A Christmas Story

by Caseen Gaines

  “The whole movie is Bob, really, if you think about it,” Petrella says. “It was his dream. It was his Red Ryder. It’s Jean’s story, but it’s Bob’s film. Every ounce of that man was put into this film. I never got the chance to ask him [his thoughts on the film] and that’s the sad part. There are lots of people from this film that I never got the chance to ask those sorts of questions, and I never will. They were all taken from us.”

  The sequel moved forward with no one from the original film involved, despite Petrella’s best efforts. Daniel Stern, who co-starred in Home Alone, was cast as the Old Man. While his recognizable name and face were associated with the film, which no doubt provided the perception of a small life preserver on what appeared to be a ship destined to sink, the rest of the cast was rounded out with virtual unknowns.

  When the trailer appeared for A Christmas Story 2, which Warner Bros. dubbed as the “official sequel” in an attempt to steal that distinction back from My Summer Story, fans collectively lost their minds. Bloggers from all corners of the web took to their keyboards to express not only their displeasure but also their deep-seated hatred for those responsible.

  In a post about the film, the website IWatchStuff posted the following: “With little regard toward shooting our nostalgia out, Warner has decided that the film they’ve dubbed ‘the most beloved Christmas story of all time’ is in need of an instantly less-beloved straight-to-video sequel.” Other citizen-journalists were less kind.

  Russ Fischer of SlashFilm said, “I’m trying to come up with anything substantial to say about that trailer, but for the most part it is just sad.”

  MSN.com reported, “That the thoughtful classic would be tied to this blatant rip-off is making YouTube commenters see red, and clearly the producers had their eyes only on the green.”

  Dave Trumbore of Collider wrote, “In the true spirit of the holiday, A Christmas Story 2 seeks to feed off of the nostalgia for the original film like a parasite and trick you into wasting your hard-earned money. Season’s greetings!”

  Rollin Bishop from Geek-O-System stated, “If you’ve ever wanted to convince someone that there really are vile people out there looking to mine childhood nostalgia for golden nuggets of currency, might we humbly suggest that you point them to this trailer for A Christmas Story 2.”

  Alicia Lutes of Hollywood.com said, “Cult-like holiday classic and my mother’s all-time favorite film, A Christmas Story has a sequel. ‘At long last!’ screamed nobody. ‘You’re welcome,’ said Hollywood.”

  Among the actors in the original film, the reactions to the trailer were decisively more mixed.

  “I was left with the feeling that it is such a tragedy that Bob did not live long enough to [make this film],” Tedde Moore says. “It probably would have had a story somewhat like the one we now seem to have, but I can see from the few frames that are in the trailer that it does not have the same loving touch. The key is always love. Not ‘like’ or ‘be like’ but love, as in caring and understanding. It is very hard to judge from a trailer, but I was just left with the feeling of missing Bob. We’ll see how the audience feels! They are the arbiters.”

  “They seem to have done a good job capturing the style and period of the film,” Ian Petrella says. “It seems like they kept with the idea of Mad Magazine meets Norman Rockwell, like the first one.”

  “My initial response to the trailer is that is feels stiff and forced,” Zack Ward admits. “Not to be unkind to the actors, but it looks like they’re trying to fill other people’s shoes and it’s not a comfortable fit. The original was politically incorrect in so many ways: kids getting bullied and fighting, ‘mocking’ the Chinese, saying ‘fudge’ when we all know he said ‘fuck,’ the father being a hard ass. You can’t do those things in PG-rated films anymore without pissing off some parental group, so the script has to be ‘sanitized for our protection’ and it takes away all the natural flavors that make it feel real to us. Just my thoughts from the trailer,” he added. “I could be wrong.”

  The scene from one of the Christmas Story conventions © Tyler Schwartz

  Some believe that whether or not A Christmas Story 2 is actually any good is beside the point. In the last decade, fans have been inundated with their favorite film, but has it all become too much? Is the film still growing in popularity, or have the stage adaptations, the endless deluge of merchandise, the unwanted sequels, and that little tourist attraction in the heart of Cleveland helped the movie jump the shark?

  “A Christmas Story is probably at saturation point,” says Tyler Schwartz. “It’s not going to get any bigger. In fact, it might be slightly on the decline. These things go in cycles.”

  “I actually thought that once we had the twentieth anniversary, it was done,” Ian Petrella says. “I thought once they started merchandising it, it was done. Once you start shoving it down people’s throats, it’s done. But it sort of seemed like it just gained steam. I don’t think that this movie is ever really going to die in everybody’s hearts. It’s always going to be there. There may be a time when people aren’t going to want to go to the house or buy leg lamps, that’s probably all going to go away. This isn’t a merchandise film, but I think because this is a movie that everyone basically discovered on their own on cable and VHS, it’s going to live on in their hearts. And that’s what matters. That’s what’s important.”

  © David Monseur

  As Fred Fox Jr., the writer of the shark-jumping episode of Happy Days noted in 2010, people still love Happy Days, even though it inadvertently inspired a phrase that has become synonymous with the demise of a successful franchise. Likewise, it seems unlikely that anything will take away the sentimentality one feels when Ralphie Parker discovers his Red Ryder BB gun on Christmas morning. Parents will still sit down with their children and laugh when Flick gets stuck to the flagpole, and will still consider asking them to eat “like the little piggies” when they become disagreeable at the dinner table. Even if the blogosphere continues to cite A Christmas Story 2 as the worst sequel in the history of film, and they very well may, it won’t diminish the joy millions of people worldwide have for what is considered by many to be the best holiday film of all time.

  “There are a gazillion movies that are made every decade, but how many of them stick on the wall?” Scott Schwartz asks. “There’s just not many on that list, and fortunately enough, I’m a small part of one that stuck. We’re going on thirty years and it’s not slowing down; it just keeps going.”

  Like Rudolph, Ebenezer Scrooge, and the jolly fat man himself, A Christmas Story is likely to remain a staple of the holiday season for decades to come. It doesn’t take much internet searching to find pictures of men and women dressed up like Ralphie in his bunny suit pajamas or a giant leg lamp for Halloween. The Christmas Story House and Museum continue to attract fans from across North America, and its founder Brian Jones has even become a pseudo-celebrity in his own right, having appeared in a special for the TV Guide Network about the film and a Best Buy commercial in 2012. A Christmas Story consistently averages sales of over 100,000 DVD and Blu-ray copies a week during the holiday season, while even the much disparaged “official sequel” averaged 50,000 copies in its first two weeks of release. A Christmas Story, the Musical! grossed over $5 million during its Broadway run, outperforming much anticipated musical revivals of Annie and Elf throughout the holiday season. As mentioned earlier, the musical also shattered box office records at the Broadway theater where it ran. In the week leading up to Christmas 2012, the show grossed almost $1.5 million, an improvement over the stage adaptation of The Addams Family, which earned just over $1.4 million over the last week of December in 2011. One week later — the final one of its run — the musical broke its own record, earning over $1.5 million.

  A Christmas Story, the Musical! © Carol Rosegg

  In recent years, A Christmas Story has been cit
ed as the best Christmas movie of all time by AOL, IGN, Moviefone, Hollywood.com, and FilmCritic.com, which certainly isn’t bad for a film that wasn’t a critical darling during its original run in the theaters and failed to make a strong impression at the box office. The Broadway run of the musical was nominated in three categories at the 2013 Tony Awards, including the prestigious Best Musical honor. The annual marathon continues to grow in the ratings with each passing year, with as many as 54.4 million viewers tuning in at any given point between Christmas Eve and the following day.

  On December 19, 2012, when the movie was inducted into the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry, it was called one of the “important cultural, artistic, and historic achievements in filmmaking.”

  But what has made A Christmas Story so culturally important?

  “Everybody’s pretty much connected [to the film] in the same way,” Ian Petrella says. “I probably hear this a lot more from people who are in the Midwest and the East Coast, but people come up to me all the time and say, ‘That was my childhood growing up.’”

  “It’s a humble movie,” Scott Schwartz says. “It’s a relationship movie. It’s a heartwarming movie. It’s something that Grandma and Grandpa remember because they were alive in the ’30s and ’40s. Everybody has got that one specific item they remember as a kid that they wanted to get for Christmas.”

  In developing the script for the original film, Jean Shepherd certainly recognized that the movie’s plot and vignettes would resonate with people young and old alike. He believed it was a reflection of the power of Christmas-time more than about the characters. “Something touches Americans, something deep in his bellybutton, around Christmas,” he said in 1997. “He can’t really explain what it is about Christmas that he enjoys so much, he just knows that when those red and green lights go up around the street, and you see Santa Clauses walking around with their bells, that something happens to you. You enjoy it. Now, you can be cynical all you want, but you still enjoy it.”

  However, others credit the film’s seemingly unending popularity not to its holiday narrative, but rather the brilliance of Bob Clark and Jean Shepherd: “It happens to be over the holidays, but so many of the moments — trying to cook a turkey, trying to deal with school, daring your friends to do something that they shouldn’t be doing — it’s just all those things and they become such heightened things when you’re a kid,” Peter Billingsley said. “It’s just so relatable.”

  “The poet Ralph Waldo Emerson said that ‘What is genius is true for all men,’” Tedde Moore says. “These events that Brian Jones puts on at the house, the disparate lineup of people who would turn up, to me, was astonishing. There were white trash people there, there were people dripping jewels, there were funky people, there were bikers, there were teachers, of course, tons of teachers. It was just right across the spectrum, and they’d all stand there together in this lineup just to talk to us about the film. And it has no boundaries, this film. It is true for all men.”

  In the late 1990s, Bob Clark sat in a New Hampshire diner and overheard the lines from his most popular film being delivered by a family of four a few booths over. The owner, noticing Clark’s diverted attention, came over to explain the situation.

  “They come here every year two days before Christmas and they act out A Christmas Story,” he said. The director sat there, listening to the mother, father, and their two kids move from scene to scene with the attention to detail of a court stenographer. “They did all the small parts,” he recalled. “It was astonishing!”

  And at that moment, he knew his film was true to all men, and that it would forever be remembered as a classic.

  © MGM/UA Entertainment / Photofest

  NOTES

  In the first chapter, the framing story about Bob Clark’s drive to pick up his date was told in Deren Abram’s 2009 documentary Clarkworld as well as the audio commentary on the Christmas Story twentieth anniversary DVD. The bulk of Jean Shepherd’s biographical information in this chapter, along with all of his quotes, comes from Eugene B. Bergmann’s book Excelsior, You Fathead! The Art and Enigma of Jean Shepherd (Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, 2004). Additional information about Shepherd’s life comes from Hammond, Indiana’s tribute video to him and the film, located on YouTube (www.youtube.com/watch?v=fa2NnxhhzYE). Jerry Seinfeld’s quotes come from the January 23, 2012, presentation at the Paley Center in New York entitled, Remembering Master Storyteller, Jean Shepherd: With Jerry Seinfeld. The bulk of the biographical information about Clark comes from the Clarkworld documentary, the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), or from The Terror Trap (www.terrortrap.com). The information about the real Flick and Miss Shields comes from Mark Kiesling in the Northwest Indiana Times on December 24, 2006: “Cleveland Stole Our ‘Christmas Story.’” The director’s quote about Porky’s, as well as the bulk of the production information about A Christmas Story, comes from the film’s production notes that were released in 1983. Clark’s comments about being a “bonded slave,” as well as the financial information regarding his agreement with the studio, is from a Toronto Star article from March 6, 1983: “Porky’s Director ‘A Bonded Slave.’” Additional information and quotes were provided by Tedde Moore, Ian Petrella, Scott Schwartz, and Zack Ward.

  The second chapter is primarily based on conversations with Patty Johnson and Ian Petrella. The background information about Higbee’s is from the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History (which can be found at http://ech.cwru.edu/). Additional information about the construction and design of Mount Olympus comes from the film’s 1983 production notes. Drew Hocevar’s quotes come from the Times of Northwest Indiana’s December 28, 2008 article, “Teachers Recall Roles in ‘A Christmas Story.’”

  Chapter three is primarily based on conversations with Tedde Moore, Scott Schwartz, Tyler Schwartz, and Carl Zittrer. 40’s quote is from Dalton Higgins’ Far From Over: The Music and Life of Drake (ECW Press, 2012). All of the quotes from the children at Victoria Public School, as well as some of the details about the shoot and the movie screening, come from the following articles for the St. Catharines Standard written by Brian Collins in 1983: “City School Show Biz Hot Spot” (January 8, 1983), “Green Winter Stops Cameras” (February 2, 1983), “Students Learn Reality of Acting as Classroom Becomes Film Set” (February 2, 1983), “Snow Brings Film Crew Back” (February 7, 1983), “It’s Fade-out Time at Local School” (February 8, 1983). Additional information about the St. Catharines screening comes from Kevin McMahon’s article, “Students Chance to See Themselves on Screen” from the St. Catharines Standard (November 19, 1983). The information about the production of the fake snow comes from the film’s production notes. R.D. Robb’s and Peter Billingsley’s quotes come from the special features on the Christmas Story twentieth anniversary DVD release.

  The fourth chapter is primarily based on the author’s conversations with Paul Hubbard, Tedde Moore, Ian Petrella, and Tyler Schwartz. Bob Clark’s and Peter Billingsley’s quotes once again come from the twentieth anniversary DVD audio commentary. The information about the creation of the leg lamp comes from the Christmas Story House website (www.achristmastoryhouse.com). Additional information about the leg lamp, as well as Reuben Freed’s quote, comes from Cleveland Magazine’s August 2009 article, “The Leg Lamp,” written by Kathleen Corlett.

  The fifth chapter is primarily based on the author’s conversations with Yano Anaya, Patty Johnson, Brian Jones, Tedde Moore, Ian Petrella, Scott Schwartz, Tyler Schwartz, and Zack Ward. The box office information comes from Box Office Mojo (www.boxofficemojo.com). Bob Clark’s and R.D. Robb’s quotes come from the twentieth anniversary DVD. Peter Billingsley’s quote comes from an interview with the actor and Will Harris at www.bullz-eye.com. The quote from Lisa Mateas comes from Sean Callahan’s article, “Jean Shepherd’s Hammond Holiday Tale Finds a Loyal Following,” published on December 24, 1997, in the Chicago Daily Southtown. The review from Cinema Canada i
s from an article by John Harkness published in their January 1984 issue. Information about the merger between MGM, Ted Turner, and Warner Bros. comes from “Time Warner Closes Deal for Turner” by Jeff Pelline for the San Francisco Chronicle on September 23, 1995. Information about the film’s television airings comes from television listings in the Orlando Sentinel and “‘Christmas Story’ Still a Hit with Cable Viewers” by Kimberly Nordyke for Reuters on December 31, 2007. Yano Anaya’s quote about the cast being like brothers comes from an interview with Ron Scalzo for Trip City (www.welcometotripcity.com). Additional information about the renovations of the Christmas Story House comes from the attraction’s website (www.achristmasstoryhouse.com).

  Chapter six comes primarily from the author’s conversations with Brian Jones and Tyler Schwartz. Those interested in finding out more about Tyler’s journey should check out his film Road Trip for Ralphie, which is available at www.retrofestive.ca. The information about Ken Goch comes from the Christmas Story House website.

  The seventh chapter is mostly based on the author’s conversations with Brian Jones and Ian Petrella. The biographical information about Petrella comes from IMDb. The story about the house tenant disposing of drugs comes from an article published on December 1, 1995, in the Cleveland Free Times by James Renner entitled, “A Cleveland Story.”

  The eighth chapter comes from conversations with Yano Anaya, Ian Petrella, and Scott Schwartz, but the bulk of it comes from Zack Ward, with the assistance at times from his attorney Randall S. Newman. Yano Anaya’s quote comes from the TV Guide Network special, “The Cast of A Christmas Story: Where Are They Now,” which originally aired on November 26, 2012. Some information about the NECA lawsuit, and all the information about the Warner Bros. suit, comes from publicly released court documents. Additional information comes from Eriq Gardner’s article in The Hollywood Reporter: “‘A Christmas Story’ Bully Fights for His Image in Court.” Kent Raygor’s last statement comes from Mark Greenblatt’s “Zach [sic] Ward: Bully from A Christmas Story Sues, Says He Was Bullied in Real Life,” which was published by ABC News on December 22, 2012.