Redux: A Christmas Story.

Redux #020: A Christmas Story.

Cast: 

Peter Billingsley (Ralphie Parker), Jean Shepherd (Narrator), Ian Petrella (Randy Parker), Melinda Dillon (Mrs. Parker), Darren McGavin (Mr. Parker - The Old Man), Scott Schwartz (Flick), R. D. Robb (Schwartz), Zack Ward (Scut Farkus), Yano Anaya (Grover Dill), and Tedde Moore (Miss Shields) Directed by Bob Clark.

Review: 

From my review on December 25, 2010: 

This film, is a classic. it's a film that has decent acting (albeit with some overacting at points), a story that has many themes to go with it that connect into one (with some...fantasies by Ralphie) It's funny, but it can also be serious. It's a timeless classic that was once overlooked back in 1983, but it is now considered to be a classic in the Christmas spirit. Merry Christmas, and I hope you watch this film at least once this year, if not twice (as it's on a marathon right now...).

If you have not encountered this film on cable television or on the video shelves, it would be quite a curious achievement for a film that has grown in stature since its release in November of 1983, which is now forty years old. The making of the film was a long and lengthy process that really should start with Jean Shepherd and his unique place among the art of telling a narrative to others. Born in Chicago but raised in Hammond, Indiana, Shepherd had served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps during the second World War before getting into radio that saw him move around various places such as Indiana and Ohio (there was also an attempt at late night television) before his most noted run came at WOR in the New York area, where he broadcasted for over two decades beginning in 1956. Somehow, with a timeslot of 1:00-5:30am, it all came together for those monologues (as opposed to playing music records). Probably his most notable stunt came with I, Libertine, a practical joke novel born in 1956 out of making fun of how bestseller lists were done (where people would just go to libraries and ask for it, complete with listing a publisher and a fake author name), which became such a noted phenomenon that an actual book was created (written by Theodore Sturgeon based on an outline by Shepherd). Shepherd kept busy even when not on radio all the time, whether that involved segment work, commentaries on other radio outlets / in magazine form / the college circuit, or, well, script work in television and this film. In 1966, Shepherd's novel In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash was published, which came about after Shel Silverstein had encouraged him to put his musings from tape into book form, which saw him help Shepherd with editing and developing. His musings were loosely inspired by experiences that aren't exactly autobiographical but are, well, ones that might seem real to you or me in the ways that matter - it was a hit book. A couple of Shepherd works had reached television (with him as narrator) before and after the release of this film, such as The Great American Fourth of July and Other Disasters (1982) for TV. Shepherd apparently envisioned the film as "Dickens’s Christmas Carol as retold by Scrooge.” Shepherd, along with his wife Leigh Brown, wrote the film with Clark. The Louisiana native grew up in Alabama and Florida and had dabbled in philosophy and football before entering film in horror, such as with Black Christmas (1974). He had an interest in making a film of Shepherd's stories, but he couldn't get funding from MGM until the success of Porky's (1981). The film was done in Toronto for interiors and Cleveland for exteriors, but in that manner of low-budget films having to improvise, a lack of snow meant a variety of tricks used for snow, such as foam. You could watch the film in any one scene and feel right at home, whether that involves the reveal of that primal instinct coming out in going from tears to drawing blood in a fight or those imagined sequences of being a gunfighter or being blind from soap that isn't too different from the delusions one can find as an adult when it comes to assurances. 

The mundane things that make us who we are really do come into account for this film, one that runs for an efficient 94 minutes. Sure, it has the softening of nostalgia (as per Clark to the chagrin of Shepherd), but at the end of the day, we are weird little people every day of the year with our own little things to get hung up on, and such weirdness can be really funny to look at again and again. It was a modest success with audiences of the time, don't forget that part. But why do people like me come back to this film every now and then?  Shepherd once put it best: “Ah, life is like that. Sometimes at the height of our revelries, when our joy is at its zenith, when all is most right with the world, the most unthinkable disasters descend upon us.” One can be playing with their present and boom, something comes up to remind us that things will come and go the way you cannot control, holiday or not. Billingsley proves more than just a vessel for Shepherd to narrate the observations of memories past with his worthwhile timing that make for useful delight. It is a film for the kids and adults because it doesn't dawdle on BS'ing you about where things stand. There are no weak elements to the kid actors because they seep right into the story with no pretensions of being anything other than who they are: vessels to show us the weirdness of growing up in the pains and very few pleasures. Dillon and McGavin hold the film as the paragon of lovingly human people that hold it all together in that great connection of showing family in the clearest sense of making it work in spite of itself. Probably the best way to show that is in that fateful reveal of the last Christmas present where you see the faces of the two as Billingsley opens it (notice that through the previous parts of the film, McGavin's character never talks to Billingsley about a "Red Ryder BB Gun"). The film may seem like one all about the pursuit of an object, but really it is about who we are when it comes to the basic elements deep inside us, whether the calendar says December 25 or not. We lash out in those certain moments, we imagine others as witches or people to liberate with our perspective (hey, saving people with a "BB gun" or writing a theme isn't that too different), we try to do our job until we can start getting the shoes ready to head out, you get the picture. The film may be set in that time of the 1940s, but those desires and impulses are timeless and Clark knows what he can show in a film that doesn't stoop awkwardly in its perspectives. There are no dull moments shown here, and it is that tinge of bittersweet nostalgia that makes it all count in spite of whatever Shepherd may have thought of the whole thing. We connect with the material because there is a chunk of it in us more than we think it is. The films of the old in Christmas-flavoring like Miracle on 34th Street (1947) did their thing in holiday magic of belief, but this is a representation of holiday homespun honesty in the ideal way.

It was at the turn of the 1980s that Shepherd thought to drive an idea for a follow-up to this film. Perhaps it only made sense that he called it purely an exercise to try and make money, since he saw the following that was growing with rerun showings (i.e., royalties), which apparently saw a bunch of showings around the Thanksgiving season rather than just on Christmas Eve (1997 was when the whole tradition of Turner Broadcasting running it for 24 hours straight started, incidentally). My Summer Story (formerly referred to as It Runs in the Family) (1994) retained Clark as director and Shepherd as narrator, which is amusing considering that the two hadn't got along in the first film because of the incessant suggestions that Shepherd tried to give on set that led to Clark not allowing him to be there at all. The second Story film came and promptly died in little-run theaters. A Christmas Story Christmas, a film with a handful of returning cast members, was released in 2022 to a streaming service (gag). At any rate, the enduring element of the film that became more than just a low-budget sleeper is the everyday aspect that makes us chuckle in the holiday sense of the word. The item that one desires and the ways we toil in that wish (child or adult) is amusing when you really look at things, and it only makes sense that it has endured for generations as one to blare from the rooftops again and again. The inflections of mundane life and the odd nature of trying to look back at such things in life make for a great contradiction in the grand scheme of things that make an enduring winner that could only come from Clark and Shepherd in the best of ways.

Overall, I give it 10 out of 10 stars.

My Summer Story.

Review #1854: My Summer Story.

Cast: 

Charles Grodin (Mr. Parker, the Old Man), Mary Steenburgen (Mrs. Parker), Kieran Culkin (Ralphie Parker), Christian Culkin (Randy Parker), Whit Hertford ("Lug"), Chris Owen ("Scut" Farkus), Geoffrey Wigdor (Flick), David Zahorsky (Schwartz), Tedde Moore (Miss Shields), T.J. McInturff (Grover Dill), Glenn Shadix (Leopold Doppler, Manager of the Orpheum Theater), and Roy Brocksmith (Mr. Winchell, The Assessor) Directed by Bob Clark (#020 - A Christmas Story, #679 - Black Christmas, #1055 - Porky's)

Review: 

A Christmas Story (1983) was a loose working of two Jean Shepherd works: his 1966 book In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash and his 1971 book Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories And Other Disasters. Shepherd, along with Bob Clark and Leigh Brown (Shepherd's wife), wrote the screenplay for the movie. You might not know that Shepherd was the best man to serve as narrator, since the screenplay was based on a series of monologues that he had done on the radio (his broadcasts on the station WOR made him quite popular); he was known for his "interesting" manner of telling tales about his life that balanced the line of fact and fiction while saying that his work was "anti-sentimental". Shepherd had been born in Chicago, Illinois before being raised in Indiana (East Chicago along with Hammond, where he graduated). Clark, inspired by hearing one of Shepherd's stories being told to him on the radio, spent twelve years trying to make the movie, and a couple of Shepherd works had reached television (with him as narrator) before and after the release of this film, most notably with The Great American Fourth of July and Other Disasters (1982), a TV work with Matt Dillon as "Ralphie". The movie lessened the acid edge of the Shepherd stories, which he had envisioned as "Dickens’s Christmas Carol as retold by Scrooge.” At any rate, the moderate success of the film on release led to a plethora of television channels showing the movie on Christmas not long after it was released, and the popularity on the television circuit (rightfully) continues to this day. Shepherd, seeing the returns made from its showings on television, was inspired to try and make another movie based on his stories. Of course, it is also possible that Clark wanted to make a sure winner, since Clark directed these films after the release of A Christmas Story: Rhinestone (1984), Turk 182 (1985), From the Hip (1987), and Loose Cannons (1990). Somehow, idiotically, the movie was released as It Runs in the Family to tremendous empty returns. It was only after the movie had vanished from theaters that it was retitled My Summer Story, which is what you will see on video releases.

Of course, in waiting eleven years to make a movie with the same director and writing crew (along with being shot primarily in Cleveland), the main cast was entirely replaced. Oh, and now one is watching a series of vignettes that seem like an anthology rather than the offbeat material presented in the original, one that saw a handful of imagined scenes, such as our lead imagining himself as a hero stopping bandits from taking down his family (dressed up in frontier garb) with his imagined gun. So, instead of a movie where a kid's desire for a Red Ryder BB Gun that happens to feature little side stories in the spirit of Christmas, now one has a movie with small plots for the main family that has a central story of...super-duper tops along with a neighbor with hillbillies (or whatever you would call them). Of course, neither is really about the acquisition of an item as it is more about capturing the spirit of a time long ago told in engaging vision; Shepherd may think his stuff was anti-sentimental, but the heart of what made that movie work was how one confronts their childhood memories in its positives and negatives without being trapped by them. In other words: it was the experiences that stuck with one rather than some toy. Somehow, the movie just doesn't come together, proving that having the same crew behind a classic does not mean the next movie together will work out just the same. Simply put, putting a bunch of new faces will not make a winner when they can't quite live up to mildly interesting expectations that are flattened. Look, we all know that A Christmas Story can raise a distinct discussion when it comes to just how funny it actually is (spoiler: it is funny, no shit), but no one will really have that kind of discussion with My Summer Story, since it doesn't even reach half of the heights of amusement that the previous film had. Shepherd once stated that "The reality of what we really are is oftentimes found in the small snips way down at the bottom of things.” My Summer Story is basically the flattened expectations of what we thought summer was going to be...with life being like a series of ties. Who the hell would want that kind of movie? If Shepherd didn't care for the lightened touch of the original film, why go back with the original crew? And if he was fine with what was done before, why make a movie that seems thoroughly pale in spirit to the original?

It was a tough task to replace Peter Billingsley as the lead from the original, since he managed to cultivate an interesting lead presence in youthful charm. Culkin...doesn't really have that charm. One simply feels like they are watching a television product rather than something that reaches the level of film in conviction, which he just can't capture, and being paired with his brother doesn't lead to even a fraction of the brotherly amusement seen in the previous movie. I'm told that Grodin was actually a pretty funny actor with timing like no other in sardonic charm, even if his film choices were all over the place, ranging from The Heartbreak Kid (1972) to Beethoven (1992). Here, replacing Darren McGavin from the original, he just doesn't have what it takes to really capture the role from before, seeming more of an agitated father figure than the hardboiled tender role of the original. It probably doesn't help that he has an actual foil to deal with in the "Bumpus Family", which proves the case that you sometimes don't need to see something. Melinda Dillon held the original film pretty well in her timing that counteracted McGavin that practically resonated together with no effort needed. Steenbergen has the best timing of the main group here and is thus the only one to result in general charm, probably because her character arc is the most bewildering (read: interesting) of anyone in the movie, involving a bunch of gravy boats and irritated collectors, which she handles with semblances of laughs. The movie might prove fine for those who want something really average, since the technical aspects of its look and feel does at the very least seem adequate to anybody with the tiniest curiosity for the movie or to just spend 85 minutes. As a whole, the movie just seems lost in trying to capture the (ordinary) magic that had been seen a decade prior, one that was made too late to really have an impact while also serving as the strange cousin of future attempts at trying to cash in on the original movie that included a musical, a direct-to-video sequel, and even a live show. Sometimes the best thing to do is to just walk away and satisfy a different curiosity.

Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.

Down the Road Again.

Review #1694: Down the Road Again.

Cast: 

Doug McGrath (Pete McGraw), Kathleen Robertson (Betty-Jo Mayle), Anthony Lemke (Matt Burns), Jayne Eastwood (Betty Mayle), Cayle Chernin (Selina), Tedde Moore (Annie Burns), Kristin Adams (Secretary), John Cleland (Sammy), and Elva Mai Hoover (Housekeeper) Written and Directed by Donald Shebib (#408 - Goin' Down the Road)

Review: 

"I think “Down the Road Again” has a better script, more emotional. It will never have the effect the original one had, that was kind of a unique film in its own way, but it was also filled with flaws, a lot of montages, musical sequences–there were far too many."

Do you remember Goin' Down the Road? 51 years later, it still stands one of Canada's most notable feature films, one that followed two Canadians from the Maritimes (located on the Atlantic coast) that migrate from Cape Breton Island to Toronto for the perceived better opportunities in jobs and the bright lights only to find hard truths. It was the debut feature film of Toronto native Donald Shebib, who was once quoted as saying the basic premise was to make a film about folks most people wouldn't care for, stating that "The young twenty-five-year-old hip kids that went to see the film wouldn’t spend the time of day speaking to those and neither would I, but they like them in the film.” Shebib had spent over a decade in film that started with his study at the the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television in 1961 that had followed his study of sociology and history at the University of Toronto. His study there got him close to a classmate that soon became involved in film production with Francis Ford Coppola, and Shebib worked as a cinematographer and assistant editor on Dementia 13 (1962); Shebib started to do his own short films around this time. After graduating in 1965, he returned home to do work with the National Film Board of Canada and CBC Television in documentary filmmaking (which received notice, although little of his work is readily available); it was his experience seeing his cousin try to make a living in Toronto from Cape Breton that had shaped the film's creation, one made on a crew of four people on $25,000 that starred Doug McGrath, Paul Bradley, Jayne Eastwood, and Cayle Chernina that Shebib co-wrote with William Fruet. Shebib has directed ten feature films (with another in post-production), but Goin' Down the Road is generally the movie he is most remembered for (much to his surprise, since he did not expect it to get any commercial distribution), and it is considered one of the most seminal films for Canadian cinema.

Perhaps it makes sense that clips from the film are used throughout this one (one just a bit shorter than the original at 84 minutes). Shebib was inspired to make a follow-up after years of cajoling (mostly from Chernin, who passed away from ovarian cancer three months after filming), and he wanted to make a film that touched people and prove something to Canadians, in part because he has gone on record for his distaste for Canadian films for their "boring quality" at times; Bradley had died in 2003, and Shebib uses the death of his character to shape the plot for this feature. Surely he wanted to make an interesting bookend by way of making a movie that resembles something made for television with the capability for twists like a melodrama, for which it serves as a fill-in-the-blank for things you either wanted to know or didn't from before in the original - albeit with a lessened blow in its ending. Obviously it is a better-made film in terms of its look (four decades will do that), and the acting is just as fine as it was before (i.e. not awards bait), and it certainly tries to pull at the strings left hanging from before with reasoning - the result is an okay movie that either gives you enough of the answers that Shebib urges to reach or it seems unnecessary to really find out. Honestly, some things are easier to leave buried, but whatever, at least it is Shebib behind the wheel and not someone else, much like a reunion between old friends that doesn't end in passive boredom or worse. Look, if you want to see what happens to folks that ran off to Vancouver for a new start after they assaulted a clerk and left a wife and child, the result will have some payoff that makes it more than just an epilogue or a letdown. McGrath is wry and wistful enough in his balance of looking to the past and the present without becoming a shell of himself in the process - he makes the mark he wants to make without trouble in a bucket list road movie. There is a spark in Robertson that does elicit some interesting moments when paired with McGrath when it comes to tender amusement in chemistry for a time. Lemke comes around in the middle, used for the other turn of the narrative for exposition (particularly with the ending, which is drawn out pretty silly). Eastwood and Chernin accompany the film for a few scenes in providing perspective without turning into the peanut gallery. Moore is the last piece of the puzzle, playing someone affected by Alzheimer's disease, and the performance generally works out without trouble. At any rate, what we have is a decent return for all involved, one that tugs at the strings of the past without becoming strung along too tight to forge its own pattern. The passage of time ages us all, and there can be certain moments of the past that will arise at times for us to encounter once again, whether that means a bad breakup or a decision made in the name of supposed friendship. It is our reaction to it (whether one is haunted or ready to the memory presented) that makes growing up who we are. In other words, the truth always comes out, and it's our job to react accordingly to it. For a film like this, I would say it comes up just enough in the right direction to make it fairly worth what could have been a forgettable affair (or worse a letdown), one that Shebib can say accompanies his previous film and vision. There are quite a few sequels that commit the sin of just not living up to what was done before, but at least this Canadian one does what it can to make it a worthwhile affair.

Well, here we are in July. Honestly, I had intended to return to somewhat regular tradition of a Canada Day feature for Movie Night, but I ended up having to hold it a day because of timing (i.e. I didn't want to rush a review before work). Inadvertently, this is actually an anniversary review, because Goin' Down the Road made its premiere on July 2, 1970 (the sequel was released in October 2011, but that's a horror month, man). There had been rumblings about doing this movie for a few years (because even I eventually sneak up on sequels or spinoffs being made), but the Tribute to the Decades project took off and ran right over anything for July beyond the 1980s. As always, hope for a surprise when it comes to Movie Night, because the best plans are always improvised for writing...

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

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