Today marks the 30th Anniversary of the Star Wars Holiday Special. This abomination to Star Wars originally aired on November 17, 1978 the day after I was born in all its 70’s glory. This special is so bad that it has been said that George Lucas himself would like all copies destroyed. The whole basic plot is Han Solo is trying to get Chewbacca back home to his family in time for Life Day a Wookie holiday. Pretty much all the original cast was involved including Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, and Carrie Fisher. They all have pretty much the same feelings as George Lucas and would like to deny its existence. This clip is one of my favorite with Harrison Ford on Conan O’Brien being asked about the Holiday Special.
Conan O'Brien asks Harrison Ford about Star Wars Holiday Special
The best part of the whole special is the 10 minute cartoon about half way through. The cartoon was the first time anyone had seen Boba Fett before The Empire Strikes Back. It also featured all the original cast portraying their voices including James Earl Jones as Vader.
Here is just that clip
And for those that actually want to try and watch the whole thing it is available on Google Video below. Tonight I am going to try and sit through it again for the 30th anniversary, but I will be watching it with the rifftrax commentary, so it will be MSTK3 style. Hopefully that will make it easier to get through. For those that would like to find out a little more about the special there is a wikipedia entry and a fan site that even shows some of the wookie action figures that made it as far as prototype stage, but were never released.
Have a great Life Day!