Speaker 1: Christmas is one week away, and how am I celebrating
Speaker 1: with restraint and circumspection. In the glabew family, we do
Speaker 1: a mid century modern Christmas. Spare elegant, minimalist, lots of
Speaker 1: the baby Jesus in a tasteful Scandinavian leather and rosewood manger.
Speaker 1: No Santa, no reindeer, no elves. Not so for my
Speaker 1: colleague Ben adaf Halfrey. The Globows impose a dollar limit
Speaker 1: on gifts, like price controls in some socialist state that
Speaker 1: at half Halfreys spend months thinking of what to get
Speaker 1: one another. The globows by a tree at the last moment,
Speaker 1: and would be happier if we could just move the
Speaker 1: whole operation outside around the Douglas Pine. In the backyard.
Speaker 1: Ben's family has a tree, a little model village covered
Speaker 1: in snow, and his father's vintage electric train set, plus
Speaker 1: a little metal tree with ornaments that's up year round.
Speaker 1: So when I told Ben that I had never watched
Speaker 1: It's a Wonderful Life, he was stunned. Then he reached
Speaker 1: out to me as the good smartan did to the
Speaker 1: traveler lying beref by the side of the road. How
Speaker 1: could this be? He asked me gently, because, as you
Speaker 1: can imagine, within the daf Haffreys, It's a wonderful life
Speaker 1: is a sacred text. Then Ben told me another story
Speaker 1: about what, in his mind is an even more important
Speaker 1: Christmas tale, a story that he regards as the apotheosis
Speaker 1: of all Christmas movies, a story not in a film,
Speaker 1: but of the making of a film. Welcome to revisionist history.
Speaker 1: I'm Malcolm Gladwell. Today in our show, Ben the n
Speaker 1: alf Halfrey relays for the very first time in history,
Speaker 1: the truly screwy story of the making of the oddest
Speaker 1: Christmas film of all time. Trust me, you have never
Speaker 1: heard this story before ever, nor have you ever seen
Speaker 1: the movie in question. Unless you do. You remember the
Speaker 1: extended dedf Halfway Clan or were recently incarcerated in a
Speaker 1: state that limits prisoner's streaming access to obscure television movies
Speaker 1: in the nineteen nineties. But when you listen to what follows,
Speaker 1: you're going to ask yourself the same question I ask
Speaker 1: myself when Ben first told me this story.
Speaker 2: How do I miss this?
Speaker 3: Unlike Malcolm, I am a great lover of Christmas movies.
Speaker 3: Every year, as soon as Thanksgiving is over, I'm firing
Speaker 3: up the Bishop's Wife, Miracle on thirty fourth Street, or
Speaker 3: It's a Wonderful Life. And then there's my favorite Christmas movie,
Speaker 3: a little less famous, the nineteen forty five romantic comedy
Speaker 3: Christmas in Connecticut. I've watched it pretty much every year
Speaker 3: since I was little. Barbara Stanwick plays a magazine columnist
Speaker 3: who's famous for entertaining on her grand Connecticut farm. She's
Speaker 3: known as a great cook. It's the end of World
Speaker 3: War Two and her magazine's public sure has an idea
Speaker 3: for a great feature. Jill hosts a returning war hero
Speaker 3: for Christmas on her farm. There's just one problem. It's
Speaker 3: all a lie. She doesn't live in Connecticut. She lives
Speaker 3: in a tiny apartment in New York. And she has
Speaker 3: no clue how to cook.
Speaker 2: My fun? Oh yes, my fun?
Speaker 4: Oh my fine? And you want to see you right
Speaker 4: away to arrange it.
Speaker 5: Arrange it? Are you crazy?
Speaker 4: Where am I going to get a farm? I haven't
Speaker 4: even got a window.
Speaker 5: Boss, That's just it.
Speaker 4: We'll have to star him off, you know what, to
Speaker 4: stick to the truth.
Speaker 6: If he ever finds out we've been making all this up,
Speaker 6: you'll fire the both of us.
Speaker 3: Chaos ensues. It's a classic screwball comedy and a total delight.
Speaker 3: But the thing I really want to tell you about
Speaker 3: in this episode is what happened after I discovered, quite
Speaker 3: by accident, that there was a remake of this favorite
Speaker 3: Christmas movie of mine, an action packed, star studed, joke filled,
Speaker 3: really very different version of the original, made for TV
Speaker 3: and directed by none other than Arnold Schwarzenegger. A kind
Speaker 3: of shocking twist if you ask me, I mean, why
Speaker 3: would the Terminator take on Christmas in Connecticut? So I
Speaker 3: did what any good Christmas fiend would do. I talked
Speaker 3: to a dozen people about something that happened thirty years
Speaker 3: ago for way too many hours to get the real story,
Speaker 3: and I discovered in the process. But I have come
Speaker 3: to regard as the greatest Christmas tale of all time.
Speaker 2: I've told this story many times, I've never told it
Speaker 2: all the record. It's a big story, So if you've
Speaker 2: got the time, I will tell it to you.
Speaker 3: That's Stan Brooks in the early nineteen nineties. He was
Speaker 3: an independent made for TV movie producer.
Speaker 2: So I'm developing movies and a friend of mine goes
Speaker 2: and gets the job at TNC, and I make the
Speaker 2: very first movie for him.
Speaker 3: TNT launched in nineteen eighty eight, at the start of
Speaker 3: the cable television revolution. Then, as now, cable was expensive,
Speaker 3: but it was growing. The whole game was trying to
Speaker 3: raise awareness to get people to sign up, and with
Speaker 3: channels running twenty four to seven, there was a lot
Speaker 3: of space to fill, which led to a boom and
Speaker 3: made for TV movies. Stan's first film on TNT was
Speaker 3: a big success. So he got another bite at the
Speaker 3: apple and he calls.
Speaker 2: Me, He goes, what do you want to do next?
Speaker 2: So they said, Nami years, would you ever let me
Speaker 2: do a remake from the MGM library because that's what
Speaker 2: Ted owned, And he said, yes, just pick one.
Speaker 3: Christmas movies always do well, and there is one. Stan
Speaker 3: loved Christmas in Connecticut, and I.
Speaker 2: Know the Barber Stanlet movie, and so I said, well,
Speaker 2: this could be a good one. It was right as
Speaker 2: Martha Stewart was exploding. I thought, well, what if this
Speaker 2: is Martha Stewart. What if she's on TV and has
Speaker 2: an empire and it's all fake? And so they loved
Speaker 2: that take, and so off we went to the races.
Speaker 7: He got a writer to work up the script in television.
Speaker 7: It was It was great because you can get your
Speaker 7: stuff made.
Speaker 3: This is Janet Brownew, one of the all time great
Speaker 3: Bards of TV movie writer on Eloise at the Plaza,
Speaker 3: Twelve Dates of Christmas, Days of Our Lives and the
Speaker 3: uncredited rewrite of Tim Allens the Santa Claus all Brown.
Speaker 3: Now she loved the original Christmas in Connecticut.
Speaker 8: I mean it's a charming and in fairst to me,
Speaker 8: the original draft was very close.
Speaker 3: Janet wrote the draft of the script for Stan's remake.
Speaker 2: And we turn it in and they go, this is
Speaker 2: this is do me in a Christmas movie. So now
Speaker 2: I have and I have a nice little Christmas programmer
Speaker 2: and nothing more.
Speaker 3: It's the middle of nineteen ninety one in Hollywood. Janet
Speaker 3: and Stan's low budget television movie remake isn't really the
Speaker 3: sort of thing to get people talking, but they're making progress.
Speaker 3: He's got the old school movie star Diane Cannon cast
Speaker 3: in the lead as the Martha Stewart character, and an
Speaker 3: offer out to a director. And then one day his
Speaker 3: phone rings. His assistant says, it's a big Hollywood agent
Speaker 3: named Lou Pitt.
Speaker 2: Now I understand I'm in the television movie business. These
Speaker 2: guys are never calling me, so if they do call me,
Speaker 2: it's never good. And and he he gets on the
Speaker 2: phone and he says, the other director for your Christmas
Speaker 2: in Connecticut movie. And I said, uh, well almost yeah,
Speaker 2: we may have an offer out And he said, okay,
Speaker 2: Well if he doesn't say yes, I want you to consider
Speaker 2: my client. And I go, okay, wait to hear the name,
Speaker 2: and I go who He goes Arl Schwarzenegger, and I
Speaker 2: burst out laughly.
Speaker 9: Oh he was. He was totally shocked.
Speaker 3: Lou Pitt, legendary agent Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Speaker 2: That's hilarious. No, seriously, is this a joke?
Speaker 9: Is this a joke?
Speaker 2: He goes, no, seriously, and he goes, I'm Schwartzaker's not
Speaker 2: going a Christmas movie for tn T.
Speaker 3: To be clear, Arnold had just finished shooting James Cameron's
Speaker 3: epic Terminator too Asta La Vista Baby. Terminator two is
Speaker 3: the one where Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a killer cyborg sent
Speaker 3: from the future to protect young John Connor from a
Speaker 3: different killer cyborg also sent from the future to kill him.
Speaker 3: As you can imagine, such a plot necessitates a lot
Speaker 3: of elaborate production work. He was movie making on a
Speaker 3: scale that was practically unheard of, especially in Los Angeles.
Speaker 10: The production actually changed the course of a river to
Speaker 10: shoot high speed chases in the extensive clood control channels
Speaker 10: of Los Angeles.
Speaker 3: Anyways, back to Stan and Lou the Agent.
Speaker 2: I go, Lou, why on earth were Arnold Swartz? He says, well,
Speaker 2: here's why.
Speaker 3: Arnold Schwarzenegger was forty four years old, he had two kids.
Speaker 3: Nobody is an action hero forever. Maybe it was time
Speaker 3: to explore some alternatives.
Speaker 2: And so he was kind of tired after T two
Speaker 2: when he said to Blue, I would like to direct
Speaker 2: a movie.
Speaker 9: The directing thing was kind of out of the box,
Speaker 9: out a left field, and they.
Speaker 2: Said, well, can we'll put together a big feat direct
Speaker 2: He goes, no, no, no, I want low risk. If I
Speaker 2: do a terrible job, I don't want anyone to be upset.
Speaker 2: I don't want a big budget, and I want it
Speaker 2: to be family friendly because I don't want anything to
Speaker 2: be controversial nothing. I just want something very simple. And
Speaker 2: the only one that fit the bill was Christmas, Connecticut.
Speaker 2: So I said, okay, I'll I'll call you if this
Speaker 2: guy passes and I ham the phone off force my
Speaker 2: hearts jumping out him like I go.
Speaker 9: What and and I said, yeah, I'm serious. I read it.
Speaker 9: I think he'd like it, So get me an offer.
Speaker 3: Stan gets the green light from the executives at TNT.
Speaker 3: There's some negotiating and they offer Schwartzenegger one hundred thousand bucks,
Speaker 3: and then one night stands phone rings.
Speaker 2: I pick it up and I hear Sam Brooks, yes
Speaker 2: please hold for homes forts Snagger and now I'm serious.
Speaker 2: I can see my heart beating, and he goes hello.
Speaker 2: I go, uh, Arnold, you're the guy with this Christmas script?
Speaker 2: I said yes. He says it's fantastic. I'd love to direct.
Speaker 9: I go okay.
Speaker 2: He goes, but I have to shoot in Los Angeles,
Speaker 2: knight to do it in these days. And he goes
Speaker 2: a nice some notes of the script. I go, okay,
Speaker 2: can you be here in an hour?
Speaker 3: And I go, uh no.
Speaker 2: He goes, can you be on Wednesday? I go, yes,
Speaker 2: I could be there on Wednesday.
Speaker 3: He goes over for a meeting at Arnold's offices in
Speaker 3: Santa Monica.
Speaker 2: So now going to see me on Wednesday? And you
Speaker 2: walk in and there's this giant lobby and and the
Speaker 2: first thing you see is the exoskeleton, the metal thing
Speaker 2: with the red eyes from Terminator. So there's no doubt.
Speaker 2: I mean, the posters are up on the wall, but
Speaker 2: there's no doubt. When you walk in and you see
Speaker 2: this seven foot thing, you go, oh, crap, I know
Speaker 2: where I am. My heart's beating and I go in
Speaker 2: and he's in his office, which is massive. It's like
Speaker 2: you know, signs of a football field, and he's on one.
Speaker 2: You walk in on this end and he's on the
Speaker 2: other ends. You go walk past all the you know,
Speaker 2: the props and stuff, and then he's at a big,
Speaker 2: huge desk with a big giant chair, and behind him
Speaker 2: is a bookshelf but with all of the Mister Universe awards,
Speaker 2: not film stuff, it's all his bodybuilding awards. And I
Speaker 2: remember we were going through the script and I said, hey,
Speaker 2: I want to use the restroom and he pointed to
Speaker 2: me by putting up this bicep and pointing it like this,
Speaker 2: and his bicep comes cleaning. He goes this doc wo
Speaker 2: and I go, is that just to show me your
Speaker 2: boy step? And he goes, I have to show you know,
Speaker 2: the guns whenever I can, and I realized, okay, so
Speaker 2: this guy definitely has a sense of humort by himself.
Speaker 3: They sit down, Arnold has notes on the script he
Speaker 3: will he wanted.
Speaker 2: A more humor and a little more jeopardy, and so
Speaker 2: we added in like this like sort of big action
Speaker 2: sequence at the beginning.
Speaker 3: Where he rescues the and all of a sudden, Janet Brownell,
Speaker 3: who wrote the original script for the remake, is looking
Speaker 3: at a very different movie.
Speaker 7: The whole thing took this like one hundred and eighty
Speaker 7: degree turn. At that point, it was just like what
Speaker 7: is And Stan just did not want to lose him,
Speaker 7: And I'm like, Okay.
Speaker 8: I truly don't see this.
Speaker 2: But if it gets a film green light, I don't
Speaker 2: give a shit.
Speaker 3: Arnold wants them to get someone else to come in
Speaker 3: and punch up the script.
Speaker 2: He wanted more humor, and as it happened, my best
Speaker 2: friend in the world had written.
Speaker 3: Commando Commando, the nineteen eighty five action film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger,
Speaker 3: which the critic from the La Times referred to as
Speaker 3: a quote gory crowd pleaser and a glorified fireworks display.
Speaker 2: And Arnold loved them and said, if you think you
Speaker 2: get him to do a comedy past.
Speaker 3: Jeff Low, the friend who wrote Commando, gets hired to
Speaker 3: do the rewrite with his writing partner.
Speaker 9: We walk in.
Speaker 6: He's sitting on a white couch, maybe it's literally the
Speaker 6: length of the biggest limousine you've ever seen in your life,
Speaker 6: and he has his feed up on this white porcelain
Speaker 6: marble table. He's got a big cigar in his mouth
Speaker 6: and scrips all around him, and he doesn't say hello,
Speaker 6: He doesn't introduce himself, he doesn't do anything.
Speaker 5: He just the first thing out of his mouth is, so,
Speaker 5: what of you guys been doing since Commando? Clearly not
Speaker 5: going to the gym.
Speaker 3: I just have to say, everyone in this episode is
Speaker 3: going to do their own Schwartzenegger impression, which is good
Speaker 3: because even though we couldn't land an interview with him,
Speaker 3: I feel like he's here with us in spirit anyway.
Speaker 3: They settle in and start rewriting the film Commando style.
Speaker 8: So that's where things kind of went off the rails
Speaker 8: for me personally, because it's like, Okay, this is becoming
Speaker 8: a completely different thing. It just Schwartzenegger eye into like
Speaker 8: this thing that was bigger than life.
Speaker 4: I mean, she just did an amazing job. We didn't
Speaker 4: make any real big structural changes. That's all hers, but
Speaker 4: a dialogue pass and goes through it and try to
Speaker 4: find more Bold's vision.
Speaker 3: They start burning through the script. A big job for
Speaker 3: any director is giving notes on the rewrites. Schwarzenegger was
Speaker 3: calling in help from his director friends, including legendary comedy
Speaker 3: director Ivan Reitman, the guy who did Ghostbusters. Everyone was
Speaker 3: working to realize Arnold's vision.
Speaker 5: Now you have to understand that on Commando he would
Speaker 5: do this all the time.
Speaker 4: He would go, I have a great idea this and
Speaker 4: this is what I want to do.
Speaker 6: When the guy comes at me, I want to throw.
Speaker 11: A buzzsaw at him and it chops off his arm,
Speaker 11: and then I'm going to pick up his arm and
Speaker 11: punch me in his face with his old arm. And
Speaker 11: we would go, well, we like the bus off part.
Speaker 11: Can we just do the bus off art? So like,
Speaker 11: our job is not to go I think that's not
Speaker 11: gonna work. Our job is to make it work. And
Speaker 11: it doesn't help that the next day he would say.
Speaker 4: Okay, we're doing really well, We're really getting there.
Speaker 2: It's really coming to where I wanted to be, so
Speaker 2: I gave it to Steve It.
Speaker 6: And Stephen talked to me last night and he said,
Speaker 6: I have to really be careful that and this is
Speaker 6: what I want you to do. And again I'm like,
Speaker 6: is Stephen the guy at the jim is Stephen?
Speaker 4: Who is Steve It?
Speaker 6: And then suddenly as you go, you know, as he
Speaker 6: starts to sort of talk more, you go, he's talking
Speaker 6: about Steven Spielberg.
Speaker 3: This is beginning to look like a train nobody would
Speaker 3: step in front of. Back at TNT, the executives had
Speaker 3: a dim sense of what was going on.
Speaker 10: It's not it's not has done now.
Speaker 3: Lorie Postman Tier one of the TNT executives.
Speaker 10: Whether you're famous or not, as a director agent, that
Speaker 10: doesn't happen. To let somebody go and change things as
Speaker 10: much as we're change.
Speaker 3: Meanwhile, they've cast the rest of the film. Joining Diane
Speaker 3: Cannon would be Hollywood screwball legend Tony Curtis, probably best
Speaker 3: known for playing opposite Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot.
Speaker 3: Along with him would be ex country music star Chris Kristofferson.
Speaker 3: Here's TNT's senior vice president of production at the time,
Speaker 3: Nick Lombardo.
Speaker 12: Even when they cast it, I thought, well, that is
Speaker 12: the weirdest cast I ever heard of. I mean, the
Speaker 12: idea that these people fit together made no sense at all.
Speaker 12: I mean, Diane Cannon and Chriskus Dobinson in the same frame.
Speaker 12: It makes a star is born when he's holding Barbara
Speaker 12: Streisad look organic.
Speaker 3: So armed with one of the all time weirdest, most
Speaker 3: stacked casts in the history of film, a comparatively small
Speaker 3: budget of three million dollars, a slot on an upstart
Speaker 3: cable network, and a script based on a nineteen forty
Speaker 3: screwball comedy that's been punched up by two of the
Speaker 3: writers behind a big eighties blockbuster. An Austrian former bodybuilder,
Speaker 3: fresh off his repeat performance as a time traveling cyborg,
Speaker 3: prepared to direct his first Christmas film.
Speaker 2: You don't, as a TV movie producer ever get near
Speaker 2: anything this hot. You just don't.
Speaker 10: I mean, we're we're all a little nervous about the
Speaker 10: whole thing, you know, because it's like you're playing with
Speaker 10: matches and you know, oh, yeah, that's that Arnold directed this.
Speaker 9: You know.
Speaker 10: It's like, for us three million dollars was a lot
Speaker 10: of money.
Speaker 8: I don't know, I don't know whatever.
Speaker 10: It was like, Oh yeah, he wanted to prove that
Speaker 10: he could be a director.
Speaker 3: And everyone was about to find out whether or not
Speaker 3: he could. Christmas and Connecticut, the remake began filming about
Speaker 3: two months before Christmas in Los Angeles. Because Arnold Schwartzenegger
Speaker 3: had never before directed a future film, though what the
Speaker 3: record show he had directed an episode of the TV
Speaker 3: show Tales from the Crypt, the production arranged for to
Speaker 3: film more or less in the order they happen in
Speaker 3: the film. There's a lot less to keep track of
Speaker 3: continuity wise that way, but this also posed a problem.
Speaker 3: One of the anxieties of adapting a great work of
Speaker 3: art is figuring out how to make it your own.
Speaker 3: The nineteen ninety two made for TV remake of Christmas
Speaker 3: in Connecticut does this immediately by introducing its male lead,
Speaker 3: a park ranger named Jefferson Jones, mid workout routine in
Speaker 3: his mountain cabin. If you're looking for signs that this
Speaker 3: is not your grandmother's Christmas in Connecticut, the site of
Speaker 3: Chris Christofferson as Jefferson Jones, sweating after busting out some
Speaker 3: chin ups on a beam in his cabin is your
Speaker 3: first morning, a man on the television offers some brisk
Speaker 3: exposition while he cools down. In the last hour, experts
Speaker 3: predict this shouldn't be the biggest storm to hit the
Speaker 3: Rockies in the last decade.
Speaker 13: More than four feet of snow is anticipated to blanket
Speaker 13: the area in the next forty eight hours.
Speaker 3: The phone rings. Another ranger is calling to tell Jones
Speaker 3: a kid has gotten lost in the blizzard. He has
Speaker 3: to go out and find him. This is the fabled
Speaker 3: action sequence Schwarzenegger had requested. They shot the blizzard on
Speaker 3: a sound stage. It's the moment Jefferson Jones becomes a hero,
Speaker 3: which is why he gets invited to be a guest
Speaker 3: of Elizabeth Blaine's for a Christmas special in Connecticut. It's
Speaker 3: got to look epic. It's got to have that Arnold
Speaker 3: Schwarzenegger feeling. Unfortunately terminator, this is not. Here's Jim Wilberger,
Speaker 3: director of production.
Speaker 10: You know there's a scene where Christofferson, you know, suddenly
Speaker 10: has rescued the kid and you see him rolled down
Speaker 10: this little hill of snow which was shot on stage
Speaker 10: and trying to make more of more of it because
Speaker 10: there wasn't that much set for that little hill, and
Speaker 10: you know, and then suddenly you see all the people
Speaker 10: rush in to rescue you know. I mean, this was
Speaker 10: just not good blocking, and that's just an experience.
Speaker 3: Schwarzenegger wanted Jeopardy, but this kind of looks like a
Speaker 3: snowball fight gone. Jones stumbles over a very small hill
Speaker 3: holding a child that looks like it might be a mannequin.
Speaker 3: He's groaning and yelling, but his lips aren't moving, so
Speaker 3: tough start. Luckily, though, a lot of the film is
Speaker 3: set inside Elizabeth Blaine's fake Connecticut house where she's shooting
Speaker 3: a Christmas special in celebration of Jones. The bulk production
Speaker 3: happened there, so the whole crew set up at a
Speaker 3: house in South Pasadena for the real work. This introduced
Speaker 3: Arnold to the second problem of directing actor ego management,
Speaker 3: and the issue of his trailer.
Speaker 14: Arnold's trailer was like a house on wheels.
Speaker 15: It was literally like you'd look at it from the
Speaker 15: outside and you'd say, wow, that's got all kinds of
Speaker 15: popouts and the roof went off and everything.
Speaker 2: But when you got inside, it was literally like you
Speaker 2: had just walked into like the Greystone Mansion, you.
Speaker 10: Know, it's probably almost three times as wide as a
Speaker 10: normal trailer, and that it was the length that became
Speaker 10: the issue. Diane comes in and she says, why is
Speaker 10: Arnold's trailer bigger than my trailer? Nobody's supposed to have
Speaker 10: a bigger trailer than me.
Speaker 3: Diane Cannon was the star of the film, but she
Speaker 3: was maybe realizing that this production was all about the director. Schwarzenegger, though,
Speaker 3: was dealing with other problems. Namely, he had chosen one
Speaker 3: of the hardest genres for his first major directing for
Speaker 3: a screwball comedy is like dancing on the head of
Speaker 3: a pin. It thrives on chaos, but it has to
Speaker 3: be a kind of controlled chaos. With his big personality cast,
Speaker 3: low budget, short timeline, and hastily rewritten script, Schwarzenegger had
Speaker 3: an excess of chaos and a minimum of control. I mean,
Speaker 3: you have one somewhat disgruntled actress portraying fake Martha Stewart,
Speaker 3: and another who's a macho park ranger, but who, for
Speaker 3: no apparent reason, relays this backstory part way through the movie.
Speaker 16: Actually, before I moved to Colorado, I lived in Chicago.
Speaker 16: I grew up there, taught comparative Literature at the University
Speaker 16: of Container really offered tenure and head of the department,
Speaker 16: and it's what I thought I wanted. That's being caged
Speaker 16: in by concrete and crowds for the rest of my life.
Speaker 3: This is I'm pretty sure the only time in the
Speaker 3: entire film Jefferson jones Is past as chair of the
Speaker 3: University of Chicago's Comparative Literature department is mentioned. And I
Speaker 3: love Chris Kristofferson, but most of the rest of his
Speaker 3: performance veers between stiff and oddly sexually charged.
Speaker 10: When he starts smearing the pine staff on her neck.
Speaker 3: Yeah that it's it's it's just kind of transcendently weird.
Speaker 10: Yeah, well, not to mention his two times he's like
Speaker 10: staring at her butt.
Speaker 3: You know, there's an extensive shot of that.
Speaker 9: But you can't buy that at Limingdal.
Speaker 3: So you've got two characters who really just barely hang together,
Speaker 3: and then you have to direct them in tightly choreographed
Speaker 3: zany sequences that have got to feel plausible yet also hilarious.
Speaker 3: Us for instance, the scene with the baby. Remember in
Speaker 3: Christmas in Connecticut, Elizabeth is a total fraud. She doesn't
Speaker 3: know how to cook. It's not even her house in Connecticut,
Speaker 3: and she's got this fake, staged family with her, including
Speaker 3: a fake baby. She had to keep up appearances for
Speaker 3: the sake of her column. In the original film, there's
Speaker 3: a lovely scene where she and Jefferson Jones give her
Speaker 3: fake baby a bath. She a supposed domestic goddess, is
Speaker 3: meant to bathe her child, which she suspiciously has no
Speaker 3: clue how to do. He steps in and does it
Speaker 3: for her like a total pro. It's part of why
Speaker 3: she falls in love with him, and because it's so
Speaker 3: well executed in the original film, we believe they're following
Speaker 3: in love in this totally implausible moment.
Speaker 2: So so oh refer tho she's eating the soul? Would
Speaker 2: I do what they are doing?
Speaker 15: Oh?
Speaker 17: Really, you'd make a wonderful father.
Speaker 16: Mister jere You're not married off by any chance, are you?
Speaker 9: No cards are stacked against me.
Speaker 16: I guess every time I meet a girl I like,
Speaker 16: it turns out she's already married.
Speaker 6: Oh that's too bad now.
Speaker 3: This also happens in the Arnold Schwarzenegger version.
Speaker 10: Maybe we should finish up for finish up?
Speaker 18: What you know what?
Speaker 1: I just had the most wonderful idea.
Speaker 3: How would you like to bathe me?
Speaker 17: Sure, I think it'd be fun for you.
Speaker 3: Here what happens next is the greatest travesty in the
Speaker 3: history of bath time. It's as if you gave two
Speaker 3: aliens a baby and said, give this a bath, not
Speaker 3: realizing that on the planet therefrom not only are there
Speaker 3: no babies or baths, but actually there's not even water.
Speaker 3: What do you remember about.
Speaker 10: That, Well, some of that was improvised.
Speaker 3: What happens is they just drenched the baby in shampoo
Speaker 3: and then they barely wash any of it out. On
Speaker 3: the bath scale, it's two rubber duckies out of ten.
Speaker 3: But the premise of the scene is that Jefferson Jones
Speaker 3: is crushing it.
Speaker 10: It was pretty hilarious, I thought, and also very clumsy,
Speaker 10: and they really grouped up with the kid's hair.
Speaker 2: My god, I don't know, my chapoo, here's.
Speaker 17: Some soap, sweetie.
Speaker 2: That's the director thing.
Speaker 8: I mean, that is a flat out director fail.
Speaker 3: I mean that right, like, retake the scene and there
Speaker 3: probably were.
Speaker 8: Three or four versions of that. That's the one he chose,
Speaker 8: you know, It's not like that was the only one.
Speaker 10: That you're off the shit with that for a bachelor,
Speaker 10: you know, you're sure you don't have a whole stel
Speaker 10: of kids hidden somewhere nursed.
Speaker 16: A couple of bear clubs to their mother.
Speaker 4: Came back.
Speaker 15: Beauty.
Speaker 3: It's like on SNL when the actors break and laugh
Speaker 3: when Elizabeth's like, I'm not sure if we got all
Speaker 3: the soap out and Jefferson's like, well we didn't. That's
Speaker 3: the true reaction and it must be improvised. But then
Speaker 3: they go back to the scripted version where Jones is
Speaker 3: doing a great job. Most of the people on set
Speaker 3: have some kind of moment like.
Speaker 10: This, you know, the forest with the snow and a
Speaker 10: sleigh that comes along, and there's even one shot I
Speaker 10: noticed where you can see the wheels under the sleigh.
Speaker 18: I remember the day I was there, they were filming
Speaker 18: that scene where chaos RUPs, you know, and the tree
Speaker 18: falls down and all that. We had to do that
Speaker 18: scene quite a number of times. It was as chaotic
Speaker 18: as the scene is, but behind the scenes it was
Speaker 18: even more so.
Speaker 12: It's a little like opening a belode factory for cultural
Speaker 12: you know, it's sort of like, what's going on in there?
Speaker 2: Nothing good?
Speaker 3: Nothing good, don't ask anything so it was kind of
Speaker 3: hectic on set, and yet I think you can hear
Speaker 3: in people's voices how much they love telling this story.
Speaker 3: Pretty much across the board. This was a happy memory
Speaker 3: for the people I spoke to, not least of all
Speaker 3: because they never lost sight of just how improbable it
Speaker 3: all was.
Speaker 6: And then in the middle of all this is all
Speaker 6: running round going, you know, move the top or overhead,
Speaker 6: I do this over here, let's go do this. No,
Speaker 6: I think it could be ten times funny. I'll come on.
Speaker 6: So there's Arnold's voice, you know, just bellowing out. And
Speaker 6: that was the other thing that I really remember was
Speaker 6: that while this is happening, while we're making this little,
Speaker 6: tiny movie, he is in theaters with Terminator too, and
Speaker 6: it's doing numbers that no one has ever seen before.
Speaker 6: And we were on set when it crossed five hundred
Speaker 6: million dollars. But when you're standing next to the guy
Speaker 6: who's the star of that movie, and his major concern
Speaker 6: is whether or not is it didn't focus forehead.
Speaker 3: Let's go the forehead thing. You're not the first person
Speaker 3: to bring that up. Several people mentioned to me that
Speaker 3: Arnold Schwartzenegger's favorite put down was to call someone a forehead.
Speaker 3: This actually made it into the movie. When Elizabeth Blaine
Speaker 3: and Jefferson Jones get pulled over by the cops mid
Speaker 3: sleigh ride, the one where you can see the wheels,
Speaker 3: this happens.
Speaker 4: What's your hands?
Speaker 9: Where I can say them?
Speaker 4: You're both under arrest?
Speaker 14: Oh, come on, come on, you foreheads, get him up?
Speaker 6: You what?
Speaker 3: This is actually a big part of why I love
Speaker 3: this movie. It has a kind of free jazz improvisitory
Speaker 3: quality to it. It's oddly self referential and also very sweet.
Speaker 3: It's like how you can hear in someone's voice when
Speaker 3: they're smiling. That's how this movie feels. Because, even at
Speaker 3: the risk of himself being labeled a forehead who couldn't
Speaker 3: direct the movie, Arnold Schwarzenegger was showing up every day
Speaker 3: and putting in his all for the film, Buffs and
Speaker 3: the crew. It was a dream come true just to
Speaker 3: work with him or with a legend like Tony Curtis.
Speaker 2: You know, it was a trip to oz that I
Speaker 2: knew it was short lived, but it was something I
Speaker 2: was going to know, take in and enjoy them as
Speaker 2: much as possible.
Speaker 3: After twenty days of shooting the film, wrapped. They had
Speaker 3: a party at Arnold Schwartzeninger's restaurant. It was around Christmas time,
Speaker 3: and they all got sweatshirts with the name of the
Speaker 3: film on the front.
Speaker 10: And on the back was a picture of Arnold with
Speaker 10: a Santa hat on, wearing sunglasses and saying something about
Speaker 10: I can't remember the full thingybody used for you forehead.
Speaker 3: Later, Jim was kind enough to send me a photo
Speaker 3: of the sweatshirt. It said on the back more snow
Speaker 3: u forehead. There's my Schwartzeninger impression. With the film in
Speaker 3: the can. Post production and premierees loomed. That's after the break.
Speaker 3: Before we get to the premiere of Arnold Schwarzenegger's nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety two Christmas in Connecticut remake, I want to tell
Speaker 3: you about something that happened earlier this year.
Speaker 1: Thank you all for coming, Thank you Mitch for coming
Speaker 1: down from Try Yeah, thanks for having me here.
Speaker 3: Malcolm interviewed Mitch Album live on stage at the ninety
Speaker 3: second Street y Album is the best selling author of
Speaker 3: some ungodly number of books, but he's probably most famous
Speaker 3: for Tuesdays with Maury. He and Malcolm were there to
Speaker 3: talk about his new novel about the Holocaust, The Little Liar.
Speaker 3: They were warming up with some Mitch backstory about his
Speaker 3: time as a musician in New York.
Speaker 17: I tried the whole starving musician thing, and I played
Speaker 17: in all the clubs around here on Monday nights.
Speaker 3: I was backstage at this event peering out. I hadn't
Speaker 3: read Mitch's book. I was up to something else.
Speaker 1: Wait, we should probably do this, befrobab. We get too
Speaker 1: far afield on the music thing. If you've been talking
Speaker 1: so much, you will note that behind you. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: is a corg.
Speaker 3: At this point, the audience of people who had come
Speaker 3: that night to hear the author of Tuesdays with Maury
Speaker 3: discussed the Holocaust noticed the electric piano behind him.
Speaker 1: And we have a request that you play one of
Speaker 1: your most famous compositions, which you know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about Cooking for Two from the legendary Arnold
Speaker 1: Schwarzenegger nineteen ninety two, made for TV movie Christmas in Connecticut.
Speaker 17: Yeah, can you see the recognition?
Speaker 3: Yes it was my keyboard, and yes I had planted
Speaker 3: it there.
Speaker 1: Mitch, No, no, this. For some reason, I have no idea.
Speaker 1: My colleague Ben is obsessed with this and really wanted
Speaker 1: us to do this, And I thought, how great would
Speaker 1: it be for you to sing one of our songs,
Speaker 1: just like, just give us a little taste.
Speaker 17: Well, I have to tell you the story.
Speaker 3: Tell us tell a story. Okay.
Speaker 17: So after I got out of the music business, I
Speaker 17: had a college roommate who went into the movie business.
Speaker 3: That would be Stanley m Brooks, executive producer of Christmas
Speaker 3: in Connecticut. Stan and Mitch were roommates at Brandeis.
Speaker 17: And he knew that I was a musician, and he
Speaker 17: was making a movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger as a producer,
Speaker 17: and Schwartzenegger was the director of Christmas in Connecticut. The remake.
Speaker 3: Sounds about as.
Speaker 17: Good as it was, I think, And they needed as
Speaker 17: a song because she played Diane Cannon played the lead
Speaker 17: and she was a cook on TV or whatever, so
Speaker 17: the song had to be about food. And they wanted
Speaker 17: to use Harry Connick's Recipe for Love or something like that,
Speaker 17: but they couldn't afford it. Yeah, so stan calls me
Speaker 17: and says, we need a song that's kind of upbeat
Speaker 17: about food for Arnold Schwartzenegger's movie.
Speaker 3: Can you do it? You know.
Speaker 17: I said, well, what do you need it by Thursday?
Speaker 17: You know, it was Tuesday, you know. So I just
Speaker 17: went and wrote a little song. And my wife as
Speaker 17: a singer, a fantastic singer, and I said, honey, can
Speaker 17: you sing this song because we don't have time to
Speaker 17: go find anybody else. And he listened to it and
Speaker 17: he said, I liked a one but the girl. And
Speaker 17: that's how the song was chosen. Yeah, yeah, I want
Speaker 17: you to play it. I really think you should.
Speaker 18: So it went.
Speaker 17: Now, remember it had to be about food. Food, So went,
Speaker 17: let's go to the kitchen. I got something fixing, almantizing,
Speaker 17: and do here's a flue. We're cooking for two. They're
Speaker 17: inside the oven, something warm and loving. Friends would laugh
Speaker 17: and they knew that it's true. We're cooking for two.
Speaker 17: Here's the corner on the bridge. I was a soup
Speaker 17: for one girl nombers every night all but once I
Speaker 17: tasted your kisses. I was dining my candlelight. Here's a
Speaker 17: recipe for all the world to see.
Speaker 2: We take some me and some you.
Speaker 16: The it's.
Speaker 17: We're cooking for two. We're cooking for two. That definitely
Speaker 17: ranks amongst one of the most embarrassing things.
Speaker 3: I've ever done. They planned to play it over the
Speaker 3: credits with a Mitch Album closing track in hand. Christmas
Speaker 3: in Connecticut was almost ready to debut. Most made for
Speaker 3: TV movies you just put out on television, but not
Speaker 3: this one.
Speaker 2: First of all, TV movies don't have screens. If we
Speaker 2: have a screening, it's like ten people and you know,
Speaker 2: you were in a screening room somewhere like this was
Speaker 2: the big theater at the DGA, which holds I don't know,
Speaker 2: a thousand people, massive screen and there's a huge red
Speaker 2: carpet and a press line.
Speaker 18: We had two theaters going and there were phil When
Speaker 18: I tell you.
Speaker 13: That there's never been a television movie before since, they
Speaker 13: had a press line. And he's walking down working the press,
Speaker 13: and like, you know and I know that this person,
Speaker 13: this is Ambrose executive.
Speaker 2: Producer h Arnold.
Speaker 3: According to san Ivan, Wrightman and James Cameron were there,
Speaker 3: along with the whole slew of Hollywood Royalty. The screening
Speaker 3: was in LA. It was a media sensation.
Speaker 8: Watch out Hollywood. There's a new director in town and
Speaker 8: he's used to making a big impact.
Speaker 2: That is in front of the camera.
Speaker 13: When you act and you see such talent the directors
Speaker 13: as I've worked with, it inspires you.
Speaker 3: Janet Brown, now the screenwriter, was not having such a night.
Speaker 7: I remember sitting at the screening with my agent and
Speaker 7: I was like crying.
Speaker 3: I mean, I was like, oh my god, why were
Speaker 3: you crying?
Speaker 8: Is I get so bad?
Speaker 9: And my name is on this.
Speaker 8: My agent was very fast to get me a drink
Speaker 8: at that point. I just remember outside there was kind
Speaker 8: of a Christmas theme sort of party, and just like,
Speaker 8: I need to get out of.
Speaker 3: Here, but there was no putting the genie back in
Speaker 3: the bottle. TNT was running promo's NonStop.
Speaker 16: I love romantic comedies, so I made one myself, Christmas
Speaker 16: in Connecticut.
Speaker 4: It's a romantic comedy with.
Speaker 3: All the trimmings.
Speaker 6: What in the world could comfortably go wrong?
Speaker 3: Christmas in Connecticut? Directed by Arnold Schwarzening, you have a
Speaker 3: problem with that.
Speaker 4: TNT exclusive premiere Monday, April thirteen.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you caught that, but the film
Speaker 3: came out in April, one week before Easter. As one
Speaker 3: review put it, quote, don't ask me why a Christmas
Speaker 3: movie is premiering in April. As his then wife Maria
Speaker 3: Shreiver reflected, he just does. He's a big one on.
Speaker 3: Don't think about it or talk about it, do it.
Speaker 2: And then he goes, I think we want to scud
Speaker 2: into it again. That was too much fun. I go, okay,
Speaker 2: I go see if I can organ. I go no,
Speaker 2: I want to sco in Washington with my friend Jack Lent.
Speaker 2: So now we all fight Washington and uh.
Speaker 3: And it was.
Speaker 2: It was a who's who of Washington, and it was
Speaker 2: senators and members of tabinet.
Speaker 9: It was a seated dinner.
Speaker 2: And I remember my wife and I sit down. We've
Speaker 2: been working the room, so we sit last at our table,
Speaker 2: and the guy next to me has got like a
Speaker 2: dress came of form on and I say, hey, Sam Brooks,
Speaker 2: I'm the producer, and he goes, hey, Oliver North.
Speaker 3: Oliver North of Iran contra fame. The film was a
Speaker 3: big hit in the Beltway. So if I sit to
Speaker 3: say this made for television Christmas movie had an unusually
Speaker 3: big reception, but it also didn't really do much to
Speaker 3: establish Schwartzenegger as a director. The reviews were mixed.
Speaker 10: Well, I'm looking at IMDb right now, it's like the
Speaker 10: rating is four point eight out of ten, and they're
Speaker 10: not far off.
Speaker 2: We nobody had any Oh my god, we're making it's
Speaker 2: a wonderful life.
Speaker 3: I realize I've had a lot of fun with this
Speaker 3: movie and gun to my head. Do I think it's good? No?
Speaker 3: But do I love it? Obviously yes, because it's so
Speaker 3: totally weird and overcommitted to its bit that it has
Speaker 3: a kind of joyfulness to it that honestly gets me
Speaker 3: in the Christmas spirit and at its core, like the
Speaker 3: best Christmas films, the story behind the movie is a
Speaker 3: story of love and friendship between Arnold Schwartzenegger and San Brooks,
Speaker 3: two men brought together by a love of making movies.
Speaker 3: After the film, Stan and Arnold stayed in touch. Stan
Speaker 3: even moved into Arnold Schwartzenegger's office building. Their kids played
Speaker 3: football together, and even though they never made another movie together,
Speaker 3: their collaboration had one more act. Almost ten years to
Speaker 3: the day from when Christmas in Connecticut began shooting, Arnold
Speaker 3: Schwarzenegger became the governor of California. At the time, there
Speaker 3: was a lot of hand ringing over an issue called
Speaker 3: runaway production. Lots of states had started offering tax breaks
Speaker 3: to lure films into shooting somewhere other than California. It
Speaker 3: had become a real problem for Hollywood as an industry town,
Speaker 3: and this was one of the crises Schwarzenegger would have
Speaker 3: to face in his new role as governor. Now, the
Speaker 3: way people talked about his becoming governor was the same
Speaker 3: way they talked about his becoming a director, So it
Speaker 3: only makes sense that he wanted Stanbrooks in his administration.
Speaker 15: So when he became governor, he was in about a
Speaker 15: year and he called me and he said, how would
Speaker 15: you like to be on the film Commission? And I said, well,
Speaker 15: that's a dumb idea. He goes why.
Speaker 14: I said, well, because I don't shoot movies in California.
Speaker 15: I said, I'm like the worst person you could put
Speaker 15: on the film commission because I take movies out of state.
Speaker 14: And he goes, oh, that's why we want to because
Speaker 14: we want to try and.
Speaker 3: Pass the taxpayer stan joined the California Film Commission, and
Speaker 3: over the next few years he was a key part
Speaker 3: of the lobbying efforts to pass the tax credits that
Speaker 3: would make it easier to film in California.
Speaker 14: It was a hard fight, and so I ended up
Speaker 14: making a short film a short documentary film where we
Speaker 14: interviewed some of the families that left on why and
Speaker 14: that ended up being more powerful than any speech we
Speaker 14: could make in their office.
Speaker 3: The first tax credits passed in two thousand and nine.
Speaker 3: They've been renewed ever since. So back to our original question,
Speaker 3: why did Arnold Schwarzenegger direct to this bizarre one off
Speaker 3: Christmas film? I found my answer in the story Stan
Speaker 3: told me.
Speaker 2: He said to me one night we finished around seven
Speaker 2: or eight, and he goes, well you're doing And I said,
Speaker 2: I'm going home, and goes he goes, Maria's making dinner.
Speaker 2: You want to come to the house. So oh, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: So we both jump in our cars and we drive
Speaker 2: to visit Kyle's eight. And at that dinner, I remember
Speaker 2: Arnold turn to me. He says, you have a great town.
Speaker 2: I own the stat Why you don't de big feetes?
Speaker 2: And I say, to be honest, I didn't get in
Speaker 2: the business to make big, famous movies. I got in
Speaker 2: the business to make movies. And I get to make
Speaker 2: two or three a year. If I'm the future visits,
Speaker 2: I'm lucky. If I make one every other year every
Speaker 2: three years, I go, I'm happy with my life. He goes, well,
Speaker 2: that's why I'm dastic.
Speaker 3: The story really had honed for me, because I get
Speaker 3: what that's like to just love making something, even a
Speaker 3: kind of improbably dense story about the making of the
Speaker 3: remake of a Christmas movie. It's like Stan said, if
Speaker 3: you love making movies or anything, it's just a gift
Speaker 3: to get to make more, even if they're maybe not
Speaker 3: the best, especially if it's clear how much fun you
Speaker 3: had making whatever it is you're making. So to close,
Speaker 3: let me just share one quote from the very last
Speaker 3: page of Charles Dickens as a Christmas Carol, a passage
Speaker 3: about Scrooge after he's seen the light.
Speaker 14: Quote.
Speaker 3: Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but
Speaker 3: he let them laugh, and little heeded them, for he
Speaker 3: was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on
Speaker 3: this globe for good, at which some people did not
Speaker 3: have their fill of laughter. In the outset, his own
Speaker 3: heart laughed, and that was quite enough for him. Maybe
Speaker 3: Stan and Arnold didn't make It's a Wonderful Life, but
Speaker 3: it seems to me like their own hearts were laughing.
Speaker 3: So from all of us here at Revision's History, happy holidays,
Speaker 3: your foreheads see you in the New Year. Revisionist History
Speaker 3: is produced by me Ben Nattiaffrey and Lucy Sullivan with
Speaker 3: Nina Bird Lawrence. Our editor is Karen Schakerji. Fact checking
Speaker 3: on this episode by Sam Russick, a resident Schwarzenegger fan.
Speaker 3: Original touring by Luis Gara, mastering by Jake Gorsky. Our
Speaker 3: executive producer is Jacob Smith. Special thanks to Sarah Nis,
Speaker 3: David Arnott, Linda Berman, Iris Grossman, and Scott Sassa. I'm
Speaker 3: Ben Mattahaffery.
Speaker 1: Three two one.
Speaker 2: We wish.
Speaker 3: Marry Christmas.
Speaker 1: We wish you are Mary Chris.
Speaker 3: We wish you are Mary Chris M. Yeah, that's what
Speaker 3: we do, guys.
Speaker 1: I