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Speaker 1: Too Much Information is a production of I Heart Radio.

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Speaker 1: Hello everyone, and welcome to Too Much Information, the show

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Speaker 1: that brings you the secret histories and little known facts

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Speaker 1: and figures behind your favorite TV shows, movies, music, and more.

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Speaker 1: We're your two red rider BB guns of redundant, ridiculous remembrances.

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Speaker 1: I'm Alex Heigel and I'm Jordan run Tug and we're

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Speaker 1: gonna shoot your eye out with facts. Putting the proverbial

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Speaker 1: horse ahead of the card. There, But that's right. We

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Speaker 1: are talking about one of the single greatest entries in

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Speaker 1: the holiday movie can in the comedy So Nice. They

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Speaker 1: broadcast it twice, and then three times and then twelve

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Speaker 1: times at Christmas. That's right, I'm talking about the Christmas Story.

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Speaker 1: What do you say about the Christmas Story? Man? It's

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Speaker 1: so good? Is it? There? I should know this, it's

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Speaker 1: the right now. Okay, we're gonna find out live on air.

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Speaker 1: It's Christmas Christmas? Oh wait, I did know that? Actually? Okay, Okay, great,

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Speaker 1: that's right. We're talking about a Christmas story, a movie

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Speaker 1: zo beloved and ubiquitous. We completely forgot which article is

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Speaker 1: appended to it. But that does not diminish my love

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Speaker 1: for it. It's one of my dad's favorite movies of

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Speaker 1: all times, A big dad movie. I think could see

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Speaker 1: themselves in the Old Man in this movie. Yeah, fond

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Speaker 1: memories of just leaving this on a loop on its

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Speaker 1: loop every year and all out, just wandering into the

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Speaker 1: living room and catching twenty minutes of it at a clip. Um,

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Speaker 1: you know what, I can barely remember if I've ever

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Speaker 1: actually sat down and watched this start to finish. I

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Speaker 1: think i've I've definitely seen it all dozens of times,

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Speaker 1: but never such as we will cover. I don't think

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Speaker 1: they started the loop thing until the late nineties, so

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Speaker 1: at some point in the early nineties we sat down

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Speaker 1: and watched it. But yeah, I mean it's preferred format is,

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Speaker 1: of course watching it twenty minutes at the climb for

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Speaker 1: straight hours. But you like it though, right? I love

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Speaker 1: this movie. I love how begrudgingly sentimental it is, like

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Speaker 1: it gives it a heart without the saccerin aftertaste. And

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Speaker 1: it's also like a really weird movie, like why is

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Speaker 1: there a bunny suit? Why is there a leg lamp?

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Speaker 1: Why does the kid of yellow eyes? Even though I

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Speaker 1: don't some of the iconography in it, like watching that

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Speaker 1: watching it back, you're like, this is borderline Lynch in like, like, yeah,

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Speaker 1: if you put all of that with like disquieting ambient

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Speaker 1: industrial music under it instead of Schmaltz, it is a

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Speaker 1: David Lynch movie. You know, the dogs running through the house. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: even at the Chinese restaurant at the end, it's like

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Speaker 1: a razor head when they chopped the head off the duck. Yes, exactly. Oh,

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Speaker 1: that's so funny on the creepy Santa. I mean, you're right,

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Speaker 1: but I mean it's so great. And you know, the

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Speaker 1: phrase a major award is huge in my family lexicon.

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Speaker 1: I mean for gil a that must be Italian, that

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Speaker 1: that joke kills every time. Incredible success ratio. And you

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Speaker 1: know what, this movie probably introduced a whole generation, multiple

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Speaker 1: generations in fact, of kids to the concept of safety

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Speaker 1: goggles when they play with their BB guns. Kids play

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Speaker 1: with BB guns anymore? Did you have a BB gun

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Speaker 1: to video games? Completely? No? Yeah, no, I don't. I don't.

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Speaker 1: We went paintball on a couple of times, but that's

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Speaker 1: much more more. We were a big lawnmowing family and

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Speaker 1: so like it really pissed us all off when they

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Speaker 1: would end up in the lawn and go spinging out

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Speaker 1: of a riding mower at high speeds. So but yeah,

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Speaker 1: this movie is just like you're grumpy misanthropic uncle who

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Speaker 1: complains about everything but then gives the most touching toast

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Speaker 1: at a Christmas dinner. I don't know where that analogy

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Speaker 1: comes from. I don't have an analog for that in

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Speaker 1: my real life. But just go with it. You have me.

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Speaker 1: That's that. You know what? That's true? That is true. Well,

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Speaker 1: from the cultishly adored Hepcat radio personality who authored the

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Speaker 1: source material, to the director who went from a Christmas

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Speaker 1: themed slasher to a raunchy sex comedy to this. The

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Speaker 1: weird also ran beverage that inspired the iconic leg lamp.

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Speaker 1: Here's everything you didn't know about a Christmas Story. Jean

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Speaker 1: Parker Shephard Jr. Was born in one on the South

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Speaker 1: side of Chicago before moving to Indiana, specifically Hammond, Indiana,

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Speaker 1: where he graduated from Hammond High School, and that's where

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Speaker 1: a Christmas Story is ostensibly set. He fictionalizes Hammond as

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Speaker 1: homan In in all of his stories, and all of

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Speaker 1: his short stories are basically drawn from his life growing

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Speaker 1: up in the Southeast neighborhood of Hammond called Hessville. His

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Speaker 1: early jobs included mail carrier in a steel mill, which

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Speaker 1: is the most Midwest ever amateur radio DJ. He was

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Speaker 1: a Ham radio enthusiast, returned, returned to it in his

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Speaker 1: doted years and uh, I believe once said once a Ham,

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Speaker 1: always a Ham of his time and uh. He served

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Speaker 1: in the U. S. Army Signal Corps during w W two,

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Speaker 1: the Big One. UH. He began working in broadcast radio

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Speaker 1: following his service. This is five on w j O

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Speaker 1: B and Hammond. He had time in the radio in

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Speaker 1: Toledo and Cincinnati and a brief stint in Philadelphia before

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Speaker 1: landing at w o R Radio in New York City

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Speaker 1: in n where most people probably know him from. UH.

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Speaker 1: He was just famous for being one of these like

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Speaker 1: fast talking radio basically a Garrison Keeler. If he was

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Speaker 1: like a beat nick era guy, we could leave sarcastic.

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Speaker 1: Would just ramble and tell these long stories about his

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Speaker 1: his child and everything, and do weird stuff like He

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Speaker 1: had this stunt where he made up a book called

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Speaker 1: I Libertine because he was talking about how easy it

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Speaker 1: was to manipulate the best seller list, so he made

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Speaker 1: up a fake book. He made up a fake author

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Speaker 1: named Frederick R. Ewing and mobilized enough people listeners of

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Speaker 1: his show to actually land this fictional book on the

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Speaker 1: New York Times best seller list. People would call in,

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Speaker 1: call in and ask for it, or called books. Basically,

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Speaker 1: he was encouraging people to call into book distributors and

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Speaker 1: like bookstores and be like, do you have I Libertine

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Speaker 1: by Frederick Arguing? And the title of his his biography

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Speaker 1: that was written about him is uh, excelsior you fathead,

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Speaker 1: which was a phrase that if you, if someone asked

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Speaker 1: who published it, which the bookstores naturally would that you

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Speaker 1: were supposed to tell them excelsior, you fathead. So enough people,

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Speaker 1: based on the strength of is called into bookstores and

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Speaker 1: then subsequently those bookstores called publishers and called distributors that

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Speaker 1: this book solely through word of mouth ended up on

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Speaker 1: the best seller list, which was the entire point of

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Speaker 1: the of the bit was what he was trying to prove.

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Speaker 1: So such was his his influence the fifties. Yeah right.

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Speaker 1: Shepherd was wildly influential for his improvisitory pseudo beat poet

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Speaker 1: stream of conscious siness radio works. Steely Dan Co founder.

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Speaker 1: Donald Fagan paid tribute to him and a piece in

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Speaker 1: Slate in two thousand eight, and Jerry Seinfeld said on

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Speaker 1: a Seinfeld commentary track that he quote learned how to

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Speaker 1: be funny from Gene Shepherd, and Shepherd was occasionally described

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Speaker 1: as the inventor of talk radio, which I guess, given

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Speaker 1: all we know about him so far, kind of makes

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Speaker 1: sense because W. R. Stint lasted two decades, which is

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Speaker 1: astonishing because I have never heard of him before this. Uh,

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Speaker 1: And usually he started every episode with fifteen minutes of

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Speaker 1: him reading bizarre news stories before segan into improvised poetry

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Speaker 1: and spields and short stories and just kind of whatever

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Speaker 1: was on his mind. Really, and the jazz beat nick

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Speaker 1: Tastemaker crowd cottoned onto him purely on the basis of

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Speaker 1: his radio work because again, it really bore a lot

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Speaker 1: of resemblance to kind of beat poetry improvisations. Yeah, do

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Speaker 1: you ever listen to Ken Ordine. He's a he was

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Speaker 1: a big Tom Waite s guy. He would he had

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Speaker 1: this thing called word jazz where he would like, there's

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Speaker 1: like stuff of him on Steve Allen on The Tonight Show,

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Speaker 1: where Steve Allen's like playing jazz piano and Ken Nordine's

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Speaker 1: just kind of like narrating noir stuff. Yeah, it's a

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Speaker 1: lot of like hey, although like drunk early drunk Tom

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Speaker 1: Waite stuff before he gets into beefheart territory of like um,

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Speaker 1: you know, uh, when he's doing like emotional weather report

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Speaker 1: and some of those like like really heavily spoken word

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Speaker 1: things are Ken Nordeen was a huge guy for him,

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Speaker 1: so such was the milieu of the time very interesting.

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Speaker 1: He raised money for John Cassavetti's movies and he euled

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Speaker 1: you ezed, Jack Carolac when he died in nineteen sixty nine.

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Speaker 1: He's buried in Lowell, Massachusetts, near where I grew up.

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Speaker 1: And he was reportedly the inspiration for Shel Silverstein writing

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Speaker 1: the song that Johnny Cash later made famous a boy

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Speaker 1: named Sue Uh. Supposedly, when Steve Allen retired as the

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Speaker 1: first host of The Tonight Show in of it, he

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Speaker 1: suggested Jean Shepherd as a replacement. So a storied passed

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Speaker 1: for this man who wrote the stories that Christmas Story

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Speaker 1: was based on. Also, the jazz nerd me would be

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Speaker 1: remiss if I didn't mention that at some point Shepherd

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Speaker 1: became friends with legendary bassist and composer Charles Mingus. Uh.

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Speaker 1: Mingus had a kind of one of his many pet

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Speaker 1: projects with his own music was combining written word and

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Speaker 1: music and poetry. Um. There's a record called The Weary

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Speaker 1: Blues that's him doing the music and Langston Hughes reading

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Speaker 1: his poetry. Uh. And he wanted Joni Mitchell to adapt

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Speaker 1: some of T. S. Eliott's poems uh later in his life,

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Speaker 1: and that's what led to the Journey album um, where

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Speaker 1: she does Mingus compositions. So before the All, which is

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Speaker 1: just that, there's a there's a Mingus record called The Clown,

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Speaker 1: which has this truly horrifying cover art of Mingus as

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Speaker 1: like Pagliacci. Um, he looks more like John Wayne Gacy

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Speaker 1: than Paga. But there's a track on there called The

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Speaker 1: Clown that is just UM. Mingus loved the radio show

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Speaker 1: and just had Jean Shepherd come down and improvised this

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Speaker 1: narration around this, uh, this jazz tune. Give me a

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Speaker 1: thousand guesses. I never would have guessed that this was

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Speaker 1: the gen this was the mind that birth Christmas story. Alright,

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Speaker 1: even everything I said about what a weird movie it is, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I guess it kind of makes sense. Well. Beginning in June,

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Speaker 1: Jean Shepherd started pouring his radio stories over to Playboy

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Speaker 1: magazine for publication, honing in on those that depicted his

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Speaker 1: childhood in Hammond, Indiana, which he fictionalized as you said,

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Speaker 1: as the town of Holman and Playboy founder Hugh have

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Speaker 1: To reportedly said that Shel Silverstein encouraged his friend Jeane

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Speaker 1: Shepherd to turn his radio stories into pros, but initially

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Speaker 1: Jean Shepherd resisted, saying that he wasn't a writer. U

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Speaker 1: Hugh Havefter would beg to differy published twenty three of

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Speaker 1: Shepherd's stories in Playboy, and he often would play a

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Speaker 1: Christmas story late at night in the Playboy mansion, which

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Speaker 1: I find weirdly horrifying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Shel Silverstein war

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Speaker 1: Jean Shepherd down by recording the stories that he broadcast

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Speaker 1: on the radio and transcribing them for him before us

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Speaker 1: sitting down with him and trying to work them into

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Speaker 1: a proper short story. Incredibly touching display of friendship and

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Speaker 1: belief in his creative power. I think that's wonderful. We

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Speaker 1: should all have a friend like that. A Christmas story

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Speaker 1: loosely throws together five stories that Shepherd had written for

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Speaker 1: radio and published in Playboy and also in his novels.

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Speaker 1: Four of these stories were collected in Shepherd's six novel

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Speaker 1: in Godly Trust, All Others Pay Cash, which is a

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Speaker 1: great title. The fifth story the story of the old

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Speaker 1: Man's War with the neighbor's dog, the Bumpus Hounds. Again

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Speaker 1: the lexicon of this movie The Bumpus Hounds that appeared

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Speaker 1: in a later book that he published in seventy Wanda

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Speaker 1: Hickey's Night of Golden Memories a gift for titles. He

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Speaker 1: really does are saying whether these stories are fact or

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Speaker 1: fiction is not really for us to do here. He

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Speaker 1: famously resisted any attempt by people to pin down what

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Speaker 1: exactly was real and what was embellished. There's a rabid

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Speaker 1: fan base for this guy online, and a lot of

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Speaker 1: people have successfully by doing weird stuff like looking up Hammond,

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Speaker 1: Indiana high school yearbooks, pinned down specific characters from these

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Speaker 1: stories as existing. Um His father was confirmed by the

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Speaker 1: ninety Federal Census record to be a cashier at the

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Speaker 1: Boorden Milk Company, and his younger brother was indeed named Randy,

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Speaker 1: so at least at least that much was true. It suck.

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Speaker 1: It's so good. Uh, transfer, I don't have a segway

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Speaker 1: for this, the film's director, New Orleans native of Bob Clark,

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Speaker 1: he grew up poor and initially majored in philosophy at college,

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Speaker 1: scoring a football scholarship in Michigan, where he played quarterback,

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Speaker 1: and then he moved on to the University of Miami,

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Speaker 1: both of which are football schools, where he studied theater

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Speaker 1: and later turned out offers to play professional football. His

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Speaker 1: film career began somewhat inauspiciously with a nineteen sixty six

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Speaker 1: adaptation of The Emperor's New Clothes. Starting on the decline

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Speaker 1: John Carradine, by the early seventies he was doing horror

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Speaker 1: films nine Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things. But it

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Speaker 1: was in ninety eight that driving around Miami on the

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Speaker 1: way to a date, he heard Jean Shepherd on the

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Speaker 1: radio telling the story of Flick being triple dog dared

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Speaker 1: into putting his tongue in a metal pole in the

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Speaker 1: dead of winter. He listened to that story so intently

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Speaker 1: while circling the block repeatedly that he was forty five

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Speaker 1: minutes late for his date, who did not appreciate this. Ah,

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Speaker 1: he had told himself then and there, according to this

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Speaker 1: great vanity fair oral history of the film, I will

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Speaker 1: do a movie of this man's work, and it would

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Speaker 1: take twelve years to come to fruition. According to The

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Speaker 1: New York Post, Shepherd had already turned down several offers

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Speaker 1: to film his stories, including one from Disney when he

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Speaker 1: was approached by Clark in nineteen seventy three, So five

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Speaker 1: years after hearing out of the radio and ten years

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Speaker 1: before the movie came out. Can you imagine if Disney

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Speaker 1: made a Christmas story that would really suck? Yeah? No,

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Speaker 1: I can't three. Wasn't Catzenberg in the Power there? I

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Speaker 1: don't think Yetberg? When did Jeffrey? No, we're not doing this.

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Speaker 1: Stay focused. Happy Place, Happy Place, Happy Place, Happy Place.

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Speaker 1: Clark did make a very influential nineteen four film called

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Speaker 1: Black Christmas, which is generally considered one of the first

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Speaker 1: slasher movies, hugely influential on on the films that would follow,

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Speaker 1: especially Halloween. John Carpenter has talked about what an influence

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Speaker 1: that movie was on on Halloween, not just in the

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Speaker 1: holiday title. Funny to me that the Christmas Story guy

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Speaker 1: went from Black Christmas to his other biggest film, a

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Speaker 1: film he co wrote, produced, and directed, the gross out

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Speaker 1: comedy Porky's very personal produc looked for him right, apparently

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Speaker 1: about loosely based on like the Shepherd stuff, loosely based

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Speaker 1: on his own youth. That movie has been I think

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Speaker 1: so eclipsed by its descendants, most notably American Pie and

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Speaker 1: everything that, all the American Pie imitators, that it is

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Speaker 1: easy to forget that that was the third most successful

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Speaker 1: movie of two briefly one of the top grossing films

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Speaker 1: of all time in the US, and also briefly the

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Speaker 1: most successful comedy in film history. Wow. And that got

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Speaker 1: him the juice to get Christmas Story adapton. Uh. He

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Speaker 1: either I've heard various accounts the studios either wanted him

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Speaker 1: to do Porkies, to which he eventually did do, or

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Speaker 1: another horror movie. And he said, Okay, if you'll give

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Speaker 1: me money to do a Christmas Story. So MGM turn

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Speaker 1: their pockets inside out, because, as we will discuss later,

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Speaker 1: they were not in a good place in the mid eighties,

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Speaker 1: gave him four point four million for this um and

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Speaker 1: according to book on the Making of Christmas Story by

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Speaker 1: Cassine Gaines was so eager to make this movie that

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Speaker 1: he gave up his director's fee and tossed a hundred

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Speaker 1: and fifty k of his own money into the budget.

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Speaker 1: Shepherd himself, along with Bob Clark and Shepherd's third wife,

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Speaker 1: Lee Brown, wrote the screenplay. By this point, Shepherd had

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Speaker 1: left w R in nine, and Uh would later be

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Speaker 1: openly contemptuous of his diving radio, calling it just another

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Speaker 1: gig because he liked anything that he's done. No, he

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Speaker 1: didn't like anything at all. Another thing that Jean Shepard

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Speaker 1: was openly contemptuous of was the film's title. He said,

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Speaker 1: I fought it all the way down the line. He's

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Speaker 1: talking to the New York Post. It was based on

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Speaker 1: a story called Red Rider Nails the Cleveland Street Kid,

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Speaker 1: and I could accept that was too long for a marquee.

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Speaker 1: But my original title was Santa's Revenge. That's like, that

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Speaker 1: is a good title. That's why he liked the Christmas

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Speaker 1: slasher movies so much, Shepherd continued. We argued over dozens

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Speaker 1: of titles, then finally settled on Boys Life After the

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Speaker 1: magazine m It turned out that Steven Spielberg owned that.

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Speaker 1: Of course he did it was the original title of

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Speaker 1: E T and he refused to give it up. Finally,

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Speaker 1: bios Moses and this is what causes water gates. You

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Speaker 1: settle on one that nobody can get mad at, but

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Speaker 1: nobody likes. Incredible quote. It was a quote machine jeans Yeah.

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Speaker 1: All years on radio free associating, I did not know

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Speaker 1: that was the original title for the shooting. Title for

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Speaker 1: et Was it a real working title or was it

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Speaker 1: like a like a dummy title like Titanic was planet Ice?

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Speaker 1: So it might have been. It might have been the

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Speaker 1: code name for the shooting. You can, I guess you

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Speaker 1: can find this script up there so under the name

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Speaker 1: of Boy's Life. The I. R. Y. L. Shepherds lived

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Speaker 1: in various places around him and Indiana or in the

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Speaker 1: nineteen thirties, they moved into their house at twenty nine

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Speaker 1: oh seven Cleveland Street, which is a slightly over one

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Speaker 1: thousand square foot bungalow dating from the early part of

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Speaker 1: the century, and there is a carving in the attic

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Speaker 1: containing the autographs seventeen years old old Jean Shepherd February

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Speaker 1: nine and fifteen years old Randall Randy Shepherd February The

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Speaker 1: only reason I mentioned that is because they scouted twenty

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Speaker 1: cities for production, finally setting on Cleveland for the exteriors

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Speaker 1: and Toronto for the interiors. They did film during the

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Speaker 1: winter in Ohio, but there was no snow that year,

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Speaker 1: and consequently they had to import snow in from ski

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Speaker 1: resorts hundreds of miles away or use snowblowers to cover

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Speaker 1: up the trees. And at that time, apparently the technology

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Speaker 1: was not great and they had to run these things

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Speaker 1: for twenty four hours to get enough snow to shoot

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Speaker 1: in um And then when the weather warmed up and

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Speaker 1: neither of those became options, they used potato flakes, an

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Speaker 1: old Hollywood trick. Oh yeah, dried potato flakes, that's what

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Speaker 1: they used to use on TV as well, or shredded

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Speaker 1: vinyl to dress the sets, both of which don't particularly

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Speaker 1: sound very The e p a friendly uh and then

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Speaker 1: in even worse in the scene with ralph and his

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Speaker 1: brother of fleeing Scott Scott Farcas in the scene where

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Speaker 1: Ralphie and his brother and friends are fleeing the bully,

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Speaker 1: Scott Farcas keeping that firefighters foam that they are trucking through.

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Speaker 1: So man, remember when the Ohio River caught fire that

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Speaker 1: probably wasn't related to the filming of this movie, but

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Speaker 1: it also probably didn't help. Supposedly, the decision to film

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Speaker 1: in Cleveland came down to the department store Higgbie's, which

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Speaker 1: is a real life department store that allowed them to

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Speaker 1: film there at nights and left its Christmas decorations up

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Speaker 1: for them, as did a lot of the other parts

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Speaker 1: of the town they shot around. I always assumed that

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Speaker 1: was a fake department store because it sounds like such

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Speaker 1: a made up name, but it is real. Uh. The

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Speaker 1: place that Higgbie's used to be is in the center

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Speaker 1: of town. It's now a giant casino in Cleveland, where

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Speaker 1: I've actually been on several occasions. It's actually kind of cool.

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Speaker 1: You can sort of tell it was an old department

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Speaker 1: store because there's these huge atriums and massive escalators, which

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Speaker 1: might be the ones that uh Ralphie and his family

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Speaker 1: went up on. The house that plays the family's home

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Speaker 1: in the film In the Role of Itself was built,

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Speaker 1: and it was auctioned off on eBay in two thousand

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Speaker 1: four for a hundred and fifty grand. You can't get

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Speaker 1: a damn studio apartment in Cleveland for a hundred fifty

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Speaker 1: grand new. The new owners restored like the aside into

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Speaker 1: the Lamb's house that's been like vacant for years. That

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Speaker 1: every every two years, like clockwork. When I when I

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Speaker 1: was working in news, that that house would pop up again.

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Speaker 1: People will be like, you can buy Buffalo Bill's house.

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Speaker 1: And everyone was like, no, thank you. Wait, really I've

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Speaker 1: never heard that. Uh, oh, I was wrong. It did sell.

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Speaker 1: It's sold last year. The three story Victorians sold for

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Speaker 1: two hundred ninety thousand Perreopolis, Pennsylvania, just an hour from Pittsburgh.

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Speaker 1: You gonna turn into an airbnb. Well funny you should

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Speaker 1: mention that because the new owners of the Christmas Story

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Speaker 1: House restored it, built a museum across the street, and uh,

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Speaker 1: they have turned it into a foundation that preserves the

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Speaker 1: house in the neighborhood. They sell a two night stay

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Speaker 1: there around the holidays every year and funnel the proceeds

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Speaker 1: back into preserving this historic home. And they sell a

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Speaker 1: lot of Christmas Story stuff and a lot of the

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Speaker 1: trivia we found out from this episode comes from their site.

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Speaker 1: Oh Cleveland loves that house. Like I was in Cleveland

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Speaker 1: in the spring and like that's very high on all

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Speaker 1: the like Cleveland tourism stuff like year round, like people

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Speaker 1: flock out to this little suburb and go check out

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Speaker 1: this house. And yeah, they redid the interiors match the

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Speaker 1: way it was in the movie, even though those were

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Speaker 1: filmed on sets in Toronto. Became a designated landmark in

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Speaker 1: Cleveland and has welcomed over a million guests since opening

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Speaker 1: in two thousand and six. And did you hear about this?

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Speaker 1: There was some news story earlier this year about the

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Speaker 1: guy who played Grover Dill, who's like the little toady

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00:21:56,800 --> 00:21:59,399
Speaker 1: kid who pals around with the bully. Uh. He was

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00:21:59,440 --> 00:22:04,080
Speaker 1: trying to get consortium of ex Christmas Story actors together

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Speaker 1: to buy it, I guess. But then I'm kind of

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Speaker 1: unclear as to what happened, but he got into some

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Speaker 1: kind of physical fight with the current owner of the house.

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Speaker 1: Like Outside of the House would have loved that. Oh,

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Speaker 1: I'm sure. Yeah, I mean it's perfect. I mean, this

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00:22:19,400 --> 00:22:22,760
Speaker 1: is such a dysfunctional family, it's such a perfect story

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Speaker 1: for it. But yeah, like TMZ did several stories on this,

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Speaker 1: so I'm not really sure what the latest is with

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00:22:28,200 --> 00:22:32,120
Speaker 1: the ownership of that house. But interestingly, the actor who

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Speaker 1: played Randy, who plays Ralphie's little brother. He actually moved

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Speaker 1: in to the Christmas Story House decades later, in so

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Speaker 1: this would have been twenty three years after the movie.

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Speaker 1: The actor's name is Ian Petrella, and he moved into

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Speaker 1: the house after quitting acting to pursue graphic design, and

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00:22:52,800 --> 00:22:55,119
Speaker 1: he befriended the owner of the house and asked if

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Speaker 1: he could reside there for a few months, and he

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Speaker 1: moved into the third floor and gave tours and host

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Speaker 1: and beat in Greece with visitors. Brilliant idea. Because you're

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00:23:03,920 --> 00:23:06,280
Speaker 1: adding value to this guy's house, you can charge some

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00:23:06,359 --> 00:23:08,760
Speaker 1: extra bucks to the tours because you're getting an actual

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00:23:08,840 --> 00:23:12,760
Speaker 1: tour from you know, Ralphie. I'm honestly shocked. More places

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00:23:12,960 --> 00:23:15,399
Speaker 1: don't have that as like a bit like they're like

404
00:23:16,000 --> 00:23:19,280
Speaker 1: actor here, Yeah, move back into this place and give

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00:23:19,359 --> 00:23:23,400
Speaker 1: tours and it'll be like a symbiotic relationship. Yeah, free

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Speaker 1: room and board and maybe even some some extra kickback

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00:23:27,160 --> 00:23:29,280
Speaker 1: to I don't know. I thought you're gonna say, maybe

408
00:23:29,320 --> 00:23:37,480
Speaker 1: some mouth stuff. Um, keeping that as you meditate on that,

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00:23:37,800 --> 00:23:40,520
Speaker 1: we'll be right back with more. Too much information after

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Speaker 1: these messages. A neat trick that Clark pulled with the

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Speaker 1: child actors was to cut the floors out of the

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Speaker 1: set so that the camera would be down at the

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Speaker 1: kid's height around four ft looking up at all of

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Speaker 1: the adults um, rather than the perspective of the adults

415
00:24:04,680 --> 00:24:07,520
Speaker 1: looking down at the kids. So you are literally in

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Speaker 1: the kids uh perspective for these movies and Charlie Brown style. Yes,

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00:24:15,720 --> 00:24:20,359
Speaker 1: Muppet Babies an unheralded influence on this film. Um, the

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Speaker 1: director of Black Christmas, frequently cited Muppet Babies is one

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Speaker 1: of the most uh moving on a fun way to

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Speaker 1: tell which scenes are filmed where. When they're filmed at

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Speaker 1: the Cleveland House, the drapes are open in the living room,

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00:24:32,040 --> 00:24:35,359
Speaker 1: but on the sound stage that drapes are closed, which

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Speaker 1: is funny because in some of those scenes that they

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Speaker 1: did film in Toronto, you can see one of Toronto's

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Speaker 1: trademark red trolley's driving past in the in the background.

426
00:24:45,960 --> 00:24:50,480
Speaker 1: UM Victoria School in St. Catherine's, Ontario, Canada, where the

427
00:24:50,680 --> 00:24:53,879
Speaker 1: school exteriors were shot, along with the tree lot scene.

428
00:24:55,080 --> 00:24:58,119
Speaker 1: As mentioned earlier, this film was made on a shoestring budget,

429
00:24:58,320 --> 00:25:00,480
Speaker 1: which actually turned out in their favor because in the

430
00:25:00,560 --> 00:25:04,920
Speaker 1: DVD commentary, Ralphie actor Peter Billingsley noted that the studio

431
00:25:05,040 --> 00:25:07,600
Speaker 1: was barely involved and that that they had a ton

432
00:25:07,640 --> 00:25:10,359
Speaker 1: of freedom working on it. He said, unlike other studio

433
00:25:10,359 --> 00:25:12,680
Speaker 1: films where you couldn't change a word of the script.

434
00:25:13,160 --> 00:25:15,359
Speaker 1: The studio was like, ah, you're making that weird radio

435
00:25:15,440 --> 00:25:19,040
Speaker 1: play Christmas movie. Do what you want, just don't let

436
00:25:19,040 --> 00:25:22,640
Speaker 1: it cost too much. But the film is remarkably period accurate.

437
00:25:22,960 --> 00:25:26,440
Speaker 1: The cars, phones, the d coda ring, the radio um

438
00:25:26,880 --> 00:25:29,480
Speaker 1: there was I think Peter Billingsley talks about at one

439
00:25:29,560 --> 00:25:32,080
Speaker 1: point he was like talking to a woman and he

440
00:25:32,119 --> 00:25:33,360
Speaker 1: mentioned he was an actor and he was like, yeah,

441
00:25:33,400 --> 00:25:34,879
Speaker 1: I was in a Christmas story and she's like, you

442
00:25:34,920 --> 00:25:37,080
Speaker 1: can't be, you're too young. That was filmed in the forties,

443
00:25:38,400 --> 00:25:41,160
Speaker 1: neglecting to realize that they I guess the color film.

444
00:25:41,160 --> 00:25:42,879
Speaker 1: They would not have been shooting in color in the

445
00:25:42,960 --> 00:25:48,679
Speaker 1: nineteen FOURTIESZ was thirty nine. Yeah, that's true, that's true.

446
00:25:48,760 --> 00:25:51,200
Speaker 1: That's true. I stand corrected. Not the first time Wizard

447
00:25:51,200 --> 00:25:53,159
Speaker 1: of Oz will come up in this. One of the

448
00:25:53,160 --> 00:25:56,280
Speaker 1: things that was not real was the life Moooie soap

449
00:25:56,359 --> 00:25:58,920
Speaker 1: bar that was made of wax. But it was a

450
00:25:58,960 --> 00:26:01,679
Speaker 1: real brand. Yes, yes, yes, sorry, but they did not

451
00:26:01,720 --> 00:26:04,160
Speaker 1: put actual soap in that kid's mouth, which is funny because,

452
00:26:04,160 --> 00:26:06,360
Speaker 1: as we'll talk about in a second, they put these

453
00:26:06,400 --> 00:26:10,680
Speaker 1: kids through the damn bringer. Billingsley said his real life

454
00:26:10,720 --> 00:26:14,440
Speaker 1: mom actually used that that punishment a lot, and Clark

455
00:26:14,600 --> 00:26:17,080
Speaker 1: chimes in and he's like, yes, life Booie was known

456
00:26:17,119 --> 00:26:19,920
Speaker 1: for being the worst tasting. All Right, we gotta talk

457
00:26:19,920 --> 00:26:24,120
Speaker 1: about sweet sweet. Peter Billingsley, the kid had played Ralphie.

458
00:26:24,520 --> 00:26:27,800
Speaker 1: He was apparently the very first kid out of thousands

459
00:26:27,840 --> 00:26:30,480
Speaker 1: that they auditioned for the role, he told BuzzFeed. In

460
00:26:31,359 --> 00:26:33,919
Speaker 1: director Bob Clark said, for whatever reason that I was

461
00:26:33,960 --> 00:26:36,520
Speaker 1: the first kid he saw. But he thought, well, geez,

462
00:26:36,560 --> 00:26:39,680
Speaker 1: you can't just hire the first person you see. I read.

463
00:26:39,720 --> 00:26:43,640
Speaker 1: They also auditioned Seawan Aston from The Goonies and Will Wheaton,

464
00:26:44,040 --> 00:26:46,879
Speaker 1: who played the kid from Star Trek The Next Generation,

465
00:26:47,240 --> 00:26:52,000
Speaker 1: Um Wesley Crusher. That's the Crusher, Thank you, um. Peter

466
00:26:52,040 --> 00:26:54,320
Speaker 1: Billingsley had worked as an actor since he was two

467
00:26:54,320 --> 00:26:55,920
Speaker 1: and a half, and at the time he was known

468
00:26:55,960 --> 00:26:58,880
Speaker 1: mostly for a series of Hershey's Syrup commercials in which

469
00:26:58,880 --> 00:27:02,040
Speaker 1: he played Metsi Arvin, but he also started in some

470
00:27:02,080 --> 00:27:04,840
Speaker 1: big Hollywood productions in the early eighties, including the movie

471
00:27:04,880 --> 00:27:09,280
Speaker 1: Paternity opposite Burt Reynolds, and also an ensemble comedy called

472
00:27:09,320 --> 00:27:13,160
Speaker 1: Honky Tonk Freeway, and as a correspondent for the variety

473
00:27:13,160 --> 00:27:16,159
Speaker 1: show Real People, which I am not familiar. I was

474
00:27:16,200 --> 00:27:17,880
Speaker 1: gonna say, I thought you'd be familiar with the most

475
00:27:17,880 --> 00:27:20,840
Speaker 1: of them. But Peter Billingsley is interested in me also

476
00:27:20,880 --> 00:27:23,639
Speaker 1: because he's related to Beaver Cleaver's mom from Leave It

477
00:27:23,720 --> 00:27:26,840
Speaker 1: to Beaver, Barbara Billingsley. I think he's like the cousin

478
00:27:26,960 --> 00:27:29,600
Speaker 1: of her husband or something. But that's notable to me,

479
00:27:29,720 --> 00:27:32,720
Speaker 1: not only as a mid century media obsessive, but also

480
00:27:32,760 --> 00:27:36,240
Speaker 1: because Barbara Billingsley, Beaver Cleaver's mom, has my birthday December.

481
00:27:38,200 --> 00:27:40,680
Speaker 1: I love how they got Peter Billingsley to play the

482
00:27:40,840 --> 00:27:44,600
Speaker 1: elf ming ming in Elf. They kept kept him on

483
00:27:44,640 --> 00:27:48,040
Speaker 1: the Christmas He is he is. He is apparently tight

484
00:27:48,119 --> 00:27:50,960
Speaker 1: with um Vince Vaughn and those guys. He works as

485
00:27:51,000 --> 00:27:56,199
Speaker 1: a producer on their films. Yeah. Moving on, Uh, sweet

486
00:27:56,200 --> 00:27:59,879
Speaker 1: sweet Peter Billingsley. It was really cold, he told Puzzfeed,

487
00:28:00,080 --> 00:28:03,199
Speaker 1: shooting in Cleveland and Toronto in the winter, and the

488
00:28:03,280 --> 00:28:06,240
Speaker 1: child labor laws back then, if you didn't live in California,

489
00:28:06,400 --> 00:28:08,840
Speaker 1: you didn't have reciprocity with the States laws, and I

490
00:28:08,880 --> 00:28:12,560
Speaker 1: think Ohio and Canada were very lax, so you worked

491
00:28:12,560 --> 00:28:16,760
Speaker 1: a lot of hours. And while we're on the topic

492
00:28:16,760 --> 00:28:19,520
Speaker 1: of abusing kid actors, for the scene in which Ralphie

493
00:28:19,520 --> 00:28:22,840
Speaker 1: imagines himself fighting Black Bart's gang with his Red Rider

494
00:28:22,840 --> 00:28:26,200
Speaker 1: BB gun, he spits tobacco juice a couple of times,

495
00:28:26,600 --> 00:28:30,720
Speaker 1: which was real. The prop man, either not thinking or

496
00:28:30,760 --> 00:28:33,639
Speaker 1: not caring, just gave the twelve year old Peter billings

497
00:28:33,680 --> 00:28:37,760
Speaker 1: some red man chewing tobacco chaw for those in the know. Uh,

498
00:28:37,800 --> 00:28:41,200
Speaker 1: And within minutes the twelve year old actor was sweating.

499
00:28:41,640 --> 00:28:44,000
Speaker 1: And then he said we shut down for an hour

500
00:28:44,160 --> 00:28:46,320
Speaker 1: or so he's talking to Vanity Fair when I just

501
00:28:46,320 --> 00:28:48,720
Speaker 1: had to lie down on the couch. I guess after

502
00:28:48,760 --> 00:28:50,880
Speaker 1: this they realized that maybe giving a twelve year old

503
00:28:50,920 --> 00:28:53,000
Speaker 1: chewing tobacco was a bad idea, and for the rest

504
00:28:53,040 --> 00:28:55,040
Speaker 1: of the scene they gave him ground up raisins to

505
00:28:55,120 --> 00:28:59,360
Speaker 1: chew on. Yeah, not a work. Uh. And in case

506
00:28:59,360 --> 00:29:03,080
Speaker 1: you were wondering for the iconic hub cap scene, Billingsley

507
00:29:03,480 --> 00:29:08,480
Speaker 1: told BuzzFeed, Oh, they had me safe on all the takes.

508
00:29:08,880 --> 00:29:10,840
Speaker 1: I think we looped in the word fudge on top

509
00:29:10,880 --> 00:29:12,560
Speaker 1: of it so you could get the mouth to curl

510
00:29:12,640 --> 00:29:15,680
Speaker 1: to the continent of K instead of D. I had

511
00:29:15,720 --> 00:29:17,760
Speaker 1: been in Hollywood for a long time at that point.

512
00:29:17,920 --> 00:29:20,240
Speaker 1: It wasn't the first time I'd heard it or probably

513
00:29:20,240 --> 00:29:23,240
Speaker 1: set it. And yes, he still has a lot of

514
00:29:23,240 --> 00:29:25,680
Speaker 1: the stuff from the film, including the pink bunny suit

515
00:29:25,800 --> 00:29:29,040
Speaker 1: and the rhinestone cowboy outfit that he fights off Black

516
00:29:29,120 --> 00:29:31,680
Speaker 1: Bart's gang with. He also still has the red Rider

517
00:29:31,720 --> 00:29:34,440
Speaker 1: BB gun and the glasses that he broke, which were

518
00:29:34,440 --> 00:29:37,880
Speaker 1: his own in real life. Um, I mean that baby gun.

519
00:29:38,000 --> 00:29:39,440
Speaker 1: You know what I'm gonna say, but I'm gonna say

520
00:29:39,440 --> 00:29:44,080
Speaker 1: it anyway, belongs in the museum. Uh, the museum. V

521
00:29:45,120 --> 00:29:47,040
Speaker 1: there was a real life Black Bart. I just wanted

522
00:29:47,080 --> 00:29:50,040
Speaker 1: this this There's one reason I'm mentioning this. He was

523
00:29:50,040 --> 00:29:52,000
Speaker 1: an Englishman who came to the States of this family.

524
00:29:52,160 --> 00:29:54,240
Speaker 1: He served in the Union Army and moved out west

525
00:29:54,320 --> 00:29:57,240
Speaker 1: started a mine in Montana. Some men from the Wells

526
00:29:57,280 --> 00:30:00,520
Speaker 1: Fargo Bank offered to buy his claim and he were fused,

527
00:30:00,560 --> 00:30:03,160
Speaker 1: at which point they choked off the water supply to

528
00:30:03,320 --> 00:30:06,680
Speaker 1: the mine. He wrote in a letter to his wife

529
00:30:06,840 --> 00:30:11,120
Speaker 1: of this incident, I am going to take steps and

530
00:30:11,200 --> 00:30:15,160
Speaker 1: proceed to become a famous outlaw specializing in robbing wells

531
00:30:15,240 --> 00:30:19,000
Speaker 1: Fargo stage coaches. So I just had to completely mention

532
00:30:19,080 --> 00:30:22,440
Speaker 1: that dude's career and the incredible line I am going

533
00:30:22,480 --> 00:30:26,200
Speaker 1: to take steps, and then I don't think she ever

534
00:30:26,240 --> 00:30:28,520
Speaker 1: heard from him again. That was like the last she

535
00:30:28,560 --> 00:30:30,400
Speaker 1: didn't hear about him until he was in the news

536
00:30:30,440 --> 00:30:33,360
Speaker 1: for robbing stuff. Can you imagine that being the last

537
00:30:33,360 --> 00:30:35,000
Speaker 1: thing you hear from your spouse and the next time

538
00:30:35,040 --> 00:30:39,280
Speaker 1: you see them, they're they're bank robber rules. Moving on

539
00:30:39,440 --> 00:30:42,800
Speaker 1: up the familial tree, Jack Nicholson showed interest in playing

540
00:30:42,840 --> 00:30:45,440
Speaker 1: the role of the old Man, but Bob Clark pushed

541
00:30:45,480 --> 00:30:50,400
Speaker 1: for Darren McGavin because I believe largely Jack Nicholson was

542
00:30:50,440 --> 00:30:53,840
Speaker 1: making like a mill two mill or movie at this point.

543
00:30:54,480 --> 00:30:57,560
Speaker 1: But still, did you turn down Nicholson? He would have

544
00:30:57,600 --> 00:31:01,160
Speaker 1: eaten the This was like three years removed from really

545
00:31:01,200 --> 00:31:03,160
Speaker 1: like three years removed from the Shining too, so he

546
00:31:03,200 --> 00:31:06,640
Speaker 1: would have been bringing that energy to it. Yeah, he

547
00:31:06,680 --> 00:31:11,000
Speaker 1: improvised that string of of profanity in the furnace scene. Um,

548
00:31:11,160 --> 00:31:18,880
Speaker 1: he told give us a taste, uh by the Favorites

549
00:31:19,000 --> 00:31:24,840
Speaker 1: when it comes back up, you know. Uh, the first

550
00:31:24,920 --> 00:31:28,240
Speaker 1: draft had actual swearing in it, he told a Cleaveland newspaper.

551
00:31:28,400 --> 00:31:29,800
Speaker 1: But then we came up with the idea of using

552
00:31:29,840 --> 00:31:32,520
Speaker 1: nonsense words for the swearing. I had a great time

553
00:31:32,600 --> 00:31:35,960
Speaker 1: doing that. The English knows he's the English, the audience

554
00:31:36,000 --> 00:31:40,000
Speaker 1: knows he's cursing a blue streak, but it's just harmless noise. Conversely,

555
00:31:40,440 --> 00:31:43,120
Speaker 1: the jibberish that Ralphie is yelling when he's beating up

556
00:31:43,160 --> 00:31:47,720
Speaker 1: Scott Farcas was scripted, so the yin and yang of

557
00:31:47,840 --> 00:31:51,360
Speaker 1: movie gibberish there. What is cursing a blue streak? You know,

558
00:31:51,800 --> 00:31:54,960
Speaker 1: going blue tonight? Why? Why is blue synonymous with bad words?

559
00:31:55,040 --> 00:31:57,000
Speaker 1: You know, Jordan, that's a great question, because there's a

560
00:31:57,040 --> 00:32:01,240
Speaker 1: blue dot to cover up nudity, and you know, movies

561
00:32:01,280 --> 00:32:03,640
Speaker 1: and TV shows and stuff. So I don't know why

562
00:32:03,680 --> 00:32:07,000
Speaker 1: blue is such a I thought red red is a

563
00:32:07,120 --> 00:32:12,640
Speaker 1: very suggestive color. Blue is the warmest color. The Oxford

564
00:32:12,640 --> 00:32:17,880
Speaker 1: English Dictionary contains at eighteen ninety reference to the phrase

565
00:32:17,960 --> 00:32:23,280
Speaker 1: blue stories. There you go, as as nineteen hundred. Let

566
00:32:23,400 --> 00:32:27,080
Speaker 1: us propose to celebrate Chaucer by publicly reading some of

567
00:32:27,120 --> 00:32:31,480
Speaker 1: his bluest productions. Wow. And then there's the Blue Laws,

568
00:32:31,840 --> 00:32:36,000
Speaker 1: which prohibits selling or buying or selling alcohol on I

569
00:32:36,040 --> 00:32:41,680
Speaker 1: think Sundays from Massachusetts. Shion this just no idea why

570
00:32:41,760 --> 00:32:45,320
Speaker 1: that it dates back to like yeah, like Middle English,

571
00:32:45,440 --> 00:32:47,320
Speaker 1: But no one is able to tell me why that.

572
00:32:49,800 --> 00:32:53,200
Speaker 1: Any etymology experts listening tweeted us blue is the Warmest

573
00:32:53,200 --> 00:32:59,960
Speaker 1: color hashtag, hashtag Christmas story, hashtag blue is the Worm

574
00:33:00,000 --> 00:33:05,840
Speaker 1: A Christmas kellor A Jean Sheppard felt that Darren mcgavian

575
00:33:05,880 --> 00:33:08,440
Speaker 1: got the character exactly right. One of the few things

576
00:33:08,560 --> 00:33:11,360
Speaker 1: Jean Sheppard liked about this movie, apparently, he said, I

577
00:33:11,400 --> 00:33:13,479
Speaker 1: saw the old man as a guy who grew up

578
00:33:13,560 --> 00:33:16,200
Speaker 1: hustling pool games at the age of twelve and supporting

579
00:33:16,280 --> 00:33:19,880
Speaker 1: himself at the age of fourteen, and that was eerily

580
00:33:19,880 --> 00:33:23,680
Speaker 1: close to Darren McGavin's actual life story. His parents divorced

581
00:33:23,720 --> 00:33:25,480
Speaker 1: when he was eleven years old, and he was placed

582
00:33:25,520 --> 00:33:28,360
Speaker 1: under the custody of his father, who immediately boarded him

583
00:33:28,360 --> 00:33:31,480
Speaker 1: with strangers while he worked as a traveling salesman, and

584
00:33:31,560 --> 00:33:34,840
Speaker 1: McGavin ran away and was subsequently sent to Catholic boarding school,

585
00:33:35,120 --> 00:33:37,240
Speaker 1: which you ran away from again at the age of

586
00:33:37,280 --> 00:33:40,520
Speaker 1: sixteen and lived as a runaway under a wharf in

587
00:33:40,640 --> 00:33:44,960
Speaker 1: San Francisco Good Lord. Director Bob Clark would later say,

588
00:33:45,040 --> 00:33:47,400
Speaker 1: I love Jack Nicholson, but thank god he didn't end

589
00:33:47,480 --> 00:33:51,920
Speaker 1: up getting the part, because Darren is the old Man. Yes. Indeed,

590
00:33:52,480 --> 00:33:55,360
Speaker 1: my favorite detail about this character is that he's notably

591
00:33:55,800 --> 00:33:57,720
Speaker 1: not one of the three adults in the film that

592
00:33:57,840 --> 00:34:00,720
Speaker 1: Ralphie mentions the red writer bb Gun too, but he

593
00:34:00,800 --> 00:34:04,040
Speaker 1: just got his son the exact Christmas gift he wanted anyway,

594
00:34:04,040 --> 00:34:07,040
Speaker 1: which gets back to what I said about the whole

595
00:34:07,400 --> 00:34:10,239
Speaker 1: the the the grumpy uncle who then on Christmas Day

596
00:34:10,239 --> 00:34:12,600
Speaker 1: gives the most beautiful, touching speech. The whole movie is

597
00:34:12,600 --> 00:34:16,480
Speaker 1: this kind of terrifying figure that really you don't see

598
00:34:16,480 --> 00:34:19,040
Speaker 1: a lot of redeeming qualities for. And then the look

599
00:34:19,080 --> 00:34:21,440
Speaker 1: in his face when Ralphie goes behind the couch at

600
00:34:21,440 --> 00:34:23,600
Speaker 1: the tree or whatever it is and pulls the president out.

601
00:34:24,160 --> 00:34:27,200
Speaker 1: It's very sweet. It's very very sweet. One thing that

602
00:34:27,239 --> 00:34:30,040
Speaker 1: the Old Man is not is a period accurate sports fan.

603
00:34:30,200 --> 00:34:32,520
Speaker 1: In the beginning of the film, he becomes irate after

604
00:34:32,560 --> 00:34:35,600
Speaker 1: reading in the paper that the White Sox traded Bullfrog.

605
00:34:36,120 --> 00:34:39,520
Speaker 1: But the White Sox never traded Bill Bullfrog the trick

606
00:34:39,640 --> 00:34:46,120
Speaker 1: They released him on September, but the film is ostensibly

607
00:34:46,160 --> 00:34:48,839
Speaker 1: set in the late thirties or early forties, which would

608
00:34:48,920 --> 00:34:52,680
Speaker 1: make that sports pronouncement six years an acronistic. He also

609
00:34:52,680 --> 00:34:55,480
Speaker 1: refers to the Chicago Bears is the Tear of the Midway,

610
00:34:55,560 --> 00:34:59,960
Speaker 1: which is not their nickname is the Monsters of the Midway.

611
00:35:00,040 --> 00:35:01,960
Speaker 1: There are all sorts of confusing signs about when this

612
00:35:01,960 --> 00:35:03,920
Speaker 1: movie is supposed to take place, and it makes me

613
00:35:03,960 --> 00:35:06,440
Speaker 1: wonder if it was intentional just to keep it vague

614
00:35:06,440 --> 00:35:08,799
Speaker 1: and kind of throw people off the trail. Uh. First,

615
00:35:08,880 --> 00:35:12,160
Speaker 1: Ralphie's mom mentions a Bears versus Packers game which happened

616
00:35:12,160 --> 00:35:15,719
Speaker 1: in and then there's the little or Finanni Dakota pin,

617
00:35:15,800 --> 00:35:17,799
Speaker 1: which we'll talk more about later, shown in a scene

618
00:35:17,880 --> 00:35:21,480
Speaker 1: which is the same model that came out in And

619
00:35:21,480 --> 00:35:24,120
Speaker 1: there's a calendar in the Parker family kitchen that has

620
00:35:24,160 --> 00:35:27,480
Speaker 1: December one on a Friday, which took place in nineteen

621
00:35:27,560 --> 00:35:31,759
Speaker 1: thirty nine. So make of that what you will. And

622
00:35:31,800 --> 00:35:33,320
Speaker 1: I don't know if this is going to ruin anyone's

623
00:35:33,360 --> 00:35:36,600
Speaker 1: enjoyment of the film. But according to the film's shooting script,

624
00:35:36,719 --> 00:35:40,160
Speaker 1: the old man's name is Frank, but scans there's been

625
00:35:40,200 --> 00:35:43,000
Speaker 1: a long rumor that his name is hal because of

626
00:35:43,080 --> 00:35:46,000
Speaker 1: the exchange with the neighbor where he says that damn

627
00:35:46,000 --> 00:35:49,280
Speaker 1: how you say you won? That he's actually saying damn hell.

628
00:35:49,440 --> 00:35:52,880
Speaker 1: According to the shooting script, no one in history has

629
00:35:52,920 --> 00:35:59,200
Speaker 1: ever said that damn hell? Are there last names ever

630
00:35:59,239 --> 00:36:01,840
Speaker 1: mentioned in this movie? Me? The Parkers? I don't remember

631
00:36:01,840 --> 00:36:04,200
Speaker 1: that at all, But while researching this, I kept saying

632
00:36:04,200 --> 00:36:08,839
Speaker 1: that they're the Parker family. I don't know. That's a

633
00:36:08,880 --> 00:36:11,279
Speaker 1: blind spot in my research. Look that up. While I

634
00:36:11,360 --> 00:36:14,000
Speaker 1: read this, Clark saw the actress who plays the boy's mom,

635
00:36:14,080 --> 00:36:16,880
Speaker 1: me Linda Dylan in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

636
00:36:17,480 --> 00:36:19,279
Speaker 1: He said that was all he needed to cast her

637
00:36:19,360 --> 00:36:22,360
Speaker 1: as the mother. That is our second Spielberg alien movie reference.

638
00:36:22,440 --> 00:36:26,880
Speaker 1: The Parkers is their name, Yes, tremendous Frank Parker. You

639
00:36:27,000 --> 00:36:29,680
Speaker 1: heard it here? First? Uh for the scene in the

640
00:36:29,760 --> 00:36:34,040
Speaker 1: Chinese restaurant Chop Suey Palace in Toronto where that's actually

641
00:36:34,040 --> 00:36:36,840
Speaker 1: set her surprise when the duck comes out, when the

642
00:36:36,880 --> 00:36:39,000
Speaker 1: head with its head intact and they all start singing,

643
00:36:39,040 --> 00:36:43,359
Speaker 1: that was real. Um. They intentionally gave her the wrong

644
00:36:43,440 --> 00:36:46,840
Speaker 1: script pages that day, so she was baffled and surprised

645
00:36:46,840 --> 00:36:49,200
Speaker 1: and the new by all that happening. It's so great

646
00:36:49,239 --> 00:36:52,279
Speaker 1: she clearly cannot stop laughing at it. Well, and then

647
00:36:52,320 --> 00:36:56,840
Speaker 1: they take out the accent, just oh yeah, she's the streams.

648
00:36:57,080 --> 00:36:59,760
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, you can tell that that is not active.

649
00:37:00,480 --> 00:37:02,560
Speaker 1: It's like a Titanic when Rose gets in the cold

650
00:37:02,600 --> 00:37:04,840
Speaker 1: water for the first time and she lets out a yelp.

651
00:37:04,960 --> 00:37:07,400
Speaker 1: That is that you cannot act that that was a

652
00:37:07,440 --> 00:37:10,520
Speaker 1: real sound, like that yelp when the duck gets its

653
00:37:10,520 --> 00:37:14,359
Speaker 1: head chopped off. Tweet at us at duck getting its

654
00:37:14,360 --> 00:37:17,120
Speaker 1: head chopped off. In the movie, the Chinese restaurant is

655
00:37:17,160 --> 00:37:20,640
Speaker 1: called the Bowling Chop Suey Palace because there's an old

656
00:37:20,680 --> 00:37:23,439
Speaker 1: sign for bowling out front with the W burnt out.

657
00:37:24,320 --> 00:37:27,240
Speaker 1: This came from a real life experience by assistant director

658
00:37:27,320 --> 00:37:30,040
Speaker 1: Ken Goosh when he was a child. His mother had

659
00:37:30,040 --> 00:37:32,920
Speaker 1: accidentally mistaken a bowling alley with a burnt out W

660
00:37:33,120 --> 00:37:35,960
Speaker 1: for a Chinese restaurant when driving around looking for a

661
00:37:35,960 --> 00:37:39,359
Speaker 1: place to eat, which I think it's hilarious. I love

662
00:37:39,400 --> 00:37:42,160
Speaker 1: that of Ralphie's mother. Shepherd said, she's the kind of

663
00:37:42,280 --> 00:37:44,560
Speaker 1: woman I figure grew up in a family of four

664
00:37:44,640 --> 00:37:47,640
Speaker 1: or five sisters and married young. She digs the old man,

665
00:37:47,760 --> 00:37:51,839
Speaker 1: but also knows he's as dangerous as a snake. Um.

666
00:37:51,880 --> 00:37:54,080
Speaker 1: Melinda Dillon is so interesting. She began a career as

667
00:37:54,080 --> 00:37:56,680
Speaker 1: a coach check girl at Second City, the improv comedy

668
00:37:56,760 --> 00:37:59,680
Speaker 1: theater in Chicago, popularly known as a early breeding ground

669
00:37:59,680 --> 00:38:02,480
Speaker 1: for s I know, and she would start performing there.

670
00:38:02,480 --> 00:38:05,279
Speaker 1: She was in the original Broadway production of Who's Afraid

671
00:38:05,320 --> 00:38:07,680
Speaker 1: of Virginia Woolf. She was nominated for Tony and That,

672
00:38:08,080 --> 00:38:10,719
Speaker 1: And she got two Academy Award nominations, one for Close

673
00:38:10,840 --> 00:38:14,480
Speaker 1: Encounters and again for playing opposite Paul Newman in Absence

674
00:38:14,480 --> 00:38:17,319
Speaker 1: of Malice. And she is just like not as much

675
00:38:17,320 --> 00:38:20,000
Speaker 1: of a household name as you would really think considering

676
00:38:20,080 --> 00:38:21,920
Speaker 1: all of these things, all of these roles that she's

677
00:38:21,920 --> 00:38:25,640
Speaker 1: been in, And now for the rest. Zach Ward, who

678
00:38:25,640 --> 00:38:28,760
Speaker 1: plays the yellow eyed bully Scott Farcas and his little

679
00:38:28,760 --> 00:38:32,359
Speaker 1: Tody Grover Dill played by you know Anya, originally had

680
00:38:32,400 --> 00:38:34,680
Speaker 1: each other parts i e. Dill was the bully and

681
00:38:34,719 --> 00:38:36,880
Speaker 1: Farcus the tody, which would have been true at a

682
00:38:36,920 --> 00:38:39,439
Speaker 1: Shepherd's book and the stories. But when they got onto set,

683
00:38:39,520 --> 00:38:41,520
Speaker 1: Bob Clark took one look at them and swapped them.

684
00:38:41,520 --> 00:38:42,960
Speaker 1: It was like you get his lines and you get

685
00:38:42,960 --> 00:38:45,040
Speaker 1: his lines. It was the jokes was to be that

686
00:38:45,080 --> 00:38:47,600
Speaker 1: the bully was tiny and it's a visual Why would

687
00:38:47,600 --> 00:38:51,799
Speaker 1: that be in a book like Yeah? Um, and I

688
00:38:51,880 --> 00:38:54,400
Speaker 1: has a great bit about auditioning for Bob Clark. He goes,

689
00:38:54,560 --> 00:38:56,560
Speaker 1: I went into audition and he asked me to do

690
00:38:56,640 --> 00:38:59,719
Speaker 1: two crazy things. So first I acted like a rock

691
00:38:59,760 --> 00:39:02,120
Speaker 1: star are I was into van Hamma men. And then

692
00:39:02,160 --> 00:39:06,759
Speaker 1: for the second crazy thing, I farted really loud. He

693
00:39:06,840 --> 00:39:10,719
Speaker 1: told this to vanity fair, ladies and gentlemen. Um zach

694
00:39:10,760 --> 00:39:17,800
Speaker 1: Ward wins today's lawsuit category. That's scart Scott Farcas Sky

695
00:39:17,960 --> 00:39:23,080
Speaker 1: can't it's gotta intentionally be What the hell kind of

696
00:39:23,080 --> 00:39:26,360
Speaker 1: a name is scuttu? I mean it's a perfect name him.

697
00:39:27,239 --> 00:39:30,960
Speaker 1: Yeah again, this guy Geene Shepherd's gotta got a gift

698
00:39:31,000 --> 00:39:35,720
Speaker 1: for for titles and names. Um zach Ward sued Warner

699
00:39:35,760 --> 00:39:38,319
Speaker 1: Brothers and a toy company in two thousand eleven for

700
00:39:38,360 --> 00:39:41,160
Speaker 1: an action figure of his character from the movie Uh,

701
00:39:41,320 --> 00:39:43,200
Speaker 1: dropping the suit in two thousand twelve when it was

702
00:39:43,239 --> 00:39:46,160
Speaker 1: revealed that a he was never entitled to merchandising rights

703
00:39:46,160 --> 00:39:49,320
Speaker 1: in the first place because of a clausing his contract

704
00:39:49,360 --> 00:39:51,759
Speaker 1: when he signed it and be the toy used a

705
00:39:51,840 --> 00:39:55,160
Speaker 1: generic phase in its design going back to two thousand six.

706
00:39:55,440 --> 00:39:58,160
Speaker 1: So then that same year he tried to sue them

707
00:39:58,160 --> 00:40:02,719
Speaker 1: again over a Christmas story board game, playing cards and

708
00:40:02,840 --> 00:40:06,600
Speaker 1: calendar that he had been presented with two years prior

709
00:40:06,760 --> 00:40:11,000
Speaker 1: at the annual Christmas story charity fundraising convention in Cleveland. Uh.

710
00:40:11,080 --> 00:40:13,560
Speaker 1: That suit was quickly settled, But there are some astoundingly

711
00:40:13,600 --> 00:40:18,680
Speaker 1: mean things that the toy company Nika Necka said about

712
00:40:18,800 --> 00:40:23,400
Speaker 1: him in the press um, which like what they call

713
00:40:23,440 --> 00:40:26,000
Speaker 1: him a baby or something? I hang on, I mean,

714
00:40:26,040 --> 00:40:29,759
Speaker 1: this kid's story is devastating. He tells the story in

715
00:40:29,880 --> 00:40:33,480
Speaker 1: a twentieth anniversary mini documentary about the making of a

716
00:40:33,520 --> 00:40:36,680
Speaker 1: Christmas Story And he was, I guess making money for

717
00:40:36,719 --> 00:40:39,680
Speaker 1: his single mom as a child actor, and he paid

718
00:40:39,760 --> 00:40:42,480
Speaker 1: for everything in the household. And one year for Christmas,

719
00:40:42,520 --> 00:40:43,840
Speaker 1: she took him to the mall and he had to

720
00:40:43,840 --> 00:40:46,560
Speaker 1: pick out a sweater that he paid for and then

721
00:40:46,600 --> 00:40:48,680
Speaker 1: she wrapped it up and gave it to him for Christmas,

722
00:40:49,160 --> 00:40:54,040
Speaker 1: which is so sad. Jesus, Yes, Nika Neca whatever I

723
00:40:54,360 --> 00:40:58,440
Speaker 1: pronounced it. They call it a long, exceedingly silly case

724
00:40:58,480 --> 00:41:00,480
Speaker 1: by a plaintiff who had a bit role as a

725
00:41:00,520 --> 00:41:04,080
Speaker 1: thirteen year old in the well known film and then

726
00:41:04,080 --> 00:41:09,439
Speaker 1: they said he has grown up to become a professional plaintiff. Ouch. Yeah,

727
00:41:09,600 --> 00:41:12,480
Speaker 1: murdered murdered in court filings by a companied by by

728
00:41:12,480 --> 00:41:15,400
Speaker 1: a toy company. Well, now we've got to talk about Flick,

729
00:41:15,560 --> 00:41:18,799
Speaker 1: who's played by Scott Schwartz. He's the I mean, he

730
00:41:18,800 --> 00:41:20,799
Speaker 1: will forever be the kid who got his tongue stuck

731
00:41:20,840 --> 00:41:23,520
Speaker 1: to a pole. What else needed enough? Yeah? Uh? The

732
00:41:23,760 --> 00:41:26,960
Speaker 1: said tongue suck to a flagpole scene was created with

733
00:41:27,040 --> 00:41:30,000
Speaker 1: a plastic pole that they drilled the tiny hole into

734
00:41:30,040 --> 00:41:32,440
Speaker 1: which is rigged up to a vacuum so that I

735
00:41:32,440 --> 00:41:36,120
Speaker 1: would actually suction people's tongues into this little hole in

736
00:41:36,160 --> 00:41:38,560
Speaker 1: the ball. And it was popular with the boys on

737
00:41:38,600 --> 00:41:40,879
Speaker 1: the set, and they all took turns sticking their tongue

738
00:41:40,920 --> 00:41:44,680
Speaker 1: into the air hole to hit their tongues if they're lucky. Uh.

739
00:41:44,760 --> 00:41:46,920
Speaker 1: Scott Schwartz, the kid who played Flick, had to shoot

740
00:41:46,920 --> 00:41:50,200
Speaker 1: the scene twice after they accidentally underdeveloped the film on

741
00:41:50,239 --> 00:41:53,080
Speaker 1: the first shoot, and at one point Dr Bob Clark,

742
00:41:53,320 --> 00:41:57,200
Speaker 1: who was so annoyed with flicks constant breaking on the set,

743
00:41:57,680 --> 00:42:00,719
Speaker 1: called lunch while the suction was on, leaving him stuck there.

744
00:42:01,040 --> 00:42:02,920
Speaker 1: So all the scenes of him like when the teacher

745
00:42:02,960 --> 00:42:06,919
Speaker 1: looks out the classroom window and he's just like flailing around. Yeah,

746
00:42:07,000 --> 00:42:11,080
Speaker 1: that's exactly well. This was because they brought all the

747
00:42:11,160 --> 00:42:13,640
Speaker 1: Clark Bottle these kids up to Canada and and basically

748
00:42:13,719 --> 00:42:16,480
Speaker 1: stuck and and Cleveland. They were roomed in a hotel

749
00:42:16,719 --> 00:42:19,719
Speaker 1: in the in the Stafford's Hotel in downtown Cleveland for

750
00:42:19,760 --> 00:42:21,680
Speaker 1: the shoot. And he brought him to Canada so that

751
00:42:21,719 --> 00:42:23,799
Speaker 1: they could get this you know, the classic cool hand.

752
00:42:23,880 --> 00:42:28,200
Speaker 1: Luke a bunch of guys, rowdy guys, chemistry um. And

753
00:42:28,239 --> 00:42:31,319
Speaker 1: they would rehearse at his home in New Bedford, UM.

754
00:42:31,360 --> 00:42:32,959
Speaker 1: And so, like I said, most of them were staying

755
00:42:32,960 --> 00:42:35,239
Speaker 1: in this hotel together and being a bunch of ten

756
00:42:35,280 --> 00:42:37,120
Speaker 1: to fourteen year old boys, they got up into all

757
00:42:37,160 --> 00:42:41,360
Speaker 1: these shenanigans like chucking water balloons and and sodden rolls

758
00:42:41,360 --> 00:42:44,240
Speaker 1: of toilet paper out of the windows of the top floors,

759
00:42:44,880 --> 00:42:47,600
Speaker 1: would send hundreds of dollars of delivery food to people

760
00:42:47,640 --> 00:42:49,200
Speaker 1: in the middle of the night. They woul ding dong

761
00:42:49,320 --> 00:42:53,920
Speaker 1: ditch people pretending to be housekeepers. And Schwartz, who was fourteen,

762
00:42:53,960 --> 00:42:55,560
Speaker 1: he was the oldest of all of them and had

763
00:42:55,719 --> 00:42:57,560
Speaker 1: kind of he was a bit of a movie veteran.

764
00:42:57,600 --> 00:43:00,719
Speaker 1: He'd been on the toy with Richard Pryor and Jackie

765
00:43:01,120 --> 00:43:03,440
Speaker 1: and he was the ringleader, which is why Clark couldn't

766
00:43:03,480 --> 00:43:08,719
Speaker 1: stand him by the time they went to film that scene.

767
00:43:09,480 --> 00:43:13,600
Speaker 1: The kid's tongue suction to a proper pole. That's got

768
00:43:13,600 --> 00:43:16,080
Speaker 1: to go down in the annals of mean treating kids

769
00:43:16,120 --> 00:43:20,719
Speaker 1: poorly in films. I can't believe it wasn't Scott Farcas

770
00:43:20,719 --> 00:43:25,520
Speaker 1: as the his braces are one of the many anachronisms

771
00:43:25,520 --> 00:43:28,040
Speaker 1: in this film, presumably because he actually had them and

772
00:43:28,080 --> 00:43:30,120
Speaker 1: they were not going to like pry them off his

773
00:43:30,239 --> 00:43:35,680
Speaker 1: teeth just to ensure period accuracy. I didn't know that

774
00:43:35,680 --> 00:43:40,239
Speaker 1: that's a whole Wikipedia thing that there's a lot I

775
00:43:40,239 --> 00:43:43,040
Speaker 1: would go down. There's a lot of them. Uh, a

776
00:43:43,200 --> 00:43:48,280
Speaker 1: little weird date things. I think mental floss has it. Uh.

777
00:43:48,640 --> 00:43:50,600
Speaker 1: Jean Shepherd and his wife have a cameo as the

778
00:43:50,640 --> 00:43:53,400
Speaker 1: couple in the Higbies department store, and Bob Clark is

779
00:43:53,440 --> 00:43:57,560
Speaker 1: the aforementioned Swede, the family's neighbor. Um Shephard read the

780
00:43:57,560 --> 00:44:00,279
Speaker 1: film's narration off screen so that Billingsley could act to

781
00:44:00,360 --> 00:44:02,400
Speaker 1: it in real time, but he and Clark had a

782
00:44:02,520 --> 00:44:07,000
Speaker 1: mildly contentious relationship while shooting. Apparently, Shepherd was constantly looking

783
00:44:07,040 --> 00:44:10,480
Speaker 1: over Clark's shoulder and just making suggestions uh, and then

784
00:44:10,520 --> 00:44:13,359
Speaker 1: would approach the actors after he yelled cut. He would

785
00:44:13,360 --> 00:44:16,120
Speaker 1: come up to billings and be like, ralph, he's really

786
00:44:16,160 --> 00:44:18,640
Speaker 1: like this, and then Clark would come back onto the

787
00:44:18,640 --> 00:44:20,520
Speaker 1: set and be like, Gene, get away from the actors.

788
00:44:21,880 --> 00:44:24,160
Speaker 1: But because this film was made a very tight budget,

789
00:44:24,320 --> 00:44:27,160
Speaker 1: Clark had tightly storyboarded like every shot in it, and

790
00:44:27,200 --> 00:44:28,919
Speaker 1: so he didn't have a lot of time for for

791
00:44:29,040 --> 00:44:31,640
Speaker 1: Shepherd to be, you know, telling kids, Oh, you should

792
00:44:31,640 --> 00:44:34,080
Speaker 1: do it again this way, like, you know, more true

793
00:44:34,080 --> 00:44:36,680
Speaker 1: to what Ralphie was actually like. And then so Clark

794
00:44:36,760 --> 00:44:39,960
Speaker 1: finally just barred him from that. Shepherd retired to Santa

795
00:44:39,960 --> 00:44:42,360
Speaker 1: bell Island on Florida's Gulf Coast and passed away in

796
00:44:43,360 --> 00:44:46,520
Speaker 1: two years after Turn to Broadcasting began its tradition of

797
00:44:46,560 --> 00:44:52,120
Speaker 1: the twenty four hour Christmas story marathon. We're going to

798
00:44:52,200 --> 00:44:54,400
Speaker 1: take a quick break, but we'll be right back with

799
00:44:54,440 --> 00:45:10,120
Speaker 1: more too much information and just a moment. Jordan's tell

800
00:45:10,200 --> 00:45:12,520
Speaker 1: us about the leg lamp. Yes, this would not be

801
00:45:12,560 --> 00:45:14,919
Speaker 1: an episode of t M if we didn't go extremely

802
00:45:14,960 --> 00:45:19,120
Speaker 1: in depth on the major award, the leg lamp. Jordan's

803
00:45:19,160 --> 00:45:23,719
Speaker 1: it belongs in a museum segment. Yes, we gotta write

804
00:45:23,719 --> 00:45:25,759
Speaker 1: a theme song for that so we can throw to it.

805
00:45:26,080 --> 00:45:30,640
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get on that, hires John Williams Jenny Jenny Gett,

806
00:45:31,920 --> 00:45:34,360
Speaker 1: friend of the Pot Paul Williams to write Jordan's it

807
00:45:34,440 --> 00:45:39,120
Speaker 1: belongs in the museum segment. The leg lamp was first

808
00:45:39,120 --> 00:45:42,080
Speaker 1: described in the nineteen sixty six Geen Shepherd's short story

809
00:45:42,160 --> 00:45:45,040
Speaker 1: My Old Man and the Lascivias Special Award that heralded

810
00:45:45,080 --> 00:45:47,479
Speaker 1: the birth of pop hearts. The title of the short

811
00:45:47,560 --> 00:45:51,960
Speaker 1: story um and it actually appeared on screen before Christmas

812
00:45:52,000 --> 00:45:55,560
Speaker 1: story in the PBS film The Phantom of the Open Hearth,

813
00:45:55,640 --> 00:45:58,480
Speaker 1: which was broadcast in six I'm guessing that was a

814
00:45:58,560 --> 00:46:02,200
Speaker 1: Geane Shepherd's story that was done for PBS or it

815
00:46:02,320 --> 00:46:05,520
Speaker 1: had to PSYEA well, no, I mean it was a

816
00:46:05,560 --> 00:46:10,400
Speaker 1: Jean Shepherd story. Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. Jean Shepherd was

817
00:46:10,440 --> 00:46:13,880
Speaker 1: inspired to create the leg lamp by old print ads

818
00:46:13,960 --> 00:46:17,320
Speaker 1: for the soft drink Knee High, which featured a woman's

819
00:46:17,920 --> 00:46:19,400
Speaker 1: I can't remember. It's one or two. I think just

820
00:46:19,480 --> 00:46:21,880
Speaker 1: one leg from the skirt down and the very simple

821
00:46:21,920 --> 00:46:26,280
Speaker 1: copy drink knee high quality beverages. I looked that up online.

822
00:46:26,320 --> 00:46:31,600
Speaker 1: You're right, it's it's the legs. The design of the

823
00:46:31,680 --> 00:46:33,560
Speaker 1: leg lamp for a Christmas Stories the work of the

824
00:46:33,560 --> 00:46:37,000
Speaker 1: production designer, Reuben Freed, and he told Cleveland Magazine in

825
00:46:37,000 --> 00:46:39,600
Speaker 1: two thousand nine, I immediately thought of something I had

826
00:46:39,640 --> 00:46:44,160
Speaker 1: seen in my mother's front room, which was a okay

827
00:46:44,520 --> 00:46:48,560
Speaker 1: which grew up in a New Orleans Bronthel, which was

828
00:46:48,600 --> 00:46:53,840
Speaker 1: sort of which was sort of a gold colored silk

829
00:46:53,920 --> 00:46:56,840
Speaker 1: lamp shade pleaded with fringe around it. I thought of

830
00:46:56,880 --> 00:47:00,760
Speaker 1: it immediately and never thought of anything else. I assume

831
00:47:00,800 --> 00:47:03,560
Speaker 1: he means just while designing this leg lamp, just that

832
00:47:03,680 --> 00:47:06,840
Speaker 1: classic big, ugly shape, and he drew a couple of

833
00:47:06,920 --> 00:47:10,080
Speaker 1: quick sketches that Jean Shepard approved immediately, and they cast

834
00:47:10,120 --> 00:47:13,239
Speaker 1: the real woman's leg to use for the design. It's

835
00:47:13,239 --> 00:47:17,160
Speaker 1: like plaster cast, like Cynthia plaster cast. But if you

836
00:47:17,239 --> 00:47:19,160
Speaker 1: are a loved one was cast for the design of

837
00:47:19,160 --> 00:47:23,000
Speaker 1: the leg camp, he may be entitled to residuals from

838
00:47:23,000 --> 00:47:31,240
Speaker 1: Ted Turner. Please get in contact Scott fucking sus Oh,

839
00:47:31,280 --> 00:47:35,279
Speaker 1: poor Zach Ward, with your life here, we are just

840
00:47:35,360 --> 00:47:39,239
Speaker 1: piling on. Clark didn't let any of the boys on

841
00:47:39,280 --> 00:47:41,719
Speaker 1: the set see the lamp until they were shooting. So

842
00:47:41,840 --> 00:47:46,560
Speaker 1: Ralphie's blazed eyed stare as his hand glides up the

843
00:47:46,640 --> 00:47:50,719
Speaker 1: lamp was real. Was that his genuine reaction? Again, just

844
00:47:50,760 --> 00:47:53,279
Speaker 1: like when they didn't let them, when they didn't tell

845
00:47:53,280 --> 00:47:55,080
Speaker 1: any when the woman was going to be on the side.

846
00:47:55,120 --> 00:47:58,120
Speaker 1: They were just like letting all these horn dog preteen

847
00:47:58,200 --> 00:48:03,560
Speaker 1: boys see this fish net clad leg lamp. You get

848
00:48:03,560 --> 00:48:08,479
Speaker 1: Peter Billingsley's genuine reaction of awe, Well, now I feel

849
00:48:08,480 --> 00:48:10,719
Speaker 1: bad because my dad is a joke. Got me a

850
00:48:10,800 --> 00:48:13,840
Speaker 1: leg lamp, I think, like a half size one Christmas

851
00:48:13,840 --> 00:48:15,880
Speaker 1: one year, and I had it in my dorm because

852
00:48:15,920 --> 00:48:19,480
Speaker 1: I thought it was a goofy looking thing. I might

853
00:48:19,520 --> 00:48:22,080
Speaker 1: worry about the impression it gave off. I just thought

854
00:48:22,080 --> 00:48:24,080
Speaker 1: it looked surreal. I thought I thought it was the

855
00:48:24,120 --> 00:48:27,080
Speaker 1: birth of man Raith, the birth of pop art exactly.

856
00:48:28,160 --> 00:48:31,080
Speaker 1: Rd Rob, who played Schwartz on the on the DVD,

857
00:48:31,239 --> 00:48:34,040
Speaker 1: said I loved the leg lamp. That thing was sexy

858
00:48:34,080 --> 00:48:39,439
Speaker 1: as hell. Inventors Digest in their feature on the leg

859
00:48:39,520 --> 00:48:43,400
Speaker 1: lamp notes that is protected by Federal trademark Registration number

860
00:48:43,440 --> 00:48:47,240
Speaker 1: three three six four five four two, with a separate

861
00:48:47,239 --> 00:48:50,360
Speaker 1: registration for a leg lamp Christmas tree ornament, which I

862
00:48:50,400 --> 00:48:53,880
Speaker 1: believe we do have an our home. Um. Three lamps

863
00:48:53,880 --> 00:48:56,120
Speaker 1: were made for the movie, but none of them exist today, Jordan,

864
00:48:56,200 --> 00:49:00,919
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry. God. There were of reports that all

865
00:49:00,960 --> 00:49:03,920
Speaker 1: three were broken as part of filming, but a Canadian

866
00:49:03,920 --> 00:49:08,040
Speaker 1: blog called Retrofestive wrote that one did survive and sat

867
00:49:08,239 --> 00:49:12,880
Speaker 1: unused for years in the window of Martin Malivoir's special

868
00:49:12,960 --> 00:49:15,520
Speaker 1: effects shop in Toronto. I have no idea what any

869
00:49:15,560 --> 00:49:17,880
Speaker 1: of those words mean. It was eventually discarded in the

870
00:49:17,880 --> 00:49:22,799
Speaker 1: early nineties, belongs in a museum, and the celebrate a

871
00:49:22,880 --> 00:49:27,800
Speaker 1: Christmas Stories thirty anniversary in Cleveland's roles It's filming location,

872
00:49:28,239 --> 00:49:31,279
Speaker 1: Terminal Tower in Cleveland's Public Square was turned into a

873
00:49:31,360 --> 00:49:34,480
Speaker 1: giant leg lamp, complete with red garter. I need to

874
00:49:34,520 --> 00:49:39,680
Speaker 1: see that. Uh. In less sexy prop categories, the little

875
00:49:39,760 --> 00:49:42,000
Speaker 1: Orphan Annie Dakota ring featured in the movie is the

876
00:49:42,120 --> 00:49:45,280
Speaker 1: nineteen forty model. Another thing that helps kind of established

877
00:49:45,320 --> 00:49:47,840
Speaker 1: when the film is set. Uh. The design for that

878
00:49:47,960 --> 00:49:51,520
Speaker 1: Dakota originally featured the words radio orphan anys S S

879
00:49:52,400 --> 00:49:55,560
Speaker 1: and two cross skeleton keys. Now why could that have

880
00:49:55,640 --> 00:49:59,839
Speaker 1: been a poor decision in the nineteen thirties, I wonder, Well,

881
00:49:59,840 --> 00:50:03,000
Speaker 1: the S S did stand for secret society, but it

882
00:50:03,040 --> 00:50:06,840
Speaker 1: took them until ninety nine to remove the words S

883
00:50:07,120 --> 00:50:13,040
Speaker 1: S with a striking logo from a children's toy. I

884
00:50:13,080 --> 00:50:15,880
Speaker 1: mean that the US didn't enter World Ward two in

885
00:50:15,880 --> 00:50:19,280
Speaker 1: the December forty one, and maybe it was just something

886
00:50:19,320 --> 00:50:23,600
Speaker 1: that that the connotation wasn't a strong Maybe I don't know. Well,

887
00:50:23,640 --> 00:50:27,480
Speaker 1: the S S was Jan's which I only looked up

888
00:50:27,480 --> 00:50:31,520
Speaker 1: to rebut your fact, so it sucks to your Asthmar.

889
00:50:34,040 --> 00:50:35,799
Speaker 1: I'm shocked. I haven't hit you with that one yet.

890
00:50:35,840 --> 00:50:38,959
Speaker 1: That's one of my favorite note context. This is Lord

891
00:50:38,960 --> 00:50:41,040
Speaker 1: of the Flies, Ladies and gentlemen, friend of the pod.

892
00:50:41,120 --> 00:50:44,959
Speaker 1: The Lord of the Flies popularity of a Christmas story

893
00:50:45,000 --> 00:50:47,680
Speaker 1: has caused some people to believe that the secret messages

894
00:50:47,719 --> 00:50:49,840
Speaker 1: at the end of the Orphan Andy radio shows, the

895
00:50:50,040 --> 00:50:53,040
Speaker 1: first Late Afternoon children's serial based on a comic strip

896
00:50:53,080 --> 00:50:56,360
Speaker 1: by hell Gray, existed to promote Oval team. That is

897
00:50:56,400 --> 00:50:59,919
Speaker 1: not strictly true. The secret messages that the children would

898
00:51:00,040 --> 00:51:03,719
Speaker 1: code were previews of the next week's adventure. But the

899
00:51:03,760 --> 00:51:05,960
Speaker 1: guy who was the announcer for the show, Pierre Andre,

900
00:51:06,160 --> 00:51:10,200
Speaker 1: would however, ramble on at least twice per show about Ovaltine,

901
00:51:10,480 --> 00:51:13,319
Speaker 1: sometimes for up to three minutes, which was a big

902
00:51:13,400 --> 00:51:17,839
Speaker 1: chunk of time for a fifteen minute show. And now,

903
00:51:17,920 --> 00:51:22,880
Speaker 1: for all of those toy gun completists out there, yes, sadly,

904
00:51:23,040 --> 00:51:27,880
Speaker 1: while the Red Rider model BB gun was manufactured in Plymouth,

905
00:51:27,920 --> 00:51:31,640
Speaker 1: Michigan by the Daisy Company beginning in it never existed

906
00:51:31,680 --> 00:51:33,960
Speaker 1: in real life as it does in the film. The

907
00:51:34,040 --> 00:51:37,760
Speaker 1: company's Buck Jones model did have a compass and sundial

908
00:51:37,880 --> 00:51:40,759
Speaker 1: in the stock, but those features were not included in

909
00:51:40,800 --> 00:51:44,200
Speaker 1: the Red Rider model. And further, since Peter Billingsley was

910
00:51:44,280 --> 00:51:47,279
Speaker 1: left handed, the compass and sundial were placed on the

911
00:51:47,280 --> 00:51:49,359
Speaker 1: opposite side of the stock that they would have been

912
00:51:49,680 --> 00:51:52,840
Speaker 1: in the actual toy because the world is not kind

913
00:51:53,040 --> 00:51:55,440
Speaker 1: to the left handed. Oh he he still has that,

914
00:51:56,080 --> 00:51:59,160
Speaker 1: he has that problem. I mentioned that earlier. I have

915
00:51:59,200 --> 00:52:02,400
Speaker 1: goldfish memory. According to stan Cole, the film's editor MGM

916
00:52:02,440 --> 00:52:05,160
Speaker 1: wanted a Christmas story cut down to ninety minutes so

917
00:52:05,200 --> 00:52:07,520
Speaker 1: it could be turned around in a tight two hour

918
00:52:07,600 --> 00:52:11,239
Speaker 1: showing window in theaters. Consequently, several scenes were cut from

919
00:52:11,239 --> 00:52:14,719
Speaker 1: the film, among them fantasy scenes in which Ralphie rescues

920
00:52:14,760 --> 00:52:17,720
Speaker 1: Flash Gordon from Ming the Merciless on the planet Mango,

921
00:52:18,400 --> 00:52:21,120
Speaker 1: and another one where he rescues Santa from Black Bart's

922
00:52:21,200 --> 00:52:24,400
Speaker 1: gang Um. And there are photos of Ralphie in that

923
00:52:24,440 --> 00:52:27,680
Speaker 1: cowboy costume standing next to a dude playing Flash Gordon there. Really,

924
00:52:27,680 --> 00:52:30,120
Speaker 1: it's really wild the film that the scenes don't exist anymore.

925
00:52:30,120 --> 00:52:32,080
Speaker 1: But in the credits to the film you can see

926
00:52:32,080 --> 00:52:35,560
Speaker 1: people credited as Flash Gordon and Ming the Merciless. So

927
00:52:36,000 --> 00:52:38,200
Speaker 1: that's why those are in there was because those were

928
00:52:38,239 --> 00:52:41,080
Speaker 1: shot and then cut. The film opened the week before

929
00:52:41,120 --> 00:52:44,560
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving and according to Clark, doubled its business over the

930
00:52:44,560 --> 00:52:47,960
Speaker 1: long weekend. Roger Ebert, in his review wrote, my guess

931
00:52:48,000 --> 00:52:50,120
Speaker 1: is either nobody will go to see it, or millions

932
00:52:50,120 --> 00:52:52,960
Speaker 1: of people will go to see it. Unfortunately the former

933
00:52:53,080 --> 00:52:56,359
Speaker 1: was right. The film was in theaters for basically half

934
00:52:56,360 --> 00:52:59,560
Speaker 1: of November and half of December, but MGM pulled it

935
00:52:59,640 --> 00:53:03,879
Speaker 1: just in time for Christmas, which Well mentioned that they

936
00:53:04,040 --> 00:53:06,840
Speaker 1: were running out of money by the mid eighties. Business

937
00:53:06,840 --> 00:53:10,839
Speaker 1: decisions like that probably a reason why uh it took

938
00:53:10,880 --> 00:53:12,719
Speaker 1: a few years for the film to become a hit.

939
00:53:12,880 --> 00:53:16,880
Speaker 1: It first appeared on television on HBO Friend of the

940
00:53:16,960 --> 00:53:21,560
Speaker 1: Pod HBO, which is around the same time it was

941
00:53:21,600 --> 00:53:24,239
Speaker 1: released on VHS, and it really took off with the

942
00:53:24,280 --> 00:53:28,920
Speaker 1: advent of home video and home video bootlegging. People discovered

943
00:53:28,960 --> 00:53:31,600
Speaker 1: it and began sharing it and buying it and ritually

944
00:53:31,640 --> 00:53:34,160
Speaker 1: watching it, and it just sort of steadily grew, Peter

945
00:53:34,239 --> 00:53:38,640
Speaker 1: Billings told Vanity Fair Coincidentally, around this time, MGM was

946
00:53:38,680 --> 00:53:41,520
Speaker 1: falling apart and sold its film library to Ted Turner

947
00:53:42,640 --> 00:53:44,920
Speaker 1: to help pay its debts, which is how a Christmas

948
00:53:44,960 --> 00:53:48,880
Speaker 1: Story ended up on Turner's Superstation cable channel, where it

949
00:53:48,920 --> 00:53:51,680
Speaker 1: was his idea to run it annually. He might have

950
00:53:51,719 --> 00:53:54,800
Speaker 1: been taking inspiration from another MGM hit, The Wizard of Oz,

951
00:53:55,080 --> 00:53:58,719
Speaker 1: for which CBS paid two grand for the rights to

952
00:53:58,800 --> 00:54:03,600
Speaker 1: rebroadcast year early, which they did from Is that a

953
00:54:03,600 --> 00:54:05,799
Speaker 1: thing growing up in your household? I definitely remember like

954
00:54:06,239 --> 00:54:08,520
Speaker 1: my parents and relatives all being like and once a

955
00:54:08,600 --> 00:54:11,680
Speaker 1: year we would gather around the cathode ray to watch

956
00:54:11,680 --> 00:54:13,800
Speaker 1: a Wizard of Oz. I think it was more of

957
00:54:13,840 --> 00:54:18,000
Speaker 1: the sound of music in my house. Yeah, And then

958
00:54:18,040 --> 00:54:19,960
Speaker 1: that I remember to growing up. I mean, that's why

959
00:54:19,960 --> 00:54:21,920
Speaker 1: it's like at the fact of Christmas Movie now is

960
00:54:21,960 --> 00:54:24,279
Speaker 1: that they just needed to show up hours of programming

961
00:54:24,320 --> 00:54:27,880
Speaker 1: when people were off for the holidays. But when Turner

962
00:54:27,880 --> 00:54:31,440
Speaker 1: Broadcasting merged with Time Warner in they began running the

963
00:54:31,440 --> 00:54:34,160
Speaker 1: film on it's now famous continuous twenty four hour loop

964
00:54:34,280 --> 00:54:38,080
Speaker 1: Christmas Eve for Christmas Day on t n T Turner

965
00:54:38,160 --> 00:54:41,080
Speaker 1: Network Television. In two thousand four it moved to TBS.

966
00:54:41,120 --> 00:54:46,440
Speaker 1: It's also on HBO Max, so he actually says, you

967
00:54:46,480 --> 00:54:53,480
Speaker 1: get a little more of the leg lamp. Ironically, one

968
00:54:53,560 --> 00:54:56,560
Speaker 1: person uncomfortable with the film aging into a beloved Christmas

969
00:54:56,560 --> 00:55:02,239
Speaker 1: tradition was Jean Shepherd, who, as you mentioned earlier, hates everything. Uh.

970
00:55:02,280 --> 00:55:04,840
Speaker 1: He sought to puncture the very notion of nostalgia with

971
00:55:04,920 --> 00:55:07,200
Speaker 1: his stories, so I guess it makes sense why he

972
00:55:07,200 --> 00:55:09,920
Speaker 1: wouldn't be all that thrilled with the movie version of

973
00:55:09,920 --> 00:55:15,759
Speaker 1: one of his stories becoming a golden holiday standard. He

974
00:55:15,800 --> 00:55:19,640
Speaker 1: originally envisioned the Christmas story as quote Dickens's Christmas Carol

975
00:55:19,760 --> 00:55:24,000
Speaker 1: as retold by Scrooge Gazing again a quote machine, and

976
00:55:24,080 --> 00:55:28,000
Speaker 1: consequently disavowed the film version, although on one point of fact,

977
00:55:28,239 --> 00:55:31,319
Speaker 1: the sign that Ralphie's bebe ricochets off of to break

978
00:55:31,400 --> 00:55:34,239
Speaker 1: his glasses. Reads Golden Age, which you say, it's a

979
00:55:34,320 --> 00:55:38,560
Speaker 1: very nice visual symbol about the dangerous of nostalgia. Looking

980
00:55:38,600 --> 00:55:42,200
Speaker 1: backwards at the Golden Age, it can blind you. Oh,

981
00:55:43,640 --> 00:55:47,239
Speaker 1: that's very good. Apparently it's a soda company sign a

982
00:55:47,360 --> 00:55:51,080
Speaker 1: regional Cleveland area soft drink company. That is our second

983
00:55:51,120 --> 00:55:54,520
Speaker 1: obscure soft drink reference this episode front of the pot

984
00:55:54,600 --> 00:56:00,840
Speaker 1: obscure regional soft drink. I can sider. For example, this

985
00:56:00,960 --> 00:56:03,759
Speaker 1: quote that Jean Shepherd gave to Q magazine back in

986
00:56:03,920 --> 00:56:08,799
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty one. Childhood seems good in retrospect because we're

987
00:56:08,840 --> 00:56:11,719
Speaker 1: not yet aware of the basic truth that we're all

988
00:56:11,880 --> 00:56:14,960
Speaker 1: losers that were all destined to die, and death is

989
00:56:15,040 --> 00:56:21,920
Speaker 1: a defeat. Merry Christmas. Everyone just picturing Santa saying that

990
00:56:22,040 --> 00:56:25,960
Speaker 1: as he's kicking Ralphie down the slide. Ho ho ho,

991
00:56:27,360 --> 00:56:34,520
Speaker 1: death is a defeat. Uh. Supposedly, Jean Shepherd really really

992
00:56:34,760 --> 00:56:38,239
Speaker 1: didn't like the show The Wonder Years, which premiered in

993
00:56:39,560 --> 00:56:42,960
Speaker 1: just after a Christmas story became popular. UH. Wonder Years

994
00:56:43,000 --> 00:56:46,200
Speaker 1: co creator Carol Black told New York Magazine, we played

995
00:56:46,200 --> 00:56:49,160
Speaker 1: around with writing a screenplay that used narration as a device.

996
00:56:49,520 --> 00:56:50,920
Speaker 1: We started to think that there was a lot of

997
00:56:50,960 --> 00:56:53,040
Speaker 1: potential fun in that because you can really play with

998
00:56:53,160 --> 00:56:55,719
Speaker 1: the contrast between the narrator's point of view and what

999
00:56:55,840 --> 00:56:58,200
Speaker 1: the characters are doing, and you can go inside their

1000
00:56:58,239 --> 00:57:00,719
Speaker 1: head and expose what they really think when they're saying

1001
00:57:00,760 --> 00:57:02,960
Speaker 1: something different. And then we just sort of jumped from

1002
00:57:02,960 --> 00:57:05,239
Speaker 1: there to thinking that effect is ascentuated when you have

1003
00:57:05,280 --> 00:57:08,440
Speaker 1: an adult narrator looking back on childhood. Again, these are

1004
00:57:08,480 --> 00:57:11,080
Speaker 1: all the things that goes into Kevin Arnold's Daniel Stern's

1005
00:57:11,120 --> 00:57:14,040
Speaker 1: voiceover for Kevin Arnold. Yeah, so you're a big wonder

1006
00:57:14,080 --> 00:57:16,080
Speaker 1: hears guy, do you do you have you heard this

1007
00:57:16,120 --> 00:57:19,120
Speaker 1: about this? Yeah? I dimly remember hearing this. I think

1008
00:57:19,160 --> 00:57:21,360
Speaker 1: there's like an A and E biography about the show

1009
00:57:21,480 --> 00:57:23,640
Speaker 1: The Wonder Years, and they talked about a Christmas story

1010
00:57:23,760 --> 00:57:25,840
Speaker 1: kind of being in the air and being one of

1011
00:57:25,920 --> 00:57:28,400
Speaker 1: the things that was a was an influence on it.

1012
00:57:29,160 --> 00:57:33,160
Speaker 1: Peter Billingsley even appeared in the final two episodes as

1013
00:57:33,240 --> 00:57:36,440
Speaker 1: one of Kevin's roommates on The Wonder Years. Oh yeah,

1014
00:57:36,520 --> 00:57:38,200
Speaker 1: that's right. He goes to work at like a summer

1015
00:57:38,280 --> 00:57:42,240
Speaker 1: camp or something to try to or like a foot loose, stunt,

1016
00:57:42,440 --> 00:57:46,400
Speaker 1: foot loose, foot loose style like resort or something, because

1017
00:57:46,480 --> 00:57:48,959
Speaker 1: when he goes and works there. Oh yeah, that was sad.

1018
00:57:50,240 --> 00:57:53,520
Speaker 1: According to a Celsi or you fathead, the art and

1019
00:57:53,680 --> 00:57:57,320
Speaker 1: Enigma of Geene Shepherd, the Jeene Shepherd biography you mentioned earlier,

1020
00:57:58,080 --> 00:58:01,840
Speaker 1: Shepherd singled out the one Your Years along with Garrison Keeler,

1021
00:58:02,120 --> 00:58:05,520
Speaker 1: as work that he thought heavily cribbed his style. And yeah,

1022
00:58:05,560 --> 00:58:08,320
Speaker 1: I can really see how Kevin Arnold's dad Jack on

1023
00:58:08,400 --> 00:58:10,919
Speaker 1: The Wonder Years is really similar to the scary dad

1024
00:58:10,960 --> 00:58:12,760
Speaker 1: on a Christmas story. That makes a lot of sense.

1025
00:58:13,080 --> 00:58:15,920
Speaker 1: But let us look on to happier things, which is

1026
00:58:16,440 --> 00:58:20,479
Speaker 1: namely this beloved movies legacy. Peter Billings gave this great

1027
00:58:20,560 --> 00:58:23,000
Speaker 1: quote to Vanity Fair but I really love he says,

1028
00:58:23,040 --> 00:58:24,840
Speaker 1: I don't know if it was the first, but it

1029
00:58:24,920 --> 00:58:27,840
Speaker 1: was certainly one of the best embodiments of a real family.

1030
00:58:28,320 --> 00:58:31,440
Speaker 1: There's tension, there's some fear of the father. There's anxiety

1031
00:58:31,480 --> 00:58:34,240
Speaker 1: in the household. There's very much a sibling battle. There's

1032
00:58:34,280 --> 00:58:36,600
Speaker 1: a mother trying to hold things together and hold her place.

1033
00:58:36,720 --> 00:58:40,400
Speaker 1: There's probably financial trouble. The fathers do it yourself aspect

1034
00:58:40,440 --> 00:58:43,120
Speaker 1: of the household. Yet through all that there's a genuine

1035
00:58:43,200 --> 00:58:46,000
Speaker 1: sense of love and protection within the house. And yet

1036
00:58:46,080 --> 00:58:50,080
Speaker 1: the words I love you are never uttered in the movie. Still,

1037
00:58:50,320 --> 00:58:52,320
Speaker 1: he says, one of the last shots is just that

1038
00:58:52,440 --> 00:58:54,920
Speaker 1: simple gesture of the father touching the mother for the

1039
00:58:55,000 --> 00:58:57,480
Speaker 1: first time in the movie, And in that moment, it

1040
00:58:57,560 --> 00:59:00,240
Speaker 1: says all you need to know about their relationship. It

1041
00:59:00,360 --> 00:59:02,760
Speaker 1: tells you how that guy loves her, He's there for her,

1042
00:59:02,920 --> 00:59:05,040
Speaker 1: and that's it. I want to go out on this quote.

1043
00:59:05,160 --> 00:59:07,680
Speaker 1: Joan Diddion famously wrote, in a line that could have

1044
00:59:07,720 --> 00:59:11,560
Speaker 1: summed up Jean Shepherd's entire life, we tell ourselves stories

1045
00:59:11,640 --> 00:59:15,480
Speaker 1: in order to live. The actor playing the old Man himself,

1046
00:59:15,680 --> 00:59:18,920
Speaker 1: Darren McGavin, unintentionally hit on a parallel with that in

1047
00:59:19,000 --> 00:59:23,920
Speaker 1: an interview that he gave to the Plains Dealer. Asked

1048
00:59:23,920 --> 00:59:28,520
Speaker 1: about a Christmas story, the reporter said, McGavin fell silent

1049
00:59:28,680 --> 00:59:32,400
Speaker 1: and lowered his head before looking up, smiling and saying simply,

1050
00:59:33,000 --> 00:59:37,280
Speaker 1: it will live, and it will. Our feelings about the

1051
00:59:37,320 --> 00:59:39,760
Speaker 1: stories we tell ourselves can change, sometimes for the better,

1052
00:59:40,160 --> 00:59:43,080
Speaker 1: sometimes not, but they will live, and that is all

1053
00:59:43,160 --> 00:59:46,600
Speaker 1: anyone can hope for. That, And a Red Rider b

1054
00:59:46,680 --> 00:59:50,560
Speaker 1: begun folks, this has been too much information. Thank you

1055
00:59:50,640 --> 00:59:53,480
Speaker 1: for listening. I'm Alex Hegel and I'm Jordan run Time.

1056
00:59:53,720 --> 01:00:01,000
Speaker 1: We'll cat you next time. Too Much Information was a

1057
01:00:01,040 --> 01:00:04,120
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. The show's executive producers are

1058
01:00:04,200 --> 01:00:07,560
Speaker 1: Noel Brown and Jordan run Talk. The show's supervising producer

1059
01:00:07,680 --> 01:00:10,800
Speaker 1: is Michael Alder June. The show was researched, written and

1060
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Speaker 1: hosted by Jordan run Talk and Alex Hegel, with original

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Speaker 1: music by Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Punk Orchestra. If

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Speaker 1: you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave us

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Speaker 1: a review. For more podcasts on iHeart Radio, visit the

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Speaker 1: I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen

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Speaker 1: to your favorite shows