A Christmas Story
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- ''For the Christian Christmas story, see Nativity of Jesus
Tagline: Peace, Harmony, Comfort and Joy...Maybe Next Year.
A Christmas Story is a 1983 semi-biographical film based on the short stories of author Jean Shepherd collected in the book In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash and "Wanda Hickie's Night of Golden Memories." It was released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
The film relates the tale of Ralphie Parker, who wants a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas (specifically, "an official Red Ryder, carbine action, two-hundred shot range model air rifle") and will go to any lengths to get it despite the numerous adult admonitions of "you'll shoot your eye out." There is the additional subplot of Ralphie dealing with the neighborhood bully, Scut Farkus, played by Zack Ward. The movie stars Darren McGavin, Melinda Dillon, and Peter Billingsley. The movie was written by Jean Shepherd, Leigh Brown, and Bob Clark and directed by Bob Clark. Shepherd appears in the film in the department store scene, when he points Ralphie to the end of the line of kids waiting to see Santa. He also provides the movie's narration from the perspective of an adult Ralphie. This narrative style was later used in the dramedy The Wonder Years.
Overlooked as a sleeper film when it was first released, A Christmas Story has become widely popular since and is now a perennial Christmas special. Turner Network Television owns the broadcast rights, and airs it 12 consecutive times over a 24 hour period every Christmas. It should be noted that the marathon was played on TBS in 2004 and 2005 instead of TNT.
A movie sequel involving Ralphie and his family was later made with a different cast called My Summer Story. A series of television movies involving the Parker family, also from Shepherd stories, was made by PBS, including Ollie Hopnoodle's Haven of Bliss, The Great American Fourth of July and Other Disasters, and The Phantom of the Open Hearth.
In the year 2000, an authorized stage play adaptation of "A Christmas Story" was written by Philip Grecian and is produced widely in the English-speaking world each Christmas season. In 2003, Broadway Books published the five Jean Shepherd short stories from which the movie and stage play were adapted in a single volume under the title A Christmas Story, with stories including: "Duel in the Snow, or Red Ryder nails the Cleveland Street Kid", "The Counterfeit Secret Circle Member Gets the Message, or The Asp Strikes Again," "My Old Man and the Lascivious Special Award that Heralded the Birth of Pop Art," "Grover Dill and the Tasmanian Devil," and "The Grandstand Passion Play of Delbert and the Bumpus Hounds."
The story takes place in Hammond, Indiana, but the movie was filmed in Cleveland, Ohio, except for the school scenes, which used the Victoria School in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada. The school was sold to developers in 2005 and is slated for demolition. The Tremont house, where the movie was filmed, is currently under renovation to be used as a museum.
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