40 Years Ago Today, A Thing Happened…

Forty years ago, on November 17th 1978, in an effort to prove to Americans that there was nothing the Soviet Union could do to us that was worse than what we could do to ourselves, CBS broadcast The Star Wars Holiday Special.



We start with a cold open of Han and Chewbacca in the Millennium Falcon trying to outrun an Imperial Star Destroyer so Han can get his friend to Kashyyyk to celebrate LIfe Day. Then the intro credits as the stars of our special flash before our eyes, in much the same way that your life will flash before your eyes several times before this is over. All of your heroes from the movie are here. Mark Hamill doesn’t so much look like Luke Skywalker as he does a life size ventriloquist dummy that was somehow given life as the result of a thunderstorm, a shelf of chemicals, and a nearby school-bus crash. Carrie Fisher smiles widely and stares at nothing in particular, moving her mouth as if to say, “You’ll give me money for this? Money that I can use to make me forget I ever did this in the first place? Yeah, why not?” At 00:03:00, the intro ends and the real pain begins. We are inside the Kashyyyk tree-house of Chewbacca’s family. His wife, Malla; his father, Itchy; and his son, Lumpy, are all there anxiously awaiting his arrival. What follows is a solid nine minutes of no human dialogue and no subtitles. That’s not the worst of it. Malla looks and sounds more or less like a “normal” Wookiee. Unfortunately, Itchy sounds like cat coughing up a human size hairball; not only that, he looks like he is suffering from tardive dyskinesia. Lumpy actually looks kind of cute; but he sounds like a tauntaun that is drowning in its own vomit because somebody forgot to turn him on his side after he did that speedball with John Belushi. At one point, Lumpy goes outside and, in what can only be described as a suicidal gesture meant to help the audience relate, walks along the railing of the deck. At 00:12:00 they contact Luke and R2, Luke assures them that Han and Chewie are on the way. I’ll come back to this theme, but every time this show comes close to doing something almost normal it just ends up being glazed over with this layer of utter bizarreness. Next, we meet the trader Saun Dann (Art Carney) as he tends to an Imperial in his shop. Malla calls Saun to inquire about Chewie. Saun sells the Imperial a groomer and then asks him if he is going to pay or offer something in trade. The look on his face when he asks about a “trade” is, well, provocative. As if he is hoping the “trade” involves a trip to the Inner Rim, if you take my meaning. I wish I could tell you that this is the only time that this show veers into the realm of the sexual. Reader, it is not.

After Malla watches a cooking show featuring an unfortunately made up Harvey Korman, Saun Dann actually stops by the house (@ 00:25:00) to give the family Life Day presents. Chewbacca’s elderly father Itchy is given some sort of VR soft-core erotica program featuring Mermeia (Diahann Carroll). If you’ve read this far, you know when I say this is the most disturbing part of the special that it carries quite a bit of weight. We watch as the camera cuts back and forth between Ms. Carroll’s suggestive dancing and singing as well as her in no way whatsoever veiled or subtle flirtatious speech; and Itchy, who is strapped into his VR chair, writhing in pleasure and totally oblivious to the fact that his daughter-in-law and grandson are in close proximity. At 00:35:40, the family makes contact with Princess Leia and C-3PO, and badgers them about where Han and Chewie are. At this point, Malla is like your friend’s wife who calls you at, like, 1 AM to ask if you’ve seen her husband and your like, “no, I haven’t talked to him all night; I’m in bed right now”; and that should be the end of the conversation but instead you have to spend another 30 minutes reassuring her that Ted is neither dead in a ditch nor with another woman when you both know full well that it has to be one of those two things. Anyway, at 00:38:55 some Stormtroopers show up at the house to search for Chewbacca. The officer leading them looks like he forgot to take the hanger out of this jacket and walks like he held in one too many farts and now his sphincter is permanently constricted. Saun Dann distracts one of the troopers by showing him a music video. So now Jefferson Starship get to perform “Light The Sky On Fire”, and we get to pretend that anyone gave a crap about any iteration of this band that didn’t include Grace Slick. At one point the lyrics of the song echo the sentiments of everyone who has ever been involved in the production or viewing of this special when they say “come on, let’s vanish without a trace”. After the song comes what is universally regarded as the high point of this whole venture, the fabled Boba Fett cartoon. It starts at 00:50:30 and runs for about 10 minutes. The cartoon is definitely one of the best things about the special, but it’s definitely not perfect. There’s a character who looks like Bob Hudsol, but apparently isn’t. Everybody looks more or less recognizable, but Han looks like a prototype for Bojack Horseman. When the cartoon is over the troops have completed their ransack of the Wookiee home; Lumpy goes upstairs to clean his room and watches a 4 minute video of Harvey Korman (as another character) playing some sort of Max Headroom precursor and instructing Lumpy on how to use a transmitter. Again, what should be normal, or even boring, gets this extra glaze of bizarre that just pushes it into the realm of uncomfortableness.

Back downstairs, at the 01:07:40 mark, the TV comes on to broadcast an Imperially mandated show called Life On Tatooine. Everyone has to stop to watch what is basically an excuse to set a scene in the Cantina. This, of course, is when we finally meet Ackmena. Oh, Ackmena! People say the Fett segment is the highlight of this thing; fools!! They’re all fools! Bea Arthur comes in on the tail end of this waking nightmare and she serves up something more than drinks and a song. She serves up sincerity. She displays the reliability of a working actor and the genuine, rough around the edges but warm-hearted charm that made her so beloved in other roles. Harvey Korman pops back up as Krelman, a lovestruck weirdo who, even though he has a perfectly serviceable mouth, pours drinks into a hole in the top of his head. When Chalmun’s closes due to Imperial curfew, we return to Kashyyyk where a lone Stormtrooper has been left to keep an eye on the house. At 01:22:25 Chewbacca makes his triumphant entrance, Han causes the trooper to plummet to his tragic holiday death, and the Wookiee family is finally reunited. Things start moving pretty quickly in these final 15 minutes, thankfully the awkwardness is able to keep pace as Han makes small talk with the Wookiees who are like family to him but who he also realizes probably resent him for keeping Chewbacca away from his family 99% of the time. Han slinks away just in time for the family to get some Christmas ornaments off a shelf, they start to glow, everyone is suddenly in a red robe and they join a parade into what appears to be a white dwarf star. Apparently the star is actually a portal to an airplane hangar in Long Beach where a multitude of Wookiees in red robes have gathered around the Tree of Life to celebrate Life Day. Luke, Leia, Han, R2, and 3PO show up and Leia sings the Life Day song. It’s vaguely set to the tune of the main Star Wars theme and there’s no way it didn’t take several years off the tail end of Carrie Fisher’s life. I mean no disrespect, but there’s just no way. So that’s it, Life Day comes to an end and the only interesting thing I noticed in the end credits was that some of the costumes were designed by Bob Mackie. Yeah, THE Bob Mackie.

So, what are we to make of this Star Wars Holiday Special? Is it really that bad? Oh, yeah. I mean, if anything, parts of it were way worse than I expected. It’s like, there are the bad parts; and then there are the parts that could have potentially had some redeeming value but they are so steeped in bizarreness and what the ***kery that when you see them you don’t even know how to react anymore. There’s a scene after the Stormtroopers ransack Lumpy’s room where he goes inside and puts his stuffed bantha that they tore up on the bed, and I was like, “holy crap, a feeling!”; but then it’s immediately followed by a video of Korman that is so weird that I have to imagine the script read simply: “you got cocaine in my LSD!”, “no, you got LSD in my cocaine!” George Lucas has famously said that if he could he would gather every copy of the SWHS and destroy it. Of course, he also said, “Phantom Menace script too short? Eh, we’ll pad it out with more Jar Jar and farts” and “let’s sell Star Wars to Disney”. I’m not saying either of those last two things are bad; I’m just saying, you know, he said that too. My point is that I’m glad neither he nor anyone else has been able to wipe the Special from existence in this age of the internet. As bad as it is, the Special is, well, special. It’s one of the most potent reminders of a much more innocent time in the history of the GFFA; before it was a multi-billion dollar franchise. Granted, there are other reminders of this innocence that are actually kind of good, like Splinter of the Mind’s Eye or the early comics; but, still. For all of the SWHS’s awfulness (and don’t get me wrong here, it is god-awful), the Special has some heart. It’s an arrhythmic heart with a leaky valve, but heart nonetheless; and isn’t that really what Life Day is all about? No, really, I’m seriously asking here. What the heck is Life Day really about? I have no idea from watching that mess. Well, I’ve said more than enough. Let’s get someone else’s opinion: here is special celebrity guest reviewer, the late Rick James. Rick, what’s your take on the SWHS?

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