How Star Wars Conquered the Universe: The Past, Present, and Future of a Multibillion Dollar Franchise by Taylor Chris

Author:Taylor, Chris [Taylor, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Itzy, Kickass.to
ISBN: 9780465056934
Amazon: B00JZBA9ME
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2014-09-02T04:00:00+00:00

Early in 1978, Twentieth Century Fox contracted TV producer Dwight Hemion to executive produce an hour-long Star Wars Holiday Special for CBS. Fox believed three years was going to be too long to wait between Star Wars movies. Lucas agreed. The Emmy-nominated Hemion had spent a decade producing specials for the likes of Frank Sinatra and Barbara Streisand. In 1977, he had produced the last TV special to star Elvis Presley, one of Lucas’s idols. Hemion had also directed a well-received version of Peter Pan starring Mia Farrow and Danny Kaye, suggesting he could handle children’s fantasy. If his holiday special worked, it could be the pilot for a Star Wars TV series.

Lucas suggested a story that focused on Chewbacca’s relatives and a galactic holiday called Life Day on his home, Kashyyyk. The Wookiee planet had been recently rejected for The Empire Strikes Back. Now, because Lucas liked to recycle just about every concept ever considered for Star Wars, and because he still had a soft spot for Wookiees, it was revived. Ralph McQuarrie produced paintings of the planet. Lucas provided the names of Chewie’s family: his wife, Malla; his father, Itchy; and his son, Lumpy. Lucasfilm produced a “Wookiee bible” with everything the writers would need to know about the apelike species, including how they reproduce: “Wookiees have litters.” Lucas would also tell one of the writers of the show that Han Solo was married to a Wookiee, “but we can’t say that.”

The Holiday Special is legendarily awful—not in that so-bad-it’s-good kind of way that heralds a cult classic like Starcrash, but in the sense of monumentally boring. (Look it up on YouTube and see how many minutes you can suffer through.) Before it aired, Lucas and Gary Kurtz took their names off the project. “We were kind of appalled,” Kurtz told me. “It was a bad mistake.” A quote falsely attributed to Lucas by practically the entire Internet has him expressing a desire to destroy every copy of the special in existence “with a hammer.” But he told Starlog magazine in 1987 it would be released on videotape “soon.” Here’s what he said in 2002: “That’s one of those things that happened, and I just have to live with it.” (Lucas was less restrained in his appearance on Seth Green’s Robot Chicken spoof, where within the safety of satire he offered his only real public critique of Holiday Special: “I hate it, I hate it, I hate it!” his character screamed from the therapist’s couch. Green says Lucas requiered little coaching.)

Did it have to be that bad? When McQuarrie died in 2012, something turned up in his papers: a treatment for the special, dated March 1978. The author remains unknown, but it reads a lot like Lucas. The treatment begins with Chewbacca arriving at his home and reuniting with his family. Han Solo appears on a video screen, congratulating the Wookiees on the fact that their planet has been chosen to host the galactic festival called Life Day.

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