Being this is Star Wars month (back in the day, when George Lucas was making Star Wars films, all of the films were released in May, since the first film was released May 25th, 1977, it was sort of a superstitious thing for him) and, we are getting Solo: A Star Wars Story on the exact release date of the original, I figure this would be the opportune time to discuss the most controversial thing IN the Star Wars universe. No, I’m not talking the prequels. I’m not talking The Last Jedi. I’m talking the Star Wars Holiday Special, a visual “piece” SO controversial, even George Lucas wants to scour the world, find copies of this “thing” and destroy them with a hammer. I used to joke, it’s the reason why he sold off the Lucasfilm library to Disney, so he could scour the world, find copies and “destroy them with a sledge hammer.”
Aired only once on CBS here in the United States November 17th, 1978 with a few other airings overseas. This unfortunate Star Wars Holiday Special is a musical science fiction television film set in the Star Wars galaxy. It stars the original film's main cast. It also introduces the character, Boba Fett, in an animated segment, who would appear in later films. It is one the first official Star Wars spin-off.
The special’s story goes like this, Chewbacca and Han Solo visit Kashyyyk, Chewbacca's home planet, to celebrate Life Day. Pursued by agents of the Galactic Empire, Han and Chewie are searching for members of the Rebel Alliance on the planet. The special introduces Chewbacca's family: his father Itchy, his wife Mala, and his son Lumpy, though these names were later explained to have been nicknames, their full Wookie names being Attichitcuk, Mallatobuck, and Lumpawarrump.
The show also featured quite a few other Star Wars characters performed by the original cast, including an appearance by Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker, Anthony Daniels as C-3PO, Kenny Baker/A robot as R2-D2, David Prowse/James Earl Jones as Darth Vader (in archival footage) and Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia (who sang the film's "theme song", set to the music of John Williams' Star Wars theme, near the end of the program). The program includes stock footage from Star Wars (before it was called “A New Hope”) and also features a cartoon produced by Toronto’s animation company, Nelvana (who ended up doing both Star Wars Droids and Ewoks cartoons many years later) that officially introduces the bounty hunter, Boba Fett. Scenes also take place in outer space and in spacecraft including the Millennium Falcon and in an Imperial Star Destroyer. This variety type show segments and cartoon also take place in a few other locales, such as another Mos Eisley cantina on the desert planet of Tatooine and a new red ocean planet known as Panna.
It also features “comedic segments” with Harvey Corman (famous at the time for The Carol Burnett show and various films with Mel Brooks) playing various characters, a song ("Good Night, But Not Goodbye" set to the "Cantina Band" theme) by Bea Arthur (at the time, famous for the hit Norman Lear sitcom, “Maude”) who plays a lonely, disgruntled cantina bar owner, a performance by Jefferson Starship and some other weirdness in between the Han and Chewie and the Wookie family narratives (including a REALLY WEIRD segment featuring Diahann Carroll singing the original song "This Minute Now.” Carroll is supposed to be an image created by a virtual reality machine who “tells” Chewbacca's father, Itchy, that she is his "fantasy" and suggestively invites him to "experience" her… a segment that now seems ALMOST pornographic in the most innocent sense).
Lucas denies having much say in the special but, was apparently very unhappy with the end results; however, Patty Maloney, who played Lumpy, stated in 2008 that Lucas was sent dailies of each day's shooting for approval. Many agree though, that as bad as the special was and is, the animated segment of the intro to Boba Fett is a cult classic moment in Star Wars canon. It was included as an Easter egg on the Star Wars blu-ray release but, no other part of the special has ever been aired again or released for him video.
For a long time, I would talk about this special (pre-internet days) and no one knew what the Hell I was talking about. At some point, I started to THINK I imagined it but, knew deep down, I saw this thing as a young child (6 1/2 years old, to be exact). Finally, it started rearing its ugly head in various “underground” forms such as via VHS bootlegs being passed around comic conventions and later being uploaded to the internet via places like Youtube and other content sharing sites.
The special is notorious for being really bad and has never been rebroadcast or officially released on home video. Carrie Fisher said she was the only one who had a copy of the program. She asked Lucas for one. He, reluctantly, gave it to her. She used to say she that she made George Lucas give her a copy of the special in exchange for recording DVD commentaries for the Star Wars films and that she showed it at parties, "mainly at the end of the night when I want people to leave.”
I wouldn’t say it’s a total waste of time. If you can get through the first 15 minutes, where there is no dialogue, only Wookie’s grunting and growling with one another, you get to see Han take out some Stormtroopers and some really bad variety show type bits and some terrible lyrics written to John Williams Star Wars melodies. Just be prepared to zoom through it as the 98 minute running time as it is an endurance test. 98 minutes seems SO much longer during a lot of these segments but, you get introduced to Chewie’s family. Let’s hope they learned from this extremely nostalgic debacle for the Solo movie but, I HOPE they have an Easter egg or two related to this show for us nerds sake.
The over-long program is pretty damn painful to sit through but, MUST be experienced at least once to say you ran the gauntlet of weird and awful even before the prequels were made. I attached a link below so you can see it in it’s full… glory?
