That Loser Feeling: Writing: Evil: Special




On November 17th, 1978, something really, really bad happened. If you're like most people, you don't remember it. George Lucas wants it that way.

Yes, I'm talking about the Star Wars Holiday Special.

I'm not going to go into great detail about the special. You can read reviews of it elsewhere. I will mention that it was cruel, and that it could not have existed in any time or medium other than the ones that brought us Shields & Yarnell and The Waverly Wonders.

I will mention that the entire cast of Star Wars was present in this special, due to contractual obligations— except for the British actors, who all had the good sense to die right away in the series.

I will say what many other reviewers have said— that Mark Hamill, in an attempt to cover the facial scars of a recent car accident, wore more makeup than Gary Numan.

I will say that Carrie Fisher was clearly paid in kilos— not in dollars— to perform. One scene called upon her to walk around a table and deliver her line at the same time. When she did so, it was clear that she was rocked out of her fucking mind. Then she sang bra-less.

I will quote Dan, who says that this holiday special presaged Hypertext links in its ability to get you lost and bewildered quickly. The show began with a clear enough premise— will Chewbacca make it home in time to spend Life Day with his family?— and then tangent, tangent, tangent, tangent, where the fuck am I?

I will quote the Salon review, which describes the show's curious time-dilation effect: "Although technically only 120 minutes long, the "Holiday Special" has the futuristic ability to slow time, and one emerges from its vortex some six days later bearded, weeping, defeated and sporting a limp. It's the kind of experience that makes you want to go lie down in the road."

You think I'm kidding?

I mention many things here, but I still have not gone into great detail. In fact I have barely scratched the surface. It's that bad. Nothing could have prepared anyone for the soul-withering abomination that was the Star Wars Holiday Special. It was a bloodless crime, this holiday special, but that fact does not lessen its horror one iota.

I watched it. I watched the whole damned thing. Without the help of a remote control fast-forward button, when I was ten years old, on November 17th, 1978, I watched it. And when it was over, I couldn't sleep that night, because I couldn't wait to talk about it with my friends. I wanted to know if they felt the same way that I did— as if Chewbacca himself had sat on my face and pushed out a hot, sloppy Wookiee-dump— or if they had liked it. I was not a popular child in grade school, but I was willing to risk being outcast over this one. I couldn't pretend that what had happened that night was anything other than wrong.

But no one wanted to talk about it. Actually, that is not accurate. It's not that they were unwilling to discuss it. They honestly had no idea what I was talking about.

Star Wars Holiday Special? What are you talking about? Nuh-uh. No way. I would have watched it. You're high, dude. Shut up, Keller. Liar. Major liar. Mega hyper-liar.

I remember this very clearly, because it was one of those formative childhood experiences that we would— given the option— pay a neuro-specialist to surgically remove from our brains, like the memories of our lamest playground come-backs, or of farting in the library. I was floored. I knew what I had seen, but they weren't just disagreeing with me, they were accusing me of making it up. I was a mega hyper-liar.

You know that anger that you feel, the one that skips right over indignation and heads straight for righteous fury? This is my earliest clear memory of that state.

How could they have not seen it? How could they not know about it? Star Wars was white hot at the time. Everyone had just been Luke Skywalker or Princess Leia for Halloween a couple of weeks before, and the merchandising was ubiquitous. Star Wars was a religion. All of my friends were using The Force, trying to pick up dropped pencils, or to make basketballs go through the hoop. Even the teachers were caught up in it, and what the hell did they know?

Because I was the unconfident kid that I was, I shut up about it. Instead, I tried to imagine a scenario that would explain why all of my friends had missed something so important. It was as if everyone but me had slept through Christmas, and my only gift was a gaily-wrapped, leprous, pig bladder.

The best explanation I could find was that I actually hadn't watched the whole thing. There was a part at the very, very end— a part after the end credits— where George Lucas stared into the camera, swung a pocket watch back and forth, and told everyone that none of this ever happened.

I kept my silence about it. A year and a half later, The Empire Strikes Back was released, and everyone was introduced to this new character, one Boba Fett. I didn't bother trying to convince people that Boba Fett had actually been introduced in the holiday special, because... well... it just never happened.

That same year, I started playing D&D with people who I thought surely must have seen it. If anyone had seen it, it had to be them. They lived for that sort of shit. But, of course, they hadn't seen it, and so they also ridiculed me— not because I misremembered something, but because I dared to blaspheme against the Star Wars pantheon with my ugly, ugly words.

There is nothing lower than being mocked by a group of spotty teenage RPG players. Nothing.

Years went by, and the painful memory started to fade. Once or twice I mentioned the holiday special to hardcore Star Wars geeks, hoping to see a glimmer of recognition in their eyes, but that glimmer never came. As the memory faded, I began to question whether or not I had actually seen the special, or if I had dreamed the whole thing. I had had a frightening bout of the flu during the 1978 Christmas vacation, a bout that jacked my fever up to 105 degrees and left me delirious for days. Memory is a fickle, tenuous animal anyway, and by the time I was 25, it didn't take much for me to convince myself that the Star Wars Holiday Special was probably part of that delirium. I stopped talking about it entirely.

Then, when I was 30, I got a phone call from an old friend of mine. I had known Steven since I was five, and ironically enough, whenever he can't remember something from our childhood, he contacts me, because I've earned a reputation over the years for having a good memory. I remembered Koogle, after all.

"Hey Matt," he said. He's one of the few people in the world who still call me "Matt." It's a very old habit that he can't break.

"Hey Matt, I know this is a weird question, but... do you remember a Star Wars Holiday Special? It would have come out when we were in the fifth grade?"

I didn't answer him, because I was dumbfounded.

He continued, "I'm asking because I know a guy who has a copy of it on VHS."

Because George Lucas is devoting a considerable amount of his time and money toward the legal pursuit of wiping from everyone's memory the fact that the Star Wars Holiday Special ever happened, I am only going to say that I have recently had an opportunity to watch a bootleg copy of it in my living room, but that I don't own that bootleg copy, because owning it and making others watch it would be bad.

As I watched it, I compared the horror before me with what I remembered from my childhood. I remembered that the special had taken years to watch it in its entirety, but I had forgotten that you could feel— viscerally feel— those years being taken from you.

I remembered that the Wookiee scenes were long and boring, but at the time I didn't understand that the reason those scenes are so tedious is because nobody speaks anything but Wookiee-fucking-ese for close to 20 goddamn minutes.

I remembered that one of the storm troopers opened up a box with Jefferson Starship inside, but I didn't remember that Marty Balin sang into what appears to be a glowing pink dildo.

I remembered the Wookiee Porn Scene, but I didn't understand it for what it was. I only knew that it made me uncomfortable. It probably turned me gay.

But my happiest discovery wasn't even part of the show, and it wasn't even my revelation. Dan joined me when I sat down to watch the tape— after I dimmed the living room lights and explained to him in careful detail that it was going to hurt. Sitting next to me, in the dark, two minutes into the program, in wide-eyed, horrified wonderment, Dan whispered, "I remember this. Oh my God, I watched this."

And with my vindication, came peace.

Post Script: Now, whenever I mention this tape, people always say, "Oh that thing. God, I saw that at a frat party back in college. Where the hell have you been?" Like I'm suddenly behind the times, somehow. Whenever this happens, I am reminded of the comforting refrain from Julian Cope's Greedhead Detector:

fuck fuck fuck you
fuck fuck you
fuck you, fuck you


Last updated 20 March 2003

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