Selects: Star Wars Holiday Spectacular

Published Nov 30, 2024, 10:00 AM

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.

Happy Life Day. Everyone to longtime listeners of Stuff you Should Know, or at least once who've been listening for just.

Over a year.

We released this episode the Star Wars Holiday Special every year and it's kind of considered the official start of the holiday season throughout the Western Hemisphere. And if you are new to the podcast, well, then say hello to your newest holiday tradition. Enjoy this year's annual holiday presentation of the Star Wars Holiday Special, and let the holiday season begin.

Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. 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 momb is not with them any longer.

She left.

She was not about to appear in that. She went out the window. I'm excited about this.

I have to say we should say Happy Star Wars Day.

Yeah, today is December seventeenth. I have my opening night tickets. Do you really sure? Wow? You know you into it? Oh?

Yeah, I will definitely go see it in the theater. But well, I won't be their opening night. Sure, I've gotten really adept at like ignoring spoilers, people talking about stuff all like, so I can. I could conceivably see this movie a month after it comes out and still going fresh.

Yeah I'm an ostrich. Yeah you black yourself out. Yeah, you go dark. I do. I make myself go to sleep face, you go to the dark side.

I've been there a while now.

Well, Happy Star Wars Day though, I'm sure that I think this pairs nicely with Christmas Star Wars Day. It's all come together.

Yes, we already missed Life Day though, so happy belated Life Day.

Cha. Are they celebrating it this year?

November seventeenth?

Yeah, but it's every three years, our Caine. Yeah, man, weird job.

Okay, so it's every three years. Started in nineteen seventy eight. Let's do the math, shall we?

Quick? Math break? I believe that twenty fourteen was the last Life Day. Man, 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 ultra long 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 that Wookies in the Star Wars universe have every three years.

Yeah, it's like their Christmas. Yeah, they cele or their Quanta, their tent.

Supposedly, it's sort of like Earth Day too. They celebrate the diversity of their ecosystem and also remembrance of the dead, and they also give the gifts. They're like the Finns basically. Yeah, it's a very interesting part of the Star Wars cannon.

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 on television. Yeah, with this galaxy. Yeah, at first that sounds like hyperbole, like, come on, it's because it was Star Wars and we had high expectations. But it's really that bad. 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 again this week. Yeah, and you watched it twice this week.

Yeah, I watched it last night and this morning.

There's something about it.

It's mesmerizing, it really is.

It's one of those things that you start watching it and you want to turn it off, but you want to see just how absurd it can get.

Almost Yeah, and it starts absurd, it stays absurd in the middle. Yeah, it's increasingly more absurd, it's a little less absurd, finishes super absurd.

Yeah. It's just a train wreck in every single sense of the word, top to bottom.

It's extraordinarily difficult to overstate how bad this is. And some people, you know, in researching this, you read about it, you read descriptions of these things, and it just can't possibly be gotten across until you see it. So luckily, as we will see, you can go onto YouTube and watch it, and you may even 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 been many segments of it on YouTube from badly DUBBEDVHS tapes, but there's one really pretty good version of it in full, brought to you by w HIO Dayton, Ohio, Channel seven, Ohio. Because that flashes up on the screen periodically.

Man, it is high quality. Yeah, it looks good, and it has to basically be the copy that the actual affiliate broadcast. Yeah, it's like that, that quality compared to the other stuff floating around on YouTube. It's clearly recorded on a nineteen seventy eight PCR.

Yeah, which were 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 some rich people out there recording this stuff, and the wealthy have saved us all again, yes, yet again, as they always do.

Yes. And we need to shout out some articles that we use for this. There's great a great article in Vanity Fair called the Han Solo Comedy Our exclamation Point, Yes by Frank de Jacomo. And then there's the Star Wars Holiday Special was the worst thing on television ever by someone we kind of know, Alex pasternakah from Motherboard, yeah, which is not wired. It's vice. Yes, we wrote a little bit for Motherboard back then and we had a call with that.

We're like, we're like old Motherboard vets.

Yeah, basically, wasn't there one more?

There was another one and I don't know who wrote this one, chuck, Yeah, it's the titles the Star Wars Holiday Special. George Lucas wants to smash every copy of with a sledgehammer.

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 sounded like something that people made up.

Yes, 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's Couch talking about how much he hated.

The Spec 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.

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 happened is Star Wars has become a huge, huge hit, seemingly out of nowhere. Yeah, establishing George Lucas is one of the brilliant young minds in filmmaking, even though in his first movie it was his first huge, huge breakout hit. Oh yeah, for sure.

I mean talk about a breakout hit like no one had ever seen anything like it before. No, two thousand and one had come out in the late six these, but it wasn't it's still still is inaccessible to all audiences. You know, it's kind of a cerebral film.

Yeah, it's not an adventure movie. This was Star Wars.

This is like basically swashbuckling on the screen. But you know, in a galaxy far far away, Star Wars just changed everything and it came on just like a hammer.

Yeah, and a new hope by the way, yes, and then we're going to get stuff wrong, nerds. So yes, just go ahead and get your little fingers ready to email us.

Like if it wasn't driven home that I'm not a nerd by the fact that I don't have opening night tickets or any tickets yet, give me a break, and by proxy Chuck too, Okay, thank you. So it's it's hard to state how great Star Wars was 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, it'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 engaged with the whole Star Wars franchise, so that he was just starting to build, but he knew the Empire Strikes Back was a couple more years out, sure, So 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 graphic that's really awesome that we set aside just for TV specials here at CBS why don't you let us let's get together and do a Star Wars special.

That's right. Producers Gary Smith and Dwight Hemi on 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 Lucas got a cut of all the toys.

Sure. So it was right before Thanksgiving, and he said there'd be a lot of people watching TV pre holiday season, or I guess in the holiday season.

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, 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, here's my idea. I want it to be based on Wookies, and I want it to take place on their home planet of Kazuk or Wookie planet C. Is that what he's saying, 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 Cashie spell it k a s h y y y k, which I mean, I guess that sounds like Chewbuck is sure.

Also called G five six twenty three. Wookie planet ce or Eedeon is a mid rim planet. Right.

So the whole reason apparently that George Lucas was interested in featuring the Wookies was it is what we in show business call low 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? Kazuk.

Kazuk had not made the cut. Even prior to this, apparently for a new hope, George Lucas had whipped up a forty page what's known as the Wookie Bible. It's like a forty page supplement that's all about Kazuk and Wookies and Chewbacca and his family and everything about wookiedom.

Right, that's 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 a little sad about that. They're not gonna kazuk is not going to show up in Empire Strikes Back. Let's build the entire special around wookies. It's basically the one demand me George Lucas has. Yeah, that's it. I'll be totally hands off from this point on which.

He kind of was.

He totally was, And it was actually this experience that apparently taught him to be the very hands on person that he is famous for being. It came out of this Christmas special.

Absolutely he was burned and he had an iron grip after that on everything. So here's some of the folks behind it. Bruce Valanche, famous TV writer. You probably had seen him on Hollywood Squares.

Wasn't he suspected of being Thomas Pynchon for a while. I don't know, or was Thomas Pynchon on Hollywood Squares?

I have no idea.

I may be confabulating some stuff confounding. Yeah, there's some con of some sort going on.

It sounds like it. Yeah, So Valanche was hired as a writer. A guy named Lenny Rips was hired as a writer who.

Has some great quotes in that Vanity Fair article.

He does 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 Welches. Yeah, who are the parents of folk singer Gillian Welch, who I'm a big fan of And I had no idea that her parents. They were producers slash songwriters of the day. They were big on the variety show scene, which would turn out to be a really key cog in this whole experience.

So I feel like, write about here, Jerry should insert a needle coming off of our record sound effect. Yeah, okay, thanks Jerry, So Chuck, you just said singer songwriters.

Yeah, 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 the Star Wars Corporation 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. Yeah, and he also overly trusted people who talk to him. Sure, because by nineteen seventy eight, yes, variety shows had dominated television for over ten years, but it had come to an end. It was getting stale.

Yeah, we're talking to Carol Burnett show, one of my favorites.

Had just been canceled after eleven seasons.

Ye, Big Red Flag, Sonny and Chaer had just had its last season. Yeah, I mean what else, like he was still going on.

Probably the KiHa still on Solid Gold had yet to come on and take up the mantle.

That would never variety show.

No, it was a little bit there's talking in between the songs.

Yeah. Remember the Mandrell Sisters show.

I never watched that one. Well it was with that country chic thing that happened.

Yeah, it was a big deal in the it's kind of happening again.

I think, Oh, because of that dude, the guy who 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 show Cash.

And I guess that's probably where the country she 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 was actually pretty good. There's some like really great performances.

Do you know how many nerds are like, get back to Star Wars?

I know, I'm so sorry. All right, So the Variety Show is 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 and then start hitting it with the blunt edge of an axe until it mashes into that Crevis. You know that's right, because this is the time when Fantasy Island had just started Morecamindi was about to change things. Charlie's Angels was getting huge. It basically television as we knew it from nineteen eighty to whenever the real world came along. Just escape ast television is what they called. It was starting and it was the hip new thing. So basically, if they had turned Han Solo and Princess Leah and Luke Skywalker into maybe you know, sexy detectives, it might have gone over 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 a quote from I think Lenny Rips who was saying, like we had literally a dream team, Yeah, a variety show dream team, and everybody was good. But there were probably no bad welders on the Titanic either.

That's a great quote. Yeah. The guy they hired to direct it initially was a dude named David at Coomba and he had made his name for Welcome to the Fillmore East. It was a concert documentary with Van mor Van Morrison and the Birds in nineteen seventy one, and he actually was at usc Film School the same time as Lucas, even though they didn't know each other, and he only ended up directing about three segments of the thing before he quit, yep, before he walked off. Some say he was actually let go, but we'll get to him in a minute and who replaced him. Okay, as we get along down this gross road, well.

Let's take a little break because I'm overly excited.

Okay, softly jaws.

All right, So we've established most of the main players. We'll get to a few more. We should point out that Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher, Peter Mayhew, they.

Had no grounds to refuse to be on this.

Basically, yeah, pretty much. They were not huge, huge stars, yet they could throw their weight around and say this is terrible and I'm not doing it.

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 just from watching the actual special, like Harrison Ford is not happy to be there at any point. Oh no, Princess Leiah is clearly on drugs.

Was she on drugs at this point?

If you watch it, she's on drugs. Especially the ending scene, Mark Hambell.

Looks like he's happy to be there. Actually he was.

Fine, but apparently he said no, I'm not doing a musical number. And if you watch his part, wedging a musical number in there would have been even more painful. Sure, but everybody who was part of the actual Star Wars franchise that wasn't wearing like a full body costume, yeah, 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 the you know, the faces of the people, and you see Harrison Ford as if he's flying the Millennium Falcon, and you can you can just hear the guy all screen going, now look at the camera and just give a nod. Just look at the camera and give a nod. And he finally you can tell he's pissed off and he looks up at the 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. It's pretty awesome.

It felt bad for him so early on Valanche and others.

Did you feel bad for him?

Though? Really?

I mean, like, come on, it's Harrison for 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, Valanche and others knew that they may be in trouble because they decided not to subtitle any of the Wookie dialogue right and they literally started after a brief opening scene setting it up here. Here's the basic plot is Han Solo is trying to get Chewbacca back to Kazuok in time for Life Day so he can celebrate with his family. That's the basis of the entire two hours I see, 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. Back on Kazuk, because you hear like, oh, okay, well, Han Solo and Chewbacca evading the Imperial Guard and all that stuff for two hours. I would watch that, Sure, I would too. Yeah, that's not what they show.

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 and so hold on, So you say there's a setup.

Right, Yeah, that's the initial setup.

And then chuck, that's followed by this.

Yeah, it's followed by literally ten minutes, ten solid minutes of incomprehensible Wookie speak.

So let's let's join it for a second, shall we. Yeah, let's all enjoy it. And again, you said ten minutes, and you're not exaggerating, you're not being hyperbolic. You can time it. That's it's ten minutes of Wookie's talking to each other with no subtitles.

Fortunately, I couldn't follow it at first, Like I didn't even know who it was. I thought it might have been Chewbacca's mom and dad. Oh yeah, that's and little brother. Sure, And I don't find out until later when Mark Camill shows up via skype call and says he really explains everything that had just happened, Like, you're Chewbacca's father, Itchy, your cub, his son Lumpy Lumpy yeah, and you are Chewbacca's wife. Oh, Mala, yeah, thank you.

So before everybody starts like freaking out, we know that that's actually their nicknames. Their real names are. His father is a Tichik cook, a Titchik cook.

It's really hard to pronounce.

Mulatto Buck is his wife, and his son is Lumpo or ump but.

As named by Lucas. But yeah, but.

Lucas also named him Lumpy Itchy and Mala yeah. So they're all back there wringing their hands trying to figure out ways to pass the time until they get word from Chewbacca that he's made it to uh what is it? Ketchukuk Kazuk. Say ketchup, ketchup or cats up if you're fancy. But Chewbacca is having trouble getting back to Kochuk because there's Kazuk, because there's a blockade by them 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, right, I mean.

Yeah, 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 to like soak in his fame.

All right, So he realizes there's a problem Valanche. He goes to Lucas and is like, I don't know, man, this is your world, but it may not be the strongest thing to do to set this in Wokieland and have all this comprehensible dialogue. And he says he was met with a glacial stare.

Well he put it a little differently than that.

Well, he said glacial stare. He did.

The glacial steir that he got was for this quote. He said, these people just talk and what sounds like fat people having an organic Yeah. He goes, if you want, you can set up a tape recorder in my bedroom and I'll do all of the follying it for it.

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 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 cantena players in the band had appeared on other variety shows at that point, and I think it went over fairly well, just as a short segment on like the Richard Pryor Variety Show or Donnie Marie yep Man. There were a lot of variety shows.

But that's what I'm saying. That was television. That's what you did. Like the Bradys. The show had its course and then it became a variety show. It was just everybody loved variety shows.

Yeah.

By this time, though, everybody was sick of variety shows, right, 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 I do. Oh yeah, I watched it. It was at least creepy. This mind couple who had their own variety show, and they figured these two will be great because they are used to working without words.

Right, and so there is a certain logic to the variety show. It's not just all the p's just that variety shows were popular.

Yeah.

At the time, somebody was like, well, wookies, you don't understand what they're saying. So this is all going to be very physical. So these people who who did what is it Shields and Yarnell. Yeah, that's a perfect choice. That makes complete sense. You can see this whole this whole process of leading up to the point where it was produced and shot and everything. Yeah, a series of like, oh we have this problem, well here's a fix. Yeah, well but that leads to another problem. Well we'll fix it with this. And no one's 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, at eight pm Eastern time.

That's right, and according to 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 the second ar I'm sorry, from eight to nine, and in the next hour actually finished behind part two of a mini series about Pearl Harbor starring Angie Dickinson. So yeah, it didn't even win their respective hours.

No, thirteen million, that's not bad. The thing is, apparently, if you look at the Nielsen ratings graph for the first hour.

Yeah we know about that graph, It's okay, yeah, we do.

And then after a very important part, which we'll talk about soon, 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 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. Oh yeah, it's thirty minutes of content, forty if you're generous, an hour and then two hours. It becomes one of the worst things that was ever 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 definition. Right after this.

Staffy jawsh shop.

All right, so the show itself, we've given you the main plot line, which again is that Chewy is trying to get back to his home planet to celebrate life Day with his family.

Right, that's it, And again we almost barely see Chewy.

Yeah.

The rest is his family on Kazook waiting for him to come back for a life Day.

Yeah. So some of the various things they did there were guest stars. There was Harvey Korman from the Carol Burnett Show. Okay, one of my all time favorites.

Him or Carol Burnett Show both. He's great. Yeah, he actually if you watch what he's doing, like.

This is sure. Apparently he too was like the only one on set that was bringing levity. He was joking around and kind of kept spirits up. Good for him, that's what I say.

And he had 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 h He played a Julia child like cook. There's an actual cooking segment, a long one, a very long cooking segment where Chewbacca's wife makes banthas stew.

To kill some time, to kill some time on her planet and in our living room.

Yeah, so Harvey Corman is in drag is a four armed Julia childlike TV chef right, And I think it's Gormanda. It's her name, Gormonda. That makes total sense. Yeah, he also plays There's this one weird bit where Chewbacca's son tries to figure out a way to trick the story or troopers that the Empire had come and kind of because the blockade raided the house and other properties. So he tries to trick them by I think, rigging a calm link to speak in a different voice. So he has to watch the instruction manual. He watches an instruction video which was Harvey Kytel as a robot.

Oh, it would have been wonderful of big Harvey Kyel.

Oh I did say Harvey Harvey Korm.

Oh Man Harvey kit Tell murders someone in the middle of the instruction.

Rad Harvey Korman. And then the final role he had was as a bar patron in the cantina that drinks. He has a hole in the top of his head like a volcano where he pours his drinks in. That's how he drinks. And he loves b Arthur. Did we mention b Arthur was in it?

B Arthur is not only in it, Chuck. She sings a song.

She does she is the unpronounce to everyone she manages or maybe owns the owner.

Yeah, what's the mas What ma def cantina?

No, most def is a rapper? Oh yeah, 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 Maud, because, as one of the people who wrote one of the articles we based this on points out, she's just basically playing Maud as the owner of the cantina.

Yeah, and her song comes because they basically say there's a lockdown, so you gotta call last call at your bar. So she calls last call by singing a song to everyone.

Right, and again, we can't possibly have the script lead anywhere else but Chewbacca's house while his family waits for it. So all this takes place as part of a public service announcement basically broadcast by the Empire about how immoral life on Tattooin 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, he's the Honeymooner family, the star of the whole thing.

Really, he has the most lines, I would say, the most comprehensible line, right.

Yeah. So he plays a trader, a human trader that is recently been with Han, Solo and Chewy and actually gets to Kazook and says they're on the way. It's all good. Yeah, a trade or not trade tour. Yeah, traders and trades humans for you know, money.

No, he he sells goods. Yeah, a trader he doesn't trade humans. Yeah, he's in the human trade.

He No, he isn't.

Really, Yeah, he trades humans like he sells humans.

I looked it up in the Star Wars Encyclopedia said that he was in the human trade. Huh.

So in this Christmas special, Yeah, apparently they sanitized his background because he's basically just selling like gadgets and novelties and stuff like that to the Wookies and the Empire who were occupying the area.

Yes, he comes bearing gifts.

Yeah, because he's a friend of Chewbac'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 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 soft core porn.

Apparently, the writers who were interviewed for this said that was totally the intent. They were trying to get what amounted to soft core porn that would pass the sensors.

That's right.

So it's all. You can't even say it's innuendo. It's too obvious an overt for innuendo. Instead, it's just it's just it's just gross. It's really gross. Diane Carroll, great singer, Yes she is a Vegas staple, shows up and starts basically tantalizing Grandpa Itchy again. This is Chewbacca's elderly father who now engages in some sort of well he's watching virtual reality pornography now, and this is a pretty lengthy segment in and of itself.

Well yeah, and she literally says to him, 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.

Like this is pretty much like blow for blow.

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 chess board that they played in A New Hope, basically kind of sets that up and says, here, just play this. He pushes the button which is clearly a nineteen seventies cassette recorder, and another like it's like a circ desole acid trip gymnast routine happens in front of the kid's eyes. And again this all just it's not like it shows a snippet. They show the entire segments, like five, six, 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 it's trying to get one of the Imperial Guard, the leader, I think, or one of the leaders.

Who looks like somebody from Spaceballs, by the way.

Very much so, And the writer of the Vanity Fair article, by the way said this is so incomprehensible. The specialist George Lucas didn't even have the schwartz with him at the time. So anyway, our Carney's distracting this Imperial leader while they're ransacking the Wookies house, Chewbacca's house with a hologram. In this hologram, instead of being an acrobat or Diane Carroll or any kind of porn or anything like that, is Jefferson Starship. And they decide that they're going to play Light the Sky on Fire, which apparently is about UFOs. It's a little music video basically, it's a Yeah, it's the predecessor to like video kill the radio story 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. No, it's okay, here's five minutes of Jefferson Starship performing this song.

Yeah, And even the Jefferson Starship guys 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, yeah, and some cocaine. Well, so we said, yeah, chuck. I think though, there yet another segment like this is actually widely regarded as the high point of the whole thing. Oh sure, great, there is a cartoon actually, yeah, that Lump Lumpy watches. Yeah, Lumpy's like the Imperial Guard is still ransacking my house. I think I'll entertain myself by watching a cartoon on my little I.

Don't know what.

I guess it was an iPad and he watches this cartoon and it's it's actually remarkable for a number of reasons. It's the best part of the whole special.

Yeah, generally agreed upon as such, right, not just us.

And it introduces Boba Fett time Boba fet 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 you didn't watch a separate.

Version, right, you can find it on its own.

Yeah, And it's it's very much reminiscent of like the cartoon style of the day, like a he Man or something for.

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, and it introduces Boba fet like you said, and it's actually not bad. It's like Luke and R two.

And C three po Yeah, and they're like they crash on a planet or something.

Yeah, and Han and where you're in it. And it's the first time we see in Darth Vader. It's the first time we see Boba Fett and that he is that he is just doing whatever he can do for money, Like Luke trusts him at first, ce three bos like, you're sure you should trust him this quick? Yeah, and he's like, oh, three po you in your non trusting ways. And then it turns out he's selling them out to the dark side.

So it's it's basically Boba fet as an allegory for George Lucas himself. So the cartoon comes and goes, and that was the thing that came at about the end of the first hour mark and after that everybody just turned off their television sets.

Yeah, I don't remember. Did you watch this when it came up?

Yeah?

I remember watching it, but I don't remember much about it, Like if I made it through it all. I mean it was I was seven and it was on till ten, so I probably didn't make it through it all. Yeah, Plus you're probably disturbed. Who knows, I just remember that. I'll have to ask my brother. He might have a memory of this.

Oh Betty does. I'm sure he met everybody afterward 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 all right by then, Sure didn't that when centicism kicks into Jenkinsie Scott holding out to fourteen fifteen, Yeah, maybe so so Chuck, the whole.

Thing finally does in. And actually there's a guy. His name is Nathan Raven, he writes over at the av Club. He had a great quote. He basically said that one of the great redeeming values of this this special is that it does eventually end.

Yeah, you know what the first part of the quote is, I'm not convinced the special wasn't ultimately written and directed by a sentient bag of cocaine.

And like, go read his review of the Star Wars Holiday Special, because he goes on to describe exactly what that must.

Have been like.

Yeah, development meeting where the bag of cocaine is pacing back and forth talking about what should happen.

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 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 the paintings that set this up, I don't think we mentioned I don't even call him Matte 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. Chewbacca steps in front of his son to protect them. Sure, Han Solo jumps out, and the stormtrooper trips over a pile of logs and falls over the balcony and dies. In a holiday special. So they wouldn't even not only could he not shoot first with Gredo, but they couldn't even have him like wrestle the stormtrooper and throw him off. He trips over a log.

And Han Solo has his hands thrown up like wasn't me?

It might have been a banana peel, you know.

But again, this is basically produced by Vodvillians starring vaudevillians. Why not have the one death take place from base? What amounts to somebody slipping on a banana peel exactly, It's a perfect way to end it. So that's that guy basically represents the end of the imperial threat for the rest of Life Day. And we then see Life Day being celebrated, which is celebrated by lots of wookies assembling in what looks like a giant Olin Mills portrait, and all of them are wearing red robes. And I know I'm up talking, and it's because my mind is still having trouble like wrapping around us. And then Princess Leah comes out with C three po is Mark Hamill.

There, the whole gang Zerophone, Okay, the.

Whole gangs there, And then they all gather around to hear a great quote from Princess Leah 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 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 Q song.

Right, And we should also point out the Tree of Life has never been mentioned.

Up to this point. I had no idea whether it.

Takes a sudden appearance at the end. And when you said Q song, by Q song, you mean Princess Leah starts singing.

Yeah, And apparently that was one of the big contingencies on Carrie Fisher being involved. Yeah, she's going through a phase where she was like, I kind of like singing.

Bruce Valanche calls it her Joni Mitchell period.

Yeah, and she somehow convinced them to let her sing as Princess Leah. 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 before she shot this shot this scene, but she sings, Okay, it's fine, it's just the fact that Princess Leia is singing. And actually, Bruce Falanche had a really great quote too. He says that she very much wanted to show this side of her talent, and there was general dismay because this was not what we wanted Princess Lea to be doing. Yeah, she did it anyway. So the whole thing ends with her singing this song about life day oh yeah, which 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 dollar budget. Of course, always he did bring it in and at this point George Lucas said 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 Wars fans really hated it.

Everybody, the people who were in it hated it.

Lucas hated it.

Even Harvey Korman 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 was an interview He said especial from nineteen seventy eight. I really didn't have much to do with us. You know that part is true. 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 there were variety TV guys. I'm sure he remembers a few of them. We let them use the characters and stuff, and that probably wasn't the smartest 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 it looked like some of the they had some insert shots of like Imperial cruisers and tie fighters and stuff.

That, yeah, likes from remember when when Chewbacca like leans back and puts his hands behind it. Yeah, yeah, that's in there. It's it's like a just a highlight reel from the movie. Saying like I feel like this, go see the movie.

Well, and also that means it doesn't match the look of the rest of it at all.

Yeah, that's true.

It's just sort of inserted.

They tried, They definitely tried. And George Lucas is totally full of it, because in nineteen eighty seven he told star Log magazine that the Christmas Special would be out on video cassette very soon.

Yes, And in two thousand and seven, two.

Years after that quote, you just read where he's like, I don't even know what you're talking about. Basically, he apparently considered releasing The Christmas Special as a bone us on the DVDs of the first three.

Right, but did not didn't And apparently Carrie Fisher told Lucas that, if you want me to do DVD extras commentary, Yeah, commentary. Then I want a clean original copy of the Holiday Special? Yes, so why go ahead so I can play at parties what 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 the case with the rest of the Internet, you can just go find it elsewhere and piece it together. There's also the original ads that aired in Baltimore.

Yeah, that are just fascinating. 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 one.

He goes, we really care about these cars. That's no jibe man on a GM and he's like, it's serious.

Oh 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. Okay, 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 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 the second time if I wasn't. There wasn't something about it, and I figured out. I think the thing that I like the most about it is Lumpy, Chewbacca's son, Yeah, played by an actress named Patty Maloney, who frankly is hands down the best act in the entire thing. She like her responses and everything is just awesome.

I think my favorite parts are, well, there's a great Wilhelm scream. Yes that's troop for trips over the law.

Jerry would not have noticed it.

And then there's a part where all the wikie dialogue you can't understand, but there's clearly one part where where Itchy and Lumpy are having exchange where Lumpy you can make it out goes I love you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it's covered up. But someone was like, we have to have at least one exchange where you sort of know what they're saying.

Sure, or they were like, I think she has said I love you. Should we have them redo it? And the director's like, no, I want to go and Chuck. There's one other thing that I figured out from watching this. What's that it's not readily apparent the whole thing is made all the more odd, and that there's situation after situation after situation where we, as normal audiences, were trained to expect the laugh track, but there's not a laugh track. Yeah, and there's been a laugh track. Yeah, it might have been less bizarre. Yeah, but the fact that it's missing just makes your agitates the mind. So it's this whole additional element that it is weird.

I never thought about that. There's just weird moments of silence all throughout it.

Yeah, like when Art Carney's doing his thing.

Yeah, I'm 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 the Lesson of Life day it is and in two thousand and seven, Riff tracks a great Mystery science Theater. Three thousand guys Mike Nelson, BILLL. 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, you got anything else? No, No, I think we did this. There's some good stuff. Go read the Vanity Fair article Han Solo Comedy Hour. There's a book called How Star Wars Conquered the Universe that has a very interesting chapter about this. That's where we found it asserted that George Lucas never said that he would smash this thing with a sledgehammer, right, And there's also an entire website dedicated to it, Star Wars Holidayspecial dot com. Yeah, and if you want to know more about the Star Wars Holiday Special, we have a ton of hart 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 the Holly Fry from Stuff You missed a history class?

Yeah, who, she knows her stuff. She does.

So you can just type Star Wars in the search bar at how stuff works dot com and it will bring up some cool stuff for you. Since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail.

Hey guys, just finished listening to the Voyage Manuscript podcast. Found it's super interesting, especially the theories on its definition or origin. I no Josh mentioned Chuck Siery, but being drug induced is somewhat surprising or even unlikely, given the language and the manuscript follows linguistic laws only founded in the past one hundred years. But if you think about it, it's a tough. It's tough to stray away from familiar structures, especially for something like language. I think back to when I was younger and friends invented their own languages, or even in writing a song or poetry. Creativity can sometimes be limited by what we know, So just thought I contribute that to the conversation. 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. We do that w JE love and then as a way to get through traffic on my commute home from work. You guys are far more interesting and enjoyable than television and YouTube videos. I'm sure I've listened to hundreds and we'll continue to listen to hundreds more. Keep on Keeping on. That is from Amy Jay Muffett.

Thanks a lot, Amy in San Diego. Does that mean like place of the whales in German or something like that? Yeah, yeah, I want to get in touch of this. You can tweet to us at s y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook, dot com slash Stuff you Should Know. You can send us an email the Stuff podcast at how Stuffworks dot com. As always joined us at our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot Com.

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