In A Christmas Story, Dillon has a sweetly comedic presence thatthreatens to dissolve into creative anarchy. She’s a vigilant mom but isstill a child at heart, apparent when she encourages her youngest, Randy(Ian Petrella), a fussy eater, to pretend he’s a pig at a trough. Randyreally gets into it, snorting and plunging his face into his meat loafand mashed potatoes, while he and his mom dissolve into fits oflaughter.
“In a way,” Shepherd said, “the movie is about these people, notChristmas or Santa Claus.”
Storybook Christmas
The movie was based on a handful of monologues by the comedic radiopersonality and writer Jean Shepherd. (That’s Shepherd’s folksy,streetwise voice you hear in the voice-over narration as Ralphie’s adultself, telling the tale.) Shepherd’s radio career spanned four decades,ending up at WOR, in New York City. His semi-autobiographical storieswere performed without scripts and were characterized by colorfultitles, such as “Ludlow Kissel and the Dago Bomb That Struck Back” and“A Fistful of Fig Newtons.”
The screenplay adaptation was written by Shepherd himself, along withBob Clark and Shepherd’s third wife, Leigh Brown. It all started whenClark was in Miami driving to pick up his date, and he heard Shepherd onthe radio telling the story of Flick, a boy who is triple-dog-dared intoputting his tongue on a metal pole in the dead of winter, instantlyfreezing it to the pole. Clark had never heard a story told quite likethat. He was so enthralled he was 45 minutes late for his date, justcircling the block to hear the rest of the story. He resolved rightthen, “I will do a movie of this man’s work.” It took 12 years.
“There’s a sense of nostalgia built into A Christmas Story,” the actorand director Jon Favreau says. He credits A Christmas Story with beingone of the main inspirations for his movie Elf (in which Billingsley hada small role—as an elf). Favreau recalled how he “knew JeanShepherd’s voice from the radio. My dad used to listen to his monologueson AM radio. I remember hearing it in the car. I think that thecombination of the narration, the movie’s classic look, and, of course,Billingsley’s wonderful open face and his performance really drew youinto the movie and made you feel connected emotionally.”
Fans of Shepherd’s radio monologues include a roster of some ofAmerica’s most original performers and writers: Jules Feiffer, TomWolfe, Jerry Seinfeld, Penn Jillette (of Penn and Teller), Donald fa*gen(of Steely Dan). Seinfeld especially. “He really formed my entirecomedic sensibility. I learned how to do comedy from Jean Shepherd,” heonce said. Hugh Hefner was also a big fan; he published 23 of Shepherd’sshort stories in Playboy, and he would play A Christmas Story late atnight at the mansion. He loved it, and the Playboy Bunnies loved it!
The Parkers after Ralphie drops the f-bomb.
Shepherd’s stories were first improvised on his radio program in the50s, 60s, and early 70s. The children’s-book author and Playboycartoonist Shel Silverstein and Shepherd’s second wife, actress LoisNettleton, encouraged him to write the stories down. In 1966, they werecollected and published in In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash, whichbecame a best-seller. Wildly popular, Shepherd performed at Town Hall inNew York City in a sold-out performance, and had three solo shows atCarnegie Hall.
Shepherd hated the idea that people thought his work was nostalgic. Hedescribed it as “anti-sentimental, as a matter of fact. If you reallyread it, you realize it’s a put-down of what most people think it standsfor—it’s anti-nostalgic writing.” Shepherd’s biographer EugeneBergmann points out that the line in the film that best describesShepherd’s attitude toward life is when they’re getting ready forChristmas dinner and the Old Man is sitting in the living room readingthe funny papers. “The viewer can see the Bumpuses’ hounds starting totrot past him, but he doesn’t see them, because the paper is blockinghis view. And, of course, we know what’s going to happen—the houndsare going to get hold of that Christmas turkey.” So Shepherd says, inhis voice-over narration, “Ah, life is like that. Sometimes at theheight of our revelries, when our joy is at its zenith, when all is mostright with the world, the most unthinkable disasters descend upon us.”
Even the depiction of Santa Claus himself is anti-nostalgic. He justwants to hang up his suit and go home. And how does he get rid ofRalphie, after Ralphie finally gets to the front of the Santa line butis too overwhelmed to remember what he wants? Santa’s elf pushes himdown the exit slide. But Ralphie turns, desperately climbs back up,suddenly remembering to ask for the Red Ryder BB gun. That’s whenSanta’s black boot pushes Ralphie in the face, right back down theslide.
Tinseltown
It took Bob Clark’s success as the director of the high-grossinggross-out movie Porky’s in 1982—which ushered in an era of raunchyteen-sex comedies—before MGM green-lighted A Christmas Story. That’snot surprising, Billingsley has pointed out: “I think it took so longto get made because the movie, by modern-day standards, is aboutnothing. It’s a family a couple of weeks before Christmas, and the kidwants a BB gun. That’s not exactly a pitch in which you’d say, ‘Let meget the president of the studio on the phone!’ ” MGM finally gaveClark $4.4 million to make A Christmas Story. According to a 2013 bookon the making of the film by Caseen Gaines, he was so eager to make themovie that he gave up his director’s fee and contributed $150,000 ofhis own money.
Once he had his cast assembled, there were production challenges. Firstwas the problem of location. They scouted 20 cities, finally settling onToronto for the interiors and Cleveland for the exteriors. It wasappropriately winter, and cold, in Ohio, but there was no snow thatyear. Snow had to be hauled in from ski resorts hundreds of miles away.René Dupont, a producer along with Clark, even had additional trucks ofsnow standing by (that’s what made him so good at his job—anticipatingthe unanticipated). When the weather got warmer, they concocted fallingsnow out of potato flakes, used shredded vinyl as snow set dressing, andfurther employed firefighter’s foam. In vignettes where Ralphie, hisfriends, and his little snowsuited brother, Randy, are fleeing from ScutFarkus (the bully “with the yellow eyes”), they are in fact sloshingthrough foam as if from a washing machine that’s lost its mind.
Another brainstorm of Clark’s was to cut the floors out of the set sothe camera would be at Peter’s height, at four feet two inches, so thatthe perspective is not that of the adults looking down on the childactors but Ralphie’s point of view, looking up, trying to make sense outof the frustrating and unfathomable adult world.
The set was mostly harmonious, but there was one particular source offriction: Clark and Shepherd didn’t get along. Shepherd was just tooprotective of his material, looking over Clark’s shoulder and makingsuggestions. When the director’s back was turned, he would come up toone of the actors with his own ideas of how the character should beplayed. The director would call “Cut,” and as soon as he left the set,Shepherd would lean in and say to Billingsley, “Ralphie’s really likethis.” Bob would come roaring back and say, “Jean, get away from theactors!”
Clark had storyboarded every shot in the movie on index cards, down tothe smallest detail. He had to quickly countermand Shepherd’sinterference—the shoot couldn’t afford two directors. Finally, Clarkhad to bar Shepherd from the set. Bergmann recalled, “Shepherd was aperfectionist with his own material, but Bob Clark had a budget and aschedule that he had to meet, and he already figured out how this allshould be done, and he couldn’t have Shepherd constantly interrupting.”
Shepherd does make a cameo appearance in the movie, Hitchco*ck-like, as astern older man scolding Ralphie for breaking into the long line to seeSanta at Higbees department store.
Dupont first met Clark as the English producer on a Sherlock Holmesmystery, Murder by Decree, with Christopher Plummer and James Mason,which Clark was directing. One of Dupont’s two sons, PhilDupont—currently an assistant director filming the FX seriesBones—described his father and Bob Clark as having had an especiallycollegial working relationship. Dupont was involved in every aspect ofthe production. His younger son, Christian Dupont, who spent time on theset of A Christmas Story, remembers his father working on the logisticalproblem of how to film the scene of Flick’s tongue stuck to the metalflagpole.
