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

Hey! I love those movies! add some extra sugar and I'm good!

 

what really got me was the phone call with the friends Mothers! Oh boy can I relate...my best friend and I constantly got in trouble when we were kids..AND both Mom's called each other. It was doomsday when the phone call was over!

 

The house is now a museum and gift shop

http://www.achristmasstoryhouse.com

 

You're not alone. It doesn't do much for me either!

 

Wish TCM had the rights.

 

For me, I grew up just a few miles from Hammond, Indiana (Hohman, in the film) that is the area the film is set. And Jean Shepherd actually grew up there, on Cleveland street. Flick's tavern is still there. Nearly everything in the movie is based on real places. The steel mills, Higby's (actually Goldblatt's department store), even the houses, and yes the Bumphus' were reminiscent of my youth in Northern Indiana where I "grew and festered as a youth" ( to quote Shep). So the movie resonates with me. The movie is based on short stories about Ralphie growing up, and I consider it just one episode of Shep's telling the story of Ralphie growing up. I enjoy the many movies he made detailing Ralphie and his family.

• My Summer Story (the real sequel and the great gravy boat riot)
• Ollie Hopnoodle's Haven of Bliss (the Parker family's escapades on the way to the annual vacation in Lower Michigan);
• Phantom of the Open Hearth (Ralphie goes to Prom and other escapades)
• The Great American Fourth of July (escapades surrounding the 4th of July and the town drunk)
• The Star-crossed romance of Josephine Cosnowski (a fine looking Polish Girl moves in next door to Ralphie's house)

All these movies were put together around books of short stories called "In God We Trust, All Others PayCash" and "Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories". There are also a couple of Ralphie stories in Shep's two other books, "The Ferrari in the Bedroom" and "A Fistful of Fig Newtons". Reading these books, or listening to Shep narrate them on tape always makes me laugh out loud.

I never liked the marathon showing of this movie on only one day and I think that is just dumb. I much preferred when it was shown several times on several stations during the Christmas season. It is a great movie, and yes I have been to the house where they filmed in Cleveland Ohio and our family got our picture taken with the now adult, Ian Petrella, Randy in the movie.

 

pretty cool I must say!

 

Ed Grimley !

 

fabulous story and great memories! thanks for sharing.

 

I figured someone out there would know at least TGAFOJ, but you've far surpassed what I know.

I agree about the marathon - it's getting to the point where it's become "It's a Wonderful Life" over-saturation. I actually try to avoid that as much as possible and just watch the movie on my own terms.

 

I have no negative feelings but I do have to ration Christmas music and movies because my wife is over the top and I have to be careful not to burn out.

She is already on Christmas music in her office

 

Person on Internet doesn't like popular movie - stunning!!!!

 

I wish all of these would get official DVD releases. All I have is poor copies.

 

That's basically how I read your review of "The Blues Brothers"

But back on topic: Because the movie can be so disparate (sometimes sentimental, corny, absurdist, &mc) in the way it's presented, lots of people can find something in it to like and others don't like the amalgam.

 

I'm too lazy to look these up, which one is the one I saw on PBS decades ago, where a rented tuxedo with a bullet hole is part of the plot?? (Probably the second one).

Shepherd recorded LPs for Elektra and Mercury, which are pretty easy to find. I have a 78 recording of him telling a story about the White Sox, looks like a promo of some sort??

As for the movie, how do you quantify pacing? This movie is perfectly paced. The story? All killer, no filler - there are NO dead spots. A distillation of decades of stories and monologues down into a perfect screenplay. Darren McGavin has probably his best film role. He's an old pro and knows exactly what to do. I have nothing to base this on, but watching his performance, I imagine that Bob Clark didn't have to give McGavin any direction at all aside from which marks to hit. He got it. As did everyone else in the cast. In other words, it's a perfect movie.

Even so, not everyone will like it. I do, but that doesn't mean I want to watch it every year. Probably once every three or four is enough.

 

And that's what the big deal about this movie is (for people in my area) -- a big part of it was filmed in Cleveland including the downtown store Higbees. By coincidence my workplace is now in that same Higbee building. In the renovation to turn it into office space, they kept the original elevator floor labels of what was on each level (housewares, women's lingerie, shoes, etc). On our floors part of the wall graphics depict old Higbee photos of what used to be in each specific area of the floors. I used to work in the musical instrument section until we moved to women's hats earlier this year.

I love seeing the film and being reminded of how it all used to be right around me, the physical surroundings, but also life in general.

 

HO.........HO..........HO !!!

It's part of our family tradition to watch it together at least once during the marathon. But once a year is enough. Still love it, goofiness and all...

 

Illogical comparison, but I suspect you already knew that. At least you read the review!

 

I have cassettes called Shepherd's Pie, where he narrates many of the short stories used in the films, but a favorite is his narration of a trip to the County Fair. I have the White Sox story on a commercial DVD.

Tons of info here: http://sheptalk.flicklives.com

 

you are a lucky guy! so am I...my wife loves The Holidays.
I find the Holiday time is not long enough. I love Christmas music!

 

I was a huge fan of Jean Shepard back in the 1970s when he had a radio show on WOR-AM in New York, every weeknight for 45 minutes. I read his books and loved the PBS film "The Phantom of the Open Hearth" (wish I could get that on video !) So when "A Christmas Story" was released around Thanksgiving 1983, I ran to the nearest theater, and I was howling with laughter. I thought the film perfectly captured the tone of Shepard's stories, and I have probably watched it another 10 times since then, and introduced it to my adolescent son, who is a huge fan now.

 

They've shown it in the past, albeit not on Christmas Eve/Day itself. They naturally don't want to cannibalize viewership from their sister channel's marathon.

I kind of feel the same way about A Christmas Story as I do It's a Wonderful Life: It's a genuinely great movie, but one that was a lot more fun when it really was a cult item that not everyone knew about, as opposed to the ubiquitous cultural presence that it's become.

By the way, fans might want to check out Shep's dramatic reading of his original story that the film was based on (Duel in the Snow, or Red Ryder Nails the Cleveland Street Kid) from his WOR radio show in the '70s:

 

To quote Ray S - Youtube is your friend:

 

YES !!!!!

 

whenever I see the title of this movie I get a sad feeling as to what happened to Jean Shepard and his son...Unbelievably tragic...BUT, I'm sure he's happy that he left us such a wonderful movie that many of us love so much! Thanks Jean