Speaker 1: Bushkin.
Speaker 2: Christmas is one week away, and how am I celebrating
Speaker 2: with restraint and circumspection. In the Glabew family, we do
Speaker 2: a mid century modern Christmas spare elegant, minimalist, lots of
Speaker 2: the Baby Jesus in a tasteful Scandinavian leather and rosewood manger.
Speaker 2: No Santa, no reindeer, no elves. Not so for my
Speaker 2: colleague Ben ad Alf Halfrey. The Globows impose a dollar
Speaker 2: limit on gifts, like price controls in some socialist state
Speaker 2: that at a half Halfreys spend months thinking of what
Speaker 2: to get one another. The Globows buy a tree at
Speaker 2: the last moment, and would be happier if we could
Speaker 2: just move the whole operation outside around the Douglas Pine.
Speaker 2: In the backyard, Ben's family has a tree, a little
Speaker 2: model village covered in snow and is fos vintage electric
Speaker 2: train set, plus a little metal tree with ornaments that's
Speaker 2: up year round. So when I told Ben that I
Speaker 2: had never watched It's a Wonderful Life, he was stunned.
Speaker 2: Then he reached out to me as the good smartan
Speaker 2: did to the traveler lying beref by the side of
Speaker 2: the road. How could this be, he asked me gently, because,
Speaker 2: as you can imagine, within the daph Haffreys, It's a
Speaker 2: wonderful life is a sacred text. Then Ben told me
Speaker 2: another story about what, in his mind is an even
Speaker 2: more important Christmas tale, a story that he regards as
Speaker 2: the apotheosis of all Christmas movies, a story not in
Speaker 2: a film, but of the making of a film. Welcome
Speaker 2: to revisionist history. I'm Malcolm Gladwell. Today in our show,
Speaker 2: Ben the alf Halfrey relays for the very first time
Speaker 2: in history, the truly spruy story of the making of
Speaker 2: the oddest Christmas film of all time. Trust me, you
Speaker 2: have never heard this story before ever, nor have you
Speaker 2: ever seen the movie in question, unless you're a member
Speaker 2: of the extended no Deaf Halfway Clan or were recently
Speaker 2: incarcerated in a state that limits prisoner's streaming access to
Speaker 2: obscure television movies in the nineteen nineties.
Speaker 1: But when you listen to.
Speaker 2: What follows, you're going to ask yourself the same question
Speaker 2: I ask myself when Ben first told me this story.
Speaker 3: How do I miss this? Unlike Malcolm, I am a
Speaker 3: great lover of Christmas movies. Every year as soon as
Speaker 3: Thanksgiving is over, I'm firing up the Bishop's Wife, Miracle
Speaker 3: on thirty fourth Street. Or It's a Wonderful Life. And
Speaker 3: then there's my favorite Christmas movie, a little less famous,
Speaker 3: the nineteen forty five romantic comedy Christmas in Connecticut. I've
Speaker 3: watched it pretty much every year since I was little.
Speaker 3: Barbara Stanwick Play is a magazine columnist who's famous for
Speaker 3: entertaining on her grand Connecticut farm. She's known as a
Speaker 3: great cook. It's the end of World War Two and
Speaker 3: her magazine's publisher has an idea for a great feature.
Speaker 3: Jill hosts a returning war hero for Christmas on her farm.
Speaker 3: There's just one problem. It's all a lie. She doesn't
Speaker 3: live in Connecticut. She lives in a tiny apartment in
Speaker 3: New York. And she has no clue how to cook.
Speaker 1: My fun? Oh yes, my fun?
Speaker 4: Oh my fine?
Speaker 5: And you want to see you right away to arrange it.
Speaker 6: Arrange it?
Speaker 2: Are you crazy?
Speaker 4: Where am I going to get a farm?
Speaker 5: I haven't even got a window. Boss, That's just it.
Speaker 1: We'll have to star him off, you know what, to
Speaker 1: stick to years for the truth. If he ever finds
Speaker 1: out we've been making all this up.
Speaker 5: You'll fire the both of us.
Speaker 3: Chaos ensues. It's a classic screwball comedy and a total delight.
Speaker 3: But the thing I really want to tell you about
Speaker 3: in this episode is what happened after I discovered, quite
Speaker 3: by accident, that there was a remake of this favorite
Speaker 3: Christmas movie of mine, an action packed, star studed, joke filled,
Speaker 3: really very different version of the original, made for TV
Speaker 3: and directed by none other than Arnold Schwarzenegger. A kind
Speaker 3: of shocking twist if you ask me, I mean, why
Speaker 3: would the Terminator take on Christmas in Connecticut? So I
Speaker 3: did what any good Christmas fiend would do. I talked
Speaker 3: to a dozen people about something that happened thirty years
Speaker 3: ago for way too many hours to get the real story,
Speaker 3: and I discovered in the process what I have come
Speaker 3: to regard as the greatest Christmas tale of all time.
Speaker 1: I've told this.
Speaker 7: Story many times, I've never told it all the record.
Speaker 7: It's a big story, So if you've got the time,
Speaker 7: I will tell it to you.
Speaker 3: That's Stan Brooks in the early nineteen nineties. He was
Speaker 3: an independent made for TV movie producer.
Speaker 7: So I'm developing movies and a friend of mine goes
Speaker 7: and gets the job at TNC and I make the
Speaker 7: very first movie for him.
Speaker 3: TNT launched in nineteen eighty eight, at the start of
Speaker 3: the cable television revolution. Then, as now, cable was expensive,
Speaker 3: but it was growing. The whole game was trying to
Speaker 3: raise awareness to get people to sign up, and with
Speaker 3: channels running twenty four to seven, there was a lot
Speaker 3: of space to fill, which led to a boom and
Speaker 3: made for TV movies. Stan's first film on TNT was
Speaker 3: a big success. So he got another bite at the
Speaker 3: Apple and he.
Speaker 1: Calls me, He goes, what do you want to do next?
Speaker 7: So they said, like Nami years, would you ever let
Speaker 7: me do a remake from the MGM library because that's
Speaker 7: what Ted owned, And he said, yes, just pick one.
Speaker 3: Christmas movies always do well, and there is one Stan
Speaker 3: loved Christmas in Connecticut, and I.
Speaker 7: Know the Barber Stanlet movie, and so I said, well,
Speaker 7: this could be a good one. It was right as
Speaker 7: Martha Stewart was exploding. I thought, well, what if this
Speaker 7: is Martha Stewart. What if she's on TV and has
Speaker 7: an empire and it's all fake? And so they love
Speaker 7: that take, and so off we went to the races.
Speaker 3: He got a writer to work up the script in television.
Speaker 8: It was It was great because you can get your
Speaker 8: stuff made.
Speaker 3: This is Janet Brownew, one of the all time great
Speaker 3: Bards of TV movies, writer on Elouise at the Plaza,
Speaker 3: Twelve Dates of Christmas, Days of Our Lives and the
Speaker 3: uncredited rewrite of Tim Allens the Santa Claus all Brownew
Speaker 3: she loved the original Christmas in Connecticut. I mean it is.
Speaker 8: It's a charming and in fairst to me, the original
Speaker 8: draft was very close.
Speaker 3: Janet wrote the draft of the script for Stan's remake.
Speaker 1: And we turn it in and they go, this is
Speaker 1: this is do me in a Christmas movie.
Speaker 7: So now I have and I'm I have a nice
Speaker 7: little Christmas programmer and nothing more.
Speaker 3: It's the middle of nineteen ninety one in Hollywood. Janet
Speaker 3: and Stan's low budget television movie remake isn't really the
Speaker 3: sort of thing to get people talking, but they're making progress.
Speaker 3: He's got the old school movie star Diane Cannon cast
Speaker 3: in the lead as the Martha Stewart character, and an
Speaker 3: offer out to a director. And then one day his
Speaker 3: phone rings. His assistant says, it's a big Hollywood agent
Speaker 3: named Lou Pitt.
Speaker 7: Now I understand I'm in the television movie business. These
Speaker 7: guys are never calling me, so if they do call.
Speaker 1: Me, it's never good.
Speaker 7: And and he he gets on the phone and he says,
Speaker 7: the other director for your Christmas in Connecticut movie.
Speaker 1: And I said, uh, well.
Speaker 7: Almost yeah, we may have an offer out And he said, okay,
Speaker 7: Well if he doesn't say yes, I want you to consider
Speaker 7: my client. And I go okay, and wait to hear
Speaker 7: the name, and I go who He goes, Arl Schwarzenegger,
Speaker 7: and I burst out laughly.
Speaker 9: Oh he was.
Speaker 1: He was totally shocked.
Speaker 3: Lou Pitt, legendary agent Arnald Schwarzenegger.
Speaker 1: That's hilarious. No, seriously, is this a joke? Is this
Speaker 1: a joke?
Speaker 7: He goes, no, seriously, and he goes, I'm Schwartzeker's not
Speaker 7: going at Christmas movie for tat.
Speaker 3: To be clear. Arnold had just finished shooting James Cameron's
Speaker 3: epic Terminator two Asta La Vista Baby. Terminator two is
Speaker 3: the one where Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a killer cyborg sent
Speaker 3: from the future to protect young John Conner from a
Speaker 3: different killer cyborg also sent from the future to kill him.
Speaker 3: As you can imagine such a plot necessitates a lot
Speaker 3: of elaborate production work. He was movie making on a
Speaker 3: scale that was practically unheard of, especially in Los Angeles.
Speaker 9: The production actually changed the course of a river to
Speaker 9: shoot high speed chases in the extensive clood control channels
Speaker 9: of Los Angeles.
Speaker 3: Anyways, back to Stan and Lou the agent.
Speaker 1: I go, Lou, why on earth were Arnold Swartz there?
Speaker 1: He says, Well, here's why.
Speaker 3: Arnold Schwarzenegger was forty four years old, he had two kids.
Speaker 3: Nobody is an action hero forever. Maybe it was time
Speaker 3: to explore some alternatives.
Speaker 1: And so he was tired after tea two and he
Speaker 1: said to Blue I would like to direct a movie.
Speaker 9: The directing thing was kind of out of the box,
Speaker 9: at a left field, and.
Speaker 7: They said, well, okay, we'll put together a big feature act.
Speaker 7: He goes, no, no, no, I want low risk. If I
Speaker 7: do a terrible job, I don't want anyone to be upset.
Speaker 7: I don't want a big budget, and I want it
Speaker 7: to be family friendly because I don't want anything to
Speaker 7: be controversial nothing.
Speaker 1: I just want something very simple. And the only one that.
Speaker 7: Fit the bill was Christmas, Connecticut. So I said okay,
Speaker 7: I'll I'll call you if this guy passes. And I
Speaker 7: ham the phone.
Speaker 1: Of course, my parts.
Speaker 9: Jumping out of min I go what and and I said, yeah,
Speaker 9: I'm serious.
Speaker 1: I read it.
Speaker 9: I think he'd like it, so get me an offer.
Speaker 3: Stan gets the green light from the executives at TNT.
Speaker 3: There's some negotiating and they offer Schwartzenegger one hundred thousand bucks.
Speaker 3: And then one night stands phone rings.
Speaker 7: I pick it up and I hear Sam brooks, yes,
Speaker 7: please hold for Armschzenegger and now serious.
Speaker 1: I can see my heart beating, and he goes hello.
Speaker 1: I go Arnold, are you're the guy with this Christmas script?
Speaker 1: I said yes. He says it's fantastic. I'd love to direct.
Speaker 1: I go okay.
Speaker 7: He goes, but I have to shoot in Los Angeles,
Speaker 7: knight to do it in these days, and he goes
Speaker 7: a nice some notes of the script.
Speaker 1: I go, okay, can you be here in an hour?
Speaker 3: And I go, uh no.
Speaker 7: He goes, can you be on Wednesday? I go, yes,
Speaker 7: I could be there on Wednesday.
Speaker 3: He goes over for a meeting at Arnold's offices in
Speaker 3: Santa Monica.
Speaker 1: So now I'm going to see me on Wednesday, and
Speaker 1: you walk in and there's this giant lobby and and
Speaker 1: the first thing you see is the exoskeleton, the metal
Speaker 1: thing with the red eyes from Terminator. So there's no doubt.
Speaker 7: I mean, the posters are up on the wall, but
Speaker 7: there's no doubt. When you walk in and you see
Speaker 7: this seven foot thing, you go, oh, craft, I know
Speaker 7: where I am. My heart's beating and I go in
Speaker 7: and he's in his office, which is massive. It's like
Speaker 7: you know, signs.
Speaker 1: Of a football field, and he's on one. You walk
Speaker 1: in on this end and he's on the other ends.
Speaker 7: You go walk past all the you know, the props
Speaker 7: and stuff, and then he's at a big, huge desk
Speaker 7: with a big giant chair, and behind him is a
Speaker 7: bookshelf but with all of the Mister Universe awards, not
Speaker 7: film stuff.
Speaker 1: It's all his bodybuilding awards.
Speaker 7: And I remember we were going through the script and
Speaker 7: I said, hey, I want to use the restroom and
Speaker 7: he pointed to me by putting up this bicep and
Speaker 7: pointing it like this, and his bicep comes cleaning.
Speaker 1: He goes this, dot what And I go, was that
Speaker 1: just to show me your boy step? And he goes
Speaker 1: I have to show the you know, the guns whenever
Speaker 1: I can.
Speaker 7: And I realized, okay, so this guy definitely has a
Speaker 7: sense of heart by himself.
Speaker 3: They sit down, Arnold has notes on the script he
Speaker 3: will he wanted a.
Speaker 7: More humor and a little more jeopardy, and so we
Speaker 7: added in like this like sort of big action sequence
Speaker 7: at the beginning where he rescues.
Speaker 3: The kid, and all of a sudden, Janet Brownell, who
Speaker 3: wrote the original script for the remake, is looking at
Speaker 3: a very different movie.
Speaker 8: The whole thing took this like one hundred and eighty
Speaker 8: degree turn.
Speaker 1: At that point, it was just like what is and
Speaker 1: Stan just did not want.
Speaker 8: To lose him, And I'm like, okay, I truly don't
Speaker 8: see this.
Speaker 1: But if it gets a film green light, I don't
Speaker 1: give a shit.
Speaker 3: Arnold wants them to get someone else to come in
Speaker 3: and punch up the script.
Speaker 7: He wanted more humor, and as it happened, my best
Speaker 7: friend in the world had written.
Speaker 3: Commando Commando, the nineteen eighty five action film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger,
Speaker 3: which the critic from the La Times referred to as
Speaker 3: a quote gory crowd pleaser and a glorified fireworks display.
Speaker 7: And Arnold love them and said, if you think you
Speaker 7: get him to do a comedy.
Speaker 3: Past, Jeff Low, the friend who wrote Commando, gets hired
Speaker 3: to do the rewrite with his writing partner.
Speaker 1: We walk in.
Speaker 5: He's sitting on a white couch maybe it's literally the
Speaker 5: length of the biggest limousine you've ever seen in your life,
Speaker 5: and he has his feed up on this white porcelain
Speaker 5: marble table. He's got a big cigar in his mouth
Speaker 5: and scripts all around him, and he doesn't say hello,
Speaker 5: He doesn't introduce himself, he doesn't do anything. He just
Speaker 5: the first thing out of his mouth is, so, what
Speaker 5: of you guys been doing since Commando?
Speaker 1: Clearly not going to the gym.
Speaker 3: I just have to say, everyone in this episode is
Speaker 3: going to do their own Schwartzenegger impression, which is good
Speaker 3: because even though we couldn't land an interview with him,
Speaker 3: I feel like he's here with us in spirit. Anyway.
Speaker 3: They settle in and start rewriting the film Commando style.
Speaker 8: So that's where things kind of went off the rails
Speaker 8: for me personally, because it's like, Okay, this is becoming
Speaker 8: a completely different thing. It just Schwarzenegger eyed into like
Speaker 8: this thing that was bigger than life.
Speaker 5: I mean, she just did an amazing job. We didn't
Speaker 5: make any real big structural changes.
Speaker 6: That's all hers, but a dialogue pass and goes through
Speaker 6: it and try to find more Old's vision.
Speaker 3: They start burning through the script. A big job for
Speaker 3: any director is giving notes on the rewrites. Schwarzenegger was
Speaker 3: calling in help from his director friends, including legendary comedy
Speaker 3: director Ivan Reitman, the guy who did Ghostbusters. Everyone was
Speaker 3: working to realize Arnold's vision.
Speaker 5: Now you have to understand that on Commando he would
Speaker 5: do this all the time. He would go, I have
Speaker 5: a great idea. Listen, this is what I want to do.
Speaker 5: When the guy comes at me.
Speaker 10: I want to throw a buzzsaw at him and it
Speaker 10: chops off his arm, and then I'm going to pick
Speaker 10: up his arm and punch me in his face with.
Speaker 5: His old arm.
Speaker 10: And we would go, well, we like the bus off part.
Speaker 10: Can we just do the bus off art? So like,
Speaker 10: our job is not to go I maybe that's not
Speaker 10: gonna work. Our job is to make it work. And
Speaker 10: it doesn't help that the next day he would say, Okay.
Speaker 5: We're doing really well, We're really getting there.
Speaker 1: It's really coming to where I wanted to be. So
Speaker 1: I gave it to Steve It.
Speaker 10: And Stephen talked to me last night and he says,
Speaker 10: I have to really be careful that and this is
Speaker 10: what I want you to do. And again I'm like,
Speaker 10: is Stephen the guy at the jim is Stephen?
Speaker 5: Who is Steve It?
Speaker 10: And then suddenly as you go, you know, as he
Speaker 10: starts to sort of talk more, you go, he's talking
Speaker 10: about Steven Spielberg.
Speaker 3: This is beginning to look like a train nobody would
Speaker 3: step in front of. Back at T and T, the
Speaker 3: executives had a dim sense of what was going on.
Speaker 11: It's not it's not has done.
Speaker 3: Now Lori Posmantier, one of the TNT executives.
Speaker 9: Whether you're famous or not, as a director, that doesn't happen.
Speaker 1: To let somebody go and change things as much as
Speaker 1: we're change.
Speaker 3: Meanwhile, they've cast the rest of the film. Joining Diane
Speaker 3: Cannon would be Hollywood screwball legend Tony Curtis, probably best
Speaker 3: known for playing opposite Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot.
Speaker 3: Along with him would be ex country music star Chris Christofferson.
Speaker 3: Here's TNT's senior vice president of production at the time,
Speaker 3: Nick Lombardo.
Speaker 12: Even when they cast it, I thought, well, that is
Speaker 12: the weirdest cast I ever heard of. I mean, the
Speaker 12: idea that these people fit together made no sense at all.
Speaker 12: I mean, Diane Cannon and Chriscus Dobinson in the same frame.
Speaker 12: It makes the star is Born when he's holding Barbara
Speaker 12: streissad look organic.
Speaker 3: So armed with one of the all time weirdest, most
Speaker 3: stacked casts in the history of film, a comparatively small
Speaker 3: budget of three million dollars, a slot on an upstart
Speaker 3: cable network, and a script based on nineteen forty screwball
Speaker 3: comedy that's been punched up by two of the writers
Speaker 3: behind a big eighties blockbuster, An Austrian former bodybuilder, fresh
Speaker 3: off his repeat performance as a time traveling cyborg, prepared
Speaker 3: to direct his first Christmas film.
Speaker 7: You don't, as a TV movie producer ever get near
Speaker 7: anything this hot, y, You just don't.
Speaker 9: I mean, we're we're all a little nervous about the
Speaker 9: whole thing, you know, because it's like you're playing with
Speaker 9: matches and you know, oh yeah, that's that Arnold direct this.
Speaker 9: You know, it's like for US three million dollars was
Speaker 9: a lot of money.
Speaker 8: I don't know, I don't know whatever.
Speaker 1: It was like, Oh yeah.
Speaker 9: He wanted to prove that he could be a director.
Speaker 3: And everyone was about to find out whether or not
Speaker 3: he could. Christmas in Connecticut the remake began filming about
Speaker 3: two months before Christmas in Los Angeles. Because Arnold Schwarzenegger
Speaker 3: had never before directed a future film, though let the
Speaker 3: record show he had directed an episode of the TV
Speaker 3: show Tales from the Crypt, the production arranged for things
Speaker 3: to film more or less in the order they happen
Speaker 3: in the film. There's a lot less to keep track
Speaker 3: of continuity wise that way, but this also posed a problem.
Speaker 3: One of the anxieties of adapting a great work of
Speaker 3: art is figuring out how to make it your own.
Speaker 3: The nineteen ninety two made for TV remake of Christmas
Speaker 3: in Connecticut does this immediately by introducing its male lead,
Speaker 3: a park ranger named Jefferson Jones, mid workout routine in
Speaker 3: his mountain cabin. If you're looking for signs that this
Speaker 3: is not your grandmother's Christmas in Connecticut, the site of
Speaker 3: Chris Christofferson as Jefferson Jones, sweating after busting out some
Speaker 3: chin ups on a beam in his cabin is your
Speaker 3: first warning. A man on the television offers some brisk
Speaker 3: exposition while he cools down.
Speaker 4: In the last hour, experts predict this shouldn't be the
Speaker 4: biggest storm to hit the Rockies in the last decade.
Speaker 4: More than four feet of snow has anticipated to blanket
Speaker 4: the area in the next twenty eight hours.
Speaker 3: The phone rings. Another ranger is calling to tell Jones
Speaker 3: a kid has gotten lost in the blizzard. He has
Speaker 3: to go out and find him. This is the fabled
Speaker 3: action sequence Schwarzenegger had requested. They shot the blizzard on
Speaker 3: a sound stage. It's the moment Jefferson Jones becomes a hero,
Speaker 3: which is why he gets invited to be a guest
Speaker 3: of Elizabeth Blaine's for a Christmas special in Connecticut. It's
Speaker 3: gotta look epic. It's got to have that Arnold Schwarzenegger
Speaker 3: feeling unfortunately terminator. This is not Here's Jim Wilberger, director
Speaker 3: of production.
Speaker 9: Yeah, there's a scene where Christofferson, you know, suddenly has
Speaker 9: rescued the kid and you see him roll down this
Speaker 9: little hill of snow which was shot on stage and
Speaker 9: trying to make more of more of it because there
Speaker 9: wasn't that much set for that little hill, and you know,
Speaker 9: and then suddenly you see all the people rush in
Speaker 9: to rescue you know. I mean, this was just not
Speaker 9: good blocking, okay, and that's just an experience.
Speaker 3: Schwarzenegger wanted Jeopardy, but this kind of looks like a
Speaker 3: snowball fight gone awry. Jones stumbles over a very small
Speaker 3: hill holding a child that looks like it might be
Speaker 3: a mannequin. He's groaning and yelling, but his lips aren't moving,
Speaker 3: so tough start. Luckily, though, a lot of the film
Speaker 3: is set inside Elizabeth Blaine's fake Connecticut house where she's
Speaker 3: shooting a Christmas special in celebration of Jones. The bulk
Speaker 3: production happened there, so the whole crew set up at
Speaker 3: a house in South Pasadena for the real work. This
Speaker 3: introduced Arnold to the second problem of directing actor ego
Speaker 3: management in the issue of his trailer.
Speaker 1: Arnold's trailer was like a house on wheels.
Speaker 13: It was literally like you'd look at it from the
Speaker 13: outside and you'd say, wow, that's got all kinds of
Speaker 13: pop outs and the roof went off and everything.
Speaker 1: But when you got inside, it was literally like you
Speaker 1: had just walked into like the Greystone mansion.
Speaker 9: You know, it's probably almost three times as wide as
Speaker 9: a normal trailer, and that it was the length that
Speaker 9: became the issue. Diane comes in and she says, why
Speaker 9: is Arnold's trailer bigger than my trailer? Nobody's supposed to
Speaker 9: have a bigger trailer than me.
Speaker 3: Diane Cannon was the star of the film, but she
Speaker 3: was maybe realizing that this production was all about the director. Schwarzenegger, though,
Speaker 3: was dealing with other problems. Namely, he had chosen one
Speaker 3: of the hardest genres for his first major directing for
Speaker 3: a screwball comedy is like dancing on the head of
Speaker 3: a pin. It thrives on chaos, but it has to
Speaker 3: be a kind of controlled chaos. With his big personality cast,
Speaker 3: low budget, short timeline, and hastily rewritten script, Schwarzenegger had
Speaker 3: an excess of chaos and a minimum of control. I mean,
Speaker 3: you have one somewhat disgruntled actress portraying fake Martha Stewart,
Speaker 3: and another who's a macho park ranger, but who, for
Speaker 3: no apparent reason, relays this backstory part way through the movie.
Speaker 14: Actually, where I moved to Colorado, I lived in Chicago.
Speaker 14: I grew up there, taught comparative literature at the University
Speaker 14: of Container Really, I got offered tenure and head of
Speaker 14: the department. And it's what I thought I wanted. That's
Speaker 14: being caged in by concrete and crowds for the rest.
Speaker 4: Of my life.
Speaker 3: This is I'm pretty sure the only time in the
Speaker 3: entire film Jefferson Jones is past as chair of the
Speaker 3: University of Chicago's comparative literature department is mentioned. And I
Speaker 3: love Chris Kristofferson, but most of the rest of his
Speaker 3: performance veers between stiff and oddly sexually charged.
Speaker 9: When he starts smearing the pine staff on her neck.
Speaker 3: Yeah that it's it's it's just kind of transcendently weird.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 9: Well, not to mention his two times he's like staring
Speaker 9: at her butt.
Speaker 3: You know, there's an extensive shot of that.
Speaker 1: But you can't buy that at Limingdon.
Speaker 15: You're right.
Speaker 3: So you've got two characters who really just barely hang together,
Speaker 3: and then you have to direct them in tightly choreographed
Speaker 3: zany sequences that have got to feel plausible yet also hilarious.
Speaker 3: For instance, the scene with the baby remember in Christmas
Speaker 3: in Connecticut. Elizabeth is a total fraud. She doesn't know
Speaker 3: how to cook, it's not even her house in Connecticut,
Speaker 3: and she's got this fake, staged family with her, including
Speaker 3: a fake baby. She had to keep up appearances for
Speaker 3: the sake of her column. In the original film, there's
Speaker 3: a lovely scene where she and Jefferson Jones give her
Speaker 3: fake baby a bath. She a supposed domestic goddess, is
Speaker 3: meant to bathe her child, which she suspiciously has no
Speaker 3: clue how to do. He steps in and does it
Speaker 3: for her like a total pro. It's part of why
Speaker 3: she falls in love with him, and because it's so
Speaker 3: well executed in the original film, we believe they're following
Speaker 3: in love in this totally implausible moment.
Speaker 7: So oh, refer though she's eating the sil would like
Speaker 7: do what.
Speaker 9: He her they are doing.
Speaker 14: Oh really, you'd make a wonderful father.
Speaker 5: Mister Jehan, You're you're not married yourself by any chance?
Speaker 1: Are you?
Speaker 5: No cards are stacked against me.
Speaker 4: I guess every time I meet a girl I like,
Speaker 4: it turns out she's already married.
Speaker 6: Oh that's too bad now.
Speaker 3: This also happens in the Arnold Schwarzenegger version.
Speaker 1: Maybe we should finish up for finish.
Speaker 4: You know what, I just had the most wonderful idea,
Speaker 4: How would you like to bathere?
Speaker 16: Me?
Speaker 5: Sure?
Speaker 17: I think it'd be fun for you here.
Speaker 3: What happens next is the greatest travesty in the history
Speaker 3: of bath time. It's as if you gave two aliens
Speaker 3: a baby and said, give this a bath, not realizing
Speaker 3: that on the planet there from not only are there
Speaker 3: no babies or baths, but actually there's not even water.
Speaker 3: What do you remember about that?
Speaker 9: Well, some of that was improvised.
Speaker 3: What happens is they just drenched the baby in shampoo
Speaker 3: and then they barely wash in of it out. On
Speaker 3: the bad scale, it's two rubber duckies out of ten.
Speaker 3: But the premise of the scene is that Jefferson Jones
Speaker 3: is crushing it.
Speaker 9: It was pretty hilarious, I thought, and also very clumsy,
Speaker 9: and they really grouped up with the kid's hair.
Speaker 6: My god, I.
Speaker 7: Don't know, I'm brought to a chap here's some soap, sweetie.
Speaker 1: That's a director thing. I mean, that is a flat
Speaker 1: out director fail.
Speaker 5: I mean that right.
Speaker 3: But retake the scene and.
Speaker 8: There probably were three or four versions of that.
Speaker 1: That's the one he chose.
Speaker 8: You know, it's not like that was the only one.
Speaker 4: That you're off the shit of that for a bachelor,
Speaker 4: you know, you're sure you didn't have a whole stel
Speaker 4: of kids hidden somewhere.
Speaker 14: Nursed a couple of bear clubs to their mother came back.
Speaker 3: It's like on SNL when the actors break and laugh
Speaker 3: when Elizabeth's like, I'm not sure if we got all
Speaker 3: the soap out, and Jefferson's like, well we didn't. That's
Speaker 3: the true reaction and it must be improvised. But then
Speaker 3: they go back to the scripted version where Jones is
Speaker 3: doing a great job. Most of the people on set
Speaker 3: have some kind of moment.
Speaker 9: Like this, you know, the forest with the snow and
Speaker 9: the sleigh that comes along, and there's even one shot
Speaker 9: I noticed where you can see the wheels under the sleigh.
Speaker 18: I remember the day I was there, they were filming
Speaker 18: that scene where chaos RUPs, you know, and the tree
Speaker 18: falls down and all that. We had to do that
Speaker 18: scene quite a number of times. It was as chaotic
Speaker 18: as the scene is, but behind the scenes it was
Speaker 18: even more so.
Speaker 12: It's a little like opening a bolode factory for cultural
Speaker 12: you know, it's sort.
Speaker 3: Of like, what's going on in there?
Speaker 15: Nothing good? Nothing good, don't ask anything. So it was
Speaker 15: kind of hectic on set. And yet I think you
Speaker 15: can hear in people's voices how much they love telling
Speaker 15: this story. Pretty much across the board, this was a
Speaker 15: happy memory for the people I spoke to, not least
Speaker 15: of all because they never lost sight of just how
Speaker 15: improbable it all was.
Speaker 5: And then in the middle of all this is Arnold
Speaker 5: running around going, you know, move the top or overhead,
Speaker 5: I do this over here, let's go do this. No,
Speaker 5: I think it could be ten times funny.
Speaker 1: I'll come on.
Speaker 5: So there's Arnold's voice, you know, just bellowing out. And
Speaker 5: that was the other thing that I really remember was
Speaker 5: that while this is happening, while.
Speaker 19: We're making this little trainy movie, he is in theaters
Speaker 19: with Terminator two and it's doing numbers that no one
Speaker 19: has ever seen before.
Speaker 5: And we were on set when it crossed five hundred
Speaker 5: million dollars. But when you're standing next to the guy
Speaker 5: who's the star of that movie and his major concern
Speaker 5: is whether or not.
Speaker 1: It didn't focus forehead.
Speaker 3: Let's go the forehead thing. You're not the first person
Speaker 3: to bring that up several people mentioned to me that
Speaker 3: Arnold Schwartzenegger's favorite put down was to call someone a forehead.
Speaker 3: This actually made it into the movie. When Elizabeth Blaine
Speaker 3: and Jefferson Jones get pulled over by the cops mid
Speaker 3: sleigh ride, the one where you can see the wheels,
Speaker 3: this happens.
Speaker 5: What's your hands? Where I can say, you're both under arrest?
Speaker 1: Oh, come on, come on, you foreheads, get him up?
Speaker 4: You what?
Speaker 3: This is actually a big part of why I love
Speaker 3: this movie. It has a kind of free jazz improvisitory
Speaker 3: quality to it. It's oddly self referential and also very sweet.
Speaker 3: It's like how you can hear in someone's voice when
Speaker 3: they're smiling. That's how this movie feels. Because, even at
Speaker 3: the risk of himself being labeled a forehead who couldn't
Speaker 3: direct the movie, Arnold Schwarzenegger was showing up every day
Speaker 3: and putting in his all for the film, Buffs and
Speaker 3: the crew. It was a dream come true just to
Speaker 3: work with him or with a legend like Tony Curtis.
Speaker 1: You know, it was a trip to oz that I
Speaker 1: knew was short lived, but it was.
Speaker 7: Something I was going to take in and enjoy them
Speaker 7: as much as possible.
Speaker 3: After twenty days of shooting the film wrapped, they had
Speaker 3: a party at Arnold Schwartzeninger's restaurant. It was around Christmas time,
Speaker 3: and they all got sweatshirts with the name of the
Speaker 3: film on the front.
Speaker 9: And on the back was a picture of Arnold with
Speaker 9: a Santa hat on, wearing sunglasses and saying something about
Speaker 9: I can't remember the full thing anybody used for you forehead.
Speaker 3: Later, Jim was kind enough to send me a photo
Speaker 3: of the sweatshirt. It said on the back more snow
Speaker 3: u forehead. There's my Schwartzeneger impression with the film in
Speaker 3: the can. Post production and premieres loomed. That's after the break.
Speaker 3: Before we get to the premiere of Arnold Schwarzenegger's nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety two Christmas and Connecticut remake, I want to tell
Speaker 3: you about something that happened earlier this year.
Speaker 2: Thank you all for coming, Thank you Mitch for coming
Speaker 2: down from Try Yeah, thanks for having me here.
Speaker 3: Malcolm interviewed Mitch Album live on stage at the ninety
Speaker 3: second Street Y Album is the best selling author of
Speaker 3: some ungodly number of books, but he's probably most famous
Speaker 3: for Tuesdays with Maury. He and Malcolm were there to
Speaker 3: talk about his new novel about the Holocaust, The Little Liar.
Speaker 3: They were warming up with some Mitch backstory about his
Speaker 3: time as a musician in New York.
Speaker 11: I tried the whole starving musician thing, and I played
Speaker 11: in all the clubs around here on Monday nights.
Speaker 3: I was backstage at this event peering out. I hadn't
Speaker 3: read Mitch's book. I was up to something else.
Speaker 2: We should probably do this before we get too far
Speaker 2: afield on the music thing. If you're talking so much,
Speaker 2: you will note that behind you. Yeah, there's a corg.
Speaker 3: At this point, the audience of people who had come
Speaker 3: that night to hear the author of Tuesdays with Maury
Speaker 3: discussed the Holocaust noticed the electric piano behind him.
Speaker 2: And we have a request that you play one of
Speaker 2: your most famous compositions, which you know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2: I'm talking about Cooking for Two from the legendary Arnold
Speaker 2: Schwarzenegger nineteen ninety two, made for TV movie Christmas in Connecticut.
Speaker 11: Yeah, can you see the recognition?
Speaker 3: Yes it was my keyboard, and yes I had planted
Speaker 3: it there.
Speaker 2: Mitch, No, no, this For some reason, I have no idea.
Speaker 2: My colleague Ben is obsessed with this and really wanted
Speaker 2: us to do this, and I thought, how great would
Speaker 2: it be for you to sing one of our songs,
Speaker 2: just like just give us a little taste.
Speaker 11: Well, I have to tell you this story. Tell tell Okay.
Speaker 11: So after I got out of the music business, I
Speaker 11: had a college roommate who went into the movie business.
Speaker 3: That would be Stanley m Brooks, executive producer of Christmas
Speaker 3: in Connecticut. Stan and Mitch were roommates at Brandeis.
Speaker 11: And he knew that I was a musician, and he
Speaker 11: was making a movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger as a producer,
Speaker 11: and Schwartzenegger was the director of Christmas in Connecticut. The
Speaker 11: remake sounds about as good as it was, I think,
Speaker 11: And they needed as a song because she played Diane
Speaker 11: Cannon played the lead and she was a cook on
Speaker 11: TV or whatever, so the song had to be about food.
Speaker 11: And they wanted to use Harry Connick's Recipe for Love
Speaker 11: or something like that, but they couldn't afford it. So
Speaker 11: stan calls me and says, we need a song that's
Speaker 11: kind of upbeat about food for Arnold Schwartzenegger's movie. Can
Speaker 11: you do it? You know, I said, well, what do
Speaker 11: you need it by Thursday?
Speaker 15: You know?
Speaker 11: It was Tuesday, you know. So I just went and
Speaker 11: wrote a little song. And my wife is a singer,
Speaker 11: a fantastic singer, and I said, honey, can you sing
Speaker 11: this song because we don't have time to go find
Speaker 11: anybody else. And he listened to it and he said,
Speaker 11: I liked a bun but the girl. And that's how
Speaker 11: the song was chosen. Yeah, yeah, I want you to
Speaker 11: play it. I really think you should.
Speaker 18: So it went.
Speaker 16: Now, remember it had to be about food. Food, So
Speaker 16: it went, let's go to the kitchen. I got something fixing, admanizing,
Speaker 16: and do here's a flood. We're cooking for two. They're
Speaker 16: inside the oven, something warm and loving. Friends would laugh
Speaker 16: and they knew.
Speaker 11: That it's true. We're cooking for two. Here's the corn bridge.
Speaker 11: I was a souper wid girl, left nombers every night.
Speaker 16: Ah, but once I tasted your kisses, I was dining
Speaker 16: my candlelight.
Speaker 11: Here's a recipe for all the world to see.
Speaker 1: We take some me and some you that.
Speaker 16: It's too we're cooking for two.
Speaker 11: I love you. We're cooking for two. That definitely ranks
Speaker 11: amongst one of the most embarrassing things I've ever DoD.
Speaker 3: They planned to play it over the credits with a
Speaker 3: Mitch Album closing track in hand. Christmas in Connecticut was
Speaker 3: almost ready to debut. Most made for TV movies you
Speaker 3: just put out on television, but not this one.
Speaker 1: First of all, TV movies don't have screenings.
Speaker 7: If we have a screening, it's like ten people and
Speaker 7: you know, you were in a screening room somewhere like
Speaker 7: this was the big theater at the DGA, which holds
Speaker 7: I don't know, a thousand people, massive screen and there's
Speaker 7: a huge red carpet and a press line.
Speaker 18: We had two theaters going and there were phil When I.
Speaker 7: Tell you that there's never been a television movie before since,
Speaker 7: they had a press line. And he's walking down working
Speaker 7: the press and like, you know, and I you know,
Speaker 7: thet Blee person.
Speaker 1: This is d Ambrose executive producer h Arnold.
Speaker 3: According to san Ivan, Reitman and James Cameron were there,
Speaker 3: along with the whole slew of Hollywood Royalty. The screening
Speaker 3: was in LA. It was a media sensation.
Speaker 8: Watch out Hollywood.
Speaker 5: There's a new director in town and he's used.
Speaker 8: To making a big impact that is in front of
Speaker 8: the camera.
Speaker 4: When you act, sees such talent that directs as I've
Speaker 4: worked with, it inspires you.
Speaker 3: Janet Brown, Now the screenwriter was not having sent for
Speaker 3: you to night.
Speaker 8: I remember sitting at the screening with my agent and
Speaker 8: I was like crying.
Speaker 3: I mean, I was like, oh my god, why were
Speaker 3: you crying?
Speaker 9: I get so bad and my name is on this.
Speaker 8: My agent was very fast to get me a drink
Speaker 8: at that point. I just remember outside there was kind
Speaker 8: of a Christmas theme sort of party, and just like
Speaker 8: I need to get out of.
Speaker 3: Here, but there was no putting the genie back in
Speaker 3: the bottle. TNT was running promo's NonStop.
Speaker 4: I love romantic comedies, so I made one myself, Christmas
Speaker 4: in Connecticut. It's a romantic comedy with all the trimmings.
Speaker 1: What in the world could comfortably go wrong?
Speaker 4: Christmas in Connectic directed by Arnold schwartzening you have a
Speaker 4: problem with that? TNT exclusive premiere Monday, April thirteen.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you caught that, but the film
Speaker 3: came out in April, one week before Easter. As one
Speaker 3: review put it, quote, don't ask me why a Christmas
Speaker 3: movie is premiering in April. As his then wife Maria
Speaker 3: Shreiver reflected, he just does. He's a big one on.
Speaker 3: Don't think about it or talk about it.
Speaker 6: Do it.
Speaker 1: And then he goes, I think we want to scud
Speaker 1: into it again. That was too much fun.
Speaker 7: I go, okay, I go see if I can organ
Speaker 7: I go no, I want to ski in Washington with
Speaker 7: my friend Jack Lent.
Speaker 1: So now we all fight Washington.
Speaker 7: And uh and it was it was a who's who
Speaker 7: of Washington, and it was senators and members of tabinet.
Speaker 1: It was a seated dinner and I remember my wife
Speaker 1: and I sit down. We've been working the rooms.
Speaker 7: So we sit last at our table and the guy
Speaker 7: next to me has got like a dress can of
Speaker 7: form on and I say, hey, Stan Brooks, I'm the producer,
Speaker 7: and he goes, hey, Oliver North.
Speaker 3: Oliver North of Iran contra fame. The film was a
Speaker 3: big hit in the belt Way. Suff I sit to
Speaker 3: say this made for television Christmas movie had an unusually
Speaker 3: big reception, but it also didn't really do much to
Speaker 3: establish Arnold Schwartzenegger as a director. The reviews were mixed.
Speaker 9: Well, I'm looking at IMDb right now it's like the
Speaker 9: rating is four point eight out of ten and they're
Speaker 9: not far off.
Speaker 1: We nobody had any Oh my god, we're making it's
Speaker 1: a wonderful life.
Speaker 3: I realize I've had a lot of fun with this
Speaker 3: movie and gun to my head. Do I think it's good? No?
Speaker 3: But do I love it? Obviously yes, because it's so
Speaker 3: totally weird and overcommitted to its bit that it has
Speaker 3: a kind of joyfulness to it that honestly gets me
Speaker 3: in the Christmas spirit and at its core, like the
Speaker 3: best Christmas films, The story behind the movie is a
Speaker 3: story of love and friendship between Arnold Schwartzenegger and San Brooks,
Speaker 3: two men brought together by a love of making movies.
Speaker 3: After the film, Stan and Arnold stayed in touch. Stan
Speaker 3: even moved into Arnold Schwartzenegger's office building. The kids played
Speaker 3: football together, and even though they never made another movie together,
Speaker 3: their collaboration had one more act. Almost ten years to
Speaker 3: the day from when Christmas and Connecticut began shooting, Arnold
Speaker 3: Schwarzenegger became the governor of California. At the time, there
Speaker 3: was a lot of handwringing over an issue called runaway production.
Speaker 3: Lots of states had started offering tax breaks to lure
Speaker 3: films into shooting somewhere other than California. It had become
Speaker 3: a real problem for Hollywood as an industry town. This
Speaker 3: was one of the crises Schwarzenegger would have to face
Speaker 3: in his new role as governor. Now, the way people
Speaker 3: talked about his becoming governor was the same way they
Speaker 3: talked about his becoming a director, So it only makes
Speaker 3: sense that he wanted stan Brooks in his administration.
Speaker 13: So when he became governor, he was in about a
Speaker 13: year and he called me and he said, how would
Speaker 13: you like to be on the Film Commission? And I say, well,
Speaker 13: that's a dumb idea. He goes why, I said, well,
Speaker 13: because I don't shoot movies in California. I said, I'm
Speaker 13: like the worst person you could put on the film
Speaker 13: Commission because I take my movies out of state. And
Speaker 13: he goes, oh, that's why we want to because we
Speaker 13: want to try and pass the taxpayer.
Speaker 3: Stan joined the California Film Commission, and over the next
Speaker 3: few years he was a key part of the lobbying
Speaker 3: efforts to pass the tax credits that would make it
Speaker 3: easier to film in California.
Speaker 1: It was a hard fight, and so I ended up
Speaker 1: making a short film, a short documentary film where we
Speaker 1: interviewed some of the families that left on why, and
Speaker 1: that ended up being more powerful than any speech we
Speaker 1: could make in their office.
Speaker 3: The first tax credits passed in two thousand and nine.
Speaker 3: They've been renewed ever since. So back to our original question,
Speaker 3: why did Arnold Schwarzenegger direct to this bizarre one off
Speaker 3: Christmas film? I found my answer in a story Stan
Speaker 3: told me.
Speaker 1: He says to me one night we finished around seven
Speaker 1: or eight, and he goes, well you're doing and I said,
Speaker 1: I'm going home. He goes, he goes, Maria's making dinner.
Speaker 1: You want to come to the house. So oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: So we both jump in our cars and we drive
Speaker 1: to Pacific Palis eate and at that dinner, I remember
Speaker 1: Arnold turn to me. He says, you have a good town.
Speaker 1: I own the stat Why don't get big speeches?
Speaker 7: And I said, to be honest, I didn't get in
Speaker 7: the business to make big, famous movies. I got in
Speaker 7: the business to make movies, and I get to make
Speaker 7: two or three a year if I mean the future business,
Speaker 7: I'm lucky if I make one every other year.
Speaker 1: Every three years. I go, I'm happy with my life.
Speaker 1: He goes, well, that's fantastic.
Speaker 3: The story really had honed for me because I get
Speaker 3: what that's like to just love making something, even a
Speaker 3: kind of improbably dense story about the making of the
Speaker 3: remake of a Christmas movie. It's like Stan said, if
Speaker 3: you love making movies or anything, it's just a gift
Speaker 3: to get to make more, even if they're maybe not
Speaker 3: the best, especially if it's clear how much fun you
Speaker 3: had making when it is you're making. So to close,
Speaker 3: let me just share one quote from the very last
Speaker 3: page of Charles Dickens as a Christmas Carol, a passage
Speaker 3: about Scrooge after he's seen the light quote. Some people
Speaker 3: laughed to see the alteration in him, But he let
Speaker 3: them laugh, and little heeded them, for he was wise
Speaker 3: enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe
Speaker 3: for good, at which some people did not have their
Speaker 3: fill of laughter. In the outset, his own heart laughed,
Speaker 3: and that was quite enough for him. Maybe Stan and
Speaker 3: Arnold didn't make It's a Wonderful Life, but it seems
Speaker 3: to me like their own hearts were laughing. So from
Speaker 3: all of us here at Revision's History. Happy Holidays, you foreheads,
Speaker 3: See you in the New Year. Revisionist History is produced
Speaker 3: by me Bennatt of Haffrey and Lucy Sullivan with Bird Lawrence.
Speaker 3: Our editor is Karen Chakerji. Fact checking on this episode
Speaker 3: by Sam Russick, a resident Schwarzenegger fan. Original scoring by
Speaker 3: Luis Gara, mastering by Jake Krsky. Our executive producer is
Speaker 3: Jacob Smith. Special thanks to Sarah Nis, David Arnott, Linda Berman,
Speaker 3: Iris Grossman, and Scott Sassa. I'm Ben Mattahaffery.
Speaker 2: Three two one.
Speaker 17: We wish Eyal Berry Christmas. We wish you are mayor
Speaker 17: me Christmas. We will you are Merry Christmas New
Speaker 3: What we do, guys,