The STAR WARS Holiday Special Gets Dissected Live

Last night, I went to the Parkside Lounge where the podcasters behind THE STAR WARS MINUTE, Alex Robinson and Pete The Retailer, took on the bastard stepchild of the SW franchise; the infamous STAR WARS HOLIDAY SPECIAL. Their 2-hour live podcast took apart the "special" which was essentially a variety program that aired on CBS just before Thanksgiving in 1978 (pre-empting THE HULK and WONDER WOMAN!) and was considered a critical disaster even though it got a respectable audience of about 13 million people...which is not too shabby for a Saturday night in the pre-cable era.

If you haven't seen it, you can watch the entire special online at Daily Motion. But be warned... it is extremely slow going and very bizarre. During the live podcast last night, Alex Robinson referred to the opening 20 minutes as a sort of "weird performance art piece" where only Wookie is spoken. The episode centers around Chewbacca's family on their home planet as they wait for Chewie to return for something called Life Day. When humanoids appear, it's in the form of short cameos by the SW gang; Luke (looking heavily made up post-car accident), Leia, Han, and even Darth Vader (in a clip swiped from the first movie and repurposed for the show).

But the true strangeness is the special guest stars--Harvey Korman in multiple "comic" roles, Art Carney as a local trader and Bea Arthur as a sassy barkeep at the alien cantina from STAR WARS. But wait there's more--Diahann Carroll and Jefferson Starship do a couple strange songs too. The one element the bloggers agreed was actually good was an animated short about halfway through that introduces Boba Fett. And it is pretty cool looking filled with trippy, 70s style animation of the familiar characters and some snappy dialogue as well. The rest, however, is pretty embarrassing and had little involvement by George Lucas, who basically licensed the characters for this one time outing which never aired again and still remains commercially unavailable. But thanks to the Internets, it lives on to baffle and amuse people to this day. Merry Christmas!

Fanboy Podcast Looks At STAR WARS, Minute By Minute

I recently discovered an unusual podcast which started back in June and, since then, has been doing daily episodes which examine the original STAR WARS film, minute by minute. The show is hosted by two self-professed SW super-geeks, Alex Robinson and Pete The Retailer. For each episode, they have a guest host who joins in a discussion in which they go over one minute of the film with a geeky microscope, talking about fan theories, SW trivia and cracking jokes too.

I listened to minute 116 which was a precise dissection of the moment in which Luke fires his mysterious photon torpedoes (or were they heat seeking cruise-style missiles?) into the Death Star causing it's spectacular destruction. I learned that this is not called the Battle of the Death Star but the Battle of Yavin (after the planet the Death Star nearly eliminates). Also, there was much citing of something called the Wookie-Pedia, which is a complete and incredibly detailed online glossary of all thing SW.

I thought I was a STAR WARS fan with a decent knowledge of the original trilogy and behind-the- scenes stuff. But these guys take it to a entirely different level. One of the hosts, I believe it was Pete, says he saw the original film about 35 times when it first came out in 1977, spending many afternoons at the multiplex watching it over and over. [I actually remember getting into a fight with my parents when I wanted to go see it a second time, which they considered to be a waste of money since I had already seen it!] Anyway, the podcast will end this week at minute 119 (skipping the 2 minutes of credits). They may move on to the next two films but no official word yet -- you can check their Facebook page for updates.