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

Episode Date: December 19, 2020

Long ago, in a galaxy not so far away, George Lucas allowed the Star Wars Holiday Special to be made. What happened on the night of November 17, 1978 can never be fully explained, but we make our best effort in our annual special edition of SYSK. May the force be with us all. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Happy belated life, day everyone. It's me, Josh, and I chose for this week's S-Y-S-K selects the Star Wars Holiday Special episode. It's true, this just came out two years back, but in my opinion, listening to this episode

should probably become a worldwide annual holiday tradition. So, we missed last year. We can just go ahead and consider this year one of that tradition. I hope you enjoy it. And Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, however you celebrate them.

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With Charles W. Chuckers Bryant and Jerry Jerome Rowland. Who's the wookie mother? Yeah, Mala. That was the wookie wife.

Oh, and mother. Yeah, sure. Chewbacca's mom is not with them any longer. Yeah, she left. She was not about to appear in that. She went out the window. I'm excited about this, I have to say. We should say Happy Star Wars Day.

Yeah, today is December 17th. I have my opening night tickets. Do you really? Sure. Wow. You don't? I do. You into it?

Yeah, I will definitely go see it in the theater, but why won't be their opening night? Sure. I've gotten really adept at ignoring spoilers, people talking about stuff. So, I could conceivably see this movie a month after it comes out. And it's all good.

And still going fresh. I'm an ostrich. 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. Arcane. Yeah. Man, nice job. OK, 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. OK, so 2017, we'll celebrate Life Day. We'll put on our red robes, our ultra long straight ironed

wigs, and we'll celebrate Life Day the way it was meant to. Yes, and if you have no idea what we're talking about, we are talking about Life Day, which is a celebration that Wookiees in the Star Wars universe have every three years. Yeah, it's like their Christmas. Yeah, they celebrate. Or their Hanukkah, or their Kwanzaa, or their Tet.

Supposedly, it's sort of like Earth Day, too. They celebrate the diversity of their ecosystem and also remembrance of the dead. And they also give gifts. They're like the fins, 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. And it's the basis of what has become derided as 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, 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.

Yeah. 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. Talk to the bottom. It's extraordinarily difficult to overstate how bad this is. And 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. 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. 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 7. Woo, 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 quality. Compared to the other stuff floating around on YouTube, it's clearly recorded on a 1978 PCR. Yeah, which were really expensive. Very expensive. I did some calculating on West Egg. OK.

So the average VCR went for about $1,000. They were brand new. That's amazing. $1,000 in 1978 money. So they were 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.

Yes. 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 DeGiacomo. And then there's The Star Wars Holiday Special was the worst thing on television ever by someone we kind of know,

Alex Pastraneck. 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. Wasn't there one more?

There was another one. And I don't know who wrote this one, Chuck. Yeah. It's the titles The Star Wars Holiday Special. George Lucas wants to smash every copy of with a sledgehammer. Which is a famous quote supposedly at a convention by Lucas. Yes, which is not correct. He didn't ever say that.

No. OK, 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 let's let's- I'm sure he felt that way, though. Clearly. 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, it's 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 don't know what's up yet. 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. 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. No one had ever seen anything like it before. 2001 had come out in the late 60s.

But it wasn't a different kind of movie. It still isn't accessible to all audiences. You know, it's a pretty cerebral film. Yeah, it's not an adventure movie. This was like Star Wars. This is like basically swashbuckling on the screen, but in a galaxy far, far away, Star Wars just changed everything, and it came on just like a hammer.

Yeah. This is a new hope, by the way. Yes. And I know we're going to get stuff wrong, nerds. 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, too, OK? Thank you. So 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? 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 I think he was approached by some TV executives who said, have you considered doing some sort of TV special? They're all the rage right now. We have a graphic that's really awesome that we set aside just for TV specials here at CBS. Why don't you let us get together and do a Star Wars special?

That's right. Producers Gary Smith and Dwight Himion 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. So it was right before Thanksgiving,

and he said, there'd be a lot of people watching TV pre-holiday season, or I guess in the holiday season. Well, the weekend before Thanksgiving, it's like everybody's shopping, sitting around family, like waiting to actually do stuff. That's right. Perfect time to broadcast something on TV. So Lucas says, all right, let's do this.

I don't have a ton of time, but how about this? I'll get a story together, and then you can go hire a whizbang 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 Wookiees, and I want it to take place on their home planet of a kazook, or Wookiee Planet C. Is that how you say it, 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-ee-yuk. Go spell it.

K-A-S-H-Y-Y-Y-K. Which, I mean, I guess that sounds like Chewbacca's planet. Sure. Also called G5-623, Wookiee Planet C, or Edion, is a mid-rim planet. Right, so the whole reason, apparently, that George Lucas was interested in featuring the Wookiees was it is what we in show business call low-hanging fruit.

The reason why it was low-hanging fruit was because they had just established the different scenes that would make the cut for Empire Strikes Back. And 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 Wookiee Bible. It's like a 40-page supplement that's all about Kazook and Wookiees and Chewbacca and his family and everything about Wookiee-dom, right? That's right. So he's like, I've got this thing already established. I love Wookiees.

They didn't make the cut. I'm a little sad about that. They're not going to, Kazook is not going to show up in Empire Strikes Back. Let's build the entire special around Wookiees. 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 it kind of was. He totally was. And it was actually this experience that apparently taught him to be the very hands-on person that he is famous for being. It came out of this Christmas special. Absolutely.

He was burned and had an iron grip after that on everything. So here's some of the folks behind it. Bruce Valanche, famous TV writer. You've probably seen him on Hollywood Squares. Wasn't he suspected of being Thomas Pinchone for a while? I don't know. Or was Thomas Pinchone on Hollywood Squares? I have no idea.

Maybe confabulating some stuff, confounding. There's some con of some sort going on. Sounds like it. So Valanche was hired as a writer. A guy named Lenny Rips was hired as a writer. Who has some great quotes in that Vanity Fair article? He does. His first quote was, we were really excited because this

is Star Wars. How could it lose? Famous less 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 had no idea that her parents, they were producers slash songwriters of the day.

They were big on the variety show scene, which would turn out to be a really key cog in this whole experience. So I feel like right about here, Jerry should insert a needle coming off of a record sound effect. Yeah. OK, thanks, Jerry. So Chuck, you just said singer songwriters.

Yeah, what would that have to do with Star Wars? Yeah. Well, actually, in this Star Wars holiday special, for those of you who hadn't seen it, there are musical numbers. They decided from the outset that there should be musical numbers. And the reason that they decided that there

should be musical numbers is because the people who sold George Lucas, and at the time, 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. 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. That's a big red flag. Sonny and Cher had just had its last season. Yeah. I mean, what else? Like, He Hall was still going on. Probably.

They didn't know when to quit. I think He Hall is still on. Solid gold had yet to come on and take up the mantle. That would never write a show. That was a little bit. There was talking in between the songs. Yeah, I remember the Mandrell sisters 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 kind of happening again, I think. Oh, because of that dude, the guy who won all the CMA awards. I don't know. He's like, he came along and he's like, actually country. His dad's like a coal miner for real from Kentucky. I think I know.

He mean Chris, Chris some face. 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 Sean Cash. And I guess it's probably where the country chic 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. It was actually pretty good. There's some like really great performances.

Do you know how many nerds are like, get back to Star Wars. I know, I'm so sorry. All right, so the variety show is dying sort of. And so they figure, what a great time to take the biggest movie property on the planet and wedge it into the variety show milieu. I don't know if wedge is the right word. I think maybe nestle it in there.

And then start hitting it with the blunt edge of an axe until it mashes into that 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. It basically television as we knew it from 1980 to whenever the real world came along,

just escapist televisions, what they called it, 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 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. Like there was a quote from, I think, Lenny Rips, who was saying like, we had literally a dream team, a variety show dream team. And everybody was good. But there were probably no bad welders on the Titanic either. That was a great quote.

The guy they hired to direct it initially was a dude named David Acomba. And he had made his name for Welcome to the Fillmore East. It was a concert documentary with Van Morrison and the Birds in 1971. And he actually was at USC Film School the same time as Lucas, even though they didn't know each other. And he only ended up directing about three segments

of the thing before he quit. Yep, before he walked off. Some say he was actually let go. But we'll get to him in a minute and he replaced him as we get along down this gross road. Well, let's take a little break because I'm overly excited. All right. OK?

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point. But we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it.

And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal?

No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy,

blowing on it, and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough,

or you're at the end of the road. OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god.

Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step.

Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio

app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Learning stuff with Joshua and Charles, stuff you should know. All right. So we've established most of the main players. We'll get to a few more. We should point out that Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford and Kerry Fisher, Peter Mayhew. They had no grounds to refuse to be on this, basically.

Yeah, pretty much. They were not huge, huge stars yet that 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.

And 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 Hamill. He looks like he's happy to be there, actually.

He was fine, but apparently he said, no, I'm not doing a musical number. And if you watch his part, wedging a musical number in there would have been even more painful. 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. In fact, in the opening credit sequence,

they're showing the faces of the people. And you see Harrison Ford as if he's flying the Millennium Falcon and you can just hear the guy all screen going, now look at the camera and just give a nod. Just look at the camera and give a nod. And he finally, you can tell he's pissed off and he looks up at the camera and just sort of smirks. Yeah, and points at the camera like, OK,

I'm looking at the camera and then goes back to what he's doing. Yeah, it's pretty awesome. I felt bad for him. So early on, Valanche and others kind of. Did you feel bad for him, though, really? I mean, like, come on. It's Harrison Ford, it's Han Solo. He has to go do this for like five days.

Yeah, I felt terrible for him. I think it's hilarious that they had to do this, especially now. Well, early on, Valanche and others knew that they may be in trouble because they decided not to subtitle any of the Wookie dialogue. Right. And they literally started after a brief opening scene setting it up.

Here's the basic plot is Han Solo is trying to get Chewbacca back to Kazook in time for life day so he 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 kind of what's going on while the delay is happening.

Back on Kazook. Back on Kazook. 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. Kill in 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. 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 10 minutes, 10 solid minutes of incomprehensible Wookie speak.

So let's join it for a second, shall we? Yeah. Let's all enjoy it. And again, you said 10 minutes, and you're not exaggerating. You're not being hyperbolic. You can time it. It's 10 minutes of Wookie's 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 Chewbacca's mom and dad. Oh, yeah, that's possible. And little brother. Sure. And I don't find out until later when Mark Camel shows up

via Skype call and says he really explains everything that had just happened. You're Chewbacca's father, Itchy. You're Chewbacca's son. Lumpy. Lumpy. And you are Chewbacca's wife. Oh, Mala.

Yeah, thank you. So before everybody starts freaking out, we know that that's actually their nicknames. Their real names are, his father is Etitchekook. Etitchekook. It's really hard to pronounce. Milado Buck is his wife, and his son is Lumpoworump. But as named by Lucas.

But yeah, but Lucas also named him Lumpy, Itchy, and Mala. Yeah. So they're all back there, wringing their hands, trying to figure out ways to pass the time until they get word from Chewbacca that he's made it to, what is it, Ketchuk? Kizuk. Kizuk.

Did you say ketchup? Ketchup. Or catsup, if you're fancy. But Chewbacca is having trouble getting back to Kichuk because there's Kizuk. 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 Wookiee 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 to that degree. Yeah, but we're seeing these people's view of the universe. What about back on Kizuk?

Yeah, he might have just been a fly by night Wookiee. Right. Yeah, but not the case. Very famous Wookiee. 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 Wookiee land and have all this comprehensible dialogue. And he says he was met with a glacial stare. Well, he put it a little differently than that. Well, he said glacial stare. He did. The glacial stare that he got was for this quote. He said, these people just talking what sounds like fat

people having an orgasm. He goes, if you want, you can set up a tape recorder in my bedroom, and I'll do all of the foleying it for it. Yeah, he's a large guy. He is. So that's what got the glacial stare. But Valance later said that from this, there was one development meeting that Lucas attended.

And it was, here's the Wookiee Bible. Tell me what you got. And Valance 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. And 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. Like the Brady's, the show had its course. And then it became a variety show. It was just everybody loved 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 Yarnel. Which I hadn't heard of, had you? Oh, yeah, I watched it. It was these 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, and so there is a certain logic to the variety show. It's not just that variety shows were popular at the time. Somebody was like, well, Wookiees, 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 17, 1978, a Friday at 8 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 eight to nine. And then the next hour actually finished behind part two of a miniseries about Pearl Harbor starring Angie Dickinson. So it didn't even win their respective hours. No, 13 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 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. That they extended it to two hours, and it shines through. You can totally tell that this thing was never supposed to be. I think an hour might have been stretching it to tell you the truth. 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, even don't want to call it content. But it is content in the strictest definition. Sure. Right after this.

All right, so the show itself, we've given you the main plot line, which again is that Chewie 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 Chewie. 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, there were guest stars. There was Harvey Corman from The Carol Burnett Show, one of my all-time favorites. Him or Carol Burnett Show? Both.

He's great. Yeah. He actually, if you watch what he's doing, you're like, this guy's a comedy genius for sure. Apparently, he too was the only one on set that was bringing levity. He was joking around and kind of kept spirits up. Good for him.

That's what I say. And he had three different parts. Yeah, he played, 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 Chewbacca's wife makes Bantha stew.

To kill some time? To kill some time, because they're just waiting. 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 Gormanda is her name. Gormanda, that makes total sense.

He also plays, there's this one weird bit where Chewbacca's son tries to figure out a way to trick the stormtroopers that the empire had come and kind of because the blockade raided the house and other properties. So he tries to trick them by, I think, rigging a com link 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 living Harvey Keitel. Oh, what did I say? Harvey Keitel. Harvey Corp. Oh, man. Harvey Keitel murders someone in the middle of the instruction video.

That would be great. Harvey Corman. 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 until 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. What's the ma's? What? Ma's deaf cantina? No, Ma's deaf is a rapper.

Oh, yeah. I think you mean Ma's Isley? Yes, yes, that cantina. 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 Maude 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 the script lead anywhere else but Chewbacca's house while his family waits for it.

So all this takes place as part of a public service announcement, basically, broadcast by the empire, about how immoral life on Tatooine is. So let's go see what's going on in the Ma's Isley cantina as it's being shut down for curfew. Yeah. All right, this is incomprehensible, but it goes on. So there in it, there's also Art Carney.

Yes, he's probably the star of the whole thing, really. He has the most lines, I would say. The most comprehensible line. Right, so he plays a human trader that has recently been with Han Solo and Chewie and actually gets to Kazook and says, they're on the way. It's all good. Yeah, a trader, not a traitor.

Yeah, a trader is in trades humans for money. No, he sells goods. Yeah, a trader. 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 Star Wars Encyclopedia. It said that he was in the human trade. 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 Wookiees and the Empire who were occupying the area. Yes, he comes bearing gifts.

Yeah, because he's a friend of Chewbacca's family. Yeah, so he comes bearing gifts. One of the gifts he gives is a sort of like a little digital insert to a, oh, I guess you would call it a virtual reality hair dryer. Hair dryer, like a beauty shop hair dryer. He gives it to Grandpa Itchy. Grandpa Itchy sits under this hair dryer,

pops in this digital cassette, and it can only be described as soft-core porn. Apparently, the writers who were interviewed for this said that was totally the intent. They were trying to get what amounted to soft-core porn that would pass the censors. That's right. So it's all, you can't even say it's innuendo.

It's too obvious and overt for innuendo. Instead, it's just gross. It's really gross. Diane Carroll, who, yes, she is, a Vegas staple, shows up and starts basically tantalizing Grandpa Itchy, who, again, this is Chewbacca's elderly father who now engages in some sort of, well, he's watching virtual reality pornography now.

And this is a pretty lengthy segment in and of itself. Well, yeah, and she literally says to him, 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. Like, this is pretty much like 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 chess board that they played

in A New Hope? Yeah. Basically, it 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 du Soleil acid trip gymnast routine happens in front of the kid's eyes.

And again, it's not like it shows a snippet. They show the entire segments, like five, six, 10 minutes long 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. And the writer of the Vanity Fair article, by the way,

said, this is so incomprehensible. The special is George Lucas didn't even have the Schwartz with him at the time. So anyway, Art Carney is distracting this Imperial leader while they're ransacking the Wookiee's house, Chewbacca's house, with a hologram. And this hologram, instead of being an acrobat or Diane Carroll or any kind of porn or anything like that,

is Jefferson Starship. And they decide that they're going to play Light the Sky on fire, which apparently is about UFOs. It's a little music video, basically. Yeah, it's the predecessor to, like, Video Killed the Radio Star, you can tell. And again, it is the whole lengthy song, the whole thing. So every time that somebody's like,

we need to escape mentally from what's going on here in our house, let's go into the video world, and they don't cut back and forth, it's OK. Here's five minutes of Jefferson Starship performing this song. Yeah, and even the Jefferson Starship guys were like, it's sort of a weird trip. Like, we didn't get it, but we did it.

Right, they gave us some money and some cocaine. Well, probably so. We said, yeah. Chuck, I think though, yet another segment like this is actually widely regarded as the high point of the whole thing. Oh, sure. So 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, I don't know, 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. Even a little more artsy than that. Yeah, but it does have a plot that you can follow that makes sense as a Star Wars thing. And it introduces Boba Fett, like you said. And it's actually not bad. It's like Luke and R2 and C3PO.

Yeah. And they crash on a planet or something. Yeah, and Han and Chew were in it. And it's the first time we see, in Darth Vader, it's the first time we see Boba Fett and that he is just doing whatever he can do for money. Like Luke trusts him at first. C3PO is like, you sure you should trust him this quick.

And he's like, oh, 3PO, you and your non-trusting ways. 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 Luke himself. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces.

We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever.

Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper,

because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in, as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation?

If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man.

And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life.

Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast, and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. 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 until 10,

so I probably didn't make it through it all. Plus, you're probably disturbed. Who knows? I just remember that, well, if that's my brother, he might have a memory of this. Oh, bet he does. I'm sure he met everybody afterward or something like that. You know, has a picture.

Well, he was 10 at that point, so cynicism had, you know, become a thing in his life, probably. By then? Sure. Didn't that, when cynicism kicks in? I can see Scott holding on to 14, 15. Yeah, maybe so. So Chuck, the whole thing finally does end.

And actually, there's a guy, his name's Nathan Rabin. 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.

And 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 Chewie 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 Chewie 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, which by the way, 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 put a camera in front of it. Pretty much. So they get back, and Han Solo hides around the corner.

Chewbacca steps in front of his son to protect him. Han Solo jumps out, and the stormtrooper trips over a pile of logs and falls over the balcony. And dies in a holiday special. So they wouldn't even, not only could he not shoot first with Greedo, but they couldn't even have him wrestle the stormtrooper and throw him off. He trips over a log.

And Han Solo has his hands thrown up like, wasn't me. It might have all 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.

So that guy basically represents the end of the imperial threat for the rest of life day. And we then see life day being celebrated, which is celebrated by lots of Wookiees assembling in what looks like a giant Olin Mills portrait. And all of them are wearing red robes. And I know I'm up talking, and it's because my mind is still having trouble wrapping around this.

And then Princess Leia comes out with C3PO. Is Mark Hamill there? The whole gang's there. 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, Q Song. Right. And we should also point out, the Tree of Life has never been mentioned up to this point. No idea what that was. Just makes a sudden appearance at the end. And 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 kind of like singing. Bruce Valange 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. 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 scene. But she sings OK. It's fine.

It's just the fact that Princess Leia is singing. And actually, Bruce Valange 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, which is set loosely to the John Williams Star Wars theme. So 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. And at this point, George Lucas, 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 Corman secretly hated it.

Yeah, even Harvey Keitel hated it. Actually, he loved it. But Lucas has been asked over the years about it a lot. And he doesn't talk about it much. But in 2005, and I don't buy this for a second, he says it was an interview. He said, special from 1978, I 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 CVS. We kind of just let them do it, I believe that. It was done by, I can't even remember who the group was, but there were a variety TV guys.

I'm sure he remembers a few of them. We let them use the characters and stuff, and that probably wasn't the smartest thing to do. But you learn from those experiences. I think they even use some of the footage from the movie. At the end. It looks like 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 like imperial cruisers and tie fighters and stuff that looked like this from the movie. And remember when Chewbacca like leans back and puts his hands behind his head? Yeah, yeah. That's in there. It's like just a highlight reel from the movie, saying,

like, if you're 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 in there. They tried. They definitely tried. And George Lucas is totally full of it,

because in 1987 he told Starlog Magazine that the Christmas special would be out on videocassette very soon. Yes. And 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.

Didn't. And apparently Carrie Fisher told Lucas that if you want me to do DVD extras. Commentary. Yeah, commentary, then I want a clean original copy of the holiday special. Yes. So why?

Go ahead. So I can play at parties when I want people to leave. It's pretty great. It is. So, and there is one of those clean copies that's floating around out there. So you can watch this in its entirety. Some of it, like the cartoon was removed due to copyright

infringement and that kind of stuff. But as the case with the rest of the internet, you can just go find it elsewhere and piece it together. There's also the original ads that aired in Baltimore. Yeah. That are just fascinating. Yeah, those are always fun. GM ads, where one of the guys who's in quality control is,

he says, did you watch it? I don't think I saw that one. He goes, we really care about these cars. That's no jive, man. I'm a GM, man. And he's like, 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. And 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.

And I don't know, somehow that enriches the rest of it. I'm with you. You like it? Oh, yeah. I mean, I watched it twice. I wouldn't 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 would have made it through the first time. I wouldn't have watched it a second time if I wasn't. There wasn't something about it. And I figured out, I think the thing that I like the most about it is Lumpy, Chewbacca's son, played by an actress named Patty Maloney, who, frankly, is hands down the best actor in the entire thing.

She, like her responses and everything, is just awesome. I think my favorite parts are, well, there's a great Wilhelm scream when the Storm Trooper trips over the log. Jerry would not have noticed it. And then there's a part where all the wookie dialogue you can't understand, but there's clearly one part where we're itchy and lumpy or 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 was like, we have to have at least one exchange where you sort of know what they're saying. Sure. Or they were like, I think she just said, I love you.

Should we have them redo it? And the director's like, no, I want to go. And Chuck, there's one other thing that I figured out from watching this. What's that? It's not readily apparent. The whole thing is made all the more odd and that there's situation after situation after situation

where we, as normal audiences, we're trained to expect a laugh track, but there's not a laugh track. Yeah, I didn't notice that. Had there been a laugh track? Yeah. It might have been less bizarre. Yeah. But the fact that it's missing just makes your,

it agitates the mind. So 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. OK, I agree with you, Chuck. Don't take things too seriously. I think that's the great lesson in this. Yeah. And then that's the lesson of life day. It is. And in 2007, Rift Tracks, the great Mystery Science Theater

3000 guys, Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, and Kevin Murphy provided audio commentary for the full version of the special. So try and go grab that if you can as well. Oh, you can. It's on their site. Because it's great. I think it's like eight bucks. And those guys are awesome.

And 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, StarWarsHolidaySpecial.com. Yeah. And if you want to know more about the Star Wars Holiday

special, we have a ton of Star Wars stuff on How Stuff Works, by the way. Yeah, we have cool sort of fun articles about the Death Star and lightsabers. Videos with Holly Fry from Stuff You Missed in History Class. Yeah, who she knows her stuff. She does.

So you can just type Star Wars in the search bar at 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 Voynich Manuscript podcast. Found it's 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. And 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. Sure, I've listened to hundreds, and will continue to listen to hundreds more. Keep on keeping on. That is from Amy J. Moffitt.

Thanks a lot, Amy, in San Diego. Doesn't that mean like 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 at S-Y-S-K podcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash wshanow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.housetoforks.com.

And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces.

We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast,

Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast,

and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.