A Christmas Story: Behind the Scenes of a Holiday Classic Read online

  A

  CHRISTMAS

  Story

  BEHIND THE SCENES OF

  A HOLIDAY CLASSIC

  CASEEN GAINES

  ECW PRESS

  Foreword: My Christmas Story

  Foreword: Christmas Revisited

  Introduction

  1 | The Ten-Year Itch

  2 | Atop Mighty Mount Olympus

  3 | St. Catharines and the No-Show Snow

  4 | Indiana, Canada

  5 | Reconstructing Christmas

  6 | Explorers Road Trip for Ralphie

  7 | This Little Piggy Came Home

  8 | Zack the Bully, Toady, and Nameless Victim

  9 | Applauding the Geniuses on Cleveland Street

  10 | The Shark and the Real Turkey

  Notes

  Acknowledgments

  For my grandparents, because it’s impossible to think of Christmas without thinking about you

  My guess is that either nobody will go to see it or millions of people will go to see it because it will catch on. It’s the kind of movie that everyone can identify with.

  — Roger Ebert —

  1983

  My Christmas Story

  by Wil Wheaton

  In 1983, all I wanted for Christmas was a slot car track called U.S. 1 Fire Alert! Electric Trucking. It had roads that snaked around buildings, trucks you could load and unload, and this fire truck that had flashing lights and a real fire bell. Whenever my parents took me to the mall, I waited in line as patiently as an eleven-year-old could for Santa (who I knew wasn’t the real Santa, but was actually one of his helpers) so I could make sure the big man knew exactly what I wanted. I wrote letters weekly, leaving nothing to chance.

  On Christmas morning, my brother, sister, and I woke up with the dawn, jumped on our parents’ bed until they woke up, assembled in our hallway, and held hands. Our father walked out into the living room and announced, “It looks like Santa came last night!” We held hands a little tighter, and tried our best to be still. Our mother assured herself that our eyes were closed, opened the hallway door, and led us into the living room.

  When my mother gave the signal, I opened my eyes, and there it was: U.S. 1 Fire Alert! Electric Trucking. I squealed with joy, jumped as high as I could, and ran across the room, power sliding in my footie pajamas like a baseball player trying to make a suicide squeeze play. It was already assembled and ready to go. I grabbed a controller and began driving my trucks around while my siblings opened their gifts and our parents beamed.

  I can remember that moment today, thirty years later, as clearly as if I were in the living room in that house right now. I can hear Bing Crosby singing “White Christmas” on the radio, and I can feel the rough gold shag carpeting beneath me as I drove my trucks and the fire engine — with its ringing bell and flashing red lights — around and around.

  Coincidentally, A Christmas Story was also released in 1983. I didn’t know that it would become a classic film, but I knew that it was going to be a great film, because I had auditioned for the part of Ralphie the year before. I was just ten years old at the time, but it made me laugh in all the right places, and it told a story that I could relate to in more ways than I could articulate. I auditioned a lot back then, and I hardly ever read entire scripts, but once I started reading A Christmas Story, I couldn’t put it down. I didn’t book the job (can you imagine anyone other than Peter Billingsley as Ralphie?), but just as I can recall with photographic clarity that Christmas morning in 1983, I can also recall the callback I had for the movie.

  The auditions were held on a cold, rainy day in spring, at a casting office in Venice, California. I saw the same kids that I always saw on auditions: Sean Astin, Keith Coogan, this kid named “Scooter” who had a weird mom, and Peter Billingsley, who was very well known at the time, because he was Messy Marvin in commercials for Hershey’s chocolate syrup. I sort of knew Peter, because we’d been on so many auditions together, but I was always a little starstruck when I saw him. That day, we talked about Tron and The Dark Crystal, and the video games we were playing at the time. We were too young to feel competitive, and I was just happy to know so many of the kids in this cold, damp waiting room with even colder metal folding chairs, concrete floors, and bright blue walls.

  The scenes we read were the one where Ralphie is telling Santa what he wants and panics, the one where Ralphie is decoding the Little Orphan Annie message, and the one where he thinks he shot his eye out. I remember how I felt like I was getting away with murder by saying “son of a bitch” in front of a whole room of adults.

  I remember that my dad took me on the audition, and helped me learn my lines. I can still see my dad, in all his permed, mustached, corduroy-pantsed 1982 glory, helping me understand how badly Ralphie wanted that BB gun, not knowing that one year later I would know exactly how Ralphie’s BB gun mania felt, when I experienced my own slot car mania. It’s a really happy memory, because my dad and I didn’t do too many things together when I was a kid, and I always loved it when he’d take me on an audition.

  From VHS to DVD, long before it joined The Twilight Zone as a must-watch television marathon event, A Christmas Story became The Christmas Story. And it’s easy to see why. Jean Shepherd’s narration and dialog is as timeless as his characters are relatable. How many of our fathers also worked in profanity the way other artists worked in oils or clay? Peter just is Ralphie. That sweet, guileless kid who you can’t help but like? That’s who he was in all the waiting rooms in all the auditions I ever saw him in when we were kids. That fast-talking wiseass whose mouth writes checks his body can’t cash? Scotty Schwartz is still that guy; it’s no wonder he was the perfect Flick. And it’s no wonder that A Christmas Story is not just The Christmas story for me. It’s The Christmas story for a generation.

  In fact, maybe it’s better to call it Our Christmas Story, because it’s a gift from Bob Clark and Jean Shepherd that we get to open up year after year after year, and it never disappoints.

  Merry Christmas. I hope it’s a good one.

  And don’t shoot your eye out.

  Wil Wheaton is an actor (The Big Bang Theory, Stand By Me, Eureka, The Guild), writer (Just a Geek, The Happiest Days of Our Lives, Memories of the Future), and producer (Tabletop). He lives in Los Angeles, blogs at wilwheaton.net, and is on Twitter @wilw.

  Christmas Revisited:

  Minor Disasters and Happy Endings

  by Eugene B. Bergmann

  A Christmas Story is not only the funniest, but the most witty, most clever, and most satisfying film you’re ever likely to see for twenty-four hours straight starting Christmas Eve.

  Over 50 million people watch at least parts of it every year as it’s shown on cable television, and some families, in their Christmas passion, have memorized the dialogue and the narration, repeating them along with the film. Yet most of the viewers undoubtedly don’t know much about the background of the film. If their ignorance is bliss, this book will improve their bliss by filling in a lot of background — and foreground.

  Focus for a moment on the creator of this masterpiece. Let’s begin A Christmas Story with its opening titles. Of course not enough people read film titles, but in this case it’s worth taking the trouble, because who created it and narrates it are of much relevance to what it’s all about. The vast majority of the film’s annual viewers probably don’t know who Jean Shepherd is,
despite the fact that prominent among the opening titles they could read Shepherd’s name four times: that this was a film “from the works of Jean Shepherd”; that Ralphie’s adult voice was none other than Shepherd; that the movie was based on Shepherd’s story collection, In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash; and that Shepherd cowrote the film script with his wife, Leigh Brown, along with the film’s director and co-producer, Bob Clark.

  Jean Shepherd, for all the humor and joy he expressed in his decades of nightly radio programs, also had a negative view of life — he called it “realistic” — and he definitely disliked nostalgia, even though it sometimes crept into his work, especially at the tail-end of a film such as A Christmas Story. Although Bob Clark once said that they worked hard to give a recognizable sense of what many people would remember from their past, he did not suggest that the film was meant to be an exercise in nostalgia. Clark called it “an odd combination of reality and spoof and satire.” That is not nostalgia.

  As to negativity and nostalgia, one has only to think about most of the film’s calamitous set pieces. Yet, because they are so funny, most people don’t realize that the funniness is inseparable from the bizarre outcome of so many incidents:

  Flick’s time at recess ends with his tongue getting painfully stuck to a metal pole.

  On the crate containing the Old Man’s major award leg lamp, a stenciled sign, poorly positioned on the lid, serves as a critique of the Old Man: missing the beginning letter T, it says, “HIS END UP.” Later, the symbol of the Old Man’s triumph is reduced to nothing but a pile of broken glass and plastic.

  When Ralphie says the “F” word while helping out his father, he blames his innocent friend Schwartz for teaching him the word (causing Schwartz’s undeserved pain and anguish), and, as punishment, Ralphie has a bar of Lifebuoy soap stuck in his mouth. Convinced he’ll go blind, he’ll at least enjoy making his parents feel guilty.

  Ralphie’s boundless joy at finally receiving his Little Orphan Annie decoder pin is deflated by “a crummy commercial.”

  Nasty Santa’s big black boot, descending toward Ralphie’s face, gives him a no-more-nonsense-out-of-you tap on his forehead, propelling him down the slide — not your usual image of jolly Ol’ St. Nick.

  Back home, when the lights go out as the father decorates the tree, narrator Shepherd comments: “The Old Man could replace fuses quicker than a jackrabbit on a date.” One need only remember what rabbits are famous for and imagine what jackrabbits would be doing on a date.

  The Bumpus hounds steal the Old Man’s greatly anticipated Christmas turkey. Shepherd, the narrator, prefaces the scene by giving us his humorous and ironic view of life in general: “Ah, life is like that. Sometimes at the height of our revelries, when our joy is at its zenith, when all is most right with the world, the most unthinkable disasters descend upon us.” It’s a funny line to precede what happens, but think about Shepherd’s statement seriously for a moment.

  On Christmas morning, surrounded by gifts under the tree, Ralphie’s kid brother, Randy, is overcome with the holiday spirit: “That’s mine! That’s mine! Oh boy, that’s mine!” As the narration puts it, both kids quiver with “unbridled avarice,” not the best way to celebrate the birth of Jesus. Regarding the pink bunny-pajama gift, our narrator gets to pull a little insider’s joke, commenting, “Aunt Clara had for years labored under the delusion that I was not only perpetually four years old, but also a girl.” (Shepherd’s best buddy, kids’ poet and cartoonist Shel Silverstein, wrote Johnny Cash’s “A Boy Named Sue” as a friendly poke in the ribs at Jean and his “girl’s name” — not the first time they’d kidded each other in public.) With unconscious sexual innuendo, Mom drops in Dad’s lap a wrapped bowling ball. He responds with a high-pitched castrati’s “Thanks a lot!”

  “Did you get everything you wanted?” the Old Man asks Ralphie, who says, “Oh, almost.” The dad responds with a bit of Shepherd-like truth: “Almost, huh? Well, that’s life.” But the Old Man has bought Ralphie a Red Ryder BB gun to make his life — at least for the moment — seemingly perfect. Ralphie, with loaded gun in hand, is the personification of “armed and dangerous.” He sets up a target in the backyard, and gets ready to shoot. The scheming kid has gotten his wish.

  And here comes a comment on our family entertainment. How many viewers notice that the support for the target is an advertising sign, maybe from some commercial emporium that had discarded it as useless? One has to look fast for a clue to the film’s ironic comment about nostalgia — that upended, sideways sign, in beautiful, old-fashioned, pure white script, in a fleeting reminder of the good old days, announces the soda’s brand simply: “Golden Age.” That discarded sign, of some resilient metal, propels the ultimate comeback to Ralphie’s first shot, ricocheting that BB at him so fast it almost shoots his eye out. Some day the kid might learn the worldly, savvy, adult adage “Be careful what you wish for.” Perhaps this is why Shepherd originally wanted to title the film Santa’s Revenge.

  Although Jean Shepherd’s philosophy tended to be that most things in life were going to end in disaster, in A Christmas Story he was able to present this in an acceptable form, disguising a negative undercurrent and making people laugh with his ever-present humor. After all, much laughter in life springs from a bit of ironic recognition of hard truths unexpectedly made manifest.

  Besides, the unpleasant stuff really isn’t so bad — in fact it’s mostly sort of unreal. For example, Scut Farkus is an overexaggerated caricature of a generic schoolyard bully, and he gets his comeuppance in the end. Losing the Christmas turkey gives the father the opportunity to save the day and also to bring the family together in the funny (politically incorrect) Chinese restaurant scene. The father, indeed, is somewhat unreal in a cliché, cartoony way, somehow rather simple-minded in his pleasures, obsessions, and disgruntlements, but he comes through in the end with the coveted BB gun — he’s got love and a heart as big as all indoors. All resentment between Father and Mother dissolves in the final scene of a picture-postcard, gently falling snow accompanied by Christmas tree lights. Humor, contentment, love. Who could ask for anything more? We love this movie because, in some important way, we believe in it.

  My family and I watch bits and pieces of the Christmas classic each year between other holiday activities, maybe once or twice sitting through the whole thing, knowing what comes next, enjoying it and laughing as if seeing it for the first time, right down to the film’s final scenes. Ralphie and kid brother each happily in bed with his favorite present, and the parents sharing an affectionate moment, scenes that might well have been mandated by the film studio: nobody wants to see a family movie about Christmas, our happiest season, end under an anti-nostalgic cloud. On our TV screen, left on for most of the day, A Christmas Story will start anew in a moment, almost endlessly, during that twenty-four hour orgy of delight, and it will be there next Christmas Eve again when we participate in our pleasurable ritual, our reaffirmation of our happy past and hopes for the future. We, my family along with millions of others, smile contentedly and laugh all over again — all is right with the world. That’s entertainment.

  No matter what else they accomplished creatively, Shepherd and Clark will forever be celebrated for this joint achievement — and Shepherd was proud of the film. In what may have been his last written piece, for The Age of Videography in 1996, without question referring to A Christmas Story, he wrote, “I must say big-screen movies beat them all. Sitting in a dark movie house, watching your work on the screen and hearing paying customers laugh is one of life’s great experiences.”

  Many of those familiar with Shepherd’s work believe that his stories, including those upon which the film is based, are at least somewhat autobiographical. Not so, he insisted — they are all fictional creations. The “true” elements in most of his works are but minor details demonstrating what life is like, rather than depictions of real events. In his stories, he often used
real names from his childhood, but this seems just a way to confuse and conflate fact and fiction for his own pleasure. His radio technique convinced many that all his stories and commentaries actually happened to him. He was undoubtedly the most skilled faker in the business.

  To repeat the irony that’s symptomatic of Jean Shepherd’s career, most people who love the film don’t even know who he is. Shepherd’s most ardent fans consider his decades of radio work to be his supreme achievement, and they also appreciate A Christmas Story as a worthy masterpiece — it not only comments with humor on human experience, but it is sublime, chock-full of life’s petty afflictions and heartwarming joys. Thankfully, Caseen Gaines’ book, while giving us the lowdown on the making of the film, and all that surrounds it, will also increase knowledge of that insufficiently recognized American genius, Jean Parker Shepherd.

  Eugene B. Bergmann’s book, Excelsior, You Fathead!: The Art and Enigma of Jean Shepherd, is a description and appreciation of Shepherd’s creative work. Bergmann’s transcriptions of dozens of Shepherd army stories can be found in his Shep’s Army: Bummers, Blisters, and Boondoggles. And covering all aspects of Shepherd’s life and work is Bergmann’s blog, http://shepquest.wordpress.com.

  Introduction

  My Google Maps app sent me down Rowley Avenue, a tiny side street in Cleveland that was the last turn before the main attraction — the house that had been completely gutted and lovingly restored to transport tourists back in time to 1983, when the location was used for the exterior shots of the Bob Clark film A Christmas Story. Before I realized my destination was in sight, a man with a bright yellow jacket rose deliberately, but slowly, out of his aluminum lawn chair, which was placed at the end of a large stretch of burnt grass in front of his house. He had angled himself so he could see the interested parties coming from blocks away. As his neon orange flag started waving aggressively in the air, I recognized that my attention was being sought.