Jingle Bell Grok: Blame Bea Arthur
Jingle Bell Grok: Blame Bea Arthur
Dec 24Alert Nerdian Jeff put out a call to our good pal Fake George Lucas for a contribution to our Jingle Bell Grok holiday feature. As always, we received a poorly-faxed note a short while later, sent from a Kinko’s in Marin County, CA. Our thanks to Fake George Lucas for his time and talent…okay, just the time.
I was fucking Bea Arthur.
There, I said it. The BIG SECRET is out. Gawd, you people! Vultures! Leeches! Dianogas!
And yet…and yet, it’s time for you to know this, o people, my people. You have wondered for so long–you have watched in confusion every holiday season on abruptly-terminated YouTube links and bootleg VHS dubs, you have discussed it in hushed tones at conventions and with your minister, you have written the Lumpy/Mala slashfic that has fueled many a lonely night at the Ranch.
Now, the truth can be told–in fact, it was just told. I just told you.
I made the Star Wars Holiday Special because I was fucking Bea Arthur.
Not “I was (fucking) Bea Arthur,” as if to suggest that I used to BE the actual Bea, and had some sort of aggressive (well, maybe not SO aggressive) surgery and hormone treatment to transform myself into the heaving hunk of manhood you now behold every time somebody gives Stevie Spielberg another goddamned award.
No, “fucking” is the operative word. It always is.
We met in early 1978, when I was first flush with my Star Wars money and on one of my frequent “sabbaticals” from my wife Marsha. I think she was probably boning her karate instructor at the time–or she would be soon, anyway.
I was living what I’d later term my “Lost Memorial Day Weekend,” in which I killed many of the brain cells I later could have used to transform the Episode I script from a steaming pile of fetid dog shit into a reasonably coherent film. Those days, I spent a lot of time at the Friars Club in LA, wearing an ascot and lounge jacket and slamming Harvey Wallbangers at 11 in the morning while Marty Allen tried to shove a bowl of beer nuts into my underpants.
Bea walked into the bar, a ray of dirty sunshine, the kind that barely makes it through your filthy windshield after a long road trip. It was love at third sight…maybe fourth. Love at seventh Harvey Wallbanger.
We kissed; we made love in the coat check; she whispered into my ear, “Let’s do this again sometime, sailor.”
“I’m not a sailor,” I replied. “I directed Star Wars.”
She grabbed my balls tight. This was not a love squeeze. This was ambition.
“Write me a role,” she growled into my ear. “Send me to space. Make me a toy.”
Six weeks later, two junkies masquerading as “producers” showed up at my office and asked me how I felt about doing something on CBS for the holidays.
“Sure,” I replied. “Write a part for Bea Arthur and you can take that duffel bag full of money. No, not that one. The one with the Happy Days logo stenciled on the side.”
Oddly enough, we only ever met in that coat room, more times than I could count, over just seven months. Our last time, she seemed distant; clearly, she had read the script. After shooting on the special, we never spoke again. The next thing I knew, I was being blamed for twenty minutes of Wookiee “dialogue” and Harvey Korman in drag.
Don’t blame me, people. Blame my groin, blame the Friars Club, blame the moon.
Most of all, blame Bea Arthur. If we’d never fucked, the Star Wars Holiday Special would never have come to be…and neither would Hayden Christensen. That’s a conversation I really need to have someday.
Holiday Toodles,
Fake George Lucas
A merry crimble to you all, and don’t forget our 2008 Grokin’ Around The X-Mas Tree compilation, available here. The perfect soundtrack to wrapping last-minute gifts, preparing holiday meals, or having your testicles squeezed by Bea Arthur. Ho ho ho!
