It's official
A Christmas Story ranks among holiday TV classics
TORONTO (CP) - Sitting in a diner in New Hampshire five years ago, director Bob Clark overheard a mom and dad and their kids in the next booth reciting lines from A Christmas Story, the poignant and nostalgia- laden holiday feature he filmed in Toronto two decades ago.
That's when Clark realized his Depression-era comedy had joined It's a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Carol and Miracle on 34th Street as a bona fide seasonal classic, an annual must-see on TV. "And the owner says 'Oh yeah, they come here every year two days before Christmas and they sit and act out A Christmas Story.' The whole movie, they did all the small parts. It was astonishing!" Clark says in a telephone interview from Los Angeles.
In the United States two years ago, TV Guide anointed it the No. 1 holiday film. Ted Turner's TNT channel offers it up non-stop for 24 hours at a time. This year, Clark and stars Peter Billingsley and Melinda Dillon will even add a DVD-style voiceover commentary for some broadcasts.
And last Saturday night, 800 people - most of whom had never seen A Christmas Story on the big screen - cheered and applauded a special theatrical showing in Glendale, Calif.
"The screening was like a huge lovefest," a thrilled Clark says. "These people had incredible affection, a depth of feeling for it. It was extraordinary, I could not believe the response. It's a funny movie. I hadn't seen it in quite awhile."
Up in the balcony, Darren McGavin, who played the crotchety but lovable dad with a statewide reputation for his cussin' and love of Christmas turkey, sat in a wheelchair. Unable to speak after a stroke two years ago, McGavin received a heartfelt standing ovation from the crowd.
Clark says Billingsley, who starred as Ralphie, wasn't able to make it but continues to work in Hollywood as an editor and director.
Based on a series of childhood recollections by the late humorist Jean Shepherd (In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash), A Christmas Story tells the adventures of Ralphie Parker, a bespectacled dreamer of a kid growing up in an American Midwest town during the 1940s.
All he wants for Christmas is a Red Ryder BB gun, but everyone, from mom, to his schoolteacher to the beleaguered department-store Santa Claus nixes the idea, warning him ominously: "You'll shoot yer eye out!"
It all began two decades ago, long before the term Hollywood North was coined.
The Florida-based Clark had made his first feature, a little horror picture called Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things, for a paltry $40,000.
On the basis of its success he was invited to Toronto where he really kickstarted his career with a variety of successful films, including Black Christmas (the first co-ed slasher film), Murder by Decree (a new twist on Jack the Ripper) and Porky's (a predecessor to today's teen gross-out comedies and still considered the most profitable made-in-Canada feature).
Then there was A Christmas Story.
Although Torontonians easily recognize their city's red streetcars in several sequences, some exteriors were shot in Cleveland. And the famous scene where Ralphie's classmate Flick, on a "triple dog dare," gets his tongue frozen on the schoolyard flagpole, was shot at a public school in St. Catharines, Ont. A collector has since bought the pole.
Clark shares a screenwriting credit but admits he wouldn't have and couldn't have made the film without Shepherd's whimsy, and his unmistakable soundtrack narration. He first met Shepherd in Fort Lauderdale in 1968 (where he also absorbed those ribald college experiences for Porky's) and was immediately taken with his storytelling abilities.
"It's comprised of about 10 stories, a number of them he only told in his college circuit," Clark explains. "I was so enamoured of his offhand, flippant kind of deceptively wry and witty comments."
They collaborated on several screenplays and eventually got to do A Christmas Story 13 years later. It won three Genie Awards in 1984 with Clark sharing the best director honour with Videodrome's David Cronenberg.
"It was a work of joy. We were thrilled to be doing it," he recalls. "It was done with affection and with feeling for our North American life."
© The Canadian Press, 2002
A Christmas Story ranks among holiday TV classics
TORONTO (CP) - Sitting in a diner in New Hampshire five years ago, director Bob Clark overheard a mom and dad and their kids in the next booth reciting lines from A Christmas Story, the poignant and nostalgia- laden holiday feature he filmed in Toronto two decades ago.
That's when Clark realized his Depression-era comedy had joined It's a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Carol and Miracle on 34th Street as a bona fide seasonal classic, an annual must-see on TV. "And the owner says 'Oh yeah, they come here every year two days before Christmas and they sit and act out A Christmas Story.' The whole movie, they did all the small parts. It was astonishing!" Clark says in a telephone interview from Los Angeles.
In the United States two years ago, TV Guide anointed it the No. 1 holiday film. Ted Turner's TNT channel offers it up non-stop for 24 hours at a time. This year, Clark and stars Peter Billingsley and Melinda Dillon will even add a DVD-style voiceover commentary for some broadcasts.
And last Saturday night, 800 people - most of whom had never seen A Christmas Story on the big screen - cheered and applauded a special theatrical showing in Glendale, Calif.
"The screening was like a huge lovefest," a thrilled Clark says. "These people had incredible affection, a depth of feeling for it. It was extraordinary, I could not believe the response. It's a funny movie. I hadn't seen it in quite awhile."
Up in the balcony, Darren McGavin, who played the crotchety but lovable dad with a statewide reputation for his cussin' and love of Christmas turkey, sat in a wheelchair. Unable to speak after a stroke two years ago, McGavin received a heartfelt standing ovation from the crowd.
Clark says Billingsley, who starred as Ralphie, wasn't able to make it but continues to work in Hollywood as an editor and director.
Based on a series of childhood recollections by the late humorist Jean Shepherd (In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash), A Christmas Story tells the adventures of Ralphie Parker, a bespectacled dreamer of a kid growing up in an American Midwest town during the 1940s.
All he wants for Christmas is a Red Ryder BB gun, but everyone, from mom, to his schoolteacher to the beleaguered department-store Santa Claus nixes the idea, warning him ominously: "You'll shoot yer eye out!"
It all began two decades ago, long before the term Hollywood North was coined.
The Florida-based Clark had made his first feature, a little horror picture called Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things, for a paltry $40,000.
On the basis of its success he was invited to Toronto where he really kickstarted his career with a variety of successful films, including Black Christmas (the first co-ed slasher film), Murder by Decree (a new twist on Jack the Ripper) and Porky's (a predecessor to today's teen gross-out comedies and still considered the most profitable made-in-Canada feature).
Then there was A Christmas Story.
Although Torontonians easily recognize their city's red streetcars in several sequences, some exteriors were shot in Cleveland. And the famous scene where Ralphie's classmate Flick, on a "triple dog dare," gets his tongue frozen on the schoolyard flagpole, was shot at a public school in St. Catharines, Ont. A collector has since bought the pole.
Clark shares a screenwriting credit but admits he wouldn't have and couldn't have made the film without Shepherd's whimsy, and his unmistakable soundtrack narration. He first met Shepherd in Fort Lauderdale in 1968 (where he also absorbed those ribald college experiences for Porky's) and was immediately taken with his storytelling abilities.
"It's comprised of about 10 stories, a number of them he only told in his college circuit," Clark explains. "I was so enamoured of his offhand, flippant kind of deceptively wry and witty comments."
They collaborated on several screenplays and eventually got to do A Christmas Story 13 years later. It won three Genie Awards in 1984 with Clark sharing the best director honour with Videodrome's David Cronenberg.
"It was a work of joy. We were thrilled to be doing it," he recalls. "It was done with affection and with feeling for our North American life."
© The Canadian Press, 2002
