Speaker 1: This is a podcast from Minute Media.
Speaker 2: Fucking hello everybody, and welcome back to the Surely You
Can't Be Serious Podcasts, Part two of our special Christmas edition.
And I'm thinking, Jason, maybe these guys should be spending
some time with their family instead of listening to our podcasts.
What do you think? No? For three reasons.
Speaker 3: Ay, we'll be comparing two of the greatest Christmas movies
of all time, Home Alone and Christmas Story two.
Speaker 2: This is our last podcast of twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: One, and d we'll be giving our final judgment and
all five of the Christmas movies we've covered so far
in our podcast.
Speaker 2: It's going to be amazing. Why the heck did you
take your shoes off? Why are you just like a chicken?
Speaker 3: All right, we're diving in right here, Part two of
a Christmas Story versus Home Alone. Let's talk about the
lamp real quick, Okay, the electric sex and in the
window I had somebody. This week we've posted on Facebook
about a Christmas Story fragilely.
Speaker 2: Yes, must be French, not French. It's Italian. Must be Italian.
Everybody does it. Everybody says must be French, but it's
not French. This must be Italian.
Speaker 3: Really, Yes, Okay, well I blew that one.
Speaker 4: Then.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The reason why he gets this lamp in the first
place because his wife is great this trivia, Yeah, Victor, you.
Speaker 2: Know everybody knows the lone Ranger's nephew's horse. Great characters
of literature, Victor.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And then when he gets the lamp, of course he
sets it up. She keeps turning it off. She hates
it clearly. And then that day comes where there's an
I don't.
Speaker 2: Know what happened. I was watering my plants and I
broke your lamp. Get the glue. We don't have any
You used up all the glue. On purpose, he was
looking for a singer, but all he could get out
was not guy. Oh my god, it's great.
Speaker 3: The Chinese scene at the end of the movie, Yeah,
we have to shepherd.
Speaker 2: They had to go eat Chinese food. But the rest
of the scene was all a creation of Bob Clark.
There was no duck, there was no singing. That was
all Bob Clark and the rah and he's he's smiling
at me.
Speaker 3: Oh, I love that scene. Melinda Dylon was purposely given
the wrong script so she would be shocked in.
Speaker 2: Surprise, and her reaction is so genuine, her laughter is
so good, and her scream is so on point awesome.
I love it. He's smiling at me.
Speaker 3: And then the Chinese guys are singing fellah la la lah, right,
and the guy the restaurant keeps correcting them. Yeah, no, no, no, no,
seemed like this like the Hall of the Balls and
hollow right, and he corrects them. If you watch the movie,
that dude is cracking up.
Speaker 2: The whole time. Oh yeah, he can't stop laughing. It's
it's great, it's great. Okay, one more quick thing. Okay,
this is a point of contention and I and I
wonder about that because I think that I had my
Red Writer be Begun before this movie came out, and
my Red Writer be Begun I still own it. It
has a compass in the stock, yes, Red Writer b
Begun maintains that they did not have a model that
had a compass in the stock. That's some other brand
of B Begun. And Geene Shepherd, when he was still alive,
was like, I remember it. I remember the compass in
the stock. And this thing that tells time. I say,
which tails time?
Speaker 4: Yet?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I'm telling you, I had it compass in
the stock Sundial all on the butt of my Red
Writer be begun.
Speaker 3: Yes, but those are recreations. So when they went to
the nineteen thirty nine version, Red Writer Company is like, well,
we're going to have to make one for you because
it's not the way you remember it.
Speaker 2: Right and speaking, which is important to note that this
was supposed to be back in the nineteen thirties. Forties
areas right that? Yeah? Okay, So Bob Clark deliberately tried
to make the movie look like it was filmed back then.
That's why you have that kind of stalgic look going on.
I mean, not only did they do the costumes right
and the cars right, but he had the way of filming.
And one of those things was the iris opening and
closing from one scene to the next scene, which was
a totally old style of doing your cuts. But he
brought it back for this movie because he wanted that
nostalgia feeling and he nailed it.
Speaker 3: You know, a movie the cinematographer for Home Alone watched
in order to get the right feel for the movie.
Speaker 2: Christmas Story Perfect. How about that?
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out Blindsided. Okay, so let's move back to home alone. Right. Okay,
so we said we started off with Warner Brothers. The
budget was ten million dollars, and they started making their movie,
and day after day, event after event, the budget started
to creep up, creep up, and creep up, and eventually
they reached fourteen point seven million dollars, and Warner Brothers
called them up and said, you guys have to stop.
You're at fourteen point seven. You said you could make
this movie for ten million. You need to stop. Like
you're gonna give us trouble. We're doing great, We've got
all this stuff together. I mean they went cheap. I
meant the cinematographer, second unit guy for movies like he
had never really done it on his own before. Same
thing for the editor, same thing for the set designer.
And so they had gone for guys who didn't have
a whole lot of experience to do these things, just
to keep the budget within reasonable realms. And it's not
like they had Arnold Schwarzenegger the title role, right, r
an eight year old kid, And so they went off
by a little bit. But I mean, we're talking about
Hollywood standards here, that's not that much.
Speaker 3: So John Hughes is like, no, this is bull crap.
This is Warner Brothers we're talking about. This is not
some mom and pop thing. He's like, they'll make it.
It's fine, I'll send him a letter. So John Hughes
writes a letter. It's like there's nothing left to cut.
So they're like, all right, we're pulling the plug.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But John Hughes had a little ace in his sleeve,
right because he did something that if you live in Hollywood,
you would call it underhanded, that's right, or illegal? Right,
Like it's it's not okay. So he had talked to
executives from twentieth Century Fox while the movie was still
a Warner Brothers movie, and surreptitiously, somehow those guys got
a copy of the script. That's funny how that happens
just happened up on their doorsteps somehow. Man. And so
they when these things are going on with Warner Brothers.
They're like, if anything goes wrong, if it ends up
and turnaround, you let us know, just keep going. And
they're like, how much did you say you were at
and he's like fourteen point seven. They're like, you don't stop.
Don't stop production. And so literally, when the hatchetman from
Warner Brothers shows up, he goes from door to door
in the New Trier School to their offices and say,
all right, guys, shut it down, we're cutting it. This
movie's over. And right behind him was the assistant director
who's like, don shut it down. And he would literally
follow him from office to office. And when he walked
out of the building, he turned around and he's like,
what's going on. He's like, what's going on is you're fired?
I love it.
Speaker 3: I love that story.
Speaker 2: And we're talking about I mean, fourteen fifteen million dollars.
Can you imagine being the Warner Brothers guy who said
kill this movie and then seeing it hit number one
week one, then week two, week three, week four, we five,
I mean something like twelve to fourteen weeks this movie
was in the number one spot.
Speaker 3: It's insane. It made almost what half a billion dollars?
Speaker 2: Like it was, Yeah, in the four hundred million dollar.
Speaker 3: Range, and they let it slip through their fingers over
one point two million dollars.
Speaker 2: It's nice. Warner Brothers, Warner Brothers.
Speaker 3: Gosh, Daniel Stern was filming City Slickers, and Billy Crystal
would get a copy of the magazine and he kept
coming to me. He was like, Hey, your movie's number one.
And then he showed up again, Hey, guess what your
movies number one. They were shot City Slickers for three months.
The whole time it was number one.
Speaker 2: It was in the theater for six months. It's insane.
It is insane.
Speaker 3: When Chris Columbus's next movie, Only Lonely, starring John Candy,
was released.
Speaker 2: Home Alone was in the theater.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Only Lonely finished number five. Home Loan was number eleven.
Speaker 2: That's how long it had stayed. Okay, So let's talk
a little bit about those guys who were editing and
filming and such like that. So the guy who had
only done second unit, who was their cinematographer, he's a
little concerned that he might mess something up, and so
he had a little like tiny extra camera that he
would set up for every shot just to get coverage. Right,
just to just to make sure in case something goes
wrong with the main picture that I've got that. And
he called it his chicken camera. Please believe that the
bonus camera. Yes, and so he was like, not only
was it invaluable, but I started to realize some of
my best shots were coming from the chicken caing And
so a lot of what you see in the movie
is from that second camera that he had set up.
And some of the reasons that it's so good are
the stunts, because the stunt would you know, he'd have
one camera set up and he'd catch the stunt man's
face or whatever. And I mean, you watch those stunts,
Holy cow, you think that's a real person. This isn't
a cartoon, Like those guys are real human beings falling
as hard as and there wasn't padding. This is a
low budget movie. There was a guy dressed up like
Joe Pesci who fell as hard as he could after
doing a four jump in the air straight on to
his back. Chris Columbus said, they wouldn't watch the take.
They'd say action, they'd turn away, and then once they
knew it was over, they go, is he okay? Okay?
All right? And then and it was ready to do
it again. Those stuntmen are amazing. I mean, you just
got to think about iron to the face, shot in
the crotch, blow towards whatever you got. It is amazing
the stuff that those guys went through, including the stuntman
for Macaulay Culkin.
Speaker 3: Who is a thirty year old man, yeah, who is
just just short.
Speaker 2: Yeah, short, and then just worked out. Well.
Speaker 3: The one stunt that bothers me the most is that
dude who's jumping off the porch directly on his like
backslash neck.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he lands. I mean, dude, I wouldn't be
like dead. You listen to him talking about He's like,
I love it. I love he must be a massacre.
He just enjoys the thing. Crazy man. So, how do
you make a movie that's got this much violence and
still make it PG and acceptable to parents and kids.
You make it a cartoon movie. That's what you do.
And so that's he was pulling. The guy who they
had doing the editing was pulling sounds and notions and
shots from the Looney Tunes.
Speaker 3: He watched Looney tunes to get the beats of the movie,
Like when do you show the slip.
Speaker 2: When do you show the crunch? When do you show
the Marv? What are you doing Marv? You know the.
Speaker 3: Tarantula scene, the Transla on the face scene, which you
know when I saw this in the movie theater, I'm like, dude,
that's a real translaon his face and it was like
super scary, right, I guess translas are deaf, Like they
can't hear. Like Daniel Sturm was like, if I scream
my guts ound, is this thing gonna bite me? And
they're like, no, no, it's deaf.
Speaker 2: Can't hear you? Okay, sure, there it goes.
Speaker 3: By the way, way that Trancella's name they never say
in the movie. You get it from the novelization.
Speaker 2: Okay, Transella's name. Axel, Oh my god? Is it Fully
or Rose?
Speaker 3: I believe it's Rose based on the year that it
came out.
Speaker 2: Well, I guess Buzz would probably be a g n
R fan. By the way, your girlfriend.
Speaker 3: The girlfriend's picture, yeah, that is the that is the
son of like the assistant director.
Speaker 2: They felt it was going to be too mean to.
Speaker 3: Take a picture of a real girl and then talk
about how much of a dog she is.
Speaker 2: So it's his son. That picture is hilarious. That's hysterical.
One of the things that I want to talk about.
Speaker 3: During the production, like they would film scenes with the
family in France, and when they cut it all together
and they showed it to test audiences, people could have
cared less about the mcallisters in France, right.
Speaker 2: They wanted just to get back to Kevin. I mean,
and that's another question, you know, how do you make
how do you create a believable story where the mother
leaves her child at home and is not a human
being that you hate? Okay, we got to talk about that.
So that's the biggest problem with this movie. Okay, yep.
Speaker 3: Most people when they watch it, they're like, well, she's
a terrible mother. I would say, she's not a terrible mother.
Speaker 2: No, Okay.
Speaker 3: She had a series of unfortunate events, including the neighbor
boy who came over and looked enough like Kevin to
be counted as part of the family. They were in
a huge rush because they overslept because the power.
Speaker 2: Line right, right.
Speaker 3: But one thing that you might miss when you watch
the movie that I only caught this time, when Kevin
and Buzz get in a fight at the dinner before
they have their flight or whatever. He knocks over a
bunch of milk. Mister mcalliser scoops up this giant mess
and it includes Kevin's ticket, his airline ticket.
Speaker 2: Yep. If you freeze frame it, you can see the
ticket being thrown into the trash.
Speaker 3: I guess John Hughes was intent on covering all the holes, right.
Speaker 2: So I note because I knew that that was the case.
I watched as they came onto the plane, and they
just make it onto the plane, right, And the flight
attendant is like, you just made it, And so she's
got all of the tickets in her hand. They hand
them all to her at the same time, and so
she's got the tickets, she's counting the heads as they
go onto the plane. And that's why you don't get
a miscount. It's because that ticket got thrown away. John
Hughes is brilliant.
Speaker 3: There was a scene that was actually cut from the
movie when Kevin realizes that his family is missing. He
burst out the front door and into the front lawn
and like, where's my family?
Speaker 2: And the garage doors are up.
Speaker 3: They actually did forget to put the garage doores.
Speaker 2: That's right, yep.
Speaker 3: So I thought this was interesting, the Christmas ornaments that
Daniel Stearn has to step on. So we talked about
how die Hard and Home Alone have people picking glass
out of their feet. Those ornaments he actually did step on.
He did have those fake ribber feet that Bruce Willis
had in die Hard.
Speaker 2: He wore those as well.
Speaker 3: But those ornaments were made of sugar, so those shards.
Speaker 2: Are not really that sharp, gotcha.
Speaker 3: We talked about how they had this cartoon language where
they didn't curse at all.
Speaker 2: Right, right about the fifty three.
Speaker 3: Minute mark, Daniel Stern does let out the old sh word.
Speaker 2: Yep. It just kind of.
Speaker 4: Slides under you don't really notice it, right, So apparently
that is the point in the movie where he's retrieving
his boot through the doggy door, right, And it even
shows up in the subtitles, which I thought was funny.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is also probably the time in a Christmas
story where Ralphie realizes that his decoder ring has been
an advertisement frommy commercial says, I just want to talk
about that. There's a moment that's like with actors on movies,
you have these small scenes, right like this boom happens,
Boom happened. They're looking at their script as it goes right, right,
but they're in this home alone. There is an extended
dialogue scene that involves Kevin call him just this very
young actor doing the scene, and it's the one in
the church, right, And it's an emotional, moving, important moment
because it's like it's like we talked about, you have
to fall in love with the character before you see
him go do all this horrible stuff, right, because you're
about to see him go do some really mean and
dastardly things, although it is the bad guys, but before that,
you are touched. Your heart is touched. Right. And it's
that scene with the old man in the church talking
about his son and his granddaughter who was singing in
the choir. Right. So Chris Columbus was concerned about the scene.
And Chris Columbus is a great guy to work with kids,
like he just loves treats them like grown ups but
still appreciates that there are kids and has fun with them.
So he was worried about how the scene was going
to go. He said. Macaulay Culkin showed up for this
scene and had it memorized and did it perfectly right,
out of the gate right like it was like or
watching a stage performance. He had it all down and
delivered it all perfectly from beginning to end.
Speaker 3: You know, that scene I think would mirror the scene
in Diehard when Bruge Willis is picking the glass out
of his feet talking about how I always told his
wife he loved her, but he never said he was sorry. Yep,
you gotta nail that one, because it's time to go get.
Speaker 2: The bad guys right right, Okay, we're ready to talk composers.
Let's talk composers. Okay, So jumping back to a Christmas story,
we have a couple guys. We have Paul Zaza, yes,
and Carl Zitter. Now, Carl Zitter has done a music
composition for New Jack City and Moonstruck, and then of
course he also did it for a couple of Bob
Clark movies called the Murder by Numbers and Black Christmas.
As we discussed, Murder by Numbers also involved Paul's Aza,
and Paul's Oza was also the composer for Baby Genuses.
The music that they have in this movie is very
Christmas based, right, it's all. And then you have the
kind of chase and as the kids are running away
from the bullies. Right. It's very subtle. It's not breathtaking,
but it makes the movie in a non obtrusive way, right,
would you agree?
Speaker 3: Sure?
Speaker 2: So then jump forward to Home Alone. They have a
guy who's supposed to do the music composition for Home Alone. Yeah,
you know who that guy is. His name is Bruce Broughton.
Speaker 3: H He was attached as the original composer.
Speaker 2: Ye. He worked with Chris.
Speaker 3: Columbus when they did Young Sherlock Holmes, but he left
Home Alone to go do The Rescuers down Under.
Speaker 2: Really yeah? Okay, well he had composed some music for it.
Ultimately we know that it didn't get used in the movie. Right,
just wasn't right. But there they are. They've got a movie,
they've got it cut together, but they don't have music. Like, okay, well,
what are we going to do? Who are we going
to get? And Chris Columbus as a joke, because we're
talking about a small budget movie by a director who
has done two movies, one of which is an absolute failure,
and he goes going to be great if we could
get John Williams.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the greatest living movie composer of all.
Speaker 2: Time, Right, somehow John Williams gets the rough cut of
the movie. He calls them on the phone and says,
I love this movie. Is it okay if I compose
the music for it? Gosh?
Speaker 3: And it was so key to the feel and tone
of this movie.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh. Yes. I mean he takes all of
those Tchaikowsky Nutcracker music suits and weaves them perfectly into
his own music, which creates the I mean, it changes
the movie. I mean without that music, it's not the
same movie. It is. It takes it to that number
one over and over again, week after week.
Speaker 3: Level. The word he used was I was enchanted. Yeah,
which is so John Williams, Yeah, it is.
Speaker 2: It really is so.
Speaker 3: Then of course Chris Columbus goes on to do the
Harry Potter movies, right, and John Williams does those as well.
Speaker 2: And it's also very crests, very first, lots of bells
and chines. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, okay, So on
the music, not only did we have you know that
Christmas music, but do you know what music plays when
the bullies come out? It's like Peter and the Wolf, right, Yeah,
And of course the bullies are Grover Dill and Scott Farcas,
which is a Hungarian word which means wolf. Oh that's great.
There you go down the day all right. Of note
in home alone, just talking about the little the little
nuances you know, right that make it. Yes, there's almost
no blue in the entire movie. It is almost exclusively
red and green. It's amazing.
Speaker 3: The guy who did it, the production designer, Yeah, he
doesn't even like Christmas. Yeah, I hate Christmas. But let's
make everything green and red.
Speaker 2: And it works. It's I mean, that movie makes you
feel like Christmas. It does.
Speaker 3: Okay, One things I wanted to bring up and we
didn't talk about this during casting. John Hughes called in
a favor with his buddy John Candy, right, So John
Candy says.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll do it.
Speaker 3: You got one day with me. So John Hughes is like, great,
one day. So they bring him and he works for scale.
He actually earned less than the pizza boy, right people,
five hundred bucks. John Candy made four fourteen for one
day's worth of work. So when he gets to the set,
he allows John Candy to improvise, does all his boca
boca PoCA, all that stuff r and he and Catherine
Nahara had worked together on SETV, so they knew each other.
They were comfortable, they were improv actors, all that stuff.
Speaker 2: But here's the funny part. John Candy said, yeah, I'll
work for one day.
Speaker 3: He didn't realize that it was actually going to be
twenty three hours of filming. He said, there was a
moment in the day when he glared at John Hughes
is like, it's seven am.
Speaker 2: What the heck?
Speaker 3: I thought that was funny. I do think that it's funny.
The movie Angels with Filthy Souls.
Speaker 2: Was created and directed specifically for this movie. Yes, keep
that change of filthy animal.
Speaker 3: Yes. In fact, the set pieces in that movie were
like cardboard and stuff like that. They barely pieced it together.
Keep the change of Filthy Animals.
Speaker 2: And then in part two he watches Angels with Filthy
Years olds. Right, that's right.
Speaker 3: I guess the two actors had to reverse their roles.
Speaker 2: I don't know their names.
Speaker 3: So the guy who was like, keep the change of
filthy animal and the other guy who's like, hey snakes, wait,
they were actually reversed, but one guy hurt his knee so.
Speaker 2: He couldn't take the fall. Ah.
Speaker 3: So the guy who ended up shooting the guy. He
came back for the sequel because he had an injured knee.
Speaker 2: So yeah. So interestingly, this narration thing that the executive
said was not going to be of interest to anyone
ended up spawning a TV series where you had somebody
narrating what happened to them when they were young. Except
taking place in the forties. It took place from nineteen
sixty eight to nineteen seventy six. You know what the
show is I'm talking about. We're talking about The Wonder Years. Yeah,
and do you know who the narrator was, Daniel Stern.
There you go.
Speaker 3: The Wonder Years is based off a Christmas story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it inspired it. It inspired the creation of The
Wonder Years. Yeah, I can see that now. Yeah. I
had not put those two and together. That is cool.
The fantasy sequences are a key part of this, right,
you've got the so poisoning you knew you'll be pushing
up nighties. Yeah. So there was an additional scene that
was filmed that was in the movie where he's in
space using his Red Rider be begun to help out
a hero that we've discussed earlier this year, Flash Gordon Yeap,
the Buster Crab version of Flashboard. Yes, I would have
loved to have seen that. Yeah, I think it's I
think you can see it on maybe a TV or
did they lose it.
Speaker 3: I think it's gone in a warehouse.
Speaker 2: Somewhere or something. I don't know. If you Shirley fans,
if you've got access to that scene, if you know
about it, send it to us. But yeah, film the
whole scene, but decided it was just a little too much,
and it was you you really need threes, three is funny,
four is too much, and you've got soap poisoning, You've
got the cowboy scene, and you've got yeah, and you've
got the teacher hey plus and I really think that
the you know c is just a part two to
that Dreams. I'd go with that.
Speaker 3: One thing I want to mention about John Hurd. We
talked about him as Peter McAllister. Okay, so here's the
funny thing about that. He was unhappy about working on
this movie. He did not like it. He did not
think it was going to do anything. He was not
into it, really, Yeah, But after seeing the finished product
and of course the success after that, right, he realized
that he was wrong. So while they were shooting his
scenes for Home Alone two, he broke character, spoke directly
through the camera and told Chris Columbus, sorry, I was wrong.
Speaker 2: Oh nice, pretty cool. Yeah, that's great.
Speaker 3: Chris Columbus says he still has that footage of Herd's
apology on a video.
Speaker 2: That's pretty cool. Yep. I remembered him, of course from
Big Big. Yeah, he was a jerk coworker and big
you know, just come in here and say bucks bugs.
Speaker 3: One of the scenes I wanted to talk about from
a Christmas story, h huh. That caught me off guard
when I saw it in the movie theater for the
first time was when he finally gets the BB gun
on Christmas morning and he goes outside, huh, and he's like, oh, yes,
I was so happy for him that he got the
BB gun and it goes and he's looking at that thing.
He's going to shoot it, and it hits that bird
bath and it comes right back and hits his in
the eye, and he's like, oh my god, shut my
eye out.
Speaker 2: That was so out of left field.
Speaker 3: When I saw it, I was shocked and laughing, like,
oh my gosh, he shut his eye.
Speaker 2: You know. Such great writing too, because it's led up
to that moment the whole time. It's led up, and
then you're just like, oh no, oh, it's the worst.
And then he steps on his glasses. Oh no, oh,
my gosh, so good, so good.
Speaker 3: All right, let's talk about reception on the Central quick.
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean we talked.
Speaker 3: About it briefly, but Home Alone made almost half a
billion dollars. It was number one for fourteen weeks. We
talked about how it destroyed everything else that came out
that same time period.
Speaker 2: Yep, like Predator two came out Rocky five. Rocky five
was buried right as it should be. It should it
still should.
Speaker 3: Be well, and Predator two wasn't any good either. Yeah,
they now use that term. If you get buried by
a movie at the box office, they call it getting
Home Alone.
Speaker 2: Nice.
Speaker 3: Next summer when we talk about ET, Yeah, ET had
the same effect for all the other movies that came
out in June.
Speaker 2: The guaranteed they guaranteed. So for a Christmas story, it
wasn't such a rousing success. It wasn't bad. It wasn't
like it did terrible, but it wasn't some big, humongous hit.
But this was right around the time that VHS was
becoming big and that cable television was becoming big, and
so you just saw it. It was like, oh, it's
Christmas time, let's get a Christmas story. A Christmas story
is on HBO. We should watch that tonight. You would
watch it. And then in the mid nineties something interesting happened,
and this relates back to Wizard of Oz. Ted Turner
had TBS and he then got T and T and
he decided, Hey, I'm going to start on Christmas showing
a movie twenty four hours a day. And the movie
that he picked was Wizard of os OK. And the
first year did pretty good and the second year it
didn't do as good. Right, and so it's like, okay,
well let's try It's a Wonderful Lune, which, by the way,
you just did a podcast with our friends from thirty
something podcast movie podcast on It's a Wonderful Life. I
watched it for the first time, which is nuts. And
how do you feel about it now?
Speaker 3: It was remarkably good.
Speaker 2: Right, everybody expects it to not be good because it's
an old black white movie. It is amazing. It's amazing.
Speaker 6: Yeah, right, I saw you rank it in your top
three on Twitter. Am I wrong in Christmas movies? Yeah,
it's very very good movie. So they that again ran
it for twenty four hours. First year pretty successful, second.
Speaker 2: Year not so much so. Try number three A Christmas Story.
First year pretty successful, second year more successful. And for
the last twenty four years it has been on Christmas
Eve to Christmas Day, twelve showings, twenty four hours and
has basically become a tradition. They didn't even come out
with memorabilia for the movie until two thousand and three.
That's insane, that piece, that piece of playing twenty four
hours a day. Although I was very familiar with it
at the time they started that, I was like, oh,
this is a great movie. It was that that turned
this movie into probably the icon that it is today.
Speaker 3: You want to hear a funny story, Sure, so you
know it's Christmas time or whatever. We open presence, we
drive to Tulsa to my in laws.
Speaker 2: Huh, there are approximately two hours away from my house. Okay,
so whenever.
Speaker 3: We stop watching The Christmas Story in Norman and we
get to Tulsa, it's about the same spot.
Speaker 2: Perfect. That's perfect. Yeah, I will say this our Christmas
tradition since we've had kids, so we're talking eighteen years now.
Has always been we do Christmas Morning at our house
and then around lunchtime we go over to my wife's
mother's house. We have the same kind of food every year,
and it's great, and the TV is always on and
it's always playing a Christmas Story right until last year.
Last year the movie was playing, Yes, all right, buddy,
the time is here. I heard Santas sleigh bells overhead.
We've got to get to bed. So before we do,
we've got to give final judgment. We have iconic movie
Home Alone, mega mega mega hit versus a Christmas Story,
iconic nostalgia. What do you say?
Speaker 3: Okay, So after analyzing these, and I told you I
saw both of these in the movie theater, I laughed
my butt off in both of these.
Speaker 2: I love them.
Speaker 3: They are fantastic Christmas movies. I am a huge huge
John Hughes fan. I would not say I'm a huge
Bob Clark fan. And really the actors and stuff that
in Christmas Story, they didn't really do anything after it
that I'm.
Speaker 2: In love with.
Speaker 3: But that's not the case with all the people from
Home Alone. But I love the vignette style of a
Christmas story. It's little bitty stories all stacked on top
of each other with the overarching I want to be
begun for Christmas story. Now then, I love Home Alone.
I've seen it a million times, but watching it over
and over again, it's not as enchanting as it once was. Okay, Now,
I love John Hughes. You will not find a bigger
John Hughes fan than me. I'm also a little bit
bitter at Home Alone because it altered the course of
John Hughes's career. Because Home Alone was such a gigantic,
mega hit, we stopped getting the Breakfast Club in Ferris
Bueler's Day Off and instead we got Baby's Day Out
and Flubber and Curly Sue and Dennis the Menace. So
I kind of hold a grudge against.
Speaker 2: Home Alone because of that.
Speaker 3: So for me, the better of these two movies is
a Christmas story.
Speaker 2: D Okay, You've got die Hard in a house at Christmas,
and it's mixed with Looney to Dunes, slapstick, painful comedy
for the thumb and pinky perfect combination of Joe Peshi
and Daniel Stern. This is potentially a perfect movie. Okay,
is It is arguably a perfect movie. Is so solidly
dude with a problem and Dude solves the problem, and
it's hysterical, it's well acted, it's well directed. I mean
it changed the trajectory of Chris Columbus as well. I mean,
talk about kind of a swan song for John Hughes.
Although he did do Miracle on thirty fourth Street and
some other great ones, it really was kind of the
peak of what was an escalating career and tragically we
lost him too early. Went out for a walk one
day and had art attack. Yeah, and my gosh, the
man has given us so many iconic movies. I hate
to say this, but I have to agree with you.
Oh wow, a Christmas story. Even though it's not some
great plot structure, or it's not some it's not something
that launched the careers of a whole bunch of people
or any it was even a big hit at the time.
It does something that not many movies do, which is
capture a memory. It captures a memory, and that memory
is a timeless memory because even though those things happened
are supposed to have happened back in the thirties and forties.
The scene changes, but the people are the same. Those
are all things that I remember doing, and nobody stuck
their tongue to a light. Well, but we did things
equally as stupid. There were bullies that we had to
deal with, there were snowballs to the face, there were
parents who didn't understand us, and there were those Christmas
presents that we wanted that we knew meant the entire
world to us. But as it turned out, what was
really important was the family, right And in both of
these movies, that's kind of the message, is that really
a family is what's important. But it's Christmas Story that
really brings that message home. It moves me. I tear
up every time at the bully scene. I usually tear
up whenever the dad is chuckling giddily to himself because
he knows he's gotten his boy the present that he
really truly wanted. And so because of that, I've got
to say I agree, Christmas Story is my movie as well. Nice. Nice,
I've got two questions for you.
Speaker 3: Okay, before we throw it out to our listeners who
we want to hear from you, what is your favorite
of these two movies? But I got two questions for.
Speaker 2: You before you go into those questions. Yeah, I will
say this, Caleb, I refer to routine lying on the show.
He would throw a snowball at me if he knew
that I picked Christmas Story of a Home Alan to him,
Home Alone is by far the better movie. It's an
action packed it's the little kid shooting the bad guys.
It's comedy. Gold loves it. He loves it. And Christmas
Story he can take it or leave it. It's his
Diehard it is, Yeah, it really is. And he loves
Diehart too. Well then, all right, so here are my
two questions. All right, right, yeah, okay.
Speaker 3: What is the one Christmas present that you always wanted
that when you got it, you're like, man, this is it.
Speaker 2: No question about it. It was the Nintendo Entertainment System.
A year it came out. Oh I can remember with
ten eighty clarity seeing the advertisement for the Nintendo System.
You had the little robot, you had the gun. But
the thing that zoomed out to me was Super Mario
Brothers hitting that little key question mark. And I was like,
oh my gosh, I've spent literally tens twenties, no telling
how much money play in this video game. My favorite
video game in The arcade is now available in a
home entertainment system. I want this, This is all I want,
all that I want. I don't care if you get
me anything else. This is all that I want. And
I can remember it's a tradition at our house that
you get to open one present on Christmas Eve. Right.
That was the year that when I opened my Christmas
Eve present, opened it up it was batteries. I was
like what. I was like, No, you can't just wrap
batteries and that'd be okay because it turned out Robot
needed batteries, and so they were the batteries to the
present that wasn't under the tree at the time. It
didn't come until after I had gone to sleep.
Speaker 3: They all had fake there.
Speaker 2: Yes, it was thanks everyone, Yeah, I said, definitely. So
how about you?
Speaker 3: What was your The thing that I wanted most and
eventually got, although it took me like three Christmases to
get it was the Kinner Millennium Falcon. Oh yeah, that's
all I wanted. That was number one, two, three, four
and five on my list. I want the freaking Millennium Falcon.
Speaker 2: Right right right? And when I.
Speaker 3: Got it, I fell in love with the I played
it all the time. But here's the funny story. I
had it all set.
Speaker 2: Up with all my guys. I was playing with it
a good time. It's time for bed, Get in bed.
Speaker 3: I had a bunk bed, fell off my bunk bed
one time my entire life. In the middle of the night,
I rolled out, fell off the top, bug landed on
my Millennium falcon and smashed it and never replaced it.
Speaker 2: That is heartbreaking. I know it was heartbreaking real quick. Yeah,
there's a movie that's just come out. I think it's
on Netflix or something like that. I've just seen the
preview four. But it's called eight Bit Christmas.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's obviously a remake type thing of a Christmas Story,
except instead of a red writer be begun, it's a
Nintendo entertainment So fantastic. So I got to go check
that one out. Hopefully it's it's good. It looks like
it's got a six point seven on IMDb though.
Speaker 3: So all right, well we want to hear from you guys,
which one of these two classic Christmas movie.
Speaker 2: I forgot to ask my second question.
Speaker 3: All right, here's your second question. You're ready for this? Yeah,
all right, we've covered five Christmas movies. Now, okay, Diehard,
leave the Weapon Home Alone, Christmas Story, and the Star
Wars Holiday Special.
Speaker 2: Give me your ranking one through five?
Speaker 3: Ready said, go oh my gosh, that's oh my gosh.
Speaker 2: Okay, So if I'm walking out the door, die Hard
is number one with that question. Okay, uh, number.
Speaker 7: Two, it's so hard, Okay, die Hard, A Christmas Story
Home Alone, lethal Weapon, and.
Speaker 2: I don't think I'm ever ever going to watch Star
Wars Special. Yeah, okay, you're crazy. They're all close. I mean,
I love them all. I would watch any of them anytimes.
And they're fantastic movies. That's fair. You're forcing me into
a hole here, all right, here you go you ready? Yeah,
die Hard, lethal Weapon?
Speaker 3: Ye, a Christmas Story Home Alone, And despite my unusual
affection for the Star Wars Holiday Special, it's definitely fit right.
Speaker 8: Yeah, okay, okay.
Speaker 9: Now that we've given our ranks, we are going to
have a little special Shirley showcase and one of our
good friends, author extraordinary mister Van Allen Plexico, and.
Speaker 3: Here's how he ranked our five Christmas podcasts.
Speaker 5: Hey guys, Van Allen Plexico here from the White Rocket
Entertainment Network. You have asked me to rank these five
Christmas related features, and so here goes counting down from
number five. At number five, we have a Christmas Story.
I have never understood why people obsess over this movie.
It's just kind of weird and the lamp thing and
the BB gun and it's almost like whatever. Moving on
number four home alone, it's not my cup of tea either,
but at least it's got some action and wacky violence
to keep us all entertained. And what more can we
ask for at Christmas time than wacky violence?
Speaker 2: Exactly?
Speaker 5: And speaking of wacky violence, at number three comes Lethal Weapon.
I've never loved this movie. I've never considered it a
great movie, but it's a pretty decent one. And probably
most folks would say that Lethal Weapon two is a
better Lethal Weapon movie. But that being said, this one
ranks right in the middle for me. I mean, the
two lead actors are pretty good, and it has some
fun stuff in it. I'll even forgive Shane Black for
a ruining iron Man with the Iron Man three because
this is a pretty good movie. So number three is
Lethal Weapon. Number two The Star Wars Holiday Special an
utter glorious train wreck. In all other respects, it is
rightfully derided in that fashion by fans and has been
for over forty years. I remember watching it when it aired,
and I wondered what in the world I was seeing.
If I'd been a little bit older, I'd have been
wondering what kind of drugs were involved in the creation
of this special? But how is it ranked number two?
Because it is memorable, It is an iconic event in
Star Wars history, and most importantly, it introduces Boba Fett. Yes,
he's a cartoon and not a very good cartoon, but
he's the greatest Star Wars character of all and so
the fact that it introduces Boba fet ranks this number
two all time on the list of these five entertainments
and number one? Is this even a question? Die Hard?
Speaker 2: Come on?
Speaker 5: It's so much a Christmas movie that when I saw
it in the theater in the middle of a blazing
hot summer in nineteen eighty eight, when I left the theater,
I was fully expecting to be freezing cold. When I
got outside, I thought there'd be snow on the ground.
I thought Christmas music would be playing from every car
that passed by. I fully expected it to be snowing
when I left the theater, in like July of nineteen
eighty eight, after seeing this movie. It's so great. It's
set up a whole genre of action movies of this type,
and it is so very Christmas y. All right, there
you go. That is your five movies or entertainments that
you wanted me to rank, and I have ranked them.
I'm sure others will disagree, but that's my ranking. I
am Van Allen Plexiico. Check out all my shows by
going to www dot plexiico dot net, p l e
Xico dot net, or search White Rocket on any pod app.
Speaker 9: Oh wow, Okay, so you think you know a guy,
I'm I'm I'm baffled here, But I mean he came
strong with the opinion.
Speaker 2: He came strong with it, even though I totally disagree
with what he had to say about most of it.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I'm on board that Diehard's the best. But what
what what? What?
Speaker 2: What do you think?
Speaker 4: Man?
Speaker 9: What do you think about those rankings?
Speaker 2: I think it's strong.
Speaker 3: He's coming with Star Wars Holiday Special number two that
is amazing. He gives a lot of credit because of
both off.
Speaker 2: I think it's great.
Speaker 3: He's a little bit hard on on Home Alone and.
Speaker 2: The Christmas story and lethal weapon and leath a weapon.
That's true.
Speaker 9: I guess he's I understand he's a little bit bitter
about what he did with Ironman three.
Speaker 3: But he hates Ironman three. He wants to meet Shane
Black in a dark alley sometime.
Speaker 9: It's hilarious. Van Allen Plexo, Thank you very much, sir.
That was awesome and I love it. And a Merry Christmas.
Speaker 3: Thanks Man, appreciate you, man. Thank you to everybody who's
made this special year. Merry Christmas to everybody. God bless
us everything. Thank you for joining us and on our fun.
We hope to see you in season three. We're gonna
take some time off.
Speaker 2: We're gonna take some time off. It'll probably be February
because we've got the fiftieth anniversary of The Godfather coming up.
We've got the new release of The Batman coming up,
and we're going to be doing some special episodes on
those and before we go. It takes us literally hours
and hours to put just one of these episodes together.
So if you can, if you feel like giving us
a Christmas present this year for next year, go to
our Patreon page. It's patreon dot com. Slash Shirly Podcast,
and you can help us out with the monthly donation,
But even if we had to do it for free,
we would do it because there are some amazing people
that we've met and would not have known them and
met them but through this podcast. And so we want
to take this time to say thank you and Merry
Christmas to a select group of folks. That's right.
Speaker 3: So first of all our patrons, we want to thank
Addie Ayshino, Cameron Ecker, Travis Laslie, Chris Bauer, Dayton Johnson,
Chris and Jeanie, Alexander, Alan Is Vaccinated, Yep, Dale Selby,
Brad Moore, Christopher Walketon, and of course James Buckley, our
good friend and Patrion.
Speaker 2: Very first one. Yeah, Jonathan Tweety's the one fan that
we've met in person at this point that was really cool.
We've got good to dinner with him.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. We also have some guys who routinely communicate with
us on Facebook who are always giving us some great
insight into episodes past and potentially future. We've got Scott Rothschild,
We've got Chris Weber who did the Shirley showcase for us.
We've got Rocky Chandler, Derek el Adam Weinribb. We've got
Moe and Max from the In the Tower podcast. Be
sure and go check that out. We've got our friends
from the thirty something podcast. We've got John and Pat
and Bow and Jeff and yeah, all of those guys.
Merry Christmas, guys. We're sorry we're missing out on doing
a Christmas episode with you this year. We will we
will catch you in twenty twenty two. Maybe.
Speaker 3: You know who else we really need to think this
year is our good buddy David Wright. He did four
episodes with us. Step Dave was our hip hop rap expert.
Speaker 2: We got to just sit back and live in the
limelight as he waxed poetic on all of that rap history.
And it was awesome, truly truly great time. Some other
Facebook guys who routinely communicate with us, Nick Hinsley.
Speaker 3: Jay Reed, Ryan Ware, Ainwater, Neil Rudnick. And then we
want to thank everybody who's taken the time to record
our show Showcase. Yeah, we know that takes time, kind
of effort. Yeah, and we appreciate you guys contributing to our.
Speaker 2: Show, right, we really do, guys. It's been another great
season in the books. I can't tell you how moved
I am that you continue to listen to us and
we continue to grow. Thank you so much, and Merry Christmas,
Merry Christmas. Happy do you.
Speaker 1: I'm bound to thank you for it.