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

<v Speaker 1>This is a podcast from Minute Media.
<v Speaker 2>Fucking hello everybody, and welcome back to the Surely You
<v Speaker 2>Can't Be Serious Podcasts, Part two of our special Christmas edition.
<v Speaker 2>And I'm thinking, Jason, maybe these guys should be spending
<v Speaker 2>some time with their family instead of listening to our podcasts.
<v Speaker 2>What do you think? No? For three reasons.
<v Speaker 3>Ay, we'll be comparing two of the greatest Christmas movies
<v Speaker 3>of all time, Home Alone and Christmas Story two.
<v Speaker 2>This is our last podcast of twenty twenty.
<v Speaker 3>One, and d we'll be giving our final judgment and
<v Speaker 3>all five of the Christmas movies we've covered so far
<v Speaker 3>in our podcast.
<v Speaker 2>It's going to be amazing. Why the heck did you
<v Speaker 2>take your shoes off? Why are you just like a chicken?
<v Speaker 3>All right, we're diving in right here, Part two of
<v Speaker 3>a Christmas Story versus Home Alone. Let's talk about the
<v Speaker 3>lamp real quick, Okay, the electric sex and in the
<v Speaker 3>window I had somebody. This week we've posted on Facebook
<v Speaker 3>about a Christmas Story fragilely.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, must be French, not French. It's Italian. Must be Italian.
<v Speaker 2>Everybody does it. Everybody says must be French, but it's
<v Speaker 2>not French. This must be Italian.
<v Speaker 3>Really, Yes, Okay, well I blew that one.
<v Speaker 4>Then.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.
<v Speaker 3>The reason why he gets this lamp in the first
<v Speaker 3>place because his wife is great this trivia, Yeah, Victor, you.
<v Speaker 2>Know everybody knows the lone Ranger's nephew's horse. Great characters
<v Speaker 2>of literature, Victor.
<v Speaker 5>Yeah.
<v Speaker 3>And then when he gets the lamp, of course he
<v Speaker 3>sets it up. She keeps turning it off. She hates
<v Speaker 3>it clearly. And then that day comes where there's an
<v Speaker 3>I don't.
<v Speaker 2>Know what happened. I was watering my plants and I
<v Speaker 2>broke your lamp. Get the glue. We don't have any
<v Speaker 2>You used up all the glue. On purpose, he was
<v Speaker 2>looking for a singer, but all he could get out
<v Speaker 2>was not guy. Oh my god, it's great.
<v Speaker 3>The Chinese scene at the end of the movie, Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>we have to shepherd.
<v Speaker 2>They had to go eat Chinese food. But the rest
<v Speaker 2>of the scene was all a creation of Bob Clark.
<v Speaker 2>There was no duck, there was no singing. That was
<v Speaker 2>all Bob Clark and the rah and he's he's smiling
<v Speaker 2>at me.
<v Speaker 3>Oh, I love that scene. Melinda Dylon was purposely given
<v Speaker 3>the wrong script so she would be shocked in.
<v Speaker 2>Surprise, and her reaction is so genuine, her laughter is
<v Speaker 2>so good, and her scream is so on point awesome.
<v Speaker 2>I love it. He's smiling at me.
<v Speaker 3>And then the Chinese guys are singing fellah la la lah, right,
<v Speaker 3>and the guy the restaurant keeps correcting them. Yeah, no, no, no, no,
<v Speaker 3>seemed like this like the Hall of the Balls and
<v Speaker 3>hollow right, and he corrects them. If you watch the movie,
<v Speaker 3>that dude is cracking up.
<v Speaker 2>The whole time. Oh yeah, he can't stop laughing. It's
<v Speaker 2>it's great, it's great. Okay, one more quick thing. Okay,
<v Speaker 2>this is a point of contention and I and I
<v Speaker 2>wonder about that because I think that I had my
<v Speaker 2>Red Writer be Begun before this movie came out, and
<v Speaker 2>my Red Writer be Begun I still own it. It
<v Speaker 2>has a compass in the stock, yes, Red Writer b
<v Speaker 2>Begun maintains that they did not have a model that
<v Speaker 2>had a compass in the stock. That's some other brand
<v Speaker 2>of B Begun. And Geene Shepherd, when he was still alive,
<v Speaker 2>was like, I remember it. I remember the compass in
<v Speaker 2>the stock. And this thing that tells time. I say,
<v Speaker 2>which tails time?
<v Speaker 4>Yet?
<v Speaker 5>Yeah?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, And I'm telling you, I had it compass in
<v Speaker 2>the stock Sundial all on the butt of my Red
<v Speaker 2>Writer be begun.
<v Speaker 3>Yes, but those are recreations. So when they went to
<v Speaker 3>the nineteen thirty nine version, Red Writer Company is like, well,
<v Speaker 3>we're going to have to make one for you because
<v Speaker 3>it's not the way you remember it.
<v Speaker 2>Right and speaking, which is important to note that this
<v Speaker 2>was supposed to be back in the nineteen thirties. Forties
<v Speaker 2>areas right that? Yeah? Okay, So Bob Clark deliberately tried
<v Speaker 2>to make the movie look like it was filmed back then.
<v Speaker 2>That's why you have that kind of stalgic look going on.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, not only did they do the costumes right
<v Speaker 2>and the cars right, but he had the way of filming.
<v Speaker 2>And one of those things was the iris opening and
<v Speaker 2>closing from one scene to the next scene, which was
<v Speaker 2>a totally old style of doing your cuts. But he
<v Speaker 2>brought it back for this movie because he wanted that
<v Speaker 2>nostalgia feeling and he nailed it.
<v Speaker 3>You know, a movie the cinematographer for Home Alone watched
<v Speaker 3>in order to get the right feel for the movie.
<v Speaker 2>Christmas Story Perfect. How about that?
<v Speaker 3>All right, guys, let's take a quick break we're going
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<v Speaker 2>out Blindsided. Okay, so let's move back to home alone. Right. Okay,
<v Speaker 2>so we said we started off with Warner Brothers. The
<v Speaker 2>budget was ten million dollars, and they started making their movie,
<v Speaker 2>and day after day, event after event, the budget started
<v Speaker 2>to creep up, creep up, and creep up, and eventually
<v Speaker 2>they reached fourteen point seven million dollars, and Warner Brothers
<v Speaker 2>called them up and said, you guys have to stop.
<v Speaker 2>You're at fourteen point seven. You said you could make
<v Speaker 2>this movie for ten million. You need to stop. Like
<v Speaker 2>you're gonna give us trouble. We're doing great, We've got
<v Speaker 2>all this stuff together. I mean they went cheap. I
<v Speaker 2>meant the cinematographer, second unit guy for movies like he
<v Speaker 2>had never really done it on his own before. Same
<v Speaker 2>thing for the editor, same thing for the set designer.
<v Speaker 2>And so they had gone for guys who didn't have
<v Speaker 2>a whole lot of experience to do these things, just
<v Speaker 2>to keep the budget within reasonable realms. And it's not
<v Speaker 2>like they had Arnold Schwarzenegger the title role, right, r
<v Speaker 2>an eight year old kid, And so they went off
<v Speaker 2>by a little bit. But I mean, we're talking about
<v Speaker 2>Hollywood standards here, that's not that much.
<v Speaker 3>So John Hughes is like, no, this is bull crap.
<v Speaker 3>This is Warner Brothers we're talking about. This is not
<v Speaker 3>some mom and pop thing. He's like, they'll make it.
<v Speaker 3>It's fine, I'll send him a letter. So John Hughes
<v Speaker 3>writes a letter. It's like there's nothing left to cut.
<v Speaker 3>So they're like, all right, we're pulling the plug.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. But John Hughes had a little ace in his sleeve,
<v Speaker 2>right because he did something that if you live in Hollywood,
<v Speaker 2>you would call it underhanded, that's right, or illegal? Right,
<v Speaker 2>Like it's it's not okay. So he had talked to
<v Speaker 2>executives from twentieth Century Fox while the movie was still
<v Speaker 2>a Warner Brothers movie, and surreptitiously, somehow those guys got
<v Speaker 2>a copy of the script. That's funny how that happens
<v Speaker 2>just happened up on their doorsteps somehow. Man. And so
<v Speaker 2>they when these things are going on with Warner Brothers.
<v Speaker 2>They're like, if anything goes wrong, if it ends up
<v Speaker 2>and turnaround, you let us know, just keep going. And
<v Speaker 2>they're like, how much did you say you were at
<v Speaker 2>and he's like fourteen point seven. They're like, you don't stop.
<v Speaker 2>Don't stop production. And so literally, when the hatchetman from
<v Speaker 2>Warner Brothers shows up, he goes from door to door
<v Speaker 2>in the New Trier School to their offices and say,
<v Speaker 2>all right, guys, shut it down, we're cutting it. This
<v Speaker 2>movie's over. And right behind him was the assistant director
<v Speaker 2>who's like, don shut it down. And he would literally
<v Speaker 2>follow him from office to office. And when he walked
<v Speaker 2>out of the building, he turned around and he's like,
<v Speaker 2>what's going on. He's like, what's going on is you're fired?
<v Speaker 2>I love it.
<v Speaker 3>I love that story.
<v Speaker 2>And we're talking about I mean, fourteen fifteen million dollars.
<v Speaker 2>Can you imagine being the Warner Brothers guy who said
<v Speaker 2>kill this movie and then seeing it hit number one
<v Speaker 2>week one, then week two, week three, week four, we five,
<v Speaker 2>I mean something like twelve to fourteen weeks this movie
<v Speaker 2>was in the number one spot.
<v Speaker 3>It's insane. It made almost what half a billion dollars?
<v Speaker 2>Like it was, Yeah, in the four hundred million dollar.
<v Speaker 3>Range, and they let it slip through their fingers over
<v Speaker 3>one point two million dollars.
<v Speaker 2>It's nice. Warner Brothers, Warner Brothers.
<v Speaker 3>Gosh, Daniel Stern was filming City Slickers, and Billy Crystal
<v Speaker 3>would get a copy of the magazine and he kept
<v Speaker 3>coming to me. He was like, Hey, your movie's number one.
<v Speaker 3>And then he showed up again, Hey, guess what your
<v Speaker 3>movies number one. They were shot City Slickers for three months.
<v Speaker 3>The whole time it was number one.
<v Speaker 2>It was in the theater for six months. It's insane.
<v Speaker 2>It is insane.
<v Speaker 3>When Chris Columbus's next movie, Only Lonely, starring John Candy,
<v Speaker 3>was released.
<v Speaker 2>Home Alone was in the theater.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, Only Lonely finished number five. Home Loan was number eleven.
<v Speaker 2>That's how long it had stayed. Okay, So let's talk
<v Speaker 2>a little bit about those guys who were editing and
<v Speaker 2>filming and such like that. So the guy who had
<v Speaker 2>only done second unit, who was their cinematographer, he's a
<v Speaker 2>little concerned that he might mess something up, and so
<v Speaker 2>he had a little like tiny extra camera that he
<v Speaker 2>would set up for every shot just to get coverage. Right,
<v Speaker 2>just to just to make sure in case something goes
<v Speaker 2>wrong with the main picture that I've got that. And
<v Speaker 2>he called it his chicken camera. Please believe that the
<v Speaker 2>bonus camera. Yes, and so he was like, not only
<v Speaker 2>was it invaluable, but I started to realize some of
<v Speaker 2>my best shots were coming from the chicken caing And
<v Speaker 2>so a lot of what you see in the movie
<v Speaker 2>is from that second camera that he had set up.
<v Speaker 2>And some of the reasons that it's so good are
<v Speaker 2>the stunts, because the stunt would you know, he'd have
<v Speaker 2>one camera set up and he'd catch the stunt man's
<v Speaker 2>face or whatever. And I mean, you watch those stunts,
<v Speaker 2>Holy cow, you think that's a real person. This isn't
<v Speaker 2>a cartoon, Like those guys are real human beings falling
<v Speaker 2>as hard as and there wasn't padding. This is a
<v Speaker 2>low budget movie. There was a guy dressed up like
<v Speaker 2>Joe Pesci who fell as hard as he could after
<v Speaker 2>doing a four jump in the air straight on to
<v Speaker 2>his back. Chris Columbus said, they wouldn't watch the take.
<v Speaker 2>They'd say action, they'd turn away, and then once they
<v Speaker 2>knew it was over, they go, is he okay? Okay?
<v Speaker 2>All right? And then and it was ready to do
<v Speaker 2>it again. Those stuntmen are amazing. I mean, you just
<v Speaker 2>got to think about iron to the face, shot in
<v Speaker 2>the crotch, blow towards whatever you got. It is amazing
<v Speaker 2>the stuff that those guys went through, including the stuntman
<v Speaker 2>for Macaulay Culkin.
<v Speaker 3>Who is a thirty year old man, yeah, who is
<v Speaker 3>just just short.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, short, and then just worked out. Well.
<v Speaker 3>The one stunt that bothers me the most is that
<v Speaker 3>dude who's jumping off the porch directly on his like
<v Speaker 3>backslash neck.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and he lands. I mean, dude, I wouldn't be
<v Speaker 2>like dead. You listen to him talking about He's like,
<v Speaker 2>I love it. I love he must be a massacre.
<v Speaker 2>He just enjoys the thing. Crazy man. So, how do
<v Speaker 2>you make a movie that's got this much violence and
<v Speaker 2>still make it PG and acceptable to parents and kids.
<v Speaker 2>You make it a cartoon movie. That's what you do.
<v Speaker 2>And so that's he was pulling. The guy who they
<v Speaker 2>had doing the editing was pulling sounds and notions and
<v Speaker 2>shots from the Looney Tunes.
<v Speaker 3>He watched Looney tunes to get the beats of the movie,
<v Speaker 3>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? What are you doing Marv? You know the.
<v Speaker 3>Tarantula scene, the Transla on the face scene, which you
<v Speaker 3>know when I saw this in the movie theater, I'm like, dude,
<v Speaker 3>that's a real translaon his face and it was like
<v Speaker 3>super scary, right, I guess translas are deaf, Like they
<v Speaker 3>can't hear. Like Daniel Sturm was like, if I scream
<v Speaker 3>my guts ound, is this thing gonna bite me? And
<v Speaker 3>they're like, no, no, it's deaf.
<v Speaker 2>Can't hear you? Okay, sure, there it goes.
<v Speaker 3>By the way, way that Trancella's name they never say
<v Speaker 3>in the movie. You get it from the novelization.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, Transella's name. Axel, Oh my god? Is it Fully
<v Speaker 2>or Rose?
<v Speaker 3>I believe it's Rose based on the year that it
<v Speaker 3>came out.
<v Speaker 2>Well, I guess Buzz would probably be a g n
<v Speaker 2>R fan. By the way, your girlfriend.
<v Speaker 3>The girlfriend's picture, yeah, that is the that is the
<v Speaker 3>son of like the assistant director.
<v Speaker 2>They felt it was going to be too mean to.
<v Speaker 3>Take a picture of a real girl and then talk
<v Speaker 3>about how much of a dog she is.
<v Speaker 2>So it's his son. That picture is hilarious. That's hysterical.
<v Speaker 2>One of the things that I want to talk about.
<v Speaker 3>During the production, like they would film scenes with the
<v Speaker 3>family in France, and when they cut it all together
<v Speaker 3>and they showed it to test audiences, people could have
<v Speaker 3>cared less about the mcallisters in France, right.
<v Speaker 2>They wanted just to get back to Kevin. I mean,
<v Speaker 2>and that's another question, you know, how do you make
<v Speaker 2>how do you create a believable story where the mother
<v Speaker 2>leaves her child at home and is not a human
<v Speaker 2>being that you hate? Okay, we got to talk about that.
<v Speaker 2>So that's the biggest problem with this movie. Okay, yep.
<v Speaker 3>Most people when they watch it, they're like, well, she's
<v Speaker 3>a terrible mother. I would say, she's not a terrible mother.
<v Speaker 2>No, Okay.
<v Speaker 3>She had a series of unfortunate events, including the neighbor
<v Speaker 3>boy who came over and looked enough like Kevin to
<v Speaker 3>be counted as part of the family. They were in
<v Speaker 3>a huge rush because they overslept because the power.
<v Speaker 2>Line right, right.
<v Speaker 3>But one thing that you might miss when you watch
<v Speaker 3>the movie that I only caught this time, when Kevin
<v Speaker 3>and Buzz get in a fight at the dinner before
<v Speaker 3>they have their flight or whatever. He knocks over a
<v Speaker 3>bunch of milk. Mister mcalliser scoops up this giant mess
<v Speaker 3>and it includes Kevin's ticket, his airline ticket.
<v Speaker 2>Yep. If you freeze frame it, you can see the
<v Speaker 2>ticket being thrown into the trash.
<v Speaker 3>I guess John Hughes was intent on covering all the holes, right.
<v Speaker 2>So I note because I knew that that was the case.
<v Speaker 2>I watched as they came onto the plane, and they
<v Speaker 2>just make it onto the plane, right, And the flight
<v Speaker 2>attendant is like, you just made it, And so she's
<v Speaker 2>got all of the tickets in her hand. They hand
<v Speaker 2>them all to her at the same time, and so
<v Speaker 2>she's got the tickets, she's counting the heads as they
<v Speaker 2>go onto the plane. And that's why you don't get
<v Speaker 2>a miscount. It's because that ticket got thrown away. John
<v Speaker 2>Hughes is brilliant.
<v Speaker 3>There was a scene that was actually cut from the
<v Speaker 3>movie when Kevin realizes that his family is missing. He
<v Speaker 3>burst out the front door and into the front lawn
<v Speaker 3>and like, where's my family?
<v Speaker 2>And the garage doors are up.
<v Speaker 3>They actually did forget to put the garage doores.
<v Speaker 2>That's right, yep.
<v Speaker 3>So I thought this was interesting, the Christmas ornaments that
<v Speaker 3>Daniel Stearn has to step on. So we talked about
<v Speaker 3>how die Hard and Home Alone have people picking glass
<v Speaker 3>out of their feet. Those ornaments he actually did step on.
<v Speaker 3>He did have those fake ribber feet that Bruce Willis
<v Speaker 3>had in die Hard.
<v Speaker 2>He wore those as well.
<v Speaker 3>But those ornaments were made of sugar, so those shards.
<v Speaker 2>Are not really that sharp, gotcha.
<v Speaker 3>We talked about how they had this cartoon language where
<v Speaker 3>they didn't curse at all.
<v Speaker 2>Right, right about the fifty three.
<v Speaker 3>Minute mark, Daniel Stern does let out the old sh word.
<v Speaker 2>Yep. It just kind of.
<v Speaker 4>Slides under you don't really notice it, right, So apparently
<v Speaker 4>that is the point in the movie where he's retrieving
<v Speaker 4>his boot through the doggy door, right, And it even
<v Speaker 4>shows up in the subtitles, which I thought was funny.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, which is also probably the time in a Christmas
<v Speaker 2>story where Ralphie realizes that his decoder ring has been
<v Speaker 2>an advertisement frommy commercial says, I just want to talk
<v Speaker 2>about that. There's a moment that's like with actors on movies,
<v Speaker 2>you have these small scenes, right like this boom happens,
<v Speaker 2>Boom happened. They're looking at their script as it goes right, right,
<v Speaker 2>but they're in this home alone. There is an extended
<v Speaker 2>dialogue scene that involves Kevin call him just this very
<v Speaker 2>young actor doing the scene, and it's the one in
<v Speaker 2>the church, right, And it's an emotional, moving, important moment
<v Speaker 2>because it's like it's like we talked about, you have
<v Speaker 2>to fall in love with the character before you see
<v Speaker 2>him go do all this horrible stuff, right, because you're
<v Speaker 2>about to see him go do some really mean and
<v Speaker 2>dastardly things, although it is the bad guys, but before that,
<v Speaker 2>you are touched. Your heart is touched. Right. And it's
<v Speaker 2>that scene with the old man in the church talking
<v Speaker 2>about his son and his granddaughter who was singing in
<v Speaker 2>the choir. Right. So Chris Columbus was concerned about the scene.
<v Speaker 2>And Chris Columbus is a great guy to work with kids,
<v Speaker 2>like he just loves treats them like grown ups but
<v Speaker 2>still appreciates that there are kids and has fun with them.
<v Speaker 2>So he was worried about how the scene was going
<v Speaker 2>to go. He said. Macaulay Culkin showed up for this
<v Speaker 2>scene and had it memorized and did it perfectly right,
<v Speaker 2>out of the gate right like it was like or
<v Speaker 2>watching a stage performance. He had it all down and
<v Speaker 2>delivered it all perfectly from beginning to end.
<v Speaker 3>You know, that scene I think would mirror the scene
<v Speaker 3>in Diehard when Bruge Willis is picking the glass out
<v Speaker 3>of his feet talking about how I always told his
<v Speaker 3>wife he loved her, but he never said he was sorry. Yep,
<v Speaker 3>you gotta nail that one, because it's time to go get.
<v Speaker 2>The bad guys right right, Okay, we're ready to talk composers.
<v Speaker 2>Let's talk composers. Okay, So jumping back to a Christmas story,
<v Speaker 2>we have a couple guys. We have Paul Zaza, yes,
<v Speaker 2>and Carl Zitter. Now, Carl Zitter has done a music
<v Speaker 2>composition for New Jack City and Moonstruck, and then of
<v Speaker 2>course he also did it for a couple of Bob
<v Speaker 2>Clark movies called the Murder by Numbers and Black Christmas.
<v Speaker 2>As we discussed, Murder by Numbers also involved Paul's Aza,
<v Speaker 2>and Paul's Oza was also the composer for Baby Genuses.
<v Speaker 2>The music that they have in this movie is very
<v Speaker 2>Christmas based, right, it's all. And then you have the
<v Speaker 2>kind of chase and as the kids are running away
<v Speaker 2>from the bullies. Right. It's very subtle. It's not breathtaking,
<v Speaker 2>but it makes the movie in a non obtrusive way, right,
<v Speaker 2>would you agree?
<v Speaker 3>Sure?
<v Speaker 2>So then jump forward to Home Alone. They have a
<v Speaker 2>guy who's supposed to do the music composition for Home Alone. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>you know who that guy is. His name is Bruce Broughton.
<v Speaker 3>H He was attached as the original composer.
<v Speaker 2>Ye. He worked with Chris.
<v Speaker 3>Columbus when they did Young Sherlock Holmes, but he left
<v Speaker 3>Home Alone to go do The Rescuers down Under.
<v Speaker 2>Really yeah? Okay, well he had composed some music for it.
<v Speaker 2>Ultimately we know that it didn't get used in the movie. Right,
<v Speaker 2>just wasn't right. But there they are. They've got a movie,
<v Speaker 2>they've got it cut together, but they don't have music. Like, okay, well,
<v Speaker 2>what are we going to do? Who are we going
<v Speaker 2>to get? And Chris Columbus as a joke, because we're
<v Speaker 2>talking about a small budget movie by a director who
<v Speaker 2>has done two movies, one of which is an absolute failure,
<v Speaker 2>and he goes going to be great if we could
<v Speaker 2>get John Williams.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, the greatest living movie composer of all.
<v Speaker 2>Time, Right, somehow John Williams gets the rough cut of
<v Speaker 2>the movie. He calls them on the phone and says,
<v Speaker 2>I love this movie. Is it okay if I compose
<v Speaker 2>the music for it? Gosh?
<v Speaker 3>And it was so key to the feel and tone
<v Speaker 3>of this movie.
<v Speaker 2>Oh my gosh. Yes. I mean he takes all of
<v Speaker 2>those Tchaikowsky Nutcracker music suits and weaves them perfectly into
<v Speaker 2>his own music, which creates the I mean, it changes
<v Speaker 2>the movie. I mean without that music, it's not the
<v Speaker 2>same movie. It is. It takes it to that number
<v Speaker 2>one over and over again, week after week.
<v Speaker 3>Level. The word he used was I was enchanted. Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>which is so John Williams, Yeah, it is.
<v Speaker 2>It really is so.
<v Speaker 3>Then of course Chris Columbus goes on to do the
<v Speaker 3>Harry Potter movies, right, and John Williams does those as well.
<v Speaker 2>And it's also very crests, very first, lots of bells
<v Speaker 2>and chines. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, okay, So on
<v Speaker 2>the music, not only did we have you know that
<v Speaker 2>Christmas music, but do you know what music plays when
<v Speaker 2>the bullies come out? It's like Peter and the Wolf, right, Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>And of course the bullies are Grover Dill and Scott Farcas,
<v Speaker 2>which is a Hungarian word which means wolf. Oh that's great.
<v Speaker 2>There you go down the day all right. Of note
<v Speaker 2>in home alone, just talking about the little the little
<v Speaker 2>nuances you know, right that make it. Yes, there's almost
<v Speaker 2>no blue in the entire movie. It is almost exclusively
<v Speaker 2>red and green. It's amazing.
<v Speaker 3>The guy who did it, the production designer, Yeah, he
<v Speaker 3>doesn't even like Christmas. Yeah, I hate Christmas. But let's
<v Speaker 3>make everything green and red.
<v Speaker 2>And it works. It's I mean, that movie makes you
<v Speaker 2>feel like Christmas. It does.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, One things I wanted to bring up and we
<v Speaker 3>didn't talk about this during casting. John Hughes called in
<v Speaker 3>a favor with his buddy John Candy, right, So John
<v Speaker 3>Candy says.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I'll do it.
<v Speaker 3>You got one day with me. So John Hughes is like, great,
<v Speaker 3>one day. So they bring him and he works for scale.
<v Speaker 3>He actually earned less than the pizza boy, right people,
<v Speaker 3>five hundred bucks. John Candy made four fourteen for one
<v Speaker 3>day's worth of work. So when he gets to the set,
<v Speaker 3>he allows John Candy to improvise, does all his boca
<v Speaker 3>boca PoCA, all that stuff r and he and Catherine
<v Speaker 3>Nahara had worked together on SETV, so they knew each other.
<v Speaker 3>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.
<v Speaker 3>He didn't realize that it was actually going to be
<v Speaker 3>twenty three hours of filming. He said, there was a
<v Speaker 3>moment in the day when he glared at John Hughes
<v Speaker 3>is like, it's seven am.
<v Speaker 2>What the heck?
<v Speaker 3>I thought that was funny. I do think that it's funny.
<v Speaker 3>The movie Angels with Filthy Souls.
<v Speaker 2>Was created and directed specifically for this movie. Yes, keep
<v Speaker 2>that change of filthy animal.
<v Speaker 3>Yes. In fact, the set pieces in that movie were
<v Speaker 3>like cardboard and stuff like that. They barely pieced it together.
<v Speaker 3>Keep the change of Filthy Animals.
<v Speaker 2>And then in part two he watches Angels with Filthy
<v Speaker 2>Years olds. Right, that's right.
<v Speaker 3>I guess the two actors had to reverse their roles.
<v Speaker 2>I don't know their names.
<v Speaker 3>So the guy who was like, keep the change of
<v Speaker 3>filthy animal and the other guy who's like, hey snakes, wait,
<v Speaker 3>they were actually reversed, but one guy hurt his knee so.
<v Speaker 2>He couldn't take the fall. Ah.
<v Speaker 3>So the guy who ended up shooting the guy. He
<v Speaker 3>came back for the sequel because he had an injured knee.
<v Speaker 2>So yeah. So interestingly, this narration thing that the executive
<v Speaker 2>said was not going to be of interest to anyone
<v Speaker 2>ended up spawning a TV series where you had somebody
<v Speaker 2>narrating what happened to them when they were young. Except
<v Speaker 2>taking place in the forties. It took place from nineteen
<v Speaker 2>sixty eight to nineteen seventy six. You know what the
<v Speaker 2>show is I'm talking about. We're talking about The Wonder Years. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>and do you know who the narrator was, Daniel Stern.
<v Speaker 2>There you go.
<v Speaker 3>The Wonder Years is based off a Christmas story.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it inspired it. It inspired the creation of The
<v Speaker 2>Wonder Years. Yeah, I can see that now. Yeah. I
<v Speaker 2>had not put those two and together. That is cool.
<v Speaker 2>The fantasy sequences are a key part of this, right,
<v Speaker 2>you've got the so poisoning you knew you'll be pushing
<v Speaker 2>up nighties. Yeah. So there was an additional scene that
<v Speaker 2>was filmed that was in the movie where he's in
<v Speaker 2>space using his Red Rider be begun to help out
<v Speaker 2>a hero that we've discussed earlier this year, Flash Gordon Yeap,
<v Speaker 2>the Buster Crab version of Flashboard. Yes, I would have
<v Speaker 2>loved to have seen that. Yeah, I think it's I
<v Speaker 2>think you can see it on maybe a TV or
<v Speaker 2>did they lose it.
<v Speaker 3>I think it's gone in a warehouse.
<v Speaker 2>Somewhere or something. I don't know. If you Shirley fans,
<v Speaker 2>if you've got access to that scene, if you know
<v Speaker 2>about it, send it to us. But yeah, film the
<v Speaker 2>whole scene, but decided it was just a little too much,
<v Speaker 2>and it was you you really need threes, three is funny,
<v Speaker 2>four is too much, and you've got soap poisoning, You've
<v Speaker 2>got the cowboy scene, and you've got yeah, and you've
<v Speaker 2>got the teacher hey plus and I really think that
<v Speaker 2>the you know c is just a part two to
<v Speaker 2>that Dreams. I'd go with that.
<v Speaker 3>One thing I want to mention about John Hurd. We
<v Speaker 3>talked about him as Peter McAllister. Okay, so here's the
<v Speaker 3>funny thing about that. He was unhappy about working on
<v Speaker 3>this movie. He did not like it. He did not
<v Speaker 3>think it was going to do anything. He was not
<v Speaker 3>into it, really, Yeah, But after seeing the finished product
<v Speaker 3>and of course the success after that, right, he realized
<v Speaker 3>that he was wrong. So while they were shooting his
<v Speaker 3>scenes for Home Alone two, he broke character, spoke directly
<v Speaker 3>through the camera and told Chris Columbus, sorry, I was wrong.
<v Speaker 2>Oh nice, pretty cool. Yeah, that's great.
<v Speaker 3>Chris Columbus says he still has that footage of Herd's
<v Speaker 3>apology on a video.
<v Speaker 2>That's pretty cool. Yep. I remembered him, of course from
<v Speaker 2>Big Big. Yeah, he was a jerk coworker and big
<v Speaker 2>you know, just come in here and say bucks bugs.
<v Speaker 3>One of the scenes I wanted to talk about from
<v Speaker 3>a Christmas story, h huh. That caught me off guard
<v Speaker 3>when I saw it in the movie theater for the
<v Speaker 3>first time was when he finally gets the BB gun
<v Speaker 3>on Christmas morning and he goes outside, huh, and he's like, oh, yes,
<v Speaker 3>I was so happy for him that he got the
<v Speaker 3>BB gun and it goes and he's looking at that thing.
<v Speaker 3>He's going to shoot it, and it hits that bird
<v Speaker 3>bath and it comes right back and hits his in
<v Speaker 3>the eye, and he's like, oh my god, shut my
<v Speaker 3>eye out.
<v Speaker 2>That was so out of left field.
<v Speaker 3>When I saw it, I was shocked and laughing, like,
<v Speaker 3>oh my gosh, he shut his eye.
<v Speaker 2>You know. Such great writing too, because it's led up
<v Speaker 2>to that moment the whole time. It's led up, and
<v Speaker 2>then you're just like, oh no, oh, it's the worst.
<v Speaker 2>And then he steps on his glasses. Oh no, oh,
<v Speaker 2>my gosh, so good, so good.
<v Speaker 3>All right, let's talk about reception on the Central quick.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, I mean we talked.
<v Speaker 3>About it briefly, but Home Alone made almost half a
<v Speaker 3>billion dollars. It was number one for fourteen weeks. We
<v Speaker 3>talked about how it destroyed everything else that came out
<v Speaker 3>that same time period.
<v Speaker 2>Yep, like Predator two came out Rocky five. Rocky five
<v Speaker 2>was buried right as it should be. It should it
<v Speaker 2>still should.
<v Speaker 3>Be well, and Predator two wasn't any good either. Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>they now use that term. If you get buried by
<v Speaker 3>a movie at the box office, they call it getting
<v Speaker 3>Home Alone.
<v Speaker 2>Nice.
<v Speaker 3>Next summer when we talk about ET, Yeah, ET had
<v Speaker 3>the same effect for all the other movies that came
<v Speaker 3>out in June.
<v Speaker 2>The guaranteed they guaranteed. So for a Christmas story, it
<v Speaker 2>wasn't such a rousing success. It wasn't bad. It wasn't
<v Speaker 2>like it did terrible, but it wasn't some big, humongous hit.
<v Speaker 2>But this was right around the time that VHS was
<v Speaker 2>becoming big and that cable television was becoming big, and
<v Speaker 2>so you just saw it. It was like, oh, it's
<v Speaker 2>Christmas time, let's get a Christmas story. A Christmas story
<v Speaker 2>is on HBO. We should watch that tonight. You would
<v Speaker 2>watch it. And then in the mid nineties something interesting happened,
<v Speaker 2>and this relates back to Wizard of Oz. Ted Turner
<v Speaker 2>had TBS and he then got T and T and
<v Speaker 2>he decided, Hey, I'm going to start on Christmas showing
<v Speaker 2>a movie twenty four hours a day. And the movie
<v Speaker 2>that he picked was Wizard of os OK. And the
<v Speaker 2>first year did pretty good and the second year it
<v Speaker 2>didn't do as good. Right, and so it's like, okay,
<v Speaker 2>well let's try It's a Wonderful Lune, which, by the way,
<v Speaker 2>you just did a podcast with our friends from thirty
<v Speaker 2>something podcast movie podcast on It's a Wonderful Life. I
<v Speaker 2>watched it for the first time, which is nuts. And
<v Speaker 2>how do you feel about it now?
<v Speaker 3>It was remarkably good.
<v Speaker 2>Right, everybody expects it to not be good because it's
<v Speaker 2>an old black white movie. It is amazing. It's amazing.
<v Speaker 6>Yeah, right, I saw you rank it in your top
<v Speaker 6>three on Twitter. Am I wrong in Christmas movies? Yeah,
<v Speaker 6>it's very very good movie. So they that again ran
<v Speaker 6>it for twenty four hours. First year pretty successful, second.
<v Speaker 2>Year not so much so. Try number three A Christmas Story.
<v Speaker 2>First year pretty successful, second year more successful. And for
<v Speaker 2>the last twenty four years it has been on Christmas
<v Speaker 2>Eve to Christmas Day, twelve showings, twenty four hours and
<v Speaker 2>has basically become a tradition. They didn't even come out
<v Speaker 2>with memorabilia for the movie until two thousand and three.
<v Speaker 2>That's insane, that piece, that piece of playing twenty four
<v Speaker 2>hours a day. Although I was very familiar with it
<v Speaker 2>at the time they started that, I was like, oh,
<v Speaker 2>this is a great movie. It was that that turned
<v Speaker 2>this movie into probably the icon that it is today.
<v Speaker 3>You want to hear a funny story, Sure, so you
<v Speaker 3>know it's Christmas time or whatever. We open presence, we
<v Speaker 3>drive to Tulsa to my in laws.
<v Speaker 2>Huh, there are approximately two hours away from my house. Okay,
<v Speaker 2>so whenever.
<v Speaker 3>We stop watching The Christmas Story in Norman and we
<v Speaker 3>get to Tulsa, it's about the same spot.
<v Speaker 2>Perfect. That's perfect. Yeah, I will say this our Christmas
<v Speaker 2>tradition since we've had kids, so we're talking eighteen years now.
<v Speaker 2>Has always been we do Christmas Morning at our house
<v Speaker 2>and then around lunchtime we go over to my wife's
<v Speaker 2>mother's house. We have the same kind of food every year,
<v Speaker 2>and it's great, and the TV is always on and
<v Speaker 2>it's always playing a Christmas Story right until last year.
<v Speaker 2>Last year the movie was playing, Yes, all right, buddy,
<v Speaker 2>the time is here. I heard Santas sleigh bells overhead.
<v Speaker 2>We've got to get to bed. So before we do,
<v Speaker 2>we've got to give final judgment. We have iconic movie
<v Speaker 2>Home Alone, mega mega mega hit versus a Christmas Story,
<v Speaker 2>iconic nostalgia. What do you say?
<v Speaker 3>Okay, So after analyzing these, and I told you I
<v Speaker 3>saw both of these in the movie theater, I laughed
<v Speaker 3>my butt off in both of these.
<v Speaker 2>I love them.
<v Speaker 3>They are fantastic Christmas movies. I am a huge huge
<v Speaker 3>John Hughes fan. I would not say I'm a huge
<v Speaker 3>Bob Clark fan. And really the actors and stuff that
<v Speaker 3>in Christmas Story, they didn't really do anything after it
<v Speaker 3>that I'm.
<v Speaker 2>In love with.
<v Speaker 3>But that's not the case with all the people from
<v Speaker 3>Home Alone. But I love the vignette style of a
<v Speaker 3>Christmas story. It's little bitty stories all stacked on top
<v Speaker 3>of each other with the overarching I want to be
<v Speaker 3>begun for Christmas story. Now then, I love Home Alone.
<v Speaker 3>I've seen it a million times, but watching it over
<v Speaker 3>and over again, it's not as enchanting as it once was. Okay, Now,
<v Speaker 3>I love John Hughes. You will not find a bigger
<v Speaker 3>John Hughes fan than me. I'm also a little bit
<v Speaker 3>bitter at Home Alone because it altered the course of
<v Speaker 3>John Hughes's career. Because Home Alone was such a gigantic,
<v Speaker 3>mega hit, we stopped getting the Breakfast Club in Ferris
<v Speaker 3>Bueler's Day Off and instead we got Baby's Day Out
<v Speaker 3>and Flubber and Curly Sue and Dennis the Menace. So
<v Speaker 3>I kind of hold a grudge against.
<v Speaker 2>Home Alone because of that.
<v Speaker 3>So for me, the better of these two movies is
<v Speaker 3>a Christmas story.
<v Speaker 2>D Okay, You've got die Hard in a house at Christmas,
<v Speaker 2>and it's mixed with Looney to Dunes, slapstick, painful comedy
<v Speaker 2>for the thumb and pinky perfect combination of Joe Peshi
<v Speaker 2>and Daniel Stern. This is potentially a perfect movie. Okay,
<v Speaker 2>is It is arguably a perfect movie. Is so solidly
<v Speaker 2>dude with a problem and Dude solves the problem, and
<v Speaker 2>it's hysterical, it's well acted, it's well directed. I mean
<v Speaker 2>it changed the trajectory of Chris Columbus as well. I mean,
<v Speaker 2>talk about kind of a swan song for John Hughes.
<v Speaker 2>Although he did do Miracle on thirty fourth Street and
<v Speaker 2>some other great ones, it really was kind of the
<v Speaker 2>peak of what was an escalating career and tragically we
<v Speaker 2>lost him too early. Went out for a walk one
<v Speaker 2>day and had art attack. Yeah, and my gosh, the
<v Speaker 2>man has given us so many iconic movies. I hate
<v Speaker 2>to say this, but I have to agree with you.
<v Speaker 2>Oh wow, a Christmas story. Even though it's not some
<v Speaker 2>great plot structure, or it's not some it's not something
<v Speaker 2>that launched the careers of a whole bunch of people
<v Speaker 2>or any it was even a big hit at the time.
<v Speaker 2>It does something that not many movies do, which is
<v Speaker 2>capture a memory. It captures a memory, and that memory
<v Speaker 2>is a timeless memory because even though those things happened
<v Speaker 2>are supposed to have happened back in the thirties and forties.
<v Speaker 2>The scene changes, but the people are the same. Those
<v Speaker 2>are all things that I remember doing, and nobody stuck
<v Speaker 2>their tongue to a light. Well, but we did things
<v Speaker 2>equally as stupid. There were bullies that we had to
<v Speaker 2>deal with, there were snowballs to the face, there were
<v Speaker 2>parents who didn't understand us, and there were those Christmas
<v Speaker 2>presents that we wanted that we knew meant the entire
<v Speaker 2>world to us. But as it turned out, what was
<v Speaker 2>really important was the family, right And in both of
<v Speaker 2>these movies, that's kind of the message, is that really
<v Speaker 2>a family is what's important. But it's Christmas Story that
<v Speaker 2>really brings that message home. It moves me. I tear
<v Speaker 2>up every time at the bully scene. I usually tear
<v Speaker 2>up whenever the dad is chuckling giddily to himself because
<v Speaker 2>he knows he's gotten his boy the present that he
<v Speaker 2>really truly wanted. And so because of that, I've got
<v Speaker 2>to say I agree, Christmas Story is my movie as well. Nice. Nice,
<v Speaker 2>I've got two questions for you.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, before we throw it out to our listeners who
<v Speaker 3>we want to hear from you, what is your favorite
<v Speaker 3>of these two movies? But I got two questions for.
<v Speaker 2>You before you go into those questions. Yeah, I will
<v Speaker 2>say this, Caleb, I refer to routine lying on the show.
<v Speaker 2>He would throw a snowball at me if he knew
<v Speaker 2>that I picked Christmas Story of a Home Alan to him,
<v Speaker 2>Home Alone is by far the better movie. It's an
<v Speaker 2>action packed it's the little kid shooting the bad guys.
<v Speaker 2>It's comedy. Gold loves it. He loves it. And Christmas
<v Speaker 2>Story he can take it or leave it. It's his
<v Speaker 2>Diehard it is, Yeah, it really is. And he loves
<v Speaker 2>Diehart too. Well then, all right, so here are my
<v Speaker 2>two questions. All right, right, yeah, okay.
<v Speaker 3>What is the one Christmas present that you always wanted
<v Speaker 3>that when you got it, you're like, man, this is it.
<v Speaker 2>No question about it. It was the Nintendo Entertainment System.
<v Speaker 2>A year it came out. Oh I can remember with
<v Speaker 2>ten eighty clarity seeing the advertisement for the Nintendo System.
<v Speaker 2>You had the little robot, you had the gun. But
<v Speaker 2>the thing that zoomed out to me was Super Mario
<v Speaker 2>Brothers hitting that little key question mark. And I was like,
<v Speaker 2>oh my gosh, I've spent literally tens twenties, no telling
<v Speaker 2>how much money play in this video game. My favorite
<v Speaker 2>video game in The arcade is now available in a
<v Speaker 2>home entertainment system. I want this, This is all I want,
<v Speaker 2>all that I want. I don't care if you get
<v Speaker 2>me anything else. This is all that I want. And
<v Speaker 2>I can remember it's a tradition at our house that
<v Speaker 2>you get to open one present on Christmas Eve. Right.
<v Speaker 2>That was the year that when I opened my Christmas
<v Speaker 2>Eve present, opened it up it was batteries. I was
<v Speaker 2>like what. I was like, No, you can't just wrap
<v Speaker 2>batteries and that'd be okay because it turned out Robot
<v Speaker 2>needed batteries, and so they were the batteries to the
<v Speaker 2>present that wasn't under the tree at the time. It
<v Speaker 2>didn't come until after I had gone to sleep.
<v Speaker 3>They all had fake there.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, it was thanks everyone, Yeah, I said, definitely. So
<v Speaker 2>how about you?
<v Speaker 3>What was your The thing that I wanted most and
<v Speaker 3>eventually got, although it took me like three Christmases to
<v Speaker 3>get it was the Kinner Millennium Falcon. Oh yeah, that's
<v Speaker 3>all I wanted. That was number one, two, three, four
<v Speaker 3>and five on my list. I want the freaking Millennium Falcon.
<v Speaker 2>Right right right? And when I.
<v Speaker 3>Got it, I fell in love with the I played
<v Speaker 3>it all the time. But here's the funny story. I
<v Speaker 3>had it all set.
<v Speaker 2>Up with all my guys. I was playing with it
<v Speaker 2>a good time. It's time for bed, Get in bed.
<v Speaker 3>I had a bunk bed, fell off my bunk bed
<v Speaker 3>one time my entire life. In the middle of the night,
<v Speaker 3>I rolled out, fell off the top, bug landed on
<v Speaker 3>my Millennium falcon and smashed it and never replaced it.
<v Speaker 2>That is heartbreaking. I know it was heartbreaking real quick. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>there's a movie that's just come out. I think it's
<v Speaker 2>on Netflix or something like that. I've just seen the
<v Speaker 2>preview four. But it's called eight Bit Christmas.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>It's obviously a remake type thing of a Christmas Story,
<v Speaker 2>except instead of a red writer be begun, it's a
<v Speaker 2>Nintendo entertainment So fantastic. So I got to go check
<v Speaker 2>that one out. Hopefully it's it's good. It looks like
<v Speaker 2>it's got a six point seven on IMDb though.
<v Speaker 3>So all right, well we want to hear from you guys,
<v Speaker 3>which one of these two classic Christmas movie.
<v Speaker 2>I forgot to ask my second question.
<v Speaker 3>All right, here's your second question. You're ready for this? Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>all right, we've covered five Christmas movies. Now, okay, Diehard,
<v Speaker 3>leave the Weapon Home Alone, Christmas Story, and the Star
<v Speaker 3>Wars Holiday Special.
<v Speaker 2>Give me your ranking one through five?
<v Speaker 3>Ready said, go oh my gosh, that's oh my gosh.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, So if I'm walking out the door, die Hard
<v Speaker 2>is number one with that question. Okay, uh, number.
<v Speaker 7>Two, it's so hard, Okay, die Hard, A Christmas Story
<v Speaker 7>Home Alone, lethal Weapon, and.
<v Speaker 2>I don't think I'm ever ever going to watch Star
<v Speaker 2>Wars Special. Yeah, okay, you're crazy. They're all close. I mean,
<v Speaker 2>I love them all. I would watch any of them anytimes.
<v Speaker 2>And they're fantastic movies. That's fair. You're forcing me into
<v Speaker 2>a hole here, all right, here you go you ready? Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>die Hard, lethal Weapon?
<v Speaker 3>Ye, a Christmas Story Home Alone, And despite my unusual
<v Speaker 3>affection for the Star Wars Holiday Special, it's definitely fit right.
<v Speaker 8>Yeah, okay, okay.
<v Speaker 9>Now that we've given our ranks, we are going to
<v Speaker 9>have a little special Shirley showcase and one of our
<v Speaker 9>good friends, author extraordinary mister Van Allen Plexico, and.
<v Speaker 3>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 tea 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?
<v Speaker 2>Exactly?
<v Speaker 5>And 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 involved in the creation
<v Speaker 5>of this special? But how is it ranked number two?
<v Speaker 5>Because it is memorable, It is an iconic event in
<v Speaker 5>Star 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? Is this even a question? Die Hard?
<v Speaker 2>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 a 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. That is your five movies or entertainments that
<v Speaker 5>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 9>Oh wow, Okay, so you think you know a guy,
<v Speaker 9>I'm I'm I'm baffled here, But I mean he came
<v Speaker 9>strong with the opinion.
<v Speaker 2>He came strong with it, even though I totally disagree
<v Speaker 2>with what he had to say about most of it.
<v Speaker 9>Yeah, I'm on board that Diehard's the best. But what
<v Speaker 9>what what? What?
<v Speaker 2>What do you think?
<v Speaker 4>Man?
<v Speaker 9>What do you think about those rankings?
<v Speaker 2>I think it's strong.
<v Speaker 3>He's coming with Star Wars Holiday Special number two that
<v Speaker 3>is amazing. He gives a lot of credit because of
<v Speaker 3>both off.
<v Speaker 2>I think it's great.
<v Speaker 3>He's a little bit hard on on Home Alone and.
<v Speaker 2>The Christmas story and lethal weapon and leath a weapon.
<v Speaker 2>That's true.
<v Speaker 9>I guess he's I understand he's a little bit bitter
<v Speaker 9>about what he did with Ironman three.
<v Speaker 3>But he hates Ironman three. He wants to meet Shane
<v Speaker 3>Black in a dark alley sometime.
<v Speaker 9>It's hilarious. Van Allen Plexo, Thank you very much, sir.
<v Speaker 9>That was awesome and I love it. And a Merry Christmas.
<v Speaker 3>Thanks Man, appreciate you, man. Thank you to everybody who's
<v Speaker 3>made this special year. Merry Christmas to everybody. God bless
<v Speaker 3>us everything. Thank you for joining us and on our fun.
<v Speaker 3>We hope to see you in season three. We're gonna
<v Speaker 3>take some time off.
<v Speaker 2>We're gonna take some time off. It'll probably be February
<v Speaker 2>because we've got the fiftieth anniversary of The Godfather coming up.
<v Speaker 2>We've got the new release of The Batman coming up,
<v Speaker 2>and we're going to be doing some special episodes on
<v Speaker 2>those and before we go. It takes us literally hours
<v Speaker 2>and hours to put just one of these episodes together.
<v Speaker 2>So if you can, if you feel like giving us
<v Speaker 2>a Christmas present this year for next year, go to
<v Speaker 2>our Patreon page. It's patreon dot com. Slash Shirly Podcast,
<v Speaker 2>and you can help us out with the monthly donation,
<v Speaker 2>But even if we had to do it for free,
<v Speaker 2>we would do it because there are some amazing people
<v Speaker 2>that we've met and would not have known them and
<v Speaker 2>met them but through this podcast. And so we want
<v Speaker 2>to take this time to say thank you and Merry
<v Speaker 2>Christmas to a select group of folks. That's right.
<v Speaker 3>So first of all our patrons, we want to thank
<v Speaker 3>Addie Ayshino, Cameron Ecker, Travis Laslie, Chris Bauer, Dayton Johnson,
<v Speaker 3>Chris and Jeanie, Alexander, Alan Is Vaccinated, Yep, Dale Selby,
<v Speaker 3>Brad Moore, Christopher Walketon, and of course James Buckley, our
<v Speaker 3>good friend and Patrion.
<v Speaker 2>Very first one. Yeah, Jonathan Tweety's the one fan that
<v Speaker 2>we've met in person at this point that was really cool.
<v Speaker 2>We've got good to dinner with him.
<v Speaker 5>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. We also have some guys who routinely communicate with
<v Speaker 2>us on Facebook who are always giving us some great
<v Speaker 2>insight into episodes past and potentially future. We've got Scott Rothschild,
<v Speaker 2>We've got Chris Weber who did the Shirley showcase for us.
<v Speaker 2>We've got Rocky Chandler, Derek el Adam Weinribb. We've got
<v Speaker 2>Moe and Max from the In the Tower podcast. Be
<v Speaker 2>sure and go check that out. We've got our friends
<v Speaker 2>from the thirty something podcast. We've got John and Pat
<v Speaker 2>and Bow and Jeff and yeah, all of those guys.
<v Speaker 2>Merry Christmas, guys. We're sorry we're missing out on doing
<v Speaker 2>a Christmas episode with you this year. We will we
<v Speaker 2>will catch you in twenty twenty two. Maybe.
<v Speaker 3>You know who else we really need to think this
<v Speaker 3>year is our good buddy David Wright. He did four
<v Speaker 3>episodes with us. Step Dave was our hip hop rap expert.
<v Speaker 2>We got to just sit back and live in the
<v Speaker 2>limelight as he waxed poetic on all of that rap history.
<v Speaker 2>And it was awesome, truly truly great time. Some other
<v Speaker 2>Facebook guys who routinely communicate with us, Nick Hinsley.
<v Speaker 3>Jay Reed, Ryan Ware, Ainwater, Neil Rudnick. And then we
<v Speaker 3>want to thank everybody who's taken the time to record
<v Speaker 3>our show Showcase. Yeah, we know that takes time, kind
<v Speaker 3>of effort. Yeah, and we appreciate you guys contributing to our.
<v Speaker 2>Show, right, we really do, guys. It's been another great
<v Speaker 2>season in the books. I can't tell you how moved
<v Speaker 2>I am that you continue to listen to us and
<v Speaker 2>we continue to grow. Thank you so much, and Merry Christmas,
<v Speaker 2>Merry Christmas. Happy do you.
<v Speaker 1>I'm bound to thank you for it.