SYSK Selects: The Star Wars Holiday Special of 1978

Published Dec 19, 2020, 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.

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

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If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD,  
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