Speaker 1: Hey guys, this is Brad Pete and I'm Giff from
the Pop Culture Yearbook podcast. And you're listening to Surely
you Can't Be Serious? 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?
Speaker 2: For three reasons. Ay, we'll be comparing two of the
greatest Christmas movies of all time, Home Alone and Christmas
Story two. This is our last podcast of twenty twenty 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. It's going to be amazing.
Speaker 1: Why the heck did you take your shoes off?
Speaker 3: Why are you just like a chicken?
Speaker 2: 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 in the in
the window. I had somebody this week we posted on
Facebook about a Christmas Story fragilely yes, must be French.
Speaker 1: 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 2: Really, yes, okay, well I blew that. And then yeah,
the reason why he gets this lamp in the first
place because his wife is great this trivia, Yeah, Pictor.
Speaker 1: You know, everybody knows the lone Ranger's nephew's horse, great
characters of literature, Victor.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And then when it 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 know what happened.
Speaker 1: I was watering my plants and I broke your lamp.
Speaker 2: Get the glue. We don't have any You used the
ball the glue on purpose.
Speaker 1: He was looking for his singer, but all he could
get out was.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, it's great. The Chinese scene at the
end of the movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so Shepherd. 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 2: Oh, I love that scene. Melinda Dylon was purposely given
the wrong script so she would be shocked in.
Speaker 1: Surprise, and her reaction is so genuine. Her laughter is
so good and her scream is so on point.
Speaker 2: That's awesome.
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 2: He's smiling at me. And then the Chinese guys are
singing fellah lah la lah right, and the guy the
restaurant in her keeps correcting them. No, no, no, no, seemed
like this the Hall of hollow right, and he corrects them.
If you watch the movie, that dude is cracking up
the whole time.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, he can't stop laughing.
Speaker 2: It's it's great, it's great.
Speaker 1: Okay, one more quick thing. This is a point of contention.
And I wonder about this 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.
Speaker 2: I rest, which tails time yet Yeah.
Speaker 1: 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 2: 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 1: Right and speaking, which is important to note that this
was supposed to be back in the nineteen thirties forties area,
right that. Yeah, okay, So Bob Clark deliberately he tried
to make the movie look like it was filmed back then.
That's why you have that kind of nostalgic 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 2: You know, a movie the cinematographer for Home Alone watched
in order to get the right feel for the movie
Christmas Story Perfect. How about that? All right, guys, let's
take a quick break. We're going to intro a new
podcast out there right now.
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Speaker 2: By former NAHL goalie Corey Hirsch and psychiatrist doctor Diane McIntosh.
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Speaker 2: All right, guys, go check got Blindsided?
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's move back to home Alone.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 4: Budget started to creep up and 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.
Speaker 1: 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
mean they get 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.
Speaker 2: And it's not like they had Arnold Schwarzenegger in the
title role, right, an eight year old kid, And so
they went off by a little bit.
Speaker 1: But I mean, we're talking about Hollywood standards here, that's
not that much.
Speaker 2: So John Hughes is like, no, this is bullkrap. 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 1: 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 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 happened, just happened
on their doorstep somehow man. And so they when these
things are going on with Warner Brothers, they're like, anything
goes wrong, if it ends up and turnaround, you let
us know.
Speaker 2: Just keep going.
Speaker 1: 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, no.
Speaker 2: Shut it down.
Speaker 1: 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?
Speaker 2: I love it. I love that story. And we're talking
about I mean, fourteen fifteen million dollars.
Speaker 1: 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 five,
I mean something like twelve to fourteen weeks this movie
was in the number one spot.
Speaker 2: It's insane. It made almost what half a billion dollars?
Speaker 1: Like it was, yeah, in the four hundred million dollar.
Speaker 2: Range, and they let it slip through their fingers over
one point two million dollars.
Speaker 1: It's nice. Warner Brothers, Warner Brothers.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 1: Was number one. It was in the theater for six months.
Speaker 2: It's insane.
Speaker 1: It is insane.
Speaker 2: When Chris Columbus's next movie, Only Lonely, starring John Candy,
was released.
Speaker 1: Ye, Home Alone was in the theater.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Only Lonely finished number five. Home Loan was number eleven.
That's how long it had stayed.
Speaker 1: 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 se a unit, who
is 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 can. 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 herds again, and there wasn't padding.
This is a low budget movie. There was a guy
dressed up like Joe Peshy who fell as hard as
he could after doing a four foot 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 2: Who is a thirty year old man, yeah, who is
just just short.
Speaker 1: Yeah, short, and then just worked out. Well.
Speaker 2: The one stunt that bothers me the most is that
dude who's jumping off the porch directly on his like
backslash neck. Yeah, and he lands. I mean, dude, I
wouldn't be like dead.
Speaker 1: You listen to him talking about He's like, I love it.
I love he must be a massacre. He just enjoys
the painting. Crazy. 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 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?
Speaker 1: What are you doing Marv?
Speaker 2: You know the 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 Transla on his face,
and it was like super scary. Right, I guess translas
are deaf, like they can't hear like Daniel Stems, like
if I scream my guts, sound, is this thing gonna
bite me? And they're like, no, no, it's deaf. Can't
hear you? Okay, sure, there it goes. By the way
that Transella's name they never say in the movie. You
get it from the novelization. Okay, Transella's name Axel.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, is it Fully or Rose?
Speaker 2: I believe it's Rose based on the year that it
came out.
Speaker 1: Well, I guess Buzz would probably be a g n
R fan. By the way, your girlfriend.
Speaker 2: The girlfriend's picture, Yeah, that is the that is the
son of like the assistant director. They felt it was
going to be too mean to take a picture of
a real girl and then talk about how much of
a dog she is. So it's his son. That picture
is hilarious.
Speaker 1: That's hysterical.
Speaker 2: One of the things that I want to talk about
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. They wanted just
to get back to Kevin.
Speaker 1: 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?
Speaker 2: Okay, we got to talk about that. So that's the
biggest problem with this movie.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: Ye most people when they watch it, they're like, well,
she's a terrible mother. I would say, she's not a
terrible mother. No, Okay. 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.
Speaker 1: Power line right right.
Speaker 2: 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 McAllister scoops up this giant mess
and it includes Kevin's ticket, his airline ticket.
Speaker 1: Yep, if you freeze frame it, you can see the
ticket being thrown into the trash.
Speaker 2: I guess John Hughes was intent on covering all the holes, right,
So I noted because I knew that that was the case.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 2: John Hughes is brilliant. 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.
Speaker 1: Like, where's my family?
Speaker 2: And the garage doors are up. They actually did forget
to put the garage doores.
Speaker 1: That's right, yep.
Speaker 2: So I thought this was interesting. The Christmas ornaments that
Daniel Stearn has to step on. Yeah, So we talked
about how die Hard and Home Alone have people picking
glasses of their feet. Those ornaments he actually did step on.
He did have those fake ribber feet that Bruce Willis had.
Iheard he wore those as well, But those ornaments were
made of sugar, so those shards are not really that sharp, gotcha.
We talked about how they had this cartoon language where
they didn't curse at all. Right, right about the fifty
three minute mark, Daniel Stern does let out the old
sh word.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: It just kind of 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 1: Yeah, which is also probably the time in a Christmas
Story where Ralphie realizes that his decoder ring has been
an advertisement from a 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 there in this home alone,
there is an extended dialogue scene that involves Kevin mcaulay culkin,
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 him
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 likely they were watching a stage performance.
He had it all down and delivered it all perfectly
from beginning to end.
Speaker 2: 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 1: The bad guys right right, Okay, we're ready to talk composers.
Speaker 2: Let's talk composers.
Speaker 1: 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
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 2: Sure?
Speaker 1: So then jump forward to Home Alone. They have a
guy who's supposed to do the music composition for Home Alone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know who that guy is. His name is
Bruce Broughton. H He was attached as the original composer.
He worked with Chris Columbus when they did Young Sherlock Holmes,
but he left Home Alone to go do The Rescuers
down Under.
Speaker 1: 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 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 2: Yeah, the greatest living movie composer of all time.
Speaker 1: 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?
Speaker 2: Gosh? And it was so key to the feel and
tone of this movie.
Speaker 1: 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. Level.
Speaker 2: The word he used was I was enchanted. Yeah, which
is so John Williams, Yeah, it is. It really is so.
Then of course Chris almost goes on to do the
Harry Potter movies, right, and John Williams does this as well.
Speaker 1: And it's also very christmas y, very.
Speaker 2: First lots of bells and chines.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah for sure. Okay, So on the music, not
only do we have you know that Christmas music, but
do you know what music plays when the bullies come out?
Speaker 2: It's like Peter and the Wolf, right, yeah.
Speaker 1: And of course the bullies are Grover Dill and Scott Farcus,
which is a Hungarian word which means wolf.
Speaker 2: Oh that's great.
Speaker 1: There you go down out of 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.
Speaker 2: It's amazing. 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 1: And it works. It's I mean, that movie makes you
feel like Christmas.
Speaker 2: It does. 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. So
John Candy says, yeah, I'll do it. 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, he went
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.
But here's the funny part. John Candy said, yeah, I'll
work for one day. 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 1: What the heck?
Speaker 2: I thought that was funny. Yep, I do think that
it's funny. The movie Angels with Filthy Souls.
Speaker 1: Was created and directed specifically for this movie. Yes, keep
a change a filthy Animal.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 1: Animals, And then in part two he watches Angels with
Filthy year Souls.
Speaker 2: Right, that's right. I guess the two actors had to
reverse their roles. I don't know their names. 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
he couldn't take the fall. Ah, So the guy who
ended up shooting the guy he came back for the
sequel because he had an injured knee.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 2: We're talking about The Wonder Years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and do you know who the narrator was, Daniel Stern.
There you go.
Speaker 2: The Wonder Years is based off a Christmas story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it inspired it. It inspired the creation of the
Wonder Years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can see that now. Yeah, I had not
put those two together. That is cool.
Speaker 1: The fantasy sequences are a key part of this, right,
You've got the.
Speaker 2: So poisoning.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 2: Flash Gordon, Yep.
Speaker 1: The Buster Crab version in the flashboard.
Speaker 2: Yes, I would have loved to have seen that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think it's I think you can see it
on maybe a TV or did they lose it.
Speaker 2: I think it's like it's gone in a warehouse somewhere
or something.
Speaker 1: 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. And I really think that the you know,
CEOs is just a part two to that dreams. I'd
go with that.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 1: He did not like it.
Speaker 2: He did not think it was going to do anything.
He was not.
Speaker 1: Into it really.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but after seeing the finished product and of course
the success. After that, 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 1: Oh nice, pretty cool. Yeah, that's great.
Speaker 2: Chris Columbus says he still has that footage of Herd's
apology on a video.
Speaker 1: That's pretty cool. YEP. I remembered him, of course from
Big Big. Yeah, he was a jerk coworker and big.
Speaker 2: You know, just come in here and say bugs.
Speaker 1: Bugs.
Speaker 2: One of the scenes I wanted to talk about from
a Christmas story, Uh, 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 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. That was so out of left field. And
I saw it. I was shocked and laughing, like, oh,
my gosh, he shut his eye on.
Speaker 1: You know, it's 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 2: All right, let's talk about reception on the Central quick.
Speaker 1: Yes, I mean we talked.
Speaker 2: 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, YEP, like Predator.
Speaker 1: Two came out Rocky five.
Speaker 2: Rocky five was buried right.
Speaker 1: As it should be. It should it still should.
Speaker 2: 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 1: Nice.
Speaker 2: Next summer when we talk about ET, Yeah, ET had
the same effect for all the other movies that came
out in June.
Speaker 5: Yep.
Speaker 2: They guaranteed YEP.
Speaker 1: 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 os 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 Oska. 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 Life, which, by the way, you just did a
podcast with our friends from thirty something podcast movie podcast
on It's a Wonderful Life.
Speaker 2: I watched it for the first time, which is nuts.
Speaker 1: And how do you feel about it now?
Speaker 2: It was remarkably good.
Speaker 1: Right, everybody expects it to not be good because it's
an old black white movie. It is amazing. It's amazing, right,
I saw you rank it in your top three on Twitter?
Speaker 2: Am I wrong?
Speaker 1: 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 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 trip to
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 at twenty four hours a day. Although
I was very familiar with it 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 2: You want to hear a funny story, sure, so you
know it's Christmas time or whatever, we open presents, we
drive to Tulsa to my in laws. Huh, they are
approximately two hours away from my house.
Speaker 1: Okay, so whenever.
Speaker 2: We stop watching The Christmas Story in Norman and we
get to Tulsa, it's about the same spot.
Speaker 1: 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 story right until last year. Last year
the movie that was playing Diard. 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 2: 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. I love them.
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 in love with. 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. Ok 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 Buelo'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 Home Alone because of that. So for me,
the better of these two movies is a Christmas story.
Speaker 1: D Okay, You've got die Hard a house at Christmas,
and it's mixed with Looney Tunes, slapstick, painful comedy for
the thumb, and pinky perfect combination of Joe Peshey 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 and 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, 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 not nobody
stuck their tongue to a light bulb, 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 messages 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.
Speaker 2: Nice. Nice, I've got two questions for you, Okay, before
we throw it out to our listeners, who we want
to hear from you, what is your favorite of these
two movies.
Speaker 1: But I got two questions for 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 Loan 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 Fantasy loves it. He loves it, and a Christmas story.
He can take it or leave it.
Speaker 2: It's his Diehard it is, Yeah.
Speaker 1: It really is. And he loves Diehart too.
Speaker 2: Then all right, so here are my two questions.
Speaker 1: All right, right, yeah, okay.
Speaker 2: What is the one Christmas present that you always wanted
that when you got it, you're.
Speaker 1: Like, man, this is it, 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 you 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, open
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 2: They all had fake there.
Speaker 1: Yes, it was thanks everyone, Yeah, said definitely. So how
about you?
Speaker 2: 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 1: Right, right right, And when I.
Speaker 2: 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 up with all my guys. I
was playing with it, having a good time. It's time
for bed. Get in bed. 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 1: That is heartbreaking. I know it was heartbreaking real quick.
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. Yeah, 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 2: So all right, well we want to hear from you guys,
which were these two classic Christmas movie I forgot to
ask my second question. All right, here's your second question.
You're ready for this?
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right.
Speaker 2: We've covered five Christmas movies now, okay, die Hard, Leath
the Weapon, Home Alone, Christmas Story, and the Star Wars
Holiday Special. Give me your ranking one through five? Ready, said, go, oh.
Speaker 1: My gosh, that's oh my gosh. Okay, So if I'm
walking out the door, die Hard is number one with
that question. Okay, uh, number two, it's so hard. Okay,
die Hard, a Christmas Story, Home Alone, lethal Weapon, and
I don't think I'm ever ever going to watch Star
Wars Special.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, you're crazy.
Speaker 1: They're all close. I mean, I love them all. I
would watch any of them anytimes, and they're fantastic movies.
You're forcing me into a hole.
Speaker 2: Here, all right, here you go?
Speaker 1: You ready?
Speaker 2: Yeah, die Hard, Leath a Weapon, now, a Christmas Story
Home Alone, and despite my unusual affection for the Star
Wars Holiday Special, it's definitely fit right.
Speaker 6: Yeah, okay, okay.
Speaker 7: 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 2: 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 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 exactly? 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 in in the creation
as 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?
Speaker 1: Is this even a question?
Speaker 5: Diehard?
Speaker 1: 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 the whole genre of action movies of this type,
and it is so very Christmas y. All right, there
you go. Oh, 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 7: 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 1: He came strong with it.
Speaker 7: Even though I totally disagree with what he had to
say about most of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm on board that Diehard's the best, though. What what? What?
What what do you think? Man? What do you think
about those rankings?
Speaker 3: I think it's strong.
Speaker 2: He's coming with Star Wars Holiday Special number two that
is amazing. He gives a lot of credit because of
both event.
Speaker 1: I think it's great. He's a little bit hard on
Home Alone and the Christmas story.
Speaker 7: They had lethal weapon and lethal weapon.
Speaker 2: That's true.
Speaker 7: I guess he's I understand he's a little bit bitter
about what he did with Ironman three.
Speaker 2: But he hates Ironman three. He wants to meet Shane
Black in a dark alley sometime.
Speaker 1: It's hilarious.
Speaker 7: Van Allen Plexiko, Thank you very much, sir. That was
awesome and I love it. And a Merry Christmas.
Speaker 2: Thanks Man, appreciate you, man, Thank you to everybody who's
made this special year. Merry Christmas to everybody.
Speaker 1: God bless us everything.
Speaker 2: 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 1: We're gonna take some time off, but 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.
Speaker 2: That's right. So first of all our patroons, 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 very first one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Jonathan Tweety's the one fan that we've met in
person at this point. That was really cool. We've got
to go to dinner with him.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: 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 Cham, Derek l Adam Winerub, We've got
Mo and Max from the Buzz and 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.
Speaker 2: Pat and Bo and Jeff and yeah, all.
Speaker 1: 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 2: 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 1: 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 2: Jay Reed, Ryan Wore, Ainwater, Neil Rudnick. And then we
want to thank everybody who's taken.
Speaker 1: The time to record our show showcase.
Speaker 2: Yeah we know that takes time kind of effort, Yeah yeah,
and we appreciate you guys contributing to our.
Speaker 1: 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 mere
Christmas here, Christmas happiness there.
Speaker 3: You do you, I'm bound to thank you for it.
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