I'll
be totally hands off from this point on which he
kind of was. He totally wasn't. It was actually this
experience that apparently taught him to be the very hands
(12:09):
on person that he is famous for being. It came
out of this Christmas special. Absolutely, he was burned and
he had an iron grip after that on everything. So
here's some some of the folks behind it. Bruce Valanche,
famous TV writer. You probably seen him on Hollywood Squares.
Wasn't he suspected of being Thomas Pinchon for a while? Oh?
(12:31):
I don't know, Or was Thomas Pinchon on Hollywood Squares?
I have no idea. I maybe confabulating some stuff confounding. Yeah,
there's some kind of some sort going on. It sounds
like it. Yeah, 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
(12:51):
he does. His first quote was, we were really excited
because this is Star Wars. How could it lose? Yeah?
Famous last words? Who else was hired? There was a
husband and wife team, the Welch's. Yeah, who are the
parents of folk singer Gillian Welch. I'm a big fan
of and I had no idea that her parents. They
(13:14):
were producers slash songwriters of the day. They were big
on the variety show scene, which would turn out to
be a really key cog in this whole experience. So
I feel like a right about here, Jerry should insert
a needle coming off of a record sound effect. Yeah, okay,
thanks Jerry, So Chuck, you just said singer songwriters. Yeah,
(13:36):
what would that have to do with Star Wars? Yeah? Well, actually,
in this Star Wars Holiday special, for those of you
who hadn't seen it, there are musical numbers. They decided
from the outset that there should be musical numbers. And
the reason that they decided that there should be musical
numbers is because the people who sold George Lucas and
at the time it was Star the Star Wars Corporation
(13:57):
was what it was called. Yeah, on the idea of
doing this TV special was that everyone would love a
variety show. Yeah, it was the seventies. Great idea, let's
do a variety show. The problem was this, Apparently George
Lucas didn't watch enough TV and he also overly trusted
people who talk to him. Sure, because by nineteen seventy eight, yes,
variety shows had dominated television for over ten years, but
(14:23):
it had come to an end. It was getting stale. Yeah,
we're talking. Carol Burnett Show, one of my favorites had
just been canceled after eleven seasons, a big red flag.
Sonny and Chair had just had its last season. Yeah,
I mean what else, Like he Hall was tall was
still going on probably, I think he was still on
solid Gold. It yet to come on and take up
(14:44):
the mantel. That wouldn't a variety show. Oh that was
a little bit and there was talking in between the songs. Yeah,
I remember the Mandrell's Sisters show. I never watched that one. Well,
it's with that country chic thing that happen. Yeah, it
was a big deal in this it's kind of happening again.
I think, oh, because of that dude, the guy who
(15:04):
won all the CMA Awards. I don't know, he's like
he's he came along and he's like, actually country. His
dad's like a coal miner for real from Kentucky. I think,
I know you mean Chris something. Yeah, yeah, he is good.
He's come along and been like, what are you guys doing? Well,
there's a revival in like good country music again. That's great,
like in the tradition of Merle Haggard and Shash And
(15:26):
I guess it's probably where the Country sheet came from,
because there was actually good country going on. Yeah, Johnny
Cash out of a variety show, did he really? Oh yeah,
I knew they did, like a Sunday singing thing like
out in Virginia. Yeah, he had his own variety show
is actually pretty good. There's some like really great performances.
Do you know how many nerds are like, get back
to Star Wars. I know, I'm so sorry. All right,
(15:47):
So the Variety Show is is dying sort of, and
so they figure what a great time to take the
biggest movie property on the planet and wedge it into
the Variety Show. Milieu. I don't know if wedge is
the right word. I think maybe nestle it in there, yeah,
and then start hitting it with the blunt edge of
an axe until it mashes into that crevice. You know.
(16:11):
Because this is the time when Fantasy Island had just started,
Mork and Mindy was about to change things, Charlie's Angels
was getting huge. It basically television as we knew it
from nineteen eighty two, whenever the real world came along. Yeah,
just escape as television is what they called. It was
starting and it was the hip new thing. So basically,
(16:33):
if they had turned Han Solo and Princess Leia 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 genre of television,
and they hired the best in the business. Yeah, like
there was there was. There was a quote from I
(16:53):
think Lenny RiPPs who was saying, like we had literally
a dream team, a variety show dream team, and everybody
was good, but there were probably no bad welders on
the Titanic. He there, That's a great quote. Yeah, the
guy they hired to direct it initially was a dude
named David A. Coomba, and he had made his name
for Welcome to the Fillmore East. It was a concert
(17:15):
documentary with Van Morrison Van Morrison and the Birds in
nineteen seventy one, and he actually was at usc Film
School at the same time as Lucas, even though they
didn't know each other. And he only ended up directing
about three segments of the thing before he quit. Yet
before he walked off, some say he was actually let go,
but we'll get to him in a minute and who
(17:37):
replaced him. Okay, as we get along down this gross road,
well let's let's take a little break because I'm overly excited. Okay,
(18:06):
all right, so we've established most of the main players.
Well we'll get to a few more. We should point
out that um Mark hamill And and Harrison Ford and
Carrie Fisher, Peter Mayhew, they had no grounds to refuse
to be on this basically, yeah, pretty much. They were
not huge, huge stars. Yet they could throw their weight
(18:26):
around and say this is terrible 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. Sure,
back at the studio they could still be bossed around
and this was 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.
(18:49):
Oh no, Um, Princess Leia is clearly on drugs. Uh
was she on drugs at this point? She? If you
watch it, she's she's on drugs. Especially the ending scene.
Mark Hambell, it looks like he's happy to be there.
Actually he was fine, but apparently he said, no, I'm
not doing a musical number. Yeah, and if you watch
(19:10):
his part, wedging a musical number in there would have
been even more painful. Sure, but they everybody who was
part of the actual Star Wars franchise that wasn't wearing
like a full body costume. Yeah, it was like I
really wish I wasn't here. And you can tell, oh yeah.
In fact, in the opening credit sequence, they're showing the picture,
(19:32):
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 screen
going now look at the camera and just give a nod.
Just look at the camera and give a nod, and
he finally you can tell he's pissed off, and he
looks up at the camera and just sort of smirks yeah,
and points at the camera like okay, I'm looking at
the camera, and then goes back to what he's doing. Yeah,
(19:53):
it's pretty awesome. I felt bad for him so early
on Valanche and others did. Did you feel bad for him? Though? Really?
I mean, like, come on, it's Harrison Ford, it's Hans Solo.
He has to go do this for like five days. Yeah,
I felt terrible for him. I think it's hilarious that
they had to do this, especially now. Well, early on,
(20:13):
Valanche and others knew that they may be in trouble
because they decided not to subtitle any of the Wookie dialogue,
and they literally started after a brief opening scene setting
it up here. Here's the basic plot is Han Solo
is trying to get Chewbacca back to Kazuok in time
for Life Day so we can celebrate with his family.
(20:33):
That's the basis of the entire two hours. The basis
the entire two hours. They encounter a space battle and
they're delayed, and the next two hours are kind of
what's going on while the delay is happening back on
Kazuk because you hear like, okay, well Han Solo and
Chewbacca evading the Imperial Guard and all that stuff for
(20:54):
two hours. I would watch that, Sure, I would too. Yeah,
that's not what they show. Killing time at the Wookie household,
that is what they show. Yeah, that's what they do.
It's people hanging out waiting for Chewbacca, worrying about him, yeah,
and then killing time while they wait for him to
come back. Yeah. Literally, so um and so hold on.
So you say there's a setup, right, Yeah, that's the
(21:17):
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 join it for a second,
shall we. Yeah, let's all enjoy it. And again, you
(22:19):
said ten minutes, and you're not exaggerating, you're not being hyperbolic.
You can time it. That's it's ten minutes of Wookie's
talking to each other with no subtitles. Fortunately, I couldn't
follow it at first, Like I didn't even know who
it was. I thought it was might have been Chewbacca's
mom and dad. Oh yeah, that's a little brother. And
(22:40):
I don't find out until later when Mark Camill shows
up via skype call and says, he really explains everything
that had just happened, Like, you're Chewbacca's father, right, Itchy,
your Chewbacca's son, Lumpy Lumpy, and you're Chebacca's wife. Oh mama, yeah,
thank you. So before everybody starts like freaking out, we
(23:02):
know that that's actually their nicknames. Their real names are.
His father is a tichik cook a cook it's really
hard to pronounce. Mulatto buck is his wife, and his
son is Lumpo or rump but as named by Lucas.
But yeah, but Lucas also named him Lumpy, Itchy and Malaya.
(23:24):
So um. 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? Ketchukaz kazuk um just like ketchup, ketchup
or cats up if you're fancy um. But Chewbacca is
(23:45):
having trouble getting back to ketchuk because there's kazuk because
there's a blockade by the Empire and they're looking for rebels,
specifically Chewbacca, who I didn't realize this. He's the most
famous Wookie of all. Did you know that? Yeah, of
course I didn't know that. Well, I mean he's the
only one that really appears in the movies. I mean
(24:06):
we're seeing, like, you know, these people's view of the universe.
What about back on Kazook. Yeah, he might have just
been a fly by night wookie, right, Yeah, but not
the case very famous wookie. Yeah, and he really loved it,
like soak in his fame. All right, So he realizes
there's a problem Valanche. He goes to Lucas and was like,
(24:27):
I don't know, man, this is your world, but it
may not be the strongest thing to do to set
this in wookie Land and have all this incomprehensible dialogue.
And he says he was met with a glacial stair. Well,
he put it a little differently than that. Well, he
said glacial stair. He did. The glacial stair that he
got was for this quote. He said, these people just
(24:50):
talk and what sounds like fat people having an orgasm. Yeah.
He goes, if you want, you can set up a
tape recorder in my bedroom and I'll do all of
the follying for it. Yeah. He's a large guy, he is,
so that's what got the glacial stare. But Valanche later
said that from this, there was one development meeting that
Lucas attended, and it was here's the Wookie Bible, tell
(25:11):
me what you got. And Valanche said he and the
other writers and producers and director were just kind of
throwing ideas, and George Lucas would either say like, no,
that doesn't work, give him a glacial stare, or say, yes,
that's exactly it. Yes, let's make this a variety show. Yeah.
And there was a little bit of background there. The
(25:31):
cantina players in the band had appeared on other variety
shows at that point. Yeah, and I think it went
over fairly well, just as a short segment on like
the Richard Pryor Variety Show or Donnie Marie yep Man.
There were a lot of variety shows. But that's what
I'm saying. It was that was television. That's what you did,
(25:52):
like the breaks. The show had its course, and then
it became a variety show. It was everybody love variety shows. Yeah.
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, had you? Oh yeah, I
(26:14):
watched it. It was creepy, this mime 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 that's just that variety shows were popular. Yeah,
at the time, somebody was like, well, Wookie's you don't
(26:36):
understand what they're saying. So this is all going to
be very physical. So these people who who did what
is it? Shields and Yarnell. Yeah, that's a perfect choice.
That that makes complete sense. You can see this whole
this whole process of leading up to the point where
it was produced and shot and everything. Yeah, a series
of like, oh we have this problem, well here's a fix. Yeah,
(26:57):
but that leads to another problem. Well we'll fix it
with this, 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 made. That's right, and it
eventually airs on November seventeenth, nineteen seventy eight, a Friday,
(27:21):
at eight pm Eastern time. That's right, And according to
CBS Nielsen ratings, it attracted thirteen million viewers lost the
second hour just in the US. It aired in six
or seven countries total. Yeah, but no one cares about that,
I guess not because none of those are on the internet.
You know. It finished second to the Love Boat in
(27:42):
the second I'm sorry, from eight to nine, and in
the next hour I 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, thirteen million,
that's that's not bad. The thing is, apparently if you
look at the Nielsen ratings graph for the first hour,
Yeah we know about that graph, It's okay, Yeah, we do.
(28:04):
And then after a very important part, which we'll talk
about soon, it just drops off at the end of
the first hour, and that actually probably made the executives
at CBS cringe for a number of reasons. Number one
is this special was originally supposed to just be an hour,
but so many advertisers wanted to sign one that they
(28:25):
extended it to two hours. And it shines through. You
can totally tell that this thing was never supposed to
I think an hour might have been stretching it, to
tell you the truth. Yeah, it's thirty minutes of content,
forty if you're generous, an hour and then two hours.
It becomes one of the worst things that was ever
(28:45):
put on television. All right, Well, let's take a break
and then we'll talk a little bit more about the
actual even don't want to call it content, but it
is content in the strictest definitions. Right after this, all right,
(29:20):
so the show itself, we've given you the main plot line,
which again is that Chewy is trying to get back
to his home planet to celebrate life Day with his family. Right,
that's it, And again we almost barely see Chewy. Yeah,
the rest is his family on because look waiting for
him to come back for a life Day. Yeah. So, um.
(29:41):
Some of the various things they did there were guest stars.
There was Harvey Corman from the Carol Burnette Show. Okay,
one of my all time favorites him or Carol Carol
Burnette show both. He's great. Yeah, he actually if you
watch what he's doing, you're like, this is comedy genius
for sure. Apparently he too was like the only one
on set that was bringing levity. He was joking around
(30:02):
and kind of kept spirits up. Good for him, that's
what I say. And he had three, three different parts. Yeah,
he played uh well, I don't even know the names. Actually,
we could look him up, but he played a he
played a Julia child like cook. There's an actual cooking segment,
a long one, a very long cooking segment where Chewbacca's
(30:25):
wife makes Banta stew to kill some time, to kill
some time because there was waiting on her planet and
in our living room. Yeah, so Harvey Corman is in
Drag as a foe armed Julia childlike TV chef and
I think it's Gormanda. It's her name, Gormanda. That makes
total sense. Yeah, he also plays um. There's this one
(30:48):
weird bit where Chewbacca's son tries to figure out a
way to trick the stormtroopers that the Empire had come
and kind of because the blockade raided the house and
other properties, so he tries to trick them by I
think rigging a calm link to speak in a different voice.
So he has to watch the instruction manual. He watches
(31:10):
an instruction video which was Harvey Kitel as a robot. Oh,
it would have been wonderful of big Harvey Kitel. What
I'd say, Harvey Carvey Corman. Oh, many Kite murders someone
in the middle of the instruction grade Harvey Corman. And
then the final role he had was as a bar
patron in the cantina that drinks. He has a hole
(31:33):
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 be Arthur
was in it? Be Arthur is not only in it, Chuck.
She sings a song. She does. She is the unknownst
to everyone. She manages or maybe owns the owner. Yeah,
the what's the mos? What mos def cantina? Uh No,
(31:55):
most deaf is a rapper? Oh yeah, I think you
mean Moss Eisley. Yes, yes, that cantina. She's the owner.
Be Arthur is the owner. Be Arthur of the Golden Girls,
but in this case be Arthur of Maude because as
one of the people who wrote one of the articles
we based this on points out she's just basically playing
Maude as the owner of the cantina. Yeah, and her
song comes because they basically say there's a lockdown, so
(32:20):
you gotta call last call at your bar. So she
calls last call by singing a song to everyone. Right,
and again, we can't possibly have the script lead anywhere
else but Chewbacca's house while his family waits for it.
So all this takes place as part of a public
service announcement basically broadcast by the Empire about how immoral
(32:43):
life on Tattooen is. So let's go see what's going
on in the mos Eisley Cantina as it's being shut
down for curfew. Yeah, all right, this is incomprehensible, but
it goes on. So they're in it. There's also Art Carney, yes,
of the Honeymooners, finally the star of the whole thing. Really,
(33:05):
he has the most lines, I would say, the most
comprehensible line, right, Yeah, So he plays a trader, a
human trader that has recently been with Han Solo and
Chewy and actually gets to Kazuk and says they're on
the way, it's all good. Yeah, a trader, not trade tour. Yeah,
traders in trades humans for you know, money. No, he
(33:30):
sells goods. Yeah, a trader. He isn't trade humans. Yeah,
he's in the human trade. He No, he isn't really, Yeah,
he trades humans like he sells humans. Looked it up
in the Star Wars Encyclopedia said that he was in
the human trade. Huh so in this Christmas special, Yeah,
apparently they sanitized his background because he's basically just selling
(33:52):
like gadgets and novelties and stuff like that to the
Wookies and the Empire who were occupying the area. Yes,
he comes bearing gifts because he's a friend of Chewbacca's family. Yeah,
so he comes bearing gifts. One of the gifts he
gives is a sort of like a little digital insert
to a Oh, I guess you would call it a
(34:14):
virtual reality hair dryer hair dryer, like a beauty shop
hair dryer. Right. He gives it to Grandpa Itchy. Grandpa
Itchy sits under this hair dryer, pops in this digital cassette,
and it can only be described as softcore porn. Apparently,
the writers who were interviewed for this said that was
(34:37):
totally the intent. They were trying to get what amounted
to softcore porn that would pass the sensors. That's right.
So it's all you can't even say it's innuendo. It's
too obvious in overt for innuendo. Instead, it's just it's
just it's just gross. It's really gross. Diane Carroll, great singer,
(34:58):
Yes she is a Vegas staple, shows up and starts
basically tantalizing. M Grandpa Itchy, who again, this is Chewbacca's
elderly father who now engages in some sort of well
he's he's watching virtual reality pornography now, and this is
a pretty lengthy segment in and of itself. Well yeah,
(35:20):
and she literally says to him like, now I can
see you're really excited. Yeah, it's pretty rough to watch. Yeah,
So then you've got another musical number because also again
he shudders, Yeah, it's really strange. All right. So there's
also a I know, it seems like we're jumping around,
but it's it's so mind blowing, not like this is
(35:42):
pretty much like blow for blow. Um. Actually I forgot
earlier on in the in the special, there's one of
my favorite sequences is when Grandpa Itchy goes over to
Lumpy and basically sets up remember the hologram chessboard that
they played in a New Hope. Yeah, basically kind of
sets that up and says, here, just play this. He
(36:03):
pushes the button which is clearly a nineteen seventies cassette recorder,
and another like it's like a cirque desolate acid trip
gymnast routine happens in front of the kid's eyes. Yeah,
and again this all just it's not like it shows
a snippet. They show the entire segments, like five, six,
(36:27):
ten minutes long. Sure of all of these things. So
you would think, Okay, they've gone to this hologram well
a couple of times, why not go to it again?
Well they do. They do to kill more time. While
the Imperial Guard is ransacking their house. Art Carney apparently,
I guess, is trying to get one of the Imperial Guard,
(36:47):
the leader I think, or one of the leaders who
looks like somebody from Spaceballs, by the way, very much so. Yeah,
And the writer of the Vanity Fair article, by the way,
said this, this is so incomprehensible. The specialist George Lucas
didn't even have the Schwartz with him at the time.
So anyway, Art Carney's distracting this Imperial leader while they're
(37:10):
ransacking the Wookie's house Chewbacca's house with a hologram, and
this hologram, instead of being an acrobat or Diane Carroll
or any kind of porn or anything like that, is
Jefferson Starship. And they decide that they're going to play
Light the Sky on Fire, which apparently is about UFOs.
It's a little music video basically, it's a Yeah, it's
(37:33):
the predecessor to like video Kill the Radio Star, you
can tell. And again it is the whole lengthy song. Yeah,
the whole thing. So every time that somebody's like we
need to escape mentally from what's going on here in
our house, let's go into the video world, it's not
just and they don't cut back and forth. It's okay,
(37:57):
here's five minutes of Jefferson Starship performing this song. Yeah,
and even the Jefferson Starship guys m were like, yeah,
it's sort of a weird trip, like we didn't get it,
but we did it right. They gave us some money
and some cocaine. Well probably, so we said yeah, chuck,
I think though there yet another segment like this is
(38:18):
actually widely regarded as the high point of the whole thing.
Oh sure, so there is a cartoon actually, yeah, that
lump Lumpy watches Yeah lumpies, like the Imperial Guard is
still ransacking my house. I think I'll entertain myself by
watching a cartoon on my little um, I don't know what.
I guess it was an iPad and he watches this
(38:41):
cartoon and it's it's actually remarkable for a number of reasons.
It's the best part of the whole special. Yeah, generally
agreed upon as such, right, not just us. And it
introduces Boba Fett. It's the first time Boba Fett ever
makes an appearance in the Star Wars universe. Yeah, it's
actually not a bad And you can't find it in
the the one version I told you to watch. They
removed it for copyright, but they didn't watch a separate version, right,
(39:04):
you can find it on its own. Yeah, and it's
um it's very much reminiscent of like the cartoon style
of the day, like a he Man or something. Sure,
even even it's even a little more artsy than that. Yeah,
but it does have a plot that you can follow
that makes sense as a Star Wars thing. Yeah, and
it introduces Boba Fett, like you said, and it's actually
not bad. It's like Luke and R two and C
(39:26):
three po Yeah, and they're like they crash on a
planet or something. Yeah, and Han and chewhere you're in it.
And it's the first time we see in Darth Vader.
It's first time we see Boba Fett and that he
is that he is just doing whatever he can do
for money, right, Like Luke trusts him at first. C
three pos like you sure you should trust him this quick?
And he's like, oh, three po, you and your non
(39:47):
trusting ways, and then it turns out he's selling them
out to the dark side. So it's it's basically Boba
Fett is an allegory for George Lucas himself. Um. So
the cartoon comes and goes, and that was the thing
that came at about the end of the first hour
mark and after that everybody just turned off their television sets. Yeah,
(40:09):
I don't remember. Did you watch this when it came out? Yeah?
I remember watching it, but I don't remember much about it,
Like if I made it through at all, I mean
it was I was seven and it was on till ten,
so I probably didn't make it through it all. Yeah, um,
plus you're probably disturbed. Who knows, I just remember that.
I'll have to ask my brother. He might have a
memory of this. Oh, Betty does. I'm sure he met
(40:29):
everybody afterwards or something like that. You know, it has
a picture. Well, he was ten at that point, so
cynicism had, you know, become a thing in his life
probably by then. Sure didn't that when cynicism kicks into
Scott holding out the fourteen fifteen Yeah maybe so so um, chuck,
the whole thing finally does end. And actually there's a
guy his name is Nathan Raban, he writes over at
(40:51):
the av Club. He had a great quote. He basically
said that one of the great redeeming values of this
um this special is that it does eventually end. Yeah,
you know, 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
review of the Star Wars Holiday Special, because he goes
(41:12):
on to describe exactly what that must have been like
development meeting where the bag of cocaine is pacing back
and forth talking about what should happen. That's what it
feels like. But it doesn't, and it ends even more.
It takes this bizarre two hours and wraps it up
in just a nice bizarre bow. Yeah, so what happens
is eventually Han Solo should we say spoiler alert. Eventually
(41:37):
Han Solo and Chewy make it to the planet. They
park on the far side of the planet because they
know the Imperial forces are there and the exercise will
do Chewy good. Yeah, so they have to hike over there.
They eventually make it back home. They find a storm
the stormtroopers at their house, their tree hut. Yeah, which
way by the paintings that set this up, I don't
(42:00):
think we mentioned I don't even call him Matt paintings.
It looks like someone painted something on the wall and
they just like put a camera in front of it.
Pretty much. Yeah. So they get back and Chewbacca, Han
Solo hides around the corner of Chebacca steps in front
of his son to protect him. Han Solo jumps out
and the stormtrooper trips over a pile of logs and
(42:23):
falls over the balcony. And dies in a holiday special,
So they wouldn't even not only could he not shoot
first with Grido, but they couldn't even have him like
wrestle the stormtrooper and throw him off. He trips over
a log, right and Han Solo has his hands thrown
up like wasn't me? It might as well been a
banana peel, you know. But again, this is basically produced
(42:48):
by Vaudevillians starring vaudevillians. Why not have the one death
take place from basically what it mounts to somebody slipping
on a banana peel? Exactly, It's a it's a perfect
way to end it. So that's that guy basically represents
the end of the Imperial threat for the rest of
Life Day. Yeah. And we then see Life Day being celebrated,
(43:09):
which is celebrated by lots of wookies assembling in what
looks like a giant Olan Mills portrait. Yea, and all
of them are wearing red robes sor and I know
I'm up talking, and it's because my mind is still
having trouble like wrapping around us. And then Princess Leia
(43:30):
comes out with C three po is Mark Hamill. There
the whole gang Zerifi. Okay, the whole gangs there, and
then they all gather around to hear a great quote
from Princess Leia, which we will read verbatim. This holiday
is yours, but we all share with you the hope
that this day brings us closer to freedom, into harmony,
(43:52):
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
(44:13):
also point out the tree of Life has never been
mentioned up to this point, no idea what this takes
a sudden appearance at the end. And when you said
Q song, by Q song, you mean Princess Leia starts singing. Yeah.
And apparently that was one of the big contingencies on
Carrie Fischer being involved. Yeah, she's going through a phase
where she's like, I kind of like singing. Bruce Valancie
(44:33):
calls it her Joni Mitchell period. Yeah, And she somehow
convinced them to let her sing as Princess Leiah and
she does. And again I've said that she looks like
she's on drugs. This is the point where she really
does look like she's on drugs. And it's not just
me other writers who've written reviews of this. It's really
obvious that she possibly smoked a decent amount of pot
(44:57):
before she shot this, shot this, but she sings, Oh, okay,
it's fine. It's just the fact that Princess leigh is singing.
And actually, Bruce Valanche had a really great quote too.
He says that she very much wanted to show this
side of her talent, and there was general dismay because
this was not what we wanted Princess Leia to be doing. Yeah,
(45:19):
she did it anyway. So the whole thing ends with
her singing this song about life day, which is set
loosely to the John Williams Star Wars theme. Yeah. So
along the way, the director original director quit, A new director,
Steve Binder, was hired to finish the job and bring
it in, and he did over the original one million
(45:41):
dollar budget. Of course, always he did bring it in
and at this point George Lucas said he was he
was working on Empire Strikes Back. He 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 that by now. Critics hated it. Star
(46:04):
Wars fans really hated it. Everybody hate The people who
were in it hated it. Lucas hated it. Even Harvey
Corman secretly hated it. Yeah, even Harvey Keitel hated it.
Actually he loved it. But Lucas has been asked over
the years about it a lot, and he doesn't talk
about it much. But in two thousand and five, and
I don't buy this for a second, he says it
(46:26):
was an interview he said special from nineteen seventy eight.
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 CBS. Yeah, we kind of just let them
do it. I believe that it was done by I
can't even remember who the group was, but they were
(46:46):
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. Yeah, I think they even use some
of the footage from the movie. At the end. It
looks like some of the space like a highlight reel. Yeah,
the gang. Well, and during the um it looked like
(47:08):
some of the they had some insert shots of like
Imperial cruisers and Taie fighters and stuff that. Yeah, and
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 doesn't match the look of
the rest of it at all. Yeah, that's true. It's
(47:29):
just sort of inserted. They tried, They definitely tried. And
George Lucas is totally full of it, because in nineteen
eighty seven he told Starlog magazine that the Christmas Special
would be out on video cassette very soon. Yes, And
in two thousand and seven, two years after that quote,
you just read where he's like, I don't even know
what you're talking about. Basically, he apparently considered releasing the
(47:52):
Christmas Special as a bonus on the DVDs of the
first three right, but did not did and apparently Carrie
Fisher told Lucas that if you want me to do
DVD extras commentary, yeah, commentary, then I want a clean
original copy of the Holiday Special? Yes, so why go
(48:12):
ahead so I can play at parties when I want
people to leave. It's pretty great, it is so, and
there is one of those clean copies is floating around
out there, so you can watch this in its entirety.
Some of it, like the cartoon, was removed due to
copyright infringement and that kind of stuff, but as as
the case with the rest of the Internet, you can
(48:33):
just go find it elsewhere and piece it together. There's
also the original ads that aired in Baltimore. Yeah, that
are just fascinating. Yeah, those are always fun gm ads
where one of the guys who's in quality control is
he says, did you watch it? I don't think I
saw that. He goes, um, we really care about these
cars and that's no job, man, I'm a gm ad
(48:56):
and he's like, that's serious. They're trying to be hip. Yeah,
it's pretty good stuff. Here's my final thought on it.
I love it. It does not taint my Star Wars
experience or my love for the franchise. And I'm glad
it is out there because it's a it's a fun
little stain that shouldn't be taken too seriously. I think
(49:20):
it adds to it actually, because it's campy and awful. Yeah,
and I don't know somehow that enriches the rest of it.
I'm with you, you like it? Oh yeah, I mean
I watched it twice. I wouldn't watched it a second
I wouldn't have made it through the first time. Let
me take that back, as I'm a pro. Yeah, so
I would have made it through the first time. I
wouldn't have watched it a second time if I wasn't.
(49:41):
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. She like her responses and everything. It's just awesome.
I think my favorite parts are well there's a great
(50:03):
Wilhelm scream yes, trips over the law. Jerry would not
have noticed it. Uh. And then there's a part where
all the Wookie dialogue you can't understand, but there's clearly
one part where where Itchy and Lumpy are have any
exchange where Lumpy you can make it out, goes I
love you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I noticed that, but it's
(50:24):
covered up. But someone was like, we have to have
at least one exchange where you sort of know what
they're saying, or they were like, I think she just
said I love you. Should we have them redo it?
And then director's like, no, I want to go and chuck.
There's one other thing that I figured out from watching this.
What's that it's not readily apparent the whole thing is
made all the more odd, and that there's situation after
(50:45):
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, yeah, it it might
have been less bizarre. Yeah, but the fact that it's
missing just makes your It agitates the mind. So it's
this whole additional element that it is weird. I never
(51:07):
thought about that there's just weird moments of silence all
throughout it. Yeah, like when Art Carney's doing his thing, Yeah,
telling jokes. Yeah, okay, I agree with you, Chuck. Don't
take things too seriously. I think that's the great lesson
in this. Yeah, and then it's the lesson of life
day it is. And in two thousand and seven, Riff
tracks The Great Mystery Science Theater. Three thousand guys. Mike Nelson,
(51:27):
Bill Corbett, and Kevin Murphy provided audio commentary for the
full version of the special. So try and go grab
that if you can as well. Oh you can, it's
on their site because it's great. I think it's like
eight bucks. And those guys are awesome. And yeah, at
least I think Corbett listens to us. So, hey, Corbett,
(51:47):
you got anything else? No, No, I think we did this.
There's some good stuff. Go read the Vanity Fair article
a Han Solo comedy hour. There's a book called How
Star Wars Conquered the Universe has a very interesting chapter
about this. That's where we found it. Asserted that George
Lucas never said that he would smash this thing with
a sledgehammer, right, And there's also an entire website dedicated
(52:09):
to a Star Wars holiday special dot com. Yeah, and
if you want to know more about the Star Wars
holiday special, we have a ton of Star Wars stuff
on how Stuff Works by the way, Yeah, we have cool,
sort of fun articles about the Death Star and Lightsabers
videos with Holly Fry from Stuff you missed in history class. Yeah,
who she knows her stuff. She does. So you can
(52:31):
just type star Wars in the search bar how stuff
works dot com and it will bring up some cool
stuff for you. Since I said search bar's time for
listener mail. Hey guys, just finished listening to the Voytage
Manuscript podcast. Found it's super interesting, especially the theories on
its definition or origin. I know, Josh Menchin Chuck Siri,
but being drug induced a somewhat surprising or even unlikely
(52:52):
given the language in the manuscript follows linguistic laws only
founded in the past one hundred years. But if you
think about it, it's a tough. It's tough to stray
away from familiar structures, especially for something like language. I
think back to when I was younger and friends invented
their own languages, or even in writing a song or poetry.
Creativity can sometimes be limited by what we know, so
(53:14):
just thought I contribute that to the conversation. Nice. Thanks big,
thanks for all you guys do. I found the podcast
after moving to San Diego in the last few years
for some noise around my apartment, so basically we were
blocking out noise if we do that, jo love and
then as a way to get through traffic on my
commutet home from work. You guys are far more interesting
and enjoyable than television and YouTube videos. Sure, I've listened
(53:37):
to hundreds and we'll continue to listen to hundreds more.
Keep on Keeping on. That is from Amy Jay Moffatt.
Thanks a lot, Amy in San Diego. Does that mean
like place of the whales in German or something like that. Yeah. Yeah.
If you want to get in touch with this, you
can tweet to us at sysk podcast. You can join
us on Facebook, dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know.
(53:59):
You can send us to email the Stuff podcast at
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you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
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Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ho ho ho, and welcome to the annual Star Wars
Holiday Special Select episode release. It's that time of year again,
and now that we're airing this episode, the holiday season
can officially officially begin as of today. We hope this
select finds you and yours warm and totally overwhelmed by
a tidal wave of glad tidings from us at SYSK
(00:22):
to you. Happy holidays. May they now begin in earnest.
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W.
(00:45):
Chuckers Bryant and Jerry Jerome Roland. Who's the Wookie mother? Yeah? Mala,
that was the Wookie wife. Oh and mother? Yeah? Sure.
Chewbacca's bomb 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
(01:08):
say we should say Happy Star Wars Day. Yeah, today
is um December seventeenth. I have my opening night tickets?
Do you really sure? Wow? You know? I you into it? Oh? Yeah,
well I will definitely go see it in the theater.
But um, why won't be the opening night? Sure? I've
(01:30):
gotten really adept at like ignoring spoilers, people talking about
stuff all like, so I can I could conceivably see
this movie a month after it comes out and still
going fresh. Yeah it's I'm an ostrich. Yeah you black
yourself out. Yeah, you go dark I do. I make
(01:50):
myself go to sleep face, you go to the dark side.
I've been there a while now. Uh well, Happy Star
Wars Day though, I'm sure that I think this pairs
nicely with Chris Smiths Star Wars Day. It's all come together. Yes, Um,
we already missed Life Day though, so happy belated Life Day.
Are they celebrating it this year? November seventeenth? Yeah, but
(02:10):
it's every three years. M hmm, our cane yeah, man job, Okay,
so it's every three years, started in nineteen seventy eight.
Let's do the math, shall we m? Quick? Math break?
I believe that twenty fourteen was the last Life Day. Man,
(02:30):
we just missed it, and then again in twenty seventeen. Okay,
so twenty seventeen we'll celebrate Life Day. We'll put on
our red robes, our ultralong, straight ironed wigs, sure, and
we'll celebrate Life Day. The way it was meant to. Yes,
and if you have no idea what we're talking about,
we are talking about Life Day, which is a celebration,
(02:51):
uh that Wookies in the Star Wars universe have every
three years. Yeah. It's like their Christmas, Yeah, or their
Quanza there. Supposedly, it's sort of like Earth. They two.
They celebrate the diversity of their ecosystem and also remembrance
of the dead, and they also give the gifts. They're
like the Finns basically. Yeah, it's it's a very interesting
(03:12):
part of the Star Wars canon. It is, and it's
almost entirely made up, dashed off you could possibly say,
by George Lucas in the seventies. Yeah, and it's the
basis of what has become derided as like one of
the worst things that ever happened to the Star Wars galaxy. Well,
not only that, one of the worst things ever aired
(03:34):
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. Yeah, However, I watched it when I
was a kid, then again this week. Yeah, and you
(03:55):
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. Yeah, it's increasingly more absurd, it gets a
(04:17):
little less absurd, finishes super absurd. Yeah. It's just a
train wreck in every single sense of the word. Talk
to bottom. It's extraordinarily difficult to overstate how bad this is. Yeah,
and some people, you know, in researching this, you read
about it, you read descriptions of these things, and it
just can't possibly be gotten across until you see it.
(04:38):
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 dubbed VHS tapes,
but there is one really pretty good version of it
(05:01):
in full, brought to you by a w HIO Dayton,
Ohio channel seven. Who because that flashes up on the
screen periodically. Man, it is high quality. It looks good.
It has to basically be the copy that the actual
affiliate broadcast. Yeah, it's like that, that quality compared to
(05:22):
the other stuff floating around ninety two. It's clearly recorded
on a nineteen seventy eight PCR, which we're really expensive,
very expensive. I did some calculating on west Egg. Okay,
so the average VCR went for about one thousand dollars.
There were brand new it's amazing one thousand dollars in
nineteen seventy eight money. So they were about thirty eight
hundred dollars in twenty fourteen money. Crazy. Luckily there were
(05:43):
some rich people out there recording this stuff, and the
wealthy have saved us all again, yes, yet again, as
they always do. Yes, we need to shout out some
articles that we use for this. There's great a great
article in Vanity Fair called the Han Solo Comedy Hour
X Glamation Point Yes by Frank D. Jacomo. And then
(06:03):
there's the Star Wars Holiday Special was the worst thing
on television ever by someone we kind of know, Alex Pasternak. Yeah,
from Motherboard, Yeah, which is not wired. It's a vice. Yes,
we wrote a little bit for Motherboard back then and
we had a call without like we're like old Motherboard vets, yeah, basically,
and when they're one more, there was another one and
(06:26):
I don't know who wrote this one. Chuck uh, yeah,
it's the titles the Star Wars Holiday Special. George Lucas
wants to smash every copy of with a sledgehammer, which
was a famous quote 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,
(06:46):
but if you go on the internet you will quickly
believe that he did. Sure apparently didn't. So I'm sure
he felt that way though, clearly, you know, because he
did appear on Robot Chicken and I think two thousand
and five on the Therapist Couch talking about how much
he hate did the Speci show. All right, so let's
set the background, shall we Shall we go back to
nineteen seventy seven, Yeah, summer getting the old wayback machine,
(07:07):
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. So what has
(07:31):
happened is Star Wars has become a huge, huge hit,
seemingly out of nowhere. Yeah, establishing George Lucas is one
of the brilliant young minds in filmmaking. Even though it
was in his first movie, it was his first huge,
huge breakout hit. Oh yeah, for sure. Don't mean to
talk about a breakout hit like no one had ever
seen anything like it before two thousand and one had
(07:52):
come out in the late sixties. Yeah, but it wasn't
it still isn't accessible to all audiences, you know. Yeah,
it's kind of a rebral 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. Yeah, um, a new hope by the way, yes,
(08:15):
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, okay,
and by proxy Chuck too, Okay, thank you. So um,
it's it's hard to state how great Star Wars was
(08:37):
in everyone's mind. Yeah right. Bill Murray came out with
that lounge singer Star Wars thing. Yeah, 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. Yeah right. So by
the following year, George Lucas was he wanted to figure
out a way to keep audiences just to engaged with
(09:00):
the whole Star Wars franchise that he was just starting
to build. But he knew the Empire Strikes Back was
a couple more years out, sure, so um he I
think he was approached by some TV executives who said,
have you considered doing some sort of TV special? They're
all the rage right now. We have a we have
a graphic that's really awesome that we set aside just
(09:22):
for TV. Specials here at CBS. Why don't you let
us let's get together and do a Star Wars special.
That's right, producers Gary Smith and Dwight Himeon, we're working
over at CBS, and they say, this is a great
way to keep the spirit alive while you're making your
other movie. Maybe move some more toys. Yeah, which George
(09:42):
Lucas got to cut. So it was right before Thanksgiving,
and he said there'd be a lot of people watching
TV pre holiday season, or I guess in the holiday season. Well,
the weekend before Thanksgiving, it's like everybody's shopping, sitting around
family like waiting to actually do stuff. That's right, perfect
time to broadcast something on TV. So Lucas says, all right,
(10:03):
let's do this. I don't have a ton of time,
but how about this. I'll get I'll get a story
together and then you can go hire a whiz bang
team of veteran writers and producers and directors whatever genre
you think is appropriate. And those are the words that
will haunt George Lucas to his grave. Yeah. So Lucas said,
(10:24):
here's my idea. I want it to be based on
Wookie's and I want it to take place on their
home planet of Kizuk or Wookie Planet C. Is that
how you say kazuk? That's how it's pronounced in the
episode the Holiday Special, but it's also pronounced different ways
other times. I would have pronounced that cash E E
(10:46):
got spell it k A s h y y y
k yeah, which I mean. I guess that sounds like
Chewbacca's planet sure also called G five six twenty three.
Wookie Planet C or edon is a mid rim planet. Right.
So the whole reason apparently that George Lucas was interested
in featuring the Wookies was it is what we in
(11:06):
show business call low hanging fruit. The reason why it
was low hanging fruit was because they had just established
the different scenes that would make the cut for Empire
Strikes Back. Yeah, and how did you pronounce it? Again?
Kaz Kazuok had not made the cut. Even prior to this, apparently,
(11:26):
for a new hope, George Lucas had whipped up a
forty page what's known as the Wookie Bible. It's like
a forty page supplement that's all about Kazuok and Wookies
and Chewbacca and his family and everything about wookieedom. Right.
So he's like, I've got this thing already. You know
established I love Wookies. They didn't make the cut. I'm
(11:48):
a little sad about that. They're not gonna kazuk is
not gonna show up in an Empire strikes back. Let's
let's build the entire special around wookies. It's basically the
one demand me, George Lucas y. Yeah, that's it. I'll
be totally hands off from this point on which he
kind of was. He totally wasn't. It was actually this
experience that apparently taught him to be the very hands
(12:09):
on person that he is famous for being. It came
out of this Christmas special. Absolutely, he was burned and
he had an iron grip after that on everything. So
here's some some of the folks behind it. Bruce Valanche,
famous TV writer. You probably seen him on Hollywood Squares.
Wasn't he suspected of being Thomas Pinchon for a while? Oh?
(12:31):
I don't know, Or was Thomas Pinchon on Hollywood Squares?
I have no idea. I maybe confabulating some stuff confounding. Yeah,
there's some kind of some sort going on. It sounds
like it. Yeah, 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
(12:51):
he does. His first quote was, we were really excited
because this is Star Wars. How could it lose? Yeah?
Famous last words? Who else was hired? There was a
husband and wife team, the Welch's. Yeah, who are the
parents of folk singer Gillian Welch. I'm a big fan
of and I had no idea that her parents. They
(13:14):
were producers slash songwriters of the day. They were big
on the variety show scene, which would turn out to
be a really key cog in this whole experience. So
I feel like a right about here, Jerry should insert
a needle coming off of a record sound effect. Yeah, okay,
thanks Jerry, So Chuck, you just said singer songwriters. Yeah,
(13:36):
what would that have to do with Star Wars? Yeah? Well, actually,
in this Star Wars Holiday special, for those of you
who hadn't seen it, there are musical numbers. They decided
from the outset that there should be musical numbers. And
the reason that they decided that there should be musical
numbers is because the people who sold George Lucas and
at the time it was Star the Star Wars Corporation
(13:57):
was what it was called. Yeah, on the idea of
doing this TV special was that everyone would love a
variety show. Yeah, it was the seventies. Great idea, let's
do a variety show. The problem was this, Apparently George
Lucas didn't watch enough TV and he also overly trusted
people who talk to him. Sure, because by nineteen seventy eight, yes,
variety shows had dominated television for over ten years, but
(14:23):
it had come to an end. It was getting stale. Yeah,
we're talking. Carol Burnett Show, one of my favorites had
just been canceled after eleven seasons, a big red flag.
Sonny and Chair had just had its last season. Yeah,
I mean what else, Like he Hall was tall was
still going on probably, I think he was still on
solid Gold. It yet to come on and take up
(14:44):
the mantel. That wouldn't a variety show. Oh that was
a little bit and there was talking in between the songs. Yeah,
I remember the Mandrell's Sisters show. I never watched that one. Well,
it's with that country chic thing that happen. Yeah, it
was a big deal in this it's kind of happening again.
I think, oh, because of that dude, the guy who
(15:04):
won all the CMA Awards. I don't know, he's like
he's he came along and he's like, actually country. His
dad's like a coal miner for real from Kentucky. I think,
I know you mean Chris something. Yeah, yeah, he is good.
He's come along and been like, what are you guys doing? Well,
there's a revival in like good country music again. That's great,
like in the tradition of Merle Haggard and Shash And
(15:26):
I guess it's probably where the Country sheet came from,
because there was actually good country going on. Yeah, Johnny
Cash out of a variety show, did he really? Oh yeah,
I knew they did, like a Sunday singing thing like
out in Virginia. Yeah, he had his own variety show
is actually pretty good. There's some like really great performances.
Do you know how many nerds are like, get back
to Star Wars. I know, I'm so sorry. All right,
(15:47):
So the Variety Show is is dying sort of, and
so they figure what a great time to take the
biggest movie property on the planet and wedge it into
the Variety Show. Milieu. I don't know if wedge is
the right word. I think maybe nestle it in there, yeah,
and then start hitting it with the blunt edge of
an axe until it mashes into that crevice. You know.
(16:11):
Because this is the time when Fantasy Island had just started,
Mork and Mindy was about to change things, Charlie's Angels
was getting huge. It basically television as we knew it
from nineteen eighty two, whenever the real world came along. Yeah,
just escape as television is what they called. It was
starting and it was the hip new thing. So basically,
(16:33):
if they had turned Han Solo and Princess Leia 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 genre of television,
and they hired the best in the business. Yeah, like
there was there was. There was a quote from I
(16:53):
think Lenny RiPPs who was saying, like we had literally
a dream team, a variety show dream team, and everybody
was good, but there were probably no bad welders on
the Titanic. He there, That's a great quote. Yeah, the
guy they hired to direct it initially was a dude
named David A. Coomba, and he had made his name
for Welcome to the Fillmore East. It was a concert
(17:15):
documentary with Van Morrison Van Morrison and the Birds in
nineteen seventy one, and he actually was at usc Film
School at the same time as Lucas, even though they
didn't know each other. And he only ended up directing
about three segments of the thing before he quit. Yet
before he walked off, some say he was actually let go,
but we'll get to him in a minute and who
(17:37):
replaced him. Okay, as we get along down this gross road,
well let's let's take a little break because I'm overly excited. Okay,
(18:06):
all right, so we've established most of the main players.
Well we'll get to a few more. We should point
out that um Mark hamill And and Harrison Ford and
Carrie Fisher, Peter Mayhew, they had no grounds to refuse
to be on this basically, yeah, pretty much. They were
not huge, huge stars. Yet they could throw their weight
(18:26):
around and say this is terrible 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. Sure,
back at the studio they could still be bossed around
and this was 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.
(18:49):
Oh no, Um, Princess Leia is clearly on drugs. Uh
was she on drugs at this point? She? If you
watch it, she's she's on drugs. Especially the ending scene.
Mark Hambell, it looks like he's happy to be there.
Actually he was fine, but apparently he said, no, I'm
not doing a musical number. Yeah, and if you watch
(19:10):
his part, wedging a musical number in there would have
been even more painful. Sure, but they everybody who was
part of the actual Star Wars franchise that wasn't wearing
like a full body costume. Yeah, it was like I
really wish I wasn't here. And you can tell, oh yeah.
In fact, in the opening credit sequence, they're showing the picture,
(19:32):
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 screen
going now look at the camera and just give a nod.
Just look at the camera and give a nod, and
he finally you can tell he's pissed off, and he
looks up at the camera and just sort of smirks yeah,
and points at the camera like okay, I'm looking at
the camera, and then goes back to what he's doing. Yeah,
(19:53):
it's pretty awesome. I felt bad for him so early
on Valanche and others did. Did you feel bad for him? Though? Really?
I mean, like, come on, it's Harrison Ford, it's Hans Solo.
He has to go do this for like five days. Yeah,
I felt terrible for him. I think it's hilarious that
they had to do this, especially now. Well, early on,
(20:13):
Valanche and others knew that they may be in trouble
because they decided not to subtitle any of the Wookie dialogue,
and they literally started after a brief opening scene setting
it up here. Here's the basic plot is Han Solo
is trying to get Chewbacca back to Kazuok in time
for Life Day so we can celebrate with his family.
(20:33):
That's the basis of the entire two hours. The basis
the entire two hours. They encounter a space battle and
they're delayed, and the next two hours are kind of
what's going on while the delay is happening back on
Kazuk because you hear like, okay, well Han Solo and
Chewbacca evading the Imperial Guard and all that stuff for
(20:54):
two hours. I would watch that, Sure, I would too. Yeah,
that's not what they show. Killing time at the Wookie household,
that is what they show. Yeah, that's what they do.
It's people hanging out waiting for Chewbacca, worrying about him, yeah,
and then killing time while they wait for him to
come back. Yeah. Literally, so um and so hold on.
So you say there's a setup, right, Yeah, that's the
(21:17):
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 join it for a second,
shall we. Yeah, let's all enjoy it. And again, you
(22:19):
said ten minutes, and you're not exaggerating, you're not being hyperbolic.
You can time it. That's it's ten minutes of Wookie's
talking to each other with no subtitles. Fortunately, I couldn't
follow it at first, Like I didn't even know who
it was. I thought it was might have been Chewbacca's
mom and dad. Oh yeah, that's a little brother. And
(22:40):
I don't find out until later when Mark Camill shows
up via skype call and says, he really explains everything
that had just happened, Like, you're Chewbacca's father, right, Itchy,
your Chewbacca's son, Lumpy Lumpy, and you're Chebacca's wife. Oh mama, yeah,
thank you. So before everybody starts like freaking out, we
(23:02):
know that that's actually their nicknames. Their real names are.
His father is a tichik cook a cook it's really
hard to pronounce. Mulatto buck is his wife, and his
son is Lumpo or rump but as named by Lucas.
But yeah, but Lucas also named him Lumpy, Itchy and Malaya.
(23:24):
So um. 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? Ketchukaz kazuk um just like ketchup, ketchup
or cats up if you're fancy um. But Chewbacca is
(23:45):
having trouble getting back to ketchuk because there's kazuk because
there's a blockade by the Empire and they're looking for rebels,
specifically Chewbacca, who I didn't realize this. He's the most
famous Wookie of all. Did you know that? Yeah, of
course I didn't know that. Well, I mean he's the
only one that really appears in the movies. I mean
(24:06):
we're seeing, like, you know, these people's view of the universe.
What about back on Kazook. Yeah, he might have just
been a fly by night wookie, right, Yeah, but not
the case very famous wookie. Yeah, and he really loved it,
like soak in his fame. All right, So he realizes
there's a problem Valanche. He goes to Lucas and was like,
(24:27):
I don't know, man, this is your world, but it
may not be the strongest thing to do to set
this in wookie Land and have all this incomprehensible dialogue.
And he says he was met with a glacial stair. Well,
he put it a little differently than that. Well, he
said glacial stair. He did. The glacial stair that he
got was for this quote. He said, these people just
(24:50):
talk and what sounds like fat people having an orgasm. Yeah.
He goes, if you want, you can set up a
tape recorder in my bedroom and I'll do all of
the follying for it. Yeah. He's a large guy, he is,
so that's what got the glacial stare. But Valanche later
said that from this, there was one development meeting that
Lucas attended, and it was here's the Wookie Bible, tell
(25:11):
me what you got. And Valanche said he and the
other writers and producers and director were just kind of
throwing ideas, and George Lucas would either say like, no,
that doesn't work, give him a glacial stare, or say, yes,
that's exactly it. Yes, let's make this a variety show. Yeah.
And there was a little bit of background there. The
(25:31):
cantina players in the band had appeared on other variety
shows at that point. Yeah, and I think it went
over fairly well, just as a short segment on like
the Richard Pryor Variety Show or Donnie Marie yep Man.
There were a lot of variety shows. But that's what
I'm saying. It was that was television. That's what you did,
(25:52):
like the breaks. The show had its course, and then
it became a variety show. It was everybody love variety shows. Yeah.
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, had you? Oh yeah, I
(26:14):
watched it. It was creepy, this mime 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 that's just that variety shows were popular. Yeah,
at the time, somebody was like, well, Wookie's you don't
(26:36):
understand what they're saying. So this is all going to
be very physical. So these people who who did what
is it? Shields and Yarnell. Yeah, that's a perfect choice.
That that makes complete sense. You can see this whole
this whole process of leading up to the point where
it was produced and shot and everything. Yeah, a series
of like, oh we have this problem, well here's a fix. Yeah,
(26:57):
but that leads to another problem. Well we'll fix it
with this, 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 made. That's right, and it
eventually airs on November seventeenth, nineteen seventy eight, a Friday,
(27:21):
at eight pm Eastern time. That's right, And according to
CBS Nielsen ratings, it attracted thirteen million viewers lost the
second hour just in the US. It aired in six
or seven countries total. Yeah, but no one cares about that,
I guess not because none of those are on the internet.
You know. It finished second to the Love Boat in
(27:42):
the second I'm sorry, from eight to nine, and in
the next hour I 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, thirteen million,
that's that's not bad. The thing is, apparently if you
look at the Nielsen ratings graph for the first hour,
Yeah we know about that graph, It's okay, Yeah, we do.
(28:04):
And then after a very important part, which we'll talk
about soon, it just drops off at the end of
the first hour, and that actually probably made the executives
at CBS cringe for a number of reasons. Number one
is this special was originally supposed to just be an hour,
but so many advertisers wanted to sign one that they
(28:25):
extended it to two hours. And it shines through. You
can totally tell that this thing was never supposed to
I think an hour might have been stretching it, to
tell you the truth. Yeah, it's thirty minutes of content,
forty if you're generous, an hour and then two hours.
It becomes one of the worst things that was ever
(28:45):
put on television. All right, Well, let's take a break
and then we'll talk a little bit more about the
actual even don't want to call it content, but it
is content in the strictest definitions. Right after this, all right,
(29:20):
so the show itself, we've given you the main plot line,
which again is that Chewy is trying to get back
to his home planet to celebrate life Day with his family. Right,
that's it, And again we almost barely see Chewy. Yeah,
the rest is his family on because look waiting for
him to come back for a life Day. Yeah. So, um.
(29:41):
Some of the various things they did there were guest stars.
There was Harvey Corman from the Carol Burnette Show. Okay,
one of my all time favorites him or Carol Carol
Burnette show both. He's great. Yeah, he actually if you
watch what he's doing, you're like, this is comedy genius
for sure. Apparently he too was like the only one
on set that was bringing levity. He was joking around
(30:02):
and kind of kept spirits up. Good for him, that's
what I say. And he had three, three different parts. Yeah,
he played uh well, I don't even know the names. Actually,
we could look him up, but he played a he
played a Julia child like cook. There's an actual cooking segment,
a long one, a very long cooking segment where Chewbacca's
(30:25):
wife makes Banta stew to kill some time, to kill
some time because there was waiting on her planet and
in our living room. Yeah, so Harvey Corman is in
Drag as a foe armed Julia childlike TV chef and
I think it's Gormanda. It's her name, Gormanda. That makes
total sense. Yeah, he also plays um. There's this one
(30:48):
weird bit where Chewbacca's son tries to figure out a
way to trick the stormtroopers that the Empire had come
and kind of because the blockade raided the house and
other properties, so he tries to trick them by I
think rigging a calm link to speak in a different voice.
So he has to watch the instruction manual. He watches
(31:10):
an instruction video which was Harvey Kitel as a robot. Oh,
it would have been wonderful of big Harvey Kitel. What
I'd say, Harvey Carvey Corman. Oh, many Kite murders someone
in the middle of the instruction grade Harvey Corman. And
then the final role he had was as a bar
patron in the cantina that drinks. He has a hole
(31:33):
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 be Arthur
was in it? Be Arthur is not only in it, Chuck.
She sings a song. She does. She is the unknownst
to everyone. She manages or maybe owns the owner. Yeah,
the what's the mos? What mos def cantina? Uh No,
(31:55):
most deaf is a rapper? Oh yeah, I think you
mean Moss Eisley. Yes, yes, that cantina. She's the owner.
Be Arthur is the owner. Be Arthur of the Golden Girls,
but in this case be Arthur of Maude because as
one of the people who wrote one of the articles
we based this on points out she's just basically playing
Maude as the owner of the cantina. Yeah, and her
song comes because they basically say there's a lockdown, so
(32:20):
you gotta call last call at your bar. So she
calls last call by singing a song to everyone. Right,
and again, we can't possibly have the script lead anywhere
else but Chewbacca's house while his family waits for it.
So all this takes place as part of a public
service announcement basically broadcast by the Empire about how immoral
(32:43):
life on Tattooen is. So let's go see what's going
on in the mos Eisley Cantina as it's being shut
down for curfew. Yeah, all right, this is incomprehensible, but
it goes on. So they're in it. There's also Art Carney, yes,
of the Honeymooners, finally the star of the whole thing. Really,
(33:05):
he has the most lines, I would say, the most
comprehensible line, right, Yeah, So he plays a trader, a
human trader that has recently been with Han Solo and
Chewy and actually gets to Kazuk and says they're on
the way, it's all good. Yeah, a trader, not trade tour. Yeah,
traders in trades humans for you know, money. No, he
(33:30):
sells goods. Yeah, a trader. He isn't trade humans. Yeah,
he's in the human trade. He No, he isn't really, Yeah,
he trades humans like he sells humans. Looked it up
in the Star Wars Encyclopedia said that he was in
the human trade. Huh so in this Christmas special, Yeah,
apparently they sanitized his background because he's basically just selling
(33:52):
like gadgets and novelties and stuff like that to the
Wookies and the Empire who were occupying the area. Yes,
he comes bearing gifts because he's a friend of Chewbacca's family. Yeah,
so he comes bearing gifts. One of the gifts he
gives is a sort of like a little digital insert
to a Oh, I guess you would call it a
(34:14):
virtual reality hair dryer hair dryer, like a beauty shop
hair dryer. Right. He gives it to Grandpa Itchy. Grandpa
Itchy sits under this hair dryer, pops in this digital cassette,
and it can only be described as softcore porn. Apparently,
the writers who were interviewed for this said that was
(34:37):
totally the intent. They were trying to get what amounted
to softcore porn that would pass the sensors. That's right.
So it's all you can't even say it's innuendo. It's
too obvious in overt for innuendo. Instead, it's just it's
just it's just gross. It's really gross. Diane Carroll, great singer,
(34:58):
Yes she is a Vegas staple, shows up and starts
basically tantalizing. M Grandpa Itchy, who again, this is Chewbacca's
elderly father who now engages in some sort of well
he's he's watching virtual reality pornography now, and this is
a pretty lengthy segment in and of itself. Well yeah,
(35:20):
and she literally says to him like, now I can
see you're really excited. Yeah, it's pretty rough to watch. Yeah,
So then you've got another musical number because also again
he shudders, Yeah, it's really strange. All right. So there's
also a I know, it seems like we're jumping around,
but it's it's so mind blowing, not like this is
(35:42):
pretty much like blow for blow. Um. Actually I forgot
earlier on in the in the special, there's one of
my favorite sequences is when Grandpa Itchy goes over to
Lumpy and basically sets up remember the hologram chessboard that
they played in a New Hope. Yeah, basically kind of
sets that up and says, here, just play this. He
(36:03):
pushes the button which is clearly a nineteen seventies cassette recorder,
and another like it's like a cirque desolate acid trip
gymnast routine happens in front of the kid's eyes. Yeah,
and again this all just it's not like it shows
a snippet. They show the entire segments, like five, six,
(36:27):
ten minutes long. Sure of all of these things. So
you would think, Okay, they've gone to this hologram well
a couple of times, why not go to it again?
Well they do. They do to kill more time. While
the Imperial Guard is ransacking their house. Art Carney apparently,
I guess, is trying to get one of the Imperial Guard,
(36:47):
the leader I think, or one of the leaders who
looks like somebody from Spaceballs, by the way, very much so. Yeah,
And the writer of the Vanity Fair article, by the way,
said this, this is so incomprehensible. The specialist George Lucas
didn't even have the Schwartz with him at the time.
So anyway, Art Carney's distracting this Imperial leader while they're
(37:10):
ransacking the Wookie's house Chewbacca's house with a hologram, and
this hologram, instead of being an acrobat or Diane Carroll
or any kind of porn or anything like that, is
Jefferson Starship. And they decide that they're going to play
Light the Sky on Fire, which apparently is about UFOs.
It's a little music video basically, it's a Yeah, it's
(37:33):
the predecessor to like video Kill the Radio Star, you
can tell. And again it is the whole lengthy song. Yeah,
the whole thing. So every time that somebody's like we
need to escape mentally from what's going on here in
our house, let's go into the video world, it's not
just and they don't cut back and forth. It's okay,
(37:57):
here's five minutes of Jefferson Starship performing this song. Yeah,
and even the Jefferson Starship guys m were like, yeah,
it's sort of a weird trip, like we didn't get it,
but we did it right. They gave us some money
and some cocaine. Well probably, so we said yeah, chuck,
I think though there yet another segment like this is
(38:18):
actually widely regarded as the high point of the whole thing.
Oh sure, so there is a cartoon actually, yeah, that
lump Lumpy watches Yeah lumpies, like the Imperial Guard is
still ransacking my house. I think I'll entertain myself by
watching a cartoon on my little um, I don't know what.
I guess it was an iPad and he watches this
(38:41):
cartoon and it's it's actually remarkable for a number of reasons.
It's the best part of the whole special. Yeah, generally
agreed upon as such, right, not just us. And it
introduces Boba Fett. It's the first time Boba Fett ever
makes an appearance in the Star Wars universe. Yeah, it's
actually not a bad And you can't find it in
the the one version I told you to watch. They
removed it for copyright, but they didn't watch a separate version, right,
(39:04):
you can find it on its own. Yeah, and it's
um it's very much reminiscent of like the cartoon style
of the day, like a he Man or something. Sure,
even even it's even a little more artsy than that. Yeah,
but it does have a plot that you can follow
that makes sense as a Star Wars thing. Yeah, and
it introduces Boba Fett, like you said, and it's actually
not bad. It's like Luke and R two and C
(39:26):
three po Yeah, and they're like they crash on a
planet or something. Yeah, and Han and chewhere you're in it.
And it's the first time we see in Darth Vader.
It's first time we see Boba Fett and that he
is that he is just doing whatever he can do
for money, right, Like Luke trusts him at first. C
three pos like you sure you should trust him this quick?
And he's like, oh, three po, you and your non
(39:47):
trusting ways, and then it turns out he's selling them
out to the dark side. So it's it's basically Boba
Fett is an allegory for George Lucas himself. Um. So
the cartoon comes and goes, and that was the thing
that came at about the end of the first hour
mark and after that everybody just turned off their television sets. Yeah,
(40:09):
I don't remember. Did you watch this when it came out? Yeah?
I remember watching it, but I don't remember much about it,
Like if I made it through at all, I mean
it was I was seven and it was on till ten,
so I probably didn't make it through it all. Yeah, um,
plus you're probably disturbed. Who knows, I just remember that.
I'll have to ask my brother. He might have a
memory of this. Oh, Betty does. I'm sure he met
(40:29):
everybody afterwards or something like that. You know, it has
a picture. Well, he was ten at that point, so
cynicism had, you know, become a thing in his life
probably by then. Sure didn't that when cynicism kicks into
Scott holding out the fourteen fifteen Yeah maybe so so um, chuck,
the whole thing finally does end. And actually there's a
guy his name is Nathan Raban, he writes over at
(40:51):
the av Club. He had a great quote. He basically
said that one of the great redeeming values of this
um this special is that it does eventually end. Yeah,
you know, 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
review of the Star Wars Holiday Special, because he goes
(41:12):
on to describe exactly what that must have been like
development meeting where the bag of cocaine is pacing back
and forth talking about what should happen. That's what it
feels like. But it doesn't, and it ends even more.
It takes this bizarre two hours and wraps it up
in just a nice bizarre bow. Yeah, so what happens
is eventually Han Solo should we say spoiler alert. Eventually
(41:37):
Han Solo and Chewy make it to the planet. They
park on the far side of the planet because they
know the Imperial forces are there and the exercise will
do Chewy good. Yeah, so they have to hike over there.
They eventually make it back home. They find a storm
the stormtroopers at their house, their tree hut. Yeah, which
way by the paintings that set this up, I don't
(42:00):
think we mentioned I don't even call him Matt paintings.
It looks like someone painted something on the wall and
they just like put a camera in front of it.
Pretty much. Yeah. So they get back and Chewbacca, Han
Solo hides around the corner of Chebacca steps in front
of his son to protect him. Han Solo jumps out
and the stormtrooper trips over a pile of logs and
(42:23):
falls over the balcony. And dies in a holiday special,
So they wouldn't even not only could he not shoot
first with Grido, but they couldn't even have him like
wrestle the stormtrooper and throw him off. He trips over
a log, right and Han Solo has his hands thrown
up like wasn't me? It might as well been a
banana peel, you know. But again, this is basically produced
(42:48):
by Vaudevillians starring vaudevillians. Why not have the one death
take place from basically what it mounts to somebody slipping
on a banana peel? Exactly, It's a it's a perfect
way to end it. So that's that guy basically represents
the end of the Imperial threat for the rest of
Life Day. Yeah. And we then see Life Day being celebrated,
(43:09):
which is celebrated by lots of wookies assembling in what
looks like a giant Olan Mills portrait. Yea, and all
of them are wearing red robes sor and I know
I'm up talking, and it's because my mind is still
having trouble like wrapping around us. And then Princess Leia
(43:30):
comes out with C three po is Mark Hamill. There
the whole gang Zerifi. Okay, the whole gangs there, and
then they all gather around to hear a great quote
from Princess Leia, which we will read verbatim. This holiday
is yours, but we all share with you the hope
that this day brings us closer to freedom, into harmony,
(43:52):
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
(44:13):
also point out the tree of Life has never been
mentioned up to this point, no idea what this takes
a sudden appearance at the end. And when you said
Q song, by Q song, you mean Princess Leia starts singing. Yeah.
And apparently that was one of the big contingencies on
Carrie Fischer being involved. Yeah, she's going through a phase
where she's like, I kind of like singing. Bruce Valancie
(44:33):
calls it her Joni Mitchell period. Yeah, And she somehow
convinced them to let her sing as Princess Leiah and
she does. And again I've said that she looks like
she's on drugs. This is the point where she really
does look like she's on drugs. And it's not just
me other writers who've written reviews of this. It's really
obvious that she possibly smoked a decent amount of pot
(44:57):
before she shot this, shot this, but she sings, Oh, okay,
it's fine. It's just the fact that Princess leigh is singing.
And actually, Bruce Valanche had a really great quote too.
He says that she very much wanted to show this
side of her talent, and there was general dismay because
this was not what we wanted Princess Leia to be doing. Yeah,
(45:19):
she did it anyway. So the whole thing ends with
her singing this song about life day, which is set
loosely to the John Williams Star Wars theme. Yeah. So
along the way, the director original director quit, A new director,
Steve Binder, was hired to finish the job and bring
it in, and he did over the original one million
(45:41):
dollar budget. Of course, always he did bring it in
and at this point George Lucas said he was he
was working on Empire Strikes Back. He 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 that by now. Critics hated it. Star
(46:04):
Wars fans really hated it. Everybody hate The people who
were in it hated it. Lucas hated it. Even Harvey
Corman secretly hated it. Yeah, even Harvey Keitel hated it.
Actually he loved it. But Lucas has been asked over
the years about it a lot, and he doesn't talk
about it much. But in two thousand and five, and
I don't buy this for a second, he says it
(46:26):
was an interview he said special from nineteen seventy eight.
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 CBS. Yeah, we kind of just let them
do it. I believe that it was done by I
can't even remember who the group was, but they were
(46:46):
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. Yeah, I think they even use some
of the footage from the movie. At the end. It
looks like some of the space like a highlight reel. Yeah,
the gang. Well, and during the um it looked like
(47:08):
some of the they had some insert shots of like
Imperial cruisers and Taie fighters and stuff that. Yeah, and
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 doesn't match the look of
the rest of it at all. Yeah, that's true. It's
(47:29):
just sort of inserted. They tried, They definitely tried. And
George Lucas is totally full of it, because in nineteen
eighty seven he told Starlog magazine that the Christmas Special
would be out on video cassette very soon. Yes, And
in two thousand and seven, two years after that quote,
you just read where he's like, I don't even know
what you're talking about. Basically, he apparently considered releasing the
(47:52):
Christmas Special as a bonus on the DVDs of the
first three right, but did not did and apparently Carrie
Fisher told Lucas that if you want me to do
DVD extras commentary, yeah, commentary, then I want a clean
original copy of the Holiday Special? Yes, so why go
(48:12):
ahead so I can play at parties when I want
people to leave. It's pretty great, it is so, and
there is one of those clean copies is floating around
out there, so you can watch this in its entirety.
Some of it, like the cartoon, was removed due to
copyright infringement and that kind of stuff, but as as
the case with the rest of the Internet, you can
(48:33):
just go find it elsewhere and piece it together. There's
also the original ads that aired in Baltimore. Yeah, that
are just fascinating. Yeah, those are always fun gm ads
where one of the guys who's in quality control is
he says, did you watch it? I don't think I
saw that. He goes, um, we really care about these
cars and that's no job, man, I'm a gm ad
(48:56):
and he's like, that's serious. They're trying to be hip. Yeah,
it's pretty good stuff. Here's my final thought on it.
I love it. It does not taint my Star Wars
experience or my love for the franchise. And I'm glad
it is out there because it's a it's a fun
little stain that shouldn't be taken too seriously. I think
(49:20):
it adds to it actually, because it's campy and awful. Yeah,
and I don't know somehow that enriches the rest of it.
I'm with you, you like it? Oh yeah, I mean
I watched it twice. I wouldn't watched it a second
I wouldn't have made it through the first time. Let
me take that back, as I'm a pro. Yeah, so
I would have made it through the first time. I
wouldn't have watched it a second time if I wasn't.
(49:41):
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. She like her responses and everything. It's just awesome.
I think my favorite parts are well there's a great
(50:03):
Wilhelm scream yes, trips over the law. Jerry would not
have noticed it. Uh. And then there's a part where
all the Wookie dialogue you can't understand, but there's clearly
one part where where Itchy and Lumpy are have any
exchange where Lumpy you can make it out, goes I
love you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I noticed that, but it's
(50:24):
covered up. But someone was like, we have to have
at least one exchange where you sort of know what
they're saying, or they were like, I think she just
said I love you. Should we have them redo it?
And then director's like, no, I want to go and chuck.
There's one other thing that I figured out from watching this.
What's that it's not readily apparent the whole thing is
made all the more odd, and that there's situation after
(50:45):
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, yeah, it it might
have been less bizarre. Yeah, but the fact that it's
missing just makes your It agitates the mind. So it's
this whole additional element that it is weird. I never
(51:07):
thought about that there's just weird moments of silence all
throughout it. Yeah, like when Art Carney's doing his thing, Yeah,
telling jokes. Yeah, okay, I agree with you, Chuck. Don't
take things too seriously. I think that's the great lesson
in this. Yeah, and then it's the lesson of life
day it is. And in two thousand and seven, Riff
tracks The Great Mystery Science Theater. Three thousand guys. Mike Nelson,
(51:27):
Bill Corbett, and Kevin Murphy provided audio commentary for the
full version of the special. So try and go grab
that if you can as well. Oh you can, it's
on their site because it's great. I think it's like
eight bucks. And those guys are awesome. And yeah, at
least I think Corbett listens to us. So, hey, Corbett,
(51:47):
you got anything else? No, No, I think we did this.
There's some good stuff. Go read the Vanity Fair article
a Han Solo comedy hour. There's a book called How
Star Wars Conquered the Universe has a very interesting chapter
about this. That's where we found it. Asserted that George
Lucas never said that he would smash this thing with
a sledgehammer, right, And there's also an entire website dedicated
(52:09):
to a Star Wars holiday special dot com. Yeah, and
if you want to know more about the Star Wars
holiday special, we have a ton of Star Wars stuff
on how Stuff Works by the way, Yeah, we have cool,
sort of fun articles about the Death Star and Lightsabers
videos with Holly Fry from Stuff you missed in history class. Yeah,
who she knows her stuff. She does. So you can
(52:31):
just type star Wars in the search bar how stuff
works dot com and it will bring up some cool
stuff for you. Since I said search bar's time for
listener mail. Hey guys, just finished listening to the Voytage
Manuscript podcast. Found it's super interesting, especially the theories on
its definition or origin. I know, Josh Menchin Chuck Siri,
but being drug induced a somewhat surprising or even unlikely
(52:52):
given the language in the manuscript follows linguistic laws only
founded in the past one hundred years. But if you
think about it, it's a tough. It's tough to stray
away from familiar structures, especially for something like language. I
think back to when I was younger and friends invented
their own languages, or even in writing a song or poetry.
Creativity can sometimes be limited by what we know, so
(53:14):
just thought I contribute that to the conversation. Nice. Thanks big,
thanks for all you guys do. I found the podcast
after moving to San Diego in the last few years
for some noise around my apartment, so basically we were
blocking out noise if we do that, jo love and
then as a way to get through traffic on my
commutet home from work. You guys are far more interesting
and enjoyable than television and YouTube videos. Sure, I've listened
(53:37):
to hundreds and we'll continue to listen to hundreds more.
Keep on Keeping on. That is from Amy Jay Moffatt.
Thanks a lot, Amy in San Diego. Does that mean
like place of the whales in German or something like that. Yeah. Yeah.
If you want to get in touch with this, you
can tweet to us at sysk podcast. You can join
us on Facebook, dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know.
(53:59):
You can send us to email the Stuff podcast at
houstufforch dot com has always joined us at at home
on the web. Stuff you Should Know dot Com. Stuff
you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
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