S02E05 — A Christmas Story
SPOILER ALERT: This episode and transcript below contains major spoilers for A Christmas Story.
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Featuring hosts Timothy Haynes, Donna Haynes, Rebekah Edwards, and T. Josiah Haynes.
We watch it every year, and so far, none of us has managed to shoot our eyes out!
Learn about the charming collection of short stories pulled together to create one of the world’s most iconic Christmas movies. Was the film a worthwhile adaptation?
Final Verdicts
If you haven’t listened to the episode yet, we recommend waiting to read our verdicts. (But you’re probably grown, so do what you want!)
The A Christmas Story movie condenses Gene Shepard’s collection of witty essays into a cohesive, heartwarming holiday tale. While the book wanders through different seasons, the film sharpens its focus on Christmas magic, making it an iconic seasonal tradition.
Tim: The film was better
Donna: The film was better
Rebekah: The film was better
Josiah: The film was better
Full Episode Transcript
Prefer reading? Check out the full episode transcript below. It’s AI-generated from our audio, and if we’re being honest… no one sat to read the entire thing for accuracy. (After all, we were there the whole time.) 😉 We’re sorry in advance for any typos or transcription errors.
[00:00:00] Rebekah: Welcome to the Book is Better podcast. We are a family of four reviewing book to film adaptations. This is a clean podcast, and this might be a fun one to spend with your kiddos listening to if you, like us, are big fans of watching A Christmas Story. A Christmas Story? Yes, it’s a big holiday. Mom, you want to say it now, too, since they’re starting a trend with that?
A Christmas story? Uh, we are going to be spoiling the plot of a Christmas story. It did come out before Josiah and I were born. So at this point, if we’re spoiling something for you, I genuinely don’t feel that bad. Uh, but you know, I figured I’d let you know anyway. And as we introduce ourselves as your podcast hosts, we’re going to answer a little fun fact.
And today’s fun fact is, what is your favorite Christmas movie? And I guess I’ll go first. Uh, I’m Rebecca. I am the daughter slash sister of the pod. And my favorite Christmas movie often is whatever, like, charming Hallmark y type thing just came out this year. Uh, because I’m way too basic for my own good.
But I would say, like, the best re watchers, I have a few, if I’m being honest. My family loves watching Klaus every year over and over. Uh, so that’s a really big one for us. I love the, uh, it’s a Netflix movie, I think, uh, A Boy Named Christmas, and, uh, what’s the one? I’m bad at titles sometimes, um, oh, the story about Charles Dickens is called The Man Who Invented Christmas.
Which is also really good and based on a book. So maybe one day for Christmas, we’ll review that one. So that’s mine.
[00:01:44] Donna: Well, my name is Donna and I am the wife and mom of this wonderful little band of elves. Oh, so sweet. And. My favorite Christmas movie, if you don’t know already, which apparently some of us didn’t know, is
[00:02:04] Rebekah: I know it’s one of your favorite movies.
I just, I know it’s a Christmas movie. I just didn’t think about it in that
[00:02:09] Donna: context. You just told on yourself. I wasn’t gonna rat you out to the audience. You weren’t talking about me. They don’t know that the baby listeners didn’t know until now. Now they know now they know, uh, is die hard. And I’m in that camp of people who say, please do not be my friend.
If you don’t think it’s a. Christmas movie because it is the whole thing is set at christmas at a christmas party with gifts And all the christmas things that is accurate. It’s very true. Um, I also just We’ve been watching some christmas movies I am a Self proclaimed Scrooge, but I’ve been trying really hard to reform myself.
So we’ve been watching Christmas movies over the past couple of weeks, and we actually watched Elf for the first time that we’ve both seen it all the way through. Wow. Oh my gosh, I watched it on Saturday. I don’t know why we’ve not watched it. I know it’s a good movie. What did you think? Um, it was fun. I thought it was interesting to see James Caan, uh, play.
Buddy the Elf’s dad. That was pretty, pretty interesting to see him in a different role. Um, I know he’s been in many different roles, but I don’t really follow James Conn’s career closely, so that was pretty cool. Now, since
[00:03:34] Rebekah: I’ve only seen the Godfather once,
[00:03:37] Donna: what role does James Conn is Sonny, who’s kind of the wild womanizing older brother that gets, you know, pretty much shot up at the toll
[00:03:48] Rebekah: booth.
Well, this is a kid friendly episode, so we probably shouldn’t talk too much about it. I’m not going to say any more
[00:03:52] Donna: about it. Um, I will say a close second favorite movie, Christmas movie for me is White Christmas with Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye. Um, I, I’m not crazy about all older, I mean, you know, I’ve, I watched some and they’re pretty cool and others I think are pretty lame, uh, but I really enjoy that and I have not watched it yet this Christmas season, but I will be sure to do that soon.
[00:04:18] Tim: Well, my favorite Christmas movie is completely the opposite. I did not realize until recently that actually, uh, when I started watching it, it was brand new. I just assumed because it reran every year. I assumed it, it had been running for a long time, but actually it’s, uh, it premiered like in 1965. So when I started watching it, it was the beginning.
So
[00:04:47] Josiah: cool.
[00:04:48] Tim: Wow.
[00:04:48] Josiah: I’m Josiah, the brother, son of this workshop of Leges. And
[00:04:57] Donna: you know of Leg? Yeah. He’s an elf. Leges. The Elf. Legless. . Sorry, I thought you were making a joke about the The lamp.
[00:05:07] Josiah: Yeah, the legless. The legless ones.
[00:05:10] Donna: Yep. ’cause they’re short. Mm-hmm. But legless is good. Oh God bless.
[00:05:14] Josiah: I like Christmas a lot.
Christmas movies are not often something I really want to watch. But Christmas Story is up there on my favorites. Die Hard is great, especially if you can get the TV edit. And the Charlie Brown Christmas is great. You know, Elf is great, but I think that, uh, I think that this is probably the one that I like the most.
And it’s obviously Nostalgia. We used to play it all day on Christmas, because it was on TBS 24 7. So we’d put it on Uh, all of the 25th and got used to it and it’s just so fun. I don’t know what else
[00:05:56] Tim: to say. I will say that, that uh, Red One, the new one this Christmas, um, I thought was a good Christmas movie.
That’s probably something I could re watch.
[00:06:07] Rebekah: Oh, I loved Red One. I liked it a lot. Josh was not, he was like okay with it, but I was a big fan. Uh, by the way, PBS and TNT have been airing 24 hours of a Christmas story started on TNT in 1997, which means this is what, 27 years straight? That’s my number. There you go.
All right. So, mom, why don’t you tell us? What exactly a Christmas story is all about in a Christmas story.
[00:06:37] Donna: Young Ralphie Parker dreams of one thing, a red Ryder BB gun for Christmas as he navigates bullies, bunny suits and tongue stuck to a pole dares. Ralphie faces every kid’s holiday dilemma. Getting through the chaos of family life and convincing adults he won’t shoot his eye out.
It’s nostalgic, hilarious, and filled with festive misadventures. It’s the ultimate slice of 1940s Christmas magic.
[00:07:12] Tim: Now I have a question. Is it 1940s or 1950s? The movie is different than the, the movie is
[00:07:18] Rebekah: the forties. I looked it up in a couple of places because I thought it was the fifties. I’d had that written down, but everywhere I looked it up said forties.
So that’s
[00:07:25] Tim: interesting because there’s no mention of, of people being away at war or anything like that. So the late forties,
[00:07:31] Donna: this apparently, if you follow. Christmas story pages. There’s stuff from 37, 39. There, there is some mention of war in some crop, I think, but music is from 40, 44. And then there was one thing, and now I cannot remember what the thing, what the nod to this was, but whatever it was, was like 1951.
But the director did want it, In in the late thirties, early forties, that was his goal, but he didn’t want it so obvious that you couldn’t that you could just pin it down. So I thought that’s an interesting statement, though, because you’re right. I never I would never pinned it in the thirties or forties.
[00:08:22] Rebekah: Well, one of the interesting things about that is that they. I wonder if that’s just like a Christmas movie trope in some ways, is that you want some Christmas movies to feel somewhat timeless. And so like best Christmas pageant ever, you know, we talked about, he went a great way out of, he went a great deal out of his way to make sure it wasn’t identifiably 2024 or 2005 or whatever.
And so are other Christmas movies like that or am I just crazy?
[00:08:50] Tim: Um, a lot of times they seem to be like that. They, they try to avoid, they try to avoid the, uh, the dating because if they, if they can’t avoid the dating, then they become, they become connected with a time and, and they don’t work. See, a Charlie Brown Christmas is generic as far as time goes, you know?
Yeah.
[00:09:11] Rebekah: Okay, so the way that we’re going to talk about differences this episode is a little Uh, you know, not the same as normal. I have them in two sections. So the first is the setting and the structure of the stories, which you’ll understand in a minute. And then I have plot, timeline, and characterization, kind of all back and forth.
So, because of what I’m about to explain, you’ll see that there’s reasons that the structure of the movie versus the way that the book was written, um, kind of felt like a better way to ta talk about the setting and the setting changes. However, because it was written by the screenwriter was the same person who wrote the original book.
Uh, I feel like you can tell in the dialogue and in the way that a lot of the text was written, that it is the same person. Like, so it has very much the same feel. And there’s actually not a lot of changes kind of overall compared to some of the things that we, that we cover. So one of the most significant changes from book to film is that the.
A Christmas Story, the book, is actually a compilation of five autobiographical essays that screenwriter Gene Shepard published in 1966 as part of his book, In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash. The original book contains I’ve heard of that one. I feel like I have too. I recognized that title. I think we’ve
[00:10:25] Josiah: seen it in the credits of Christmas Carol.
I mean, Christmas story, story.
[00:10:31] Rebekah: Uh, the original book does contain 15 total essays, but the first four in the titular book, plus a bit from a fifth, what they call a bonus story. Were used to weave together this cable Christmas classic because of the, several of the stories are actually set in different.
Times of the year than just the holidays. And the primary plot points from the film are actually individual storylines from the different short stories and essays. So there’s, I don’t know if this was an audio book, but in the like Kindle version of the book that I read, they have like an acknowledgements chapter where they describe how it’s all broken down.
And that, uh, the actual book, which is. was still in print at the point that that was written and God, we trust all others pay cash, um, is actually quite a bit longer and contains a lot that’s not in the film.
[00:11:19] Donna: The five essays that Rebecca mentioned in the final book as those that Jean used to write the screenplay.
for the film A Christmas Story are entitled Duel in the Snow or Red Rider Nails the Cleveland Street Kid. The Counterfeit Secret Circle Member Gets the Message or The Asp Strikes Again. My Old Man and the Lascivious Special Award that heralded the birth of pop art. Love
[00:11:51] Josiah: it.
[00:11:51] Donna: Grover Dill and the Tasmanian Devil, or I would say Grover Dill was the Tasmanian Devil.
Uh, The Grandstand Passion Play of Delbert and the Bumpus Hounds. I will tell you, I, I loved that they took this book, which, which I like the book too. I thought it was a good, I thought it was a good length. It wasn’t super long. It was, it kept me interested, but I loved that they took these stories and focused in on a Christmas tale.
They could have done it very much along the book going throughout the year, but I thought it was really cool that they just took it and made it into. Specifically a Christmas story. I thought that was, I thought that was genius.
[00:12:41] Rebekah: I do think that one of the things that stuck out to me as I was reading about all of this that I loved was not only is Gene Shepard’s like writing voice so clear, like I started reading the book before I realized that he also wrote the screenplay and I was reading the book and I’m like, Dang, they nailed it.
Like they nailed the way that this person spoke. And then I was like, Oh, it’s
[00:13:01] Tim: the writer.
[00:13:02] Rebekah: He’s also the narrator for the film, which I did not know. The original film is narrated by Gene Shepard. So I thought that was really cool.
[00:13:10] Tim: Wow. And apparently he has a part in it. We just, we just watched it a little while ago.
And there’s one point where, oh, it’s, uh, at the store where the, where the kids are, they get in line. Mom says it’s not too long and they walk away. And the guy that says, kid, that’s where the line ends. The line starts way back over here. The person who says that is the same voice. as the narrator. So that was probably a role.
I didn’t check that out, but I heard the voice and it’s like, yeah, that’s the same person.
[00:13:43] Donna: Several people involved in the writing and the screenplay, the directing. There were several people that had little bits and pieces, little cameos in there for sure.
[00:13:52] Tim: Well, the book stories take place very solidly during the Great Depression, meaning it was set sometime during the 1930s.
The film was supposed to be in the 1940s. And the running commentary about the depression is not present in the film.
[00:14:11] Josiah: Only the first and the longest essay about the highly desirable red Ryder BB gun actually takes place at Christmas in the book. This actually threw me off a little bit. The film used this short story as its core driving plot.
And all of the other stories were shifted to Christmastime to fit the short timeline. The other stories take place over longer periods of time in their original short story form. Several mentioning summer, spring, the story of the Bumpasses and their hounds actually reaches its peak at Easter rather than Thanksgiving.
And
[00:14:46] Tim: the food in the book was Ham, as opposed to, in the film, turkey.
[00:14:54] Josiah: Wow. Disgusting.
[00:14:57] Tim: I’ve heard from someone that they don’t care for ham.
[00:15:02] Rebekah: I like ham, to clarify. Are you talking about Josh?
[00:15:07] Tim: Yeah, I wasn’t going to make, I wasn’t going to, you know, diss on him or anything. Yeah,
[00:15:11] Rebekah: yeah, yeah. You said something threw you off when you were talking about the first essay being the only one at Christmas.
I wasn’t paying
[00:15:17] Josiah: attention to the length. I just had it playing.
[00:15:20] Rebekah: And
[00:15:21] Josiah: the story was ending. He got the BB gun and shot his eye out. I was like, oh wow. Mom said this was a short book. She was right. And I look, and I’m only like a third of the way through the whole thing. And I was very confused. It took me a while before I, I was like, is the rest of this like, Afterward, just talking about making the movie or something, and then it started going.
I was like, oh, yeah, I guess all there were all those stories left out.
[00:15:50] Donna: Yeah, I did the same thing. I was like, what have
[00:15:53] Rebekah: I missed here? That’s so funny. I don’t know why they don’t include that acknowledgments thing at the beginning of the, the audio book because that was
[00:16:01] Tim: so important. I do want to say something about the, uh, about the setting that’s, that’s not in there.
Oh, yeah. Um, he makes, he makes a big deal in the book about the little town in Michigan that they live in. He’s, he, he goes through this part that is so funny, um, that obviously the people who started the town decided it was going to be the place and the location for it was awesome and wonderful. Mm hmm.
Mm hmm. And as he describes it, it’s like the worst possible location. It’s very hot in the summer and very, very cold in the winter. And it’s like just the worst of all places. And you know, it’s like the first guy founded it and everybody after him said, yeah, let’s just keep doing this thing in this place.
That’s horrible. Um, you know, the best thing, the best thing about it is they have factories that, you know, Put out all sorts of dirty air and stuff like that. It’s just, it’s just a hilarious part to the story that I thought was very interesting about the town.
[00:17:09] Donna: But that’s where I grew up. That’s the kind of place I grew up in.
And I really did not know there were other places. I didn’t know. Like I did not know how the sky could be so clear as it is here where
[00:17:23] Rebekah: we live now, which is a crazy thing to think, but that’s just like, yeah, I just didn’t know for the internet, like people just knew what they knew, like it was what they knew was familiar and so it was really cool to go to different places that look super different because you’ve never seen places like that before.
I don’t know.
[00:17:41] Josiah: And the newspaper tells me this and it’s the only person who’s telling me anything like it. So yeah, I guess it’s true.
[00:17:47] Rebekah: Um, something else that did throw me off in the timeline of the books was that the beginning of the Red Rider essay and then the one about the major award start with, uh, Ralphie in his modern day and he’s an adult living in New York thinking nostalgically of his childhood.
And it honestly, like, it kind of took me out
[00:18:07] Tim: of it. You’re still trying
[00:18:09] Rebekah: to find a woman. Yes, sadly. There’s a
[00:18:10] Tim: lot of that in it.
[00:18:12] Rebekah: But it threw me off just a little because I was like, Oh, I wonder if. Like, is this going to be a back and forth kind of thing? Like, is he going to, are we going to, like, time jump over and over?
But the two that do that is, it’s just like at the beginning, and he starts thinking about things that happened when he was a kid and stuff, but yeah. Okay, so what about changes to our plot? timeline and characters. I will
[00:18:35] Donna: start. The book covers the huge amounts of snow the family sees every year around the holidays but the film adds the scene of Ralphie’s little brother Randy shouting that he can’t put his arms down.
[00:18:50] Tim: It is one of my favorite parts. One of the greatest parts. Yeah. I
[00:18:54] Donna: can’t put my arms down. I can’t put my arms down.
[00:18:58] Tim: Mom says put your arms down at school.
[00:19:01] Donna: I remember I was trying to remember I have tried to remember before if mom was this particular or, or concerned about this, because where we lived wasn’t quite as far north as where he grew up, but we had a, we did have cold winters, but I don’t, I don’t think, I mean, we had to be, she wanted to make sure we were covered, but, Gene
[00:19:25] Rebekah: describes this as like a hardier time, like where
[00:19:30] Tim: people were expected to prefer, you know, they walked
[00:19:35] Donna: I did walk, uh, my elementary school was about a mile away and my grandmother walked with us every day to school.
So, I mean, that is interesting. Yeah, we didn’t, mom and dad left for work before school started. So, Jim B would walk down the street because that was a big milestone when I hit 5th or 6th grade. I was allowed to walk to school by myself. So, that’s kind of interesting.
[00:19:56] Rebekah: I know, we’re old, whatever. Speaking of getting old though, if it makes you feel any better, Christian has started talking to Josh about how movies in his old days, you know, were like that.
The movies when you were, they’re so Like Inception. Yeah.
[00:20:12] Tim: Oh, those old movies. No,
[00:20:14] Rebekah: he was talking, oh my gosh, what was it? Well, first of all, back to the future was one that he was like,
[00:20:19] Josiah: okay, you
[00:20:19] Rebekah: know, talking about, but then we were watching something, remember
[00:20:21] Josiah: the first avengers,
[00:20:24] Rebekah: it was something he was like released in like 2003 and I was like, Oh, Oh, shot to the heart.
I can’t.
[00:20:31] Josiah: You’re to blame.
[00:20:32] Donna: It’s painful, trust me. Hey, you want to know
[00:20:33] Josiah: something interesting? Always. Sure. Yeah. Young Ralphie has 80 lines in the movie. And adult Ralphie has 98. Nice. But adult Ralphie’s narrator lines are much longer, and usually young Ralphie is saying things like, Yeah, or Mom.
[00:20:54] Donna: That makes sense.
Yeah.
[00:20:55] Josiah: Also, uh, Something I wanted to talk about with the characterization of the Bumpuses. That, uh, Bumpus family, known mostly for the dogs in the film. But the book’s essay You Bumpuses! That’s right. In the book, in these essays, they feature a family, uh, it’s a much longer and more colorful portrayal of this fascinating family from Kentucky.
The story begins, it ends with them moving in and out of the dead of night.
[00:21:24] Donna: Yes.
[00:21:26] Josiah: I liked that ending, because this was, this was the only story that was a lot more expanded than what’s in the movie from, from what I was experiencing. So it, and it was at the very end of this collection, it was seen as like a bonus to the Christmas story essays.
[00:21:40] Rebekah: The acknowledgments kind of put it as. They call it a bonus story. They say like Gene didn’t really use it much, but he used one little thing that he thought would fit funny into the rest of the narrative. But they include it in the book just because.
[00:21:54] Josiah: And so that was the main time when I was on the edge of my seat, I didn’t know what was going to come next.
See all the bumpers, it’s a whole family, it’s not just some dogs that were strays and living in a house.
[00:22:05] Tim: Not just a whole family, a huge family with lots of relatives that come to visit. I love my
[00:22:13] Rebekah: favorite part of that and I, this is so dumb and little, but my favorite part was every time Ralphie said the number of dogs they had, I got bigger.
Like every is like 17, 789,
[00:22:27] Tim: 2000 to it was just really funny to me. They were all named the same thing except one of them.
[00:22:32] Rebekah: It was. It was Big Red and Old Man Blue, and then there were like a bunch of them named John or something. There are lines,
[00:22:40] Donna: there are lines in this book. Um, I was, I laughed out loud a couple of times.
Definitely. A couple of times I was listening to it, like walking somewhere or whatever, and almost embarrassed myself because he would come up with these. I mean, he was a great. humorous, I mean, Shepard was really that was what he was well known for his, his, the way he could weave words together. And there were a few lines in there and I should, I meant to write some down.
I’m sorry I didn’t now, but they’re so funny. It was great, great stuff in the book for anybody that enjoys book reading.
[00:23:13] Rebekah: I actually also noticed. That when he was talking about the bump asses, they were kind of the epitome of like the negative stereotype of like Southerners like they were from Kentucky, which if you’re in the South, a lot of people don’t even know if Kentucky is really like Southern in that way, but like their accented lines were written so weird, but they were awful.
They didn’t pay their rent. They disrespected everyone around them. They destroyed the house they lived in. They were, uh, Oh, it was so bad, but it was so funny. Like they were the worst
[00:23:48] Tim: stereotype of
[00:23:49] Josiah: hillbilly
[00:23:50] Rebekah: hillbilly specifically. You know
[00:23:52] Josiah: what? We should accept them at church. Oh, sorry. Wrong Christmas story.
[00:23:56] Rebekah: Yeah, we already did. That’s the greatest Christmas.
[00:23:59] Josiah: We don’t have the
[00:23:59] Rebekah: bumpuses. That was just
[00:24:01] Donna: for the one. No,
[00:24:02] Tim: just for one.
[00:24:03] Donna: I had trouble reading through it. Not connecting the Bumpasses with Imogene and her family from the greatest, the best Christmas pageant ever. I kept thinking, oh, it’s a bunch of little kids that have a, they’re bullies and they’re whatever, and had so much trouble and I was like, no, get out of that.
Get out of that world. Come over here. This
[00:24:27] Rebekah: is a comedy. Yeah. Uh, one of the most memorable lines from the film, You’ll Shoot Your Eye Out, was stated differently the first time Ralphie’s mother says it in the book. It was. I was disgusted. I know. I was like, oh no, did they not say it the same way any time?
Her actual first line was, You’ll shoot out one of your eyes. However, as we go on, Santa and Ralphie’s teacher both say the memorable line as we’ve come to recognize it.
[00:24:53] Tim: Well, the film includes an iconic section where Ralphie says a terrible swear word while he’s helping the old man change a tire. He blames one of his friends, Flick, who gets a beating for it and his own mother makes him wash his mouth out with soap.
In the essays, Ralphie says a swear word while beating up Grover Dill and makes himself sick thinking that his mom will rat him out to the old man, although she doesn’t. So they, they kind of include both of those though, um, in the film in slightly different ways.
[00:25:27] Rebekah: There’s no like, they, he mentions them getting a Christmas tree in the book, and then they have the Christmas tree in that section of the book, and then in a different section, the one that’s just about the bullies, he beats up Grover Dill, and that’s when he says the swear word in the book.
And, Uh, in, so in the film they like take him beating up the kid, like that’s one thing that gets like thrown into this right thing. But then the swear word part is actually not during him beating up the kid like it was in the book. They add this whole scene of them getting a Christmas tree and going home and having a flat tire and all that.
[00:26:00] Tim: And technically lists some parent think, Oh no, I don’t want to. want my child to listen to this if it’s about beating people up. Um, it’s the bully that’s been bullying them the whole time that eventually does get his comeuppance. Ralphie’s not the bully. He’s not the bully. He didn’t go out and find this person.
They were just picking on him and picking on him and picking on him. And eventually he’d had enough.
[00:26:26] Donna: Yeah. And I think everybody, probably even, probably even people who we would think are bullies, I think everybody can relate to somebody growing up that they always thought was mean or somebody, there was always the smart Alec.
There was somebody. And so I think that makes this, uh, it makes it right in the context of what all goes on because. You know, you get that,
[00:26:56] Rebekah: he also feels bad to be fair. Yes. So it’s not like he has no repentance, like he doesn’t love it.
[00:27:03] Donna: One way that this portion of the film is quite different from the book is there’s no mention of Ralphie’s father having.
Quite the potty mouth, although that that is a running joke through the film. The old man certainly swears in the book, but it doesn’t seem like he’s actually the one who taught Ralphie that worst word. And let me tell you, my mother. Considered that the worst of the worst words. Dad used curse word. She used curse word.
They spoke, they used curse words in their normal conversation. But that word, I only heard my dad say one time. And when he said it, he was on the phone with somebody and I don’t know who he’s talking to, but I’d never heard it before at that point in my life. And my mom, I don’t know what stopped her from going and knocking him with some instrument of pain because to her, that was The worst of the worst.
And it’s so weird that I can clearly remember that. But I do, but I do find it, I did, I did find that this whole part interesting about, you know, hearing him just grumble and grouse. And I think, can you all admit, can you all say truthfully, you’ve heard dad grumble and grouse when he’s upset about things.
He’s not cursing, but you know what I mean? And I can think of dad. You know, he just gets up frustrated about things. That’s kind of what happens. And more so than mom. Yeah. Yeah. I just say, though,
[00:28:32] Rebekah: I think that the trope that they portray in this movie is very much something I’ve seen, like your mom and dad were definitely like had some of those traits, like Josh’s family has people in it that had a lot of those kind of traits, which I think.
It’s culturally, you know, in that time period was kind of normal. But there were two things I thought of when you were talking. First of all, it is truly a tragedy that we started this podcast after your mother passed away, because I just had the funniest little thought of her sitting in her recliner while we’re recording this right now and her hearing you tell that story and from across the room.
Don’t tell them about that.
[00:29:11] Josiah: I
[00:29:11] Rebekah: think that would have been hilarious. And so in our hearts, it’s still there. The other thing
[00:29:17] Josiah: that’s
[00:29:18] Rebekah: funny to me, hold on, it’s just, this is not small or this is small. You can tell the story. The other thing I thought of was your, it doesn’t surprise me that your mom picked a swear word to hate, even though she would swear normally, because isn’t she the one that said that women shouldn’t smoke while walking?
Like that was a woman should not. I guess it’s
[00:29:38] Donna: just such random things to be so elegant. Right, she smoked, but if you’re going to be actively putting the cigarette to your mouth and drawing on it. You should not walk if you’re a woman, you need to do that standing still and put the cigarette out and then you walk down the street.
That is so funny. Because that is trashy. I’ll never, I’ll never understand, I will never know where she got it. That’s a Sue ism. That’s a Sue ism. My whole life, um, that was her, I don’t know why. Also, you couldn’t trust blonde men, I just want to throw that out. Sorry blonde guys.
[00:30:16] Josiah: I think that Mama was such a distinguished, sophisticated woman I loved when Thanksgiving was happening.
This was 10 or so years ago around the Thanksgiving table in the living room and she said, Oh that man? He’s, uh, and then she covered her mouth and stage whispered for the entire room to hear but oh, I don’t know who she was covering her mouth from loud enough for the whole house to hear it on her mouth.
[00:30:48] Tim: So I, I found the, the whole washing your mouth out with soap and an interesting thing in this whole section. Um, you know, they say dad’s probably where he learned the words from, but you know, the, his friend got in trouble for it, but, but the whole thing around the washing his mouth out with soap and you know, every kid secretly dreams that one day, you know, there’ll be blind and the parents will be sorry for all of that because the doctor will say it was soap blindness.
I’ve, I’ve just found that really interesting. You know, he’s a connoisseur of soap, he says. He does mention washing his mouth
[00:31:29] Rebekah: out with soap in the book, but I did love that that scene from the movie is only in the movie where he has this whole flash forward of, you know, hoping he goes blind from the soap, you know, it
[00:31:40] Donna: was.
And then to see her after he leaves the room and she threatens him and sends him to bed and then she’s like sticks it in her mouth to see what it tastes like and just about throws up on it. So I thought that was a pretty cool little piece of of character for her to show, you know, she really did want to.
At least feel for him enough that she wanted a little sympathy with it. That
[00:32:06] Tim: was still something when I was growing up. That was still something that parents talked about. I heard them talk about that. That never happened in my home, but I heard people talk about that. You know, going to wash your mouth out with soap.
And at that point, it may have even been just a Just a colloquial kind of terminology that you don’t actually do it, but yeah, we’re saying, you know, you need your mouth cleaned out So yeah,
[00:32:30] Josiah: well, let me tell you what I want to talk about right now How much discussion there is in the book about how one receives a major award like the lamp.
This was probably my favorite short story in the book. It was, um, so evocative. The subtext of the old man and the mom battling silently, passive aggressively. It was, uh, you know, Ralphie’s old man spent What seemed like forever, answering more and more difficult puzzles from the paper, followed by an almost impossible two sets of puzzles sent to him by mail.
The top prize, which the old man, unfortunately, did not receive was 50, 000, but he did receive
[00:33:20] Tim: the leg lamp. Hmm. That has become extremely iconic. Didn’t I get you a leg
[00:33:27] Donna: lamp ornament?
[00:33:28] Tim: Oh, we have, we have a number of them on the Christmas tree.
[00:33:32] Donna: Not leg lamp ornaments. We only have one of those. Okay. We’re not skeevy.
We have several, uh, Christmas story ornaments.
[00:33:39] Tim: Uh huh. Oh yeah. The leg lamp was not simply a sexy but random symbol in the book. The individual leg with no other context was actually stated to be the logo of the soda brand that offered the awards for puzzle solving in the paper. The illuminated knee high pop logo was the inspiration of the major award sexy leg lamp.
[00:34:06] Donna: There was no other good drink. No. Pop, which we only knew as Coke. The only brand was Coke. Wait, you grew up knowing it as Coke? It was only Coke.
[00:34:17] Tim: What kind of Coke do you want? Grape or orange? But grape,
[00:34:21] Donna: it was grape and orange knee high. was the brand knee high pop and but now that was pop. It was great knee high pop.
Orange knee high pop. Uh, they were amazing that I love sun kissed orange now, but knee high was a brand of its own, except when I drank it before I rode on Ferris wheels, which I did twice and two different times threw up at the top of the Ferris wheel in my mother’s life. So just make fun of that. Yeah, it was unfortunate, but it was either hold it or throw me out.
[00:35:00] Tim: I find it absolutely fascinating that this has become one of the most recognizable things from the movie. It is so funny. This leg lamp, this strange. Major award, one leg by itself with a lampshade on it, and it’s the major award. Maybe, maybe it’s going to be a bowling, bowling alley. How would they deliver a bowling alley?
Well, they wouldn’t deliver the whole thing just to deliver the deed or whatever. Oh no, what’s in that box? A major award. It’s a leg. I
[00:35:35] Rebekah: do also love that the book has the scene where he goes outside and has her adjusted in the window and then everyone in the neighborhood just. Like, yeah, there’s a round to see it.
[00:35:45] Tim: Oh, what is that? It’s a major award.
[00:35:50] Rebekah: The leg lamp does stay in the window in the book for several months before it is unceremoniously broken, of course, by accident. In the film, it’s only up like a week and then. You know, she was vacuuming and the lamp, it just, it broke. I don’t know what happened. It was so sad in the book too.
Cause like they go through the whole process of him, like going to the store to get glue because he was like,
get the glue, we got to put it back together. And she’s like, we’re out of glue. And then he goes to the store and gets the glue and he tries to put it back together for an entire day. And the glue is like hardening and You used all the
[00:36:26] Tim: glue on purpose.
And she absolutely did. Anyway. She probably squeezed it all out into the trash can.
[00:36:33] Donna: Yeah. During the lead up to Christmas, the Ralphie in the book agonizes over what gift to get each member of his family. He eventually decides on a zeppelin for his brother. Do you know what that is? Which is the big, I didn’t know.
I had to look that up. Well,
[00:36:54] Josiah: it’s yeah, it’s the Hindenburg. He gets Randy
[00:36:57] Donna: Zeppelin, which it does show up in the film. Then he gets a Simon eyes for the old man, which is a car product,
[00:37:05] Tim: which also shows up in the film.
[00:37:07] Donna: Yes. and an atomizer for his mom. This isn’t part of the movie story, those, those last gifts, even though there’s nods to them.
Um, I will tell you that one of the trivias I was reading when I was, uh, when I was in the section talking about when this book took place, it was odd that they had the Zeppelin there. period because it had a very negative connotation after the World War. And they were kind of like, they put it in there and it was fine.
I’d never thought about that or whatever. But there was a period of time where people were like, Oh, we don’t know. We maybe we should use the zip. Yeah.
[00:37:49] Tim: That’s interesting because I, I’ve not. I’ve not seen that historically, that it was, it was only a German, uh, German thing. It was, it was a worldwide, uh, way of air travel before the airplane became popular enough.
You could, you know, hang the gondola underneath it. Transport quite a, quite a few people in a lot of cities, including New York City. Um, the Empire State Building, the reason that it has the, the tall tower at the top, that was to receive the Zeppelin. So they could, they could dock there and the people could get off.
So that would have been a common thing. During the time that was built. Tiny little fact, sorry. Factoid.
[00:38:37] Donna: I love it.
[00:38:37] Tim: I love a factoid. Well, the adventures and all of the bullying are quite a bit shorter in the book than in the film. Uh, the primary character, Ralphie, gets into a fight. Uh, which is also a bit different, Grover, Jill, in the book, it’s Scott, Scott Farkas in the film.
Is this Scott, not Scott? It is Scott. Good. Parents, what in the world are you doing to your children?
[00:39:03] Donna: I mean, Scott Farkas actually kind of rolls now, unlike Rebecca’s name for the evening. It
[00:39:09] Tim: rolls, but if you say it too fast, if you say it too fast, you’re liable to say just about anything. Um, however, both of these characters appear in the essays at different points.
We also don’t see a scene in the book about Flick getting his tongue stuck to a pole on the triple dog dare. That doesn’t, that doesn’t appear in the book at all? I did not, I didn’t read through that at all.
[00:39:32] Rebekah: Also, um, I just want to clarify, I don’t know if you guys thought this, because I thought we were talking about this, but, um, Grover Dill is in the film as is Scott Farkas.
Yeah, they’re both just the guy he beats up in the film and it’s Grover Dill in the book. Yeah, I thought when we were talking about this earlier, I had thought Grover Dill was a book only character and then I looked it up and I was like, no, no That’s actually one of the bully kids. Like that was his. Is that the,
[00:40:00] Tim: that’s the, that’s the little one, right?
The toady? Yes. City calls him. That’s Grover Deal. I believe so.
[00:40:06] Rebekah: Also, I thought it was funny. I know Josiah really liked the the Bumpus story because it was like the newest one we didn’t know a lot about. And in that one, is it Willie Bumpus? I think is his name. Um, but one of the Bumpus kids that’s in Ralphie’s grade also becomes like a big bully because Scott Farkas makes fun of him and so then he beats up Scott Farkas.
So.
[00:40:28] Josiah: Right. Yes. Mm hmm. Horsecut. Mom, I heard that this book was released in 1966.
[00:40:35] Donna: Uh, it totally was. I was two years old. The movie release was in November of 1983. The book rating on Book Reads was 3. 88. I think I would have given it a little higher, but I mean
[00:40:51] Tim: That’s out of four?
[00:40:52] Donna: Yeah, out of five.
[00:40:54] Tim: Oh, if that’s out of five, that is a little strange.
Yeah,
[00:40:56] Donna: I thought so. As far as the movie ratings go, Rotten Tomatoes, the critics score, and the Flixster audience score for both 89 are both currently 89 percent. It’s held on to a good, it’s a good strong rating for it. IMDB rates it 7. 9 out of 10. The movie only costs 3 million dollars to make. So even in, I mean, in 1983 still, that’s still a low budget, I think.
[00:41:25] Tim: That was just a year or so before Back to the future,
[00:41:30] Donna: but it was after like the Star Wars stuff is in and but I think the difference being What was their production cost for they didn’t have CG they didn’t need CG so they didn’t need a lot of stuff No, no in the winter They’re opening weekend 886 theaters, so it’s a great number for that many theaters It was 2 million in the U.
S. Now, the most that theaters that had ever showed in after that was 938. So we’re talking about another, what, 50 theaters were added to it and that was it. Uh, today, it, that would be a very limited, minutely released thing. Uh, so that’s, that’s really great. That’s a great take, box office take. Uh, USA Canada gross and the total gross, there was a little bit of international but It’s very, not even, it was negligible.
Uh, their total take of the first run of the movie was 19. 2 million total. And I also was reading that, um, they use, they start, it came out end of November, mid November. Definitely a Christmas movie, but like, they stopped showing it early in December. They didn’t, it wasn’t out a bunch of weeks, and people were like furious about it.
And so, after either a week out or two weeks out, something like that, the theaters brought it back because people were like, what are you doing, why’d you take it off? People wanted to see it. So I thought that was kind of cool. Um, the movie’s rated PG and it’s filmed in Cleveland, Ohio, with some scenes, uh, filmed up in Toronto, Ontario.
So I thought that was, uh, a pretty interesting piece. You know, a lot of the movies that we’ve looked at, you know, the numbers are so big. And so when you read this, it’s like, oh, it only made 19 million. Well, it only costs 3 million to produce. So it did great. So for six times, it’s. You know, production costs, so it’s pretty, pretty cool.
[00:43:43] Josiah: Oh, how sweet. I see this 2017 article on Fox about how actors are still receiving royalties. They’re not very large, but Scott Farkas told Page Six, and it’s about 1, 800 every two years. Hey, well, that’s good though. There are a lot of things
[00:44:04] Tim: that happened around gifts. Yeah, there’s a lot of things that happened around that time that you got paid period and you don’t get any rights even though they show it a thousand times afterward.
Um, that’s the Brady Bunch was that way the kids in the Brady Bunch don’t have residuals. So
[00:44:21] Rebekah: in my acknowledgement thing that you guys didn’t. Um, I thought it was really interesting, uh, in 1983, a low budget film titled A Christmas Story was released during the holiday season with little fanfare. So, describes what the book does, or what the movie was about.
And then says, it did modest business at the box office, but the second televised life of a Christmas story has proven nothing short of astonishing. Year by year, it has garnered more and more fans of its reality based screwball comedy, so knowing about the ways of kids in an adult controlled universe, until it now has become a cinematic holiday tradition to rival It’s a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street.
This film is ubiquitous on cable television in the week leading up to Christmas. And Ralphie Parker’s dogged quest to have a red rider BB gun in the face of re repeated adult warnings that you’ll shoot your eye out. Mm-hmm . Has entered the mass consciousness as an archetypal childhood experience.
That’s interesting
[00:45:20] Tim: because these days there aren’t as many of those kinds of things because even at the time that. that it came out, uh, there were limited, a limited number of television stations. Of course, there wasn’t internet yet, at least not to that group, to the degree it is now for sure. Streaming didn’t exist.
Um, and all of those things. So it’s less and less likely to have one of these. Um, society wide,
[00:45:48] Rebekah: like a later cult following thing,
[00:45:49] Tim: yeah, because, yeah, because everybody doesn’t watch the same thing. There’s so many different things to watch that it’s, it’s really hard to find that,
[00:46:00] Josiah: you know, I think I was just going to say my theory.
Is that my experience. I wonder if it is other people’s experience. My experience is we watch every year and it wasn’t until I was an adult. I realized it was from the 80s.
[00:46:17] Donna: It felt
[00:46:17] Josiah: like it was made in the 40s. Yeah, in the 50s. We just assume. And so I wonder if like just a year or two after it came out, it already felt like Oh yeah, this movie’s been around a long time.
Yeah. This movie was around since I was a kid. Right. I don’t know. That’s my theory. Well,
[00:46:34] Tim: I, I thought the, I thought that about the, you know, Christmas, Charlie Brown Christmas special. I didn’t realize it hadn’t been out for a long time. You know, I was a kid when it came out and I just assumed it had been out for a long time,
[00:46:49] Donna: and I don’t remember that this came out in 83 either.
Uh, because I agree with you. I thought for a long time it was, it was probably older. Yeah.
Yeah.
[00:46:58] Rebekah: Well, Mom did find a few pieces of interesting trivia that we can kind of start to wrap up with here. Mm
[00:47:04] Tim: hmm. Well, Gene Shepard, the author and the narrator. And
[00:47:08] Rebekah: screenwriter.
[00:47:09] Tim: And screenwriter, was a humorist well known for his radio performances in the years following World War II.
He started adapting his episodes for publication in Playboy magazine in June of 1964. Um, yeah, the year that Donna was born. Most of his work was centered on childhood experiences in the fictional town of Holm, Holman, Indiana. Shepard’s hometown was actually Hammond, Indiana. Uh, author Shel Silverstein tried to get Gene to put his stories on paper with no luck.
Finally, Shel recorded some of the episodes on tape, transcribed them, then worked with Shepard to edit and perfect the most popular. Shepherd said it took him three years to complete this one named In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash.
[00:48:00] Donna: He, uh, the more I read about him, he had no interest. He was a radio personality.
Why would I, no, who’s going to want to read my stuff? I really thought, I was very fascinated to read stuff about him. and hear, you know, find things about him. The title is a mix of the popular motto in God we trust that’s from the 19th century, uh, and all others pay cash, which is a witticism. I’d not heard of this before.
It’s called, um, cracker barrel. Uh, philosophy,
[00:48:37] Tim: that would be, that would be fellas gathering at the general store over the cracker barrels, playing games and talking and it was the, it was the place where you, you know, it was the chat room long before the chat room was such a thing.
[00:48:55] Donna: And all others pay cash.
was a witticism rejecting new forms of payment in the early 20th century. The credit card and checks
[00:49:07] Josiah: and I love those new forms, not real money.
[00:49:11] Donna: Listen, when my mom was a teenager, uh, She had credit cards to department stores in Charleston and that those were not, I mean, it was a new thing. It was a special thing to be able to have a credit line like that.
So, I mean, yeah, they are, they are relatively new in the last hundred years when you look back like that. Um, anyway.
[00:49:37] Josiah: The original book. In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash. Here’s how to break it down. That book is 31 standalone stories. 15 of them are autobiographical. 5 of them are used for a Christmas story.
I think all of us read the 5 short stories. Yes. We didn’t read the other short stories that did not have anything to do with a Christmas story. I would be interested to read them, but we didn’t do it for this because it wasn’t directly related to a Christmas story.
[00:50:07] Donna: Yeah.
[00:50:08] Josiah: The book that we read was published in 2003, which specifically compiled the five short stories that were used in the movie.
[00:50:18] Rebekah: And I appreciate that because to be totally honest with you, I’m glad I didn’t have to read 31 stories, including, um, 26 that weren’t related to this movie. So I’m really glad they did it that way. Uh, This was a piece from Wikipedia about Shepard’s clever wit that we found interesting. His most famous stunt was a hoax he created about a non existent book, I, Libertine, by a fake author, Frederick R.
R Ewing in 1956 during a discussion on how easy it was to manipulate the bestseller lists based on demand as well as sales. Shepherd suggested his listeners visit bookstores and ask for a copy of I, Libertine, which led to booksellers attempting to order the book from their distributors. Fans of the show planted references to the book and author so widely that demand for the book led to claims of it being on the New York Times bestseller list.
Shepard, Theodore Sturgeon, and Betty Ballantine wrote the long awaited book with a cover designed by illustrator Frank Kelly Freese, published by Ballantine Books.
[00:51:24] Donna: Well, I, I tried to imagine when I read this whole ruse he put together, I tried to imagine how would that look today? Because if somebody at the point that people were claiming, Oh, I saw it on the bestseller list when it clearly was never on the bestseller list because it didn’t exist today.
You couldn’t do that because of the way media is structured now. You’d have people pouring over it, but you’d also have people creating a I image of the New York times bestseller list with the book on it. Yeah. True. I mean, it’s, it’s crazy to think how all that’s changed, but, um.
[00:52:08] Tim: A lot of things can be, can be manipulated.
[00:52:11] Donna: Yeah, I’ve never heard that.
[00:52:14] Josiah: Well, speaking of manipulating inventions, Gene Shepard contended that most of the characters were made up. But, many people associated with Gene as a young man said, That a lot of the characters were real people, including Flick and Schwartz, the two besties of Ralphie. And Gene commonly referred to his dad as the old man.
I think that’s such an easy, easy one. Of course it’s his dad.
[00:52:39] Tim: Yeah. So they were not exactly made up, but they were. probably adjusted to make it funnier and you know,
[00:52:47] Donna: I mentioned before that Shepard’s delivery style and his writing were so funny and again, go read, go read the book. It’s genuinely funny.
His delivery style was a precursor Honestly, I’m not sure if any of our baby listeners, maybe a few, might even recognize the name Garrison Keillor. But, uh, Garrison Keillor is an author and singer and he’s a humorist as well. And he’s most famous for Uh, a show that he ran from 1974 to 2016.
[00:53:25] Tim: Wow.
[00:53:25] Donna: On Minnesota Public Radio called A Prairie Home Companion.
And so if you listen to public radio out there, Hmm?
[00:53:33] Josiah: Even Prairie Home? Yeah. Prairie Home?
[00:53:36] Donna: That was Garrison Keillor. And so he, um, a lot of his, A lot of his style is very similar to Shepard. And then, I also was very fascinated to read in the comments on the six season DVD set of Seinfeld, Jerry Seinfeld says, He really formed my entire comedic sensibility.
I learned how to do comedy from Gene Shepard. And once I read it, I went, Oh, I can totally see that and then Seinfeld named his third child Shepard. Shepard Seinfeld. I love that. Isn’t that cute? That’s really cute. I love this next factoid and I love that TJ picked it.
[00:54:21] Josiah: A hidden suction tube was used to create the illusion of Flick’s tongue.
being stuck to a flagpole, and we’re sure it wasn’t Schwartz.
[00:54:29] Donna: It was, it was flick. Yeah, but we looked it up. I mean, I went back and, I went back and checked it, because I thought it was Schwartz too, but it was flick. And I really want to, I want to go watch this scene again, because I want to figure out how they used a suction tube.
[00:54:45] Josiah: I know they hid it. Camera angles, baby. We’re about to watch Lord of the Rings filled with camera trickery. Yes. Oh my
[00:54:51] Tim: gosh. Amazing stuff. Well, Peter Billingsley, the Primary star, young Ralphie, says that the string of nonsense cursing that he screams while beating up scut Farkas was scripted word for word.
That’s pretty impressive. Which I find fascinating. Yeah. I like that. Seems like that would have been one of those times where you just do some off the cuff ad lib 20 times and see which one you’re going to use.
[00:55:19] Josiah: But I can see how they wanted it to sound like cursing without being cursing.
[00:55:23] Tim: Yes.
[00:55:24] Rebekah: And I appreciate that it’s still pretty family friendly.
[00:55:27] Tim: I did not realize that there was some actual cursing in the film. Because the version we, right, the version we watched all those years, even Dad His cursing was just nonsensical words. You knew he was cursing, but he wasn’t cursing. And the book had more. The book
[00:55:46] Josiah: didn’t censor any of it. Yeah. The book definitely used a lot of curse words, so it’s a little less family friendly.
[00:55:54] Donna: I did read somewhere, just didn’t include it, that along this line of like, uh, uh, this slew of cursing or whatever, that, um, he said, he, He couldn’t do it without cursing. So they just, he just mumbled and grumbled. He said, I didn’t even try to make words because there was no way I could say it. Expletives kept coming out and he said, I didn’t want, they didn’t want that.
Uh, nod to the non PC days gone by. The prop manager gave Peter Billingsley, who was 12 when they filmed this, okay, 12 actual chewing tobacco, big league chewing tobacco. for his black Bart seed. After he spent an hour sick on the set, they changed it up and gave him raisins to chew so he could make brown spit.
[00:56:44] Tim: Interesting
[00:56:44] Donna: that wasn’t their first choice.
[00:56:47] Josiah: He’s 12, I think. Yeah, it was the 80s. We knew about tobacco. It wasn’t the 40s when they filmed
[00:56:56] Donna: this. I just was like, Hot poor kid. That’s the word. Yeah.
[00:57:02] Josiah: Yeah. You say nod non PC. That’s just irresponsible. Should we give kids chewing tobacco?
[00:57:12] Donna: Apparently in 1983 the prop managers did. Oh my god. Gave all the kids the chewing tobacco. Hey Reagan was
[00:57:18] Tim: president. Don’t forget, don’t forget your mom’s dad started smoking when he was nine. They swept things up off the barn floor and rolled them into cigarette rolls and smoked them. So
[00:57:32] Donna: the doctor asked him when he was like 60s in his mid 60s.
What did you smoke at nine? What did you smoke at nine? And dad was like, anything we could roll into
[00:57:43] Tim: paper, roll in the paper, cigarette
[00:57:45] Donna: paper, you roll stuff up in it. You
[00:57:47] Rebekah: could try. You know, the terrifying part about that, it was not a good thing, but it was a lot less dangerous than cigarettes, which are sold in stores.
and have oversight and regulation.
[00:57:57] Donna: Yeah. Oh yeah. It didn’t matter. And you know, then you did roll your, you didn’t buy, you couldn’t, they couldn’t afford, they lived out in the country on a farm. They were poor. They couldn’t, they couldn’t afford to buy cigarettes. Even at the point when dad was, dad and mom got married, mom would go and to, when they would go to visit his parents, uh, and my dad’s dad was sick, had cancer.
That’s, he died from cancer. Mom would go and, and, uh, they would go every weekend to see his parents and she would sit and roll cigarettes for him. They would buy the tobacco, loose tobacco, and mom would sit and roll his cigarettes up for the week to do it. She could do it. He liked the way she rolled them well.
Yeah. Good Daughter-in-law
[00:58:40] Tim: days gone by.
[00:58:41] Donna: Mm-hmm .
[00:58:42] Tim: Well, one of the funniest lines, he looks like a deranged Easter bunny. was a total ad lib by Darren Mcg. Gavin . That’s good. That, that sounds awesome to me. Just let, let the actor go and see what comes out. And you’ve got to have something funny coming up and it was, it’s hilarious.
It’s a great one.
[00:59:04] Rebekah: Yeah. Another interesting factoid is although Ralphie’s actor, Oh, what is his name? Sorry. I had it. Peter Billingsley. Peter Billingsley. Sorry. My brain just boop. Uh, although he’s become obviously the iconic actor who played Ralphie, other actors that auditioned for his role included Sean Astin and Will Wheaton.
Before we wrap up, have any of you seen. A Christmas Story Christmas, a Christmas Story 2, or the stage play, A Christmas Story, and if so, what did you think?
[00:59:35] Josiah: No, I almost directed the play this year, though. Oh. Oh. Yeah, it was, um. What’s the play called?
[00:59:41] Rebekah: I think it’s just A Christmas
[00:59:42] Josiah: Story. A Christmas Story. Oh, it is this.
Maybe the musical. I think it’s a musical.
[00:59:47] Tim: We have watched A Christmas Story Christmas.
[00:59:51] Rebekah: I think I watched it with you guys.
[00:59:53] Tim: Is it also A Christmas Story 2? Yes, that’s the most recent one. So, there was
[00:59:57] Rebekah: A Christmas Story 2 in like 2013 or 14. And it was apparently horrible. Like, very bad. Completely different
[01:00:06] Tim: characters.
They used different actors and everything. Oh,
[01:00:08] Rebekah: 2012, I was wrong about the date. Disgusting,
[01:00:12] Tim: but a Christmas story on rotten
[01:00:14] Rebekah: tomatoes, which is actually not as bad as I thought it was going to get.
[01:00:16] Tim: Yeah, a Christmas story, Christmas. Peter Billingsley is in it. The mom is different, and I won’t spoil the plot for anybody else.
The mom is different. But he’s the only character. He’s, he returns and so do his friends. The actors that played his friends.
[01:00:34] Rebekah: Yeah. The mom, apparently the actor who played the mom returned, didn’t return because she stopped acting in like the early 2000s. And so that’s why they changed out the actor, actress for that part.
[01:00:46] Josiah: Oh, she passed away last year.
[01:00:48] Rebekah: Oh, that’s so sad.
[01:00:50] Josiah: I think she might have been alive during the, the movie being filmed, but she passed away last year. Do you know what she was
[01:00:57] Donna: in before that? I do not. And why he wanted her. Was she
[01:01:00] Josiah: in Close Encounters of the Third Kind that we started watching and didn’t finish?
[01:01:05] Donna: Yeah.
[01:01:05] Tim: Oh, you didn’t finish it. Weren’t you there? You what? Half the stuff that you all do, you do once I go to bed. Um, well,
[01:01:14] Rebekah: all I was going to say was I did see A Christmas Story Christmas with you guys, and I thought it was very, it was not the classic of the original. Like, I don’t know that I’m going to like rewatch every Christmas or anything, but it, it, Nailed the nostalgia, but also it had a decent plot and story all of its own.
It wasn’t them trying to just recreate the same story. Like, I saw a review that a guy was, he said, and it was kind of the same thought I’d had. Going in, I was worried that it was just going to be them trying to have, like, Ralphie has kids and his kids get into this stuff, and it’s really a lot of the same stuff he went through.
And I really appreciated that it had its own plot, and I definitely think it was worth watching. I have not seen the play, nor A Christmas Story 2. So.
[01:01:59] Tim: We were actually watching it just before we started the podcast, so we haven’t quite finished it. Yeah. This is, we’ve seen it before. Yeah. Like I said, I think you and I,
[01:02:09] Rebekah: I think the three of us at least were together when we watched it.
[01:02:11] Tim: Yeah, probably so. And I think it’s, I think it’s pretty good. Um, Peter Billingsley, although he is recognizable. Um, he still has that every man, not super famous kind of person. So, I like that. Hey,
[01:02:29] Josiah: remember how we kept getting confused about Flick and Schwartz? Flick is played by Scott Schwartz.
[01:02:35] Rebekah: Oh, well, that’s not confusing at all.
[01:02:40] Josiah: Thank
[01:02:40] Donna: you, Casting Director.
[01:02:42] Josiah: Schwartz is played by Artie Robb. Oh. Alright. Yeah. But Flick, Schwartz, and Scutt all appear as well in the Christmas Story Christmas. One of them is
[01:02:55] Rebekah: a police officer. I bet you can’t guess which one. It’s Scutt. Yep. The funniest one as a police officer. My twin
[01:03:03] Donna: brother. My twin too.
What?
[01:03:08] Rebekah: Yeah, I’m Scott Fartus, so that would make us triplet everyone that biology doesn’t mean anything. It’s 2024 on the recording that would make us. Rebecca
[01:03:19] Josiah: is Scott Fartus. Mother is Scottita Farkas, Twinkie of Scott.
[01:03:28] Donna: Josiah is Bumpus. His old man Don Hatfield. And let me tell you. My dad was. Was the old man in the movie that he really was that guy. Oh, yeah. All right. So
[01:03:41] Rebekah: let’s give our
[01:03:42] Donna: final verdicts. I will start I Was so pleasantly surprised that the book kept my interest it had new things in it And it was okay. They weren’t in the movie.
I still enjoyed them podcast that Gene Shepard is a very funny man And I really appreciate natural humor from a person you could tell even as he was reading the audio book. I just knew in my head. He just was naturally funny. And my brother, it was naturally funny. He could just say stuff that was just.
So off the wall and out there and it was so funny and, um, uh, I think that’s a, that’s a great trait to have. And so I really enjoyed the book in this situation. I’m glad I read. I’m glad I watched the movie before I read the book. I know we’ve chatted about that too, which is really the best way to do it.
Um, but the, it allowed me to read the book and get some. Um, so, you know, nothing. I think the movie’s better overall because they focused on Christmas and I thought that was a smart move. Um, it’s kind of hard to say. I, the book was less, but. If I’m going to rate one of them, I definitely thought the movie was better.
[01:05:14] Josiah: I think that the movie was a little better, but I basically agree that the book was great. I wouldn’t really change anything about the book. I think the book is amazing and the movie is just a little more, well, a lot more, but it’s a more
[01:05:31] Donna: iconic
[01:05:32] Josiah: for multiple reasons. It added things that were good additions.
And, uh, you know, I’m interested in what wasn’t included from the 31 essays in the original, In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash, but Yeah, it was, it was a great, great adaptation. The movie really is, and I’m glad that Gene Shepard was so heavily involved with it. Yeah, I think the movie was better this time.
[01:05:55] Tim: I think perhaps Shepard’s heavy involvement in the whole project, including the movie, is probably why Why it carries, you know, the same kind of weight. They both have the same kind of feeling. I like the movie better because although the book is really good, the fact that the things that have become iconic are kind of spread across the year and some of them are bigger and some of them are smaller.
I really like the way that the movie did it and I would I would liken it to, um, a concentration of flavor. Uh, there, there are things that you, that you boil and, and the flavor gets more concentrated and so it’s just a richer flavor. That’s the whole concept behind stew and, and things like that. But um, I think that’s what the movie is.
It takes this wonderful book and it concentrates it into the very best parts of it, uh, with stew. With very little or no fluff. Yeah. That isn’t just building this flavor of the movie.
[01:07:05] Donna: Honey, that was beautiful.
[01:07:07] Rebekah: It was beautiful. I think I probably agree with everything that you’ve all said. Um, we’re pretty much all on the same page that the book was a good work.
The movie’s iconic. I feel the same way. I think the movie was better, but just in the way that I’ve rated a couple things like that recently, where I think the movie was better, partly because I’ll rewatch the movie. This is not a book I would typically just pick up and read. I don’t really read books about Christmas and I don’t really read books that aren’t in the fantasy sci fi genre.
So just reading something about things that could be real, you know, kind of interesting stories about real life. Um, is not my typical thing, so I don’t know that I’m going to pick it up again, although I did have the thought while I was reading, like, I could see putting this on an audio book and having, like, you know, maybe middle school ish age kids in the car and like listening to it together on our way to Christmas at Grandma’s or whatever, like, you know, I could see doing something like that.
So I think. The book was certainly fantastic. Uh, I don’t know that I’ll read it again, but I know that we’ll watch the movie over and over and it will continue to be nostalgic for me. I’m certain three years.
[01:08:15] Tim: Yeah. I, I thoroughly enjoyed Darren McGavin’s, uh, acting. There are a few other iconic things that he’s done, uh, over the years before he passed away.
But, um, I just, I think he’s a great actor and I think. He just brought life to the old man, so I
[01:08:33] Rebekah: think so, too. Well, if you would like to bring life to our Christmas, uh, we would love it if you would give us the gift of giving us a rating or a review or a subscription on Patreon. We are now live there.
We’d love to have your support as a free subscriber or part of a paid tier. Um, we do have some fun bonuses that we would love to get started on as soon as we’ve built up. Some, uh, some paid members there. So you can also find us on X Instagram and Facebook at book is better pod. If you want to send feedback, ask us questions to answer on future episodes or just chat with the hosts, you can also join our free discord server at the link in the episode description.
Uh, if you sign up on Patreon, you may have access to additional channels, but the Patreon is free to anyone, Patreon subscriber or not anyway, uh, until. Next time, I guess. Oh my gosh. It’s the time to say it. We’ll see you next year.
[01:09:33] Tim: He looks like a deranged Easter Bunny.
[01:09:38] Donna: And I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas.
[01:09:41] Tim: Yes. Merry Christmas. And a Happy New Year.
[01:09:45] Donna: Yes. Oh
[01:10:01] Rebekah: my gosh, I heard a new gen alpha slang the other day that we should probably start using. You call your parents your spawn point.
[01:10:11] Tim: Spawn point. That’s great. So now we’re salmon.
[01:10:15] Donna: No, it’s a video game reference. Now we’re salmon.
