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Hoy Sollom, Life Day to you all, this is Josh and for this week's as well as Kate Selex, it's our annual Christmas edition of the Star Wars holiday special here to kick off your holiday season in Grand Style. I know Life Day actually took place this year on November 17th, but we wanted to wait to save it until a little closer to Christmas to really put everybody in the Christmas spirit.

So here everyone is the stuff you should know. Annual holiday tradition of the listening of the Star Wars holiday special episode. Enjoy.

Happy Holidays. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know.

A production of Pirate Radio's HowStuffWorks. Hey, and welcome to the podcast, I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuckers, Bryant and Jerry drumroll and the Wookie mother. Yeah, Maula. That was the wacky wife. Oh, and mother. Yeah, sure. To his mom is not with them anymore. She left. She was not about to appear and then 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. You know I dare you into it. Oh yeah. I will definitely go see it in the theater, but I won't be there opening night. Sure. I've got I'm really adept at like ignoring spoilers, people talking about stuff like so I can I could conceivably see this movie a month after it comes out and it's still going fresh. Yeah, it's kind of an ostrich. Yeah. You black yourself out. Yeah.

You go dark.

I do. I make myself go to sleep face.

You go to the dark side. I've been there a while now. Will 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 miss Life Day though so happy belated life they are.

They celebrating it this year, November 17th. Yeah, but it's every three years. Hmm. Arcane. Yeah.

Then weird job. OK, so it's every three years started in 1978. Let's do the math shall we.

Hmm. Quick math break. I believe that 2014 was the last life they may have just missed and then again in twenty seventeen.

OK, so 2017 we'll celebrate like they will put on our red robes our ultra long straight ayanda wigs. Sure. And we'll celebrate Life Day the way it was meant to. Yes.

And if you have no idea what we're talking about, we are talking about Life Day, which is a celebration that Watkis in the Star Wars universe every three years.

Yeah, it's like their Christmas. Yeah. They said Veronica or their Kwanzaa. They're supposedly sort of like Earth Day two. They celebrate the diversity of their ecosystem and also remembrance of the dead. And they also give gifts.

They're like the Finns, basically. Yeah, it's 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 seventies. Yeah. And it's the basis of what is become derided as like one of the worst things that ever happened to the Star Wars galaxy.

Well, not only that, one of the worst things ever aired on television. Yeah, well, this galaxy. Yeah, at first that sounds like hyperbole. Like, come on, it's because it was Star Wars. We had high expectations, but it's really that bad.

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

Yeah. Yeah. However, I watched it, uh, when I was a kid, uh, then again this week. Yeah. And you watched it twice this week.

Yeah, I watched it last night and this morning there's something about it. It's mesmerizing.

It really is.

It's one of those things that you start watching and you want to turn it off, but you want to see just how absurd it can get almost. Yeah. And it starts absurd. It stays absurd in the middle. Yeah. 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. Yeah. And some people, you know, in researching this, you read about it, you read descriptions of these things and it just can't possibly be gotten across until you see it.

So luckily, as we will see, you can go on to YouTube and watch it and you may even enjoy this episode more. If you pause, go spend two hours watching this thing.

Yeah.

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 Baddeley dubbed VHS Tapes. Yeah, but there's one really pretty good version of it in full. Um uh brought to you by w h i o Dayton, Ohio, Channel seven, Ohio because that flashes up on the screen periodically.

Yeah man it is high quality. Yeah. It looks good. It has to basically be the copy that the actual affiliate broadcast. Yeah. It's like that that quality compared to the other stuff floating around on YouTube. It's clearly recorded on a 1978 VCR. Yeah. Which is really expensive. Very expensive. I did some calculating on Westerburg. OK, so the average VCR went for about a thousand dollars. There were brand new. It's amazing. Thousand dollars in 1978 money.

So there are about. Thirty eight hundred dollars in 2014, money crazy. Luckily, there were some rich people out there recording this stuff and the wealthy have saved us all again. Yes. Yet again, as they always do.

Yes. We need to shout out some articles that we use for this.

There's great a great article in Vanity Fair called The Han Solo Comedy Hour. Exclamation point. Yes, by Frank de Giacomo.

And then there's the Star Wars holiday. Special was the worst thing on television ever by someone we kind of know. Alex Pasternak. Yeah. From Motherboard. Yeah. Which is not wired. It's by Vice. Yeah.

So we wrote a little bit for Motherboard back then and we had a call with that, like we're like old motherboard vets. Yeah. Basically wasn't there one more. There was another one and I don't know who wrote this one. Chuck. Uh yeah. It's the titles the Star Wars Holiday Special.

George Lucas wants to smash every copy of With a Sledgehammer, which is a famous quote, uh, supposedly at a convention by Lucas. Yes. Which is not correct. He didn't ever say that. No. OK, that 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. So I'm sure he felt that way, though, clearly, you know, because he did appear on robot chicken and I think 2005 on the therapist's couch talking about how much he hated the special.

All right. So let's set the background, shall we?

Shall we go back to 1977? Yeah. Summer getting the old Wayback 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 am. I've just turned one. Yes, you know, no, it's up yet.

I please forgive me if I urinate myself. No problem. OK, so what has happened is Star Wars has become a huge, huge hit, seemingly out of nowhere.

Yeah, establishing George Lucas is one of the brilliant young minds in filmmaking.

Even though it wasn't his first movie, it was his first huge, huge breakout hit. Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean, talk about a breakout hit like no one had ever seen anything like it before. No, 2001 had come out in the late 60s. Yeah. But it wasn't it still isn't accessible to all audiences, you know.

Yeah. It's of a cerebral film. Yeah. It's not an adventure movie this year because this is like basically swashbuckling on the screen.

But, you know, in a galaxy far, far away, Star Wars just changed everything and it came on just like a hammer. Yeah. There's a new hope, by the way. Yes.

And I know we're going to get stuff wrong, nerds. So, yes. Just go ahead and get your little fingers ready to email us.

Like if it wasn't driven home, that I'm not a nerd by the fact that I don't have opening night tickets or any tickets yet. Give me a break. OK, and by proxy, Chuck to OK. Thank you so much. It's hard to overstate how great Star Wars was in everyone's mind. Yeah, right. Bill Murray came out with that lounge singer Star Wars thing. Yeah. It was everywhere.

And if you if you just listen to the lyrics of it, really, it's just Bill Murray singing about how much Star Wars is all something. Yeah, right. Yeah. So by the following year, George Lucas was he wanted to figure out a way to keep audiences just engaged with the whole Star Wars franchise that he was just starting to build. But he knew the Empire Strikes Back was a couple more years out. Sure. So he I think he was approached by some TV executives who said, have you considered doing some sort of TV special?

They're all the rage right now. We have we have a graphic that's really awesome that we set aside just for TV specials here at CBS. Why don't you let us let's get together and do a Star Wars special. That's right.

Producers Gary Smith and Dwight Hermione, we're working over at CBS and they say this is a great way to keep the spirit alive while you're making your other movie, maybe move some more toys.

Yeah, which George Lucas got all the toys. You're so 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 shopping, sitting around family, like waiting to actually do stuff. That's right. Perfect time to broadcast something on TV.

Salukis says, all right, let's do this. I don't have a ton of time, but how about this? I'll get I'll get a story together and then you can go hire a Whiz-Bang team of veteran writers and producers and directors, whatever genre you think is appropriate.

And those are the words that will haunt George Lucas to his grave.

Yeah. So Lucas said, here's my idea. I want it to be based on cookies and I want it to take place on their home planet of Kissack or Wookey Planet Sea. Is that he said Kazik. That's how it's pronounced in the episode, the holiday special. But it's also pronounced different ways.

Other times I would have pronounced that keshi spell it h y y y k. Yeah, which I mean, I guess that sounds like Chewbacca is playing it. Sure. Also called G five six twenty three. We'll keep playing at C or Ethion is a mid rim planet. Right.

So the whole reason apparently that George Lucas was interested in featuring the book is, was it is what we in show business call low hanging fruit. The reason why it was low hanging fruit was because they had just established the different scenes that would make the cut for Empire Strikes Back. Yeah. And how did you pronounce it again? Kissack. Kazik had not made the cut even prior to this. Apparently for a new hope, George Lucas had whipped up a forty page, what's known as the Wookie Bible.

Yeah, it's like a forty page supplement. That's all about Kazik and cookies and Chewbacca and his family and everything about Wookey. Damn right. That's right. So he's like, I've got this thing already, you know, established. I love Watkis. They didn't make the cut. I'm a little sad about that. They're not going to Kazuki is not going to show up in Empire Strikes Back. Let's let's build the entire special around Watkis. It's basically the one demand me George Lucas has.

Yeah, that's it. I'll be totally hands off from this point on which kind of 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.

Came out of this Christmas special. Absolutely, he was burned and you had an iron grip after that on everything. So here's some some of the folks behind it.

Bruce Vilanch, famous TV writer, you probably have seen him on Hollywood Squares.

Wasn't he suspected of being Thomas Pynchon for a while? I don't know. Or was Thomas Pynchon on Hollywood Squares? Have no idea. I may be confabulating some stuff. Confounding. Yeah, there's some con of some sort going on. It sounds like it. Yeah.

So Vilanch was hired as a writer, a guy named Lenny Rip's 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 the famous last words? Who else was hired? There was a husband and wife team. The Welches. Yeah. Who are the parents of of folk singer Gillian Welch. 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.

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

Yeah.

OK, thanks. So, Chuck, you just said singer songwriters. Yeah. What would that have to do with Star Wars?

Yeah, well, actually in this Star Wars holiday special for those who hadn't seen it, there are musical numbers. They decided from the outset that there should be musical numbers. And the reason that they decided that there should be musical numbers is because the people who sold George Lucas and at the time it was the Star Wars Corporation was what it was called. Yeah. On the idea of doing this TV special was that everyone would love a variety show. Yeah, it was a 70s.

Great idea. Let's do a variety show. The problem was this. Apparently George Lucas didn't watch enough TV and he also really trusted people who talked to him. Sure. 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 Carol Burnett Show.

One of my favorite had just been canceled after 11 seasons. Yeah, uh, big red flag. Sonny and Cher had just had its last season. Yeah. Um, I mean, what else? Like he how was he? I was still going on. Probably they didn't know anything.

He was still on solid gold and yet to come on and take up the mantle that that wasn't a variety show.

There was a little bit. And there talking in between the songs. Yeah. I remember the Mandrell Sisters show. I never watch that one with that country chic thing that it was.

Yeah, it was a big deal in the sense it's kind of happening again, I think. Oh, because of that dude, the guy who won all the CMA Awards. Uh, I don't know. He's like he's he came along and he's like actually country. His dad's like a coal miner for real from Kentucky.

I think. I know he I mean, Chris is something. Yeah. Yeah, he's he is good.

He's come along and been like, what are you guys doing. Well, there's a revival in like good country music. Again, that's great. Like in the tradition of Merle Haggard and. Sure.

Cash. And I guess that's 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 like a Sunday singing thing, like out in Virginia. Yeah.

He had his own variety show was actually pretty good. There's some really great performances, you know.

I mean, nerds are the perfect storm.

I know. So sorry. All right. So the variety show is is dying, sort of. And so they figure what a great time to take the biggest movie property on the planet and wedge it into the variety show MLU.

I don't know if wage is the right word. I think maybe Nessel it in there. Yeah. And then start hitting it with the blunt edge of an axe until it smashes into that crevice, you know. 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.

Yeah, just escapist television's all it was was starting and it was the hip new thing. So basically, if they had turned Han Solo and Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker into maybe, you know, sexy detectives, it might have gone over even better. But they went the other way. They decided to latch onto this extraordinarily stale genre of television and they hired the best in the business. Yeah, like there was there was there was a quote from, I think Lenny Rip's who was saying, like, we had literally a dream team.

Yeah. A variety show, dream team. And everybody was good, but there were probably no bad welders on the Titanic either.

That's a great quote. Yeah. The guy they hired to direct it initially was a dude named David Acoma and. He had made his name for a welcome to the Fillmore East, it was a concert documentary with Van Morrison, Van Morrison and The Byrds in 1971, and he actually was at USC film school the same time as Lucas, even though he didn't know each other. And he only ended up directing about three segments of the thing before he quit, before he walked off.

Some say he was actually let go, but we'll get to him in a minute. And who replaced him?

OK, as we get along down this gross road, well, let's let's take a little break, because I'm overly excited.

OK.

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

Sure, Peter Mayhew, they had no grounds to refuse to be basically.

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

They were they were big overnight because of Star Wars for sure. But they weren't to the adoring public. Sure. Back at the studio, they could still be bossed around. And this was the result of it. And you can tell also just from watching the actual special, like Harrison Ford is not happy to be there at any point. Oh, no. Princess Leia is clearly on drugs.

Uh, was she on drugs at this point?

She if you watch it, she she's on drugs, especially the ending scene. Mark Hamill looks like he's happy to be there.

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

In fact, in the opening credits sequence, they're showing the picture the, you know, the faces of the people. Right. And you see Harrison Ford as if he's flying the Millennium Falcon. And you can you can just hear the guy on screen going now look at the camera and just give a nod. Just look at the camera and give a nod. And he finally you can tell he's pissed off and he looks up at the camera and just sort of smirks.

Yeah.

And point to the camera like, OK, I'm looking at the camera and then goes back to what he's doing.

It's pretty awesome. I felt bad for him so early on. Vilanch and others did. Did you feel bad for him, though, really?

I mean, like, come on, it's Harrison Ford as Han Solo.

He has to go do this for like five days.

Yeah, I feel terrible for him. I think it's hilarious that they had to do this, especially now. Well, early on, Vilanch and others knew that they may be in trouble because they decided not to subtitle any of the Wookey dialogue. Right.

And they literally started after a brief opening scene setting it up. Here is the basic plot is Han. I was trying to get Chewbacca back to Cusack in Time for Life Day so we can celebrate with his family. That's the basis of the entire two pieces.

The entire two hours they encounter a space battle and they are delayed and the next two hours are kind of what's going on while the delay is happening.

Back on because. Back on because. Because you hear like, OK, well, Han Solo and Chewbacca evading the Imperial Guard and all that stuff for two hours.

I would watch that. Sure I would too. Yeah, that's not what they show.

Killing time at the Wookie household. That is what they show. Yeah, that's what they do.

It's people hanging out, waiting for Chewbacca, worrying about him. Yeah. And then killing time while they wait for him to come back. Yeah. Literally so and so. Hold on. So you say there's a setup, right. Yeah, that's the initial setup. And then Chuck that's followed by this. Yeah. It's followed by. Literally ten minutes, ten solid minutes of incomprehensible Wookiee speak.

So let's let's join it for a second, shall we? Yeah, let's all enjoy it. And again, you said ten minutes and you're not exaggerating, you're not being hyperbolic, you can time it. It's 10 minutes of work. He's talking to each other with no subtitles. Fortunately, I couldn't follow it at first.

Like I didn't even know who it was I thought it was. Might have been Chewbacca, his mom and dad. Oh, yeah, the little brother. And I don't find out until later when Mark Hamill shows up via Skype call. Yeah. And says he really explains everything, that it just happened like your Chewbacca, his father Riichi, your Chewbacca son. Lumpy. Lumpy. Yeah. And you were Chewbacca. His wife.

Oh, Mahwah. Yeah. Thank you.

So before everybody starts, like, freaking out, we know that that's actually their nicknames.

Their real names are his father is a teacher cook, a teacher cook. It's really hard to pronounce. Mellado Bucke is his wife and his son is Lampo or up, but his name by Lucas.

But yeah, but Lucas also named him Lumpy, Itchy and Mollah. Yeah. So they're all back. They're wringing their hands, trying to figure out ways to pass the time until they get word from Chewbacca that he's made it to. What is it, Catterick is Kazik. Um, it's like ketchup, ketchup or catsup if you're fancy. Yeah, but Chewbacca is having trouble getting back to Kuchuk because there's Kazik because there's a blockade by the empire and they're looking for rebels, specifically Chewbacca, who I didn't realize this.

He's the most famous wookey of all. Did you know that?

Yeah, of course I didn't know that. Well, I mean, he's the only one that really appears in the movies.

I mean, that we're seeing, like, you know, these people's view of the universe. What about back on Chizuru? Yes. You might have just been a fly by night Wookey, right? Yeah, but not the case. Very famous Wookey. Yeah. And he really loved it, like soak in his fame.

All right. So he realizes there's a problem.

Vilanch 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 Wookiee land and have all this incomprehensible dialogue. And he says he was met with a glacial stare.

Uh, well, and he put it a little differently than that. Well, he said glacial stare. He did. The glacial stare that he got was for this quote. He said, these people just talk. And what sounds like people having an orgasm. Yeah. He goes, if you want, you can set up a tape recorder in my bedroom and I'll do all of the foliage for it. Yeah, he's a large guy. He is.

So that's what got the glacial stare. But Vaillant's later said that from there was one development meeting that Lucas attended and it was here's the Wookie Bible. Tell me what you got. And it Vilanch said he and the other writers and producers and director were just kind of throwing ideas. And George Lucas would either say, like, no, that doesn't work, give him a glacial stare or say, yes, that's exactly it.

Yes. Let's make this a variety show.

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

It was that was television. That's what you did. Like the brickies, the the the show had its course and then it became a variety show. It was just everybody loved variety shows. Yeah, it'll 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 creepy, this mime couple who had their own variety show and they figured these two will be great because they are used to working without words. Right. So and so.

There is a certain logic to the variety show. It's not just all over the place, it's just that variety shows were popular.

Yeah. At the time, if somebody was like, well, Watkis, you don't understand what they're saying. So this is all going to be very physical. So these people who who did what is it? Shields and Yarnell. Yeah, that's a perfect choice.

That makes complete sense. You can see this whole this whole process of leading up to the point where it was produced and shot and everything.

Yeah. A series of like, oh, we have this problem. Well, here's the fix. Yeah. Well what that leads to another problem.

We'll 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 was made.

That's right. And it eventually airs on. November 17th, 1978, a Friday at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time. That's right, and according to the Nielsen ratings, it attracted 13 million viewers. Just the second hour just in the U.S. It aired in six or seven countries total. Yeah, but no one cares about that. I guess not, because none of those are on the Internet.

You know, it finished second to the Love Boat in the second hour, I'm sorry, from eight to nine. And in the next hour, I actually finished behind part two of a miniseries about Pearl Harbor starring Angie Dickinson. So it didn't even win their respective hours.

Now, 13 million, that's that's not bad. The thing is, apparently, if you look at the Nielsen ratings graph for the first hour.

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

And then after a very important part, which we'll talk about soon, it just drops off at the end of the first hour.

And that actually probably made the executives at CBS cringe for a number of reasons. Number one is this special was originally supposed to just be an hour, but so many advertisers wanted to sign on to that. They extended it to two hours and it shines through. You can totally tell that this thing was never supposed 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 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, but it is content in the strictest definition. Sure. Right after this.

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All right, so the show itself, we've given you the main plot line, which again is that Chewey 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 Chewey. Yeah. The rest is his family on Facebook 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 Carol Burnett Show both. He's great. Yeah.

He actually if you watch what he's doing, you're like, this is comedy genius. Well, apparently he, too, was like the only one on set that was bringing levity. He was joking around and kind of kept spirits up. Good for him. That's what I say.

And he had three, maybe three different parts. Yeah.

He played, uh, well, I don't even know the names, actually.

We could look him up, but he played a he played a Julia Child like cook.

There's an actual cooking segment, a long one, a very long cooking segment where Tubac, his wife, um, makes Mantha Stew to kill some time, to kill some time, uh, because they're waiting on her planet and in our living room.

Yeah. So Harvey Korman is in drag as a forearmed. Julia Child like a TV chef.

Right. And I think it's Garamond. Is her name Gaumont. That makes total sense. Yeah. He also plays, um, there's this one weird bit where Chewbacca, his son, tries to figure out a way to trick the stormtroopers that the empire had come and kind of because the blockade raided the house and other properties.

So he tries to trick them by, I think, rigging a comlink to speak in a different voice. So he has to watch the instruction manual.

He watches an instruction video, which was Harvey Keitel as a robot.

Oh, it would have been wonderful.

Big Harvey Keitel, although I did say Harvey Harvey Keitel murdered someone in the middle of the 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 drinks and that's how he drinks.

And he he loves Bea Arthur. Did we mention Bea Arthur was in it? Bea Arthur is not only in it, she sings a song. She does.

She is the notes to everyone she manages or maybe owns. She's a she's the owner. Yeah.

The what's the miles. What? Mos Def Cantina. Uh, no, Mos Def is a rapper. Oh yeah. I think you mean Mos Eisley. Yes.

Yes. That cantina. She's the owner. Bea Arthur is the owner Bea Arthur of the Golden Girls. But in this case, Bea Arthur Maude, because sure. As one of the people who wrote one of the articles we base this on points out, she's just basically playing. Maude is the owner of the cantina. Yeah.

And her song comes because they basically say there's a lock down. So you got a call last call at your bar. So she calls last call by singing the song to everyone.

Right. And again, we can't possibly have this script lead anywhere else, but Chewbacca is house while his family waits for it. So all this takes place as part of a public service announcement, basically. Yeah. Broadcast by the Empire. Yeah. About how immoral life on tattooing is.

So let's go see what's going on in the Mars Eisley cantina as it's being shut down for curfew.

Yeah.

All right. This is incomprehensible, but it goes on. So they're in it. There is also Art Carney. Yes.

It's The Honeymooners family, the star of the whole thing. Really. He has the most lines, I would say the most comprehensible one, right?

Yeah. So he plays a traitor, a human traitor that is recently been with Han Solo on Chewey and actually gets to Cusack and says they're on the way. It's all good. Yeah. A traitor, not traitor. Yeah. Traitors and trades humans for, you know, money. No, he he sells goods. Yeah, a trader isn't trade humans. Yeah, he's in the human trade. You know, he is. It really? Yeah.

He trades humans like he sells humans. I looked it up in the Starwars encyclopedia. It said that he was in the human trade. Huh. So in this Christmas special. Yeah, apparently they sanitized his background because he's basically just selling like gadgets and novelties and stuff like that to the bookies and the empire who were occupying the area.

Yes, he comes bearing gifts, um, because he's a friend of Tubac, his family. Yeah. So he comes bearing gifts.

One of the gifts he gives is a sort of like a little digital insert to a oh, I guess you would call it a virtual reality.

Hairdryer hairdryer like a beauty shop. Hair dryer. Right. He gives it to Grandpa Itchy.

Grandpa Itchy sits under this hairdryer, pops in this digital cassette, and it can only be described as soft core porn.

Apparently, the writers who were interviewed for this said that was totally the intent. They were trying to get what amounted to softcore porn that would pass the censors. That's right.

So it's all yeah. You can't even say it's innuendo.

It's too obvious and overt for innuendo. Instead, it's just it's just it's just gross.

It's really gross.

Diahann Carroll, great singer. Yes, she is. A Vegas staple, shows up and starts basically tantalizing. Grandpa Archie, who again, this is Chewbacca, is elderly father who now engages in some sort of well, he's he's watching virtual reality pornography now. And this is a pretty lengthy segment in and of itself. Well, yeah.

And she literally says to him, like, now I can see you're really excited. Yeah. It's pretty rough to watch. Yeah. So then you've got another musical number because also again, he shudders. Yeah, it's really strange.

All right. So there's also a I know it seems like we're jumping around, but it's it's not like this is pretty much like blow for blow.

Actually, I forgot earlier on in the in the special, um, there's one of my favorite sequences is when Grandpa actually goes over to a lumpy and basically sets up, remember the the hologram chess board that they played in a new hope. Yeah. Basically kind of sets that up and says, here, just play this.

He pushes the button, which is clearly a 1970s cassette recorder and another like it's like a Cirque de Soleil acid trip.

Yeah.

Um, gymnast routine happens in front of the kids.

Yeah. And again, this all just it's not like it shows a snippet. They show the entire segments like five, six, ten minutes long. Sure. Of all of these things.

So you would think, OK, they've gone to this hologram. Well, a couple of times. Why not go to it again. Well, they do. They do. To kill more time while the Imperial Guard is ransacking their house.

Art Carney apparently, I guess, is trying to get one of the Imperial Guard, the leader, I think, or one of the leaders who looks like somebody from Spaceballs, by the way.

Very much so, yeah. Um, and the writer of the Vanity Fair article, by the way, said this. This is so incomprehensible that Specialist George Lucas didn't even have the Schwartz with the method.

So anyway, Art Carney's distracting this imperial leader while they're ransacking the his house, Chewbacca, his house with a hologram and this hologram, instead of being an acrobat or Diahann Carroll or any kind of porn or anything like that is Jefferson Starship.

And they decide that they're going to play Light the Sky on Fire, which apparently is about UFOs. It's a little music video. Basically, it's a pretty yeah, it's the predecessor to like video killed. The radio started to tell. And again, it is the whole lengthy song. Yeah, the whole thing. So every time that somebody is 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 OK.

Here's five minutes of Jefferson Starship performing this song. Yeah.

And even the Jefferson Starship guys were like, yeah, it's sort of a weird trip.

Like, we didn't get it, but we did it right.

They gave us some money. Yeah. And some cocaine. Well, 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. There is a cartoon actually. Yeah. That lump. Lumpy watches. Yeah. Lumbees. Like the Imperial Guard is still ransacking my house, I think I'll entertain myself by watching a cartoon on my little, um, I know what I guess it was an iPad and he watches this cartoon.

And it's it's actually remarkable for a number of reasons. It's the best part of the whole special. Yeah. Generally agreed upon as such. Right. Not just us. And it introduces Boba Fett.

It's the first time Boba Fett ever makes an appearance in the Star Wars universe.

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

Right. You can find it on its own. Yeah.

And it's it's very much reminiscent of like the cartoon style of the day, like a human or something.

Even even it's even a little more artsy than that. Yeah. But it does have a plot that you can follow that makes sense as a Star Wars thing. Yeah. And it introduces Boba Fett, like you said, and it's actually not bad.

It's like Luke in our two and C three po. Yeah. And they're like a crash on a planet or something. Yeah. And Hannant, you were in it and it's the first time we see in Darth Vader, it's first time we see Boba Fett and that he is that he is just doing whatever he can do for money. Right. Like Luke, trust him at first. See through videos like you. Sure you should trust him this quick.

And he's like, oh, three below you and your non trusting ways too. And then it turns out he's selling them out to the dark side.

So it's basically Boba Fett is an allegory for George Lucas himself. So the cartoon comes and goes. And that was the thing that came at about the end of the first hour mark. And after that, everybody just turned off their television sets. Yeah, I don't remember. Did you watch this when it came on? Yeah, I remember watching it, but I don't remember much about it. Like, if I made it through it all, I mean, it was I was seven and it was on till ten, so I probably didn't make it through it all.

Yeah. Plus you're probably disturbed. Who knows. I just remember that to that's my brother. He might have a memory of this. I'll bet he does.

I'm sure he met everybody afterward or something like that, you know, has a picture. Well he was ten at that point. The cynicism had, you know, become a thing in his life probably by then. Sure enough, when cynicism kicks in, I think he's got holding out to fourteen. Fifteen. Yeah, maybe so. So, Chuck, the whole thing finally does in in actually there's a guy, his name's Nathan Rayburn. He writes over at the AV Club.

He had a great quote. He basically said that one of the great redeeming values of this, this special is that it does eventually end.

You know, the first part of the quote is I'm not convinced the special wasn't ultimately written and directed by a sentient bag of cocaine and like, go read his his review of the Star Wars holiday special because he goes on to describe exactly what that must have been like, development meeting where the bag of cocaine is pacing back and forth talking about what should happen.

That's what it feels like, but it doesn't. And it ends even more. It takes this bizarre two hours and wraps it up and just a nice, bizarre bow. Yeah.

So what happens is eventually Hanzo, should we say spoiler alert, eventually Han Solo and Chewie make it to the planet.

They park on the far side of the planet because they know the the imperial forces are there and the exercise will do to be good. Yeah. So they have to hike over there.

They eventually make it back home. They find a storm. The storm troopers at their house right there.

Tree hut. Yeah. Which way by the paintings that set this up. I don't think we mentioned I don't even call them matte paintings.

It looks like someone painted something on the wall and they just like put a camera in front of it. Pretty much.

Yeah. Yeah. So they get back and, uh, Chewbacca Han hides around the corner. Chewbacca steps in front of his son to protect them. Sure.

Han Solo jumps out and the stormtrooper trips over a pile of logs and falls over the balcony and dies in a holiday special so they wouldn't even harm not only could he not shoot first with Greedo, but they couldn't even have him like wrestle the stormtrooper and throw him off.

He trips over a log right in.

Consolo has his hands thrown up like wasn't me. It must have been a banana peel, you know. Right.

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. So that's that guy basically represents the end of the imperial threat for the rest of life day. Yeah. And we we then see Life Day being celebrated, which is celebrated by lots of bookies assembling in what looks like a giant Olan Mills portraits.

Yeah. And all of them are wearing red robes. Sure.

And I know I'm up talking and it's because my mind is still having trouble wrapping around the. And then Princess Leia comes out with C three, PO is Mark Hamill, they're the whole gang Xeroform, OK, the whole gang's there. And then they all gather around to hear a great quote from Princess Leia, which we will read verbatim.

This holiday is yours, but we all share with you the hope that this day brings us closer to freedom 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.

Kusang Right.

And we should also point out the Tree of Life has never been mentioned up to this point.

No idea whether this is a sudden appearance at the end.

And when you said khutsong by khutsong, you mean Princess Leia starts singing? Yeah. And apparently that was one of the big contingencies on Carrie Fisher being involved. Yeah, she's going through a phase where she's like kind of like singing.

Bruce Vilanch calls it a 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. And it's not just me, other writers who've written reviews of this. It's really obvious that she possibly smoked a decent amount of pot before she shot this shot, this scene.

But she sings, OK, OK, it's fine. It's just the fact that, um, Princess Lay is singing. And actually, Bruce Vilanch had a really great quote, too. He says that she very much wanted to show this side of her talent and there was general dismay because this was not what we wanted Princess Leia to be doing.

Yeah, she did it anyway. So the whole thing ends with her singing this song about Life Day.

Oh, yeah. Which is set loosely to the John Williams Star Wars theme. Yeah. So along the way, the director, original director quit a new director, Steve Binder, was hired to finish the job and bring it in, and he did over the original one million dollar budget. Of course, always, uh, he did bring it in. And at this point, George Lucas said he was he was working on Empire Strikes Back.

He didn't know what was going on. He wasn't around for the shoot.

No, it wasn't until it aired. I think that he actually saw it. Yes. And it was a travesty, obviously, if you haven't noticed that by now. Uh, critics hated it.

Star Wars fans really hated it. Everybody the people who were in it hated it. Lucas hated it. Uh, even Harvey Korman secretly hated it. Yeah.

Even Harvey Keitel hated actually loved it. But Lucas has been asked over the years about it a lot and he doesn't talk about it much. But in twenty five and I don't buy this for a second, he says it was an interview, he said, especially from 1978. I really didn't have much to do with us. You know, that part is true. I can't remember what network it was even on, but it was the thing that they did.

That's a lie. There's no way he doesn't know that was CBS. Yeah, uh, we kind of just let them do it. I believe that it was done by I can't even remember who the group was, but they were variety TV guys. I'm sure he remembers a few of them.

Uh, we let them use the characters and stuff, and that probably wasn't the smartest thing to do. But you learn from those experiences.

Yeah, I think they even use some of the footage from the movie at the end.

It looks like some of is based like a highlight reel. Yeah. The gang. Well and during the it look like some of the they had some insert shots of like imperial cruisers and tie fighters and stuff. Yeah.

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

Well and also that means it doesn't match the look of the rest of it at all. Yeah, that's true. It's just sort of inserted. They tried.

They definitely try. And George Lucas is totally full of it because in 1987 he told Star Long magazine that the Christmas special would be out on video cassette very soon. Yes. And in 2007, two years after that quote, you just read words like, I don't even know what you're talking about.

Basically, he apparently considered releasing the Christmas special is a bonus on the the DVDs of the first three.

Right. But did not did. And apparently Carrie Fisher told Lucas that if you want me to do DVD extras commentary. Yeah. Commentary, then I want a clean original copy of the holiday special. Yes. So why are you so I can play at parties when I want people to leave.

It's pretty great.

It is so and there is one of those clean copies is floating around out there. So you can watch this in in its entirety. Some of it like the cartoon was. Removed due to copyright infringement. That kind of stuff, but as is the case with the rest of the Internet, you can just go find it elsewhere and piece it together. There's also the original ads that aired in Baltimore. Yeah. That are just fascinating. Yeah, those are always fun.

GM ads where one of the guys who's in quality control is he says, did you watch it? I don't think I saw that. He goes, we really care about these cars.

And that's no jive man on a GM. And you think it's serious? They're trying to be hip. Yeah, it's a pretty good stuff. Uh, here's my final thought on it. I love it.

It does not taint my Star Wars experience or my love for the franchise. And I'm glad it is out there because it it's a it's a fun little stain that shouldn't be taken too seriously. Mm hmm. Uh, I think it adds to it, actually, because it's campy and awful. Yeah. And I don't know, somehow that enriches the rest of it.

I'm with you. You like it. Oh yeah.

I mean, I watched it twice so I wouldn't watch it a second. I wouldn't have made it through the first time. Let me take that back as I'm a pro. Yeah. So it would have made it through the first time. I wouldn't watch it a second time if I wasn't, there wasn't something about it. And I figured out I think the thing that I like the most about it is lumpy. Tubac, his son. Yeah. Played by an actress named Paddy Moloney, who frankly is hands down the best actor in the entire thing.

She like her responses and everything is just awesome. I think my favorite parts are while there's a great Vilhelm scream. Yes. And Storm trooper trips over the lodge area would not have noticed it.

Uh, and then there's a part where all the Wookey dialogue you can't understand. But there's clearly one part where we're itchy and lumpier having an exchange where lumpy, you can make it out goes, I love you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I noticed that. But it's covered up. But someone knows, like, we have to have at least one exchange.

We sort of know what they're saying.

Sure. Or they were like I think she said, I love you. Should we have we do it. And the director is like, no, I want to go and check this. One other thing that I figured out from watching this, it's not readily apparent.

The whole thing is made all the more odd and that there's a situation after situation after situation where we as normal audiences, we're trained to expect the laugh track.

There's not a laugh track. Yeah, I notice a laugh track.

Yeah, it well, it might have been less bizarre. Yeah.

The fact that it's missing just makes your agitates the mind.

So is 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 Akana 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.

In a nutshell, the lesson of life that it is. And in twenty seven retracts the great mystery science theater. 3000 guys, Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy, uh, provided audio commentary for the full version of the special. So try and go grab that if you can as well.

Oh, you can. It's on their site because it's great. I think it's like eight bucks and those guys are awesome.

And they are at least I think Corbett listens to us. So. Hey, Corbett, you got anything else? No.

No, I think we did this, there's some good stuff, go read the Vanity Fair article Han Solo Comedy Hour. There's a book called How Star Wars Conquered the Universe that has a very interesting chapter about this. That's where we found it asserted that George Lucas never said that he would smash this thing with a sledgehammer. Right. And there's also an entire website dedicated to it, Star Wars holiday special dotcom. Yeah. And 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 sort of fun articles about the Death Star and Light Sabers videos with Holly Fry from stuff you missed in history class. Yeah, she knows her stuff. She does. So you can just type Star Wars in the search bar HowStuffWorks that come and bring up some cool stuff for you since I said search part time for listener mail.

Hey, guys, just finished listening to the Voynich manuscript podcast. And it's super interesting, especially the theories on its definition or origin. I know Josh mentioned Chuck theory, but being drug induced is 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 a tough it's tough to stray away from familiar structures, especially for something like language. I think back to when I was younger and friends invented their own languages or even in writing a song or poetry. Creativity can sometimes be limited by what we know. So I just thought I contribute to the conversation. Nice things. Big thanks for 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, enjoyable than television and YouTube videos. Sure. I've listened to hundreds and will continue to listen to hundreds more.

Keep on keeping on. That is from Amy Jay Murfitt, thanks a lot.

Amy in San Diego. Put them in place of the whales in German or something like that. Yeah, yeah. If you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us as well as podcast. You can join us on Facebook, dot com slash stuff you should know and send us an email, the stuff podcast, the HowStuffWorks dot com. As always, join us at our home on the web stuff you should know Dotcom. Stuff you should know is a production of radios HowStuffWorks for more podcasts, my radio is the radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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Every Friday, you'll find Stephanie behind the counter at your favorite record store, dispensing recommendations, making lists and talking to our customers about anything and everything music related. So listen to record store society on the radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. You probably heard a lot about Portland on the news about the tear gas and the federal agents with snatch vans and the the anarchy, what you probably haven't heard is the truth, because the reality of what happened in Portland is so much stranger, so much more incredible than what the mainstream media was willing to show.

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