Patty Maloney is the only member of the Wookiee family still involved with acting [Peter Mayhew has since recounted his role as Chewbacca in Episode III after this interview was conducted]: Mickey Morton, who played Chewbacca’s wife Mallatobuck (a.k.a. Malla), passed away in early 1998. “He was the sweetest man,” remembers make-up effects artist Stan Winston. “He had a good sense of humor” [read more from Stan Winston below]. Paul Gale as Attichitcuk (“Itchy”), Lumpy’s
350-plus-year-old grandfather, has retired from acting. “He was just like being with family,” recalls Patty Maloney. “He was so much fun to work with. Paul had worked for Sid & Marty Kroft. That’s were I first met him. He played Hoo Doo on the road show that we did of Pufnstuf and was in Sigmund and the Sea Monsters.”
Maloney has been obsessed with acting since a very young age. “When I was about four years old my mother put me into dancing school and, the minute I walked out onto that floor and looked into the mirror, I went ‘(gasp!) This is it! This is what I want to do!’ I was really, really tiny and I even didn’t know that I was never going to grow any taller, so my dream was that I was going to be a chorus girl on Broadway. I studied dance from then on. That was my life. I would go right from school to dance classes. When the last class was over I went home and slept and got up the next day and did it all over again. I did this five days a week, and on Saturdays I was in dance class all day long. I loved it.”
She has had an extremely fruitful career, having worked on countless ’70s sitcoms and shows such as Charlie’s Angels and the original Love Boat. “When I came to Cailfornia in 1972 with $500 in my pocket, I figured ‘When that’s gone, I’ll return home to Orlando, Florida. I never left because I never stopped working.” Maloney has played many costumed characters besides Lumpy, including McDonald’s Early Bird, Goofy Gopher, and Bonita Bizarre for a travelling Sid & Marty Krofft show, and Piglet on Disney’s Welcome to Pooh Corner. More recently [in 1998], Maloney was in an episode of Star Trek: Voyager. “I had a great time in that. It was an episode called ‘The Thaw’. There wasn’t a mask on my face. It was all done with make-up. We were aliens that invaded the crews’ minds.” When she reflects on her career, Maloney cannot single out a favorite project. “I can’t think of anything that I haven’t liked doing.”
FAX: Do you remember auditioning for the role of Lumpy?
MALONEY: Oh, I sure do. I probably auditioned with ten other people, I was the only female that I’m aware of that auditioned for the part. I was surprised, being a female, that I got it but I was thrilled with it. I just loved doing Lumpy.
FAX: What was it like working with the cast of Star Wars?
MALONEY: I thought it was great! It was like icing on a cake to be able to work with those people. Harrison Ford was just the most wonderful person to work with. He was so nice to me. While we were shooting the scene where Han and Chewie arrive at the Wookiee planet, he had a line were he had to say “My he’s grown, hasn’t he?” and he’dsay. “My she’s grown, hasn’t she?” (laughter) And they say, “Cut! Harrison, Lumpy’s a boy,” and he would say, “Oh yeah, that’s right. Let’s do that again.” And in the next take he said “My she’s grown, hasn’t she?” They would go “Cut! Harrison!” He would go “Oh, I know, but I can’t look at her when she doesn’t have this mask on, and think of her as a boy when she gets into this thing.” He was wonderful, and everyone else was great.
We had Ben Burtt, the man who does the sound effects for Star Wars. He came into the dressing room one day and he had me do a tape of my voice, and then he engineered it to all different sounds: high, low, fast, and slow. He sent me a tape that was incredible, just so that I could hear what you could do, engineering voices. He was so fascinated with my voice that he wanted it just for his own.
FAX: How would you describe Lumpy?
MALONEY: Lumpy was like an impish little boy that was rebellious. Very active and curious about everything. If his mother said “Take out the garbage” he would reply “I don’t want to do that now! I’m too busy doing something else.” He loved his grandfather and adored his father, which was obvious when Chewbacca came home. He was just an inquisitive, active, and happy Wookiee. He was not really afraid of the stormtroopers, but a little timid of them when they would get upset with him.
FAX: You obviously had to convey a lot of information with mime, since the first half-hour of the show involved the Wookiees who don’t speak English.
MALONEY: Exactly. Well they had a Wookiee language, and we even went to a class to listen to it on tapes to educate us on what their language was like, and if we heard a particular sound, we knew what it meant to us. But it was basically doing mime. The feelings had to come from the whole body in order to get across sorrow and happiness. It was just a wonderful experience.
A lot of the scenes — such as where I’m at the holographic chess table watching alien acrobats — were done where I couldn’t see any of it. It wasn’t there in front of me at all. The director would say, “They’re swinging up to your right,” and I would look up, or he would say, “They’re finished so you can applaud” and I would clap. It was all done by being spoken to, not by any visual references, which was really interesting to do because it’s hard to do that. When I saw it all put together I went “Whew! That’s amazing!”
FAX: Lumpy, Malla and Itchy’s faces were more expressive than Chewbacca’s. Also, Lumpy’s eyes conveyed a lot of expressions.
MALONEY: Yes. The only part of me that you saw were my eyes, and the area around them was painted black. So the expression that I had to give came out of my eyes. It was a new experience because they had just started doing electronic faces. Stan Winston had made the mask for me. I had wires that went down my arms with little rings on my fingers that I could pull and make the nose twitch, make the lips curl up and smile a little bit and open up the mouth alittle bit so the teeth would show. Chewbacca, on the other hand, was more solid. I don’t think he had that kind of movement in his face. It was really fascinating to do it. When they wanted to do a tight close-up. and I had to use my hands to pick up props or something, Stan Winston would sit behind me and work the strings for me.
There were so many things to be done simultaneously in the close-ups. In the long shots, I had to control the cables myself because he couldn’t follow me around.
FAX: It must have been difficult operating your facial expressions with your hands, and doing body gestures simultaneously.
MALONEY: Yes, but it was just a matter of coordination. I thought of it as a dance routine: you get a rhythm going and you almost count it. I almost felt the music without the music being there.
FAX: What were your favorite sets?
MALONEY: I particularly liked Lumpy’s bedroom, which was supposed to be upstairs. It was like going up into a tree. I loved all the toys that they put in there for Lumpy. The scene that I liked the most was when Lumpy went upstairs and found that the troopers had destroyed his toys and pulled the head off the Bantha and how sad it was that his favorite toy had been destroyed.
FAX: How long did the filming last?
MALONEY: I think it was about ten days. We worked very hard and we worked very long hours. Sometimes we would work until two or three in the morning but we just laughed and had fun. It was hot being in that costume but everybody was so wonderful to work with that I forgot about it. One of the most wonderful things was that when I finished the show they sent me a bonus, which you hardly ever get in this business. They also had a director’s chair delivered to my house with the name Lumpy on one side and my name on the other. Smith-Hemion, the producers, did the Emmy Awards for a long time and they’re a wonderful production company.
Read on for some comments by make-up effects artist Stan Winston…
Stan Winston, Wookiee Make-up
By Ross Plesset
One of the most impressive achievements in The “Star Wars Holiday Special” was the creature make-up. Stan Winston created Chewbacca’s family using leading-edge technology. (Winston was not involved in all of the special effects make-up for the show. According to Miki Herman, Don Post Chewbacca masks were used for the Wookiee crowd scene at the climax. For the recreation of the famous Star Wars cantina, Lucasfilm provided the original masks while Rick Baker and crew provided some new characters).
Several people had input into the Wookiee’s design. Many of their characteristics can be attributed to Ralph McQuarrie. “I drew an old Wookiee getting up out of his chair and several females and children,” he says. Stan Winston and his colleagues also contributed to the designs. Recalls Tom Burman: “I helped [Stan] with some ideas for the hair on the Wookiees’ bodies and my brother Ellis Burman worked with him on the mechanical faces.”
Winston describes his work on the show, which he considers a pivotal point in his career:
“It was quite an opportunity for me. I was able to use a Stuart Freeborn concept, which was very in inspirational to me and my whole career, as a spring board to advance the technology in the direction of where we are today. Stuart had developed the lip articulation for the apes in 2001 and then had created Chewbacca for Star Wars. For the “Holiday Special” they had to have this family of Wookiees and, to my good fortune, Stuart wasn’t available. I had done some lip articulation on The Wiz with the flying monkeys, and this was a chance to take it a step further. The production company sent me the original Chewbacca head so I was able to look at it and see how Stuart had originally done it. I used that as my inspiration to take it to another level, where I could put some expressions into the faces besides having the mouths open and pull back. It allowed me to move into the animatronic face phase of my career.”
Just as a FYI, to avoid old posts becoming one with the Force, this post has been republished so it can be a blue glowy thing, it was Originally posted 2022-10-10 16:00:31.
Ever wanted to draw Star Wars characters and vehicles just like the professional comic book artists? In this step-by-step series, Star Wars artists and illustrators show you how to draw some of the most beloved characters in the saga.
Star Wars illustrator Nicole Falk explains with these easy-to-follow steps on how to draw a wampa family trimming the tree during the holiday season.
Step One:
Draw lightly with pencil all the basic shapes that make up an adult wampa, a Christmas tree, a little wampa and a misfit C-3PO in the box. Draw ovals, circles, rectangles, and connecting lines. This will help place where the body, arms, head and everything else will go. This is also where you decide the outline for your pose.
Step Two:
Next sketch in the shapes of the wampa, and everyone else on top of your original outline. Draw a rounder, teddy bear-like shape for the wampa. Add in his tusks, same with the little wampa. Make a shapelier Christmas tree. Start to draw in a body shape for the C-3PO in the box, give him a Santa hat and an elf collar! For his arms, since he is a droid, there are some nice easy lines to follow like more straight lines and rectangles.
Step Three:
Here you can start adding in the lines that create a more detailed and 3-D look. For starters, draw in a slightly curved line behind the entire drawing, about 2/3 down on the page. This is to separate your wall from your ground. Now your characters look like they are in an environment, and not just floating in space. For the big wampa, add in his little hair on top and make his tusks bumpier on the edges. Later when we add lines through them it will make sort of a ring pattern on each tusk. Make his body softer by rounding those lines and shaping a body form, add in his chubby fingers. Do these steps to the little wampa as well. The C-3PO in the box will need his face drawn out. Follow the lines to create his eyes, nose and mouth, the extra lines on the side of his head and under his chin to create depth. Make his arms appear more droid like and less human by sectioning them at different points. The body is the shape of a bouncy coil, so just zigzag some lines over the curved lines you had before. The Christmas tree could use some more form to it! Try giving it some more detail on the edges, you can design your tree however you like! Add some presents underneath as well, some in front and some in back.
Step Four:
Here is where you can add in a lot of the detail. On the wampas, add in some hair lines to give them a fuzzier and furrier hairdo and draw in their faces with eyes, eyebrows, nose and mouths. Give them whatever expression you want, the example here shows the big wampa being surprised by how lovely the star he just put on top of the tree looks in all its shining glory! Add in those tusk lines, and make the fingers and toes more detailed. C-3PO needs some eyes and add in some lines to that zigzag body too. This will make C-3PO look like he just popped out of the box. Turn the box into an R2-D2 by adding in some of his details, this is done with just some more rectangles and circles. The Christmas tree can be trimmed now, add in some lights and fun ornaments. Also to make the presents look wrapped draw some ribbon around them going horizontal and vertical on each package and shape. Next draw a wallpaper design. I did a striped background for this piece. And lastly, some shading will help put those characters on the floor better. Since the adult wampa is reaching, one foot is lifted, so the shading shouldn’t touch that raised foot. Same thing for the C-3PO in a box, he just sprung out so he is high in the air so place the shading further away from him. Anything else that is directly on the floor can have shading placed right underneath them, like the presents and the little wampa. Also have him playing with some cool action figures!
**Missing**
Step Five:
Next go over the pencil with some dark pencil or ink. Use a pen, a dark-colored pencil or a fine tip marker. Be careful, stay on those lines, after all your hard work, keep this part clean!
Step Six:
Now you can color your wampa Christmas anyway you want. Use colored pencils, crayons, watercolors or markers. You can even color it on the computer. It’s completely up to you. Don’t forget things that are shaded should always be a little darker, like under the tree and under the presents and wampas. This step I did all the base colors and will add highlights (and fur) in the next step.
Step Seven:
Here I used white pen to make all the wampa fur and add some highlights. I hope you enjoyed my wampa Christmas drawing, have a happy holiday!
Just as a FYI, to avoid old posts becoming one with the Force, this post has been republished so it can be a blue glowy thing, it was Originally posted 2022-11-02 15:45:58.
The trench run from Star Wars: A New Hope has been reimagined in gingerbread cookies for a stylized holiday Star Wars Mini by Industrial Light & Magic.
By StarWars.com Team
This holiday season, we have the perfect gift to share your love of Star Wars and the magic of creativity with your favorite younglings. Arriving on Star Wars Kids this Tuesday, a bite-sized short from the wizards at Industrial Light & Magic reimagines a classic scene from Star Wars: A New Hope with a delicious twist: the Death Star, Darth Vader, and the Rebel Alliance fleet of X-wings has been crafted entirely out of gingerbread cookies!
This stylized animation is just one of the ways ILM artists are paying homage to the Star Wars galaxy, finding creative ways to explore both their craft and their love of the saga. “The Gingerbread Death Star Trench Run” was created by ILM’s artists, including Landis Fields, a real time principal creative, using some of the same unreal engine technology used to craft the sprawling worlds of Star Wars video games and visualize the far-flung locales of recent Star Wars live-action series.
“We all love to spread joy and inspire people to make things and to imagine things,” Fields tells StarWars.com. “If you look all the way back to Walt Disney and George Lucas, and the folks after them that carried the baton and built these companies up, you’ll see that that is always at the root.”…
As the 2024-2025 Holiday Season comes to a close, we’d like to share images of the Lucas Company holiday cards from 1977 to present. Although this is not a complete set, it’s really close. These cards were sent by employees of Lucasfilm, Lucas Arts, Lucas Digital, ILM, Lucas Learning, Lucas Licensing, JAK, Skywalker Ranch, and other companies to friends and colleagues. They are unbelievably hard to track down, but collectors have made it their mission to hunt these down over the years. Not all of them are Star Wars themed, but many are…
Gather your younglings for the charming Life Day classic now on the Star Wars Kids YouTube channel, then stay tuned for LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy arriving next month
By StarWars.com Team
Some of your favorite LEGO Star Wars stories are headed to the Star Wars Kids YouTube channel just in time for the holidays!
Join Rey, Finn, Poe, and their friends on a journey back to Chewbacca’s homeworld of Kashyyyk for a Wookiee-sized celebration of the galaxy’s most magical holiday — Life Day! — in the LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special. Previously released on Disney+, the endearing special is available today to watch on Star Wars Kids YouTube for a limited time, making it even easier to share your love of the galaxy with the next generation of fans in your life….
As a kid whose life was profoundly changed by Star Wars in theaters in 1977, the anticipation for the Star Wars Holiday Special on television the following year was high. It’s hard to imagine there was a time when there was very little Star Wars content available to us, but no one anticipated the unprecedented success and impact of Star Wars, and we were starved for that content in the early years. We got some of that fix through the Marvel Comics series, but the three year wait for the next movie seemed like an eternity. So the announcement of a live action television program that continued the story and included all the main actors was something to look forward to. I was glued to the television for every second of the broadcast, and even some of the commercials were entertaining, such as the Kenner commercial with C-3PO and R2-D2….
Despite the Star Wars Holiday Special’s infamous reputation, it has influenced quite a bit of the Star Wars canon! Here is everything that’s been made canon since it first aired in 1978.
Executive producers James Waugh and Josh Rimes reveal never-before-seen concept art and look back at the modern holiday classic.
It was the early days of Disney+. Lucasfilm had the opportunity to tell new stories for the fledgling streaming service, and inspiration could come from anywhere. Even playtime.
“There was a moment with our LEGO partnership where we wanted to reassess all we’d done before and challenge ourselves to see if we could find a fresh new expression of that collaboration, and a way to lean more into the way kids play with their LEGO Star Wars toys — they dump them on the floor and mix and match them. They’re not timeline dependent. We wanted to unlock that whimsy and wonder that’s unique to LEGO play in our linear content, and find a way to celebrate that experience in our storytelling,” James Waugh, SVP, franchise content and strategy at Lucasfilm, tells StarWars.com. “With the opportunity to do a special, we really realized that if it’s going to be a once a year experience, there’s something that just resonates about timeless holiday specials and the idea that, looking back, I think we all have pretty fond memories of specials that we watch every year over and over, that became tradition. We thought how great would it be to do that with LEGO Star Wars.”…
This Life Day feast is a cornucopia packed with STAR WARS news, film updates, and tons of laughs. Sitting at the head of the table is our own Puppet Lando, who brings us holiday cheer with the world premiere of his latest tune “Have Yourself A Happy Little Life Day”. We look back at the STAR WARS HOLIDAY SPECIAL and look forward to the upcoming documentary “A Disturbance In The Force”, debuting next month. Plus, production updates from THE MANDALORIAN, STAR WARS: SKELETON CREW, Taika Waiti’s film, STAR WARS in Pop Culture and much more!
Lucasfilm launches a new product program that will reveal and highlight the best items from the galaxy far, far away.
Have a Star Wars fan in your life? These are the holiday gifts you’re looking for.
Today Lucasfilm announced “Gift the Galaxy,” a 10-week celebration revealing and highlighting Star Wars toys, apparel, and more, helping fans find a gift for everyone on their list. Or if you’re a fan, maybe you’ll find something new for your own wishlist! Just visit StarWars.com/GiftTheGalaxy every Tuesday through December 19 to see the latest products featured and join the conversation on social media using #GiftTheGalaxy and #StarWars.
See below for some of our favorite items from the launch of Gift the Galaxy, and happy (bounty) hunting!…
Without a doubt, this is the most toe-curling, embarrassing bit of TV ever created. It’s no secret that if he could, George Lucas would find and destroy every last copy making sure it is never seen again.
But, as we know, that is an impossible task and so I present it here for you now, to cringe along to. Back in 1978 I so desperately wanted to see this but couldn’t because of my geographical location (UK). Seems I was lucky, I guess.
The following interviews were originally printed in a double issue of Filmfax magazine #69/70 from 1998.
Ralph McQuarrie, Conceptual Illustrations
The “Star Wars Holiday Special” benefitted immeasurably from Ralph McQuarrie’s concepts for the Wookiee planet. One of today’s foremost space illustrators, McQuarrie was crucial in designing the look of Star Wars. He subsequently worked on The Empire Strikes Back in concert with “The Star Wars Holiday Special”. Joe Johnston, another of Lucasfilm’s prominent designers, storyboarded several scenes for the show, none of which were used. Ultimately, Johnston’s only contribution was establishing the scale of the new Wookiee characters and various elements of Boba Fett’s uniform.
FAX: What do you remember about “The Star Wars Holiday Special”?
McQUARRIE: [Joe Johnston and I] had worked out some stuff for the Wookiee planet for The Empire Strikes Back. I was drawing this forest with the mile-high trees and was deciding what the Wookiees’ tree houses should be. We then segued into the Christmas special through that.
FAX: Could you talk about the house’s interior?
McQUARRIE: I wound up with something that looks fairly earth-like. I invented those clay oven stoves and I experimented with all kinds of stuff. Frankly. I never saw the Christmas special so I don’t know exactly what they did with it. I did see a couple of stills and it looked like they had some of my ideas in there.
FAX: Why did the clay oven have futuristic tubing protruding from it?
McQUARRIE: I was thinking about a high-tech circulation system that used parts of old space craft. Half of the stuff on there wouldn’t work but the Wookiees adapted these old parts to their heating and ventilation systems.
FAX: Did the Wookiee technology come from their exposure to imperialism like many third world countries on Earth?
McQUARRIE: You would have to ask George about that. My feeling was that they had plenty of skills. They were kind of like Jawas in this sense. They collected space junk and things that were left over from wars that went by. The Empire would come through, build a base, and abandon it, and the Wookiees would go in and ransack the place for usable parts.
FAX: That’s reminiscent of your rendering of Tusken Raiders salvaging parts from a crashed space ship.
McQUARRIE: Yes. All those cultures on the fringe would be using this leftover hardware.
FAX: Did you design any life forms for Kashyyyk?
McQUARRIE: Well we were working with a caravan of animals. There was a big beast of burden on the Wookiee planet that was sort of elephant-like. I designed that for when the Wookiee planet was going to be in one of the films, not for the special.
FAX: How closely did you work with George Lucas?
McQUARRIE: I only had one meeting with him and the show’s producers and we just had a general conversation.
FAX: Were you given a lot of creative freedom?
McQUARRIE: Right. George just let me go ahead and do what I do. I gave him those sketches and he said: “I like this and I like that.” Usually when he says he likes something. it will get into the show if possible.
FAX: I understand that Lucas didn’t give the show very much attention.
McQUARRIE: Right. I know he wasn’t happy with it.
FAX: Many fans were glad to see the Wookiee planet.
McQUARRIE: Yes. I thought the Wookiee planet idea was terrific and it would have been great if it had gotten into one of the films [this interview was taken before Kashyyyk’s return in Episode III].
The following interviews were originally printed in a double issue of Filmfax magazine #69/70 from 1998.
Although the “Star Wars Holiday Special” aired only once 30 years ago, it is well remembered by Star Wars fans because it expanded the Star Wars universe: Boba Fett was introduced for the first time, and the Wookiee planet of Kashyyyk, originally conceived for the Star Wars films, was introduced, as was Chewbacca’s family. Star Wars fans were ambivalent about the show’s vaudevillian take on George Lucas’s universe. However, the involvement of Lucasfilm veterans did give it some legitimacy: Star Wars illustrator Ralph McQuarrie designed the Wookiee planet. Ben Burtt provided new sound effects, and Lucasfilm liaison Miki Herman made sure the special remained consistent with George Lucas’s Star Wars mythology. The following interviews reveal the fascinating and sometimes tempestuous story behind the making of the show.
None of the former-production staff remembers how the special came about but co-executive producer Gary Smith of Smith-Hemion Productions (The Emmy Award, The People’s Choice Awards, The Tony Awards) believes that 20th Century Fox came up with the idea. “I have a feeling that 20th Century Fox was the instigator. In typical television style they probably said, ‘Let’s sell a Christmas special promoting Star Wars and we think Smith-Hemion Productions are the right people to do it. So we met with George and played around with several concepts.” Although the original script was a collaborative effort between George Lucas and Smith-Hemion Productions, the final draft was written without Lucas’s involvement.
The first draft of The “Star Wars Holiday Special” was written by Lenny Ripps and his then-partner Pat Proft, with input from George Lucas. The final script was turned over to producers Ken & Mitzie Welch, who made significant changes to it. Both Ripps and Proft have since worked on highly successful projects. After many successful years of writing for stand-up comics such as Joan Rivers, Rodney Dangerfield and David Steinberg, Ripps worked on Tim Burton’s featurette Frankenweenie and contributed to The Flintstones and Casper. Proft went on to collaborate with Zucker, Abrahams & Zucker on the Police Squad TV series and the Naked Gun films.
FAX: How did you become involved in the “Holiday Special”?
RIPPS: Lucasfilm came to 20th Century-Fox, and they came to Smith-Hemion Productions because of their reputation for doing high quality TV specials. Pat Proft and I had worked for Smith-Hemion. We were chosen for this project because of our work on Captain & Tenniel, which combined comedy and music.
FAX: Did Lucasfilm present you with a story?
RIPPS: Yes. Pat and I spent a day with George Lucas in which he took a piece of paper and said “How long is a TV movie?” He put that number down and said “Now let’s write what we’re going to do every minute.’ It was the only day of my life that I forgot to have lunch!
At that time I was a 310 pound man who didn’t think about food for the entire day! Now I’m a couple hundred pounds lighter but, at that time. I was an eating machine who forgot to eat. It was fascinating! He had a vision of what it was going to be. The original director was a protegé of his. I don’t know why he got replaced. He was a good guy, a good director, but the vision changed. It became more a musical comedy.
FAX: What was George Lucas’s original vision?
RIPPS: I think he wanted to make a sweet and sentimental vision of a holiday season and I think it evolved into something maudlin which was not what I thought his vision was. Now I don’t mean to speak for him, but my inclination was that it got kind of sappy.
FAX: It was an eclectic combination of elements: drama. space fantasy. and musical variety.
RIPPS: To me, it didn’t come together. The ideas were all right but I’m not sure that they belonged in the same room. What was interesting to me was that Lucas started talking about Star Wars as if it was a real world. He said things like “Well, you know Han Solo is married to a Wookiee. but we can’t say that.” Now that was 20 years ago [in 1998], so my memory may be wrong. [As outrageous as Ripps’s recollection sounds, there is evidence supporting it. Pat Proft corroborates it and an early draft of the Star Wars script (January 28, 1975) has Han Solo living with a furry female creature who he kisses. Proft also remembers learning that Han was raised by Wookiees, which is verified on pages 46 & 131 of Laurent Bouzereau’s Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays.]
This was a world that the audience only knew a little bit about. It was like he was showing pieces of history; however, he knew the whole world, a world that we may never know. It was almost like he had discovered the Sphinx and was only showing parts of it, but he had it all.
He creates not just biography but history and context. It was remarkable. I hope that, as a writer, I learned from that. When you look at a character it’s not just who they are on the page but who they were before you created them. He was one of the most interesting people that I ever spent any time with because he had so much focus and passion. I subsequently re-wrote a movie for Steven Spielberg [Casper] and spent a day with him, and he was the same way: passionate and focused. He knew what it was about even though it wasn’t done yet. By the same token, however, both men were totally open to ideas. There was no egotism at all.
FAX: After the meeting ended, how did work progress?
RIPPS: We went off and did an outline based on his notes, and then it was approved. We did not see him subsequently. Pal and I did not do the final re-write. People were brought in who did a lot more of the variety writing. It changed, in terms of style, from what we wrote.
FAX: Did George Lucas’s basic story stay the same? Was it always about Chewie trying to get home for in time for Life Day?
RIPPS: That was the story. It was a re-interpretation of Thanksgiving: home, family, and tradition. I viewed it as a Thanksgiving movie in a stellar context. I felt it became less cinematic and more television. It was George Lucas’s story but not necessarily his vision.
FAX: One of the more interesting aspects about the “Holiday Special” was the lack of violence.
RIPPS: I remember that we were talking about prime time television for families. You have to remember that this was a long time ago when what was violent then would be considered a cartoon now. I know that we were careful not to show violence.
FAX: Was it a challenge writing a Star Wars script with minimal violence?
RIPPS: In the context of a holiday special, it was not hard to accommodate. Even though there was no violence, there should have been more tension. I think it could have been more dramatic without being melodramatic.
Smith & Hemion are terrific producers with real integrity. My inclination — and I could be wrong — was that their vision was not the same as Lucas’s. Everybody involved had great respect for the film because it was more than a movie: it was almost literature. This was a newly-minted icon and maybe we had too much reverence for it. It’s always a problem when you’re trying to interpret somebody else’s vision.
FAX: What was your favorite part of the special?
RIPPS: Obviously the high point was working with Lucas. He was one of the most interesting people that I ever spent any time with.
[After this interview was conducted, Ripps had a chance to watch the special for the first time in decades. He described it as “sweet” but added “I don’t think it was George Lucas’s vision. That’s pretty clear because he doesn’t even want to talk about it.”]
This is my greatest challenge yet. A video of pure celebration of one of the most highly criticized Star Wars stories ever created. Here is everything that I think is great about the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special!
Welcome to the RFR Star Wars Holiday Office Party! Everyone is welcome. The gifts are under the tree, food is on the table and the eggnog is definitely spiked. Kitster’s got a lamp shade on his head and RFR listeners are the guests of honor. We’re featuring your voice messages with opinions from everything to ANDOR to KENOBI to BOBA FETT and beyond. You tell us your top STAR WARS moments in 2022, reveal some predictions for 2023, and provide us with plenty of great topics for conversation. Star Wars in Pop Culture returns with clips from “Grey’s Anatomy”,” Somebody Feed Phil”, “Mythic Quest’, ‘Phineas and Ferb”, even England’s new Prime Minister checks in!. And what happens when STAR WARS comes up while you’re in the dentist chair? Listen to find out!
AUDIO PODCAST! We gave you the scoop, and now we have confirmation the first F-bomb in STAR WARS was included in the ANDOR season finale prior to editing. More fallout from ANDOR as Tony Gilroy recently talked to the media about the final 3 episodes of season one and we have all the highlights. From Saw Guerrera and the birth of the rebellion to Luthen’s gallery and “lightsaber”, we review Gilroy’s insight, motivation and inspiration. We look at new info about STAR WARS in 2023, including THE MANDALORIAN, AHSOKA, and THE ACOLYTE. Bob Iger is back, and we bring you the WORLD PREMIERE of the all-new song from Puppet Lando, “Hello, What Have We Here”.
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Official YouTube Video Home for Rebel Force Radio: Star Wars Podcast
AUDIO PODCAST! Celebrating 44 years of the STAR WARS HOLIDAY SPECIAL! Presented on CBS one-time-only on November 17, 1978, this show has become legendary & infamous among STAR WARS fans. We share our memories of the show with Steven Kozak, producer of the upcoming documentary “A Disturbance in The Force”, who joins us to share some interesting and hilarious Holiday Special info. Plus, we’re looking forward to the season finale of ANDOR with rumors and speculation about what we might see (and hear).
As someone always on the lookout for rare old Star Wars photos, I was pleased to discover Forbes.com’s Geek Beat columnist David M. Ewalt had unearthed a cool old gem from the vaguely-documented “Star Wars Holiday Special” of 1978, which we actually lent a bit of coverage to a couple years ago.
While researching a couple of those pieces, I came across a rare Associated Press image of Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher in photocopied articles from 1978, but couldn’t locate the original in Lucasfilm’s expansive Image Archives (apparently, wire photos were not automatically sent to LFL for approval and/or cataloging). Enter Ewalt’s Geek Beat column, which appears to have located the original shot of Ford and Fisher in a rare backstage moment captured by AP photographer George Brich.
Ah, to be a fly on the wall to hear what Ford is sharing with Fisher before their next Holiday Special take…
