Life Day!

So my lil' bro Bobby was in San Francisco last week and asked me if I'd ever seen the Star Wars Holiday Special.

Despite my utter geekery (legit nerd cred: I went to a Stars Trek convention when I was 12), I had never heard of this movie. We pulled it up on the Internet and watched. It's real and it's amazingly bizarre.

Made after the first movie (so it's Episode 4.5), it actually features all the original cast members (Harrison, Mark and Carrie!) and the first ever appearance of Boba Fett.

I was shocked that Chewbacca has a wife and kid since his private life is never mentioned in the other movies. I gotta be honest here - Chewie's wife Malla is not hot. Chewie could have done much better.

Say what you will, but Chewie is one attractive Wookiee. He's a leader of the Rebellion. His other car is the Millenium Falcon! Something tells me this was a shotgun wedding. I can understand why Chewie never seems to go home to Kashyyyk except for Life Day (which only happens every third year).



Anyhow, there's tons of outlandish stuff happening in this movie. As Malla prepares "Bantha Surprise" for Life Day dinner, she watches a weird Julia Child parody cooking show featuring a white man in black-face playing a space lady with eight arms. It's bizarro. Chewie's dad watches a musical porn movie. Bea Arthur runs the Cantina at Mos Eisley and sings a little number trying to get her patrons to evacuate after the Empire shuts down all the bars in the galaxy.

I kind of feel bad for the non-famous actors in this movie. They must have been so excited when they got the roles and all during filming ("I'm gonna be in the next Star Wars movie!!"). Then November 17, 1978 rolls around and they sit in front of the tv with their families to watch... only to find out that their breakout movie is completely and totally unwatchable, to be shown only once on television and then subjected to a three-decade campaign to suppress its very existence.

The fact that I could live from 1981 to 2009 without knowing this movie ever existed is a real testament to that "power of the Internet" we talk about all the time. A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, you could actually bury a career-embarrassment bad movie.

The final product never had George Lucas' name on it.

Regardless, allow me to present, in full-length with original 1978 tv commericals, the Star Wars Holiday Special. Happy Life Day!

*Note, in the first commercial break, there's a painfully ironic GM ad about how great it is to work in their factories. The tagline: "General Motors - People Building Transportation to Serve People."
**Note 2, I want the "Trail Tracker" toy advertised after the GM commercial.