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The Humbugs of Cinema: A Christmas Carol(s) Retrospective
Old Box Office Pulp was better than its word. It returned to the well of Dickens yet again that December, to spend another holiday discussing where the adaptations of A Christmas Carol fell on the gravy-grave scale. They ranked the various Scrooges, Fezzywigs, Marleys, and infinitely more; and to Cody, who did NOT die of alcohol poisoning last commentary, there was much introspection on the logistics of employing a street urchin, the bizarre phenomenon of Scrooge Action Scenes, why Albert Finney decided to go Full Witch, whether London bookie Eddie Scrooge ever beat that murder rap, and whether the miser truly ever had become as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the movies always said. And so, as BOP Guy once observed, "Box Office Pulp hasn't felt holiday cheer since he licked a car battery and was legally dead for thirty seconds!"
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Transcript
I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.
Speaker:Groovy.
Speaker:How do you define time travel?
Speaker:That's my question.
Speaker:How do you define time travel?
Speaker:They are spiritually going to the past and going to the future,
Speaker:but they cannot physically interact with anything.
Speaker:They're apparitions there that are watching shadows of what was and what could be.
Speaker:If you're going back and seeing the shadow of what was,
Speaker:I still think that counts.
Speaker:You are retreating back into the past.
Speaker:You may not be a member of it,
Speaker:but you're reviewing it.
Speaker:I feel like time travel is defined,
Speaker:would be in a sci-fi context,
Speaker:would be defined as you are able to physically go to the past or go to the future.
Speaker:This is more time projection.
Speaker:Also, I hate the ghost of Christmas present technically goes into the future.
Speaker:He's not actually from the present.
Speaker:He's showing you the next goddamn day.
Speaker:He does cheat a little bit.
Speaker:He's more like the ghost of Christmas.
Speaker:So I just don't trust the guy who fucking has two kids underneath his robe at all times.
Speaker:And he doesn't really tell you about it.
Speaker:What are they doing down there?
Speaker:That is weird.
Speaker:That's really weird.
Speaker:And they're desperate to like he admits they'll do anything.
Speaker:He's always laughing too much.
Speaker:He's getting tickled.
Speaker:I don't like that guy.
Speaker:Can that be how you introduce yourself next time we come over for Christmas?
Speaker:Just look upon me.
Speaker:As you disrobe.
Speaker:That's what I like to.
Speaker:That's how I like to start my one-on-ones with my manager over Zoom.
Speaker:One thing before we move off of this idea of what is a time travel.
Speaker:It has bothered me extensively watching the Robert Zemeckis Christmas Carol because we
Speaker:have extended segments where Scrooge just gets shrunk down to the size of like a bug
Speaker:and just has to run around London in fear of his life.
Speaker:Like he doesn't he can't interact with anything.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:And yet he's terrified of mice, cats.
Speaker:And the shit in the tunnel that he crawls through.
Speaker:This is a guy who thinks he's part of that world.
Speaker:And if it's not, then why are they wasting 20 minutes of the audience's time seeing Scrooge
Speaker:go around, have weird mini adventures when he could be learning a moral lesson?
Speaker:That is true.
Speaker:If you are doing a fairly straightforward adaption of a Christmas Carol, wait, it's
Speaker:the same time period.
Speaker:It's the same adventure.
Speaker:It's not like a remix into a different setting or something like that.
Speaker:Stop adding shit.
Speaker:It's actually action.
Speaker:Just do the fucking book.
Speaker:I think we're in agreement.
Speaker:A Christmas Carol should not be like a two hour long endeavor.
Speaker:Like you got it.
Speaker:You got to get in, get out.
Speaker:I think it hits best about an hour.
Speaker:Like you got to move.
Speaker:So I suppose before we get any further in, we should start the episode properly.
Speaker:But we are three minutes in.
Speaker:So, yeah, that's probably a good idea.
Speaker:It's high energy, though.
Speaker:I like this.
Speaker:We're bringing this level of rage for a Christmas.
Speaker:We just had to get pissed off first.
Speaker:Started in a fight about what is time travel.
Speaker:Merry fucking Christmas.
Speaker:Decrease the surplus.
Speaker:Less population, Cody.
Speaker:Let me crack open this beer.
Speaker:Come into the podcast and know me better, man.
Speaker:Look at me.
Speaker:Welcome to Box Office Pulp, your one stop podcast for a bit of beef, a blot of mustard,
Speaker:a crumb of cheese and a fragment of an underdone potato.
Speaker:The one podcast that's equal parts gravy and grave.
Speaker:I'm your host, Cody.
Speaker:And joining me for this Christmas Carol special are my co-host, Mike.
Speaker:Say hello, Mike.
Speaker:Marley was a pedophile.
Speaker:And say hello, Jamie.
Speaker:I'm going to go past that.
Speaker:I'm just going to skate on by.
Speaker:I like that.
Speaker:This is my fault.
Speaker:I plan.
Speaker:This is the George Bush doesn't like black people moment of the podcast.
Speaker:Like, I'm Mike Myers and I did not know he's going off script.
Speaker:I'm so sorry.
Speaker:Okay, Mike.
Speaker:Oh, my God.
Speaker:Oh, Jamie.
Speaker:It's James.
Speaker:He forged in life delightful.
Speaker:I just want to say, Mike, earlier, my girlfriend made this joke and I want to repeat this solely
Speaker:for you and about four listeners out there, a version of the of a Christmas Carol performed
Speaker:by the kids in the hall where the ghost of Christmas past is Scott Thompson as the blowjob
Speaker:angel.
Speaker:And she's.
Speaker:She said kids in the hall.
Speaker:I knew that's where this was going.
Speaker:It's just imagine him throwing the boombox into Ebeneezer's window with Christmas hymns.
Speaker:It just immediately just paints a picture in your mind, doesn't it?
Speaker:The fact he blows an old man.
Speaker:He still would.
Speaker:You would still give him the moral lesson, but then blow him at the end.
Speaker:Put on your cap to get his mind off of Bell.
Speaker:Oh, I'll release you, Ebeneezer.
Speaker:Oh, it's George C.
Speaker:Scott, who comes so hard.
Speaker:It just cuts to him weeping in bed in the chamber.
Speaker:We're fine.
Speaker:Sorry.
Speaker:That is not in the file.
Speaker:So if folks haven't guessed it, we're here today to discuss the thousand and one different
Speaker:versions of a Christmas Carol.
Speaker:That you can find online.
Speaker:I was shocked today.
Speaker:I was trying to find a specific Christmas Carol on Tubi and I typed in Christmas Carol
Speaker:and my TV exploded.
Speaker:Same thing.
Speaker:It's hilarious on every single app.
Speaker:They're all lousy with Christmas Carols like they're talking dog movies on Amazon.
Speaker:There's more Christmas Carols than Dracula's.
Speaker:It's astonishing.
Speaker:You just start scrolling through them and you realize like every animated show in the
Speaker:80s produced a Christmas Carol.
Speaker:There's musical adaptations.
Speaker:Fuck it.
Speaker:People back in 1910 were making these things, just cranking them out.
Speaker:The silent era was like, hey, we got to get some more ghosts in here.
Speaker:It's astonishing how many versions of a Christmas Carol are out there.
Speaker:It's like a Christmas Carol, Frankenstein, and the story of Christ.
Speaker:Like the second motion pictures were invented.
Speaker:We started telling these stories.
Speaker:There's so many of these things that as we discovered, they occasionally double up on
Speaker:a tiny Tim.
Speaker:Which is just imagine that's your life.
Speaker:You're a type.
Speaker:Cast is tiny Tim, the world's most pathetic boy.
Speaker:Oh, it's like that Russian chick who kept showing up in 2000s video game movies.
Speaker:But I was going to say, I think a Christmas Carol makes sense as a silent film because
Speaker:one, you actually can tell it very fast.
Speaker:You can run through those things.
Speaker:Even back then, like you can skip a lot of the details and just go ghost one, ghost two,
Speaker:ghost three, done.
Speaker:Scrooge is a better guy.
Speaker:But if you look back, a lot of the really early like 1900, 1910.
Speaker:Silent films were all really focused on trick photography, right?
Speaker:They wanted to impress people by being like, hey, cool.
Speaker:We made Satan pop out of this cauldron with some smoke.
Speaker:And, you know, we stopped the camera and put him in.
Speaker:That's cool.
Speaker:Or a lot of ghosts, a lot of ghost photography where it's like double exposure.
Speaker:And so a Christmas Carol gives you so many opportunities to play with those ideas because
Speaker:it's basically Scrooge fucks around with ghosts for a night.
Speaker:So I definitely see why that one was very appealing to early filmmakers because it gave
Speaker:them an into kind of wow audiences.
Speaker:That's it.
Speaker:The one I watched today from 1910 sucked balls.
Speaker:Get better at early cinema.
Speaker:What are you even doing?
Speaker:Awful, awful translation.
Speaker:Get bent.
Speaker:Most of the I'm not a huge fan of most of the early ones.
Speaker:Surprisingly, I do like the the Alistair Sim one from the 50s.
Speaker:I think there's something about it being in black and white.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Some of the 30s like there's one from 35 from remembering dates, right?
Speaker:Just intrinsically are spookier in black and white, I think.
Speaker:And that really serves the early part of the movie.
Speaker:They almost need to do like a fucking.
Speaker:Uh, Wizard of Oz thing where at the end of the day, Scrooge wakes up and walks out into
Speaker:sepia tone or actual color and the whole rest of the movie is black and white.
Speaker:That would be cool.
Speaker:Once he's had like, yeah, his moral transformation, all of a sudden the world's in color.
Speaker:I'm a joyous man.
Speaker:Go buy some turkeys.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Wait, wait.
Speaker:Before we actually go any further.
Speaker:Does anyone else get annoyed by Scrooge going to some fucking random street urchin?
Speaker:Boy, go buy the biggest bird in the butcher shop.
Speaker:Every time.
Speaker:With that money you have.
Speaker:Every time.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Like one.
Speaker:And the kid must go up to the shop and be like, I don't know.
Speaker:Put it on Scrooge's tab.
Speaker:He wants it.
Speaker:Um, two, he's going to deliver it to Bob Cratchit without notifying Bob on the day of that.
Speaker:He wants Bob to make the biggest goose in London.
Speaker:I don't know if Scrooge is just rich enough.
Speaker:He doesn't understand that food takes time to prepare and cook.
Speaker:But this little family probably doesn't have the capacity to cook the biggest goose in
Speaker:town, nor do they have the time to do one.
Speaker:I would be so mad if someone just dropped off like a 20 pound.
Speaker:Raw bird at my house the morning of and said, Hey man, having a party tonight.
Speaker:You cooking that?
Speaker:That's why I appreciate comparing all of the different versions.
Speaker:It's interesting to see like the, the things like certain adaptions will add to have those
Speaker:moments make more sense.
Speaker:Like, Oh, and like the Muppet Christmas Carol, he gives money first instead of offering to
Speaker:give it when the kid brings the goose back.
Speaker:Some other ones, he makes a big deal.
Speaker:About it wanting to be a surprise for Bob Cratchit.
Speaker:Um, in other ones, he's, he tells the kid to bring the guy back.
Speaker:So, okay.
Speaker:He's bringing the guy back to get paid.
Speaker:And then some just say like, boy, go use your money, go buy that.
Speaker:And then I'll give you some money.
Speaker:Also, if you're quick about it, I'll give you more.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Half a prep, which I don't know.
Speaker:I'm assuming that's a lot.
Speaker:Like, is he slipping that kid a hundred dollars to get a turkey?
Speaker:That kid should probably like check himself.
Speaker:That seems like a scam.
Speaker:Well, did the bird is specifically described as being as big as the child too.
Speaker:How is he going to carry that?
Speaker:I, this is why I think the best version of this is Scrooged where they have like the
Speaker:dramatic TV version of a Christmas Carol and the guy flips the coin out of the building
Speaker:and Bill Murray just catches it before he interrupts him with like enough of this bullshit.
Speaker:I'm now going to tell you about my day.
Speaker:I want to see the sequel to a Christmas Carol where we see like 48 hours later, that bird
Speaker:is just mad.
Speaker:I get infested on their front step.
Speaker:Like the, the, what are those people going to do?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:They're going to have to like smoke that entire turkey.
Speaker:I don't know how the Victorians managed their food poorly.
Speaker:I guess.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I'm assuming, you know, no refrigerators or anything.
Speaker:If someone hands you a bird, that's too big for a family of four to eat in one sitting.
Speaker:What do you do with the rest?
Speaker:Can you keep those leftovers?
Speaker:Is there like a forever stew that they have going?
Speaker:They just dump the bird in.
Speaker:What do they do?
Speaker:I like how Scrooge giving this one family, a large bird.
Speaker:It's like Oprah.
Speaker:It's like Oprah cursing that studio audience with the cars they couldn't pay for.
Speaker:It feels that way.
Speaker:Like he means well, but you're also like this fucking knob.
Speaker:Tiny Tim dies because of all the money they pay for the taxes on that bird.
Speaker:That would be the next thing.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Someone's going to come and be like, hold on a minute here.
Speaker:Where did this bird come from?
Speaker:On your earnings?
Speaker:Looks like fraud.
Speaker:Bob Cratchit is, is, is audited by the Victorian IRS.
Speaker:I think it's just Scotland Yard at that point, right?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:To examine all your shillings with a fine tooth comb.
Speaker:I shan't be at work tomorrow, Mr. Scrooge.
Speaker:I'm going to the gulag.
Speaker:Oh God, that's so cruel.
Speaker:So, uh, this kind of leads me into a movie we all just watched the first time because
Speaker:Mike stumbled upon this.
Speaker:Uh, I'm trying to find it on IMDb, but I'm having difficulty because again, there are
Speaker:a million films called A Christmas Carol.
Speaker:This was a version from 2001 and it's British.
Speaker:It's a British TV movie.
Speaker:That's about an hour long.
Speaker:You can find it on Tubi, uh, Roku.
Speaker:I think all the free streaming services.
Speaker:Oh, that is, that is, uh, inaccurate.
Speaker:That's why I couldn't find it on IMDb.
Speaker:It came out, uh, Christmas 2000.
Speaker:So it's listed someplace.
Speaker:It's 2001, but it's 2000 on IMDb.
Speaker:It took me like 20 minutes to find it.
Speaker:There, that does help.
Speaker:That gets me right to it.
Speaker:If you type in A Christmas Carol 2000 into your web browser, it'll take you right to it.
Speaker:I wish that were right.
Speaker:It is.
Speaker:A Dracula 2000, A Christmas Carol 2000.
Speaker:It is very much A Christmas Carol for a new millennium.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:It's a modern telling, uh, for 2000 about an unscrupulous loan shark who makes excuses
Speaker:for his uncaring nature and learns real compassion when three ghosts visit him on Christmas Eve.
Speaker:Mostly though, it's the ghost of his murdered friend slash partner.
Speaker:We, it really fixates on, fixates on the Marley portion.
Speaker:Uh, and I like, my connecting bridge here was, I like this version because Scrooge doesn't
Speaker:just wake up the end and all of a sudden he's a nice guy throwing money at problems.
Speaker:Uh, he has a slow realization that he's an asshole and it parts, he's basically going
Speaker:through Groundhog's Day.
Speaker:He keeps going through Christmas Eve over and over.
Speaker:Uh, and there's times where he's trying to do more to help and then realizing his heart's
Speaker:not in the right spot.
Speaker:So it doesn't come out correctly.
Speaker:Or just like, here, I'll give some money to dying tiny Tim.
Speaker:And they're like, he is terminal.
Speaker:That money will not help.
Speaker:Thanks a lot.
Speaker:You did not think this through.
Speaker:Thanks, Scrooge.
Speaker:He's just shoving like gifts in people's faces.
Speaker:And screaming at them to take it and like just forcing money.
Speaker:It's, I was so taken with this like Groundhog Day, like wrinkle and then, and adding a
Speaker:bit of him, like a Scrooge who is like, okay, I understand the concept of good.
Speaker:So I'll try to do that, but it's not from any place real.
Speaker:So it, it adds so much to his arc of instead of just arriving at a place of, of being a
Speaker:better person.
Speaker:He goes.
Speaker:Through the motion of attempting to be that before he reaches full catharsis, which doesn't
Speaker:come from nowhere.
Speaker:It's something that gets that winds up in adaptations to varying degrees, but it's very
Speaker:present in Dickens novella where Scrooge isn't stupid.
Speaker:He realizes halfway through, you know, the first ghost visit.
Speaker:Oh, I get what you're doing here.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I'm going to be a good person now.
Speaker:I get it.
Speaker:Good job, everybody.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Which is the realistic response to someone having an intervention, which is they will
Speaker:say whatever they can to make the intervention stop.
Speaker:So you'll leave.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Plus it's always bothered me in every adaptation.
Speaker:It gets to the end where it's like Scrooge knows that it's his course, but they still
Speaker:have to play it out and make him see his grave.
Speaker:Like, all right, we get it.
Speaker:We can probably speed this part along here.
Speaker:He's not dumb enough to think like, oh, it's some stranger who's also very rich and not
Speaker:liked by everyone else who's dead.
Speaker:It's so weird.
Speaker:It's so weird.
Speaker:So many adaptions.
Speaker:Occasionally they'll do it where he just realizes right away that, no, this is all
Speaker:my shit that they're selling and whatnot.
Speaker:And then others have Scrooge play so fucking stupid.
Speaker:And my favorite thing in any adaptation where Scrooge is like, whoever this jackass is they're
Speaker:talking about must have sucked.
Speaker:Glad I'm not that guy.
Speaker:It's me?
Speaker:No.
Speaker:It's a very Homer Simpson reaction.
Speaker:Ha ha ha.
Speaker:Glad I'm not that guy.
Speaker:Glad I'm not that guy.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:But there is a, there is something I think a lot of adaptions miss and with Scrooge's
Speaker:like kind of how his arc unfolds and this like random 2000 TV movie where he's a loan
Speaker:shark, like I think captured it really well.
Speaker:Um, I think in the Muppet Christmas Carol commentary, I talked about how that is like
Speaker:the most believable arc for Scrooge for me, for, for whatever reason, the way it's written
Speaker:and the way Kane plays it.
Speaker:Um, but it's very, there's a subtleness to it and it's the most believable.
Speaker:Um, until I actually saw this where this one actually kind of like comes pretty close to
Speaker:like that same feeling.
Speaker:It's something I do like too, but what they do with Scrooge to update this is Scrooge for
Speaker:once is not like a 70 year old man who has like a year to make good for a lifetime of
Speaker:fucking around.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Like he's this version of Scrooge, Eddie Scrooge, uh, is what, like 40 when this movie comes
Speaker:out?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So 41 on his IMDb.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:They, they, for some reason chose the picture of where he's looking at his shiny cross that
Speaker:shows his face and his date of birth, his date of death, which is hilarious out of context.
Speaker:Uh, it's just, Oh, he's staring right at me.
Speaker:Uh, I like that though, because it's always bothered me in writing that the ghosts find
Speaker:this old man who has like a year left.
Speaker:If he keeps up his ways and they turns all around and then everyone's cool with him.
Speaker:Like, Oh no, he's a nice guy.
Speaker:He undid all that shitty stuff he's been doing for the past 60 years.
Speaker:And it's weird.
Speaker:Marley waited seven years.
Speaker:It is very weird.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Like apparently the ghost thing wouldn't work.
Speaker:It's like, Hey man, you got like five more years of this, but don't fuck around.
Speaker:You got to free it up.
Speaker:There was another version that de-aged him a little bit.
Speaker:Um, it's an animated one, Christmas Carol, the movie from I think 2001 or something like
Speaker:that.
Speaker:Um, 99.
Speaker:It's somewhere around there.
Speaker:Um, uh, directed by Jimmy Murakami who did, uh, like when the wind blows and stuff like
Speaker:that.
Speaker:Um, interesting little movie.
Speaker:Um, it drag, it's a little bit draggy.
Speaker:It's a little bit more morose.
Speaker:It's animated on threes.
Speaker:So it has like, Oh, and like anime Disney, like fluid, it's like super fluid animation.
Speaker:So it's very weird and kind of startling to kind of get used to.
Speaker:Um, like Nick Cage plays Marley in it.
Speaker:Um, Kate Winslet sings a song.
Speaker:Um, it has a really like random cast, but, uh, that they de-age Scrooge too and allow
Speaker:him to do that.
Speaker:Um, I think that's why they de-age it because like, Oh, he's not too, it's not too late
Speaker:for him to find love and give it a romance ending.
Speaker:Uh, I just like it from the thematic standpoint of boy, if like fucking Elon Musk gets to
Speaker:seven years old and turns around and just gives all his money away and dies like a day
Speaker:later, does that undo all of the shitty things he did previously in life?
Speaker:Eh, whereas if you're like 40 years old and you make that change of mind and you live
Speaker:out your next couple of days, you're like, Oh, I'm going to die.
Speaker:Decades being a good person, that kind of balances more for me.
Speaker:I think it means more as an audience to be like, no, now you should do it early.
Speaker:You should, I mean, you can always do it later, but now's better.
Speaker:It's like investing in a 401k.
Speaker:That ending feels very earned, um, in that, in the crime version of Christmas Carol.
Speaker:With a whole subplot over whether or not Eddie Scrooge killed Jacob Marley.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I was not expecting a murder subplot to just kind of be the undercurrent.
Speaker:Of this whole thing.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:There are a lot of little twists like that that make things a lot more, it's weird saying
Speaker:this for a Christmas Carol, but a lot more personal in this version where instead of,
Speaker:uh, of just, uh, archetypal spirits, each of the ghosts are somebody with a personal
Speaker:connection to Scrooge.
Speaker:The ghost of Christmas past is his, uh, abusive father.
Speaker:The ghost of Christmas present is just Marley.
Speaker:Again.
Speaker:And future is the spirit of the child he would have in the future if he gave up his life
Speaker:of crime, which is such a cool idea.
Speaker:Speaking of, you know, kind of twists on the formula one, I think the reason so many genre
Speaker:fans are into a Christmas Carol, cause I've noticed a lot of them really dig the idea
Speaker:of a Christmas Carol and they watch 40 different versions every year.
Speaker:Uh, Mike, how many versions did you watch just to prep for this episode on like a week's
Speaker:notice?
Speaker:Nine.
Speaker:Nine.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:Point in case point.
Speaker:I think it's like slasher films where we all love seeing an established formula that
Speaker:just gets a little tweak each time.
Speaker:So we have a general idea what's coming and when it does a twist, you're like, Ooh, a
Speaker:new wrinkle.
Speaker:I didn't expect.
Speaker:That's definitely the case with the Christmas Carol because you can't just do a Christmas
Speaker:Carol anymore, right?
Speaker:No one would go see a plain ass Christmas Carol, which makes me wonder what is your
Speaker:favorite little wrinkle someone's done to reinvigorate the idea of a Christmas Carol
Speaker:and get it put back onto film or stage.
Speaker:Mine would be adding Muppets.
Speaker:I think that's the best way.
Speaker:Adding Muppets.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I mean, that's still.
Speaker:It's still my absolute favorite, but honestly, after watching it yesterday, the fucking
Speaker:crime Christmas story that is really shot up to like the near the top of my list.
Speaker:It may be out inching the George C.
Speaker:Scott version for me.
Speaker:It's doing a couple of things though, right?
Speaker:Because it's modernizing the story.
Speaker:And then it's, it's kind of changing several regular aspects of it.
Speaker:Like it almost all of them.
Speaker:Scrooge is just a money lender or a very, very rich guy in this one.
Speaker:Eddie doesn't seem like a multimillionaire.
Speaker:He's just doing pretty good as a loan shark.
Speaker:Which they, they kind of transformed Scrooge from being a miser into maybe an actual criminal.
Speaker:So there's, there's.
Speaker:He does have various wanted posters up everywhere.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So I think this one takes more liberties than a lot of other Christmas Carols, which is fun.
Speaker:It could have been enough to say, Hey, we're modernizing this and all the characters will be doing their stuff in the year 2000 rather than.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Which is what I was expecting going in.
Speaker:Like, okay, you just kind of do this and very simple.
Speaker:Like, no, they really added, they added so many different elements.
Speaker:And I.
Speaker:I, I've watched a lot of Christmas Carols and that wasn't even like I've, I rewatched, uh, all the ones I had seen previously.
Speaker:So I I've seen so many fucking Christmas Carols in my life.
Speaker:And honestly, most of them.
Speaker:Mike, can you in your house make something called a Carol counter?
Speaker:And each time you add another one of these, you just kind of raise the temperature on the counter for the gauge.
Speaker:Oh, until I die.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Until you've seen them all.
Speaker:And then I just like pull out a gun.
Speaker:And then it's like, uh, uh, uh, something unclicks.
Speaker:And then a safe opens.
Speaker:I just pull out a gun and put it in my mouth and blow the trigger.
Speaker:Like I, once I get to a million Christmas Carols.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Here's your fun bucks.
Speaker:Cash them in.
Speaker:Yay.
Speaker:For, uh, confetti falls from the ceiling and I'm dead and alone.
Speaker:But before I killed myself, what was I talking about?
Speaker:Your favorite gimmicks of a Christmas Carol.
Speaker:Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker:But this one goes so much further than that because it's hard for a Christmas Carol movie to really be.
Speaker:Bad because most of them, it really just comes down to acting and directing and the story has been established and everyone recognizes a good story.
Speaker:So yeah, no, no one really alters the story very much.
Speaker:So there's usually other reasons for why it, a movie adaption doesn't work for a Christmas Carol.
Speaker:This one decides to throw so much, not like out, but like, no, let's really dig in.
Speaker:If we're changing the setting, like let's do different things with the ghosts.
Speaker:Let's.
Speaker:Add to like this Groundhog Day aspect.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker:Yeah, I forgot about that in terms of gimmick.
Speaker:The Groundhog's thing is definitely there.
Speaker:Jamie, I swear we're going to let you go because I think we've hit you off eight times.
Speaker:One fascinating thing I found out in research for that movie is apparently that was just a blank check project given to one of the actors from EastEnders.
Speaker:Who's like Willy Wonka golden ticket dream was he wanted to do crime.
Speaker:Well, Christmas Carol, for whatever reason, that's the only reason this exists and is so weird and take so many chances is it was somebody's blank check, which I fucking love.
Speaker:And the only thing that was shot down by the network was their original idea for Tiny Tim because they thought the traditional Tiny Tim was both really like saccharine and ableist.
Speaker:They wanted Tiny Tim to be a badass street.
Speaker:Great.
Speaker:Great.
Speaker:Great.
Speaker:Great.
Speaker:Like a graffiti artist in a wheelchair who was like really jacked.
Speaker:And that's what they called him.
Speaker:Tiny Tim.
Speaker:And he'd be like this cool underground artist that the network said, let's make the most extreme, the most 2000s era Tiny Tim we could.
Speaker:God, could Tiny Tim be more unlikable?
Speaker:I'm just imagining a character from like a very special.
Speaker:Special episode of Family Matters.
Speaker:Wasn't wasn't that just one of the main leads in Extreme Ghostbusters?
Speaker:You don't get all my story.
Speaker:You don't get more of that time then.
Speaker:Oh, we can do better than Tiny Tim, who's kind of like not a great portrayal of a disabled person.
Speaker:Let's let's go full Burger King Kids Club.
Speaker:Why haven't they done a Burger King Kids Club toy menu of a Christmas Carol?
Speaker:You get like a little Tiny Tim action figure with like his crutch comes up and it's got like a little peg missile in it.
Speaker:They can fire it out of the other toys.
Speaker:Scrooge like throws money out of his hands.
Speaker:He's got like a coin in his stomach.
Speaker:He pushed out.
Speaker:He like knocks over all the bad guys.
Speaker:Oh, God.
Speaker:That Tiny Tim would totally team up with the Alice and Red Riding Hood from the Xenophil.
Speaker:The Xenoscope comics.
Speaker:How deep can we make these references?
Speaker:Keep digging.
Speaker:But as far as favorite twists on bringing this story back goes, my favorite has absolutely got to be Richard Donner with Scrooged.
Speaker:And not because of not even really because of switching it to the modern era and doing the meta stuff.
Speaker:But just the simple twist of going.
Speaker:As horror as you can possibly go with a Christmas Carol without turning it into a completely different story and specifically like a horror satire, which is something that is present in Dickens's story.
Speaker:There is a lot of LOL fuck the rich of that movie beyond its heavier social commentary.
Speaker:It was just something that is often very lost in the more morose, dour adaptation.
Speaker:It is a story that has more gravy than of grave to it.
Speaker:It starts with a joke about a doornail not being a particularly dead piece of iron mongery.
Speaker:I would say the idea of goddamn capitalists makes me wonder half if this movie should be more popular in the current age or less popular.
Speaker:Because you see so much stuff now where people realize like, hey, man, my life is pretty miserable because like one percenters basically have found all sorts of different ways to game the economy long enough where the system.
Speaker:Is hopeless if you're not already rich.
Speaker:But on the other hand, we also have a giant subculture of people who will just dedicate themselves to grifting as hard as possible to live in the grind life or you should have two jobs at all times.
Speaker:You should be buying real estate, all of these things to make additional money.
Speaker:So it feels like a giant schism in society of you either need to desperately, desperately try to get all the cash you can so you can make it and be like the top guys or like abject horror at the idea of, oh, God, we're in a money system.
Speaker:And fucking.
Speaker:Everything's bleeding to death.
Speaker:Oh, God.
Speaker:Can all the guys who unironically worship Patrick Bateman now move on to standing Scrooge?
Speaker:I mean, if if a Christmas Carol came out today for the first time, there would be people that unironically are like Scrooge is better before he got soft.
Speaker:You would have like, you know, the Jordan Belfort Belfort guys are like, no, I don't see anything wrong with loving.
Speaker:Yeah, it's it's weird because that's such a big part of the commentary of this goddamn thing.
Speaker:It's not just Scrooge was nice.
Speaker:It's.
Speaker:Scrooge stopped being essentially a predator and using his capital to make everyone else miserable like a dragon.
Speaker:There's also I think there's elements of the story that make it into some adaptions and most don't really do this.
Speaker:And it's because they they make they focus solely on the grubby rich guy aspect of Scrooge.
Speaker:And despite the fact we go into the past, they don't really focus on that.
Speaker:Scrooge is also very like broken.
Speaker:Lonely human being that was kind of like both forged through kind of like trauma into the person that he is.
Speaker:And very few do that correctly.
Speaker:It's I think the Muppet version does that pretty well.
Speaker:I think the Dorsey Scott version and the Patrick Stewart version do that pretty well.
Speaker:Crime story does that pretty well.
Speaker:But most tend to have him just be grumpy.
Speaker:And miserly and just like a bad rich guy who then becomes a good rich guy and kind of misses out, I think, on some of the more like like psychological aspects of Scrooge's change and like why he is the way he is, which I actually think is more interesting if you wanted to do like a modern version where you could do like there's there's different ways you could approach it.
Speaker:You could have it be, you know, a rich one percenter who changes his ways and you see like how he got here or somebody.
Speaker:Who is like obsessed with hustle and grind culture and realizes what life is really about or fucking you.
Speaker:I was thinking today you could literally do one where it's like your Republican family member.
Speaker:And it was like how the world actually works.
Speaker:And oh, God, it's the opposite of the boys are here.
Speaker:Yeah, I would say, too.
Speaker:It's better when they go back and show.
Speaker:Oh, hey, Scrooge was having a good time for a while in his life.
Speaker:Like he wasn't miserable.
Speaker:He was happy.
Speaker:It wasn't about money.
Speaker:He was just a normal dude.
Speaker:And then having some sort of inciting incident to show like why he turned the way he did is nice.
Speaker:Otherwise, it always feels very strange that we get a character in slot B that doesn't feel like he came from slot A.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So it's I mean, they definitely, I think, show that in something like a Christmas carol, a Muppet Christmas carol.
Speaker:Sometimes they kind of skip over it, which is a shame because it could prove the point.
Speaker:Hey, Scrooge wasn't always a bad guy.
Speaker:He kind of dealt with trauma in a bad way or something.
Speaker:You know, let a corrupting force kind of guide him.
Speaker:Like you could do something with that lesson right there of just no, no, no, no.
Speaker:He's reverting back to his good state.
Speaker:He was kind of choosing to be an asshole.
Speaker:Yeah, he was broken down.
Speaker:Like as much as I love a Muppet Christmas carol, obviously, because it's a fucking Muppet movie.
Speaker:They couldn't like do a lot of the things that are in it that are in the book and in a lot of other adaptions.
Speaker:And but one thing that does kind of like bug me is at Fuzzy Winks party.
Speaker:Fozzy Winks.
Speaker:Fozzy Winks.
Speaker:I'm sorry.
Speaker:That was actually really good.
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:I don't just do Kermit.
Speaker:I don't just do Kermit.
Speaker:Cody contains multitudes.
Speaker:God damn it.
Speaker:So where am I, Gonzo?
Speaker:I'll get back to you.
Speaker:My one thing is like you still see Stooge being like studious and uptight there.
Speaker:And you and you you've already kind of left out stuff from his childhood and like the way his father treat him.
Speaker:Obviously, because it's a Muppet movie.
Speaker:Yeah, it'd be really weird if they showed like young Michael Caine getting like caned or just his family being in abject poverty.
Speaker:Yeah, they pretty much like leave out the sister stuff for the and all that for good reason.
Speaker:But I do wish they showed that Scrooge was like a normal guy at one point.
Speaker:And they don't really quite do that.
Speaker:I wish I could remember which one it was, but there was one adaptation from the 2000s that featured its own.
Speaker:Unique version of Scrooge's childhood where he sees his father carried away by the police to debtors prison as he screams to Ebenezer, save every penny.
Speaker:Do not be charitable.
Speaker:You must be miserly.
Speaker:I will father.
Speaker:I will like it's the opening of Shallow Howl.
Speaker:Yes, I will become a bat.
Speaker:I love that.
Speaker:At some point, somebody thought that.
Speaker:A Christmas carol was too subtle.
Speaker:I also really appreciate the in the George C.
Speaker:Scott version.
Speaker:They add a little bit of a extra wrinkle of his.
Speaker:They kind of switch around like him and his sisters like birth and his mother died giving birth to Scrooge instead of fan.
Speaker:And like the wrong boy died kind of situation there.
Speaker:But but they add the extra wrinkle that fan.
Speaker:They usually do.
Speaker:This but I had this they add this like this little piece of nature to it of fan dying giving birth to his nephew and that's like that was like one of the nails and in Scrooge's coffin is like looking at him and seeing her.
Speaker:So they even do a thing where it's like he can't like look directly at him.
Speaker:And I really like that additional wrinkle because they just add all these little breadcrumbs throughout Scrooge's life in that one as to what.
Speaker:It's up to where he is.
Speaker:Oh, that one moment at Fezzy Wig's party where Christmas past tells him, oh, you know, he looks so much like your sister and you get this little like flustered look.
Speaker:And then, oh, I never noticed from Scott.
Speaker:And I kind of like a little like always like pleasant old man smile like, oh, you've you've caught me in something that that's flustered me, which is out of character for Scrooge.
Speaker:But he's genuinely caught.
Speaker:Yeah, I love everything Scott does in that film.
Speaker:He he brings such a completely different nature to Scrooge than any other actor.
Speaker:Like as much as I love fucking Michael Caine is Scrooge.
Speaker:He is probably my favorite.
Speaker:He like kind of dry wit and sarcasm.
Speaker:He brings it adds like he there's this facade he's clearly putting up and you see it break now and again and you see him trying to still.
Speaker:Pretend to be miserly as the story progresses or he's still being like kind of hard up about things, but you can tell that he's kind of making himself react that way.
Speaker:He doesn't want to like show the spirits that they're getting to him.
Speaker:An essential part of his character that shows up to varying degrees and adaptations is the fact that Scrooge is.
Speaker:At the end of the day, like somebody who has closed himself from all close himself off from all warmth and comfort.
Speaker:Like you were saying earlier, it's not just a money thing.
Speaker:It's not just about not being charitable.
Speaker:It's about shutting down that part of you completely to the to the extent where in a good adaptation, it's they make it a point to show that Scrooge denies himself any luxuries of a rich man.
Speaker:Yes, right down to demanding.
Speaker:Being cold, which Scott's the only Scrooge where I've ever actually bought.
Speaker:No, he sits in the dark and freezes all night.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah, there's like full like out of all the hundreds versions of A Christmas Carol.
Speaker:There's like four that include the fact that he doesn't give himself any luxuries.
Speaker:He every night he goes and just gets the cheapest meal at at some bar somewhere like he just gets like scraps.
Speaker:It's he doesn't.
Speaker:He's not.
Speaker:He's not even hoarding his money to enjoy it.
Speaker:He there's nothing in his home.
Speaker:He sits by an empty fire and the nicest thing are his bed linens to borrow a Radiohead lyric.
Speaker:I'm not living.
Speaker:I'm just killing time.
Speaker:It's beautiful, but I it's beautiful.
Speaker:I still I saw from Radiohead.
Speaker:Of course, beautiful, but I would say to even the weird Zemeckis animated one kind of goes into that.
Speaker:It's rarer than you'd think.
Speaker:But yeah, it does kind of feel out of place.
Speaker:If you don't get a little bit more.
Speaker:The psychological edge to that story.
Speaker:I always thought like man at the very least this guy should buy some really nice slippers.
Speaker:He's going to spend like 90% of the movie and he should have gold laced everything.
Speaker:Yeah, it's it's it's like how people don't like misunderstand what humbug means like when you kind of get into the like the misunderstanding of the meaning of that word or why he uses it.
Speaker:You start missing out on what Scrooge's character is actually about like he's not greedy actually like that's not actually what his thing is.
Speaker:He's not a money hoarder.
Speaker:He's not greedy.
Speaker:He doesn't it's for him.
Speaker:It's like it's about hard work and like this laser focus humbug is meant to be you don't Christmas is a farce and he's the only one who sees it pretty much anybody being good to somebody else is a farce.
Speaker:He's a damaged human being who believes everyone's going to hurt him.
Speaker:So in his mind, everyone's an enemy.
Speaker:Everyone's going to hurt each other.
Speaker:Everyone's deluded.
Speaker:Including themselves into believing especially on this one day of the year where they all have to be charitable.
Speaker:It's all empty.
Speaker:It's all false.
Speaker:It doesn't mean anything that they don't actually feel that way and it's a defense mechanism.
Speaker:Like that's what Scrooge is about it.
Speaker:He's not actually just a greedy piece of shit.
Speaker:But you're saying that I had to look up humbug on Wikipedia just see what the history of the word was and surprisingly enough.
Speaker:It first appeared in 1751 as student slang, which I appreciate.
Speaker:We now have student slang is a fully accepted word always associated though specifically with one story.
Speaker:That means that 100% meant ass at the time.
Speaker:I mean people always get mad when like a phrase that gets cooked up on TikTok or something enters the normal lexicon and then gets put into like the dictionary word of the year contest.
Speaker:That's just how language works.
Speaker:Yeah, that's essentially it.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I always want to tell people like look at old words.
Speaker:We didn't just come with these from like academic sources.
Speaker:A lot of these were just weird.
Speaker:Weird things people said one time and their friend was like, oh, I like that.
Speaker:And then it became popular.
Speaker:The language and Shakespeare's plays were street slang being written down for the first time.
Speaker:The word wheelbarrow was controversial to people for five minutes.
Speaker:One thing that always gets me is apparently he invented the phrase like the snow blanketed the earth and people like what?
Speaker:What?
Speaker:You can't say that.
Speaker:It's snow.
Speaker:It doesn't blanket.
Speaker:Apropos of nothing.
Speaker:I just really appreciate that one because it's such a good course.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:You can use like figurative language.
Speaker:It's okay.
Speaker:And people apparently back at that time were like fucking weirdo.
Speaker:What are you doing?
Speaker:You can't use blanket that way.
Speaker:I will say it's because this is a pet peeve of mine.
Speaker:Shakespeare was the first person to write down these words that people were using.
Speaker:He is not.
Speaker:Correct.
Speaker:As one cracked article once famously put it, the inventor of half the English language,
Speaker:because that would mean his plays would just be noises to people.
Speaker:I really love that idea, though, that he was just making.
Speaker:Shit up.
Speaker:And everyone was like, oh, they're like subtitles or notes.
Speaker:I should have.
Speaker:Oh, it's like Master Exploder from Tenacious D.
Speaker:Everyone's heads just exploded.
Speaker:I was just like, it's like modern day reading Shakespeare.
Speaker:If you were in a high school doing it, they have to give you like the literal text on the left and then like the annotated version on the right.
Speaker:That's like rewritten.
Speaker:So modern audiences can understand it.
Speaker:I like the idea of even in the day it was made, people were like in theaters.
Speaker:They had like poorly written parchment versions.
Speaker:Explain like your dog.
Speaker:He meant it snowed.
Speaker:Well, God.
Speaker:Speaking of.
Speaker:Of Shakespeare, that was something I wanted to bring up, which is a wrinkle that's very unique to A Christmas Carol.
Speaker:There's very few literary adaptions that carry this consistently throughout the history of cinema.
Speaker:90% of the time, they're mostly using beat for beat, just the plot of the book and often entire passages, if not just using all the dialogue from the book, like especially in many of the best ones,
Speaker:which is common.
Speaker:So it's not the only one, but I think that there's a lot of things that can be done to make it so that it's comparable only to maybe Dracula and Shakespeare, which is part of the fun of going through so many different adaptations is just seeing those little twists on a line, that slight rephrasing of one famous phrase.
Speaker:Like seeing how George C. Scott's delivery of there's more of gravy than of grave to you measures up with Albert Finney and Patrick Stewart and the rest.
Speaker:I think it's a sign we're getting old where all of a sudden you appreciate theater.
Speaker:You're like, ooh, well, I've seen the play a hundred times before, but I haven't seen him say the lines.
Speaker:Hey, this was me when I was nine.
Speaker:Oh, no, an old soul.
Speaker:But no, seriously, I don't know what Albert Finney was doing in that movie.
Speaker:He's like Gollum.
Speaker:I haven't seen it.
Speaker:Could someone try to do his line reading?
Speaker:I could not.
Speaker:He's like a monster in that thing.
Speaker:It kind of sounds like his big fish voice.
Speaker:You are ready for a surprise.
Speaker:Hold on.
Speaker:Hold on.
Speaker:I know this isn't live, so we could just pause this, but I'm going to look this up and listen to it in real time.
Speaker:He was like, it is 30s, like 33 or something when he did that.
Speaker:And what it's fucked up is you like, you know what old Albert Finney is now.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:So it was young Albert Finney doing what he thought would be old Albert Finney.
Speaker:And it's so far off.
Speaker:Let's see.
Speaker:I'm having a hard time.
Speaker:He sounds like an old witch.
Speaker:Delightful.
Speaker:The Baba Yaga of Christmas.
Speaker:I'm seeing a lot of the making of Scrooge 1970.
Speaker:I'm trying to find like one specific clip.
Speaker:I just I just want to hear him like belt one out.
Speaker:I want to hear a Tom Waits Ebenezer Scrooge.
Speaker:Oh, just search Christmas Carol.
Speaker:I hate people.
Speaker:I just want to see Michael Caine's Ebenezer Scrooge pick up a microphone and sing Dirt in the Ground.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Sven raps.
Speaker:I have the clip up.
Speaker:I need to give me one minute of silence.
Speaker:Yeah, I hate people.
Speaker:That's the best part of the movie.
Speaker:I have heard them.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:He sounds like he's about to give Theseus like a fucking task.
Speaker:That weird.
Speaker:Deleted scene from Immortals No One's Scene.
Speaker:And then at the end, he's fucking dressed as Santa Claus dancing around singing.
Speaker:It's fucking bizarre.
Speaker:You must go retrieve the biggest goose or you shall fall on your caboose.
Speaker:Spruce Goose, what are you doing here?
Speaker:I do not like that movie.
Speaker:Anyway, I'm sorry.
Speaker:I stepped on Jamie's point.
Speaker:She brought up Albert Finney and I just it triggered me a little bit.
Speaker:They can't all be good.
Speaker:Mike, I do not like that born supremacy memories.
Speaker:The Netflix one, I think, is like a remake of that one.
Speaker:But speaking of Christmas carols, we don't like what's what's the list like for Mike?
Speaker:I think we already know the answer for me.
Speaker:I just watched the Robert Zemeckis version again last night.
Speaker:And not that it was bad per se, but maybe misguided, like letting Jim Carrey do as much Jim Carrey shit as he does while also trying to rein him in for most of the performance.
Speaker:Is a weird.
Speaker:Upsetting blend, especially because it tries to go into a more horror direction, which is too effective.
Speaker:Seeing Jim Carrey just do weird accents and have his weird face transposed onto a flame person.
Speaker:It's unsettling.
Speaker:It's a movie that has no idea what its tone is, especially.
Speaker:Yeah, it's tone.
Speaker:Action beats are 100 percent for small children.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And they go way too long.
Speaker:And it seems like that's jokey fun.
Speaker:And then it's like, here's what's an ignorance.
Speaker:They're trying to fuck me.
Speaker:It's it's a weird movie.
Speaker:Uh, and it's.
Speaker:It doesn't help that it's still kind of early days of CGI filmmaking when this was put together.
Speaker:So the animation still is a little soulless behind the eyes.
Speaker:It doesn't look at a level, but no, but it still doesn't look great.
Speaker:Carrie is the ghost of Christmas present is honestly terrifying.
Speaker:Every time he does his big laugh is just like, oh, God, this guy's a murderer.
Speaker:I will never understand the trend of having actors voice act opposite each other or voice act opposite themselves.
Speaker:Go.
Speaker:No, why do we why can't we use Tony Todd when we can have Benedict Cumberbatch talk to Benedict Cumberbatch?
Speaker:But yeah, that's probably a weird thing to say that that's the worst one.
Speaker:It's probably just because it's a very high profile one and it was very expensive to make.
Speaker:That makes me dislike it more.
Speaker:But we've had so many low budget or weird ones through the years.
Speaker:It's probably stupid to say that's the worst one.
Speaker:There are very few truly bad Christmas carols.
Speaker:There's boring ones.
Speaker:And then there's like the weird like side Christmas carol stuff.
Speaker:I would say, yeah, like remember the FX Christmas carol miniseries?
Speaker:I haven't seen it, so I can't judge it.
Speaker:But it just seemed wild to me that they came out with like a three hour long adaptation of a Christmas carol.
Speaker:That's whole selling point was we got Guy Pearce and this one's fucking dark, guys.
Speaker:I don't know if anybody wants that.
Speaker:I think like there's got to be a certain level of creepiness and spookiness.
Speaker:To a Christmas carol.
Speaker:But it needs to be balanced out by warmth in certain parts for the whole thing to work.
Speaker:It can't just be everything is miserable the entire time until like the last 10 minutes, I presume.
Speaker:Oh, God.
Speaker:Remember only a couple of years ago, Dan Stevens was Charles Dickens in a Christmas carol Shakespeare and love movie.
Speaker:I had not seen it, but I saw it like for sale, the DVD for sale at like Target.
Speaker:Did anyone check that one out?
Speaker:I did not.
Speaker:I did not see it.
Speaker:It was apparently good.
Speaker:Yeah, people do really dig that.
Speaker:I guess it's kind of like a like in the wheelhouse of like finding Neverland, Neverland or whatever it's fucking called.
Speaker:OK.
Speaker:And who doesn't love Dan Stevens?
Speaker:Yeah, I'm scrolling through the IMDb list of Christmas carols just to see what other weird ones have fallen through the cracks.
Speaker:I might have noticed apparently last year we had one called Scrooge, a Christmas carol, which is an animated one with Luke Evans.
Speaker:That's the one.
Speaker:I think that's the remake.
Speaker:Oh, it's Netflix.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:That's probably what you're talking about.
Speaker:That's the Albert Finney one.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I hope he has the same voice.
Speaker:What else do we have here?
Speaker:Christmas Carol, the musical with Kelsey Grammer.
Speaker:That's a hard pass for me.
Speaker:That one was on Tubi.
Speaker:Didn't want it.
Speaker:I kind of remember watching that when it first aired.
Speaker:I think that was like in the early 2000s.
Speaker:We've got the Henry Winkler version.
Speaker:Oh, the Henry Winkler version is fucking wild.
Speaker:An American Christmas carol.
Speaker:It takes place in 1930s America.
Speaker:With Henry Winkler, not as Scrooge, but as an unrelated, I believe he's a landlord who's like terrorizing a city in New Hampshire.
Speaker:His character name is Benedict Slade, which sounds like it should be a DC villain.
Speaker:Who exists in a universe with a Christmas carol.
Speaker:Because at one point he destroys a priceless collection of rare books.
Speaker:And on the top of the pile.
Speaker:Is a Christmas carol.
Speaker:And he gleefully rips it apart.
Speaker:Pronouncing it nonsense.
Speaker:This is awful because it's from 1979.
Speaker:So it's Henry Winkler in old age makeup doing old man acting.
Speaker:It's Rick Baker, old age makeup too.
Speaker:Rick Baker consulted on that.
Speaker:That's wild.
Speaker:It's a lot.
Speaker:I think a lot of it is though.
Speaker:Henry Winkler moves pretty fast, but he also kind of gives himself a little bit of a hunch, which it's like he kind of understands he needs to be old, but he's got too much vigor for him to be.
Speaker:The age he's playing.
Speaker:Oh, it's every younger guy playing an old man on in like a vaudeville act you've ever seen.
Speaker:It's very weird.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Also, it has the most 70s take on the ghosts ever.
Speaker:The ghost of Christmas future is a well-dressed black man from the 1970s who tells Winkler that the future is coming, whether the white man wants it or not.
Speaker:The future is now, old man.
Speaker:That sounds awesome.
Speaker:Tying into what you were saying, Jamie, just for a second at the start of that little synopsis was the fact that an American Christmas Carol was like a 1930s story.
Speaker:I found a dark theory on why Scrooge was so miserly.
Speaker:You know, one of those Reddit things people make up.
Speaker:Is Scrooge dead the whole time?
Speaker:No, surprisingly, the theory was Scrooge is so miserly because he grew up during the Napoleonic Wars.
Speaker:Which were like decade long, you know, basically it was a time where England was going through huge boycotts of all their goods from first France and then the United States.
Speaker:So they were like scrapped for supplies, like they didn't have enough food to cover people.
Speaker:So having money would be difficult, which makes me think, oh, the Great Depression might be a good timeline for a Christmas Carol kind of thing where people desperately need money and they have people hoarding it.
Speaker:I'm actually surprised that hasn't happened more.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:But I just find it funny.
Speaker:People had to like make a dark.
Speaker:Theory to be like Scrooge probably grew up destitute on the streets and the French wouldn't allow food to be given to the British and he was starving.
Speaker:And that's why, though, he's the way he is.
Speaker:Like, you know, we hear your great grandma who's like grew up during the Great Depression.
Speaker:It's like, we'll eat squirrel stew.
Speaker:It'll be good.
Speaker:Squirrel stew is fantastic.
Speaker:You ever had it?
Speaker:It's good.
Speaker:It's very good.
Speaker:Oh, it's not the first time I've.
Speaker:Yeah, it's not the first time I've heard that theory.
Speaker:And I'm mad.
Speaker:That's not the first time I've heard that theory.
Speaker:I only stumbled onto it because I was searching for how old Scrooge was supposed to be in the story.
Speaker:And somehow those got linked through Google results because it'll just spit out whatever you want.
Speaker:Now, I won't actually be what you're looking for.
Speaker:But here's some random crap.
Speaker:Enjoy it.
Speaker:According to Albert Finney, he's in like his 900s.
Speaker:This is unrelated to everything we've just spoken about.
Speaker:But I think if you were ever an animated show that had more than one season, it's a crime if you didn't produce some sort of Christmas Carol episode.
Speaker:There was a fucking all dogs go to heaven Christmas Carol.
Speaker:Mr.
Speaker:Magoo.
Speaker:Got one.
Speaker:The Flintstones got one face.
Speaker:What?
Speaker:It's a wonderful car face.
Speaker:The all dogs go to heaven Christmas Carol movie.
Speaker:They did.
Speaker:They dedicated an entire movie to that.
Speaker:That wasn't even like an episode of the TV show.
Speaker:Oh, Jesus.
Speaker:I've got.
Speaker:Remember the two mutually exclusive Scrooge is an old black lady now movies from the late 90s.
Speaker:Miss Scrooge and a diva's Christmas Carol.
Speaker:I was a big fan of both of those.
Speaker:Miss Scrooge is actually like legitimately like solid.
Speaker:That one was actually like very.
Speaker:I remember like being like for what it is fairly effective and cold.
Speaker:I'm not encouraging people to pirate, but I just had to look up in all dogs Christmas Carol.
Speaker:And sure enough, the first result is a YouTube link to the entire goddamn film.
Speaker:One hour and 10 minutes and 22 seconds.
Speaker:I know what we're doing.
Speaker:There we go.
Speaker:I also like that people asked, what is the dog version of the Christmas Carol?
Speaker:Did Ebeneezer Scrooge have a dog in one version in one animated version?
Speaker:He has a fucking dog.
Speaker:I would hate to be Ebeneezer Scrooge's dog.
Speaker:That was not great.
Speaker:It's from like 97.
Speaker:I think it's Tim Curry is Scrooge.
Speaker:Scrooge has a dog named Debit in this animated musical.
Speaker:Debit.
Speaker:It's a weirdly it includes scenes that are not in some adaptions, but it's not great.
Speaker:And the fact he hangs out with a dog is very strange to me.
Speaker:Looper has 12.
Speaker:Most trippy moments and Scrooge a Christmas Carol ranked.
Speaker:Goddamn Looper Looper.
Speaker:You can find a link to everything.
Speaker:Oh, I can't read it, though, because I've got a blocker on.
Speaker:They won't let me on their website.
Speaker:Never mind.
Speaker:We'll never find out the 12 trippiest moments in this Netflix gruel.
Speaker:But seriously, a Flintstones Christmas Carol is not good.
Speaker:I was very angry when I watched that this morning.
Speaker:We were bitching about that earlier.
Speaker:I was saying, like, I don't think I could ever get through more than like 20 minutes of that as a kid.
Speaker:I wanted to watch it today.
Speaker:It's just and yeah, I couldn't get to load.
Speaker:I was kind of disappointed.
Speaker:And then you were like about it.
Speaker:So, yeah, apparently I lucked out.
Speaker:It is.
Speaker:It feels like it's three hours long.
Speaker:It just goes and goes.
Speaker:And it's so there's nothing to it.
Speaker:It's it's most fascinating aspect is it has a character from Flintstones kids in his only adult appearance.
Speaker:Ah, also, it sounds like it's just kind of ripping off Scrooge reading the plot line here.
Speaker:Fred is cast as Ebenezer Scrooge in a stage adaptation adaptation.
Speaker:The adaptation of the story, but is acting a bit stingy in real life.
Speaker:So isn't that also the plot of the Mr.
Speaker:Magoo Christmas Carol?
Speaker:Probably just rubber stamp and they're all the same.
Speaker:He like forgets to pick up pebbles from school or some such shit like he's so he doesn't buy anybody Christmas gifts because he's so into the fact he's playing Scrooge.
Speaker:He's just method acting.
Speaker:They're mad for being a method actor.
Speaker:He Daniel Day Lewis it and they got mad at him.
Speaker:And there's a weird like subplot.
Speaker:Subplot where there's this bedrock bug going around.
Speaker:So actors in the in the play keep getting sick and Wilma has to replace them.
Speaker:That's really complicated.
Speaker:And I think Fred wants to cheat on Wilma.
Speaker:It's so fucking weird.
Speaker:It's an hour nine.
Speaker:How do they fit all that in?
Speaker:And it doesn't feel like enough.
Speaker:Mickey's Christmas Carol is only like 30 minutes long, like 30 flat.
Speaker:And that one really hits all of the essential beats of a Christmas Carol.
Speaker:That one rocks.
Speaker:I fucking love it.
Speaker:You can get that in like while you're having dinner.
Speaker:And it's.
Speaker:I have seen a Christmas Carol.
Speaker:Also, the animation is real good in it.
Speaker:For being 80s Disney, that one is particularly well done.
Speaker:Did Simpsons ever do a Christmas Carol parody?
Speaker:They had to.
Speaker:There's no way they didn't use Mr. Burns as Scrooge.
Speaker:Or they had to have used Mr. Burns as Scrooge before.
Speaker:In the 2000s seasons, there was a pretty good for its time Christmas episode.
Speaker:That was about Homer being introduced to the concept of a Christmas Carol through.
Speaker:Through Sitcom Christmas Carol episodes and that making him realize that he's an asshole.
Speaker:That's exactly.
Speaker:Honestly, kind of brilliant.
Speaker:Pretty solid.
Speaker:That's clever.
Speaker:And Homer.
Speaker:Homer wakes up the next day trying to tell the kids about the greatest thing he's ever seen.
Speaker:As if no one's ever heard of a Christmas Carol before.
Speaker:We get to see that.
Speaker:We get to see Star Trek Christmas Carol.
Speaker:A Christmas Carol is so popular.
Speaker:Popular that it has its own Simpsons wiki entry.
Speaker:Just to note.
Speaker:All the times it's been referenced on the show.
Speaker:There are 28 so far.
Speaker:Including The Nightmare After Crustmas.
Speaker:White Christmas Blues.
Speaker:Holidays of Futures Past.
Speaker:The Fight Before Christmas.
Speaker:Springfield Up.
Speaker:The Heartbreak.
Speaker:The Heartbroke Kid.
Speaker:One of the Treehouse of Horrors.
Speaker:Tis the 15th Season.
Speaker:Which includes a Mr. McGrew's Christmas Carol reference.
Speaker:Oh, Mr. McGrew's Christmas Carol.
Speaker:Which is the parody of Mr. McGrew's Christmas Carol.
Speaker:Makes sense.
Speaker:I think that's the one that has the Star Trek and Family Matters parodies.
Speaker:That Jamie's.
Speaker:And the one I really remember.
Speaker:The Grift of the Magi.
Speaker:Which randomly ends with Mr. Scrooge coming in with a bunch of money and turkey.
Speaker:For everyone.
Speaker:Oh, that's right.
Speaker:That's right.
Speaker:Hey, question.
Speaker:Was Mr. McGrew a pedophile?
Speaker:Is this the second character you've accused?
Speaker:I was trying to bookend.
Speaker:But no, seriously.
Speaker:It's actually a legitimate question.
Speaker:This is something I've wondered for a while.
Speaker:Is Mr. McGrew an implied pedophile?
Speaker:If you can't trust J. Quincy McGrew with your children.
Speaker:Who can?
Speaker:Who can you?
Speaker:I like Mr. Bean better.
Speaker:He's probably a pedophile, though.
Speaker:I could see that.
Speaker:Mike would never leave his children with anyone who goes by Mr. Anything.
Speaker:Blippi.
Speaker:Now, Blippi is a pedophile.
Speaker:Are we finding out Mike's blacklist for Christmas?
Speaker:These are all the fictional characters that Mike is giving Cole to this year.
Speaker:The reason?
Speaker:Pedophiles.
Speaker:That's the only reason he gives out Cole.
Speaker:This is slowly turning into, like, we need to do a Christmas Carol.
Speaker:No, I don't like that you're accusing people of stuff.
Speaker:You're like, we should do a parody.
Speaker:No, I see where you're at.
Speaker:I will say, a quick scan of Wikipedia, which is my go-to research article of choice while we're on these calls,
Speaker:and I can't do any real reading, doesn't have a whole pedophile section on it.
Speaker:Okay, hold on.
Speaker:I'm just going to ask.
Speaker:I mean, there's the AI thing with Google search now.
Speaker:There you go.
Speaker:Try that.
Speaker:Is Mr. McGrew a...
Speaker:Okay, it wasn't an autocomplete.
Speaker:It was an autocomplete thing, which shocks me.
Speaker:I got a hit for Mr. Magoo and Magoo's Problem Child from 1956, uploaded by John Mayer.
Speaker:That's a thing.
Speaker:Adams County Sheriff's Office, sexually violent predator community.
Speaker:I guess that's a form?
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:No, I'm getting no responses.
Speaker:I guess no one...
Speaker:Something about Bad Bunny.
Speaker:Oh, here we go.
Speaker:This is actually the entire third act of the Mr. Magoo film.
Speaker:From 1997.
Speaker:I knew it.
Speaker:Malcolm McDowell is actually...
Speaker:No, I'm making this up.
Speaker:Oomph, no.
Speaker:Well, we started with A Christmas Carol.
Speaker:Now we've dived into Mr. Magoo, which is probably a sign we need to let things go.
Speaker:But before we wrap up, can I just briefly mention the worst version of A Christmas Carol I could find,
Speaker:which I obviously didn't...
Speaker:did not watch,
Speaker:but I just want to do a brief summary of the fact that this exists.
Speaker:1978.
Speaker:Rich Little's Christmas Carol.
Speaker:Broadcast one time on HBO.
Speaker:They had a Star Wars Christmas movie of...
Speaker:Oh, boy.
Speaker:Oh, God.
Speaker:Rich Little.
Speaker:This is a movie where Rich Little plays every role through the magic of green screen.
Speaker:Oh, my God.
Speaker:We have to track this down.
Speaker:And each role is a celebrity impression.
Speaker:Yeah, we gotta watch this.
Speaker:Maybe it's just because we've been typing a lot of Christmas Carol things into Google recently,
Speaker:but I typed Rich Little, and it's the second thing that pops up under your search results.
Speaker:There's a 47-minute video at the top of the YouTube results.
Speaker:That might be it.
Speaker:You might have access.
Speaker:They could barely fit an hour of it.
Speaker:It is Rich Little as W.C. Fields as Ebenezer.
Speaker:Scrooge.
Speaker:Paul Lind as Bob Cratchit.
Speaker:Johnny Carson as Fred.
Speaker:Laurel and Hardy as the Solicitors.
Speaker:You ever seen someone do both parts of Laurel and Hardy with a green screen?
Speaker:You shouldn't.
Speaker:Richard Nixon as Jacob Marley.
Speaker:Humphrey Bogart as Christmas Past.
Speaker:Groucho Marx as Fizzy Wig.
Speaker:Jimmy Stewart as Dick Wilkins.
Speaker:Columbo as the Ghost of Christmas Present.
Speaker:Edith Bunker as Mrs. Cratchit.
Speaker:Chucky.
Speaker:Chucky.
Speaker:Chucky.
Speaker:Truman Capote as Tiny Tim, and it's as offensive as you think.
Speaker:Why?
Speaker:Why are we doing this?
Speaker:Spectre Corso as the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.
Speaker:And Jack Benny as a boy.
Speaker:I don't want to get-
Speaker:The little boy who gets the goose.
Speaker:And people think comedy has gotten worse.
Speaker:I don't want to get anyone too excited, but you can actually buy Rich Little's Christmas Carol and Robin Hood on a dual-featured DVD for about $50 on Amazon.
Speaker:Oh, nope.
Speaker:I'm sorry.
Speaker:It's sold out.
Speaker:Get it on video.
Speaker:Get it on video disc.
Speaker:Nope, I take it back.
Speaker:They've got a used copy.
Speaker:They've got a used one.
Speaker:Oh, God.
Speaker:$49 in good condition and $4.88 delivery.
Speaker:Every penny.
Speaker:I can have a copy of this.
Speaker:Give it to a sick, dying child or bring him back to life.
Speaker:I could have a copy of this in eight days at my house.
Speaker:I could be watching this movie.
Speaker:No.
Speaker:Do it.
Speaker:I'm mad now.
Speaker:Maybe it comes with a copy of the Rich Little movie from a few years before that where he played Nixon.
Speaker:And he and Agnew.
Speaker:Were Laurel and Hardy for two hours.
Speaker:He made an entire movie that's just a Laurel and Hardy impression, but it's the president.
Speaker:Oh, boy.
Speaker:Daisy 899, I'm sorry I will not be purchasing your used copy of Richard Little's Christmas Carol and Robin Hood DVD.
Speaker:I'm looking at the Wikipedia article.
Speaker:Despite not being filmed in front of a studio audience, Rich Little's Christmas Carol had a laugh track at it.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:It's for it.
Speaker:It was for his.
Speaker:It was for his benefit, so he fell accomplished.
Speaker:God bless us, each and every one, especially Rich Little.
Speaker:On the opposite side of the spectrum, just an honorable mention before we wrap things up.
Speaker:And Jamie and I could talk in like an hour about this.
Speaker:So we'll just mention to reach out and watch A Christmas Carol Goes Wrong.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Oh, yeah.
Speaker:Delightful.
Speaker:I get watch all of the goes wrong.
Speaker:A BBC special.
Speaker:And their one season TV show, which I think is all still for free on YouTube.
Speaker:But A Christmas Carol Goes Wrong especially is both hysterical and actually works as a legit version of A Christmas Carol.
Speaker:I'm glad we got one good recommendation in before letting this burn down on such an awful note.
Speaker:Mr. Magoo?
Speaker:Rich Little.
Speaker:Also possibly pedophile Mr. Magoo.
Speaker:Well, Rich Little is definitely a pedophile.
Speaker:We're all in agreement for that one, right?
Speaker:I mean, man of a thousand voices.
Speaker:Breaking news, Box Office hit by cease and desist order.
Speaker:We might get sued because of me.
Speaker:Probably.
Speaker:I don't know this man, if any litigators listening to this show.
Speaker:I'll put that on paper.
Speaker:Anyways, before Box Office Pulp has to go into the witness relocation program, you can find more of this show on boxofficepulp.com.
Speaker:You can find us on pretty much wherever you would go for your podcast.
Speaker:We're not hard to find.
Speaker:We swear to God.
Speaker:Be it Spotify or Google Music.
Speaker:We're around.
Speaker:We're around.
Speaker:And, uh, boy, actually, that one's smooth enough where I'm like, I, I, did I, I should.
Speaker:I was about to say, like, I like how you, you pause because you've never done it in one go like that before.
Speaker:I, yeah, I'm mystified.
Speaker:It's a Christmas miracle.
Speaker:Oh!
Speaker:You learned your lesson.
Speaker:Did three spirits visit you before you did the outro?
Speaker:They hit me with sticks.
Speaker:I was put into a bag and they just said the beatings would continue until I learned how to close out my own show I've been doing for a decade.
Speaker:It worked.
Speaker:It's a beautiful lesson.
Speaker:Anyways, folks.
Speaker:Hope you have a Merry Christmas, uh, Crazy Kwanzaa, uh, Happy Hanukkah, whatever you're into.
Speaker:That's a wrap.
Speaker:But, like, Christmas wrapping.
Speaker:Get it?
Speaker:It's not like our normal.
Speaker:It's a wrap.
Speaker:This one's topical.
Speaker:Oh, we rap about a Christmas carol over the end credits?
Speaker:No!
Speaker:No!
Speaker:How is that not a thing that happened in the 90s?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Ice-T's a Christmas carol.
Speaker:Why the fuck go back into that?
Speaker:Let's use time travel, real time travel for that.
Speaker:Let's get that fucking movie made.
Speaker:Whoa, whoa.
Speaker:We got a diva's Christmas carol and not a gangsta's Christmas carol.
Speaker:Mike, is it only real time travel to you if it's in, like, a hot tub?
Speaker:Uh, a hot tub or, like, a cardboard box that has, like, electrical wires going to it.
Speaker:The Calvin and Hobbes, Calvin and, yeah, like, their time travel box.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:I might accept the primer box.
Speaker:Nobody knows how that works.
Speaker:I don't even think they're going back in time.
Speaker:I think they were just high.
Speaker:I figured it out one time, but I've lost it since then.
Speaker:No, you didn't.
Speaker:You're a liar.
Speaker:I did.
Speaker:I spent it.
Speaker:It's higher.
Speaker:I spent it this afternoon, like, going over all the graphs and shit, and I think I figured it out.
Speaker:I also haven't seen Primer in a while, so I probably just was deluding myself.
Speaker:You were not.
Speaker:Yeah, that's where I'm at.
Speaker:No one understands Primer.
Speaker:Do they?
Speaker:No one filmed Primer.
Speaker:It just was there one day on their hard drive.
Speaker:Primer's been there since the oldest days.
Speaker:It's from the time before, like, Galactus.
Speaker:So I got a photo of the Overlook Hotel, and in the crowd is a DVD copy of Primer.
Speaker:Primer, that's kind of a Christmas Carol movie.
Speaker:I mean, you kind of, like, learn a moral lesson.
Speaker:This is why I wrapped up the show.
Speaker:Now we're just reaching the straws.
Speaker:And like that, he's gone.
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