106: A is for Arthur

CAUTION: Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.




Do you remember when Bea Arthur from The Golden Girls worked at the Mos Eisley Cantina out of Star Wars?



No, of course you don't, it was only shown once.
You see, during the Clone Wars it was being staffed by a Yarkora and a Weequay, and shortly before the Battle of Yavin, it was being run by Chalmun and day-staffed by a chap named Wuher. Under both management schemes, it was a pretty seedy place, full of dark corners and nefarious dealings.



Working the night-shift around 0-bby was a bartender named Ackmena who had a very different approach. Rather than throw the hoodlums out on the street at closing-time, she'd sing them a playful song, and send them cheerily on their drunken way.



* sigh *

I'm talking, of course, about the Star Wars Holiday Special. Commissioned by CBS after the success of Star Wars in 1977, for the Thanksgiving/Christmas period of 1978. The story outline was written by George Lucas, and it starred the principal cast of the first movie (Luke, Leia, Han, Chewie, R2-D2, C-3PO, and unused scenes of Darth Vader, ported over from Star Wars). George Lucas wasn't present for the production of The Holiday Special, as he was busy with the pre-production work for The Empire Strikes Back. It's amazing to think that these were being produced at the same time, but I'm jumping ahead there. The story is centered around Chewbacca's family, preparing for Life Day (a sort of Christmas/Thanksgiving/Day-of-Peace combination set), while Han and Chewie struggle to return to Kashyyyk because of the Imperial presence. Being a 'holiday special', this is interspersed with singing, dancing and light-comedy routines.
Yes, you read that right.

The Holiday Special aired on November 17th 1978 (in the USA only), to reasonable viewing figures. It wasn't repeated, though. It was awful, see? Didn't you read that bit just now about singing and dancing? George Lucas was, understandably, devastated by what had been done to his creation. It was turned from the brash new cinematic kid on the block, into a placid variety-show. While Lucasfilm acknowledges the existence of tHS, it's never seen a re-broadcast or domestic-release. As luck would have it, a few brave souls recorded it on early home-video machines, and actually kept the tapes. It's not difficult to find on the internet these days, although the quality's largely crap. Seriously.



George Lucas, for many years, disowned the thing. Reportedly saying to Steve Sansweet (former Lucasfilm Head-of-Fan-Relations and SW-Ambassador) that if he had the time, he would 'hunt down every copy of it, and smash it with a hammer'. With the advent of the internet, nothing stays hidden for long, of course. It used to be a VHS tape traded at Sci-Fi conventions, but now you can find it very easily online. You don't want to, mind. Did I mention it's awful? No, even I, the guy with two Star Wars tattoos, can't bear to watch it in one sitting. The actual bottom-line is, all the Christmassy variety shows produced around this time were crap. It's just that the rest of them didn't end up as part of a sprawling cinematic empire (no pun intended).

The only redeeming feature of tHS was the animated segment. A 10 minute cartoon by a company called Nelvana, which saw the heroes on a quest to overcome a sleeping-virus, which also brought us Boba Fett for the first time. Yes, ahead of tESB, viewers in North America saw Fett introduced as an un-trustworthy bounty hunter, cruel to animals and sparing with information.



The cartoon was a forerunner of the Droids and Ewoks series from 1985, also produced by Nelvana, but I'll blog about those in the future, probably.

The really strange thing about tHS and all it contains, however, is that the Star Wars fan community actually recognises its canonicity. It says a lot about the fandom that, generally, not only are we prepared to accept things like tHS, we find a way to justify them, and even defend them when they're bashed from the outside. Seriously, Jar-Jar Binks is nothing; nothing; compared to the atrocity that is tHS.

Throughout the novels, comics and video-games based around and through the Star Wars movies, there's a concerted effort by Lucasfilm to make sure one section of the storyline doesn't step on the toes of another. If glitches do occur, they can usually be retconned (retroactive-continuity) to explain both sides of the story. This approved continuity is what Star Wars fans refer to as the canon. Occasionally, there'll be a comic series with an 'Infinities' badge on it, a sign that it takes place outside continuity, like the old 'What If?' series from Marvel. But generally speaking, if it's got a Star Wars logo on it, Lucasfilm have stated that this actually happened in the Galaxy Far, Far Away. There are squabbles and disagreements among the fans, of course, particularly when it comes down to a matter of taste (eg: 'I didn't like that story, so I'm not going to see it as canon'), but there are some things that can't be escaped.



The Holiday Special was written by George Lucas and stars Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford, Peter Mayhew, Kenny Baker, Anthony Daniels and David Prowse. If that doesn't make it canon, nothing will. Even George Lucas' wishing-it-didn't-exist doesn't count. Because it does exist, we've seen it. We saw Art Carney as a kindly shopkeeper/ Rebellion-sympathiser. We saw Harvey Korman as a four-armed chef (long before the appearance of Dex's Diner in Episode II). We saw Jefferson Starship play a song with a sort of crap-lightsaber as a microphone. We saw a Wookiee family converse in grunts and growls, in un-interrupted 10 minute segments, with no subtitles. We saw Diahann Carroll starring in some kind of Wookiee-porn holovid, enjoyed by Chewbacca's sinister, mangy-looking father, Itchy (and you can't un-see that).

So with that in mind, Ackmena ran the Mos Eisley Cantina shortly after the Battle of Yavin.
What do you want, proof?




DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.

• Photos and videos appearing in this blog post are for informational and reference purposes only, and no ownership of copyright is claimed or implied by me. The intellectual and physical copyright of such material belongs to its creators and owners.

• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organizations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

58: Twelve Movies – The Star Wars Holiday Special

CAUTION: Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.



12 Days: 12 Movies – Special Edition
Day Two: The Star Wars Holiday Special
(1978, 100 mins, Dir. Steve Binder)



At 8pm EST, On Friday November 17th 1978, something awful happened. Actually, that's not fair. Something awful had already happened, it was just revealed to the world that evening. "Holiday Specials" were commonplace TV in the USA at the time, and would be for several years to come. They were a kind of 'variety' format. Sort of like Sunday Night at the Palladium with a story running through.
And so, the CBS channel aired a program that had been made to cash in on the success of 1977's Star Wars. George Lucas had written the outline for the story, but because he was kind of busy with The Empire Strikes Back, had then given creative control to CBS. The original director, David Acomba, left halfway through the production. George thought this was understandable. If he hadn't been contractually tied to it, he'd probably have burned the thing before it aired. The show got great ratings, but was panned by audiences, critics and probably even the poor bastards who made it. It was never aired again. It was never released officially. Several VHS'd copies have made their way onto the internet, much to the chagrin of Lucasfilm.
That's the history, you can read more on Wiki.



So, where to I start with the train-wreck that is SW:THS? It's just AWFUL. No, really. The plot revolves around Han and Chewie trying to get back to Kashyyyk for Life Day, the Wookiee equivalent of Thanksgiving and Christmas combined. It's set two years after A New Hope, and features the 'main' cast of Star Wars (even background Imperials who should have died in the Death Star blast, as it uses segments filmed on the Death Star set). It should work, but I figure that's what George thought when he handed the manuscript in. It's essentially half an hour of plot, padded out for another seventy minutes with singing, dancing, spoof cookery, Wook-erotica and long stretches of un-translated Wookiee speech.

As Steve Sansweet once said, for all the things that are wrong with SW:THS, its' worst crime is that it's BORING. The actors playing Chewie's family grunt and warble their way through scenes with no subtitles and no C-3PO to give exposition. Their acting is enough that you can make out what's going on, but frankly you just don't give a shit. Huge shots with no editing and no background music only make it worse, as it looks like a camera has been left running on set while the cast get pissed in-costume. The only saving grace is the short animated segment, produced by Nelvana in Canada, who would go on to make Droids a few years later.



The Star Wars universe is slowly stripped away with comedic performances from Harvey Korman, Art Carney and the great Bea Arthur; This is made worse when Diahann Carroll and Jefferson Starship do their respective turns, but what really pulls you out with a thump is the acrobatic routine (yes, you read that right), accompanied by what sounds like a synth which would have been crappy even in 1978.

We got a figure of Boba Fett with his SW:THS colour scheme a couple of years back, and it is grudginly acknowledged by Lucasfilm. The worst part? This has the SW logo in it, was written by George Lucas and features the main cast; therefore it's canon. Yes, this actually happened in the Star Wars universe.

I'd recommend you avoid it (and I know most of you will), but you really need to witness this with your own eyes to truly take in the horror.



The Good: The Holiday Special gave us the Wookiee homeworld of Kashyyyk, and our first encounter with Boba Fett. For these reasons, I will tolerate its existence.


The Bad: Too long. Too many song and dance numbers. Embarrassing "comedy" moments.


The Ugly: The fucking rest of it.

Best Line: “You are foolish to waste your kindness on this dumb creature”, Boba Fett, speaking in what turns out to be an allegory for the entire show.

My biased rating: 1/10
And that's only because of the cartoon.

Tomorrow: The Empire Strikes Back


DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.

• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organizations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.