by Gib van Ert
There was an incongruity in this book that I never forgot. It included a scene on Tatooine of Luke Skywalker visiting his friend Biggs Darklighter. This episode was supported by two photographs of Luke and Biggs together. Biggs looked older and more confident, with a dashing cape and moustache. I puzzled over this mystery quite a bit as a boy. I had no recollection of this character at all. I was certain I had not slept through this part of the movie; it was too early on. There was no Kenner figurine for Biggs, which counted against his existence but was not conclusive. One might think there had been some mistake but the photographs supported the book’s account. I was a grown man before I got to the bottom of this, or nearly: Lucas had left these scenes on the cutting-room floor, yet somehow they made their way into this 1977 book to mystify me.
A much better book was an illustrated story called Star Wars: the Mystery of the Rebellious Robot. The main characters are Chewie, Han and Artoo, with appearances by Luke, Threepio, Leia and some mischievous Jawas. The illustrations are terrific. The inside of the Millennium Falcon is depicted in lustrous pastels, much more exciting than in the movie. Chewbacca is monstrous with dark eyes, a large mouth and maniacal hair. The prose is delightfully out of step with the undeviating, predictable, heavily trademarked lingo found without exception in later Star Wars material: Artoo and Threepio are “robots” not droids, Luke’s X-wing fighter is his “plane”, the Falcon is a “starship”. The story itself revolves around the robots’ fondness for oil baths, which the impish Jawas attempt to exploit for their own benefit. The whole notion of droids taking oil baths is very much one from the original Star Wars film and the earliest Star Wars era. There is nothing in the prequels to suggest that battle droids ever took them.
The third Star Wars book that has stayed with me over the years—quite literally—is a little blue hardback about the making of the film. In itself it is unremarkable. What is important about it is that I stole it. That is to say I withdrew it from the local public library and very consciously failed to return it. It is still in my basement today. This was the first of two incidents of childhood theft motivated by my lust for Star Wars.
The Star Wars soundtrack, which we had on LP, also served to keep the film ever-present in my mind. It came on two discs in a gatefold cover bearing the film’s logo on the front, a frightening silhouette of Darth Vader’s head against a field of stars on the back, and a collection of stills from the movie inside. The importance of John Williams’ score to the success of Star Wars is impossible to prove but almost as hard to deny. Williams excites the audience from the opening frames—frames which are otherwise only words on a screen. For much of the rest of the film, Williams’ score acts where the actors cannot, either because they are covered in metal or fibreglass or fur, or just because they cannot. The music is at points threatening, rollicking, touching and even conversational. Star Wars is unimaginable without it. Having said all that, I do not recall sitting around the house listening to this record as a five-year-old. But I probably did.
(Regrettably, we never owned a copy of Meco’s disco remix, Star Wars and Other Galactic Funk. The single from that album stormed the charts in 1977, going platinum and holding the number one position on Billboard’s Hot 100 for two weeks. Connoisseurs prefer the 12 inch, 15-minute-long version, the highlight of which is the Cantina-Band-inspired vibes solo at about 10 minutes in.)
Thus the story George Lucas told the world in Star Wars came to me only partly from his film. What I remembered of it made a profound impression, but I had only seen it once and had fallen asleep at its climax. The rest of the story—those parts I had slept through and those parts I had forgotten—reached me through other, disparate sources: the toys, books and music I have described, but also trading cards, television commercials, board games, and most importantly the recollections, embellishments and flat-out fantasies of other Star-Wars-mad children I knew.
The story that filtered through was, of course, a barely-disguised fairy tale. Even as a child I recognized, at once dimly and deeply, the archetypical nature of the characters and plot: the innocent abroad, the princess in distress, the virtuous pirate, the wise old man—all thrown together by circumstance or fate to overcome the forces of evil. But for me, the mythic aspect of Star Wars came not only from its plot and narrative form but also from the word-of-mouth means by which the story took root in my mind. Like other fairy tales, Star Wars was told and retold, with developments of its details and changes in emphasis in each retelling. Like other myths, Star Wars was part fact and part hearsay. In the earliest years of my infatuation with it, Star Wars was at once ubiquitous and elusive, and its elusiveness permitted—even necessitated—imaginative retellings. The film was, in a word, evocative.
Star Wars would not have had this quality, however, had it not been such a good story to begin with. The characteristic that made Star Wars elusive to kindergarteners in the late 1970s was that you could only see it in cinemas and only when it was playing and only when your parents took you—but the same was true of every film of the day, yet only Star Wars metamorphosed from movie to myth. The difference lay in the strength of the story.
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Were proof needed that Star Wars would be nothing if not for the strength of its story, that proof came on the evening of 17 November 1978 in the form of the Star Wars Holiday Special. The program was aired on the CBS television network in the United States and simultaneously in Canada on the CTV network. I saw it. I remember seeing it—sort of. I remember anticipating seeing it, possibly due to an ad in the newspaper. I remember the living room I saw it in: a plain rectangular room on the second floor of our Highland Place duplex with a picture window onto the cul-de-sac below and a faux-wood-panelled television in the corner. My recollections of the program itself are hazy, like a dream or an episode of déjà-vu. Unlike the real Star Wars, my memories of the Holiday Special are not reinforced by repeated viewings. It was shown once only, and will likely never been shown again. Of course the internet has now made it available for all to see as often as they like. Yet these internet versions betray their illicit, bootleg roots: the sound is poor, the video blurred or shaky. The reason is that George Lucas hates the Star Wars Holiday Special. He is said to have tried to buy all master copies of the program to destroy them, thus ensuring it was never seen again. What, one might ask, could be so distasteful to the man who wrote fart jokes into three different scenes of The Phantom Menace? The answer is complicated, but Art Carney, Bea Arthur, holo-porn and a singing Princess Leia figure prominently.
The plot, for want of a better word, concerns Chewbacca’s efforts to return to his homeworld, Kashyyyk, in time to celebrate Life Day, a Wookie holiday for which no explanation is given. To make it home in time, Chewbacca and his pal Han Solo must overcome imperial forces who attack the Millennium Falcon en route and impose martial law at home. This might not be such a bad story if it were told with any conviction or interest. But the Star Wars Holiday Special is not about storytelling. It is a 1970s variety show with a Star Wars theme. Chewbacca, Han, Luke, Leia, Threepio and Artoo are hardly even in the show; they each make appearances from time to time, but most of the two-hour-long special is devoted to Chewbacca’s family (wife Malla, son Lumpy and father Itchy—yes, Itchy), a “trader” named Saun Dann, the proprietor of the Mos Eisley cantina, Ackmena, musical guests Diahann Carroll and Jefferson Starship, and a dance outfit called the Wazzan Troupe.
The program starts inauspiciously with a ten-minute-long scene inside Chewbacca’s tree-house in which no dialogue occurs save Wookie grunting. Chewbacca’s forlorn wife, Malla, stares at a framed picture of Chewie and is comforted by Itchy, a murderous-looking ape with an old man’s underbite and (we learn later) a taste for pornography. Itchy then turns his attention to young Lumpy, entertaining him with a hologram performance by dancing gymnasts dressed in skin-tight, insect-like green and red body suits. Some sport G-strings. This goes on for an eternity until Malla decides to call Luke on the videophone to find out where
her husband is.
If the viewer has not noticed by now that the Holiday Special is a little strange, Luke’s appearance removes all doubt. His hair is cut in a girlish bob, his eyelashes are bovine in length and he is wearing a quantity of make-up usually reserved for the dead. The explanation I once heard for this was that Mark Hamill had been in a serious motorcycle accident shortly before the filming. Whatever the reason, Luke looks awful, particularly when he grins creepily and says, “C’mon Malla, let’s see a little smile”.
Next we are introduced to the keeper of Trading Post Wookie Planet C, Saun Dann, played by Art Carney of Honeymooners fame. After failing to interest an imperial trooper in a “portable aquarium”, Carney pops over to Malla’s house—despite the imperial blockade of her planet—bearing Life Day presents for all. Carney’s gift for Itchy is a hologram to be played in the family Mind Evaporator. This ominous-sounding device looks like a dentist’s chair with a welder’s helmet on top. By its name and appearance you would think it an instrument of torture, which it proves to be, for the viewing audience if not for Itchy. The decrepit Wookie climbs in and puts the mask on while Carney inserts his gift into the armrest. “Happy Life Day”, says Carney, “and I do mean Happy Life Day”. Itchy begins to masticate (yes, masticate) as swirling lights and ethereal music set the virtual stage for singer/actress Diahann Carroll, later known for her role as Dominique Deveraux in Dynasty. Carroll gets right to the point, thrilling Itchy with lines like, “Oh, oh...we are excited, aren’t we?” and “I am your pleasure. Enjoy me”. The camera cuts between Carroll, giggling and smiling, and Itchy, squirming and writhing. Carroll sings a song about infinitely extending this minute, repeating and repeating this minute, on and on and on and on. The lyrics could not be more appropriate—the song, like the entire Holiday Special, feels interminable.
While this Wookie sex fantasy is easily the strangest part of the program—and perhaps the strangest thing ever to be shown on network television—it is only one of many inexplicable episodes. There is the four-armed Chef Gormaanda (Harvey Korman, better known for his work on that other 1970s variety program, the Carol Burnett Show) guiding her audience unsuccessfully through a recipe for Bantha Surprise. There is Jefferson Starship playing a forgettable song with microphones and instruments glowing like violet lightsabers. There is the ten-minute cartoon in which Boba Fett makes his first appearance, searching for a magical talisman astride an enormous orange-pink dinosaur. There is Bea Arthur as Ackmena, the proprietor of a Tatooine cantina who persuades her patrons to abide by an imperial curfew by singing to them until they give in and clear out. There is Han Solo baring his soul to the Wookies with cringe-inducing expressions of familial affection. Finally there is Leia, taking it upon herself to address the Wookies about the significance of their own holiday in a vacuous sermon which concludes with her singing these words to the tune of the Star Wars theme:
We celebrate a day of peace / A day of harmony / A day of joy we can all share / Together joyously / A day that takes us through the darkness / A day that leads us into might / A day that makes us want to celebrate / The light / A day that brings the promise / That one day we’ll be free / To live, to laugh, to dream, to grow, to trust, to love, to be!
Thankfully perhaps, most of what I have recounted here is not from memory. I vaguely recall the Wookie tree-house, Luke’s strange appearance—like a damaged mannequin—and the Boba Fett cartoon, but I seem to have repressed the rest. Not until I was nearly thirty did I discover, thanks to the internet, that these foggy images in my mind were not childhood hallucinations but fragmentary recollections of a suppressed chapter in Star Wars history. Something I had read or heard about the forthcoming prequels taking place in part on the Wookie homeworld of Kashyyyk prompted my investigation. I recalled a portrayal of the planet in Marvel Star Wars number 91. But I also recalled seeing Wookies on television—with musical guests? A bit of digital digging turned up accounts of the Holiday Special, and even a few freeze frames from the program (but no video). I was amazed that I remembered the thing, however faintly, and more amazed that George Lucas had permitted it to be done.
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All these things informed my earliest notions of what Star Wars was. But the movie was too inspiring and fleeting to confine me to any vision of it that was not my own. Building on what I remembered from the drive-in and what I gleaned from friends, toys, books, television and more, I imagined what Star Wars was and made it what I wanted it to be at any given moment.
Frequently this turned George Lucas’s epic story into a protracted, repetitive and desolate tale of two adversaries stranded together on an island full of caves, plotting each other’s demise in hand-to-hand combat. The cave-laden island was my favourite blanket, crumpled in a pile on my lap as I sat on the floor or in bed. The adversaries were Kenner action figures, one in each hand. Their identities depended on my mood, but I knew enough to tell the imperials from the rebels and generally respected this division of political opinion, which was the sole reason for their antagonism. Thus Han Solo might find himself marooned with an imperial stormtrooper. Each would promptly resolve to annihilate the other. After an initial skirmish the figures would retreat to whatever cave they had each chosen and plot their next attempt. That event would ensue with little delay and again result in a draw and retreat. After another brief respite, the antagonists would meet again in the same violent and futile struggle, distinguished this time perhaps by some new move—pouncing on the other as he emerged unwarily from his cave, or pushing him over a cliff. I could amuse myself quietly for an hour or more this way. It is no wonder my parents were so willing to keep feeding my developing Star Wars habit.
[EMPIRE] A PIG WITH A STOMACH ACHE
In May 1980, the sequel to Star Wars was released. I was seven years old. It was the greatest thing that had ever happened. I saw The Empire Strikes Back for the first time in a movie theatre in the NorthPark shopping centre in Dallas, Texas during a visit with my grandparents. It was one of many such visits my mother, sister and I made in the early 1980s. Each trip saw my grandparents spoil my sister and me so that Dallas, my grandparents and The Empire Strikes Back are now nearly synonymous in my mind.
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My grandparents’ reaction to their only daughter becoming a hippy, marrying a Californian draft dodger and moving to Canada was what you might expect of mid-20th century middle-class Texans. When, before leaving for Canada, my mother brought my father home to meet her parents, my grandfather literally chased him out of the house. If the Vietnam War was not reason enough for my father to flee the country, my grandfather might have been.
Rollie Poston Bourland, known to most as Bob but to me as Clawpa, was a man of his place and time: a white Texan who picked cotton as a child, lived through the Depression and the war (he trained pilots but did not fight) and made his own way. He worked hard, earned a considerable amount of money, and rose to a prominent position in a national health insurance company. He had no sympathy for peaceniks or longhairs or Californians not named Nixon. If my mother was seeking to antagonize him, she could not have chosen a more effective instrument than my father.
My grandmother’s frame of mind is less clear to me. She believed in God, I recall, but did not appear to have opinions about anything else. Perhaps she figured my grandfather had enough for the two of them. She had been attractive in her youth and still spent a lot of time “putting her face on” when I knew her, by which point she was in her late 60s. But she had a weakness bordering on addiction for Blue Bell Pecan Pralines ‘n’ Cream ice cream, and as a result she developed a compact but very evident belly. As a child I marvelled at how it protruded from her. I do not remember my grandmother ever saying anything in particular about my father. I nevertheless had a distinct sense that he was not quite the son-in-law she had in mind.
My grandparents’ misgivings about my father never expressed themselves in any sort of hostility or even coolness towards me or my sister. They were loving grandparents and always very
generous with us. The frequent trips my mother, sister and I made to Dallas during my childhood—always wisely leaving my father behind—were as much shopping sprees as family visits. Every day was the same. For most of the morning my sister and I wandered around my grandparents’ large air-conditioned one-storey house on East Lovers Lane, waiting hours, or so it seemed to us, for my grandmother to dress. My mother was faster, but not by much. When the four of us were finally ready to go we said goodbye to Clawpa—he always stayed home—and made our way down a small hallway off the kitchen to the dark two-car garage that adjoined the house. The humidity confronted us from the moment my mother opened the door. As my grandmother armed the alarm system—something I had never seen in Canada—my sister and I climbed in to the back seat of my grandmother’s spotless Lincoln Town Car. It was yellow on the outside and yellow again inside. My grandmother took the driver’s seat, started the car to get the air conditioning going, and gave me or my sister the garage door opener. We pressed it with delight and the door drew open, pouring Texas sunlight into the garage as we backed out into the alley. We hit the button again to close the door and were on our way.
Our destinations rarely changed. First we went to pick up my great-grandmother. Her name was Reva but I only ever knew her as Re Re (what my mother called her) and Mother (what my grandmother called her). Re Re was in her eighties but she was no little old lady. She was sturdy, deep-throated, tall for a woman born in 1899, and forceful. Picking Re Re up usually involved going inside her bungalow and waiting (again) while she prepared herself for the outing. My sister and I spent the time in the dark sitting-room banging on the electric organ she played hymns on, or running around her small back yard nearly bouncing off the thick Dallas grass. Once she was ready, we all squeezed back into the Town Car, turned on the air, and made for the NorthPark shopping centre.
