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SYSK Selects: The Star Wars Holiday Special of 1978 · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Happy belated life day everyone. It's me Josh uh, and
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Speaker 1: I chose for this week's s Y s K selects
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Speaker 1: the Star Wars Holiday Special episode. It's true this just
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Speaker 1: came out two years back, but in my opinion, listening
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Speaker 1: to this episode should probably become a worldwide annual holiday tradition.
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Speaker 1: So we missed last year, we can just go ahead
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Speaker 1: and consider this year one of that tradition. I hope
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Speaker 1: you enjoy it, and Merry Christmas and happy holidays however
0:30
Speaker 1: you celebrate them. Welcome to Stuff you should know from
0:40
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
0:49
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuckers Bryant and Jerry
0:53
Speaker 1: Jerome Roland. Uh. Who's the Wookie mother? Yeah? Mala? That
1:01
Speaker 1: was the Wookie wife. Oh and mother? Yeah sure, Chewbacca's
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Speaker 1: momb is not with them any longer. She left. She
1:09
Speaker 1: was not about to appear in that. She went out
1:11
Speaker 1: the window. I'm excited about this. I have to say
1:16
Speaker 1: we should say Happy Star Wars Day. Yeah. Today is
1:19
Speaker 1: um December. Um, I have my opening night tickets? Do
1:24
Speaker 1: you really sure? Wow? You know I into it? Oh? Yeah,
1:31
Speaker 1: well I will definitely go see it in the theater,
1:33
Speaker 1: But um, why won't be the opening night? Sure, I've
1:36
Speaker 1: gotten really adept at like ignoring spoilers, people talking about
1:41
Speaker 1: stuff all like, so I can I could conceivably see
1:44
Speaker 1: this movie a month after it comes out and still
1:48
Speaker 1: going fresh. I'm an ostrich. Yeah you black yourself out,
1:53
Speaker 1: Yeah you go dark. I make myself go to sleep face,
1:57
Speaker 1: you go to the dark side. Been there a while now?
2:02
Speaker 1: Uh Well, Happy Star Wars Day though, I'm sure that
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Speaker 1: I think this pairs nicely with Christmas Star Wars Day.
2:07
Speaker 1: It's all come together. Yes, Um, we already missed Life
2:11
Speaker 1: Day though, so happy belated Life Day. Are they celebrating
2:14
Speaker 1: it this year? Novemb Yeah, but it's every three years.
2:19
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, our cane man job. Okay, so it's every
2:24
Speaker 1: three years, started in nineteen seventy eight. Let's do the math,
2:28
Speaker 1: shall we? Mm hmmm, quick math break. I believe that
2:34
Speaker 1: two thousand fourteen was the last Life Day, man, we
2:37
Speaker 1: just missed, and then again in seventeen. Okay, soeen we'll
2:41
Speaker 1: celebrate Life Day. Will put on our red robes, are ultralong,
2:45
Speaker 1: straight ironed wigs, and we'll celebrate Life Day the way
2:49
Speaker 1: it was meant to. Yes, And if you have no
2:51
Speaker 1: idea what we're talking about. We are talking about Life Day,
2:55
Speaker 1: which is a celebration, uh that Wookies in the Star
2:59
Speaker 1: Wars Union first have every three years. Yeah, it's like
3:01
Speaker 1: their Christmas or the Kanza, their tet. Supposedly, it's sort
3:07
Speaker 1: of like Earth. They too. They celebrate the diversity of
3:09
Speaker 1: their ecosystem and also remembrance of the dead, and they
3:14
Speaker 1: also give the gifts there like the Fins. Basically, Yeah,
3:17
Speaker 1: it's a it's a very interesting part of the Star
3:19
Speaker 1: Wars canon. It is, and it's almost entirely made up,
3:23
Speaker 1: dashed off you could possibly say, by um, George Lucas
3:27
Speaker 1: in the seventies. Um. And it's the basis of what
3:32
Speaker 1: is become derided as like one of the worst things
3:36
Speaker 1: that ever happened to the Star Wars galaxy. Well, not
3:39
Speaker 1: only that, one of the worst things ever aired on television. Yeah,
3:42
Speaker 1: with this galaxy. Yeah, at first that sounds like hyperbole, like,
3:47
Speaker 1: come on, it's because it was Star Wars, we had
3:49
Speaker 1: high expectations, but it's really that bad. Yeah. The people
3:53
Speaker 1: who say that haven't seen even a second of it. Yeah. Yeah, However,
3:56
Speaker 1: I watched it uh, when I was a kid. Then
3:59
Speaker 1: it again this week, and you watched it twice this week. Yeah,
4:03
Speaker 1: I watched it last night and this morning. There's something
4:06
Speaker 1: about it. It's mesmerizing, it really is. It's one of
4:09
Speaker 1: those things that you start watching it and you want
4:13
Speaker 1: to turn it off, but you want to see just
4:15
Speaker 1: how absurd it can get. Almost Yeah, and it starts absurd,
4:19
Speaker 1: it stays absurd. In the middle, it's increasingly more absurd,
4:23
Speaker 1: it's a little less absurd, finishes super absurd. Yeah, it's
4:27
Speaker 1: just a train wreck in every single sense of the word.
4:30
Speaker 1: Talk to bottom. It's extraordinarily difficult to overstate how bad
4:34
Speaker 1: this is, and some people have, you know, in researching this,
4:37
Speaker 1: you read about it, you read descriptions of these things,
4:40
Speaker 1: and it just can't possibly be gotten across until you
4:44
Speaker 1: see it. So luckily, as we will see, you can
4:46
Speaker 1: go onto YouTube and watch it, and you may even
4:49
Speaker 1: enjoy this episode more if you pause, go spend two
4:53
Speaker 1: hours watching this thing, and then come back and laugh
4:57
Speaker 1: along with us. Yeah, there's a great Over the years,
4:59
Speaker 1: there have been many segments of it on YouTube from
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Speaker 1: badly VHS tapes, but there's one really pretty good version
5:07
Speaker 1: of it in full UM brought to you by w
5:11
Speaker 1: h I O Dayton, Ohio, Channel seven. Because that flashes
5:15
Speaker 1: up on the screen periodically. Man, it is high quality,
5:20
Speaker 1: it looks good, and it has to basically be the
5:22
Speaker 1: copy that the actual UM affiliate broadcast. It's like that,
5:27
Speaker 1: that quality compared to the other stuff floating around on YouTube,
5:30
Speaker 1: clearly recorded on a pc R, which we're really expensive,
5:35
Speaker 1: very expensive. I did some calculating on west Egg okay UM,
5:38
Speaker 1: so the average VCR went for about a thousand dollars.
5:41
Speaker 1: There were brand new it's amazing thousand dollars in money,
5:44
Speaker 1: so they were about thirty eight hundred dollars in two
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Speaker 1: thousand fourteen money. Luckily, there were some rich people out
5:50
Speaker 1: there recording this stuff, and the wealthy have saved us
5:54
Speaker 1: all again yet again, as they always do. Uh. We
5:58
Speaker 1: need to shout out some art goals that we used
6:01
Speaker 1: for this. There's great a great article in Vanity Fair
6:04
Speaker 1: called the Han Solo Comedy Our exclamation Point by Frank D. Jacomo.
6:10
Speaker 1: And then there's the Star Wars Holiday special was the
6:12
Speaker 1: worst thing on television ever by So when we kind
6:15
Speaker 1: of know Alex Pasternack uh from Motherboard, Yeah, which is uh,
6:20
Speaker 1: not wired. It's uh vice. We wrote a little bit
6:24
Speaker 1: for Motherboard back then and we had a call with that,
6:26
Speaker 1: like we're like old motherboard vets basically, and when they're
6:30
Speaker 1: one more, there was another one and I don't know
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Speaker 1: who wrote this one chuck. Uh, yeah, it's the titles
6:37
Speaker 1: the Star Wars Holiday Special. George Lucas wants to smash
6:40
Speaker 1: every copy of with a sledgehammer, which was a famous quote,
6:44
Speaker 1: uh supposedly at a convention by Lucas, Yes, which is
6:47
Speaker 1: not correct. He didn't ever say that. No, okay, that
6:50
Speaker 1: that sounded like something that people made up. Yes, but
6:53
Speaker 1: if you go on the internet, you will quickly believe
6:56
Speaker 1: that he did. Apparently didn't, so that's I'm sure he
6:58
Speaker 1: felt that way though, clearly, because he did appear on
7:01
Speaker 1: Robot Chicken and I think two thousand five on the
7:04
Speaker 1: Therapist Couch talking about how much he hated the special. Alright,
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Speaker 1: so let's set the background, shall we Shall we go
7:10
Speaker 1: back to summer getting the old way back machine. All right,
7:14
Speaker 1: let's do it. All right, here we are, there's Waterson. Yeah,
7:24
Speaker 1: I'm just a little six year old excited about Star Wars.
7:27
Speaker 1: I am. I've just turned one. Yes, you don't know
7:30
Speaker 1: what's up yet. I please forgive me if I urinate myself,
7:35
Speaker 1: no problem, okay. Uh So what has happened is Star
7:38
Speaker 1: Wars has become a huge, huge hit, seemingly out of nowhere,
7:43
Speaker 1: establishing George Lucas is one of the brilliant young minds
7:46
Speaker 1: and filmmaking, even though when this first movie it was
7:49
Speaker 1: his first huge, huge breakout hit. Oh yeah, for sure,
7:52
Speaker 1: talk don't even talk about a breakout hit, Like no
7:55
Speaker 1: one had ever seen anything like it before two thousand
7:58
Speaker 1: one had come out in the late sixty but it wasn't.
8:02
Speaker 1: It's still it still isn't accessible to all audiences. You know,
8:05
Speaker 1: it's kind of cerebral film. Yeah, it's not an adventure movie.
8:08
Speaker 1: This was This is like basically swashbuckling on the screen.
8:12
Speaker 1: But you know, in a galaxy far far away, Star
8:14
Speaker 1: Wars just changed everything and it came on just like
8:17
Speaker 1: a hammer. Um, there's a new hope by the way, yes,
8:22
Speaker 1: and then then we're gonna get stuff wrong, nerds, So yes,
8:24
Speaker 1: just go ahead and get your little fingers ready to
8:26
Speaker 1: email us. Like if it wasn't driven home that I'm
8:29
Speaker 1: not a nerd by the fact that I don't have
8:31
Speaker 1: opening night tickets or any tickets yet, give me a break,
8:34
Speaker 1: and by proxy chuck to okay, thank you. So um,
8:39
Speaker 1: it's it's hard to stay how great Star Wars was
8:43
Speaker 1: in everyone's mind, right. Bill Murray came out with that
8:46
Speaker 1: lounge singer Star Wars thing. It was everywhere and if
8:49
Speaker 1: you if you just listen to the lyrics of it,
8:52
Speaker 1: it's really it's just Bill Murray singing about how much
8:55
Speaker 1: Star Wars is awesome. Right. So, by the following year, Um,
9:01
Speaker 1: George Lucas was he wanted to figure out a way
9:04
Speaker 1: to keep audiences just engaged with the whole Star Wars
9:08
Speaker 1: franchise that he was just starting to build. But he
9:10
Speaker 1: knew the Empire Strikes Back was a couple more years out, sure,
9:14
Speaker 1: so um he I think he was approached by some
9:17
Speaker 1: TV executives who said, have you considered doing some sort
9:21
Speaker 1: of TV special? They're all the rage right now. We
9:24
Speaker 1: have a we have a graphic that's really awesome that
9:28
Speaker 1: we set aside just for TV specials here at CBS.
9:32
Speaker 1: Why don't you let us let's get together and do
9:34
Speaker 1: a Star Wars special. That's right. Producers Gary Smith and
9:37
Speaker 1: Dwight him on. Uh, we're working over at CBS, and
9:41
Speaker 1: they said, this is a great way to keep the
9:43
Speaker 1: spirit alive while you're making your other movie. Maybe move
9:47
Speaker 1: some more toys. Yeah, which George Lucas got. So it
9:52
Speaker 1: was right before Thanksgiving, and he said, there'll be a
9:54
Speaker 1: lot of people watching TV um pre holiday season or
9:58
Speaker 1: I guess in the holiday season. Well, the weekend before Thanksgiving,
10:01
Speaker 1: it's like everybody's shopping, sitting around family like waiting to
10:04
Speaker 1: actually do stuff. That's right, perfect time to broadcast something
10:08
Speaker 1: on TV. So Lucas says, all right, let's do this.
10:12
Speaker 1: I don't have a ton of time, but how about this.
10:14
Speaker 1: I'll get I'll get a story together and then you
10:17
Speaker 1: can go hire a whiz bang team of of veteran
10:20
Speaker 1: writers and producers and directors whatever genre you think is appropriate.
10:25
Speaker 1: And those are the words that will haunt you, George
10:27
Speaker 1: Lucas to his grave. Yeah. So Lucas said, here's my idea.
10:31
Speaker 1: I wanted to be based um on Wookiees, and I
10:35
Speaker 1: wanted to take place on their home planet of Kazook
10:39
Speaker 1: or Wookie planet. See is that how you saying Kazuk
10:42
Speaker 1: That's how it's pronounced. In the episode, the Holiday special.
10:46
Speaker 1: But it's also pronounced different ways. Other times I would
10:50
Speaker 1: have pronounced that cashy e e got spell it k
10:54
Speaker 1: a s h y y y k, which I mean,
10:58
Speaker 1: I guess that sounds like Chewbuck is plan sure also
11:01
Speaker 1: called G five Wookie planet see or Eaton is a
11:05
Speaker 1: mid rim planet. Right. So the whole reason apparently that
11:08
Speaker 1: George Lucas was interested in featuring the Wookies was it
11:12
Speaker 1: is what we in show business call low hanging fruit.
11:16
Speaker 1: The reason why it was low hanging fruit was because
11:18
Speaker 1: they had just established the different scenes that would make
11:22
Speaker 1: the cut for Empire Strikes Back and uh, what how
11:27
Speaker 1: did you pronounce it again? Kazook Kazook had not made
11:30
Speaker 1: the cut. Uh. Even prior to this, apparently for a
11:33
Speaker 1: new hope, George Lucas had whipped up a forty page
11:36
Speaker 1: what's known as the Wookie Bible. It's like a forty
11:38
Speaker 1: page supplement that's all about Kazook and Wookies and Chewbacca
11:44
Speaker 1: and his family and everything about wookie um. Right, so
11:48
Speaker 1: he's like, I've got this thing already, you know established
11:51
Speaker 1: I love Wookies. Um, they didn't make the cut. I'm
11:54
Speaker 1: a little sad about that. They're not gonna kazuok is
11:57
Speaker 1: not gonna show up in an Empire strikes back. Let's
12:00
Speaker 1: let's build the entire special around wookies. It's basically the
12:04
Speaker 1: one demand me George Lucas has. Yeah, that's it. I'll
12:07
Speaker 1: be totally hands off from this point on which he
12:10
Speaker 1: kind of was. He totally wasn't It was actually this
12:12
Speaker 1: experience that apparently taught him to be the very hands
12:16
Speaker 1: on a person that he is famous for being. It
12:18
Speaker 1: came out of this Christmas special. Absolutely he was burned,
12:22
Speaker 1: and um he had an iron grip after that on everything.
12:26
Speaker 1: So here's some some of the folks behind it. Bruce Valanche,
12:30
Speaker 1: famous TV writer. You've probably seen him on Hollywood Squares.
12:34
Speaker 1: Wasn't he suspected of being Thomas pinch On for a while.
12:37
Speaker 1: I don't know, or was Thomas pinch On on Hollywood Squares?
12:40
Speaker 1: I have no idea. I may be confabulating some stuff confounding. Yeah,
12:46
Speaker 1: there's some kind of some sort going on. It sounds
12:48
Speaker 1: like it. So Valanche was hired as a writer. A
12:51
Speaker 1: guy named Lenny Rips was hired as a writer who
12:55
Speaker 1: has some great quotes in that Vanity Fair article. He does.
12:59
Speaker 1: His first quote was, we were really excited because this
13:02
Speaker 1: is Star Wars. How could it lose famous? Last words?
13:07
Speaker 1: Who else was hired? There was a husband and wife team,
13:11
Speaker 1: the welch Is, who are the parents of folk singer
13:16
Speaker 1: Gillian Welch. I'm a big fan of and I had
13:19
Speaker 1: no idea that her parents. They were producers slash songwriters
13:23
Speaker 1: of the day. They were big on the variety show scene,
13:26
Speaker 1: which would turn out to be a really key cog
13:28
Speaker 1: in this whole experience. So I feel like, right about here,
13:32
Speaker 1: Jerry should insert a needle coming off of a record
13:35
Speaker 1: sound effect. Okay, thanks Jerry, So Chuck, you just said
13:41
Speaker 1: singer songwriters. Yeah, what would that have to do with
13:44
Speaker 1: Star Wars. Yeah? Well, actually, in this Star Wars Holiday special,
13:48
Speaker 1: for those of you hadn't seen it, there are musical numbers.
13:52
Speaker 1: They decided from the outset that there should be musical numbers.
13:55
Speaker 1: And the reason that they decided that there should be
13:57
Speaker 1: musical numbers is because the people who sold George Lucas
14:01
Speaker 1: and at the time it was started, the Star Wars
14:03
Speaker 1: Corporation was what it was called um On the idea
14:07
Speaker 1: of doing this TV special was that everyone would love
14:10
Speaker 1: a variety show. Yeah, it was the seventies. Great idea,
14:13
Speaker 1: let's do a variety show. The problem was this, Apparently
14:16
Speaker 1: George Lucas didn't watch enough TV and he also overly
14:19
Speaker 1: trusted people who talked to him because by yes, variety
14:24
Speaker 1: shows had dominated television for over ten years, but it
14:29
Speaker 1: had come to an end. It was getting stale. Yeah,
14:32
Speaker 1: we're talking to Carol Burnett show, one of my favorite
14:35
Speaker 1: had just been canceled after eleven seasons. Sonny and Chair
14:39
Speaker 1: had just had its last season. Um, I mean what
14:43
Speaker 1: else like he Hall was he? I was still going on,
14:45
Speaker 1: probably still on solid golden yet to come on and
14:50
Speaker 1: take up the mantel that that would never write a show. Oh,
14:54
Speaker 1: it was a little bit, and there was talking in
14:56
Speaker 1: between the songs. Remember the Mandrell's Sister show. I never
15:00
Speaker 1: watched that one. Well, it's with that country chic thing
15:04
Speaker 1: that happened. Yeah, it was a big deal in the
15:06
Speaker 1: it's kind of happening again. I think, Oh, because of
15:09
Speaker 1: that dude, the guy who won all the c m
15:12
Speaker 1: A Awards. I don't know, he's like he's he came along.
15:16
Speaker 1: He's like actually country. His dad's like a coal miner
15:19
Speaker 1: for real. From Kentucky. I think, I know you mean
15:21
Speaker 1: Chris something. Yeah, he's come along and been like, what
15:25
Speaker 1: are you guys doing? Well, there's a revival in like
15:27
Speaker 1: good country music. Again, that's like in the tradition of
15:30
Speaker 1: Merle Haggard and and I guess that's probably where the
15:33
Speaker 1: country she came from because there was actually good country
15:36
Speaker 1: going on. Yeah, Johnny Cash out a variety show, did
15:39
Speaker 1: he really? Yeah? I knew they did, like a Sunday
15:42
Speaker 1: singing thing like out in Virginia. Yeah, he had his
15:45
Speaker 1: own variety show. Is actually pretty good. There's some like
15:47
Speaker 1: really great performances. Do you know how many nerds are like,
15:50
Speaker 1: get back to Star Wars? I know, I'm so sorry.
15:53
Speaker 1: All right, So the Variety Show is is dying sort of,
15:56
Speaker 1: and so they figure, what a great time to take
15:59
Speaker 1: the biggest movie property on the planet and wedge it
16:03
Speaker 1: into the variety show milieu. I don't know if wedge
16:06
Speaker 1: is the right word. I think maybe uh, nestle it
16:09
Speaker 1: in there and then start hitting it with the blunt
16:13
Speaker 1: edge of an axe until it mashes into that crevice.
16:17
Speaker 1: You know, Because this is the time when Fantasy Island
16:20
Speaker 1: had just started. Um Mork and Mindy was about to
16:24
Speaker 1: change things. Charlie's Angels was getting huge. It basically television
16:28
Speaker 1: as we knew it from two whenever the real world
16:33
Speaker 1: came along. Just escape as television is what they called
16:36
Speaker 1: it was was starting and it was the hip new thing.
16:39
Speaker 1: So basically, if they had turned Han Solo and Princess
16:41
Speaker 1: Leiah and Luke Skywalker into maybe you know, sexy detectives,
16:46
Speaker 1: it might have gone over even better. But they went
16:49
Speaker 1: the other way. They decided to latch onto this extraordinarily
16:52
Speaker 1: stale um genre of television and they hired the best
16:57
Speaker 1: in the business, like there was there was. There was
16:59
Speaker 1: a from I think Lenny RiPPs who was saying, like
17:02
Speaker 1: we had literally a dream team, a variety show dream team,
17:07
Speaker 1: and everybody was good, but there were probably no bad
17:10
Speaker 1: welders on the Titanic eare That's a great quote. Yeah.
17:13
Speaker 1: The guy they hired to direct it initially was a
17:15
Speaker 1: dude named David A. Coomba, and he had made his
17:19
Speaker 1: name for Welcome to the Fillmore East. It was a
17:21
Speaker 1: concert documentary with Van Morrison Van Morrison and the Birds
17:26
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy one, and he actually was at usc
17:28
Speaker 1: Film School at the same time as Lucas, even though
17:31
Speaker 1: they didn't know each other, and um, he only ended
17:34
Speaker 1: up directing about three segments of the thing before he quit.
17:38
Speaker 1: Yet before he walked off, some say he was actually
17:40
Speaker 1: let go, but we'll get to him in a minute
17:43
Speaker 1: and who replaced him. As as we get along down
17:46
Speaker 1: this uh gross road, well let's let's take a little
17:49
Speaker 1: break because I'm I'm overly excited. Okay, alright, so we've
18:13
Speaker 1: established most of the main players. We'll we'll get to
18:15
Speaker 1: a few more. We should point out that, um, Mark
18:19
Speaker 1: hamill And and Harrison Ford and Carrie Fischer, Peter Mayhew,
18:24
Speaker 1: they had no grounds to refuse to be on this basically, yeah,
18:29
Speaker 1: pretty much. They were not huge, huge stars, yet they
18:32
Speaker 1: could throw their weight around and say this is terrible
18:34
Speaker 1: and I'm not doing it. They were. They were big
18:36
Speaker 1: overnight because of Star Wars, for sure, but they weren't
18:40
Speaker 1: to the adoring public back at the studio. They could
18:44
Speaker 1: still be bossed around. And this is the result of it.
18:47
Speaker 1: And you can tell also, um, just from watching the
18:50
Speaker 1: actual special, Like Harrison Ford is not happy to be
18:54
Speaker 1: there at any point. Um, Princess Leiah is clearly on drugs.
19:00
Speaker 1: Uh was she on drugs at this point she if
19:03
Speaker 1: you watch it, she's she's on drugs. Especially the ending scene.
19:07
Speaker 1: Mark Hambell, it looks like he's happy to be there.
19:10
Speaker 1: Actually he was fine, but apparently he said no, I'm
19:13
Speaker 1: I'm not doing a musical number. And if you watch
19:16
Speaker 1: his part, wedging a musical number in there would have
19:19
Speaker 1: been even more painful. Um. But they everybody who was
19:24
Speaker 1: part of the actual Star Wars franchise that wasn't wearing
19:27
Speaker 1: like a full body costume was like, I really wish
19:31
Speaker 1: I wasn't here, And you can tell, oh yeah. In fact,
19:33
Speaker 1: in the opening uh credit sequence, they're showing the picture
19:38
Speaker 1: that you know, the faces of the people, and you
19:40
Speaker 1: see Harrison Ford as if he's flying the Millennium Falcon,
19:43
Speaker 1: and you can you can just hear the guy I'll
19:45
Speaker 1: screen going now look at the camera and just give
19:47
Speaker 1: a nod. Just look at the camera and give a nod.
19:50
Speaker 1: And he finally you can tell he's piste off and
19:52
Speaker 1: he looks up at the camera and just sort of
19:53
Speaker 1: smirks yeah and points at the camera like okay, I'm
19:56
Speaker 1: looking at the camera, and then goes back to what
19:58
Speaker 1: he's doing. Yeah, it's pretty awesome. I felt bad for him.
20:01
Speaker 1: So early on Valanche and others did you did you
20:04
Speaker 1: feel bad for him? Though? Really? I mean, like, come on,
20:09
Speaker 1: it's Harrison Ford, it's Hans Solo. He has to go
20:11
Speaker 1: do this for like five days. Yeah, I felt terrible
20:14
Speaker 1: for him. I think it's hilarious that they had to
20:16
Speaker 1: do this, especially now. Well, early on, Valanche and others
20:20
Speaker 1: knew that they may be in trouble because they decided
20:23
Speaker 1: not to subtitle any of the Wookie dialogue, and they
20:26
Speaker 1: literally started after a brief opening scene setting it up here.
20:30
Speaker 1: Here's the basic plot is Han Solo is trying to
20:34
Speaker 1: get Chewbacca back to Kazook in time for Life Day
20:37
Speaker 1: so we can celebrate with his family. That's the basis
20:41
Speaker 1: of the entire two the basis the entire two hours.
20:44
Speaker 1: They encounter a space battle and they're delayed, and the
20:48
Speaker 1: next two hours are kind of what's going on while
20:52
Speaker 1: the delay is happening back on Kazoo, back on Kazook.
20:54
Speaker 1: Because you hear, like, okay, well, Han Solo and Chewbacca
20:58
Speaker 1: evading the Imperial Guard and all that stuff for two hours.
21:01
Speaker 1: I would watch that. I would too. That's not what
21:05
Speaker 1: they show killing time at the Wookie household. That is
21:08
Speaker 1: what they show. That's what they do. It's people hanging
21:12
Speaker 1: out waiting for Chewbacca, worrying about him, and then killing
21:16
Speaker 1: time while they wait for him to come back. Literally,
21:19
Speaker 1: so um and so hold on. So you say there's
21:21
Speaker 1: a setup, right, Yeah, that's the initial setup and then chuck.
21:25
Speaker 1: That's followed by this. Yeah, it's followed by literally ten minutes,
21:31
Speaker 1: ten solid minutes of incomprehensible Wookie speak. So let's let's
21:37
Speaker 1: join it for a second, shall we. Let's all enjoy it.
22:24
Speaker 1: And again, you said ten minutes, and you're not exaggerating,
22:28
Speaker 1: you're not being hyperbolic. You can time it. That's it's
22:31
Speaker 1: ten minutes of wook He's talking to each other with
22:34
Speaker 1: no subtitles. Fortunately, I couldn't follow it at first, Like
22:38
Speaker 1: I didn't even know who it was. I thought it
22:41
Speaker 1: was might have been Chewbacca's mom and dad. Oh yeah,
22:44
Speaker 1: that's a little brother. And I don't find out until
22:47
Speaker 1: later when Mark Cambell shows up via skype call and says,
22:52
Speaker 1: he really explains everything that had just happened, Like, you're
22:56
Speaker 1: Chewbacca's father, Itchy, you'r Chewbacca's son, uh Lumpy Lumpy, and
23:02
Speaker 1: you are Chewbacca's wife. Oh mama, thank you. So before
23:06
Speaker 1: everybody starts like freaking out, we know that that's actually
23:09
Speaker 1: their nicknames. Their real names are. His father is a
23:14
Speaker 1: ti chick cook, a tchick cook it's really hard to pronounce.
23:18
Speaker 1: Mulatto Buck is his wife, and his son is lump
23:22
Speaker 1: O war Ump but as named by Lucas. But yeah,
23:26
Speaker 1: but Lucas also named him Lumpy Itchy and Mala so um.
23:31
Speaker 1: They're all back there wringing their hands, trying to figure
23:34
Speaker 1: out ways to pass the time until they get word
23:38
Speaker 1: from Chewbacca that he's made it to uh what is it, ketchuck, zuck,
23:43
Speaker 1: kazook Um. Just say ketchup, ketchup or cats up if
23:47
Speaker 1: you're fancy. Um. But Chewbacca is having trouble getting back
23:52
Speaker 1: to Katchuk because there's kazuock, because there's a blockade by
23:59
Speaker 1: the Empire and they're looking for rebels, specifically Chewbacca. Who
24:02
Speaker 1: I didn't realize this. He's the most famous Wookie of
24:05
Speaker 1: all did you know that? Yeah, of course I didn't
24:07
Speaker 1: know that. Well, I mean, he's the only one that
24:09
Speaker 1: really appears in the movies I mean that we're seeing, like,
24:13
Speaker 1: you know, these people's view of the universe. What about
24:16
Speaker 1: back on book Ye, he might have just been a
24:20
Speaker 1: fly by night wookie, right, yeah, but not the case
24:23
Speaker 1: very famous wookie. Yeah, and he really loved it, like
24:26
Speaker 1: soak in his fame. All right, So he realizes there's
24:29
Speaker 1: a problem. Valanche. He goes to Lucas and it's like,
24:33
Speaker 1: I don't know, man, this is your world, but it
24:36
Speaker 1: may not be the strongest thing to do to set
24:39
Speaker 1: this in wookie Land and have all this incomprehensible dialogue.
24:43
Speaker 1: And he says he was met with a glacial stare. Uh. Well,
24:47
Speaker 1: he put it a little differently than that. Well, he
24:49
Speaker 1: said glacial stair. He did. The glacial stair that he
24:52
Speaker 1: got was for this quote. He said, these people just
24:56
Speaker 1: talk and what sounds like fat people having an orgasm.
25:00
Speaker 1: He goes, if you want, you can set up a
25:01
Speaker 1: tape recorder in my bedroom and I'll do all of
25:03
Speaker 1: the follying for it. Yeah he's a large guy, he is,
25:06
Speaker 1: so uh that's what got the glacial stare. But Valanche
25:10
Speaker 1: later said that from this, there was one development meeting
25:13
Speaker 1: that Lucas attended and it was here's the Wookie Bible.
25:17
Speaker 1: Tell me what you got, And Valanche said he and
25:20
Speaker 1: the other writers and producers and director were just kind
25:23
Speaker 1: of throwing ideas, and George Lucas would either say like, no,
25:27
Speaker 1: that doesn't work, give him a glacial stare, or say, yes,
25:30
Speaker 1: that's exactly it. Yes, let's make this a variety show. Yeah.
25:34
Speaker 1: And there was a little bit of um background there.
25:37
Speaker 1: The cantina players in the band had appeared on other
25:41
Speaker 1: variety shows at that point, and I think it went
25:45
Speaker 1: over fairly well, just as a short segment on like
25:47
Speaker 1: the Richard Pryor Variety Show or Donnie Marie um Man.
25:53
Speaker 1: There were a lot of variety shows. But that's what
25:55
Speaker 1: I'm saying. It was that was television. That's what you did,
25:58
Speaker 1: Like the bread these um the The show had its
26:03
Speaker 1: course and then it became a variety show. It was
26:05
Speaker 1: just everybody love variety shows. By this time, though, everybody
26:09
Speaker 1: was sick of variety shows and so it really was
26:13
Speaker 1: a terrible choice. In fact, they even hired a couple
26:15
Speaker 1: of writers from Shields and yarn l which I hadn't
26:19
Speaker 1: heard of. Oh yeah, I watched it. It was creepy.
26:22
Speaker 1: This mind couple who had their own variety show, and
26:26
Speaker 1: they figured these two will be great because they are
26:30
Speaker 1: used to working without words, right, So, and so there
26:33
Speaker 1: is a certain logic to the variety show. It's not
26:36
Speaker 1: it's just that variety shows were popular at the time.
26:40
Speaker 1: Somebody was like, well, Wookie's you don't understand what they're saying.
26:43
Speaker 1: So this is all going to be very physical. So
26:46
Speaker 1: these people who who did what is it shields in yarn? Now, yeah,
26:50
Speaker 1: that's a perfect choice. That that makes complete sense. You
26:53
Speaker 1: can see this whole this whole process of leading up
26:56
Speaker 1: to the point where it was produced and shot and everything.
26:59
Speaker 1: It's series of like, oh, we have this problem, well
27:02
Speaker 1: here's a fix. Yeah, but that leads to another problem.
27:04
Speaker 1: Well we'll fix it with this, and and no one
27:07
Speaker 1: stepping back and being like, all we've done is create
27:10
Speaker 1: a series of problems that are going to come together
27:13
Speaker 1: and make one extraordinarily large problem that will become legendary.
27:17
Speaker 1: No one did that, and so the whole thing was
27:20
Speaker 1: was made. That's right, And that eventually airs on November
27:24
Speaker 1: sevent Friday at eight pm Eastern time. That's right, and
27:31
Speaker 1: Nielsen ratings it um attracted thirteen million viewers. Uh just
27:36
Speaker 1: the second hour, just in the US. It aired in
27:39
Speaker 1: six or seven countries total. Yeah, but no one cares
27:42
Speaker 1: about that, I guess not because none of those are
27:44
Speaker 1: on the internet. Uh. It finished second to the Love
27:47
Speaker 1: Boat in the second arm, sorry from eight to nine,
27:50
Speaker 1: and in the next hour actually finished behind part two
27:53
Speaker 1: of a mini series about Pearl Harbor starring Angie Dickinson.
27:56
Speaker 1: So it didn't even win their respective hours. No t million,
28:00
Speaker 1: that's that's not bad. The thing is, apparently if you
28:03
Speaker 1: look at the Nielsen ratings graph for the first hour, yea,
28:07
Speaker 1: we know about that graph. It's okay, yeah, we do.
28:10
Speaker 1: And then after a very important part, which we'll talk
28:14
Speaker 1: about soon. Um, it just drops off at the end
28:17
Speaker 1: of the first hour. And that actually probably made the
28:19
Speaker 1: executives at CBS cringe for a number of reasons. Number
28:23
Speaker 1: one is this special was originally supposed to just be
28:26
Speaker 1: an hour, but so many advertisers wanted to sign on
28:30
Speaker 1: that they extended it to two hours. And it shines
28:35
Speaker 1: through you can totally tell that this thing was never
28:38
Speaker 1: supposed to I think an hour might have been stretching it.
28:41
Speaker 1: To tell you the truth, it's thirty minutes of content,
28:45
Speaker 1: forty if you're generous an hour and then two hours,
28:49
Speaker 1: it becomes one of the worst things that was ever
28:51
Speaker 1: put on television. All right, well, let's take a break
28:54
Speaker 1: and then we'll talk a little bit more about the
28:55
Speaker 1: actual um uh even I don't want to call it
28:59
Speaker 1: content it but it is content in the strictest definitions.
29:03
Speaker 1: Right after this, sorry gee, alright, So the show itself,
29:27
Speaker 1: we've given you the main plot line, which again is
29:31
Speaker 1: that Chewy is trying to get back to his home
29:33
Speaker 1: planet to celebrate life Day with his family. Right, that's it,
29:37
Speaker 1: And again we almost barely see Chewy. Yeah, the rest
29:41
Speaker 1: is his family on because look waiting for him to
29:45
Speaker 1: come back for a life Day. Yeah. So, um, some
29:48
Speaker 1: of the various things they did, they were guest stars.
29:50
Speaker 1: There was Harvey Corman from The Carol Burnett Show, one
29:53
Speaker 1: of my all time favorites him or Carol Carol Burnett
29:57
Speaker 1: Show both. He's great. Yeah, he actually if you watch
30:01
Speaker 1: what he's doing, you're like, this is comedy genius. For apparently,
30:05
Speaker 1: he too was like the only one on set that
30:06
Speaker 1: was bringing levity. He was joking around and kind of
30:09
Speaker 1: kept spirits up. Good for him, that's what I say.
30:11
Speaker 1: And he had three, three different parts. Yeah, he played
30:15
Speaker 1: uh well, I don't even know the names. Actually we
30:19
Speaker 1: could look him up, but he played a He played
30:22
Speaker 1: a Julia child like cook. There's an actual cooking segment,
30:27
Speaker 1: a long one, a very long cooking segment where Chewbacca's
30:31
Speaker 1: wife Um makes Banta stew to kill some time, to
30:35
Speaker 1: kill some time because waiting on her planet and in
30:39
Speaker 1: our living room. Yeah, so Harvey Corman is in Drag
30:42
Speaker 1: is a foe armed Julia child like uh TV chef
30:47
Speaker 1: And I think it's Gormanda. It's her name, Gormanda. That
30:50
Speaker 1: makes total sense. He also plays Um. There's this one
30:54
Speaker 1: weird bit where Chewbacca's son tries to figure out a
30:58
Speaker 1: way to trick the stormtroopers. The Empire had come and
31:01
Speaker 1: kind of because the blockade raided the house and other properties.
31:05
Speaker 1: So he tries to trick them by I think, rigging
31:07
Speaker 1: a calm link to speak in a different voice. So
31:11
Speaker 1: he has to watch the instruction manual. He watches an
31:16
Speaker 1: instruction video which was Harvey Kitel as a robot. Oh,
31:21
Speaker 1: it would have been wonderful, little big Harvey Kitel did
31:24
Speaker 1: Harvey Carvey corn Man Haye murders someone in the middle
31:29
Speaker 1: of the instruction Harvey Corman. And then the final role
31:33
Speaker 1: he had was as a a bar patron in the
31:36
Speaker 1: cantina that drinks. He has a hole in the top
31:40
Speaker 1: of his head like a volcano, where he pours his
31:43
Speaker 1: drinks in. That's how he drinks. And he he loves
31:45
Speaker 1: b Arthur. Did we mention be Arthur was in it?
31:48
Speaker 1: B Arthur is not only in it, Chuck. She sings
31:50
Speaker 1: a song. She does. She is thenotes to everyone she
31:53
Speaker 1: manages or maybe owns. The owner. Yeah, the what's the
31:58
Speaker 1: mas what moss deaf cantina? Uh? No, most of is
32:02
Speaker 1: a rapper. Oh yeah, I think you mean Moss Eisley. Yes, yes,
32:06
Speaker 1: that cantina. She's the owner. Be Arthur is the owner
32:09
Speaker 1: be author of the Golden Girls, but in this case
32:12
Speaker 1: the Arthur of Maude, because as one of the people
32:14
Speaker 1: who wrote one of the articles we based this on
32:16
Speaker 1: points out, she's just basically playing Maud as the owner
32:19
Speaker 1: of the cantina. Yeah, and her song comes because um,
32:23
Speaker 1: they basically say there's a lockdown, so you gotta call
32:27
Speaker 1: last call um at your bar. So she calls last
32:30
Speaker 1: call by singing a song to everyone. Right, and again
32:34
Speaker 1: we can't possibly have the script lead anywhere else but
32:38
Speaker 1: Chewbacca's house while his family waits for it. So all
32:41
Speaker 1: this takes place as part of a public service announcement
32:45
Speaker 1: basically broadcast by the Empire about how immoral life on
32:49
Speaker 1: tattooing is. So let's go see what's going on in
32:53
Speaker 1: the mos Eisley Cantina as it's being shut down for curfew. Alright,
33:00
Speaker 1: this is incomprehensible, but it goes on. Um, so they're
33:04
Speaker 1: in it. There's also Art Carney. Yes, he's the Honeymooners family,
33:08
Speaker 1: the star of the whole thing. Really, he has the
33:11
Speaker 1: most lines, I would say, the most comprehensible line. Right.
33:16
Speaker 1: So he plays a trader, a human trader um that is,
33:20
Speaker 1: uh recently been with Han Solo and Chewy and actually
33:23
Speaker 1: gets to Kazook and says they're on the way. It's
33:26
Speaker 1: all good. Yeah, a trade or not trade tour. Yeah,
33:30
Speaker 1: traders in trades humans for you know money. No, he
33:35
Speaker 1: he sells goods. Yeah, a trader. He doesn't trade humans. Yeah,
33:40
Speaker 1: he's in the human trade. He No, he isn't. Really
33:44
Speaker 1: he trades humans like he sells humans. I looked it
33:47
Speaker 1: up in the Star Wars Encyclopedia said that he was
33:50
Speaker 1: in the human trade. So in this Christmas special, apparently
33:54
Speaker 1: they sanitized his his background because he's basically just selling
33:58
Speaker 1: like gadgets and novelty and stuff like that to the
34:01
Speaker 1: Wookies and the Empire who were occupying the area. Yes,
34:06
Speaker 1: he comes bearing gifts because he's a friend of Chewbacca's family. Yeah,
34:10
Speaker 1: so he comes bearing gifts. One of the gifts he
34:12
Speaker 1: gives is a UM sort of like a little digital
34:16
Speaker 1: insert to a Oh, I guess you would call it
34:20
Speaker 1: a virtual reality hair dryer hair dryer, like a beauty
34:25
Speaker 1: shop hair dryer. Right. He gives it to Grandpa Itchy.
34:29
Speaker 1: Grandpa Itchy UM sits under this hair dryer pops in
34:33
Speaker 1: this uh digital cassette, and it can only be described
34:37
Speaker 1: as softcore porn. Apparently the writers who were interviewed for
34:42
Speaker 1: this said that was totally the intent. They were trying
34:45
Speaker 1: to get what amounted to softcore porn that would pass
34:48
Speaker 1: the sensors. So it's all m you can't even say
34:53
Speaker 1: it's innuendo. It's too obvious in overt for innuendo. Instead,
34:56
Speaker 1: it's just it's just it's just gross. It's really gross.
35:02
Speaker 1: Um Diane Carroll, Yes she is. Um, a Vegas staple
35:08
Speaker 1: shows up and starts basically tantalizing. Um. Grandpa Itchy, who again,
35:15
Speaker 1: this is Chewbacca's elderly father who now engages in some
35:19
Speaker 1: sort of well he's he's watching virtual reality pornography now,
35:23
Speaker 1: and this is a pretty lengthy segment in and of itself.
35:26
Speaker 1: Well yeah, and she literally says to him like, now
35:29
Speaker 1: I can see you're really excited. Yeah, it's pretty rough
35:33
Speaker 1: to watch. Yeah, So then you've got another musical number
35:36
Speaker 1: because also again he shudders, it's really strange, all right,
35:42
Speaker 1: So there's also ah, I know, it seems like we're
35:45
Speaker 1: jumping around, but it's it's so blow not like this
35:48
Speaker 1: is pretty much like blow for blow. Um. Actually I
35:50
Speaker 1: forgot earlier on in in the in the special, Um,
35:55
Speaker 1: there's one of my favorite sequences is when Grandpa Itchy
35:59
Speaker 1: goes over to Lumpy and basically sets up remember the
36:03
Speaker 1: the hologram chessboard that they played in A New Hope,
36:06
Speaker 1: basically kind of sets that up and says, here, just
36:08
Speaker 1: play this. He pushes the button which is clearly a
36:11
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies cassette recorder and another uh like it's like
36:18
Speaker 1: a cirque de sol ay acid trip. Um gymnast routine
36:25
Speaker 1: happens in front of the kid's eyes. And again this
36:28
Speaker 1: all just it's not like it shows a snippet. They
36:30
Speaker 1: showed the entire segments, like five, six, ten minutes long
36:34
Speaker 1: of all of these things. So you would think, Okay,
36:36
Speaker 1: they've gone to this hologram, well a couple of times,
36:40
Speaker 1: why not go to it again? Well they do. They
36:43
Speaker 1: do to kill more time. While the Imperial Guard is
36:46
Speaker 1: ransacking their house. Um, Art Carney apparently, I guess it's
36:51
Speaker 1: trying to get one of the Imperial Guard, the leader
36:54
Speaker 1: I think, or one of the leaders who looks like
36:56
Speaker 1: somebody from space Balls by the way, very much so. Um.
37:00
Speaker 1: And the writer of the Vanity Fair article, by the
37:02
Speaker 1: way said, um, this, this is so incomprehensible. The specialist
37:06
Speaker 1: George Lucas didn't even have the schwartz with him at
37:08
Speaker 1: the time. So anyway, our Carney's distracting this uh Imperial leader. Um,
37:15
Speaker 1: while they're ransacking the Wookie's house, Chewbacca's house with a hologram,
37:20
Speaker 1: and this hologram instead of being an acrobat or Diane
37:24
Speaker 1: Carroll or any kind of porn or anything like that
37:27
Speaker 1: is Jefferson Starship and they decide that they're going to
37:32
Speaker 1: play Light the Sky on Fire, which apparently is about UFOs.
37:35
Speaker 1: It's a little music video. Basically, it's a pretty Yeah,
37:38
Speaker 1: it's the predecessor to like video Kill the Radio Storry
37:41
Speaker 1: you can tell um. And again it is the whole
37:46
Speaker 1: lengthy song, the whole thing. So every time that somebody's like,
37:51
Speaker 1: we need to escape mentally from what's going on here
37:54
Speaker 1: in our house, let's go into the video world, it's
37:58
Speaker 1: not just and they don't cut back and forth. It's okay,
38:03
Speaker 1: here's five minutes of Jefferson Starship performing this song. And
38:07
Speaker 1: even the Jefferson Starship guys um were like, yeah, it's
38:10
Speaker 1: sort of a weird trip, Like we didn't get it,
38:12
Speaker 1: but we did it right. They gave us some money
38:15
Speaker 1: and some cocaine. Well probably, so we said, yeah, chuck.
38:20
Speaker 1: I think though, um, there yet another segment like this
38:24
Speaker 1: is actually widely regarded as the high point of the
38:28
Speaker 1: whole thing. So there's a cartoon. Actually yeah that lump
38:32
Speaker 1: up watch Yeah, Lumpy's like the Imperial Guard is still
38:36
Speaker 1: ransacking my house. I think I'll entertain myself by watching
38:40
Speaker 1: a cartoon on my little Um, I don't know what.
38:44
Speaker 1: I guess it was an iPad and uh, he watches
38:47
Speaker 1: this cartoon and it's it's actually remarkable for a number
38:50
Speaker 1: of reasons. It's the best part of the whole special
38:53
Speaker 1: generally agreed upon as such, not just us. And it
38:57
Speaker 1: introduces Boba Fett. It's the first time Boba fat ever
39:00
Speaker 1: makes an appearance in Star Wars universe. Yeah, it's actually
39:03
Speaker 1: not a bad And you can't find it in the
39:06
Speaker 1: the one version I told you to watch. They removed
39:07
Speaker 1: it for copyright. But he didn't watch a separate version, right,
39:10
Speaker 1: you can find it on its own. Yeah, And it's Um,
39:13
Speaker 1: it's very much reminiscent of like the cartoon style of
39:15
Speaker 1: the day, like a he Man or something even even,
39:18
Speaker 1: but it's even a little more artsy than that. Yeah.
39:22
Speaker 1: But it does have a plot that you can follow
39:24
Speaker 1: that makes sense as a Star Wars thing, and it
39:27
Speaker 1: introduces Boba Fette, like you said, And um, it's actually
39:30
Speaker 1: not bad. It's like Luke and R two and C
39:32
Speaker 1: three p O. Yeah, and there's like they crash on
39:35
Speaker 1: a planet or something. Yeah, and Han and Jewry you're
39:37
Speaker 1: in it and it's the first time we see in
39:38
Speaker 1: Darth Vader. It's the first time we see Boba Fett
39:42
Speaker 1: and that he is uh, that he is just doing
39:45
Speaker 1: whatever he can do for money. Like Luke trusts him
39:48
Speaker 1: at first, C three pos like you sure you should
39:50
Speaker 1: trust him this quick, and he's like, oh, three p
39:52
Speaker 1: o you and your non trusting ways, And then it
39:55
Speaker 1: turns out he's selling them out to the dark side.
39:57
Speaker 1: So it's it's basically Boba Fett is an al worry
40:00
Speaker 1: for George Lucas himself. So the cartoon comes and goes,
40:30
Speaker 1: and that was the thing that came at about the
40:33
Speaker 1: end of the first hour mark, and after that everybody
40:37
Speaker 1: just turned off their television sets. Yeah, I don't remember.
40:41
Speaker 1: Did you watch this when it came up? Yeah? I
40:43
Speaker 1: remember watching it, but I don't remember much about it,
40:45
Speaker 1: like if I made it through it all. I mean
40:47
Speaker 1: it was I was seven and it was on until ten,
40:49
Speaker 1: so I probably didn't make it through it all. Um,
40:52
Speaker 1: you're probably disturbed. Who knows, I just remember that. I'll
40:56
Speaker 1: have to ask my brother. He might have a memory
40:58
Speaker 1: of this. Oh, Betty does I'm sure he met everybody
41:01
Speaker 1: afterwards or something like that, you know, it has a picture. Well,
41:03
Speaker 1: he was ten at that point. Cynicism had, you know,
41:06
Speaker 1: become a thing in his life. Probably by then, didn't
41:10
Speaker 1: that when cynicism kicks into he's Scott holding out the
41:13
Speaker 1: fourteen fifteen Yeah maybe so so um chuck, the whole
41:17
Speaker 1: thing finally does in. And actually there's a guy his
41:20
Speaker 1: name is Nathan Raban, he writes over at the A
41:22
Speaker 1: V Club. He had a great quote. He basically said
41:24
Speaker 1: that one of the great redeeming values of this um,
41:28
Speaker 1: this special is that it does eventually end. Yeah, you
41:30
Speaker 1: know what the first part of the quote is, I'm
41:33
Speaker 1: not convinced the special wasn't ultimately written and directed by
41:36
Speaker 1: a sentient bag of cocaine. And like, go read his
41:40
Speaker 1: his review of the Star Wars Holiday Special, because he
41:43
Speaker 1: goes on to describe exactly what that must have been,
41:45
Speaker 1: like the development meeting where the bag of cocaine is
41:48
Speaker 1: pacing back and forth talking about what should happen. That's
41:51
Speaker 1: what it feels like. But it doesn't, and it ends
41:56
Speaker 1: even more. It takes this bizarre two hours and wraps
41:59
Speaker 1: it up in just a nice bizarre bow. Yeah, so
42:02
Speaker 1: what happens is eventually Han Solo should we say spoiler alert. Eventually,
42:08
Speaker 1: Han Solo and Chewy make it to the planet. They
42:10
Speaker 1: park on the far side of the planet because they
42:13
Speaker 1: know the uh the Imperial forces are there and the
42:16
Speaker 1: exercise will do chew we good, so they have to
42:19
Speaker 1: hike over there. They eventually make it back home. Uh
42:21
Speaker 1: they find a storm the stormtroopers at their house. Um,
42:26
Speaker 1: their tree hut. Yeah, which by the paintings that set
42:30
Speaker 1: this up, I don't think we mentioned I don't even
42:33
Speaker 1: call him Matt paintings that it looks like someone painted
42:35
Speaker 1: something on the wall and they just like put a
42:37
Speaker 1: camera in front of it pretty much. Yeah. So they
42:40
Speaker 1: get back and um, Chewbacca, Han Solo hides around the
42:44
Speaker 1: corner of Chewbacca steps in front of his son to
42:46
Speaker 1: protect him. Han Solo jumps out, and the stormtrooper trips
42:52
Speaker 1: over a pile of logs and falls over the balcony
42:56
Speaker 1: and dies in a holiday special. So they wouldn't even
42:58
Speaker 1: not only could he not shoot for first with Grido,
43:02
Speaker 1: but they couldn't even have him like wrestle the stormtrooper
43:05
Speaker 1: and throw him off. He trips over a log and
43:09
Speaker 1: Han Solo has his hands thrown up Like wasn't me.
43:12
Speaker 1: It might also been a banana peal, you know. But again, uh,
43:17
Speaker 1: this is basically produced by vaudevillians starring vaudevillians. Why not
43:22
Speaker 1: have the one death take place from basically what it
43:24
Speaker 1: amounts to somebody slipping on a banana peel. It's a
43:28
Speaker 1: perfect way to end it. So that's uh that that
43:31
Speaker 1: guy basically represents the end of the imperial threat for
43:34
Speaker 1: the rest of Life Day. And um, we we then
43:38
Speaker 1: see Life Day being celebrated, which is celebrated by lots
43:42
Speaker 1: of wookies assembling in what looks like a giant Olan
43:47
Speaker 1: Mills portrait. Um, and all of them are wearing red robes.
43:54
Speaker 1: And I know I'm up talking, and it's because my
43:56
Speaker 1: mind is still having trouble like wrapping around this. And
43:59
Speaker 1: then um, Princess Leia comes out with C three P
44:03
Speaker 1: O is Mark Hamill there, the whole gangs there, I from, Okay,
44:07
Speaker 1: the whole gangs there. And then they all gather around
44:09
Speaker 1: to hear a great quote from Princess Leiah, which we
44:13
Speaker 1: will read um verbatim. This holiday is yours, but we
44:19
Speaker 1: all share with you the hope that this day brings
44:21
Speaker 1: us closer to freedom into harmony and to peace. No
44:24
Speaker 1: matter how different we appear, we're all the same in
44:27
Speaker 1: our struggle against the powers of evil and darkness. I
44:30
Speaker 1: hope that this day will always be a day of
44:32
Speaker 1: joy in which we can reconfirm our dedication and our courage,
44:36
Speaker 1: and more than anything else, our love for one another.
44:39
Speaker 1: This is the promise of the Tree of life que song, right,
44:43
Speaker 1: And we should also point out the tree of life
44:45
Speaker 1: has never been mentioned up to this point. A sudden
44:49
Speaker 1: appearance at the end, and when you said que song,
44:52
Speaker 1: by que song, you mean Princess Leia starts singing. Yeah.
44:56
Speaker 1: And apparently that was one of the big contingencies on
45:00
Speaker 1: Harry Fischer being involved. She's going through the phase where
45:02
Speaker 1: she was like, I kind of like singing Bruce Valanche
45:04
Speaker 1: calls it, or Joni Mitchell period. Yeah, and she somehow
45:07
Speaker 1: convinced them to let her sing as Princess Leiah and
45:11
Speaker 1: she does. And again I've said that she looks like
45:14
Speaker 1: she's on drugs. This is the point where she really
45:16
Speaker 1: does look like she's on drugs. And it's not just
45:18
Speaker 1: me Um other writers who've written reviews of this. It's
45:23
Speaker 1: really obvious that she possibly smoked a decent amount of
45:28
Speaker 1: pot before she shot this shot this scene. But she sings, Oh, okay,
45:33
Speaker 1: it's fine. It's just the fact that um, Princess Leiah
45:37
Speaker 1: is singing. And actually, Bruce Valanche had a really great
45:40
Speaker 1: quote too. He says that, um, she very much wanted
45:43
Speaker 1: to show this side of her talent, and there was
45:46
Speaker 1: general dismay because this was not what we wanted Princess
45:48
Speaker 1: Leia to be doing. She did it anyway. So the
45:52
Speaker 1: whole thing ends with her singing this song about life day,
45:55
Speaker 1: which is set loosely to the John Williams Starr Worst theme. Yeah.
46:02
Speaker 1: Uh So along the way, the director original director quit,
46:05
Speaker 1: a new director, Steve Binder was hired to finish the
46:08
Speaker 1: job and bring it in. Uh. And he did over
46:11
Speaker 1: the original one million dollar budget, of course always Uh.
46:15
Speaker 1: He did bring it in and um at this point
46:18
Speaker 1: George Lucas had uh. He was he was working on
46:22
Speaker 1: Empire Strikes Back. He didn't know what was going on.
46:24
Speaker 1: He wasn't around for the shoot. No, it wasn't until
46:26
Speaker 1: it aired. I think that he actually saw it. Yes,
46:29
Speaker 1: and it was a travesty obviously, if you haven't noticed
46:32
Speaker 1: that by now, Critics hated it. Star Wars fans really
46:36
Speaker 1: hated it. Everybody hate The people who were in it
46:39
Speaker 1: hated it. Lucas hated it. Even Harvey Corman secretly hated it.
46:43
Speaker 1: Even Harvey Kitel hated Actually he loved it. But Lucas
46:48
Speaker 1: has been asked over the years about it a lot,
46:50
Speaker 1: and he doesn't talk about it much. But in two
46:53
Speaker 1: thousand five, and I don't buy this for a second,
46:56
Speaker 1: he says, um it was an interview he said special
46:59
Speaker 1: from I really didn't have much to do with us.
47:02
Speaker 1: You know that part is true. I can't remember what
47:04
Speaker 1: network it was even on, but it was a thing
47:07
Speaker 1: that they did. That's a lie. There's no way he
47:09
Speaker 1: doesn't know that was cvt uh. We kind of just
47:12
Speaker 1: let them do it. I believe that it was done
47:15
Speaker 1: by I can't even remember who the group was, but
47:17
Speaker 1: they were variety TV guys. I'm sure he remembers a
47:20
Speaker 1: few of them. We let them use the characters and stuff,
47:23
Speaker 1: and that probably wasn't the smartest thing to do, but
47:25
Speaker 1: you learn from those experiences. I think they even used
47:29
Speaker 1: some of the footage from the movie at the end.
47:32
Speaker 1: It looks like some space like a highlight reel. Yeah,
47:35
Speaker 1: the gang, well, and during the UM it looked like
47:39
Speaker 1: some of the they had some insert shots of like
47:41
Speaker 1: Imperial cruisers and Thai fighters and stuff that. Remember when
47:46
Speaker 1: when Chewbacca like leans back and puts his hands behind it, Yeah,
47:50
Speaker 1: that's in there. It's it's like a it's just a
47:52
Speaker 1: highlight reel from the movie saying like I feel like this,
47:55
Speaker 1: go see the move well, and also that means it
47:57
Speaker 1: doesn't match the look of the rest of it at all. Yeah,
47:59
Speaker 1: that's just sort of inserted. They tried, They definitely tried, UM,
48:04
Speaker 1: And George Lucas is totally full of it because in
48:07
Speaker 1: seven he told star Log magazine that the Christmas Special
48:10
Speaker 1: would be out on video cassette very soon, and in
48:14
Speaker 1: two thousand seven, two years after that quote, you just
48:16
Speaker 1: read where he's like, I don't even know what you're
48:18
Speaker 1: talking about. Basically, UM. He apparently considered releasing the Christmas
48:23
Speaker 1: Special as a bonus on the the DVDs of the
48:27
Speaker 1: first three right, but did not didn't And apparently Carrie
48:31
Speaker 1: Fisher told Lucas that if you want me to do
48:34
Speaker 1: UM DVD extras commentary commentary, then I want a clean,
48:38
Speaker 1: original copy of the Holiday Special, So why go ahead?
48:43
Speaker 1: So I can play at parties what I want people
48:45
Speaker 1: to leave. It's pretty great. It is so uh and
48:50
Speaker 1: there is one of those clean copies is floating around
48:53
Speaker 1: out there, so you can watch this in it in
48:55
Speaker 1: its entirety. Some of it, like the cartoon, was removed
48:59
Speaker 1: due to copy right infringement and that kind of stuff,
49:01
Speaker 1: but as as the case with the rest of the Internet,
49:04
Speaker 1: you can just go find it elsewhere and piece it together.
49:07
Speaker 1: There's also the original ads that aired in Baltimore that
49:12
Speaker 1: are just fascinating. Ye. Those are always fun gm ads
49:16
Speaker 1: where one of the guys who's in quality control is
49:19
Speaker 1: he says, did you watch it? I don't think I
49:21
Speaker 1: saw that. He goes, um, we really care about these
49:24
Speaker 1: cars and that's no job man, a GM man, and
49:27
Speaker 1: he's like, it's serious. They're trying to be hip. Yeah. Um,
49:31
Speaker 1: it's a pretty good stuff. Here's my final thought on it.
49:36
Speaker 1: I love it. It It does not taint my Star Wars
49:38
Speaker 1: experience or my love for the franchise, and I'm glad
49:42
Speaker 1: it is out there because it it's a it's a
49:45
Speaker 1: fun little stain that shouldn't be taken too seriously. I
49:51
Speaker 1: think it adds to it actually because it's campy and awful,
49:55
Speaker 1: and I don't know somehow that enriches the rest of it.
49:59
Speaker 1: I'm with you, you like it? Oh yeah, I mean
50:01
Speaker 1: I watched it twice. I wouldn't watched it a second.
50:03
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have made it through the first time. Let
50:06
Speaker 1: me take that back. I'm a pro, so I would
50:08
Speaker 1: have made it through the first time. I wouldn't have
50:10
Speaker 1: watched it the second time if I wasn't. There wasn't
50:12
Speaker 1: something about it, and I figured out. I think the
50:14
Speaker 1: thing that I like the most about it is Lumpy,
50:17
Speaker 1: Chewbacca's son, played by an actress named Patty Maloney, who
50:21
Speaker 1: frankly is hands down the best actor in the entire thing.
50:26
Speaker 1: She like her responses and everything is just awesome. I
50:30
Speaker 1: think my favorite parts are, uh, well, there's a great
50:34
Speaker 1: Wilhelm screamed trips over the law. Jerry would not have
50:38
Speaker 1: noticed it. Uh And then there's a part where all
50:42
Speaker 1: the Wookie dialogue you can't understand, but there's clearly one
50:45
Speaker 1: part where where Itchy and Lumpy are have any exchange
50:49
Speaker 1: where Lumpy you can make it out goes yeah, yeah, yeah,
50:53
Speaker 1: I noticed that, but it's covered up. But someone was like,
50:57
Speaker 1: we have to have at least one exchange where you
50:59
Speaker 1: sort of know what they're saying, or they were like,
51:01
Speaker 1: I think she just said I love you. Should we
51:03
Speaker 1: have them redo it? And then directors like no, I
51:06
Speaker 1: want to go and Chuck. There's one other thing that
51:08
Speaker 1: I figured out from watching this. It's not readily apparent.
51:12
Speaker 1: The whole thing is made all the more odd, and
51:15
Speaker 1: that there's situation after situation after situation where we as
51:19
Speaker 1: normal audiences, were trained to expect the laugh track, but
51:23
Speaker 1: there's not a laugh track. Had there been a laugh track,
51:26
Speaker 1: it what it might have been less bizarre, but the
51:31
Speaker 1: fact that it's missing just makes your agitates the mind.
51:35
Speaker 1: So it's this whole additional element that it is weird.
51:37
Speaker 1: I never thought about that. There's just weird moments of
51:39
Speaker 1: silence all throughout it, like when Art Carney's doing his
51:42
Speaker 1: thing and telling jokes. Yeah, okay, I agree with you, Chuck,
51:46
Speaker 1: don't take things too seriously. I think that's the great
51:49
Speaker 1: lesson in this and the lesson of life day it
51:52
Speaker 1: is and in two thousand seven Riff tracks Great Mystery
51:56
Speaker 1: Science Theater three thousand Guys Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, and
51:59
Speaker 1: Kevin Murphy uh provided audio commentary for the full version
52:03
Speaker 1: of the special, So try and go grab that if
52:06
Speaker 1: you can as well, Oh you can't. It's on the
52:08
Speaker 1: site because it's great. I think it's like eight bucks
52:10
Speaker 1: and those guys are awesome and they are at least
52:13
Speaker 1: I think Corbett listens to us. So, hey, Corbett, you
52:19
Speaker 1: got anything else? No, no, I think we did this.
52:23
Speaker 1: There's some good stuff. Go read the Vanity Fair article
52:26
Speaker 1: h Han Solo Comedy Hour. There's a book called How
52:29
Speaker 1: Star Wars Conquered the Universe that has a very interesting
52:31
Speaker 1: chapter about this. That's where we found it asserted that
52:34
Speaker 1: George Lucas never said that he would smash this thing
52:36
Speaker 1: with a sledge hammer. Um. And there's also an entire
52:39
Speaker 1: website dedicated to its Star Wars Holiday Special dot com
52:43
Speaker 1: And if you want to know more about the Star
52:45
Speaker 1: Wars Holiday Special, we have a ton of heart Star
52:48
Speaker 1: Wars stuff on how stuff works by the way, Yeah,
52:50
Speaker 1: we have cool, um sort of fun articles about the
52:53
Speaker 1: Death Star and Lightsabers videos with the Holly Fry from
52:56
Speaker 1: stuff you missed in history class. Yeah, who she knows
52:59
Speaker 1: her stuff, she does. Um. So you can just type
53:02
Speaker 1: star Wars in the search part how stuff works up
53:04
Speaker 1: commony will bring up some cool stuff for you. Since
53:06
Speaker 1: I said search bar, its time for listener mail. Hey guys,
53:12
Speaker 1: just finished listening to the Voytage Manuscript podcast. Found it's
53:14
Speaker 1: super interesting, especially the theories on its definition or origin.
53:18
Speaker 1: No Josh Menchin Chucks theory, but being drug induced a
53:21
Speaker 1: somewhat surprising or even unlikely given the language in the
53:24
Speaker 1: manuscript follows linguistic laws only founded in the past one years.
53:29
Speaker 1: But if you think about it, it's a tough. It's
53:31
Speaker 1: tough to stray away from familiar structures, especially for something
53:35
Speaker 1: like language. I think back to when I was younger
53:37
Speaker 1: and friends invented their own languages, or even in writing
53:40
Speaker 1: a song or poetry. Creativity can sometimes be limited by
53:44
Speaker 1: what we know. Uh So I just thought I contribute
53:46
Speaker 1: that to the conversation. Than big thanks for all you
53:49
Speaker 1: guys do. I found the podcast after moving to San
53:51
Speaker 1: Diego in the last few years for some noise around
53:55
Speaker 1: my apartment, so basically we were blocking out noise. We
53:59
Speaker 1: do that, which I love, uh And then it's a
54:02
Speaker 1: way to get through traffic on my commute at home
54:03
Speaker 1: from work. You guys are far more interesting and enjoyable
54:06
Speaker 1: than television and YouTube videos. Sure, I listen to hundreds
54:09
Speaker 1: and will continue to listen to hundreds more. Keep on,
54:11
Speaker 1: keeping on. That is from Amy J. Moffatt. Thanks a lot.
54:15
Speaker 1: Amy in San Diego doesn't mean like place of the
54:18
Speaker 1: Whales and German or something like that. Uh yeah. If
54:24
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with this, you can
54:25
Speaker 1: tweet to us at s Y s K podcast. You
54:27
Speaker 1: can join us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you
54:29
Speaker 1: Should Know. You can send us an email the Stuff
54:31
Speaker 1: podcast at how stuff Works dot com and has always
54:34
Speaker 1: joined us at at Home on the web Stuff you
54:35
Speaker 1: Should Know dot com For more on this and thousands
54:43
Speaker 1: of other topics. Does it how stuff Works dot com