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Tune in to the new podcast, Stories from the Village of Nothing Much, like easy listening but for fiction. If you've overdosed on bad news, we invite you into a world where the glimmers of goodness in everyday life are all around you. I'm Katherine Nicolai, and I'm an architect of cozy. Come spend some time where everyone is welcome and the default is kindness. Listen, relax, enjoy. Listen to stories from the Village of Nothing Much on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, everyone, it's Josh, and we can officially kick off the holidays with the annual release of our Star Wars holiday special episode. I hope by now it's become an annual tradition in your home rather than a deepening annoyance. I hope it brings you glad tidings rather than rage listening. I know some of you have been at it since September, but let the 2023 holidays begin. Welcome to Stuff.

You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With Charles W. Chuckers-bradyant and Jerry Jerome-Roland-It.

Was the Wuki Mother.

Yeah.

Mala. That was the Wuki wife. Oh, and mother. Yeah, sure.

Yeah, that's true. Chewbaka's mom is not with them any longer. She left. She was not about to appear in there.

She went out the window.

I'm.

Excited about this, I have to say.

We should say Happy Star Wars Day.

Yeah, today is December 17th. I have my opening night tickets.

Do you really?

Sure.

Wow.

Do.

You care?

Are you into it?

Yeah, I will definitely go see it in the theater, but I won't be there opening night? I've gotten really adept at ignoring spoiler, people talking about stuff. I could conceivably see this movie a month after it comes out and still going fresh. Yeah, that's-I'm an ostrach.

Yeah. -you black yourself out? -yeah. You go dark?

I do. I make myself go to.

Sleep, basically. You go to the dark side?

I've been there a while now.

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

Yes. We already missed life day, though, so happy, belated life day, Chuck.

Are they celebrating it this year?

November 17th.

Yeah, but it's every three years.

Oh, arcane. -yeah. -man, so weird. -man, nice job. Okay, so it's every three years. Started in 1978. Let's do the math, shall we?

Quick math break. I believe that 2014 was the last Life Day.

Man, we just.

Missed it. And then again in 2017.

Okay, so 2017, we'll celebrate Life Day. We'll put on our red robes, our ultra long straight ironed wigs. Sure. We'll celebrate Life Day the way it was meant to be.

Yes, and if you have no idea what we're talking about, we are talking about Life Day, which is a celebration that Wookies in the Star Wars Universe have every.

Three years. Yeah, it's like their Christmas.

Yeah.

They celebrate-Or their Hanukkah, or their Kwanza, or.

Their TET. Supposedly, it's like Earth Day, too. They celebrate the diversity of their ecosystem and also remembrance of the dead. They also give gifts.

They're like the Finns, basically.

Yeah, 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 George Lucas in the '70s. It's the basis of what has become derided as like one of the worst things that ever happened to the Star Wars Galaxy.

Well, not only that, one of the worst things ever aired on television.

Yeah, in this galaxy.

Yeah. At first, that sounds like hyperbole, like come on, it's because it was Star Wars and we had high expectations, but it's really that bad.

Yeah, the people who say that haven't seen even a second of it.

Yeah. However, I watched it 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 gets 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, top to bottom.

It's extraordinarily difficult to overstate how bad this is. Some people 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. Luckily, as we will see, you can go on to YouTube and watch it. You may even enjoy this episode more if you pause, go spend two hours watching this thing, and then come back and laugh along with us.

Yeah, there's a great... Over the years, there have been many segments of it on YouTube from badly dubbed VHS tapes. But there is one really pretty good version of it in full brought to you by W. H. I. O, Dayton, Ohio, channel Seven. Ohio. Because that flashes up on the screen periodically.

Man, it is high quality. Yeah, it looks good. It has to basically be the copy that the actual affiliate broadcast. It's like that quality compared to the other stuff floating around on YouTube. It's clearly recorded on a 1978 VCR.

Yeah, which were really expensive.

Very expensive. I did some calculating on West Egg. Okay. So the average VCR went for about a thousand dollars. They were brand new. That's amazing. A thousand dollars in 1978 money. So they're about $3,800 in 2014 money.

Crazy.

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

We need to shout out some articles that we use for this. There's a great article in Vanity Fair called The Han solo Comedy Hour! Exclamation point by Frank de Jacamow. And then there's The Star Wars Holiday Special was the worst thing on television ever by someone we know, Alex Pasturnak.

From Motherboard? Yeah, from Motherboard.

Yeah. Which is not Wired, it's Vice. We wrote a little bit for Motherboard back then, and we had a.

Call with Alex. We're like old Motherboard vets, basically.

Wouldn't there one more?

There was another one, and I don't know who wrote this one, Chuck.

Yeah.

The title is The Star Wars Holiday Special, George Lucas wants to smash every copy of with a sledgehammer.

Which is a famous quote, supposedly at a convention by Lucas.

Yes, which is not correct.

He didn't ever say that. No. Okay, that sounded like something that people made up.

Yes, but if you go on the internet, you will quickly believe that he did, but apparently didn't.

I'm sure he felt that way, though.

Clearly, because he did appear on Robot Chicken in, I think, 2005 on the couch talking about how much he hated the special. All right, so let's set the background. Shall we go back to 1977?

Yes. Summer? Getting the old way back machine.

All right, let's do it.

All right, here we are.

There's Wooderson.

Yeah, I'm just a little six-year-old excited about Star Wars.

I've just turned one.

Yes, you don't know what's.

Up yet. Please forgive me if I urinate myself.

Yeah, no problem. Okay. 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 in filmmaking. Even though in his first movie, it was his first huge, huge breakout hit.

Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean, talk about a breakout hit. No one had ever seen anything like it before. No. 2001 had come out in the late '60s, but it still isn't accessible to all audiences. It's a.

Cerebral film. Yeah, it's not an adventure movie.

This was like Star Wars. This was like basically swashbuckling on the screen, but in a galaxy far, far away, Star Wars just changed everything. It came on just like a hammer.

Yeah. This is a new hope, by the way. Yes. I know we're going to get stuff wrong, nerds. Yes. Just go ahead and get your little fingers ready to email us.

If it wasn't driven home that I'm not a nerd by the fact that I don't have opening night tickets or any tickets yet, give me a break. Okay. And by proxy, Chuck, too, okay? Yes, thank you. It's hard to state how great Star Wars was in everyone's mind, right? Bill Murray came out with that lounge singer Star Wars thing. Yeah, it was everywhere. And if you just listen to the lyrics of it, really, it's just Bill Murray singing about how much Star Wars is awesome, right? Yeah. By the following year, George Lucas, 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. Sure. I think he was approached by some TV executives who said, Have you considered doing some TV special? They're all the rage right now. We have a graphic that's really awesome that we set aside just for TV specials here at CBS. Let's get together and do a Star.

Wars special. That's right. Producers Gary Smith and Dwight Hemion were 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 a cut of all the toys.

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

Well, the weekend before Thanksgiving, it's like everybody's shopping, sitting around the family, waiting to actually do stuff. That's right. It's the 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 a story together, and then you can go hire a whiz-bang team of veteran writers and producers and directors.

Whatever genre you think is appropriate. And those are the words that will haunt George Lucas to his grave.

Yeah, so Lucas said, Here's my idea. I want it to be based on Wookies, and I want it to take place on their home planet of Kazook or Wuki Planet C.

Is that how you say Kazook?

That's how it's pronounced in the holiday special, but it's also pronounced different ways other times.

I would have pronounced it Kashie-e-e-e-y-K.

Spell it.

K-a-s-h-y-y-y-k. Yeah. Which, I guess that sounds like Cheubacca's planet.

Sure. Also called G5, 623, Wuki Planet C or Edion, is a mid-rem planet.

Right. 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. How did you pronounce it again? Kazook? Kazook had not made the cut. Even prior to this, apparently for a new hope, George Lucas had whipped up a 40-page, what's known as the Wuki Bible. It's like a 40-page supplement that's all about Kazuk and Wookies and Chewbaka and his family and everything about Wookiedom, right? That's right. He's like, I've got this thing already established. I love Wookies. They didn't make the cut. I'm a little sad about that. Kazuk is not going to show up in Empire strikes back. Let's build the entire special around Wookies. It's basically the one demand. Me, George Lucas has. That's it. I'll be totally hands-off from this point on.

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

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

Wasn't he suspected of being Thomas Pinchon for a while?

I don't know.

Or was Thomas Pinchon on Hollywood Squares?

I have no idea.

I may be confabulating some stuff, confounding. There's some con of some.

Sort going on. Sounds like it. Yeah. Valanche was hired as a writer. A guy named Lenny Ripps was hired as a writer.

Who has some great quotes in that Vanity Fair article.

He does. His first quote was, We were really excited because this is Star Wars. How could it lose?

Yeah, it did. Famous last words.

Who else was hired? There was a husband and wife team, the Welches, who are the parents of folk singer, Gillian Welch, who I'm a big fan of and I had no idea that her parents, they were producers/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.

I feel like right about here, Jerry should insert a needle coming off of a record sound effect.

Yeah. Okay, thanks, Jerry. So, Chuck, you just said singer-songwriters.

Yeah. What would that have to do with Star Wars? Yeah.

Well, actually, in the Star Wars holiday special, for those of you who hadn't seen it, there are musical numbers. They decided from the outset that there should be musical numbers. And the reason that they decided that there should be musical numbers is because the people who sold George Lucas, and at the time, the Star Wars Corporation was what it was.

Called.

On the idea of doing this TV special was that everyone would love a variety show.

Yeah, it.

Was the '70s. 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 1978, yes, variety shows had dominated television for over 10 years, but it had come to an end. It was getting stale.

Yeah, we're talking the Carol Burnett Show, one of my favorite.

Had just been canceled after 11 seasons.

That's a big red flag. Sunny and Cher had just had its last season. I mean, what else? He-haw was still going on.

Probably. They didn't know when to quit. I think He-ha is still on. Solid Gold had yet to come on and take up the mantle.

That wasn't a variety show.

It was a little bit. There was talking in.

Between the songs. Yeah, remember the Mandrell Sister show?

I never watched that one. What was with that country chic thing that happened?

Yeah, it was a big deal in the '70s. It's happening again, I think.

Oh, because of that dude, the guy who won all the CMA awards.

I don't know.

He came along and he's actually country. His dad's a coal miner for real from Kentucky.

I think I know who you mean. -chris something. -chris something, yeah. Yeah, he is good.

He's come along and been like, What are you.

Guys doing? Well, there's a revival in good country music again. That's great. In the tradition of Merle.

Haged and Johnny Cash. And I guess this is probably where the country she came from because there was actually good country going on.

Yeah, Johnny Cash had a variety show.

Did he?

Really? Oh, yeah.

I knew they did a Sunday singing thing out in Virginia.

Yeah, he had his own variety show. It was actually pretty good. There were some really great performances.

Do youI don't know how many nerds are like, Get.

Back to Star Wars. I know. I'm so sorry. All right, so the variety show is dying, and so they figure what a great time to take the biggest movie property on the planet and wedge it into the Variety Show milieu.

I don't know if wedge is the right word. I think maybe nestle it in there and then start hitting it with the blunt edge of an ax until it mashes into that crevice. That's right. Because this is the time when fantasy island had just started. Mork and Mindy was about to change things. Charlie's Angels was getting huge. Basically, television, as we knew it from 1980 to whenever the real world came along, just escapist television is what they called it was starting and it was the hip new thing. Basically, if they had turned Hans solo and Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker into maybe sexy detectives, it might have gone over even better. But they went the other way. They decided to latch on to this extraordinarily stale genre of television, and they hired the best in the business. There was a quote from I think, Lenny Ripps, who was saying, 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 either.

That's a great quote. The guy they hired to direct it initially was a dude named David Acomba. He had made his name for Welcome to the Filmore East. It was a concert documentary with Van Morrison and the Birds in 1971. He actually was at USC Film School the same time as Lucas, even though they didn't know each other. He only ended up directing about three segments of the thing. Before he quit. Yeah, 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 we get along down this gross road.

Well, let's take a little break because I'm overly excited. All right.

Okay?

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I'm thinking it's idiotic to buy Twitter because he doesn't have a fingertips feel for social, emotional networks.

And when I sat down with Isaacson five weeks ago, he told me how he captured it all.

They have cans of spray paint, and they're just putting big X's on machines. And it's almost like kids playing on the playground. Just chews them up left, right, and center. And then like, Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde, he doesn't even remember it. Getting the bars doesn't excuse being a total, but I want the reader to see it in action.

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Tune in to the new podcast, Stories from the Village of Nothing Much, like easy listening but for fiction. If you've overdosed on bad news, we invite you into a world where the glimmers of goodness in everyday life are all around you. I'm Catherine Nicolai, and you might know me from the Bedtime Story podcast, Nothing Much Happens. I'm an architect of cozy, and I invite you to come spend some time where everyone is welcome and kindness is the default. When you tune in, you'll hear stories about bakeries and the walks in the woods. A favorite booth at the diner on a blustery autumn day. Cats and dogs and rescued goats and donkeys. Old houses, bookshops, beaches where kites fly and pretty stones are found. I have so many stories to tell you, and they are all designed to help you feel good and feel connected to what is good in the world. Listen, relax, enjoy. Listen to stories from The Village of Nothing Much on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

In the new Amy and TJ podcast, Amy Robach and TJ Homes, a renowned broadcasting team with decades of experience delivering headline news and captivating viewers nationwide, are sharing their voices and perspectives in a way you've never heard before. They explore meaningful conversations about current events, pop culture, and everything in between. Nothing is off limits.

This was a scandal that.

Wasn't, and this was not what.

You've been sold. The Amy.

And TJ podcast is guaranteed to be informative, entertaining, and above all, authentic. It marks the first time Robach and Holmes speak publicly since their own names became a part of the headlines.

This is the first time that we actually.

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Where we are today.

Listen to the Amy and TJ podcast on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, so we've established most of the main players. We'll get to a few more. We should point out that Mark Hamel and Harrison Ford and Cary Fisher, Peter Mayhem.

They had no grounds to refuse to be on this, basically.

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

They were big overnight because of Star Wars, for sure, but they weren't adoring public. Sure. Back at the studio, they could still be bossed around, and this was the result of it. You can tell also, just from watching the actual special, Harrison Ford is not happy to be there at any point.

Oh, no.

Princess Leia is clearly on drugs.

Was she on drugs at this point?

If you watch it, she's on drugs, especially the ending scene. Mark Hamel.

Was-it looks like he's happy to be there, actually.

He was fine, but apparently he said, No, I'm not doing a musical number. Sure. Yeah. And if you watch his part, wedging a musical number in there would have been even more painful. But everybody who was part of the actual Star Wars franchise that wasn't wearing a full body costume was like, I really wish I wasn't here. And you.

Can tell. Oh, yeah. In fact, in the opening credit sequence, they're showing the picture, the faces of the people. Right. And you see Harrison Ford as if he's flying the Millennium Falcon. And 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. Finally, you can tell he's pissed off and he looks up at the camera and just smirks.

Yeah, and points at the camera like, Okay, I'm looking at the camera, and then goes back to what he's doing. Yeah, it's pretty awesome.

I felt bad for him. Early on, Valanche and others -Did.

You feel bad for him, though, really? I mean, come on, it's Harrison Ford. It's Hans solo. He has to go do this for five days.

Yeah, I felt terrible for him.

I think it's hilarious that they had to do this, especially now.

Well, early on, Valanche and others knew that they may be in trouble because they decided not to subtitle any of the wookie dialog. They literally started after a brief opening scene setting it up. Here's the basic plot is, Han solo is trying to get Chewbaka back to Kazuk in time for life day, so we can celebrate with his family.

That's the basis of the entire.

Two hours. That's the basis of the entire two hours. They encounter a space battle and they're delayed, and the next two hours are what's going on while the delay is happening.

Back on Kazuk.

Back.

On Kazuk. Because you hear like, Oh, okay, well, Han solo and Chewbaka 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 Wuki household.

That is what they show. That's what they do. It's people hanging out, waiting for Cheubaka, worrying about him, and then killing time while they wait for him to come back.

Yeah, literally.

Hold on. You say there's a setup, right?

Yeah, that's the.

Initial set-up. Then, Chuck, that's followed by this.

Yeah, it's followed by literally 10 minutes, 10 solid minutes of incomprehensible, wookie-speak.

Let's join it for a second, shall we? Yeah. Let's all enjoy it.

Again, you said 10 minutes, and you're not exaggerating, you're not being hyperbolic. You can time it. It's 10 minutes of wookies talking to each other with no subtitles.

Fortunately-i couldn't follow it at first. I didn't even know who it was. I thought it might have been Chewbacka's mom and dad. Oh, yeah, that's possible. -and little brother. I don't find out until later when Mark Campbell shows up via Skype call and says he really explains everything that had just happened. You're Chewbacka's father, itchy, you're Chewbacka's son, Lumpy. Lumpy. Yeah. And you are Cheubacca's wife. Oh, Malla. Yeah, thank you.

So before everybody starts freaking out, we know that that's actually their nicknames. Their real names are... His father is Etichekcok. Itchekk.

It's really hard to pronounce.

Melato Buck is his wife, and his son is Lumpo Warump.

But as named.

By Lucas. But Lucas also named him Lumpy, itchy, and Malla. Yeah. So they're all back there wringing their hands, trying to figure out ways to pass the time until they get word from Chewbaka that he's made it to, what is it? Kachuk? Kazuk. Kazuk.

It's a ketchup.

Ketchup or Kachuk, if you're fancy. But Chewbaka is having trouble getting back to Kachuk because... Kazuk. Because there's a blockade by the Empire, and they're looking for rebels, specifically Cheubaka, who I didn't realize is he's the most famous wuki 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, to that degree. But we're seeing these people's view of the universe. What about back on...

Kazook. Yeah, he might have just been a fly-by-night wuki.

Right.

Yeah, but not the case. Very famous wuki.

Yeah, and he really loved to soak in his fame.

All right, so he realizes there's a problem, the lanch. He goes to Lucas and is like, I don't know, man, this is your world, but it may not be the strongest thing to do to set this in Wookieland and have all this incomprehensible dialog. He says he was met with a glacial stair.

Well, he put it a little differently than that.

Well, he said glacial stair.

He did. The Glacial Stair that he got was for this quote. He said, These people just talk and what it 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 foleying for it.

Yeah, he's a.

Large guy. He is. That's what got the glacial stair. But Valanche later said that there was one development meeting that Lucas attended, and it was, Here's the Wuki Bible. Tell me what you got. Valanche said he and the other writers and producers and director were just throwing ideas. George Lucas would either say, No, that doesn't work. Give him a glacial stare or say, Yes, that's exactly it. Yes, let's make this a variety show.

Yeah, and there was a little bit of background there. The cantina players in the band had appeared on other variety shows at that point. I think it went over fairly well just as a short segment on the Richard Pryor Variety Show or Donnie-Marie. Yeah. Man, there were a lot of variety shows.

But that's what I'm saying. That was television. That's what you did. The Brandies, the show had its course, and then it became a variety show. It was just everybody loves variety shows. Yeah, I still do. By this time, though, everybody was sick of variety shows. Right. And so it really was a terrible choice.

In fact, they even hired a couple of writers from Shields and Yarnell.

Which I hadn't heard.

Of, had you? Oh, yeah, I watched it. It was this creepy, this mime couple who had their own variety show. And they figured these two will be great because they are used to working without words.

Right. There is a certain logic to the variety show. There's logic all over the place. It's not just that variety shows were popular at the time. Somebody was like, Well, Wookies, you don't understand what they're saying, so this is all going to be very physical. So these people who did, what is it? Shields and Yarnel? Yeah. That's a perfect choice. That makes complete sense. You can see this whole process of leading up to the point where it was produced and shot and everything. A series of like, Oh, we have this problem. Well, here's a fix. But that leads to another problem. Well, we'll fix it with this. And no one's stepping back and being like, All we've done is create a series of problems that are going to come together and make one extraordinarily large problem that will become legendary. No one did that, and so the whole thing was made.

That's right. And it eventually airs on.

November 17th, 1978, a Friday at 8:00 PM Eastern Time.

That's right. And according to Nielsen ratings, it attracted 13 million viewers, lost the.

Second hour. Just in the US. It aired in seven countries total.

Yeah, but no one cares.

About that. I guess not because none of those are on the internet.

It finished second to The Love Boat in the second, or I'm sorry, from 8:00 to 9:00. In the next hour, actually finished behind part two of a mini series about Pearl Harbor starring Angie Dickinson. It didn't even win their respective hours.

No, the 14 million, that's not bad. The thing is, apparently, if you look at the Nielsen ratings graph for the first hour.

Yeah, we know about that graph.

It's okay. Yeah, we do. Then after a very important part, which we'll talk about soon, it just drops off at the end of the first hour. 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.

Oh, yeah.

It's 30 minutes of content, 40, if you're generous, an hour, meh, 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, I don't want to call it content, content. But it is content in the strictest definition. Sure. Right after this.

In the new Amy and TJ podcast, Amy Robach and TJ Homes, a renowned broadcasting team with decades of experience delivering headline news and captivating viewers nationwide, are sharing their voices and perspectives in a way you've never heard before. They explore meaningful conversations about current events, pop culture, and everything in between. Nothing is off limits.

This was a scandal that.

Wasn't, and this was not what.

You've been sold.

The Amy and TJ podcast is guaranteed to be informative, entertaining, and above all, authentic. It marks the first time Robach and Holmes speak publicly since their own names became a part of the headlines.

This is the first time that we actually.

Get to.

Say what happened and.

Where we are today.

Listen to the Amy and TJ podcast on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

When Walter Isaacson set out to write his biography of Elon Musk, he believed he was taking on a.

World-changing figure. That night, he was deciding whether or not to allow Starlink to be enabled to allow a sneak attack on Crimea.

What he got was a subject who also sowed chaos and conspiracy.

I'm thinking it's idiotic to buy Twitter because he doesn't have a fingertips feel for social, emotional networks.

And when I sat down with Isaacson five weeks ago, he told me how he captured it all.

They have cans of spray paint, and they're just putting big X's on machines. And it's almost like kids playing on the playground. Just chews them up left, right and center. Then like Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde, he doesn't even remember it. Getting to bars doesn't excuse being a total. But I want the reader to see it in action.

My name is Evan Ratliff, and this is on Musk with Walter Isaacson. Join us in this four-part series as Isaacson breaks down how he captured a vivid portrait of a polarizing genius. Listen to Ayn Musk on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Learning stuff with.

Joshua and Charles, stuff you.

Should know. All right, so the show itself, we've given you the main plotline, which again is that Chewy is trying to get back to his home planet to celebrate life day with his family. Right. That's it.

And again, we almost barely see Chewy. Yeah. The rest is his family on.

Waiting.

For him to come back for life day.

Yeah, so some of the various things they did, they were guest stars. There was Harvey Korman from the Carol Burnett show, one of my all-time favorites.

Him or Carol Burnett?

Both.

He's great. Actually, if you watch what he's doing, you're like, This guy is a comedy genius.

For sure. Well, apparently, he, too, was the only one on set that was bringing Levity. He was joking around and kept spirits up.

Good for him.

That's what I say. He had three different parts.

Yeah, he played... Well, I don't even know the names, actually. We could look them up. But he played a Julia Child-like cook. There's an actual cooking segment.

A long one.

A very long cooking segment where Cheubaca's wife makes bantha stew.

To.

Kill some time. To kill some time because they're just waiting.

Both on her planet and in our living room.

Yeah, so Harvey Corman is in drag as a four-armed, Julia Child-like TV chef. Right.

I think it's Garmanda is her name.

Garmanda? That makes total sense. Yeah. He also plays... There's this one weird bit where Chewbaka's son tries to figure out a way to trick the stormtroopers that the Empire had come because the blockade raided the house and other properties. He tries to trick them by, I think, rigging a comlink to speak in a different voice. He has to watch the instruction manual.

He watches an instruction video. Which was.

Harvey Keital as.

A robot. Oh, it would have been wonderful to have been Harvey Keightel.

Oh, what did.

They say? Harvey Keightel. Oh, man. Harvey Keightel murders someone in the middle of the instruction. That would.

Have been great. Harvey Korman. And then the final role he had was as a bar patron in the cantina that drinks. He has a hole in the top of his head like a volcano where he pours his drinks in.

That's how he drinks. And he loves B. Arthur.

Did we mention B. Arthur was in it?

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

She does. She is the unbeknownst to everyone. She manages or maybe owns.

The cantina. She's the owner. Yeah. What's the? Ma's what? Ma's Def? Kantina?

No, Ma's Def is a rapper. Oh, yeah. I think you mean Ma's Iselie?

Yes, yes, that's Santina. She's the owner. B. Arthur is the owner. B. Arthur of the Golden Girls, but in this case, B. Arthur of Maude, because as one of the people who wrote one of the articles we based this on, points out, she's just basically playing Ma'd as the owner of the cantina.

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

Right, and again, we can't possibly have this script lead anywhere else but Chewbaka'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 tattooine is. So let's go see what's going on in the Maws Iseley cantina as it's being shut down for curfew. Yeah.

All right, this is incomprehensible, but it goes on. There in it, there's also Art Carney. Yes. Of the Honeymoiner's fame.

Probably the star of the whole thing, really. He has the most lines, I would say. The most comprehensible line.

Right. He plays a traitor, a human traitor that has recently been with Han, Solo and Chew-E and actually gets to Kazook and says, They're on the way. It's all good.

Yeah, a trader, not traitor.

Yeah, a trader is in trades humans for money.

No, he sells goods.

Yeah, a traitor.

He doesn't trade humans.

Yeah, he's in the human trade.

No, he isn't, really? Yeah. He trades humans, like he sells humans?

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

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

Yes, he comes bearing gifts.

Yeah, because he's a friend of Cheubacca's family. Yeah, so.

He comes bearing gifts. One of the gifts he gives is a little digital insert to a... I guess you would call it a.

Virtual reality-Hairdryer.

-hairdryer, like a beauty shop hairdryer. He gives it to Grandpa Itchie. Grandpa Itchie sits under this hairdryer, pops in this digital cassette, and it can only be described as softcore porn.

Apparently, the writers who were interviewed for this said that was totally the intent. They were trying to get what amounted to softcore porn that would pass the censors. That's right. It's all... You can't even say it's inuendo. It's too obvious and overt for inuendo. Instead, it's just gross. It's really gross. Diane Carroll, who- He's a great singer. Yes, she is. A Vegas staple shows up and starts basically tanalizing grandpa, Itchie, who again, this is Cheubaka's elderly father who now engages in some... Well, he's watching virtual reality pornography now. This is a pretty lengthy segment in and of itself.

Well, yeah, and she literally says to him, Now I can see you're really excited.

Yeah, it's pretty.

Rough to watch. Yeah, so then you've got another musical number.

Because also, again, he shudders.

Yeah.

It's really strange.

All right, so there's also a... I know it seems like we're jumping around, but it's mind-blowing.

No, we're not. This is pretty much blow for blow.

Actually, I forgot earlier on in the special, there's one of my favorite sequences is when grandpa, Itchy, goes over to Lumpy and basically sets up. Remember the hologram chessboard that they played in A New Hope? Yeah. Basically sets that up and says, Here, just play this. He pushes the button, which is clearly a 1970s cassette recorder.

Another, it's like a Cirque du Soleil acid trip, gymnast routine happens in front of the kid's eyes. Again, this all just... It's not like it shows a snippet. They show the entire segments, like 5, 6, 10 minutes long of all of these things.

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 reinsacking their house. Art Carney, apparently, I guess, is 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. The writer of the Vanity Fair article, by the way, said, This is so incomprehensible, this specialist. George Lucas didn't even have the Schwartz with him at the time. Anyway, Art Carney is distracting this imperial leader while they're ransacking the Wookies' house, Chewbacka's house with a hologram. This hologram, instead of being an acrobat or Diane Carroll or any porn or anything like that, is Jefferson Starship. They decide that they're going to play Light the Sky on Fire, which apparently is about NGOs.

It's a little music video, basically.

Yeah, it's the predecessor to Video Kill the Radio Star, you can tell. Again, it is the whole lengthy.

Song, the.

Whole thing. Every time that somebody's like, We need to escape mentally from what's going on here in our house. Let's go into the video world. It's not just... And they don't cut back and forth.

No.

It's, okay, here's five minutes of Jefferson Starship performing this song.

Yeah. Even the Jefferson Starship guys were like, It's a weird trip. 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, yet another segment like this is actually widely regarded as the high point of the.

Whole thing.

Oh, sure. Agreed. There is a cartoon, actually.

Yeah, that Lumpy watches.

Yeah, Lumpy's like, The Imperial Guard is still ransacking my house. I think I'll entertain myself by watching a cartoon on my little iPad. I don't know what it was. I guess it was an iPad. And he watches this cartoon and it's actually remarkable for a number of reasons. It's the best part of the.

Whole special. Yeah, generally agreed upon as such, but not just us.

And it introduces Boba Fett. It's the first time Boba Fett ever makes an appearance in the Star Wars Universe.

Yeah, it's actually not a bad, and you can't find it in the one version I told you to watch. They removed it for copyright, but you can watch a.

Separate version. Right, you can find it on its own.

Yeah, and it's very much reminiscent of the cartoon style of the day, like a He-Man or something.

For sure. 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. It introduces Boba Fett, like you said, and it's actually.

Not bad. It's like Luke and R2 and C-3PO. Yeah. They crash on a planet or something.

Yeah, and Han and Chew were in it. That's right. It's the first time we see in BathVader. It's the first time we see Boba Fett and that he is just doing whatever he can do for money. Luke trusts him at first. C-3po is like, You sure you should trust him this quick? He's like, Oh, 3PO, you and your non-trusting ways. Then it turns out he's selling them out to the dark side.

Basically, Boba Fett is an allegory for George Lucas himself. The cartoon comes and goes, and that was the thing that came at about the end of the first hour mark. After that, everybody just turned off their television sets.

Yeah, I don't remember.

Did you watch this when it.

Came on? Yeah, I remember watching it, but I don't remember much about it. If I made it through it all, I was seven and it was until 10, so I probably didn't make it through it all. Plus, you're.

Probably disturbed. I probably wasn't allowed.

Who knows? I just remember that I have to ask my brother. He might have a memory of this.

I bet he does. I'm sure he met everybody afterward or something like that. He has a picture.

Well, he was 10 at that point, so cynicism had become a thing in his life probably.

By then?

Sure. Didn't that one cynicism kicks in?

I could see Scott holding on to 14:15.

Yeah, maybe so.

Chuck, the whole thing finally does end. Actually, there's a guy, his name's Nathan Raybon. He writes over at the AV Club. He had a great quote. He basically said that one of the great redeeming values of this special is that it does.

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

Go read 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 Chewy make it to the planet. They park on the far side of the planet because they know the Imperial Forces are there.

And the exercise will do Chewy good.

Yeah, so they have to hike over there. They eventually make it back home. They find the stormtroopers at their house, their tree hut. Yeah, way high up. Which by the way- Way high. The paintings that set this up, I don't think we mentioned. I don't even call them mat paintings. It looks like someone painted something on the wall and they just put a camera in front of it. Pretty much. Yeah. So they get back and Han solo hides around the corner. Cheubaca 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.

They wouldn't even... Not only could he not shoot first with Greto, but they couldn't even have him wrestle the Stormtrooper and throw him off. He trips over a log.

Right, and Han solo has his hands thrown up like, Wasn't me.

It might have been a banana peel.

But again, 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 peel? Exactly. It's a perfect way to end it. That guy basically represents the end of the Imperial Threat for the rest of Life Day. We then see Life Day being celebrated, which is celebrated by lots of wookies assembling in what looks like a giant Olin Mills portrait. And all of them are wearing red robes. Sure. I know I'm up talking, and it's because my mind is still having trouble, like wrapping around this. Then Princess Leia comes out with C-3PO. Is Mark Hamel there?

The whole gang's there, if I'm not mistaken.

Okay, the whole gang's there. Then they all gather around to hear a great quote from Princess Leia, which we will read verbatim.

This holiday is yours, but we all share with you the hope that this day brings us closer to freedom 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. We should also point out the tree of life has never been mentioned up.

To this point. I had no.

Idea what that was. Just makes a sudden appearance at the end. When you said Q-Song, by Q-Song you mean Princess Leia starts singing.

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

Like singing. Bruce Valanche calls it her Joni Mitchell period.

Yeah, and she somehow convinced them to let her sing as Princess Leia.

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. It's not just me, other writers who've written reviews of this. It's really obvious that she possibly smoked a decent amount of pot before she shot this scene. But she sings okay, it's fine. It's just the fact that Princess Leia is singing. Actually, Bruce Valanche had a really great quote, too. He says that she very much wanted to show this side of her talent. There was general dismay because this was not what we wanted Princess Leia to be doing. Yeah. I did it anyway. The whole thing ends with her singing this song about Life Day, which is set loosely to the John Williams Star Wars theme. Yeah.

Along the way, the original director quit. A new director, Steve Binder, was hired to finish the job and bring it in. And he did. Over the original $1 million budget, of course, always. He did bring it in. At this point, George Lucas had... 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 hated it. The people who were in it hated it.

Lucas hated it.

Even Harvey Korman secretly.

Hated it. Yeah, even Harvey Kytel hated it. Actually, he loved it. But Lucas has been asked over the years about it a lot, and he doesn't talk about it much. But in 2005, and I don't buy this for a second, he says it was an interview. He said, The special from 1978 really didn't have much to do with us. That part is true. I can't remember what network it was even on, but it was the thing that they did. That's a lie. There's no way he doesn't know that was CBS.

We.

Just let them do it. I believe that. It was done by, I can't even remember who the group was, but they were a variety of 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 used some of the footage from the movie.

At the end-It looks.

Some of the.

Space stuff. -like a highlight reel of the gang.

Well, and during the... It looked like some of the... They had some insert shots of Imperial Cruisers and Thai Fight and stuff.

That was from the movie. Remember when Chewbaka leans back and puts his hands behind his head? Yeah. That's in there. It's just a highlight reel from the movie saying, If you 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 inserted in there.

They tried. They definitely tried. George Lucas is totally full of it because in 1987, he told Star-Log magazine that the Christmas special would be out on video cassette very soon. Yes. In 2007, two years after that quote you just read, where he's like, I don't even know what you're talking about, basically, he apparently considered releasing the Christmas special as a bonus on the DVDs of the first three.

Right, but did not. Did not. Apparently, Kerry Fisher told Lucas that if you want me to do DVD extras- Commentary. Yeah, commentary, then I want a clean original copy of the holiday special. Yes. So why?

You can go ahead.

I can play at parties when I want people to leave.

It's pretty great. It is. Theres one of those clean copies is floating around out there. You can watch this in its entirety. Some of it, like the cartoon, was removed due to copyright infringement and that stuff. But as the case with the rest of the internet, you can just go find it elsewhere and piece it together. There's also the original ads that aired in Baltimore that are just fascinating. Yeah, those.

Are always fun.

Gm ads, where one of the guys who's in quality control, he says, Did you watch it?

I don't think I saw.

That one. He goes, We really care about these cars. That's no jive, man. I'm a GM ad, and he's dead serious.

They're trying to be hip.

Yeah, it's pretty good stuff.

Here's my final thought on it. I love it. It does not taint my Star Wars experience or my love for the franchise. I'm glad it is out there because 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. I don't know, somehow that enriches the rest of it.

I'm with you.

You like it?

Oh, yeah. I watched it twice. I wouldn't have watched it a second. I wouldn't have made it through the first time. Let me take that back. I'm a pro, so I wouldn't have made it through the first time. I wouldn't have watched it the second time if there wasn't something about it. I figured out I think, the thing that I like the most about it is Lumpy, Cheubacca's son, played by an actress named Patty Maloney, who frankly is hands down the best actor in the entire thing. Her responses and everything is just awesome.

I think my favorite parts are while there's a great Wilhelm Scream-.

Yes, I noticed that too.

-when the stormtrooper trips.

Over the log. Jerry would not have noticed it.

Then there's a part where all the wicky dialog you can't understand, but there's clearly one part where Itchy and Lumpy are having exchange where Lumpy, you can make it out, goes.

I love you. Yeah, I.

Noticed that as well. But it's covered up. But someone was like, we have to have at least one exchange where you know what they're saying.

Sure. Or they were like, I think she said, I love you. Should we have them redo it? The director was like, No. I want to go. Chuck, there's one other thing that I figured out from watching this. What's that? It's not readily apparent. The whole thing is made all the more odd and that there's situation after situation after situation where we, as normal audiences, were trained to expect a laugh track, but there's not a laugh track.

Had.

There been a laugh track, it might have been less bizarre. But the fact that it's missing just agitates the mind. It's this whole additional element.

That-it is weird. I never thought about it. There's just weird moments of silence all.

Throughout it. Yeah. Like when Art Carney is 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.

In the-It's the lesson of life day.

It is. In 2007, Riftracks, the great mystery science theater 3,000 guys, Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, and Kevin Murphy provided audio commentary for the full version of the special. Try and go grab that if you can as well.

Oh, you can. It's on their site. Because it's great. I think it's like eight bucks.

Those guys are awesome. They are.

I think Corbett listens to us. Hey, Corbett.

You got.

Anything else? No. No, I think we did this. There's some good stuff. Go read the Vanity Fair article, A Han solo Comedy Hour. There's a book called How Star Wars Conquered the Universe that has a very interesting chapter about this. That's where we found it asserted that George Lucas never said that he would to match this thing with a sledgehammer. Right. There's also an entire website dedicated to it, starwarisholidayspecial. Com. If you want to know more about the Star Wars Holiday Special, we have a ton of Star Wars stuff on HowStuffWorks.

By the way. Yeah, we have cool fun articles about the Death Star and Lightsabers.

Videos with Holly Fry from stuff you missed in history class.

Yeah, who.

She knows her stuff. She does. You can just type Star Wars in the search bar, HowStuffWorks. Com, and it'll bring up some cool stuff for you. Since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail.

Hey, guys. Just finished listening to the Voinich manuscript podcast. I found it super interesting, especially the theories on its definition or origin. I know Josh mentioned Chuck's theory of it being drug-induced. It's somewhat surprising or even unlikely given the language in the manuscript follows linguistic laws, only founded in the past 100 years. But if you think about it, it's tough to stray away from familiar structures, especially for something like language. I think back to when I was younger and friends invented their own languages or even in writing a song or poetry, creativity can sometimes be limited by what we know. So just thought I'd contribute that to the conversation. Nice. Thanks. Big thanks for all you guys do. I found the podcast after moving to San Diego in the last few years for some noise around my apartment. So basically we were blocking out noise.

We do that.

Which I love. And then as a way to get through traffic on my commute home from work, you guys are far more interesting and enjoyable than television and YouTube videos. I'm sure I've listened to hundreds and will continue to listen to hundreds more. Keep on keeping on. That is from Amy J.

Muffet. Thanks a lot, Amy, in San Diego. Does that mean like Place of the Whales in German or something like that? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. If you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at SYSK Podcast. You can join us on Facebook. Com/stuffyoushouldknow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks. Com. As always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushidknow. Com.

Stuffyoushouldknow is a production of iHeart Radio.

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Walter Isaacson set out to write about a world-changing genius in Elon Musk and found a man addicted to chaos and conspiracy.

I'm thinking it's idiotic to buy Twitter because he doesn't have a fingertips feel for social, emotional networks.

The book launched a thousand hot takes, so I sat down with Isaacson to try to get past the noise.

I like the fact that people who say, I'm not as tough on Musk as I should be, are always using anecdotes from my book to show why we should be tough on Musk.

Join me, Evan Ratliff, for On Musk with Walter Isaacson. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Tune in to the new podcast, Stories from the Village of Nothing Much. Like easy listening, but for fiction. If you've overdosed on bad news, we invite you into a world where the glimmers of goodness in everyday life are all around you. I'm Katherine Nicolai, and I'm an architect of cozy. Come spend some time where everyone is welcome and the default is kindness. Listen, relax, enjoy. Listen to stories from The Village of Nothing Much on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

In the new Amy and TJ podcast, news anchors Amy Robach and TJ Homes explore everything from current events to pop culture in a way that's informative, entertaining, and authentically groundbreaking. Join them as they share their voices for the first time since making their own headlines.

This is the first time that we.

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Get to say what happened.

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