"A Christmas Story" (1983) vs. "Home Alone" (1990): Part 2

<v Speaker 1>Hey guys, this is Brad Pete and I'm Giff from
<v Speaker 1>the Pop Culture Yearbook podcast. And you're listening to Surely
<v Speaker 1>you Can't Be Serious? Fucking hello everybody, and welcome back
<v Speaker 1>to the Surely you Can't Be Serious Podcasts, Part two
<v Speaker 1>of our special Christmas edition. And I'm thinking, Jason, maybe
<v Speaker 1>these guys should be spending some time with their family
<v Speaker 1>instead of listening to our podcasts. What do you think? No?
<v Speaker 2>For three reasons. Ay, we'll be comparing two of the
<v Speaker 2>greatest Christmas movies of all time, Home Alone and Christmas
<v Speaker 2>Story two. This is our last podcast of twenty twenty one,
<v Speaker 2>and d we'll be giving our final judgment and all
<v Speaker 2>five of the Christmas movies we've covered so far in
<v Speaker 2>our podcast. It's going to be amazing.
<v Speaker 1>Why the heck did you take your shoes off?
<v Speaker 3>Why are you just like a chicken?
<v Speaker 2>All right, we're diving in right here, Part two of
<v Speaker 2>a Christmas Story versus Home Alone. Let's talk about the
<v Speaker 2>lamp real quick. Okay, the electric sex in the in
<v Speaker 2>the window. I had somebody this week we posted on
<v Speaker 2>Facebook about a Christmas Story fragilely yes, must be French.
<v Speaker 1>Not French it's Italian. Must be Italian, everybody does it.
<v Speaker 1>Everybody says, must be French, but it's not French. This
<v Speaker 1>must be Italian.
<v Speaker 2>Really, yes, okay, well I blew that. And then yeah,
<v Speaker 2>the reason why he gets this lamp in the first
<v Speaker 2>place because his wife is great this trivia, Yeah, Pictor.
<v Speaker 1>You know, everybody knows the lone Ranger's nephew's horse, great
<v Speaker 1>characters of literature, Victor.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. And then when it gets the lamp, of course
<v Speaker 2>he sets it up. She keeps turning it off. She
<v Speaker 2>hates it clearly. And then that day comes where there's
<v Speaker 2>an I don't know what happened.
<v Speaker 1>I was watering my plants and I broke your lamp.
<v Speaker 2>Get the glue. We don't have any You used the
<v Speaker 2>ball the glue on purpose.
<v Speaker 1>He was looking for his singer, but all he could
<v Speaker 1>get out was.
<v Speaker 2>Oh my gosh, it's great. The Chinese scene at the
<v Speaker 2>end of the movie.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, so Shepherd. They had to go eat Chinese food.
<v Speaker 1>But the rest of the scene was all a creation
<v Speaker 1>of Bob Clark. There was no duck, there was no singing.
<v Speaker 1>That was all Bob Clark and the rah and he's
<v Speaker 1>he's smiling at me.
<v Speaker 2>Oh, I love that scene. Melinda Dylon was purposely given
<v Speaker 2>the wrong script so she would be shocked in.
<v Speaker 1>Surprise, and her reaction is so genuine. Her laughter is
<v Speaker 1>so good and her scream is so on point.
<v Speaker 2>That's awesome.
<v Speaker 1>I love it.
<v Speaker 2>He's smiling at me. And then the Chinese guys are
<v Speaker 2>singing fellah lah la lah right, and the guy the
<v Speaker 2>restaurant in her keeps correcting them. No, no, no, no, seemed
<v Speaker 2>like this the Hall of hollow right, and he corrects them.
<v Speaker 2>If you watch the movie, that dude is cracking up
<v Speaker 2>the whole time.
<v Speaker 1>Oh yeah, he can't stop laughing.
<v Speaker 2>It's it's great, it's great.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, one more quick thing. This is a point of contention.
<v Speaker 1>And I wonder about this because I think that I
<v Speaker 1>had my Red Writer be Begun before this movie came out,
<v Speaker 1>and my Red Writer be Begun I still own it.
<v Speaker 1>It has a compass in the stock. Yes, Red Writer
<v Speaker 1>b Begun maintains that they did not have a model
<v Speaker 1>that had a compass in the stock. That's some other
<v Speaker 1>brand of B Begun. And Geene Shepherd, when he was
<v Speaker 1>still alive, was like, I remember it. I remember the
<v Speaker 1>compass in the stock. And this thing that tells time.
<v Speaker 2>I rest, which tails time yet Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and I'm telling you I had it compass in
<v Speaker 1>the stock sundial all on the butt of my Red
<v Speaker 1>Writer be begun.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, but those are recreations. So when they went to
<v Speaker 2>the nineteen thirty nine version, Red Writer Company is like, well,
<v Speaker 2>we're going to have to make one for you because
<v Speaker 2>it's not the way you remember it.
<v Speaker 1>Right and speaking, which is important to note that this
<v Speaker 1>was supposed to be back in the nineteen thirties forties area,
<v Speaker 1>right that. Yeah, okay, So Bob Clark deliberately he tried
<v Speaker 1>to make the movie look like it was filmed back then.
<v Speaker 1>That's why you have that kind of nostalgic look going on.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, not only did they do the costumes right
<v Speaker 1>and the cars right, but he had the way of filming.
<v Speaker 1>And one of those things was the iris opening and
<v Speaker 1>closing from one scene to the next scene, which was
<v Speaker 1>a totally old style of doing your cuts. But he
<v Speaker 1>brought it back for this movie because he wanted that
<v Speaker 1>nostalgia feeling, and he nailed it.
<v Speaker 2>You know, a movie the cinematographer for Home Alone watched
<v Speaker 2>in order to get the right feel for the movie
<v Speaker 2>Christmas Story Perfect. How about that? All right, guys, let's
<v Speaker 2>take a quick break. We're going to intro a new
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<v Speaker 1>Okay, so let's move back to home Alone.
<v Speaker 2>Right.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, so we said we started off with Warner Brothers.
<v Speaker 1>The budget was ten million dollars, and they started making
<v Speaker 1>their movie, and day after day, event after event, the.
<v Speaker 4>Budget started to creep up and creep up and creep up,
<v Speaker 4>and eventually they reached fourteen point seven million dollars and
<v Speaker 4>Warner Brothers called them up and said, you guys have
<v Speaker 4>to stop.
<v Speaker 1>You're at fourteen point seven. You said you could make
<v Speaker 1>this movie for ten million. You need to stop, like
<v Speaker 1>you're gonna give us trouble. We're doing great. We've got
<v Speaker 1>all this stuff together. I mean they went cheap. I
<v Speaker 1>mean they get the cinematographer, second unit guy for movies
<v Speaker 1>like he had never really done it on his own before.
<v Speaker 1>Same thing for the editor, same thing for the set designer.
<v Speaker 1>And so they had gone for guys who didn't have
<v Speaker 1>a whole lot of experience to do these things, just
<v Speaker 1>to keep the budget within reasonable realms.
<v Speaker 2>And it's not like they had Arnold Schwarzenegger in the
<v Speaker 2>title role, right, an eight year old kid, And so
<v Speaker 2>they went off by a little bit.
<v Speaker 1>But I mean, we're talking about Hollywood standards here, that's
<v Speaker 1>not that much.
<v Speaker 2>So John Hughes is like, no, this is bullkrap. This
<v Speaker 2>is Warner Brothers we're talking about. This is not some
<v Speaker 2>mom and pop thing. He's like, they'll make it. It's fine,
<v Speaker 2>I'll send him a letter. So John Hughes writes a letter.
<v Speaker 2>It's like there's nothing left to cut. So they're like,
<v Speaker 2>all right, we're pulling the plug.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. But John Hughes had a little ace in his sleeve,
<v Speaker 1>right because he did something that if you live in
<v Speaker 1>Hollywood you would call it underhanded, that's right, or illegal? Right, Like,
<v Speaker 1>it's not okay. So he had talked to executives from
<v Speaker 1>twentieth Century Fox while the movie was still a Warner
<v Speaker 1>Brothers movie, and surreptitiously, somehow those guys got a copy
<v Speaker 1>of the script. That's funny how that happened, just happened
<v Speaker 1>on their doorstep somehow man. And so they when these
<v Speaker 1>things are going on with Warner Brothers, they're like, anything
<v Speaker 1>goes wrong, if it ends up and turnaround, you let
<v Speaker 1>us know.
<v Speaker 2>Just keep going.
<v Speaker 1>And they're like how much did you say you were
<v Speaker 1>at and he's like fourteen point seven. They're like, you
<v Speaker 1>don't stop. Don't stop production. And so literally, when the
<v Speaker 1>hatchetman from Warner Brothers shows up, he goes from door
<v Speaker 1>to door in the New Trier School to their offices
<v Speaker 1>and say, all right, guys, shut it down, we're cutting it.
<v Speaker 1>This movie's over. And right behind him was the assistant
<v Speaker 1>director who's like, no.
<v Speaker 2>Shut it down.
<v Speaker 1>And he would literally follow him from office to office.
<v Speaker 1>And when he walked out of the building, he turned
<v Speaker 1>around and he's like, what's going on. He's like, what's
<v Speaker 1>going on? Is you're fired?
<v Speaker 2>I love it. I love that story. And we're talking
<v Speaker 2>about I mean, fourteen fifteen million dollars.
<v Speaker 1>Can you imagine being the Warner Brothers guy who said
<v Speaker 1>kill this movie and then seeing it hit number one
<v Speaker 1>week one, then week two, week three, week four five,
<v Speaker 1>I mean something like twelve to fourteen weeks this movie
<v Speaker 1>was in the number one spot.
<v Speaker 2>It's insane. It made almost what half a billion dollars?
<v Speaker 1>Like it was, yeah, in the four hundred million dollar.
<v Speaker 2>Range, and they let it slip through their fingers over
<v Speaker 2>one point two million dollars.
<v Speaker 1>It's nice. Warner Brothers, Warner Brothers.
<v Speaker 2>Gosh, Daniel Stern was filming City Slickers, and Billy Crystal
<v Speaker 2>would get a copy of the magazine and he kept
<v Speaker 2>coming to me. He was like, Hey, your movie's number one,
<v Speaker 2>And then he showed up again, Hey, guess what your
<v Speaker 2>movies number one. They were shot City Slickers for three months.
<v Speaker 2>The whole time it.
<v Speaker 1>Was number one. It was in the theater for six months.
<v Speaker 2>It's insane.
<v Speaker 1>It is insane.
<v Speaker 2>When Chris Columbus's next movie, Only Lonely, starring John Candy,
<v Speaker 2>was released.
<v Speaker 1>Ye, Home Alone was in the theater.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, Only Lonely finished number five. Home Loan was number eleven.
<v Speaker 2>That's how long it had stayed.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, so let's talk a little bit about those guys
<v Speaker 1>who were editing and filming and such like that. So
<v Speaker 1>the guy who had only done se a unit, who
<v Speaker 1>is their cinematographer, he's a little concerned that he might
<v Speaker 1>mess something up, and so he had a little like
<v Speaker 1>tiny extra camera that he would set up for every
<v Speaker 1>shot just to get coverage right, just to just to
<v Speaker 1>make sure in case something goes wrong with the main picture,
<v Speaker 1>that I've got that. And he called it his chicken camera.
<v Speaker 1>Please believe that, the bonus camera. Yes, And so he
<v Speaker 1>was like, not only was it invaluable, but I started
<v Speaker 1>to realize some of my best shots were coming from
<v Speaker 1>the chicken can. And so a lot of what you
<v Speaker 1>see in the movie is from that second camera that
<v Speaker 1>he had set up. And some of the reasons that
<v Speaker 1>it's so good are the stunts, because the stunt would
<v Speaker 1>you know, he'd have one camera set up and he'd
<v Speaker 1>catch the stunt man's face or whatever. And I mean,
<v Speaker 1>you watch those stunts, Holy cow, you think that's a
<v Speaker 1>real person. This isn't a cartoon, Like those guys are
<v Speaker 1>real human beings falling as herds again, and there wasn't padding.
<v Speaker 1>This is a low budget movie. There was a guy
<v Speaker 1>dressed up like Joe Peshy who fell as hard as
<v Speaker 1>he could after doing a four foot jump in the air,
<v Speaker 1>straight on to his back. Chris Columbus said, they wouldn't
<v Speaker 1>watch the take. They'd say action, they'd turn away and
<v Speaker 1>then once they knew it was over, they go, is
<v Speaker 1>he okay, okay, all right? And then and it was
<v Speaker 1>ready to do it again. Those stuntmen are amazing. I mean,
<v Speaker 1>you just got to think about iron to the face,
<v Speaker 1>shot in the crotch, blow towards whatever you got. It
<v Speaker 1>is amazing the stuff that those guys went through, including
<v Speaker 1>the stuntman for Macaulay Culkin.
<v Speaker 2>Who is a thirty year old man, yeah, who is
<v Speaker 2>just just short.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, short, and then just worked out. Well.
<v Speaker 2>The one stunt that bothers me the most is that
<v Speaker 2>dude who's jumping off the porch directly on his like
<v Speaker 2>backslash neck. Yeah, and he lands. I mean, dude, I
<v Speaker 2>wouldn't be like dead.
<v Speaker 1>You listen to him talking about He's like, I love it.
<v Speaker 1>I love he must be a massacre. He just enjoys
<v Speaker 1>the painting. Crazy. So, how do you make a movie
<v Speaker 1>that's got this much violence and still make it PG
<v Speaker 1>and acceptable to parents and kids. You make it a
<v Speaker 1>cartoon movie. That's what you do. And so that's he
<v Speaker 1>was pulling. The guy who they had doing the editing
<v Speaker 1>was pulling sounds and notions and shots from the Looney
<v Speaker 1>tunes he watched looney tunes to get the beats of
<v Speaker 1>the movie, like when do you show the slip?
<v Speaker 2>When do you show the crunch? When do you show
<v Speaker 2>the Marv?
<v Speaker 1>What are you doing Marv?
<v Speaker 2>You know the tarantula scene, the Transla on the face scene,
<v Speaker 2>which you know when I saw this in the movie theater,
<v Speaker 2>I'm like, dude, that's a real Transla on his face,
<v Speaker 2>and it was like super scary. Right, I guess translas
<v Speaker 2>are deaf, like they can't hear like Daniel Stems, like
<v Speaker 2>if I scream my guts, sound, is this thing gonna
<v Speaker 2>bite me? And they're like, no, no, it's deaf. Can't
<v Speaker 2>hear you? Okay, sure, there it goes. By the way
<v Speaker 2>that Transella's name they never say in the movie. You
<v Speaker 2>get it from the novelization. Okay, Transella's name Axel.
<v Speaker 1>Oh my god, is it Fully or Rose?
<v Speaker 2>I believe it's Rose based on the year that it
<v Speaker 2>came out.
<v Speaker 1>Well, I guess Buzz would probably be a g n
<v Speaker 1>R fan. By the way, your girlfriend.
<v Speaker 2>The girlfriend's picture, Yeah, that is the that is the
<v Speaker 2>son of like the assistant director. They felt it was
<v Speaker 2>going to be too mean to take a picture of
<v Speaker 2>a real girl and then talk about how much of
<v Speaker 2>a dog she is. So it's his son. That picture
<v Speaker 2>is hilarious.
<v Speaker 1>That's hysterical.
<v Speaker 2>One of the things that I want to talk about
<v Speaker 2>during the production, like they would film scenes with the
<v Speaker 2>family in France, and when they cut it all together
<v Speaker 2>and they showed it to test audiences, people could have
<v Speaker 2>cared less about the mcallisters in France. They wanted just
<v Speaker 2>to get back to Kevin.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, and that's another question, you know, how do
<v Speaker 1>you make how do you create a believable story where
<v Speaker 1>the mother leaves her child at home and is not
<v Speaker 1>a human being that you hate?
<v Speaker 2>Okay, we got to talk about that. So that's the
<v Speaker 2>biggest problem with this movie.
<v Speaker 1>Okay.
<v Speaker 2>Ye most people when they watch it, they're like, well,
<v Speaker 2>she's a terrible mother. I would say, she's not a
<v Speaker 2>terrible mother. No, Okay. She had a series of unfortunate events,
<v Speaker 2>including the neighbor boy who came over and looked enough
<v Speaker 2>like Kevin to be counted as part of the family.
<v Speaker 2>They were in a huge rush because they overslept because the.
<v Speaker 1>Power line right right.
<v Speaker 2>But one thing that you might miss when you watch
<v Speaker 2>the movie that I only caught this time when Kevin
<v Speaker 2>and Buzz get in a fight at the dinner before
<v Speaker 2>they have their flight or whatever, he knocks over a
<v Speaker 2>bunch of milk. Mister McAllister scoops up this giant mess
<v Speaker 2>and it includes Kevin's ticket, his airline ticket.
<v Speaker 1>Yep, if you freeze frame it, you can see the
<v Speaker 1>ticket being thrown into the trash.
<v Speaker 2>I guess John Hughes was intent on covering all the holes, right,
<v Speaker 2>So I noted because I knew that that was the case.
<v Speaker 1>I watched as they came onto the plane, and they
<v Speaker 1>just make it onto the plane, right, and the flight
<v Speaker 1>attendant is like, you just made it. And so she's
<v Speaker 1>got all of the tickets in her hand. They hand
<v Speaker 1>them all to her at the same time, and so
<v Speaker 1>she's got the tickets. She's counting the heads as they
<v Speaker 1>go onto the plane. And that's why you don't get
<v Speaker 1>a miscount. It's because that ticket got thrown away.
<v Speaker 2>John Hughes is brilliant. There was a scene that was
<v Speaker 2>actually cut from the movie when Kevin realizes that his
<v Speaker 2>family is missing. He burst out the front door and
<v Speaker 2>into the front lawn and.
<v Speaker 1>Like, where's my family?
<v Speaker 2>And the garage doors are up. They actually did forget
<v Speaker 2>to put the garage doores.
<v Speaker 1>That's right, yep.
<v Speaker 2>So I thought this was interesting. The Christmas ornaments that
<v Speaker 2>Daniel Stearn has to step on. Yeah, So we talked
<v Speaker 2>about how die Hard and Home Alone have people picking
<v Speaker 2>glasses of their feet. Those ornaments he actually did step on.
<v Speaker 2>He did have those fake ribber feet that Bruce Willis had.
<v Speaker 2>Iheard he wore those as well, But those ornaments were
<v Speaker 2>made of sugar, so those shards are not really that sharp, gotcha.
<v Speaker 2>We talked about how they had this cartoon language where
<v Speaker 2>they didn't curse at all. Right, right about the fifty
<v Speaker 2>three minute mark, Daniel Stern does let out the old
<v Speaker 2>sh word.
<v Speaker 1>Yep.
<v Speaker 2>It just kind of slides under. You don't really notice it, right.
<v Speaker 2>So apparently that is the point in the movie where
<v Speaker 2>he's retrieving his boot through the doggy door, right, And
<v Speaker 2>it even shows up in the subtitles, which I thought
<v Speaker 2>was funny.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, which is also probably the time in a Christmas
<v Speaker 1>Story where Ralphie realizes that his decoder ring has been
<v Speaker 1>an advertisement from a commercial says, I just want to
<v Speaker 1>talk about that. There's a moment that's like with actors
<v Speaker 1>on movies, you have these small scenes, right, like this
<v Speaker 1>boom happens, Boom happened. They're looking at their script as
<v Speaker 1>it goes right. Right. But there in this home alone,
<v Speaker 1>there is an extended dialogue scene that involves Kevin mcaulay culkin,
<v Speaker 1>just this very young actor doing the scene, and it's
<v Speaker 1>the one in the church, right, And it's an emotional, moving,
<v Speaker 1>important moment because it's like it's like we talked about,
<v Speaker 1>you have to fall in love with the character before
<v Speaker 1>you see him go do all this horrible stuff, right,
<v Speaker 1>because you're about to see him go do some really
<v Speaker 1>mean and dastardly things, although it is the bad guys,
<v Speaker 1>but before that you are touched. Your heart is touched. Right.
<v Speaker 1>And it's that scene with the old man in the
<v Speaker 1>church talking about his son and his granddaughter who was
<v Speaker 1>singing in the choir. Right. So Chris Columbus was concerned
<v Speaker 1>about the scene. And Chris Columbus is a great guy
<v Speaker 1>to work with kids, like he just loves treats him
<v Speaker 1>like grown ups but still appreciates that there are kids
<v Speaker 1>and has fun with them. So he was worried about
<v Speaker 1>how the scene was going to go, he said. Macaulay
<v Speaker 1>Culkin showed up for this scene and had it memorized
<v Speaker 1>and did it perfectly right out of the gate, right
<v Speaker 1>like it was likely they were watching a stage performance.
<v Speaker 1>He had it all down and delivered it all perfectly
<v Speaker 1>from beginning to end.
<v Speaker 2>You know, that scene I think would mirror the scene
<v Speaker 2>in Diehard when Bruge Willis is picking the glass out
<v Speaker 2>of his feet talking about how I always told his
<v Speaker 2>wife he loved her, but he never said he was sorry. Yep,
<v Speaker 2>you gotta nail that one, because it's time to go get.
<v Speaker 1>The bad guys right right, Okay, we're ready to talk composers.
<v Speaker 2>Let's talk composers.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, So jumping back to a Christmas story, we have
<v Speaker 1>a couple guys. We have Paul Zaza, yes, and Carl Zitter. Now,
<v Speaker 1>Carl Zitter has done a music composition for New Jack
<v Speaker 1>City and Moonstruck, and then of course he also did
<v Speaker 1>it for a couple of Bob Clark movies called The
<v Speaker 1>Murder by Numbers and Black Christmas. As we discussed, Murder
<v Speaker 1>by Numbers also involved Paul's Aza, and Paul's Oza was
<v Speaker 1>also the composer for Baby Genuses. The music that they
<v Speaker 1>have in this movie is very Christmas based, right, it's
<v Speaker 1>all and then you have the kind of chase and
<v Speaker 1>the kids are running away from the bullies. Right, it's
<v Speaker 1>very subtle. It's not breathtaking, but it makes the movie
<v Speaker 1>in a non obtrusive way, right, would you agree?
<v Speaker 2>Sure?
<v Speaker 1>So then jump forward to Home Alone. They have a
<v Speaker 1>guy who's supposed to do the music composition for Home Alone.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, you know who that guy is. His name is
<v Speaker 2>Bruce Broughton. H He was attached as the original composer.
<v Speaker 2>He worked with Chris Columbus when they did Young Sherlock Holmes,
<v Speaker 2>but he left Home Alone to go do The Rescuers
<v Speaker 2>down Under.
<v Speaker 1>Really yeah, okay, well he had composed some music for it.
<v Speaker 1>Ultimately we know that it didn't get used in the movie, right,
<v Speaker 1>just wasn't right. But there they are. They've got a movie,
<v Speaker 1>they've got it cut together, but they don't have music. Like, okay,
<v Speaker 1>well what are we going to do? Who are we
<v Speaker 1>going to to get? And Chris Columbus as a joke,
<v Speaker 1>because we're talking about a small budget movie by a
<v Speaker 1>director who has done two movies, one of which is
<v Speaker 1>an absolute failure, and he goes going to be great
<v Speaker 1>if we could get John Williams.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, the greatest living movie composer of all time.
<v Speaker 1>Right. Somehow John Williams gets the rough cut of the movie.
<v Speaker 1>He calls them on the phone and says, I love
<v Speaker 1>this movie. Is it okay? If I compose the music
<v Speaker 1>for it?
<v Speaker 2>Gosh? And it was so key to the feel and
<v Speaker 2>tone of this movie.
<v Speaker 1>Oh my gosh. Yes. I mean he takes all of
<v Speaker 1>those Tchaikowsky Nutcracker music suits and weaves them perfectly into
<v Speaker 1>his own music, which creates the I mean, it changes
<v Speaker 1>the movie. I mean without that music, it's not the
<v Speaker 1>same movie it is. It takes it to that number
<v Speaker 1>one over and over again, week after week. Level.
<v Speaker 2>The word he used was I was enchanted. Yeah, which
<v Speaker 2>is so John Williams, Yeah, it is. It really is so.
<v Speaker 2>Then of course Chris almost goes on to do the
<v Speaker 2>Harry Potter movies, right, and John Williams does this as well.
<v Speaker 1>And it's also very christmas y, very.
<v Speaker 2>First lots of bells and chines.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, yeah for sure. Okay, So on the music, not
<v Speaker 1>only do we have you know that Christmas music, but
<v Speaker 1>do you know what music plays when the bullies come out?
<v Speaker 2>It's like Peter and the Wolf, right, yeah.
<v Speaker 1>And of course the bullies are Grover Dill and Scott Farcus,
<v Speaker 1>which is a Hungarian word which means wolf.
<v Speaker 2>Oh that's great.
<v Speaker 1>There you go down out of the day all right.
<v Speaker 1>Of note in home alone, just talking about the little
<v Speaker 1>the little nuances you know, right that make it. Yes,
<v Speaker 1>there's almost no blue in the entire movie. It is
<v Speaker 1>almost exclusively red and green.
<v Speaker 2>It's amazing. The guy who did it, the production designer, Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>he doesn't even like Christmas. Yeah, I hate Christmas. But
<v Speaker 2>let's make everything green and red.
<v Speaker 1>And it works. It's I mean, that movie makes you
<v Speaker 1>feel like Christmas.
<v Speaker 2>It does. Okay. One things I wanted to bring up
<v Speaker 2>and we didn't talk about this. During casting, John Hughes
<v Speaker 2>called in a favor with his buddy John Candy. So
<v Speaker 2>John Candy says, yeah, I'll do it. You got one
<v Speaker 2>day with me. So John Hughes is like, great, one day.
<v Speaker 2>So they bring him and he works for scale. He
<v Speaker 2>actually earned less than the pizza boy, right, he went
<v Speaker 2>five hundred bucks. John Candy made four fourteen for one
<v Speaker 2>day's worth of work. So when he gets to the set,
<v Speaker 2>he allows John Candy to improvise, does all his Boca
<v Speaker 2>Boca PoCA, all that stuff. R and he and Catherine
<v Speaker 2>Nahara had worked together on SETV, so they knew each other.
<v Speaker 2>They were comfortable, they were improv actors, all that stuff.
<v Speaker 2>But here's the funny part. John Candy said, yeah, I'll
<v Speaker 2>work for one day. He didn't realize that it was
<v Speaker 2>actually going to be twenty three hours of filming. He said,
<v Speaker 2>there was a moment in the day when he glared
<v Speaker 2>at John Hughes is like, it's seven am.
<v Speaker 1>What the heck?
<v Speaker 2>I thought that was funny. Yep, I do think that
<v Speaker 2>it's funny. The movie Angels with Filthy Souls.
<v Speaker 1>Was created and directed specifically for this movie. Yes, keep
<v Speaker 1>a change a filthy Animal.
<v Speaker 2>Yes. In fact, the set pieces in that movie were
<v Speaker 2>like cardboard and stuff like that. They barely pieced it together.
<v Speaker 2>Keep the Change of Filthy.
<v Speaker 1>Animals, And then in part two he watches Angels with
<v Speaker 1>Filthy year Souls.
<v Speaker 2>Right, that's right. I guess the two actors had to
<v Speaker 2>reverse their roles. I don't know their names. So the
<v Speaker 2>guy who was like, keep the change of filthy animal
<v Speaker 2>and the other guy who's like, hey snakes, wait, they
<v Speaker 2>were actually reversed, but one guy hurt his knee, so
<v Speaker 2>he couldn't take the fall. Ah, So the guy who
<v Speaker 2>ended up shooting the guy he came back for the
<v Speaker 2>sequel because he had an injured knee.
<v Speaker 1>So yeah. So interestingly, this narration thing that the executive
<v Speaker 1>said was not going to be of interest to anyone
<v Speaker 1>ended up spawning a TV series where you had somebody
<v Speaker 1>narrating what happened to them when they were young. Except
<v Speaker 1>taking place in the forties. It took place from nineteen
<v Speaker 1>sixty eight to nineteen seventy six. You know what the
<v Speaker 1>show is I'm talking about.
<v Speaker 2>We're talking about The Wonder Years.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and do you know who the narrator was, Daniel Stern.
<v Speaker 1>There you go.
<v Speaker 2>The Wonder Years is based off a Christmas story.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it inspired it. It inspired the creation of the
<v Speaker 1>Wonder Years.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I can see that now. Yeah, I had not
<v Speaker 2>put those two together. That is cool.
<v Speaker 1>The fantasy sequences are a key part of this, right,
<v Speaker 1>You've got the.
<v Speaker 2>So poisoning.
<v Speaker 1>You knew you'll be pushing up nighties. Yeah. So there
<v Speaker 1>was an additional scene that was filmed that was in
<v Speaker 1>the movie where he's in space using his Red Rider
<v Speaker 1>be begun to help out a hero that we've discussed
<v Speaker 1>earlier this year.
<v Speaker 2>Flash Gordon, Yep.
<v Speaker 1>The Buster Crab version in the flashboard.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, I would have loved to have seen that.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. I think it's I think you can see it
<v Speaker 1>on maybe a TV or did they lose it.
<v Speaker 2>I think it's like it's gone in a warehouse somewhere
<v Speaker 2>or something.
<v Speaker 1>I don't know. If you Shirley fans, if you've got
<v Speaker 1>access to that scene, if you know about it, send
<v Speaker 1>it to us. But yeah, film the whole scene, but
<v Speaker 1>decided it was just a little too much, and it
<v Speaker 1>was you you really need threes, Three is funny, four
<v Speaker 1>is too much, and you've got soap poisoning. You've got
<v Speaker 1>the cowboy scene, and you've got Yeah, and you've got
<v Speaker 1>the teacher. Hey. And I really think that the you know,
<v Speaker 1>CEOs is just a part two to that dreams. I'd
<v Speaker 1>go with that.
<v Speaker 2>One thing. I want to mention about John Hurd. We
<v Speaker 2>talked about him as Peter McAllister. Okay, so here's the
<v Speaker 2>funny thing about that. He was unhappy about working on
<v Speaker 2>this movie.
<v Speaker 1>He did not like it.
<v Speaker 2>He did not think it was going to do anything.
<v Speaker 2>He was not.
<v Speaker 1>Into it really.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, but after seeing the finished product and of course
<v Speaker 2>the success. After that, he realized that he was wrong.
<v Speaker 2>So while they were shooting his scenes for Home Alone two,
<v Speaker 2>he broke character, spoke directly through the camera and told
<v Speaker 2>Chris Columbus, sorry, I was wrong.
<v Speaker 1>Oh nice, pretty cool. Yeah, that's great.
<v Speaker 2>Chris Columbus says he still has that footage of Herd's
<v Speaker 2>apology on a video.
<v Speaker 1>That's pretty cool. YEP. I remembered him, of course from
<v Speaker 1>Big Big. Yeah, he was a jerk coworker and big.
<v Speaker 2>You know, just come in here and say bugs.
<v Speaker 1>Bugs.
<v Speaker 2>One of the scenes I wanted to talk about from
<v Speaker 2>a Christmas story, Uh, that caught me off guard when
<v Speaker 2>I saw it in the movie theater for the first
<v Speaker 2>time was when he finally gets the BB gun on
<v Speaker 2>Christmas morning and he goes outside and he's like, oh, yes,
<v Speaker 2>I was so happy for him that he got the
<v Speaker 2>BB gun and it goes and he's looking at that thing.
<v Speaker 2>He's going to shoot it, and it hits that bird
<v Speaker 2>bath and it comes right back and hits his in
<v Speaker 2>the eye and he's like, oh my god, shut my
<v Speaker 2>eye out. That was so out of left field. And
<v Speaker 2>I saw it. I was shocked and laughing, like, oh,
<v Speaker 2>my gosh, he shut his eye on.
<v Speaker 1>You know, it's such great writing too, because it's led
<v Speaker 1>up to that moment the whole time. It's led up,
<v Speaker 1>and then you're just like, oh no, oh, it's the
<v Speaker 1>worst and then he steps on his glasses. Oh no, oh,
<v Speaker 1>my gosh, so good, so good.
<v Speaker 2>All right, let's talk about reception on the Central quick.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, I mean we talked.
<v Speaker 2>About it briefly, but Home Alone made almost half a
<v Speaker 2>billion dollars. It was number one for fourteen weeks. We
<v Speaker 2>talked about how it destroyed everything else that came out
<v Speaker 2>that same time period, YEP, like Predator.
<v Speaker 1>Two came out Rocky five.
<v Speaker 2>Rocky five was buried right.
<v Speaker 1>As it should be. It should it still should.
<v Speaker 2>Be well, and Predator two wasn't any good either. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>they now use that term. If you get buried by
<v Speaker 2>a movie at the box office, they call it getting
<v Speaker 2>Home Alone.
<v Speaker 1>Nice.
<v Speaker 2>Next summer when we talk about ET, Yeah, ET had
<v Speaker 2>the same effect for all the other movies that came
<v Speaker 2>out in June.
<v Speaker 5>Yep.
<v Speaker 2>They guaranteed YEP.
<v Speaker 1>So for a Christmas story, it wasn't such a rousing success.
<v Speaker 1>It wasn't bad. It wasn't like it did terrible but
<v Speaker 1>it wasn't some big, humongous hit. But this was right
<v Speaker 1>around the time that VHS was becoming big and that
<v Speaker 1>cable television was becoming big, and so you just saw it.
<v Speaker 1>It was like, oh, it's Christmas time, let's get a
<v Speaker 1>Christmas story. A Christmas story is on HBO. We should
<v Speaker 1>watch that tonight. You would watch it. And then in
<v Speaker 1>the mid nineties something interesting happened, and this relates back
<v Speaker 1>to Wizard of os Ted Turner had TBS and he
<v Speaker 1>then got T and T and he decided, Hey, I'm
<v Speaker 1>going to start on Christmas showing a movie twenty four
<v Speaker 1>hours a day, and the movie that he picked was
<v Speaker 1>Wizard of Oska. And the first year did pretty good,
<v Speaker 1>and the second year it didn't do as good, right,
<v Speaker 1>and so it's like, okay, well, let's try It's a
<v Speaker 1>Wonderful Life, which, by the way, you just did a
<v Speaker 1>podcast with our friends from thirty something podcast movie podcast
<v Speaker 1>on It's a Wonderful Life.
<v Speaker 2>I watched it for the first time, which is nuts.
<v Speaker 1>And how do you feel about it now?
<v Speaker 2>It was remarkably good.
<v Speaker 1>Right, everybody expects it to not be good because it's
<v Speaker 1>an old black white movie. It is amazing. It's amazing, right,
<v Speaker 1>I saw you rank it in your top three on Twitter?
<v Speaker 2>Am I wrong?
<v Speaker 1>In Christmas movies? Yeah, it's very very good movie. So
<v Speaker 1>they that again, ran it for twenty four hours. First
<v Speaker 1>year pretty successful, second year not so much so. Try
<v Speaker 1>number three A Christmas Story. First year pretty successful, second
<v Speaker 1>year more successful. And for the last twenty four years
<v Speaker 1>it has been on Christmas Eve to Christmas Day, twelve showings,
<v Speaker 1>twenty four hours and has basically become a trip to
<v Speaker 1>They didn't even come out with memorabilia for the movie
<v Speaker 1>until two thousand and three. That's insane, that piece, that
<v Speaker 1>piece of playing at twenty four hours a day. Although
<v Speaker 1>I was very familiar with it the time they started that,
<v Speaker 1>I was like, oh, this is a great movie. It
<v Speaker 1>was that that turned this movie into probably the icon
<v Speaker 1>that it is today.
<v Speaker 2>You want to hear a funny story, sure, so you
<v Speaker 2>know it's Christmas time or whatever, we open presents, we
<v Speaker 2>drive to Tulsa to my in laws. Huh, they are
<v Speaker 2>approximately two hours away from my house.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, so whenever.
<v Speaker 2>We stop watching The Christmas Story in Norman and we
<v Speaker 2>get to Tulsa, it's about the same spot.
<v Speaker 1>Perfect. That's perfect. Yeah, I will say this. Our Christmas
<v Speaker 1>tradition since we've had kids, so we're talking eighteen years now,
<v Speaker 1>has always been we do Christmas Morning at our house
<v Speaker 1>and then around lunchtime we go over to my wife's
<v Speaker 1>mother's house. We have the same kind of food every year,
<v Speaker 1>and it's great, and the TV is always on and
<v Speaker 1>it's always playing story right until last year. Last year
<v Speaker 1>the movie that was playing Diard. Yes, all right, buddy,
<v Speaker 1>the time is here. I heard Santas sleigh bells overhead.
<v Speaker 1>We've got to get to bed. So before we do,
<v Speaker 1>we've got to give final judgment. We have iconic movie
<v Speaker 1>home alone, mega mega mega hit versus A Christmas Story,
<v Speaker 1>iconic nostalgia. What do you say?
<v Speaker 2>Okay, So after analyzing these, and I told you I
<v Speaker 2>saw both of these in the movie theater, I laughed
<v Speaker 2>my butt off in both of these. I love them.
<v Speaker 2>They are fantastic Christmas movies. I am a huge, huge
<v Speaker 2>John Hughes fan. I would not say I'm a huge
<v Speaker 2>Bob Clark fan. And really the actors and stuff that
<v Speaker 2>in Christmas Story, they didn't really do anything after it
<v Speaker 2>that I'm in love with. But that's not the case
<v Speaker 2>with all the people from Home Alone. But I love
<v Speaker 2>the vignette style of a Christmas story. It's little bitty
<v Speaker 2>stories all stacked on top of each other, with the
<v Speaker 2>overarching I want to be begun for Christmas story. Now, then,
<v Speaker 2>I love Home Alone. I've seen it a million times,
<v Speaker 2>but watching it over and over again, it's not as
<v Speaker 2>enchanting as it once was. Ok Now, I love John Hughes.
<v Speaker 2>You will not find a bigger John Hughes fan than me.
<v Speaker 2>I'm also a little bit bitter at Home Alone because
<v Speaker 2>it altered the course of John Hughes's career. Because Home
<v Speaker 2>Alone was such a gigantic mega hit, we stopped getting
<v Speaker 2>the breakfast Club in Ferris Buelo's Day Off and instead
<v Speaker 2>we got Baby's Day Out and Flubber and Curly Sue
<v Speaker 2>and Dennis the Menace. So I kind of hold a
<v Speaker 2>grudge against Home Alone because of that. So for me,
<v Speaker 2>the better of these two movies is a Christmas story.
<v Speaker 1>D Okay, You've got die Hard a house at Christmas,
<v Speaker 1>and it's mixed with Looney Tunes, slapstick, painful comedy for
<v Speaker 1>the thumb, and pinky perfect combination of Joe Peshey and
<v Speaker 1>Daniel Stern. This is potentially a perfect movie. Okay, is
<v Speaker 1>it is arguably a perfect movie. Is so solidly dude
<v Speaker 1>with a problem and Dude solves the problem, and it's hysterical,
<v Speaker 1>it's well acted, it's well directed. I mean it changed
<v Speaker 1>the trajectory of Chris Columbus as well. I mean, talk
<v Speaker 1>about and kind of a swan song for John Hughes.
<v Speaker 1>Although he did do Miracle on thirty fourth Street and
<v Speaker 1>some other great ones, it really was kind of the
<v Speaker 1>peak of what was an escalating career and tragically we
<v Speaker 1>lost him too early. Went out for a walk one
<v Speaker 1>day and had art attack. Yeah, and my gosh, the
<v Speaker 1>man has given us so many iconic movies. I hate
<v Speaker 1>to say this, but I have to agree with you.
<v Speaker 1>Oh wow, a Christmas story. Even though it's not some
<v Speaker 1>great plot structure, it's not some it's not something that
<v Speaker 1>launched the careers of a whole bunch of people or
<v Speaker 1>any it was even a big hit at the time.
<v Speaker 1>It does something that not many movies do, which is
<v Speaker 1>capture a memory. It captures a memory, and that memory
<v Speaker 1>is a timeless memory because even though those things happened
<v Speaker 1>are supposed to have happened back in the thirties and forties,
<v Speaker 1>the scene changes, but the people are the same. Those
<v Speaker 1>are all things that I remember doing, and not nobody
<v Speaker 1>stuck their tongue to a light bulb, but we did
<v Speaker 1>things equally as stupid. There were bullies that we had
<v Speaker 1>to deal with, there were snowballs to the face, there
<v Speaker 1>were parents who didn't understand us, and there were those
<v Speaker 1>Christmas presents that we wanted that we knew meant the
<v Speaker 1>entire world to us. But as it turned out, what
<v Speaker 1>was really important was the family, right, And in both
<v Speaker 1>of these movies, that's kind of the messages that really
<v Speaker 1>a family is what's important. But it's Christmas Story that
<v Speaker 1>really brings that message home. It moves me. I tear
<v Speaker 1>up every time at the bully scene. I usually tear
<v Speaker 1>up whenever the dad is chuckling giddily to himself because
<v Speaker 1>he knows he's gotten his boy the present that he
<v Speaker 1>really truly wanted. And so because of that, I've got
<v Speaker 1>to say I agree, Christmas Story is my movie as well.
<v Speaker 2>Nice. Nice, I've got two questions for you, Okay, before
<v Speaker 2>we throw it out to our listeners, who we want
<v Speaker 2>to hear from you, what is your favorite of these
<v Speaker 2>two movies.
<v Speaker 1>But I got two questions for you before you go
<v Speaker 1>into those questions. Yeah, I will say this, Caleb, I
<v Speaker 1>refer to routine lying on the show. He would throw
<v Speaker 1>a snowball at me if he knew that I picked
<v Speaker 1>Christmas story of a Home Loan to him. Home Alone
<v Speaker 1>is by far the better movie. It's an action packed
<v Speaker 1>it's the little kid shooting the bad guys. It's comedy,
<v Speaker 1>gold Fantasy loves it. He loves it, and a Christmas story.
<v Speaker 1>He can take it or leave it.
<v Speaker 2>It's his Diehard it is, Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>It really is. And he loves Diehart too.
<v Speaker 2>Then all right, so here are my two questions.
<v Speaker 1>All right, right, yeah, okay.
<v Speaker 2>What is the one Christmas present that you always wanted
<v Speaker 2>that when you got it, you're.
<v Speaker 1>Like, man, this is it, no question about it. It
<v Speaker 1>was the Nintendo Entertainment System. A year it came out.
<v Speaker 1>Oh I can remember with ten eighty clarity seeing the
<v Speaker 1>advertisement for the Nintendo System. You had the little robot,
<v Speaker 1>you had the gun. But the thing that zoomed out
<v Speaker 1>to me was Super Mario Brothers hitting that little key
<v Speaker 1>question mark, and I was like, oh my gosh, I've
<v Speaker 1>spent literally tens twenties, no telling you how much money
<v Speaker 1>play in this video game. My favorite video game in
<v Speaker 1>the arcade is now available in a home entertainment system.
<v Speaker 1>I want this. This is all I want, all that
<v Speaker 1>I want. I don't care if you get me anything else.
<v Speaker 1>This is all that I want. And I can remember.
<v Speaker 1>It's a tradition at our house that you get to
<v Speaker 1>open one present on Christmas Eve. Right. That was the
<v Speaker 1>year that when I opened my Christmas Eve present, open
<v Speaker 1>it up, it was batteries. I was like what. I
<v Speaker 1>was like, No, you can't just wrap batteries and that'd
<v Speaker 1>be okay because it turned out Robot needed batteries, and
<v Speaker 1>so they were the batteries to the present that wasn't
<v Speaker 1>under the tree at the time. It didn't come until
<v Speaker 1>after I had gone to sleep.
<v Speaker 2>They all had fake there.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, it was thanks everyone, Yeah, said definitely. So how
<v Speaker 1>about you?
<v Speaker 2>What was your The thing that I wanted most and
<v Speaker 2>eventually got, although it took me like three Christmases to
<v Speaker 2>get it was the Kinner Millennium Falcon. Oh yeah, that's
<v Speaker 2>all I wanted. That was number one, two, three, four,
<v Speaker 2>and five on my list. I want the freaking Millennium Falcon.
<v Speaker 1>Right, right right, And when I.
<v Speaker 2>Got it, I fell in love with the I played
<v Speaker 2>it all the time. But here's the funny story. I
<v Speaker 2>had it all set up with all my guys. I
<v Speaker 2>was playing with it, having a good time. It's time
<v Speaker 2>for bed. Get in bed. I had a bunk bed,
<v Speaker 2>fell off my bunk bed one time my entire life.
<v Speaker 2>In the middle of the night, I rolled out, fell
<v Speaker 2>off the top, bug landed on my Millennium Falcon and
<v Speaker 2>smashed it and never replaced it.
<v Speaker 1>That is heartbreaking. I know it was heartbreaking real quick.
<v Speaker 1>There's a movie that's just come out. I think it's
<v Speaker 1>on Netflix or something like that. I've just seen the
<v Speaker 1>preview four but it's called eight Bit Christmas. Yeah, it's
<v Speaker 1>obviously a remake type thing of a Christmas Story, except
<v Speaker 1>instead of a red writer be begun. It's a Nintendo
<v Speaker 1>entertainment so fantastic. So I got to go check that
<v Speaker 1>one out. Hopefully it's it's good. It looks like it's
<v Speaker 1>got a six point seven on IMDb though.
<v Speaker 2>So all right, well we want to hear from you guys,
<v Speaker 2>which were these two classic Christmas movie I forgot to
<v Speaker 2>ask my second question. All right, here's your second question.
<v Speaker 2>You're ready for this?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, all right.
<v Speaker 2>We've covered five Christmas movies now, okay, die Hard, Leath
<v Speaker 2>the Weapon, Home Alone, Christmas Story, and the Star Wars
<v Speaker 2>Holiday Special. Give me your ranking one through five? Ready, said, go, oh.
<v Speaker 1>My gosh, that's oh my gosh. Okay, So if I'm
<v Speaker 1>walking out the door, die Hard is number one with
<v Speaker 1>that question. Okay, uh, number two, it's so hard. Okay,
<v Speaker 1>die Hard, a Christmas Story, Home Alone, lethal Weapon, and
<v Speaker 1>I don't think I'm ever ever going to watch Star
<v Speaker 1>Wars Special.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, okay, you're crazy.
<v Speaker 1>They're all close. I mean, I love them all. I
<v Speaker 1>would watch any of them anytimes, and they're fantastic movies.
<v Speaker 1>You're forcing me into a hole.
<v Speaker 2>Here, all right, here you go?
<v Speaker 1>You ready?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, die Hard, Leath a Weapon, now, a Christmas Story
<v Speaker 2>Home Alone, and despite my unusual affection for the Star
<v Speaker 2>Wars Holiday Special, it's definitely fit right.
<v Speaker 6>Yeah, okay, okay.
<v Speaker 7>Now that we've given our ranks, we are going to
<v Speaker 7>have a little special Shirley showcase and one of our
<v Speaker 7>good friends, author extraordinary mister Van Allen Plexico, and.
<v Speaker 2>Here's how he ranked our five Christmas podcasts.
<v Speaker 5>Hey, guys, Van Allen Plexico. Here from the White Rocket
<v Speaker 5>Entertainment Network. You have asked me to rank these five
<v Speaker 5>Christmas related features, and so here goes, counting down from
<v Speaker 5>number five. At number five, we have a Christmas Story.
<v Speaker 5>I have never understood why people obsess over this movie.
<v Speaker 5>It's just kind of weird and the lamp thing and
<v Speaker 5>the BB gun and it's almost like whatever. Moving on
<v Speaker 5>number four home alone, it's not my cup of either,
<v Speaker 5>but at least it's got some action and wacky violence
<v Speaker 5>to keep us all entertained. And what more can we
<v Speaker 5>ask for at Christmas time than wacky violence exactly? And
<v Speaker 5>speaking of wacky violence, at number three comes Lethal Weapon.
<v Speaker 5>I've never loved this movie. I've never considered it a
<v Speaker 5>great movie, but it's a pretty decent one. And probably
<v Speaker 5>most folks would say that Lethal Weapon two is a
<v Speaker 5>better Lethal Weapon movie. But that being said, this one
<v Speaker 5>ranks right in the middle for me. I mean, the
<v Speaker 5>two lead actors are pretty good and it has some
<v Speaker 5>fun stuff in it. I'll even forgive Shane Black for
<v Speaker 5>a ruining Iron Man with the Iron Man three because
<v Speaker 5>this is a pretty good movie. So number three is
<v Speaker 5>Lethal Weapon number two. The Star Wars Holiday Special, an
<v Speaker 5>utter glorious train wreck in all other respects. It is
<v Speaker 5>rightfully derided in that fashion by fans and has been
<v Speaker 5>for over forty years. I remember watching it when it aired,
<v Speaker 5>and I wondered what in the world I was seeing.
<v Speaker 5>If I'd been a little bit older, I'd have been
<v Speaker 5>wondering what kind of drugs were in in the creation
<v Speaker 5>as special? But how is it ranked number two? Because
<v Speaker 5>it is memorable, it is an iconic event in Star
<v Speaker 5>Wars history, and most importantly, it introduces Boba Fett. Yes,
<v Speaker 5>he's a cartoon and not a very good cartoon, but
<v Speaker 5>he's the greatest Star Wars character of all and so
<v Speaker 5>the fact that it introduces Boba fet ranks this number
<v Speaker 5>two all time on the list of these five entertainments
<v Speaker 5>and number one?
<v Speaker 1>Is this even a question?
<v Speaker 5>Diehard?
<v Speaker 1>Come on.
<v Speaker 5>It's so much a Christmas movie that when I saw
<v Speaker 5>it in the theater in the middle of a blazing
<v Speaker 5>hot summer in nineteen eighty eight, when I left the theater,
<v Speaker 5>I was fully expecting to be freezing cold. When I
<v Speaker 5>got outside, I thought there'd be snow on the ground.
<v Speaker 5>I thought Christmas music would be playing from every car
<v Speaker 5>that passed by. I fully expected it to be snowing
<v Speaker 5>when I left the theater in like July of nineteen
<v Speaker 5>eighty eight. After seeing this movie, it's so great. It's
<v Speaker 5>set up the whole genre of action movies of this type,
<v Speaker 5>and it is so very Christmas y. All right, there
<v Speaker 5>you go. Oh, that is your five movies or entertainments
<v Speaker 5>that you wanted me to rank, and I have ranked them.
<v Speaker 5>I'm sure others will disagree, but that's my ranking. I
<v Speaker 5>am Van Allen Plexiico. Check out all my shows by
<v Speaker 5>going to www dot plexiico dot net, p l e
<v Speaker 5>Xico dot net, or search White Rocket on any pod app.
<v Speaker 7>Oh wow, Okay, so you think you know a guy
<v Speaker 7>I'm I'm I'm baffled here, But I mean he came
<v Speaker 7>strong with the opinion.
<v Speaker 1>He came strong with it.
<v Speaker 7>Even though I totally disagree with what he had to
<v Speaker 7>say about most of it.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I'm on board that Diehard's the best, though. What what? What?
<v Speaker 1>What what do you think? Man? What do you think
<v Speaker 1>about those rankings?
<v Speaker 3>I think it's strong.
<v Speaker 2>He's coming with Star Wars Holiday Special number two that
<v Speaker 2>is amazing. He gives a lot of credit because of
<v Speaker 2>both event.
<v Speaker 1>I think it's great. He's a little bit hard on
<v Speaker 1>Home Alone and the Christmas story.
<v Speaker 7>They had lethal weapon and lethal weapon.
<v Speaker 2>That's true.
<v Speaker 7>I guess he's I understand he's a little bit bitter
<v Speaker 7>about what he did with Ironman three.
<v Speaker 2>But he hates Ironman three. He wants to meet Shane
<v Speaker 2>Black in a dark alley sometime.
<v Speaker 1>It's hilarious.
<v Speaker 7>Van Allen Plexiko, Thank you very much, sir. That was
<v Speaker 7>awesome and I love it. And a Merry Christmas.
<v Speaker 2>Thanks Man, appreciate you, man, Thank you to everybody who's
<v Speaker 2>made this special year. Merry Christmas to everybody.
<v Speaker 1>God bless us everything.
<v Speaker 2>Thank you for joining us and on our fun. We
<v Speaker 2>hope to see you in season three. We're gonna take
<v Speaker 2>some time off.
<v Speaker 1>We're gonna take some time off, but it'll probably be
<v Speaker 1>February because we've got the fiftieth anniversary of The Godfather
<v Speaker 1>coming up. We've got the new release of The Batman
<v Speaker 1>coming up, and we're going to be doing some special
<v Speaker 1>episodes on those and before we go. It takes us
<v Speaker 1>literally hours and hours to put just one of these
<v Speaker 1>episodes together. So if you can, if you feel like
<v Speaker 1>giving us a Christmas present this year for next year,
<v Speaker 1>go to our Patreon page. It's patreon dot com slash
<v Speaker 1>Shirly Podcast, and you can help us out with the
<v Speaker 1>monthly donation. But even if we had to do it
<v Speaker 1>for free, we would do it because there are some
<v Speaker 1>amazing people that we've met and would not have known
<v Speaker 1>them and met them but through this podcast. And so
<v Speaker 1>we want to take this time to say thank you
<v Speaker 1>and Merry Christmas to a select group of folks.
<v Speaker 2>That's right. So first of all our patroons, we want
<v Speaker 2>to thank Addie Ayshino, Cameron Ecker, Travis Laslie, Chris Bauer,
<v Speaker 2>Dayton Johnson, Chris and Jeanie, Alexander Alan Is Vaccinated, Yep,
<v Speaker 2>Dale Selby, Brad Moore, Christopher Walketon, and of course James Buckley,
<v Speaker 2>our good friend and Patrion very first one.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, Jonathan Tweety's the one fan that we've met in
<v Speaker 1>person at this point. That was really cool. We've got
<v Speaker 1>to go to dinner with him.
<v Speaker 5>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. We also have some guys who routinely communicate with
<v Speaker 1>us on Facebook who are always giving us some great
<v Speaker 1>insight into episodes past and potentially future. We've got Scott Rothschild,
<v Speaker 1>We've got Chris Weber who did the Shirley Showcase for us.
<v Speaker 1>We've got Rocky Cham, Derek l Adam Winerub, We've got
<v Speaker 1>Mo and Max from the Buzz and the Tower podcast.
<v Speaker 1>Be sure and go check that out. We've got our
<v Speaker 1>friends from the thirty something podcast. We've got John and.
<v Speaker 2>Pat and Bo and Jeff and yeah, all.
<v Speaker 1>Of those guys. Merry Christmas, guys. We're sorry we're missing
<v Speaker 1>out on doing a Christmas episode with you this year.
<v Speaker 1>We will We will catch you in twenty twenty two. Maybe.
<v Speaker 2>You know who else we really need to think this
<v Speaker 2>year is our good buddy David Wright. He did four
<v Speaker 2>episodes with us. Step Dave was our hip hop rap expert.
<v Speaker 1>We got to just sit back and live in the
<v Speaker 1>limelight as he waxed poetic on all of that rap history.
<v Speaker 1>And it was awesome, truly truly great time. Some other
<v Speaker 1>Facebook guys who routinely communicate with us, Nick Hinsley.
<v Speaker 2>Jay Reed, Ryan Wore, Ainwater, Neil Rudnick. And then we
<v Speaker 2>want to thank everybody who's taken.
<v Speaker 1>The time to record our show showcase.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah we know that takes time kind of effort, Yeah yeah,
<v Speaker 2>and we appreciate you guys contributing to our.
<v Speaker 1>Show, right, We really do, guys, It's been another great
<v Speaker 1>season in the books. I can't tell you how moved
<v Speaker 1>I am that you continue to listen to us and
<v Speaker 1>we continue to grow. Thank you so much, and mere
<v Speaker 1>Christmas here, Christmas happiness there.
<v Speaker 3>You do you, I'm bound to thank you for it.
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