What Is The Big Deal About "A Christmas Story" (1983)?!?

Isn’t that one of the plots of A Summer Story? Along with the spinning-top battle?

 

YES...

 

A Summer Story...

 

If you haven't seen My Summer Story you should. It's decent enough and is directed by Bob and narrated by Jean. The Bumpus stuff in the movie is a little silly but other than that I enjoyed the movie.

 

A classic I still watch multiple times during the holiday season. My first viewing of the season is tonight . . .

 

Same with my wife and kids!

 

Thanks. I'll have to check out "My Summer Story". I don't think that's what I was thinking about though. If I'm remembering things correctly I would have seen it in the 70s. It was probably something along the lines of "The Phantom of the Open Hearth" An adaptation of Shepard stories made for PBS.

Chad

 

too bad we don't get a BD of A Summer Story here in the US!

 

YouTube has part 1 (6+ minutes) of the movie, but not part 2. Anyway, I enjoyed what I saw. It reminded me of my dad telling me about how they played marbles. The winner would take the marble of the loser. Apparently, like the tops, it was the entertainment of the day. I'd like to see the rest of the movie.

 

OP's befuddlement with the film notwithstanding, I'd have to say, it IS now a classic. There's the proprietary aspect of it, as TBS, cable's original 'Supestation", has unlimited access to it. If there was anything about Ti's A Wonderful Life that made it a classic in our culture, primarily it's the films' Public Domain status. Yeah, it's Capra, yeah it's sentimental, but most of all...it's been free to air for decades, and that's truly a "license to print money", as many have described a broadcast license from the FCC.

I suspect Turner has made A Christmas Story available without restriction to any and all of its' cable outlets, in hopes of burning this one into the brains of everyone within the range of a cable hookup. And other compaies probably get it at a more than reasonable rate.

The key, obviously, is the relatability, to a Boomer target demographic for whom this conjures up false memories of what it must have been like in their own small town, circa pre-Rock-&-Roll. These are white, pre-suburban, mid-to-lower-class kids and peers, exactly the makeup of what any ad agency would consider the ideal buying demographic and psychographic. No different than the nostalgic feel viewers first responded to when they got their debut look at Archie Bunker. And yes, I'm smack-dab in the middle of that wistful demographic, because nothing - NOTHING! - conjures up a whiff of "the, 'my home town' right before it became 'my home town'", more completely than Ralphie's world. THAT was Terre Haute Indiana back when all my grandparents were alive. Garfield Avenue looked like that; my dad shoveled coal at an apartment building part-time, right up the street; that could have been our grade school, pattered after so many of them built during the WPA years.

And it doesn't hurt that, I also have a false emotional connection with Jean Shepard. My uncle was GENE Shephard, and since he was laid-up with Cerebral Palsy since WWII, Christmastime was the only opportunity Uncle Gene had to get out of the Convalescent Home. They'd wheel him out to the van, and over to our house for our Christmas Eve family party. He loved his fried oysters, he loved posing for Polaroids with the family to take home with him, and he loved that his sister, my grams, could do everything she could to take care of him above and beyond what the VA could.

These were the Christmases of art-deco greeting cards, and trying to get The Messiah spiiffed-up for the Midnight Service, and the live trees my Dad would re-assemble like TinkerToys, drilling a hole up there, and sticking in a branch from down there...and Mom nearly causing a scandal because the only Christmas music she had was from Johnny Mathis and Nat King Cole. And surely all that happened right next door to little Ralphie, and that godawful lamp in their window, I'm sure of it.

The only way I can separate "those days" from "the days after I'd grown up", is that after I'd grown up, we had this movie. But in the earlier days I really cherish...we lived that movie.

 

And Shepherd also did specials for PBS in the 70s that were pre-cursors of CHRISTMAS STORY("Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories" and others).

 

When I was a kid I'd sneak a peak at my old man's Playboys so I could read the Jean Shepherd short stories that they regularly published. Funny stuff.

 

You mean you actually read the articles?!?!?!?!

 

I'm planning on viewing it in full for the first time this week - it's iconic and thus I'm familiar with many of the scenes and images but my mom absolutely hates it, so it was never something I got the chance to sit down and watch as a kid.
However her dad, my late radio DJ grandpa, who did me a huge favor in my development in lending me the Beatles Anthology CD sets when I was 9, loved the movie.
I think it's about time to get familiar, I also am already a fan of nostalgia-tinged movies set in the era like Radio Days, The Rocketeer, The Iron Giant, and The Hudsucker Proxy so I'm sure I'll find something in it to enjoy.

 

That's one of my favorite aspects of this movie. I think you'll definitely enjoy that.

 

I found out about Jean Shepherd through a column he wrote for Car & Driver, which my dad subscribed to. Shepherd's column was quirky and, as I recall, usually had little to do with cars or drivers. When his stories started popping up on PBS, I made the connection that this was the same guy. I read his books in my teens and twenties but didn't know about his radio work until the internet age.

Oddly, I did not rush out to see A Christmas Story when it was at the theaters. I think I was afraid they would not do justice to Shepherd's style. When I finally did see the movie on TV I was pleased.

 

For those of you in the areas of Marcus Theaters, "A Christmas Story" begins a week run this Friday. Also on the schedule for the week is "White Christmas" and "Christmas Vacation". On the big screen.

 

I can not watch this movie anymore. I have seen it way too many times.

 

Yes. Based on another of his short stories - Leopold Doppler and the Great Gravy Boat Riot.
There are several movies based on Jean Shepherd short stories:
Two movies currently available commercially:

• The Christmas Story and
• My Summer Story.

One was available on VHS, but never made it to DVD:

• Ollie Hopnoodles Haven of Bliss
• (Parker family's annual trip to their summer vacation rental cabin in lower Michigan - all about the trip...once they arrive the movie/story is over)

Three played on PBS back in the late 1970's/early 1980's and have never been available commercially (but are "out there" if you google around):

• The Phantom of the Open Hearth: Ralphie takes Wanda Hickey to the Prom (based on the book Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories and Other Disasters)
• The Star Crossed Romance of Josephine Cosnowski (Ralphie falls for the local Polish girl and soon things with her family take a more serious turn).
• The Great American Fourth of July: (Based on the short story titled Ludlow Kissel and the Dago Bomb that struck back). The town drunk sets off a huge firework/mortar and terrorizes the town and blows up his own porch.

If you haven't read Sheperd's books (complilations of various short stories), the ones that deal with Ralphie are:

• In God We Trust, all Others Pay Cash
• Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories and Other Disasters
• A Fistful of Fig Newtons (has just a couple of short stories about Raphie as a teenager)

Many of the short stories were available on books on tape back in the day, with Shepherd doing the narrating as he does in all the movies. They are hilarious and I still get bellylaughs and tear up even after all the times I've listened. They are great on long trips in the car.

 

And its not that good!!!

 

It’s one of those things you either love or you don’t. I know people who watch it every year on Christmas Day. I saw it once that was enough for me.

 

When I was a college student at Rochester Institute of Technology in the early '70's an annual tradition was the free Jean Shepherd concert. Always hilarious.

 

Olive Films released it last year.

My Summer Story Blu-ray

 

thanks : )

 

I could only find Part 1 on YouTube of My Summer Story.