It's a Wonderful Life / Knife multiverse

[00:00:00] Okay, David, this is where we are supposed to choose a side. Green or black? John, my soul is as black as night. Your turn. I am black for life. So we're not fighting? I thought this is where HBO wanted us to, like, pick sides and fight and stuff.

[00:00:24] Don't worry, I'm sure we'll find plenty to disagree about on the pod, but we seem to agree on one thing. We both really like the show. The politics, the drama, the lore! It was made for the Lorehounds.

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[00:01:03] Side effects may include a deeper understanding of dragon lore, a hardened conflict with itself and an inescapable urge to read the book fire and blood by George R. R. Martin. Dragon seeds may experience burning.

[00:01:46] Hello and welcome to a very happy holiday edition of Wool Shift Dust. I'm Luke and... I'm sorry, I'm not... I'm leaving it. Yeah, you're Alicia, I'm Luke. Yeah, that's correct.

[00:02:03] And we are celebrating the festive season with an in-depth dive into a holiday favorite, the OG alternate reality tale, It's a Wonderful Life and the multiverse of I wish I'd never been born rip offs, I mean tributes.

[00:02:18] So we're going to spend most of this episode focusing on It's a Wonderful Life. You know, this is like the iconic film and I've got some... Yeah, fun background information about how it was made and the legacy that it's had and why.

[00:02:36] But then we're going to be branching out for some laughs and look at how the same source material enters into the cultural psyche and then is combined and recombined over the decades.

[00:02:46] We watched six films in total to prepare for this so we'll run through all of them at least briefly. And yeah, that means spoilers for an 80 year old movie or any kind of...

[00:02:58] And yeah, also for some of the twists and turns of the movies that are based on that story. So these are movies that you may or may not ever have even heard of and probably never want to watch.

[00:03:08] But the one we will not spoil until the end is the brand new movie It's a Wonderful Knife, which is the horror parody that came out this year.

[00:03:16] We'll give you a spoiler warning for that one and we'll save it till the end because we want to give people time to watch it if they want to. And yeah, we got just FYI, we got some feedback on Twitter and Discord and Reddit.

[00:03:28] But there's not going to be a separate feedback section this time. We're just going to be working those responses in where relevant. So Luke, you this was your first time watching It's a Wonderful Knife.

[00:03:38] I have to ask, are you a fan of older black and white movies in general? Yeah, because this is what I was thinking because I've never watched It's a Wonderful Knife. This is the first time I've watched it.

[00:03:49] And like I did wonder whether my reaction was conditioned by like being told it's a classic, it's a brilliant film. It's this, it's that. But on the other hand, you know, I watched Casablanca a couple of years ago and that lives up to every expectation you could have.

[00:04:03] But you know, it's a wonderful film. Oh, see, I prefer this one to Casablanca personally. OK, OK. Well, I've rewatched that recently too, before I went to Morocco.

[00:04:15] OK. So I don't watch a lot of black and white movies, but what I found fascinating about this was just how much I already knew of the movie, despite having never watched it, like the extent to which is just leaked out into the world,

[00:04:30] like the whole scene with the bank run. I recognise that from a Simpsons episode, the whole where he's running through the streets of Bedford Falls at the end. Right. I recognise that, obviously.

[00:04:43] There's a reference to the New Post in my actual favourite Christmas movie, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, where he fixes a New Post by sorry it off. Yeah, so it was really quite startling how much I already knew of the movie, despite having never watched it.

[00:05:01] Yeah, so I've been talking to a lot of people in prepping this episode about this film and it is interesting. You know, you brought up that you thought it might be...

[00:05:11] You were talking with your British friends about how this might be like sort of an American cultural phenomenon. And I was talking to my friend, Rain from Mexico.

[00:05:20] She was saying that, you know, movies, this movie is known in Mexico, but it's not really a classic and people may know the name, but they really don't watch them. And my friend who grew up in Poland said that she's never heard of it at all.

[00:05:34] So yeah, it made me want to post. I don't know if you saw, I posted a couple polls on Twitter to ask people to weigh in on whether or not they knew the movie and how well and whether they thought it was an American or international phenomenon.

[00:05:49] So, oh, 22 minutes left on the first poll. And 43.6% said that they have seen It's a Wonderful Life. 26.9% said that they've heard of it. 16.7% say that it's one of their favourites. And 12.8% say that they've never heard of it.

[00:06:10] I mean, will the friend you refer to said it's an American thing? But actually, I don't think that it is because there's an art house cinema near my parents that shows it every year. Like I've had the opportunity to go and see It's a Wonderful Life.

[00:06:23] I've just never gotten round to it. I don't think it's quite as prevalent in the UK as the US, but it's certainly a well-known film. I think if you want the UK equivalent of It's a Wonderful Life,

[00:06:35] it's probably the version of A Christmas Carol with Alastazim from about the same time. No, that makes sense. These films are well-linked too. I mean, these stories are well-linked. We'll talk about that also as we go.

[00:06:48] But yeah, I did also ask a follow-up question about whether it's international or American. And so then we got 70.3% said that it was an American classic, 15.6% said an international classic, 10.9% said that they didn't know it, and 3.1% said it was niche. So we're leading American.

[00:07:10] But there was an interesting conversation kicked up under that where we have Nine Eve Sadi who's Irish and Charlie who's from the southeast of England. And Nine Eve was saying that I went with international, one of my OH's favorite Christmas films. What does OH mean? Other halves.

[00:07:29] Oh, yeah. There we go. One of my other half's favorite Christmas films growing up and he had the TV channels in Scotland as a kid. It was always on my TV at Christmas along with Gone with the Wind. And I grew up associating it with St. Stephen's Day.

[00:07:45] Interesting. What's St. Stephen's Day? I don't know. Oh, OK. No idea. I think this is an Irish thing rather than a... Or maybe Scottish. ...than the UK. And so, yeah, but Charlie said from South West England, sorry, born in the 80s,

[00:08:01] I watched it on purpose in my 20s because I'd heard a lot about it from Americans. It was not a naturally occurring phenomenon in me. But then they went on to discuss that it might be just based on how much you watched black and white films growing up.

[00:08:16] Like, if you watch black and white films, you watch this film. If you did not grow up with that being part of the cinematic catalogue that you watched then, you probably missed this one too. Yeah.

[00:08:30] Yeah, but we also some feedback that we got on Twitter was Mark Ansani said it's a beautiful holiday movie. Watch it every year. And I'm surprised by these numbers, but I'm American. So maybe that's why. But it's just a very wholesome feel good movie.

[00:08:44] And I cry every time. And on the other hand, a random threat in the pattern said, I know of it, but I've never bothered to sit and watch it. So it seems like that's the majority of people.

[00:08:55] And dead-eye Jedi Bob says, I've only seen it around three times over the years. I still enjoy it though. I'd say it's pretty high up on my list of Christmas favorites, even though I haven't seen it as many times as my parents.

[00:09:07] I know a great deal more about it now, thanks to you. And he's referring to the fact that he and I work together on the greatest gift audio drama of the story on which this is based. So OK, so we're establishing it's maybe American

[00:09:22] seems a lot of British people at least are aware of it, but maybe not everywhere. It seems the more you are connected to American or classic film culture, the more likely you are to have this be a part of your.

[00:09:36] Yeah, I think that sounds about right to me. Yeah. So why are we talking about this story? Well, first of all, it's the biggest alternate timeline in the cultural zeitgeist, you know, everything every time they do an alternate timeline.

[00:09:48] It's either this movie or sliding doors that people refer to. But yeah, I think Davey Max story, which he shared with me on on Discord resonates here. He said, my first memory of this film was a short bit to you see in Home Alone dubbed in French.

[00:10:05] My second memory was having a VHS tape of Dana Carvey's best SNL skits and the lost ending to It's a Wonderful Life was on there and that naturally skewed my sense of what the movie was. Content warning around insensitive language and depiction of disability.

[00:10:21] If you do look it up on YouTube three, I became obsessed with the Big Lebowski in high school and was convinced that the Big Lebowski character was inspired by Mr. Potter, the Co-Ins after all made their own Kappa movie in the Hudsucker proxy.

[00:10:35] And I don't remember when I first saw the film itself, but I had all these misperceptions around it based on how just how much it was rift on in the culture. So it's similar to what you were saying, Luke, but I eventually saw it and really liked it.

[00:10:47] A buddy of mine in college had it as one of his favorite movies. So we tried to make a yearly tradition of it, but it didn't stick after college. And I've got this weird ambivalence around Christmas movies despite my love of Christmas.

[00:10:59] So I haven't sought it out in years. And I should mention that Davey Mac grew up in the US, but has lived in Japan for a long time. So we talked about maybe that plays a role in that too.

[00:11:09] OK, so yeah, but I've also heard it's like hugely ambivalent responses. There's people online who have said that this film this film fills them with existential dread. I wouldn't say existential dread, but I do know where they're coming from.

[00:11:23] But I would dispute that film has a happy ending. OK, yeah, that's yeah, that's that's what some people find it depressing. You know, that George never gets to lead the life he wanted traveling the world. But I think to other people, it's like it's a comfort

[00:11:37] that you can feel your life still has enormous value, even if it didn't turn out the way that you planned for yourself when you were young. Although I have to say in the original short story that the film's based on

[00:11:50] George is more of an everyman rather than like a pillar of the community. So I think that also changes it too. You know, George's depression looks more like most people's depression in this in the story. OK. But yeah, overall,

[00:12:03] I guess it depends what you take out of it. Oh, some more feedback we got from at Not Shake and Child on Twitter is yeah, it's a wonderful life. It's one of my favorite Christmas movies. It's a feel good story, good and community Trump's evil capitalism

[00:12:18] and George and Mary's romance is sweet. There's just one problematic scene. George's brother with maid while they have dinner. I don't like it. Yeah, yes. Well, it's it's it's all its time. It's all its time. Let's put it that way. Yeah, it's just deeply problematic.

[00:12:36] Yeah, so the Annie the maid was played by Lillian Randolph, but I did notice that that character wasn't in any others. But then also you end up having no characters of color in the other films, a lot of them. So that's like also an issue.

[00:12:49] But and this is I have to say, yeah, of its time, I do love this film still, but there are some sexist things said in a way that's not portrayed as negative. And there's also they sing a minstrel song throughout, which is dropped another version.

[00:13:04] So yeah, yeah, acknowledging moving on. The bit that sort of stuck out for me when it's like the idea that Mary is a spin, you know, this spinster maiden aunt when she'd be about twenty seven, twenty eight, something like that. And yeah, exactly.

[00:13:22] George, how old are you? Eighteen? Oh, I guess she's old enough to give consent. I guess that's true. I guess that that's something. Whoa. So not shaken child, by the way, also weighed in on the American question and said, I lean American.

[00:13:42] The reason why I watched classics like this when I was younger was because of the TCM, the Turner Classic Channel we had on cable. So yeah, that makes sense. This is definitely a Turner Classic movie kind of thing, except

[00:13:53] we'll talk later about how you only find it on NBC channels. So but I think not shaken child does touch on what a lot of people feel is that it's a very hopeful film and, you know, George's that it's it's a film that reminds you of your values.

[00:14:07] And George Bailey's father, he had that motto, all you can take with you is that which you have given away. So yeah, it's it is it's not really the most Christmasy Christmas film, but it does have like that sort of spirit of giving in there.

[00:14:21] Yeah. And yeah, I just wanted to cite one more piece of feedback to start off just because my friend, Heather summarized so well exactly why I wanted to cover this. She said, so I've been thinking about this since you sent it.

[00:14:34] This was one of my grandpa's favorite movies, and I know he watched it, but I didn't really remember anything specific. And for a long time, I just thought I'd never actually seen it. Then I watched it as an adult a few years ago.

[00:14:46] And I realized there were a couple of scenes that had been living in my mind since childhood that I hadn't realized were from that movie. The bank run and the gym floor opening up to reveal a pool underneath.

[00:14:56] I didn't remember the mental health crisis aspects of it at all. As an adult, though, those were the parts that stood out to me the most. But I think it's kind of interesting, the parts of the movie that really stuck with me, that clung to my little brain

[00:15:09] and formed core memories that remained long after even the memory of watching the movie faded where the happy parts as an adult, though, I clung on to the sad bits, the depression, the suicidal desire.

[00:15:20] And it made the movie very painful for me to watch for a few years. But in time, I was able to put those two feelings together. And now I see it as this beautiful mosaic of the rawest, both good and bad of the human experience.

[00:15:33] And I think the way my adult brain wanted to only hold on to the dark parts, completely ignoring the joyous moments that child may so loved feels a lot like the journey George is going through. I don't know if that's what you're looking for.

[00:15:45] Yes, it was very much so. But it's been nice to think about now I want to rewatch. I really think this whole aspect is why the movie has remained in the public mind for so long.

[00:15:55] It feels so ahead of its time in a lot of ways, and it's still so incredibly rare to see a holiday movie go. Yes, things can be good, but things can be bad in such a meaningful way that respects the weight of mental health struggles.

[00:16:08] So yeah, what do you think, Luke? Yeah, I mean, that that's a very good. That's a very good review of the film. I mean, I didn't get all of that out of it, but I can see like I can see

[00:16:20] how somebody would get all of that out of it. Maybe it does take repeat viewing. Yeah. And it's it is a very sort of it's it's a film that doesn't shy away from the dark parts of human nature and the mental mental health crisis.

[00:16:37] And I think actually in a lot of ways, that's what kind of grounds the film and makes it work, because I found it quite alienating to watching this in some senses, just because it is a it's a period piece.

[00:16:49] So you know, some of the language is a bit antiquated and there are parts of it that are a bit hokey and a bit Hollywood. But yeah, the strength of Jimmy Stewart's performance and the fact

[00:17:01] that it doesn't shy away from the full horror of what George is facing towards the end of the film does kind of ground it. Yeah, I mean, I think Heather put two words exactly a lot of my feelings.

[00:17:14] And I'm also surprised to be reminded of some scenes and ideas that live in my head because of this film, but I kind of forget about it. Like, for instance, I went through a phase as a kid that actually I say

[00:17:24] as a kid, but it lasted for a really long time where I would tie red strings to my fingers to remember things. And as I'm watching this film, I'm like, oh, right, that is where I got it from. It's because Uncle Billy does that.

[00:17:36] I guess the other big question we have to discuss is like, is this a Christmas story? I'm calling this the winter holiday special because, you know, I want to leave this format open to whatever in coming years. But this one, yeah, has Christmas take place in it.

[00:17:51] But I would call it personally barely a Christmas story. What do you think? It's not it's not a Christmas film, but it has like Christmas themed elements running throughout it. You know, the importance of family, community. It's a very, very Judeo-Christian movie. Right.

[00:18:12] I am I like because I did in the research for this. I found out it's on like it's on like the Vatican's list of recommended movies. Oh, really? And yeah, it was it was one of Pope John Paul's second favorite movies.

[00:18:25] OK. And you can definitely see why this is a very, very Judeo-Christian film. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's just it wears its religiosity on its sleeve in a way that I don't have a lot of modern movies wouldn't.

[00:18:43] Yeah, OK. But so I have to say that the the author of the original short story, the greatest gift, he is he was half Jewish, half Christian. You know, he was his father was Jewish, his mother was Christian.

[00:18:56] And both he and the film director, Frank Capra, were quoted as saying that Christmas wasn't really an important part of this film. It just was like incidental, the setting. But I have to say the movie did versus the story. They added prayers and that angel element.

[00:19:12] Whereas in the short story, it's the guys just called the stranger and you don't really know what his deal is. But they took out the church going references, which I think was just like, you know, it's Christmas. People went to church in 1940 when this was written.

[00:19:26] Yeah. But only in the film, only the first scene and like the final quarter actually take place during Christmas. Yeah, that that was that. It one of the things that did surprise me is just how long it took for.

[00:19:40] Yeah, just how long it to have deep into the movie you have to get before you get to the bit where George Bailey wishes he was never born. Because I knew that story starts. Yeah. Oh, OK.

[00:19:51] Because I knew that was coming because I vaguely knew what the plot was. But you're good. You're more than two thirds of the way through the movie by the time. Yeah. But for the religiosity question, just I just have to quote

[00:20:02] two more people that have differing interesting responses to this. So Birmingham City University Criminology Professor David Wilson wrote in The Guardian that he pops open a bottle of wine and watching watches the movie without his family every year

[00:20:19] because it is the closest an atheist can get to heaven. Wilson called it the least religious but most humanist film you could ever see. But on the other hand, Ann Morse wrote in The Christian Post, the movie is a magnificent cinematic depiction of the world of Jesus.

[00:20:35] Or what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his own soul, Matthew 1626. So I just think it's interesting that both atheists and religious people can see themselves and say this is a film for me.

[00:20:51] Well, this is the thing I think both of those opinions are basically right because you can believe in Judeo-Christian morality without without necessarily having to believe in the supernatural elements of it if you don't, you know, you can accept that the Bible

[00:21:07] gives you a fairly good moral code, moral compass by which to live without interpreting it as being literally true. So I think both of those interpretations can live quite comfortably, side by side, to be honest.

[00:21:21] And I think that's one of the strengths of the film is like any great film. You get out of it, what you put into it. Absolutely. And just just to share where I'm coming from in case anyone's curious, I am I've personally always celebrated Christmas,

[00:21:38] but I had a family that was like a bunch of religions growing up. You know, especially like Orthodox and Jewish. But I'm agnostic, not really Christian. I believe things when there's evidence for or against them and leave my mind open to other possibilities otherwise.

[00:21:54] OK, I mean, just to lay my cards on the table, I'm so culturally methodist because I'm not a person. Yeah. My parents are particularly religious, but my grandparents on my dad's side were and I spent a lot of time with them growing up.

[00:22:12] So I can see a lot of that worldview and a lot that a lot of the attitude that that rubbed off on me in the way I see the world. And I did go to I wasn't a regular attendee at church

[00:22:23] as a child, but I did always go at Christmas. Right. Just because I knew I knew even as a little kid that that was that that was the best present I could give my grandparent. They would they would really that they would really appreciate.

[00:22:38] So we did go at Christmas. And yeah, I'd say I'm very much for the culturally Christian, but probably agnostic in terms of belief. Yeah. I mean, we went occasionally at Christmas, but it was like it wasn't it definitely wasn't for my grandparents

[00:22:54] because the grandparents who were most present was, you know, one was Russian Orthodox and the other was Jewish. So they're like, I don't care. Um, OK, so we're going to get into the movies themselves. But first I have to ask you, Luke,

[00:23:08] I asked you if you would think about your ranking for the six movies that we watched. And this is how we're going to introduce exactly what we're going to be talking about. So please tell us out of the six movies that we watched,

[00:23:20] which was your least favorite film? Well, I don't think this is going to come as a galloping shock to you, Alicia, but it's got to start Clarence. OK, so Clarence is a 1990 ostensible sequel. Oh, geez. Your your response to that film made me laugh so much.

[00:23:38] I can't wait to talk about it. It's going to be fun, but that's not my worst. My number six, can you guess? You're going to say the Muppets, aren't you? It's the Muppets. It's it's a very merry. What is it? It's a very merry.

[00:23:51] It's a very merry Christmas. Right. No, that was just painful for me to sit through. I ended up speeding it up halfway through. OK, I want to clarify, is it? Is it that you don't like that particular film or you just don't like the Muppets general?

[00:24:05] I'm not a huge fan of Muppets. I know, I know, I know, I know. Luke is making faces. How can you not like the Muppets? I know my heart is inside. I like other Jim Henson stuff, you know, like I really love

[00:24:22] Dark Crystal and and Labyrinth and, you know, I don't know, it's just the Muppets like the humor never appealed to me. Their charms are lost on me if I humbug. OK, OK. All right. So number five for me is yeah, it's going to be Clarence.

[00:24:41] What's your number five? Number five for me, I think, is going to be it happened one Christmas, the 1977 remake. Oh, you were considering you might like it better than the original. I thought about it, but I thought about it. And then after on reflection, I thought,

[00:25:01] why does this film exist? Like it's a shot for shot remake of it's a wonderful life. Very close, very yes. The large parts of it. And I like Moana Lo Tomas' performance and because I knew the beats of the plot by that point,

[00:25:18] I wasn't as surprised by it as I was by it's a wonderful life. But ultimately, it just seems kind of pointless and vacuous because it's not just a it's not a reimagining. It's not a retelling of the story is a show.

[00:25:33] Oh, I mean, they gender swapped it at least that. Yeah, they will talk about the differences, but there are differences. Yeah, but I can't kind of go over the fact that it just seemed a little bit pointless at the end of the day.

[00:25:44] OK, so what's your number four? Number four was the Muppets. OK, I do like the Muppets. I am a Muppets fan, but you show me a Muppets Christmas film. I'm just going to be asking why am I not watching a Muppets Christmas Carol? Yeah, so that's it.

[00:26:02] Every time I bring this film up to anyone, they're like, just watch a Muppets Christmas Carol. Like, no, you're missing the point of the assignment. Yeah, no, Muppet, they did they did the perfect Christmas movie for the Muppets and it was a Christmas Carol. OK, fair enough.

[00:26:17] OK, so my number four is going to be the Christmas spirit, the 2013 Hallmark movie starring Nicolette Sheridan. And I liked it. Nothing against it is like very Hallmark, very Christmas. Yeah, it's fun. Nothing against it. Yeah, that's that's going to be my number three.

[00:26:41] OK. I mean, you know, like you say, it's a Hallmark movie. It does what it says on the tin. There is nothing there is nothing all unexpected about that. But I did kind of I did kind of laugh at it because the plot is kind of preposterous.

[00:26:55] And I do love the fact that the entire basis of the film is this town is really struggling and everybody's a deep economic depression and everybody looks like they live in Narnia. They all have these massive houses

[00:27:08] and the streets are perfectly clean and all the shops are wonderful. It's like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Well, they are not what they are. No, we're going to press town looks like they were, you know, piggybacking on those Nicola Sheridan desperate housewife vibes. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:27:25] But I just love the fact that we've got a nurse, a soldier and a small town newspaper editor all living in a mansion. Personally, yeah, the head can and I came up with real estate is cheaper there. That's why they want to get out the real estate developer.

[00:27:41] Yeah. So, yeah. And also, like also, I think that film would have worked much better as a horror film. OK. The idea of the community, the idea of the communicating whilst in a coma, you know, I expected an exorcism.

[00:27:55] Like, yeah, I just love the entire town just accepts this. Yeah. No, that was that was one of the weirdest ones, but I did like it. OK. But my number three, yeah, I guess my number three is going to be and it was a toss up between

[00:28:11] because I rated them the same on Letterbox. My number three, my number two. But I think my number three is going to be it happened one Christmas, which it did a weird thing where it made me. I appreciated that film more than I expected to,

[00:28:25] but it also made me love the original more for some reason. It managed to it's like casting a new perspective on the original that made me appreciate aspects of it even more. So, yeah, I quite I quite like that.

[00:28:39] But then I had to give my number two spot to it's a wonderful knife. The twenty twenty three slash or comedy owed to its wonderful life. What about you? What's your second? My second is it's a wonderful life. OK.

[00:28:56] I like I watched I watched it a while ago actually, and it's kind of sort of settled in my brain. My initial reaction was not all that positive. But I think a lot of that was because it wasn't what I expected it to be. I think you're right.

[00:29:10] Having watched it happened one Christmas, I came to like the original much better because I'd expected the film to and expected it's a wonderful life to get much quicker than it did. OK. Watching it the first time, I felt it sort of ambled around a bit.

[00:29:28] And the period issues bothered me more on first watching. But I think I think once you once you sort of appreciate that, that is the plot, that is what it is. Yeah. I liked it much better on reflection. OK. Well, my number one is just

[00:29:48] yeah, I'm being obvious here, but I'm giving it to it's a wonderful life. It's it's, you know, rewatching it. I actually enjoyed it more than I expected to in this rewatch because I do have, you know, like Heather was talking about before.

[00:30:01] There are these tinges of anxiety and depression that are wrapped up in it. But that just kind of made me love it all the more. And it is the only one and it does consistently make me cry at the end.

[00:30:14] So yeah, my number one is going to be it's a wonderful knife. And now that really surprised me because I don't like slasher films as a general rule. I do not. It's not a genre of film. I appreciate it.

[00:30:28] But I thought the way they did that was I thought they did something really clever with the central conceit of both slasher films and it's a wonderful life. I thought it was actually much better acted than a lot of slasher films.

[00:30:42] I've seen and it does a really weird thing whilst being a while, being a a genuine slasher film. It's also kind of sweet and uplifting. And the ending is yeah, the ending makes you makes you feel just really good about the world. OK.

[00:30:57] Yeah, well, obviously, you and I both liked it. But as I said, that's going to be the last one that we discuss. And we're going to save all spoilers on that one until the end because it's brand new. But yeah, you know, reviews are mixed.

[00:31:08] But I think like you just have to go in embracing. It's a silly slasher film. And then you can really enjoy it because within that subgenre, it's it's it's a good one. Yeah, it is. I said that it's of like the Christmas horror films

[00:31:23] that I've watched in the past few years. It's the one that I'm most eager to revisit, probably. Yeah, I can see that being a regular Christmas film for me. Much more than it's a wonderful life to be honest. OK, no, that's fair.

[00:31:35] Well, yeah, much more if it's made 80 years later. So yeah. Well, let's get into it's a wonderful life itself. We'll be right back to break that down. Tell you all about all the juicy production details right after this quick commercial break.

[00:31:54] OK, so it's a wonderful life was based on the 1943 short story, the greatest gift by Philip Van Doren Stern. And yeah, again, like I said, this is a story we cover in the Book Club holiday special. So you'll find that link in the show notes.

[00:32:10] We'll talk about the full back story of how the story was created, how it started its life as a 20 page Christmas card. Plus, you'll find a full audio drama reading with the help of dead eye, Jedi Bob and yeah, this short story was itself

[00:32:23] loosely based on a Christmas Carol by Dickens, of course. Both are stories of one or more spirits coming back to give a soul who's lost his way, a deeper look into the consequences of their actions. And with the Christmas Carol, it's the spirits trying to instill

[00:32:39] regret into their subject and in its wonderful life. The angels trying to remove regret. Would you agree with that, Luke? Yeah, I think that's more or less right. I'm not sure he's trying to instill regret in the screw. You're just trying to make him see.

[00:32:54] Or changes ways by. Yeah, just trying to make him change his ways. By how? Well, I was thought by sort of making him see that human contact was worthwhile. But I guess it is instilling a bit of regret as well.

[00:33:06] Because yeah, I mean, I always figured that's what the ghost of Christmas past is. Well, yeah, this is what you lost. Yeah, that's true. You're missing now. This is what you could miss in the future. But yeah, you can definitely see though, this is the singular

[00:33:21] in the original story is just called The Stranger. And it's just like this sort of mysterious spirit who clearly has some sort of supernatural powers because he keeps appearing and disappearing and knows things. But otherwise, we don't know what kind of being this is.

[00:33:34] But yeah, so RKO pictures, the producer David Hempstead, he came across this story, the greatest gift, and he showed it to Kerry Grant. And the two of them decided it needed to be a movie. So it was originally going to star Kerry Grant instead of Jimmy Stewart.

[00:33:49] But RKO, they originally purchased them the rights for 10,000 in 1944. But after they took a few stabs at a script, RKO ended up selling the rights in 1945 for the same price to Frank Capra's production company. Though Frank Capra said that he paid 50 K.

[00:34:08] But yeah, his production company Liberty Films adapted the story and it became It's a Wonderful Life. But was released in 1946 with Jimmy Stewart in the lead role and Donna Reed as his other half, Mary. Are you familiar with Frank Capra? Yeah, I am familiar with.

[00:34:24] I'm familiar with some of Frank Capra's work. I have to say mostly the stuff he did during the Second World War as basically a propagandist for the American government and some of the combat footage he filmed. But yeah, I'm basically familiar with that part of his work,

[00:34:41] but not so much either before or after the Second World War. I mean, his most iconic work other than this film was from before the war. So he's an Italian American famous filmmaker and he made films like It Happened One Night in 1934.

[00:34:57] Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. These are names that might ring a bell. But then yeah, he went and joined the war effort and they made him make you know, they had him make these propagandist films because that's his expertise.

[00:35:11] And It's a Wonderful Life was the first film that he made when he got back. And it was also the first film for Jimmy Stewart, who wasn't even sure he was going to go back into acting. And Frank Capra was like from being this film.

[00:35:24] Yeah, I do know the Jimmy Stewart side of the story, because actually I read about it fairly recently. So Jimmy Stewart is Jimmy Stewart is a bona fide war hero of the Second World War. So he he'd been a pilot in the 1930s.

[00:35:40] He'd had a civilian pilot's license in the 1930s. And so pretty much as soon as the Second World War breaks out, he volunteers to join what was then the Army Air Corps, what's now the US Air Force.

[00:35:55] The Air Force is more than happy to have a famous actor aboard, but they want him to do they want him to do propaganda. They want him to do they wanted to do training movies rather like some of his contemporaries.

[00:36:08] Probably the most famous example is Ronald Reagan, who did that. But do you know that Ronald Reagan discovered Marilyn Monroe? No, I don't. So I found this out the other day. So Ronald Reagan was in charge of a cinema and photographic unit

[00:36:24] within the US Army and the US government wanted a new photograph for the Rosie the Riveter character. And one of the people they looked at was an 18 year old Norma Jean Baker. OK. And yeah, so Ronald Reagan kind of discovered Marilyn Monroe. In a way.

[00:36:44] Bit of an aside there. But anyway, Jimmy Stewart goes to Europe. He does one press conference for the Air Force and then says basically I want to be a combat pilot. If you don't let me be a combat pilot, I'm just going to go off

[00:36:57] and moan and whinge and bitch to the press, basically. So they let Jimmy Stewart be a combat pilot. He's assigned to a B17 bomber group and over the course of the war, he actually rises to command a bomber group. He's awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross,

[00:37:14] which is like the third highest medal for gallantry that you get. He's involved. The reason I read the story is that he's involved in a series of heavy bombing raids called Big Week at the beginning of 1944, which is the height of the European bomber offensive.

[00:37:33] He he actually leads one of the initial one of the first wave of US bombers over Shrine Foot, which is a major ball bearing factory in Germany. And Jimmy Stewart comes home with what we would now call a pretty severe case of PTSD

[00:37:52] because he's seen a lot of his friends killed. Yeah, he's seen men under his command kill. And so like you say, he's not sure he's going to go back into go back into acting. He thinks about staying in the Air Force.

[00:38:06] He thinks about just sort of taking some time out and figuring out what to do next. And by the way, he does stay in the Air National Guard right the way through to Vietnam. You actually you actually retires from the California Air National Guard

[00:38:21] as a Brigadier General. He doesn't serve abroad again, does he? He does. He trains pilots, stateside for the Korean War. Mm hmm. And he does go over to Vietnam in the 60s, but that's just really as a publicity junket. So yeah, you're not sure what to do.

[00:38:38] So like you say, Frank Capra basically calls him up and pretty much begs him to be in this new film that he's putting together. Yeah. And it's also so Frank Capra, this film was really his baby to the detriment of many of his personal and professional relationships,

[00:38:55] it seems. So when he bought the film, he bought it along with they gave they threw in the three scripts that they had tried before they gave up on the film. And he ended up taking elements from each of them and blending them together.

[00:39:10] For instance, one version had George Bailey as an idealistic politician who grows more cynical as a story progresses and then tries to kill himself after losing an election. And the angel shows him that Bedford Falls would be better if he had gone into business rather than politics.

[00:39:25] I'm glad they didn't go that route, actually. I'm kind of on Frank Capra's side for this. What do you think? Yeah, I don't think that would have quite communicated the same the same message. I think that would have been a much more cynical, much more hard edged film.

[00:39:39] Yeah, I'm glad they didn't have that route. Yeah, I mean, in this version, as it turns out, it says much truer to the spirit and content of the source material. But there was some kerfuffle over the writing credits. So ultimately, it was credited as screenplay by

[00:39:55] Francis Goodrich, Albert Hackett and Frank Capra with additional scenes by Joe Swirling. So Goodrich and Hackett were a married couple, and they apparently hated working with Capra, who they just said would just rewrite everything they did anyway. And Swirling was a friend of the couple

[00:40:14] and they felt betrayed that he worked with Capra to rewrite their script. But then he felt Swirling felt betrayed by being snubbed in the credits a bit. So he was additional scenes and not screenplay by. And so none of them ever talked to Frank Capra again after this.

[00:40:30] And he also fell out with the film's composer after refusing to use the music commission for two scenes because he decided those scenes just shouldn't have any music. And the composer felt like his he wasn't being taken seriously. So, yeah, he had a lot of problems

[00:40:45] like this working with people, it seems like. But he was passionate about making this film a very exact way. Does that make you like the film more or less to know that about? I don't think it makes me like the film more or less.

[00:40:55] I just find it kind of ironic that a film that's so centered on friendship and community and togetherness has all this drama going on in the background. Absolutely. But it was it was definitely it came out at a time right after the war

[00:41:10] when the studios wanted they wanted feel good movies that would offer comfort for the losses that everyone had experienced recently. And by the way, Ginger Rogers was initially offered the role that eventually went to Donna Reed. So and she later that would have been

[00:41:27] that would have been a very different film. Yeah, indeed. She wondered later if she thought it was too bland after reading the script. Do you agree? Do you think? Yeah, I can definitely see where she's coming from. It's not like Mary Bailey is giving

[00:41:41] her whole heck of a lot to do in the second half of the film. Yeah, I mean, roles for women in the 40s. This probably wasn't the most exciting, definitely was also wasn't the least exciting. Yeah, because I do appreciate that Mary's at least

[00:41:55] she's like a solid partner for George and in every version, except for the Muppets, the partner is just like a solid supporting force that helps them do what they need to do. Yeah. And so Potter the villain was Oscar winner Lionel Barrymore,

[00:42:13] who was famous at the time as Ebenezer Scrooge in radio dramas, but is also people today might know him better as the great uncle of Drew Barrymore, you know, part of the whole Barrymore dynasty. Really? Mm hmm. All actors in that family. I did not know that.

[00:42:28] And the pharmacist was played by H.B. Warner, who'd actually studied medicine in real life. But the most interesting fact about his involvement was that scene where he's upset about his son dying in the pharmacy and accidentally is almost poisoned.

[00:42:42] So kid he was actually really drunk when he filmed the scene. And he, the kid who was playing young George, he hit him so hard the kids ears bled like for real. And yeah, they know what actually thinking about it, you can tell he's drunk.

[00:43:00] Yeah, he's who's playing it. He was playing it method. He ended up actually hurting the kid and the kid cried and he hugged him afterwards and said he was sorry. But then again, the kid also said, I'm going out exploring

[00:43:12] going to have a couple of harems, maybe three or four wives. So I don't know, maybe you just deserve a little slap. Yeah, Frank Capra. He considered many actors for all the roles. He was just very this was his first film when he was back from the war

[00:43:26] and he just really wanted it to be perfect. It was clear, clearly it meant a lot to him. So that kind of makes me appreciate it more, even if that drove some wedges in some of his relationships. So I mean, I can't imagine anybody but Jimmy Stewart

[00:43:42] playing George Bailey. Yeah, I mean, he just inhabits that role. Yeah, I mean, I guess I could see Carrie Grant, but I'm glad. I mean, it's the film is what it is because it worked out that way.

[00:43:53] Yeah, like the scenes where, you know, George Bailey is in despair. Capra says he didn't think that Jimmy Stewart was particularly acting those scenes. That was that was sort of quite cathartic for Jimmy Stewart. And I remember seeing an interview

[00:44:08] where Jimmy Stewart said pretty much the same thing. Yeah, that basically that film letting work out a lot of his issues. Oh yeah, I can imagine. Yeah, the film was shot at RKO Pictures Studios over 90 days. And they built that whole town is not a real town,

[00:44:25] it's a temporary town that was built on the lot over four acres of studio land. And they actually invented the RKO Studios head of special effects, Russell Shearman. He developed a whole new like fake snow compounds because this is actually mid summer in California.

[00:44:40] So some of those points where you see Jimmy Stewart like sweating from the forehead and stuff, it's not because of his anxiety. It's because it's freaking hot and he has to wear a coat outside. But yeah, he mentioned this new compound for snow

[00:44:55] using water, soap flakes, fomites and sugar to create like what they called chemical snow. Because before that they were using like painted corn flakes, which would be crunchy when people stepped on it. So they would have to cause lots of problems with sound editing.

[00:45:10] Yeah, but the snow is perfect. I mean, it's so weird that the idea that fakes snow had to be invented, but of course it had to be invented. Everything has to be invented. So it's a weird idea.

[00:45:24] Actually, I think he ended up winning a technical Oscar for that, I think if I remember correctly. But yeah, it was a big deal. Yeah, that studio later burnt down to now there's only two surviving film locations. The swimming pool that's unveiled during the high school dance sequence

[00:45:39] is located in a gymnasium at Beverly Hills High School and the Martini home for the Martini family. That's a home in La Canyada, La Canyada, Flintridge, California. OK. But yeah, the rest of the studio burnt down. The film was nominated for five Oscars, but it got mixed reviews

[00:46:01] and it was considered not a financial success. It was just short of breaking even at the box office. It ended its run at three point three million, which put it in number twenty sixth for the year in terms of gross, which is actually

[00:46:15] the one place ahead of Miracle and 34th Street. But I guess it was more expensive. Yeah. And yeah, we're going to talk about this more because you brought this up in regards to another film. But in 1974, the copyright lapsed and the film fell into the public domain.

[00:46:31] And that's actually when the story became really popular because for a while they could broadcast it really cheaply. So OK. Because yeah, I did wonder that with it happened on Christmas like because I actually looked up the Wikipedia of it happened on Christmas

[00:46:46] after I watched it because I thought there had to be some kind of legal run because I didn't see Capra or any of the original screenwriters credited. So I thought there might have been some legal trouble for that explains it. I mean, Capra did call it plagiarism.

[00:47:00] Right. Yeah. We'll talk about that then. But yeah, Capra says it's his favorite film he ever made and he showed it to his family every holiday season. And it's also one of Jimmy Stewart's favorites. So yeah, it has a huge legacy.

[00:47:13] And it's still usually on the list of the best films ever made. So are you ready to start actually talking about the plot of this film? Yeah, let's go. Because of course, this plot is the backbone, the source material, the references for all the other films too.

[00:47:28] So released in 1946, the town of Bedford Falls collectively prays for a local man, George Bailey, who's going through a rough time. And these prayers are heard by some angels who send down one of their own Clarence Oddbody, a newer angel,

[00:47:43] second class Amir, 293 years old, who hasn't yet earned his wings. But before they sent him, they show him George's life to give him some context. George, who as a child saved his brother, Harry, from drowning and saved the local pharmacist he worked for from accidentally poisoning

[00:48:01] a kid who as an adult gave up his dreams of college and seeing the world to take over the local building and loan when his father had an unexpected stroke, keeping on in the job when his brother got a better job and a wife

[00:48:14] and got sent off to war. It's thanks to George that the town hasn't fallen into the clutches of villainous banker Mr. Potter and the locals are even able to own their own homes. And it hasn't been all bad either. George has many friends and he married Mary Hatch,

[00:48:30] a woman he's known his entire life, who is truly his equal, jumping into action when their business nearly collapses, volunteering their honeymoon money and making sacrifices with her husband, not to mention raising four kids. But things go terribly wrong one day when George's kind uncle

[00:48:45] Billy misplaces eight thousand of the building and loans money, which is equivalent to about one hundred and thirty four thousand in today's money. And Mr. Potter always looking for a way to shut down his competition, make sure it results in an arrest warrant.

[00:48:59] Piled on top of these desperate circumstances and petty grievances like sick child and a collision with the tree, George Bailey finds himself standing on a bridge, staring down into the icy river below, contemplating ending at all. So the bumbling angel Clarence appears to him,

[00:49:15] granting him his wish of never having been born so that he can see what life would be like without him. In this universe, his brother drowned as a kid and all the platoon of people Harry saved as an adult, thus also died.

[00:49:28] The pharmacist killed that kid and was sent to jail ruining his life. Potter took over the town, which is now called Pottersville, and Mary is gasp, an old maid librarian. And Mama Bailey isn't doing too well either. Everybody is generally much worse off and meaner because of it.

[00:49:46] George begs Clarence to undo his wish and return him to his life. And when he does, George goes cheerfully running home, ready to be arrested and face whatever because it's better than the alternative.

[00:49:58] But the entire town shows up with all their savings to bail George out of trouble. And as a thank you for all he's done for them. And they sing odd lang syne while George and Mary's daughter, Zuzu, notes that the bell on the Christmas tree has rung.

[00:50:12] An angel must have gotten his wings. So you sent in your thoughts for each of these movies right after you watched. So these are Luke's first watch thoughts for this movie. So I just finished watching it's a wonderful life for the first time.

[00:50:27] Really not sure what I make of it. I suppose is one of those things that's built up in your head that it's supposed to be this classic Christmas film. And so whatever you think about it, it was always going to be a bit disappointing.

[00:50:42] But I can't help but feel that the moral of the story is don't have dreams, kids. Don't have ambitions. Just settle down in the small town, marry the first girl you come across and have lots of kids.

[00:50:57] Yeah, like I'm not sure the ending is as happy as people say it is. I think it was actually quite a bummer of an ending. Also, I was surprised at how little time,

[00:51:10] how late it is in the film that you get to the point where he doesn't exist. I'd always thought that would have come about the halfway point of the film, but it actually comes about three quarters, two thirds of the way through the film.

[00:51:24] I mean, Jimmy Stewart is a great screen presence, one of the all-time great screen presences. And Potter is a great villain, just an absolutely awesome villain. But yeah, I was a little bit disappointed. I can certainly see what is one of the Catholic Church's favourite films.

[00:51:42] Yeah, a lot of that echoes what you've already said, but it seems like your opinion has softened since you said it. Yeah, I think watching all the other films were on the list of the films that were inspired by it. I think puts the original into context.

[00:51:58] And yeah, like because once I knew how late the turn, the reveal, whatever you want to call it is in the film, I didn't when I was watching it happen on Christmas, it didn't bother me. So I don't think that's a structural problem with the film.

[00:52:12] It just wasn't what I was expecting. Here's your expectations. Yeah. Yeah, like I say, I'm not like there is a way of reading it where it's actually not a very positive or uplifting film because yeah, basically George is a good man,

[00:52:25] raises a good family, is a pillar of the community. But he never at any point during the film ever gets to do anything that he wants to do. And you know, he's a guy with ambitions. I was like, you expect the man have a honeymoon? Come on.

[00:52:41] He doesn't even have a honeymoon. Like I would have liked it much better at the end if like he and Mary had gone off to Paris for just a month or something. Yeah, just to give him something.

[00:52:52] Like you can see like coming off of the back of World War Two and all the sacrifices that the public has had to make. I can see why they wanted to say even though your life hasn't been the glamorous

[00:53:07] whatever that you were hoping for, that doesn't mean that it's you haven't led a good life that affected people and made the world better. Hmm. But I just want a George to win just once because also I think the message can be don't have dreams,

[00:53:21] don't have ambitions, just settle. And the thing is as well, people do take advantage of George. It's not like he is necessarily volunteering to do all these things out of some sense of prenatal goodness. I mean, yeah, like his brother feels bad with sticking

[00:53:40] about sticking him with the job. But you can also see from his brother's perspective, he's like, listen, I got this great opportunity. And even George is like, yeah, yeah, you got this great opportunity. You got to take it. Yeah.

[00:53:50] But it's like, Harry, I would have appreciated the phone call. I would have appreciated the number. I would have appreciated some kind of consultation here. Well, yeah, well, he gets married without even telling his family. Like what the hell? Yeah. Come on, Harry. Yeah.

[00:54:03] So I definitely think the film's heart is in the right place. But I think the message of it is slightly more ambiguous than then a slightly more ambiguous than I was expecting as well. I love Clarence. I love the idea of heaven, the afterlife being

[00:54:20] it was kind of bureaucratic, having grades. And I love the idea that people's prayers are responded to literally as though with the emergency services is that we called the fire department. You got to watch Supernatural, the TV show. That's a really good. And Good Omens.

[00:54:38] Yeah, and Good Omens. That's a really nice conceit. I like that very much. Yeah. And like Potter. Like Potter in this version would line up very more and the version with awesome wells is just a really great villain. Very mustached, really. But sometimes you need that. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:54:57] I for me, like this film has always been around. I have honestly no idea when I first watched it. I guess I'm drawn to it because I love alternate reality stories. And this is like the OG, as I said before.

[00:55:09] But it also it deals with themes of depression, which is something that has been in my family and my personal experience for as long as I can remember. And especially around the holidays, I can be for so many different reasons, I can be a really tough time.

[00:55:25] So I appreciate that there's this film. But I also understand why people say sometimes it's hard for them to watch for that reason, because it's too real. And it's amazing to me that this is in the 40s. And there's a lot of Hollywood isms, as you say.

[00:55:38] And just sort of there, I know that there are things like they couldn't even use the word lousy in the script. Like there are all these rules about things they couldn't say or talk about. And that's all there.

[00:55:47] But within the confines of those rules, they were able to tell a really human story. And I guess that's what I appreciate about it. And yeah, it does always make me tear up in the good way. And yeah, by the way, Mary's life in the alternate reality

[00:56:03] doesn't seem so bad. Like I have to point out in the original story, she wound up married to an alcoholic that she and her kids are afraid of. So that seems like the short story version seems much worse for her. Yeah, she's a spinster.

[00:56:17] And she'd like to say she must have been all of 28. She she works at the library. I'm like, you're telling me she reads all day? Yeah. Like speaking of the sort of grittier part of it as well,

[00:56:29] I thought I thought the bank run, the bank run was exceptionally well done. Thinking about it, you know, the the adult audience at the time would have lived through the Great Depression. They would have been they would have been in bank runs. They would have seen bank runs.

[00:56:44] So you had to do that scene properly or it would have destroyed the realism of the you know, it would have destroyed the it would have destroyed the audience's belief in the movie. Yeah. Yeah, so I the bank run seems obviously absolutely iconic.

[00:56:58] And I actually studied it at Wharton Business School when I was in college. And you can actually you can hear it's a very interesting movie from an economic perspective, you can hear a whole breakdown of this movie from that perspective on Planet Money.

[00:57:11] I'll link that episode in the show notes because it's a really nice supplement to what we're discussing here. But it's funny though that the FBI who was led at the time by J Edgar Hoover, who was in like full red scare mode.

[00:57:26] He thought that this movie was communist propaganda. So they and also the two of the screenwriters, Goodrich and Hackett, that couple, they were quote unquote very close to known communists. And on one occasion in the recent past, practically lived with known communists

[00:57:45] and were observed eating lunch every day with known communists. Oh, oh, oh, J Edgar. So he had another agent watch the movie and write a report and the report claimed it was representing a rather obvious attempt to discredit bankers and the movie deliberately maligned the upper class

[00:58:04] attempting to show the people who had money were mean and despicable characters. But ultimately, the House on Un-American Activities Committee just let this one slide. They were just like whatever. Yeah, I mean, I mean, I wonder whether that was because Jimmy

[00:58:20] Stuart was like quite active in Republican politics in California. I think, yeah, also Donna Reed, I guess. Yeah. OK. I mean, the film though, so it had some of the expected sexism and it feels a little awkward now, but I have to say it was many

[00:58:36] better than some contemporaries on that. But I do have one question that lingers. So if Clarence doesn't want George to jump in the river, you know, commit suicide, then why does he fake drowning and make George jump into the river?

[00:58:54] That's that's not from the story, by the way. I mean, in fairness, Clarence does kind of a afterwards. He hadn't really thought the blood through, to be honest. So you're telling me that if George did jump in, nothing would have happened anyway. Yeah, I'm going to say.

[00:59:09] And so, yeah, what would have happened if George drowned saving Clarence? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So just some differences from the short story. It's obviously it's longer. It's it's so it's expanded. You know, the story starts with George on the bridge and you only learn

[00:59:28] about his past as he realizes that things have been changed. And in the story, by the way, he's posing as a brush salesman, which maybe already felt dated a few years later. But I guess there are people who are door to door selling like at one

[00:59:40] point he tries to sell a hairbrush and other ones like a brush for a couch. So just a brush salesman. And this this movie though, it also like it's I think it's a good adaptation because you see how it takes pieces from the story

[00:59:56] and then builds upon them. So for instance, in this story, it is true that one of the things that George checks when he's like realizing that it's the wrong reality is he looks at that tree because in the past he had like skim the

[01:00:09] tree and caused the scar there. And in this case, they just have him like full on ramming into the tree. And in the story, like they don't have the there's no angels. So there's no every time a bell rings, an angel gets their wings.

[01:00:22] But the stranger has George focus on the church bells to return to his reality and also things like I like at one point, the stranger is gone and George wonders if he's hiding in the bushes.

[01:00:34] So I like to think that that's the origin of the hide and seek scene in the movie. She's in the bushes. But the original Bedford Falls in the story was based on Caliphant, New Jersey, because Stern was a Jersey boy.

[01:00:49] And the movie version, a lot of people say it was based on Seneca Falls, New York, and that town has like a themed festival every year in a dedicated museum. But others argue there's no evidence that Capra meant this town specifically.

[01:01:03] He described it as quote unquote every town. And Stern, though himself said he thought the film was set in Westchester County, New York. So maybe I mean, I got the very strong vibe. It was somewhere, somewhere in the tri-state, you know, New York, Jersey, Pennsylvania. Yeah, definitely.

[01:01:20] And the historic Iron Bridge in Caliphant, the town that was supposed to be based on a similar to the bridge that George Bailey is considering jumping off of in the movie. So there's that bad. Now, yeah, like I said, there was no angel,

[01:01:34] no Clarence Oddbody in the story. There was a stranger and Clarence in the movie is much more bumbling. And we get an added perspective by seeing things through his eyes, too. I love the line. I love the fact he's got back and forth going with Joseph,

[01:01:51] yeah, his boss in heaven. And when they go to when they go to like the speakeasy bath. Drink. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, like the tree just like shakes sometimes to say Joseph's responding. Yeah, yeah. And like it does take George a long while to work out what's going on

[01:02:15] given that given that nobody recognizes him, given what he said and given that Clarence is telling him repeatedly that this is what has happened. He takes a while for the message to sing. Yeah, that is not so in the story.

[01:02:28] In the story, he's like as soon as he's like the tree scar is like what the tree scars gone? And then he's like, well, I guess what he said about the alternate reality is true. And so then he's going through and he's behaving differently

[01:02:38] because he doesn't expect people to recognize him. He's just sad that they don't, but he's curious. What are their lives like without me? Yeah, I think that would have been better to be honest, because like, yeah, nobody recognizes you. You wish you didn't exist.

[01:02:52] This guy keeps telling you your wish has been granted. Like George, wake up. Wake up. Also, it's interesting that in the short story, there is like Mr. Potter mentioned, but he's just mentioned it's the owner of a photography studio and passing.

[01:03:08] And in the movie, they took the name Mr. Potter and they made him like the evil banker character. He's the villain. So an earlier draft even had him also being responsible for the near drowning of Harry George's brother. I think that would have been too much.

[01:03:23] Yeah, I see why they pull back. But yeah, in the story, he's the villain and in sorry, in the movie, he's a villain. And in the story is just like depression is a villain, basically. So I do have a logistics question.

[01:03:36] So in the short story, the near drowning of Harry Baillie happens during the summer. And so they're just the two brothers are swimming and Harry Baillie gets a cramp and he starts to go under and his brother saves him in this movie.

[01:03:51] And some of the others, it's about it happens in the winter and Harry falls through the ice, which I guess is more harrowing. But then again, there's a bunch of other kids around. So I'm like, if George wasn't there, why don't the other kids save?

[01:04:04] And I don't know. But if you watch it, they all like form a human chain of which. So they would have been one person. Yeah, they would. They would have been one person short. They wouldn't have been quite been able to reach Harry.

[01:04:16] There was the exact right number of people there to do it. All right. All right. I'll accept that. I'll accept that. It is nice, though, that Harry's role is expanded in the movie and the townsfolk are fleshed out a bit more. But yeah, it is interesting.

[01:04:29] There were some townsfolk in the book and they didn't use any of those character names or professions, but whatever. That's fine. And also added for the movie was Mary's friend, Violet. I'm not completely sure what her role is in this. Yeah, they pretty much they eliminate Violet

[01:04:47] almost entirely from it happened on Christmas and they eliminate Sam Wainwright as well, which is a vast improvement. It's like the whole fraternity donkey brain thing. Yeah. Really? But I still think Sam Wainwright is better than the guy that Mary ends up married to in the book.

[01:05:05] So OK, at least he sends in money at the end. Yeah. And also in the short story, Paul Bailey doesn't die. And it's funny. Well, I mean, not funny, but it's it's sad that Paul Bailey, he dies of an aneurysm and later in life,

[01:05:22] Capra would also die from he dies of a stroke and later in life, Capra would also die from complications from a string of strokes. OK. It's also interesting in the short story, the war is barely mentioned because Stern started writing it in 1938,

[01:05:39] except to say that George couldn't go for medical reasons. And in the movie, obviously, that plays a much bigger role because of when it came out in 1946. Yeah, I thought it was you can definitely tell it was a very

[01:05:51] early post war movie because they have to insert the line, you know, George couldn't go to war because you can only hear out one ear. So it was 4F. So it's fine. There's no stigma attached. It's fine. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:06:05] And I have to say the short story has some it's slightly more chilling at times. You know, we talk about the movie being depressing, but in the short story, we have this kid who marries alternate reality kid is

[01:06:16] shooting at George with a play gun and asking, why won't you die? You're supposed to be dead. And then at the very end, George goes back and he's with Mary and he had left like when he was pretending to be a brush salesman,

[01:06:29] he had left a brush there and he brushes that brush with his hands. And he realizes that the other reality was real, you know, wasn't just this movie kind of leaves it open in that fantastic way or maybe he imagined the whole thing.

[01:06:43] OK, that would have been a cool search. They'll put in the movie. I think it's a cool final twist. But yeah, I also like when you leave things open to interpretation and also in the story, George doesn't have all this trouble waiting at home.

[01:06:56] The story is less about the community pulling together to save George and more about George pulling it together for himself to save himself than the people around him. So yeah, fun facts. Capra also had some trouble on the cinematography side with the talent.

[01:07:11] He found the film's original cinematographer, Vincent Milner, slow and pretentious. So when he got sick, Capra borrowed Joseph Walker from Columbia Studios. But when Rosalyn Russell, who's a famous big wing from back then, she demanded that Walker return to Columbia.

[01:07:29] So he trained the veteran camera operator, Joseph Byrock, B-Rock to be his replacement. And so we had three different cinematographers working on this film and each one bringing a different style. So I don't know if there's a video out there somewhere breaking down

[01:07:45] like who did which shots, but that would be so interesting to say. OK. Also, so Zuzu is the name of the daughter and where the hell did that name come from? But there was at the time a popular brand often advertised of Zuzu Ginger Snaps.

[01:08:01] So maybe also a funny fact. So in the scene where Uncle Billy, he gets drunk at Harry and Ruth's wedding party, you know, that their bridal shower. He so he staggers away off camera and then you hear a crash

[01:08:17] and Uncle Billy yells, I'm all right, I'm all right. But it's actually what had happened. It wasn't supposed to happen. A technician had actually knocked over some equipment. And so that was just an Mitchell just made an impromptu ad lib to save that shot. Nice. Well done.

[01:08:36] And Capra ended up leaving it in and rewarded the technician with ten dollars, which is equal to like one hundred and fifty dollars today. Thank you for his sound improvement. Capra's first script, by the way, was going to be more religious.

[01:08:51] It was going to have barely fall to his knees at the end and recite the Lord's Prayer. But he thought that was an overly religious tone with the emotional impact of the family and friends was a better way to end. And I agree. Yeah.

[01:09:03] And by the way, I'm not sure that the town raising the eight thousand dollars really gets Georgia trouble because it's not like that money's not fungible. The original eight thousand dollars still is still missing. And presumably Potter has still got the eight thousand dollars as well.

[01:09:20] Yeah, in my head can and like the cops go and arrest Potter. They will they work it out. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Did you notice by the way that Uncle Billy his pets in the film? No. So at one point there's a pet squirrel showing up on his shoulder.

[01:09:35] But the one that everyone talks about is there's a raven that shows up three times. So this raven is actually the name. His name is Jimmy in real life. And Frank Capra liked this raven and he put him in every film he made after 1938. OK.

[01:09:52] And the raven, though, interestingly shows up three times. And it's when the three worst things it's related to like the three worst incidents in the film. So when George's father dies during the bank run and after Uncle Billy loses the money, that's when we see the raven.

[01:10:07] OK. Interesting note. Also just interesting random note is Mark Twain is referenced here. And every other movie that we talk about either also references Mark Twain or uses a Dickens reference instead. Yeah. So I just wanted to wrap up the discussion of the main film

[01:10:26] here with something that Bob said, Dead I Jedi Bob, that I think is you know, about about the perceived negativity in the film and how we can interpret it today. So he said, I know the holidays can be difficult for many of us.

[01:10:40] Some tend to focus on regrets or find themselves wondering if what they do or who they are ultimately matters at year's end. I think it's a wonderful life tries to encourage viewers that while we may never know all the answers, we should do our best

[01:10:54] to remember that whether we believe it or not, we're capable of making a positive impact on others without realizing it. I believe people need to hear that they're appreciated. They matter and the world is a better place with them in it.

[01:11:06] That need is greater than ever these days since we live in the age of the anonymous angry commenters who make it their business to degrade others online. Such anonymous commenters honestly make me think of George when we see him at his worst and lashing out at others

[01:11:21] coming from a place of hurt, no doubt. Watching the film in twenty twenty three and observing Mr. Potter tends to make me think of those who cash in on the misdirected fear and frustration in people, those who stoke it, those who have wished celebrities, fans, etc.

[01:11:36] Terminally ill or worse and encourage others to do the same. Potter seems like the precursor to our modern day internet troll when he opines you're worth more dead than alive. The thing is that's just someone's warped frustrated opinion

[01:11:51] as much as they like to believe that it's a fact or a decree. It isn't the opening scene in the film continues to resonate with me. There are more in Bedford Falls rooting for George than he realizes. He's just chosen to let a malicious,

[01:12:05] malty minority of one drown out those who love him. The same can be said for us in twenty twenty three. So since I have the opportunity, this one goes out to those who have been through the ringer this year. Maybe you've lost someone. You're struggling financially.

[01:12:20] You've been bothered and bewildered online, or you live far away from family and friends. Maybe we've chatted online and maybe we've never met. But one thing is certain, I'm glad you're here. Thank you, Bob. That was beautiful. Thank you, Bob. That was very sweet.

[01:12:34] So moving on from that lovely sentiment to a movie we've teased enough already. We've got the only movie I think that we watched that can actually be called a remake. And in this case, one of the most seen by seen remakes I've ever seen.

[01:12:50] And that would be It Happened One Christmas, the 1977 film. So this was released three years after that lapse into the public domain that made the story so widely popular today. And this film is a gender swapped into a wonderful life in an almost

[01:13:07] yeah, almost seen by seen remake, as I said, the story centers on Mary Bailey, who saves her brother, Harry, from drowning, stops the local pharmacist from poisoning a child and everything possible for her to have done within the gendered constraints of her time.

[01:13:22] That's the same as the original movie. But in this version, she's marrying a successful builder named George Hatch, who becomes her partner in life and the sacrifices that they make together until it all goes horribly wrong in exactly the same way as the original film.

[01:13:37] But ultimately, the story has a happy ending. Again, the same happy ending as the original film. So, Luke, this is what you had to say after watching the film. OK, so I just finished watching It Happened One Christmas. I actually quite like that.

[01:13:52] I think I liked it a little bit better on first watching than the original. It's a wonderful life, even though the two were practically identical. I think it was just more that I knew what to expect and sort of knew what the story was this time.

[01:14:08] I have to say before I recorded this, I had to look up. I went to look up on Wikipedia. The reaction to It Happened One Christmas was because I'm surprised there wasn't any legal issues

[01:14:22] because it's in places as far as I can tell and almost shot for shot remake. The script seemed, if not identical, then very nearly identical. So I was surprised there wasn't any legal trouble. Although Frank Capra, the director of the original

[01:14:42] It's a Wonderful Life did apparently refer to It Happened One Christmas as being plagiarism and I can't see what he means. Apart from that, yeah, it was fine. It was very sort of late 1970s, but overall I enjoyed it. Also, Orson Welles, great villain.

[01:15:01] Yeah, that's all I've got to say really. So we briefly touched on the copyright stuff of basically the US Copyright of the US Copyright Act of 1909 Protected Films published before 1964 for an initial term of 28 years from when they were released. So at the end of that first term,

[01:15:21] the copyright holder was allowed to apply for a second term of 28 years. But in 1974, when that term was up, Republic Pictures, the original copyright owners didn't apply for the second term, which is probably a clerical error, but the film fell into the public domain.

[01:15:40] And because of that, as I said, it was cheap to broadcast. So it was broadcast a lot. And this 1977 remake was made three years after that, you know, lapsing into public domain. So this had effect on a few things.

[01:15:55] It also it also is why it took a while for it to be colorized because Capra at first he lobbied for it. He wanted to be colorized. He even was going to pay for half of it. But since the film was considered public domain,

[01:16:08] the people who were doing the colorizing would rather not have his inputs. They just send his money back because they're like, we don't want to deal with you and we don't want you to have artistic control.

[01:16:17] So then he and Jimmy Stewart both ended up campaigning against the colorization. Although now you'll see often the 2007 colorized version. I've never got the urge to colorize black and white films just like retroscoping a 2D film into 3D. It's it's just not made.

[01:16:35] The original film wasn't made with that technology in mind, wasn't made with that. I wouldn't mind. Oh, I always remember the Elvis Costello quote about colorized films. It's like you let a small child draw with crayons on the screen. I just don't get it.

[01:16:50] I mean, I think it can be there can be interesting artistic reasons to do it. Like, for instance, the recent film, Where Wolf By Night, it was originally released in black and whites, you know, as a nod to classic horror films. But even when they were doing that,

[01:17:06] the director was thinking about how it would be colorized and they use like a classic colorization method. Anyway, and I've heard as far as this film, there are younger generations who see it colorized where like their eyes glaze over black and white.

[01:17:22] They watched it when it's colorized and then they enjoy it. So OK. I don't hate that it exists, but yeah, you and I both we watched the black and white version. Yeah. Um, and I have to say like I watched the original. It's a wonderful life.

[01:17:38] Obviously, it was dead easy to get from Amazon. It's on Amazon Prime. The OK, it happened. It's on the Sky Show time here. Yeah. It happened on Christmas. I had to watch it in the file you sent me because it is impossible. It's on YouTube.

[01:17:53] OK. Well, you can find the entire movie on YouTube now. But yeah, because like it's it sort of fell out of wide distribution. And you can kind of see why because it is so faithful to the original, apart from the gender swapping.

[01:18:11] And they don't even make a big deal of the gender swap element. And it's just I mean, I watched that last night and recorded that last night and having slept on it, like I said at the beginning of the podcast,

[01:18:23] it's not a bad film, but it is kind of a pointless one. I don't I don't understand why you would make a film that stuck that rigidly to the original sort of scenario. Yeah. OK. But you and I both said that we it made us enjoy it.

[01:18:42] I think of films also like remakes like The Parent Trap and I know lots of other films that have been remade in very similar ways. And I don't I don't know. I don't I don't see a problem with it.

[01:18:55] I see for this one, I would suggest to anyone who enjoys its wonderful life and wants to try a different variation. Definitely 100 percent go watch it happen one Christmas. You know, you're you're probably going to it's at least an interesting curiosity, especially with that cast.

[01:19:11] It is very well acted. I love Thomas as Mary Bailey does a really good job because she brings the same energy as Jimmy Stewart. But also the fact that it's been gender swapped does mean that she brings she brings something else to it. There is a maternal

[01:19:32] kind of a maternal energy to this. And different nuances. Yeah. But we ran them fun fact about it's a wonderful life that's snuck into this part of my notes. I just but I think it's interesting to note that

[01:19:47] it was it's a wonderful life was released as one of the first films on CD-ROM for DVDs because of this copyright issue. And that happened in 1993, but that was also the year that things changed because while the film had fallen out of copyrights,

[01:20:03] the state of the writer, Stern, had gotten the greatest gift. The story is based on so he first self published that story. So it wasn't copyrighted and then later had an officially published version that was copyrighted. And so through some technical loop, deloops, they managed to say,

[01:20:24] well, if this version of this story is copyrighted and we are based off of that version, thereby this film is also copyrighted. So that's why films like It Happened One Christmas in Clarence were able to slip through, but now you'll see them being much more careful

[01:20:43] about the adaptations. And yeah, now it's known for its own by Paramount. And that's why you'll find it on Sky Showtime here and often on Paramount own things. And NBC is the only US broadcast or license to show it.

[01:20:58] OK. So is that like is that like a staple of Christmas Eve TV then on NBC? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And as far as this film, It Happened One Christmas. Yeah, you're right. The Capra called it plagiarism.

[01:21:11] But I don't agree that plagiarism is the right word because it is a very, very much a copy, but it never hid what it was. So it's not like it's not lying and pretending that it's not based on his film. Yeah, that's it's a remake. That's true.

[01:21:27] But it obviously would have never happened without that copyright loophole. And it's also they're also not lying about it too or shy about it too, because the title is a play on the Frank Capra film. It happened one night. Yeah. There's doubling down on that.

[01:21:42] It was initially made as an ABC Sunday Night movie, which with the cast, I'm surprised, but it was directed by Donald Rye, screenplay by Lionel Chetwind, starring Marlon Thomas, Wayne Rogers, Orson Wills and Chloris Leachman. Now three of those are huge names to me.

[01:22:00] The other one I wasn't familiar with him, but he reminded me so much of Will Ferrell and looks. Did you have that? Yeah, I was going to bring that. I was if you hadn't bought that up, I was going to bring that up.

[01:22:12] He does not do not so much will ferrell, but will ferrell character like a right, right? Or all Saturday Night Live character. Yeah, he does look. Yeah, he does look like well, Ferrell and also on that distracting a timer. That's not the film's fault.

[01:22:27] Yeah. But it's like also when you see awesome ones come up, you know, oh, that's who they've got to play Potter. Yeah, there's no other part in that film he could play. Right, right, exactly. So did you see his name? You're like, who's he going to be?

[01:22:42] Harry? No. But I mean, you say it's a surprise they got him, but like that was the part that was sort of late period or somewhere where he was doing anything for the paycheck. Right. Basically. Well, yeah.

[01:22:56] And Chloris Leachman as you know, gender slop to Clarence becomes Clara. She received her 10th Emmy nomination for this role. Did what did you think of Clara versus the Clarence of the previous film? I think Chloris Leachman does a good does a good job.

[01:23:13] But but no, I got with Clarence from the original. I actually I like Clara. I think she had for me, I found her funnier, but I also have questions about what accent she was going for. I think she was like trying to do Irish.

[01:23:28] I think it was the first Leachman's from the Midwest. Yeah, I think I think it was the Dick Van Dyke School of Cockening, to be honest. OK, yeah. But she does she brings a different energy and especially when she promises to guide not save.

[01:23:43] But really, she means for her. She made me laugh. I did have to laugh, though, they gender swapped everyone, but their boss in heaven, Joseph stills got to be a dude. Yeah, yeah, we can gender swap everybody, but we're not we're not gender swapping. Joseph, not the boss.

[01:23:59] That's too far. As far as as far as Wells, though, I think he played that part really well because you see there's also the fact that, you know, the main character is a female in this version. There's that extra layer where Potter begrudgingly respects her,

[01:24:16] but it almost means more in a way because he's sexist. But then also he has to admit that this woman knows what she's doing. Yeah. And like, I think this is one of the rare rare occasions in late period or some

[01:24:28] well where he actually looked like he was trying. Yeah, OK. Yeah, yeah. He looked like he was relatively sober. It's true. Actually putting some effort in. Yeah, that's true. Although, yeah, it's extra icky in this version when he's encouraging Mary to commit suicide for life insurance.

[01:24:48] He's like, oh, sounds like you are worth more dead than alive. Like, oh. And I have to call out one weird thing that was happening in the video end where they do you notice it was like that weird freeze framing that they would do

[01:25:02] sometimes? I presume I presume that's where the commercial breaks would have gone. No, but not just that. Well, it like they they would keep talking, but the screen would freeze. I thought that was just my laptop. But yeah, I thought at first, too.

[01:25:16] But I was like, no, that's actually a weird 70s filmmaking thing. The way they shot it. Yeah, that is weird. And I also we were talking about like the technological advances in the snow

[01:25:28] for the original movie. This one, it felt like the snow was just a filter they put on top. Like they weren't actually being hit by snow of any sort. Just to talk through some of the changes.

[01:25:39] So they do they credit Stern, which is probably because of that copyright thing. But really, I have to say this film, it's really only based on the prior film. So anything that was changed in the prior film was changed in this film as well.

[01:25:52] And then they made a few additional changes. So I do feel like they paid a bit more attention to the hysterocycy of the costuming and the vehicles and things like that. It's it's like the benefit of having more hindsight.

[01:26:06] Yeah, I think that's that's the thing for it's a wonderful life. The costumes and stuff were just how people dressed. Right. But when they went back in the past to like the 20s, they didn't really change that much.

[01:26:18] And also in this version, like everyone in town goes to war, not just Harry. And there's a just there's a lot more about people writing home for more, just a lot more acknowledgement of the war. And we also see George as the oil man during the Great Depression,

[01:26:34] which was a big part of American history at that time, but definitely wasn't brought up in the story or the previous movie. I do kind of like the dynamic between George and Mary better. So I like this line when they're kids, like, does he like her?

[01:26:48] Yes. That's why he spends a lot of time not looking at her. Yes. And then she calls him out later for not writing to her and but George does actually try harder for his for her affection once he's back on like in the original movie.

[01:27:07] But I missed the last in the moon moment. Yeah. It's too cheesy, but yeah, it's iconic. It is. It is. But they do talk more about real life together, like and they're not really using Sam to make each other jealous in that immature way.

[01:27:23] So it feels more like they chose each other, not just that they were yeah, happened into that. Yeah, I think that's actually nice and all the stuff. It's it's not quite as it's not quite as beat for beat as as maybe as maybe I thought it was.

[01:27:39] I may well have to go back and rewatch that. I've sort of come to one conclusion, then I've come to another conclusion. And now you're moving me on to a third. Conclusion is.

[01:27:50] Well, that's why I say anyone who's a fan of the original film, give this one a try. I also think that Mary being a woman adds an extra reason for her to be held back.

[01:27:59] Like, for instance, that's why she's her brother gets sent to college instead of her. Yeah, that's true. And she also has she has to be better behaves though. So there's no partying with her brother and their parents. I was like, but yeah, Vy's role.

[01:28:13] She's still in the film, but what role is she really here to play other than making me laugh when she switches to Sam's arm as soon as he talks about money? The pool reveal in this version is a drunken dare rather than an act of jealousy,

[01:28:28] but it's the same location as the original film. So kudos for that. Oh, it's cool. Yeah. And also I think it's funny and bringing this up because it comes back in another movie later. There's an I love when they have the whole exchange by the bushes.

[01:28:40] There's no none of that like Mary or George hiding in the bushes, begging for their robe because if it doesn't make sense for a woman to do it to a man, it doesn't make sense for a man to do it to a woman. That's just for the original.

[01:28:52] And I like it. But they talk about that house, of course, that broken down house. And she tells him this story about Mr. Potter and the ambassador's wife. And then he eventually calls her out. He's like, wait, are you lying? She says, I don't lie. I create.

[01:29:07] I guess, yeah, there's maybe some later versions becoming journalists. Makes sense off the back of that. Yeah. Random thing that I noticed there's an inconsistent number of kids. So there's three kids in this movie, four kids in the first movie, two in the story. Doesn't really matter.

[01:29:25] Just stuck out to me. And instead of Zuzu, they call the kids Susie in the story, which yeah. Yeah. I don't think Zuzu aged well as a name. But yeah, she doesn't even know her dad because he's been away at war. Oh, yeah.

[01:29:40] I was worried that he might actually not come back home when she was at that trade. Yeah, it would have been. I mean, that would have been quite a radical departure. But yeah, now that you say that would have been.

[01:29:53] Yeah, I can see where you were coming from. And I'm glad that Mary doesn't jump into safe car in this version. She actually goes and runs down the hill because that's the more sensible thing to do. But on the ding for this version is George, the creepy mechanic.

[01:30:09] I'm like, no, after that, I could not go back and be married to this man. That's wrong. Yeah, that's wrong. Well, yeah, I do find it interesting that this movie and I guess the original two emphasizes that you've been given a great gift, which is to see

[01:30:24] what the world would have been without you. But in the original story, the great gift is the gift of life. Just yeah, being born. So this was not the only attempt to remake this movie. This is definitely by far the most remaking remake.

[01:30:43] But there were also it was adopted a few times for radio, even with Stuart and Reid reprising their role three times. And there have been stage versions, including stage versions of the radio play. So people sit on stage and read the radio play.

[01:31:00] Most notably in 1997, PBS aired Mary Christmas, George Bailey, which was taped live performance and the yeah, it was a charity benefit. And the cast was all stars. Like so we had Bill Pullman as George, Nathan Lane as Clarence, Martin Landahl as Mr. Potter, Penelope Ann Miller as Mary

[01:31:22] and Sally Field as Ma Bailey. That is a great cast. Yeah, I if there were a 90s movie version, that would be a more or less ideal cast. I wish I could find a videotape of it, but I wasn't able to do so.

[01:31:37] But I was able to find some songs from the local musicals like that were made from this. You can find some of those songs on YouTube. OK. And I have to say it's not bad, but attempts

[01:31:49] of professional musicals were thwarted by the estate of Stern, the writer of the story, although Paul McCartney was reportedly working on a musical before the pandemic. So we haven't heard anything about it in the years since. But that would be interesting.

[01:32:06] So on Reddit, user NastyNickers pointed out to me, they said, I really enjoyed the Saturday Night Live skits where they do their own versions. So it's definitely in the cultural zeitgeist and ripe for satire. It's a wonderful life. All the satire seems to focus on the ending.

[01:32:23] So we've got it's a wonderful life, the Lost Ending, which is like the 1986 SNL short that was introduced by William Shatner. And it shows. So this is again quoting Nasty Nickers. This first clip shows how Mr. Potter got his just desserts in the movie.

[01:32:41] George gets saved by his friends and realizes friends, not money, make a man truly rich. However, as new audiences see the movie, they just want justice for George and to see Mr. Potter punished for his treachery. So this satire doesn't have you seen that one? No, I haven't.

[01:32:57] I can send you all the links to I can post them in the show notes for anyone who's curious as well. And there's also this you call a wonderful life, which is an SNL skits about what if it was a Hanukkah movie and it's a real hater.

[01:33:11] So that one's 10 years old. There's also a Trump version from four years ago where there's prayers for Trump played by Alec Baldwin, of course. And so he had Clarence as Kenan Thompson and they show Trump a world

[01:33:24] where he's not president and he's better off and everyone else is better off. And there's like an insane list of stars he show up like up to including DeNiro, but then Trump decides to go back every anyway.

[01:33:36] And the moral at the end is every time a bell rings, someone quits or goes to jail. And then Comedy Central did their own like more realistic take four years ago where the town pulls together all their money and it's still not enough,

[01:33:52] but no one seems to understand that. I also have to call out here that there was actually Peter Capaldi wrote and directed a an Oscar winning short in the 90s in the mid 90s called France Kafka's It's a Wonderful Life.

[01:34:07] And this is a much looser parody starring Richard E. Grant. So he plays Kafka, who's trying to write the book The Metamorphosis, but he can't decide what Gregor Samson will get transformed into. And he keeps getting interrupted by these increasingly ridiculous situations. And eventually he's inspired.

[01:34:26] He realizes it's going to be a cockroach, but then he kills a cockroach that inspires him and he's devastated that he's by this betrayal that he's done until all of his neighbors who interrupted him

[01:34:38] throughout the film bring him bugs from their houses to make up for the loss. And of course, yeah, it's not just the satire, but there's also been attempts to make sequels. So we have there was a couple of books in 2011.

[01:34:54] There was The Last Temptation of Clarence Oddbody by John Jughead Pearson. So the official marketing blurb says, what if George Bailey wasn't saved by his guardian angel, Clarence Oddbody on that snowy Christmas Eve in Bedford Falls? This reimagining of the beloved Frank Capra classic, It's a Wonderful Life

[01:35:13] and the Philip Van Doren's Stern story that inspired it tells the story of Bedford Falls and its inhabitants after the death of their drama central character. The Last Temptation of Clarence Oddbody restores the dark undercurrent of Van Doren Stern's short story, The Greatest Gift,

[01:35:29] to the uplifting plot of Capra's film and explores how the familiar characters in it might respond to the dire circumstances created by George Bailey's disappearance from their lives, the paths of an introspective cab driver, a ruthless henchman and a wayward daughter collide nearly 20 years later

[01:35:47] in the town that defined the reputations for better or for worse. And the reviews call this an emotionally disturbing roller coaster that makes you think. OK. I said I did not read it. There is another book. There was released two years later in 2013 called Return to Bedford Falls,

[01:36:06] a modern sequel to It's a Wonderful Life by William Sellers. This book says, remember Christmas Eve 1945? The warrant for the arrest of George Bailey is torn up. Violet Bick decides to stay in town and Bedford Falls is saved from the clutches of the evil Harry Potter, Henry Potter.

[01:36:25] Or is it? Let's revisit Bedford Falls to find out how things are going today. Return to Bedford Falls recounts the key events in the movie and then takes us forward in time, bringing readers up to date, describing the events that occurred after that fateful day in December 1945.

[01:36:41] Constantine Cavaldi, our storyteller, has a hankering to discover what happened to the Bailey family, the citizens and the town. Join Mr. Cavaldi as he describes what he learned through several years of research. Your reading efforts will be rewarded with twists and turns, surprises and joy.

[01:36:58] But I have to say that we're using it for that book. OK. So, yeah, there's been some film attempts to there's only one film, quote unquote, sequel that's ever been made in 1990 and we're about to talk about it.

[01:37:09] But to be very clear, this sequel should not be considered canon. It's a product of the copyright opening and will not enhance your understanding and appreciation of the original. Oh, boy, well, it may not enhance your appreciation of the original.

[01:37:25] But this was not the last attempt to make a sequel. The most notable attempt is actually announced in 2013. It was going to be called It's a Wonderful Life, the rest of the story. And it was going to star Carolyn Grimes, who is the actress who played Zuzu,

[01:37:41] the child in the original, but now she would be back as an older woman and she would be an angel herself back to guide George Bailey's grandson, who apparently is just like a little shit.

[01:37:53] Only now she's going to show him how life would have been better if he weren't born to scare him into being a better person. We either give that promise or yeah, no, make it. If there's a kickstart going for that, I'm definitely

[01:38:06] going to be like, I like that idea. Well, the actress Carolyn Grimes agrees. She says, the new film will retain the feeling of the original and it simply must be shared. I've probably read close to 20 scripts over the year,

[01:38:19] suggesting a sequel to It's a Wonderful Life, but none of them were any good. The script by Bob Tharnsworth and Martha Bolton was wonderful. And I wanted to be involved with this version of the film immediately.

[01:38:30] Now, if it had been made, the 60 year gap would have been one of the longest sequel gaps in history, but Paramounts quickly stepped in and shut that down. Mix that. Mix. So like, nope. Nope.

[01:38:44] So yeah, to put it into a Wonderful Life term, so the film that did get made, that we're about to talk about, it's think of it as a warning from Clarence Oddbody that maybe this world is better off if the sequel were never born.

[01:38:58] OK, I've been really struggling to think how to talk about this. Well, first we're going to start with what you said when you first watched it. So I've just finished watching Clarence, the 1990 sequel to It's a Wonderful Life.

[01:39:16] I suppose it's a sequel focusing on Clarence Oddbody, the angel. I'm really not quite sure what to say about this. It was the most 90s thing I've ever seen. It was really bad. I mean, really, that's 90 minutes of my life. I'm never going to get back.

[01:39:38] And not it was bad in the way that like the Hallmark movie was where it's so bad and kind of funny. This was just bad. Just naff. It was just awful. Yeah, the things I do for this podcast. Really wonder what at least hopefully

[01:40:00] Alicia's going to be a bit more eloquent in talking about this than I am. But I'm just in a state of shock at the moment that that film could ever get made. Somebody read that script and go, yeah, let's make that.

[01:40:16] Let's put people in front of the camera. Good grief it was bad. So just to summarize for people what we're talking about and before we what we're talking about before we get into it as a summary. In this stiltily acted low res and let me make this clear.

[01:40:36] Holy unauthorized, unofficial made for TV sequel. The angel named Clarence Oddbody has been a shut in since a bad angeling experience sometime after George Bailey. We don't know what happened, but apparently it caused him to lose his

[01:40:51] entire personality and now he's being sent back to Earth to help the family of his new angel friend, Jeremy. He ends up moving in with them, of course, pretending to be human. But their youngest daughter is on to him.

[01:41:04] And he tells the family's teenage son to man up, causing that kid to decide to skip school and get a job. So Clarence pretends to be a teenage boy, but then he's too awesome at school and makes things even tougher when the kids returns.

[01:41:20] Totally by the way, moving in on Jeremy's wife, Rachel, this whole time, she eventually kisses him. And though Jeremy's been watching all this from heaven, they elected not to give us his reaction shot at that particular moment. But when she finds out he's been meddling with her kids,

[01:41:35] things get dark and it gets real weird that he's still there in the house. But then Clarence fixes everything by getting the mom's computer game to speak English and Rachel gets to visit her husband in heaven briefly before

[01:41:48] returning to Earth to mom and stuff in a very anti-climatic ending. And Clarence's angel boss, Joseph, rides away in a taxi cab that flies off into the sky like Santa sleigh. Do you have anything to add to that summary? No, except that they do a really weird thing.

[01:42:07] We're like the angels age in reverse. They do like an old Benjamin Button thing and it's really weird. It's really odd. So Joseph's a child, which is and Joseph's way more involved in this version. It's not just like the tree shaking, but Joseph's like there a lot.

[01:42:25] But it also appears like in a weird sexy pose on the bed at one point, like propped up on his side like 12. Like, no. No, it's just it's just it's just so bad. Like because I literally accept, you know, we always try and do

[01:42:43] we always try to look for the positives. Right. Podcast is like a founding principle of the podcast. And I couldn't find any in this film. I really couldn't. Like you say, listen, I had a blast watching this film because it is such a train wreck.

[01:43:00] No, but that's the thing like the whole movie is a train wreck. The whole movie. Yeah, but that's a different way. That's like that's just a hallmark train. That's just a hallmark movie. It's a decent one for that. Must be what?

[01:43:11] Like having your brain eaten by a parasite. I mean, the best they could come up with this. I think if you're going to do if you're going to do a podcast as a review of content, it helps to renail and then to watch genuinely terrible content.

[01:43:29] You appreciate the good. Yeah, just a level set. Like when you see people going off on Twitter about how the Marvels is the worst movie ever or no, watch Clarence is the worst movie ever. No, I've seen bad movies. I've seen terrible movies. Gold.

[01:43:48] So this movie was originally made for the family channel. And now I could like scoured all over for all these movies. And this one I could only find on Free V. So yeah, because like you did send them all over as files.

[01:44:02] I actually did watch it on I actually did watch it on Free V. And it's ages to watch because there are adverts like every five minutes. So it made a 90 minute movie over two hours long. And so do you want to guess what the rotten tomato score is?

[01:44:20] It's rated G by the way, which I guess. I don't know. Is it possible for rotten tomatoes to go into minus? It's a minus. It's not negative, but it's 17 percent, which is a pretty dire.

[01:44:34] Yeah, I'd say it has by far the worst video quality of all the films, which is funny because it's like the third oldest and granted. Yes, I know that it's a wonderful life has been remastered and stuff. But still.

[01:44:47] But yeah, that's kind of what that's kind of what I meant by it's the most 90s thing I've ever seen because it has that weird sheen that you only get when you transfer from film to VHL.

[01:45:01] And also like it's got the sort of early 90s moral panic about video games running through it, right? So yeah, because it's 1990s. So when it was written in films, it was probably even like late 80s.

[01:45:15] Yeah, it's a film where if you asked if I didn't know what the date was and you asked me what date that was made, it would have been sometime between 1990 and 1992. OK. There's a very specific there's a very specific like 24 month window

[01:45:33] where that film could have been made. So in this case, in this case, Clarence, a titular character is played by Robert Karadine, who people might know as the main guy in Revenge of the Nerds. So that was an interesting casting. This is something Robert Karadine can act.

[01:45:53] But yeah, when all of the acting is bad, it's the director's fault. Sorry. It's just like, is that Robert Karadine or is that a large chest of drawers? Why is that? Walking down the street is so wooden and stilted. Although at least Clarence is still bumbling.

[01:46:11] So that's consistent with the first film. I suppose it is. Well, that oh my gosh, he says some of the most awkward things. Like when he says to the little girl, have you ever been to heaven? And she asks sorry.

[01:46:23] So the little girl, Jill, asks him, have you ever been to heaven? And he says yes, plenty of times when every time I see a smile like yours, that's heaven to me. The 10 year old gives like the that's the lamest shit I've ever heard face

[01:46:37] that was like all of us in that moment. You know what that bit reminded me of? It's not seen in it. It's not seen in airplane. Jimmy, have you ever seen a grown man naked? Have you ever seen the inside of a Turkish prison?

[01:46:50] Jill, I thought it was about gladiators. Yeah, it's just like I said in the initial voice note, I cannot for the life of me understand how somebody there must have been a production meeting, somebody must have green lit this monstrosity.

[01:47:08] I just I was really glad actually you did the summary of the issue because I watched this on we're recording on Thursday. I watched this on Tuesday. I have no memory of the last 25 minutes.

[01:47:19] So this was also the film that I said it was I said, I know it's bad. You don't have to watch it. I don't want to. But you're like, nah, I want to watch this. You were like, I have to see this train wreck happen.

[01:47:30] Yeah. But like I said, I thought it was going to be so bad. It's funny territory. I don't know what it was for me. You thought it was. I just thought it was awful and turgid. Yeah. My my letterbox review was one and a half stars.

[01:47:44] It's so ugly. I love it. In the movie, it's a wonderful life versus a story. Clarence is definitely more involved, but he's way more involved here. Like in its wonderful life, Clarence dragged George back from the brink.

[01:48:02] In this version, Clarence drove Rachel to the brink first and then let her not fall over. Generally thought I know what they're going to do here. I know what they're going to do here. Clarence is going to give up being an angel.

[01:48:16] He's going to become mortal again and they're going to get mad. They're going to play this for romance. Oh, yeah. No, I was so icked out by that. I'm like, Jeremy is watching. Like you're supposed to be his friend. What is your end game here?

[01:48:30] Yeah, but like Jeremy seems perfectly cool with this. Yeah. And then, yeah, also I have to call out. I noticed that the actor who plays the banker's henchman. There's always a banker's henchman. We don't talk about them much because they don't often play an important role.

[01:48:45] But it was played here by Julian Rieschens, who's an actor with a very distinctive face who people notice from like DC movies and things like that. Definitely not doing much here. But they do at least give a Mark Twain reference to Tysie, the original,

[01:49:04] but calls him Samuel Clemens, which is his real name. So, OK, point there. And also just point for ridiculousness when the banker with a mullet eats an entire lobster while twirling his mustache during a client meeting. He's just charling down on a lobster like you want some?

[01:49:21] Lobster I've ever seen. I was like, you're crazy. I think he was like two lobsters joined together. I have to compliment, though, there were two good performances, even though there was a clear lack of direction. There were two good performances in this.

[01:49:39] And that was the mother, Rachel, played by Kate Trotter and the little girl, Jill, who's played by Rachel Blanchard, who actually grew up to she's now like quite famous in her own right. She's from Yumi, her and the summer I turned pretty.

[01:49:53] But those seem like the only two characters who tried in this movie. Only two actors who try. The cinematography also had some moments. So yeah, there was a low res. So sometimes tough to see. But there was some interesting camera work.

[01:50:06] So I have to give a shout out to Glenn MacPherson for that. And also I have to compliment them. The kids are more present than in the originals and it continues a football theme. So in the two originals, we have at some point George or Mary,

[01:50:23] yeah, George being forced to dress up and football player clothes here. We have Clarence, I don't know, doing a weird disappear football game that only gets his charge into more trouble. Yeah. And I just have to finish with one last thing and on a high note,

[01:50:39] unless you have any more gripes before. No, no, no, I don't really want to think anymore. OK, I've to end on a high note with a moment I really appreciated in the realms of it being early 90s is we've got a father son coat off.

[01:50:56] Father son coat off. They do. Yeah, son coat off. I love that. They're like, yeah, remember when we used to coat off? Yeah. I see it was I had fun. I had fun with it.

[01:51:14] Like I say, it's the closest I ever want to come down to my brain eaten by a parasite. On that note, that ends the chapter of talking about the original content around its wonderful life and we're going to take a quick commercial break

[01:51:28] and when we get back, we're going to talk about three tributes to its wonderful life that are fun and wildly divergent in their own ways. All right, we're going to we're going to continue moving forward chronologically.

[01:51:43] And so that means that we're going to talk about my least favorite movie and you get to hate on me for not liking the Muppets. We're going to talk about it's a very Muppets Christmas movie to those released in 2002. And we're going to begin.

[01:51:58] So again, so if you'd asked me when that was made, it would be. 2002 and 2000. Oh, yeah, I think much more so, especially with this, we'll talk about that. But this is what you said when you first watched it. Well, I've just finished watching a very Muppet Christmas.

[01:52:15] Really enjoyed it. How can you not enjoy the Muppets? Donzo, Stattler and Woldorf are three of my favorite fictional characters of all time. I got really, really strong early 2000s nostalgia. There are a lot of celebrity cameos in this. It's obviously not the best Muppets Christmas movie.

[01:52:37] That will always be a Muppets Christmas Carol, but it's the Muppets. How can you not like the Muppets? It's me. I'm the person who doesn't like the Muppets. It's me. Oh, OK. Well, do you want to go first then?

[01:52:56] Well, OK, let me just summarize the plot real quick. And then we can dive into it. So in this nonsensical take on this tale constructed as a vehicle to shove as many early naughty stars and references in your face as possible,

[01:53:10] mean Joan Cusack as Rachel Bitterman inherits a bank when her husband dies. She wants to shut down the Muppets theater and turn it into a more profitable nightclub. Pepe, the shrimpy one, turns coat and decides to be her manservant. But when she turns out to be abusively

[01:53:26] uninto him creeping on her, he turns on her again and manages to get an application to turn the theater into a landmark processed and approved within a single evening. That's the true Christmas miracle of this movie.

[01:53:39] But along the way, David Arquette as Danny from Angel Accounting and whoopie Goldberg as God peeped down from heaven. Miss Piggy takes a job on Scrubs and they perform an extensive riff on the Baz Lerman film Mulan Rouge starring Mulan Scrooge and Saltine. Did I summarize it well?

[01:54:04] Yeah, it's just yeah. So, you know, just just love that. Yeah, this is a very loosely structured series of gangs that are just sort of held together. Yeah, very loosely and the relationship to it's a wonderful life is is pretty. It's pretty tangential. It's not my favorite.

[01:54:29] Leave me aside, Muppets, Christmas Carol, it's still it's nowhere near as good as Muppets Treasure Island or Muppets in Space. If you say so. It's a very it's a very middling out of other Muppets. But like I say, it's like I just I like the Muppets.

[01:54:48] I like Gonzo. Yeah, OK, not great. I like Stepan Wardoff. Yeah. And yeah, it's like there are so many cameos in this. Like William H. Macy turns up for about 30 seconds. Yeah, I guess he's the Joseph character. Yeah, I guess.

[01:55:05] Like the entire cast of Scrubs turn up for about two minutes. Yeah. So we have. So in this in this version, Kermit is George and Miss Piggy. I guess she's supposed to be Mary, but she's totally not Mary because she's a crappy

[01:55:20] partner in this. But Fawzi is definitely I knew right away. I was like, Kermit's going to be George and Fawzi is going to be Uncle Billy. And that was so. I think it's really funny that there's people online who say that Kermit did

[01:55:34] 9-11 because in this movie, this this movie was released shortly the year after 9-11. But it was, I guess, made before that. So when Kermit has his alternate reality where he's never been born, the Twin Towers are standing. I didn't notice that.

[01:55:55] And I do have to say they they kept the fate for Miss Piggy in the alternate reality quite close to the original where she's now a piggy cat lady and I'm like, oh, well, that's relatable. The cats are like the size of the puppet.

[01:56:09] So I'm like, I'm kind of jealous. I kind of wish that I had cats that were. You want me really? I don't think you've thought that through. No, it would be miserable. Hey, I've lived with very big dogs. It's like the same thing.

[01:56:25] But yeah, this version, it's only about the theater. It's not about like the bigger life stuff and it removes it removes all the depth from the story. And I know it's for kids, but I honestly, I wasn't into the Muppetistic kid either. Like, I know.

[01:56:40] I mean, you know, people like what they like. They just like what they just I think that this is the thing. If you like the Muppets, you'll find this a distracting. OK, yeah. And if you don't and if you don't, you won't because no,

[01:56:54] if you want, this is not the one that's going to convince you. Yeah, there isn't much of a plot to it. There isn't much of a there's not the emotional stakes you get in. Yeah, you get in the Muppets Christmas Carol,

[01:57:05] because the thing about Muppets Christmas Carol is it actually it follows the Dickens story quite closely. And you've also got like the not snited out the cameos. And the thing is Michael Cain absolutely commits to the bit.

[01:57:19] Yeah, makes that film work is that Michael Cain plays it as though he's playing alongside other human acts as it's kind of if you haven't seen him up at Christmas Carol, it's kind of like Bob Hoskins. I think I watched it as a kid.

[01:57:31] It's kind of like Bob Hoskins performance in in Roger Rabbit. OK, and that, you know, it's played dead straight. Like now it is a funny film, but Hoskins and Cain aren't playing for comedy. They're not looking at the audience.

[01:57:51] There are only two ways to there are only two ways to do a Muppet movie. Well, you either do the Michael Cain bit where you treat all the other Muppets as if they were human or you do the Tim Curry bit where you pretend to be a Muppet.

[01:58:05] Mm hmm. There's really only those two. I didn't know about that, but OK. Yeah, there's really only those two ways of of doing it. I don't think it's worth watching this as a movie. It's a series of sketches. Right. Loosely connected with one another.

[01:58:23] Some of them hit some of them don't. I do like how this no man narrator in the beginning who threatens to sue and he's kicked off, but he talks about the holiday collective consciousness.

[01:58:33] So that sets you up for what you're about to see where you're going to have like Riz of the Rat with a glowing nose and you're going to have like the creepy hooves show up because I guess that's probably around the time that that

[01:58:42] Jim Carrey Grinch movie came out. But yeah, and this is the late 90s jokes are just late 90s, early 90s jokes are just all over the place like converting CDs to MP3's. God, you can't use a tablet turning off the cell phone stroke.

[01:58:59] We've got Carson Daly as himself. Matthew Lillard as Steve Irwin hunting hunting. Yeah, there's quite there's quite an extended Steve Irwin impression that just does not work. That was the weakest. It's very bad. Did you get the impression that they really wanted Steve Irwin and they

[01:59:17] really couldn't get it. And they were like, we're not rewriting this. We're just going to. They did have Carson Daly as himself. Matthew Lillard as Luke Frommage. Kelly Rippa shows up. We have Holly Shannon from Southtnight Live shows up and references.

[01:59:32] I guess she references falling in love with Kermit and him ghosting her. I guess that must be from another movie. I don't know. We get comment the insult dog who I haven't thought about since probably about that time, the Scrubs cast as you said.

[01:59:43] And yeah, a whole bunch of other 90s stars. I've got to rewatch Scrubs at some point. If a whole talk, I absolutely love Scrubs when it was on. When it was on. Yeah, I love Scrubs. There's a there's a good podcast where what's his face?

[01:59:57] The main guy and face. We have he says he's the second guy and Zach Braff. The two of them have a podcast together. Yeah, because they actually became really good friends. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, this is the first but not last rendition.

[02:00:13] We'll discuss where George as Kermit can't unwish his wish. And the moral, I don't know, I'm struggling to find the moral. So it's something about like a life without dreams is nothing. And then, you know, the Joan Cusack saying dreams ruin lives.

[02:00:28] In this case, the lives of your friends too. But then he's shown that no, actually, his life their lives are worse without him. And this angel just wants to do out justice. There's nothing about wings or a bell.

[02:00:40] But then they ultimately decide Kermit doesn't need revenge or justice or the theater, people just need to know what matters, whatever that is. And he opens his eyes to what he already had. So I'm like, OK. Yeah, I do like the fact that clearly they told John Cusack,

[02:00:55] you know, that performance you did in Adam's family values. Do that. Do that. Exactly performance. This is what we're hiring you for. Yeah. You know what I love? Silent reference is when apparently in this version, the agent, if someone says,

[02:01:11] I wish I've never been born, the field agent, it's required to comply. So reminded me of if someone says I want to go outside. I have to compliment in its favor more of these movies should have a full musical number in the middle.

[02:01:23] Yes, that's the only thing that could have made it's a wonderful life better. But why? OK, so the angel couldn't undo the change in reality until he spits in Kermit's eye. What? What was that about? No, I didn't get that.

[02:01:40] OK. And then, yeah, a bunch of random muppets shit. Yeah, it's for me, it was much better once the alternate reality starts. But I didn't enjoy this film. Is there anything else you want to shout out? No, no, no, it's pretty much covered it.

[02:01:54] If you like the muppets, you'll find this over and you know if you don't, you won't. OK, fair enough. So moving on to another mess of a movie, one that I personally enjoyed more, the Christmas Spirit 2013 is a hallmark movie. So in the it's a wonderful life tribute,

[02:02:10] the dares to ask what if the George barely stand in and the evil banker fell in love? Charlotte Hart is a journalist back in her hometown of Laurel Springs helping her sister-in-law take care of her two kids pretending she's only there

[02:02:23] because her brother Jerry is a soldier in the Middle East. But really, she's been fired for getting too obsessive about her stories. Jerry, it turns out, is not coming home for Christmas. But there's a new guy in town, Daniel, the real estate man.

[02:02:36] Charlotte keeps bumping into him physically and metaphorically as he tries to get all the small shops in town to sell to him, claiming it so he can build a better town center. Charlotte is suspicious. Then they bump into each other real hard in their cars.

[02:02:50] So hard that they wind up as double coma ghosts. And luckily, older, mysteriously reclusive neighbor, Gwen, who's always been nice to Charlotte, can see the dead. And she thinks they have to do good deeds to get back in their bodies.

[02:03:05] And she teaches them how to quote unquote pass through, which means touching stuff. So Daniel starts giving out his money with his business card so his company gets credit and mystically coaching his protege on how to close the deal.

[02:03:19] Meanwhile, Charlotte is investigating the deal and finds out that they're actually buying the land to knock down the town and build a highway bypass. Rottrow. But then she discovers that she has mystical energy powers. Plus he helped her stop a kid from creeping on her niece.

[02:03:38] So everything is OK. And Daniel's all better now after celebrating Christmas for the first time ever so they can be alive and fall in love. The end. So, OK, Luke, obviously we have to start with your first watch thoughts.

[02:03:53] I don't know whether you want my first impressions of the Christmas spirit, but here they are. Well, it's a typical Hallmark Christmas movie that everybody's supposed to be struggling in this town of Laurel Falls, but it turns out everybody's living in mansions.

[02:04:11] It's largely the cast are basically composed of actors who have given the choice between acting talent and really good hair will reliably choose the hair every single time. I think this script confused and really confusing. I think it would work much better as a horror movie

[02:04:34] rather than as a sappy Christmas movie. I'd like to have seen I'd like to have seen the Maxisism at some point. It was fun. It's about the best I can say for it. So that's your opinion is that bad movies can be improved by making them horror movies.

[02:04:53] No, it's just it's just like the entire town seems perfectly cool with having a couple of ghosts just wondering where she sent she sending emails. She's sending emails to people. Daniel is Daniel is going around literally handing out money.

[02:05:09] By the way, does that mean is he able to like pick up physical money? Put it in his head. But that's the passing through that Gwen taught them. Gwen taught them passing through means you can interact with the physical world.

[02:05:20] That's also why she can stop the bully from hitting her nephew. Yeah, but it's that's one thing. But like Daniel is Daniel is handling objects. Daniel is handling. Yeah. She even says like she's like put that money away or people just see it floating down the street.

[02:05:38] Well, that's what I'm saying. That's why it works so much better as a horror movie. That scene would have been so much more effective. Had it been seen from the point of view of the townspeople? Yeah. I wanted to mop threatening to burn down. Burn down.

[02:05:54] Yeah, burning to burn the witch. The one sentence review of this is it's a hallmark film. It's a horror film. You know what you're going to get. It's done in that hallmark kind of way and you either go with it or you don't. Uh huh.

[02:06:12] Yeah, you either sort of enjoy. You just get on board the ride and enjoy the badness and laugh at it or you're just going to, yeah, there's just nothing for you. So, yeah, full, full confession.

[02:06:26] I if I had known how like off the this is to me, this is probably the furthest away from the source material out of all the ones we're watching. So I might have put Family Man on the list instead if I had known that in

[02:06:39] advance, although there are like some obvious illusions here like Jerry, the older brother instead of Harry, but Family Man, the Nicholas Cage movie. That one tackles more of the same themes. So this one doesn't even have an alternate reality.

[02:06:55] It's just like coma and not coma is not seeing your life without yourself really, especially because they're still interacting with the world around them even when they're force ghosts. Yeah, it's just the two leads have like some weird anti chemistry. It's not just that they. Oh, you think?

[02:07:11] Yeah, it's not just that they like. I think it's OK. It's not just that they lack chemistry with each other. It's like they make each other's performance worse. So really? It's right on. I don't see it as bad as you do.

[02:07:23] OK, how would you rate it out of five stars? Two and a half because yeah, OK, yeah, it's fun to say. That's fair. I initially gave it three and then lowered it to two and a half. Yeah, but yeah, it's so soapy.

[02:07:37] It's so trophy, but I kind of love that about it. It's like it's a wonderful life. Christmas Carol, Hallmark soup mashup, but it is a mutt of tropes. But compared to the Muppets, I it's more the references are more timeless. Yeah.

[02:07:52] And I enjoy it more as its own thing. Like I find it more coherent. Oh, definitely. It's far more coherent than the Muppets. And I don't regret including a Hallmark movie just to like cover the full range of popular horror colony movie fare.

[02:08:08] You've got to you've got to put if you're going to do a holiday special, you've got to put a whole movie in there. Yeah. In the UK for the whole month of December on Saturdays, Channel Five, like one of the main

[02:08:19] broadcasters will just show those back to back to back to back. Yeah. The entire day because there are so many of them. There is so many of them. I so I think for a Hallmark movie, this actually isn't really bad because I

[02:08:33] watched so I was doing for with my film group, a advent calendar of holiday, winter holiday movies. And I had to watch one from this year's Countdown to Christmas from Hallmark. And the one that I chose was where it's called Where is Christmas?

[02:08:50] And I didn't even know until after I started watching it that it is actually also a riff on It's a Wonderful Life where in this case, it's Christmas that's taken away. Like what would the world be like if Christmas were never born? But that one was terrible.

[02:09:06] I think this one was better. So OK, could be worse. But yeah, so we have Nicola Charidan, who was in the peak of her desperate housewives fame and they initially wanted to turn this into a series of films. But I guess that didn't work out.

[02:09:19] And then the neighbor is played by Olympia Dukakis, who is just too good for this film. I'm sorry. Yeah, I remember. I don't think it referenced this particular film, but I remember reading an article a while back saying that actually Hallmark movies do a real service

[02:09:36] to veteran actors because they obviously want people like Olympia Dukakis for the name recognition. Right, yeah. And so they give them parts that are quite small and they're just large enough to meet the SAG AFRA requirements for their membership and their health. Oh, wow. They're helping. That's great.

[02:10:00] So this is how this is like how Hallmark gets people like it's kind of like a symbiotic thing. They get. Right. They write. I mean, I'm sure it's an easy pay trek. Yeah. I'm sure it's an easy paycheck.

[02:10:14] I like to think Olympia Dukakis must have more roles, but it is true that, you know, it's well known that as women pass beyond 40 and beyond Hollywood is not so kind to them. Also, the article is making the point it's a limited role.

[02:10:29] So if the actor is older or if the actor has health problems, this is not. It's not a huge commitment. It's not a huge commitment. It's not too demanding of their time. It's funny out of all the movies. So we have to talk about Christianity.

[02:10:42] This is oddly the most Christian, but the least religious. So like it spends time in a church and there's like a pastor side character, but there's no angels and no prayers for Charlotte. Yeah, no.

[02:10:53] It's like I say, the whole it's it's sort of very, very sort of war on terror financial crisis type of film. So you've got the economy is bad and yet everybody is living in this town in

[02:11:08] Nadia where, you know, all the shops are lovely and everybody's, you know, everybody's living in mansions. But we've got to honor the sacrifice of the troops. So we've got Jerry away at war. It's very sort of mid to late 90s.

[02:11:23] I think actually it's one of the cool things about the way you've curated these films, they're all very much of their time. Right. In their wonderful ways. Yeah, absolutely. And this one, yeah, we have, you know, that that era of like trying to be

[02:11:39] feminist, but it's also about the male characters being creepy to or like icky to get that done. For instance, Daniel, it is she helps him with the car rather than him being the mechanic like it happened one Christmas.

[02:11:54] But then he asks her like, oh, you got a kid here? And she's like, no, a nephew. He's like, oh, that's better. And he's like such the caricature of like the real estate man who

[02:12:05] he learns that he can touch the real world and he wants to call his broker. Yeah, he's the real estate agent who cannot love like the whole world. There's a sort of backstory with his dad, with his dad, he's strange from.

[02:12:20] And like they just needed to get the rights to put a version of Cats and the Cradle in there. Exactly. They just paraphrased the lyrics talking about their relationship. Yeah, they're like the older he gets, the more he just wants to spend time

[02:12:35] together, like that is literally the lyrics to this song. It was resolved rather quickly, but whatever. It's fine. He did feel like it did feel like this was there were earlier versions of the strip that had the plot going off in quite different directions. Yeah, he didn't.

[02:12:54] That stuff didn't get removed. It just got drunk down to the point where you hardly noticed it. Well, maybe at one point I wondered if like Daniel was just too dumb to be the villain and like his associate was the secret villain. Oh, yeah.

[02:13:08] Daniel was giving off like massive him bow energy. Absolutely. And I still don't understand why he didn't celebrate Christmas. Like they could have at least made them Jehovah's witnesses or something to explain that he's like, no, I've never even seen a tree.

[02:13:22] Maybe not exactly like that, but but at least they are equal partners here, which is one of the things I like about this story about, you know, the story framework in general. Yeah. The thing that kind of unmoors it from being a real, you know,

[02:13:38] a true, it's a wonderful life story. Is it I don't get the sense that Charlotte's really stuck as much as she's just kind of choosing this as a way to get away from her problems.

[02:13:48] And she she actually she got to live her dream and then kind of blew it. Yeah, it's not really it's not a story about depression and regret. I don't think Charlotte regrets anything. Well, she is trying to get back on the big set in Eastpac.

[02:14:01] I mean, there is there is that. Yeah, but she's lying to her family about being fired and making them think it's their fault she's there. Like those kids are old enough to babysit themselves. And also it's like typey, typey, typey, 500 word article.

[02:14:16] Right now I'm going to go and make like I'm not just going to go and make breakfast. I'm going to go and make a little bit of breakfast. Absolutely. Yes, women, you can be professional, but also be good housewives as well.

[02:14:29] But yeah, the movie it's it's overall it's like a love letter to small towns and local businesses because it really is a problem going on across the US, especially where people are buying up real estate in these small towns

[02:14:43] and the people who are from there who made it charming or can no longer afford it. So I appreciated they acknowledged that. And I like to think that there is a few references to other films. So like referencing the original Charlotte hits another car instead of a tree.

[02:15:00] Revencing Clarence, she sees her knees skipping like like the kid did in Clarence. And also there's a lot of computer stuff like Clarence. So yeah, plot centering around the use of computers. And also out of this realm, the decorating the tree on the tree lot reminded me of

[02:15:18] Charlie Brown, but I don't think I've ever said I'm not familiar with the reference. You've never seen a Charlie Brown Christmas? No. Oh my God. That is one of the most enduring, most iconic Christmas specials. You should definitely watch it. It's only like 20 minutes long.

[02:15:35] OK, OK, I'll dig it up. And there's two bad sequels, but the originals. I mean, bad in the way like I like Charlie Brown. I like peanuts better than I like the Muppets. So but I think I feel about those sequels probably the way you felt about this

[02:15:50] Muppets movie. OK. But yeah, this movie ultimately the Christmas spirits, it's about a couple coming together rather than a town coming together to support someone who supported them, which is fine. It's a rom-com. Of course, you know, Brother Jerry shows up like in the original

[02:16:06] movie who needs a presidential honor, at least he's there for Christmas. But I have questions about the supernatural element added, not just like the spirits part, but this whole thing about this light in Charlotte that's so strong and it makes Gwen wonder where she's really from.

[02:16:25] That's one of the things like I think there was an earlier version of the script where that made sense. But yeah, I just forgot to cut it. So I'm fine with like the kids can feel that their aunt is there. Fine, that makes sense.

[02:16:39] But then, you know, the the niece is like the ghost of Christmas present is Aunt Charlotte. I'm like, OK, how did we get there? And then we just end with Olympia Dukaka saying, you've taken power

[02:16:51] from the spirit world and we find out that she's charged up the tree, even though it's not plugged in. But it would work so much better as a horror movie. But I guess this is about like they wanted to make this a series.

[02:17:05] So I guess I was supposed to set up a next film. I guess. Speaking of horror films, we're going to move on to our last film from this series. And this is where I have to issue the spoiler warning.

[02:17:17] So if you haven't watched It's a Wonderful Knife and you don't want it to be spoiled yet, then just pause right here and come back and listen once you've checked it out. If you don't mind being spoiled, here we go.

[02:17:30] So the summary of this film is in this new slasher comedy directed by Tyler McIntyre and written by Michael Kennedy, the Carothers family is gearing up to celebrate Christmas in the town of Angel Falls. Despite Dad David being overworked by his boss Henry Waters,

[02:17:46] the real estate mogul trying to buy up the whole town so he can turn it into Waters Cove. There's one holdout who won't sell an old man whose house is a registered landmark, so Waters dresses up like the scream villain cosplaying as an angel

[02:18:00] and kills him, then shows up at a Christmas party to kill the guy's granddaughter and some other teens who happen to be the children of local business owners. But working together, Winnie Carothers and her brother, Jimmy, kill him and

[02:18:13] unmask him. A year later, the Carothers family is doing well, except for Winnie, who just can't get over her best friend being murdered and killing a man. Like what's wrong with her? Right? And now then she finds out her boyfriend is cheating on her with her friend.

[02:18:28] So she does the wish she's never been born thing. And instead of an angel, there's a too far south Aurora Borealis that answers her wish, sending her to a terrible version of her town where the stoners are now crack heads and the killings have never stopped.

[02:18:44] Her brother is dead. Her aunt's wife is dead and many more. And her mother just gets drunk and makes out with randos in front of the entire family while her dad works too much for Waters, not himself.

[02:18:56] So her mom is murdered and she finds out that it was her dad who killed her. He's now doing all of the person who is now Mayor Waters murdering now. And the only person that Winnie can team up with is the girl they call weirdo,

[02:19:09] who's actually called Bernie, an aspiring fashion designer, it turns out. Bernie figures out that the Aurora Borealis is a vengeful spirit, Waters, and decides they need to kill the killers to get Winnie back to her world. Winnie's aunt believes them for some reason and helps too.

[02:19:24] And a few deaths later, they pull it off and Winnie realizes her boyfriend is actually better off with her friend and she's better off with Bernie. She wakes up thrilled to be back in her world until she remembers Bernie,

[02:19:36] who was feeling suicidal and she rushes to see her and save her from her self, only to find out that Bernie somehow remembers everything. Yay, the end. So, these are your initial thoughts. So I've just finished watching It's a Wonderful Knife.

[02:19:53] I really enjoyed the heck out of that. It's a nice palette cleanser to Clarence. Frankly, I wish the killer had turned up in Clarence and off most of the cast of that movie, but anyway, getting back to It's a Wonderful Knife.

[02:20:09] I'm usually not a huge fan of Slasher movies, but I thought this one was really well done. I thought it balanced the horror and the comedy of it really well. I thought it was a really good use of all the tropes in It's a Wonderful Knife.

[02:20:25] I thought it was funny. I thought it was weirdly sweet as well, which you normally don't get in Slasher movies. I thought it was a really sweet ending. Yeah, I really, really, really enjoyed that. Is that for the same? Yeah, no, I really did enjoy it.

[02:20:42] And like I said, I wasn't expecting to as well because this is just not my genre. It's not generally my jam. So yeah, I was I was really pleasantly surprised. Yeah, I found the premise was surprisingly similar to the Christmas, the spirit of Christmas.

[02:21:02] Yeah, I think the spirit of Christmas could have been done as horribly. Yeah, you kind of like the real estate mogul taking up the town. I have to say I came to this movie for Joel McKill as a dad and Justin

[02:21:13] Long as a villain, but I stayed for Jane Widdow as Winnie Carruthers. They were really excellent in this. Yeah, they were absolutely they were really, really good because like that kind of part, you know, the last female survivor in the trouble is it's so easy

[02:21:30] to get that role. And I think they played that role intelligently. They played it with hearts. They played it comedy. Yeah, I just thought it was a really good performance. Also, William B. Davis, cancer man from cancer man from the X files.

[02:21:49] I mean, the cast was the cast was overall really good. I thought it was interesting. Apparently this role Winnie Carruthers was written for Jane Widdow, who I know them. I know them from yellow jackets. You know what's yellow jackets? So I guess no, no.

[02:22:05] Yeah, and we also had our second villainous turn lately from Justin Long, who you know, was always the sweetheart boy and now has lately been playing villain's war, which I enjoy. I was I was I thought Justin Long and retired. I thought just really what come on? He's 40.

[02:22:25] Yeah, but I haven't seen him in anything in ages. Well, he was in Barbarian recently. OK. But I loved I loved the saying there were the motto of water score was I'm the best, so fuck the rest. And his brother, Buck, who only takes selfies and is only.

[02:22:43] I'm just. Yeah, but then at the end, you know, I have to say, Buck was he seems like the doucheier one. But at the he's actually sad when his brother is killed. You know, he's like, you killed my brother. I should do something about that.

[02:22:58] But his brother just goes and kills him in the alternate reality because he asked for a transfer to another town. Yeah, yeah. Buck looks like the jerk, but is actually he's he's the best of the henchmen out of all these I think. I love it.

[02:23:14] So I'm George Bailey. Will you be my will you be my Clarence? Yes. No, that was sweet. And then at the end. So yeah, that's that's what Bernie and and when he say to each other. But then at the end, Bernie says, I wasn't Clarence.

[02:23:30] You were and I just think their whole relationship so sweet. Like it's also the realism where when they're sleeping together in the theater, she's like, I couldn't sleep at all. You snore so loud. Apparently, the romance was not the original script,

[02:23:46] but the actors felt like they had chemistry and they wanted to like rep their own queer experiences. So they ended up writing the romance in. And I think it kind of it worked. It tied it together actually. It did. It did.

[02:23:58] And I think it made the ending much more impactful. It made the ending much stronger because they literally do do the you know, the scene of Winnie starts George Bailey running through, running through town. They do that. Yeah. And it's absolutely it's absolutely believable that Winnie would do

[02:24:15] that for to find Bernie. There's also really before the before the reality switch is a really funny setup where they buy Winnie like athletic gear, but they buy her brother a truck. Right. Yeah. They buy her workout clothes, which is not it's like a pink

[02:24:37] pink tracksuit just very as you would say in British naff. But it's monogram. But it's monogram. Very 90s, even though this is a 2023 film. But yeah, I have to say Jimmy and the ants are the only people in the family who don't suck like her parents suck.

[02:24:54] And I didn't care if they came back, like they could have died and stayed dead for all I cared, especially when Winnie's looking so rough a year after her best friend's death and she kills a guy and her family is in like hard,

[02:25:05] ignore mode, although I got mad at Bernie too. When she and the main reality claim to be protecting Winnie by lying to her about where her boyfriend is, but just for the record, like

[02:25:16] if my partner is ever cheating on me, just tell me if you want to be my friend, just tell me. But I mean, in fairness, they're like teenagers. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's the kind of stupid thing you do when you're a teenager.

[02:25:29] But yeah, I also I thought this sort of stuck by the rule. I think there's an informal rule with horror films of this sort of genre. You want to do it in a tight 90 minutes, you know, it moved along like a real clip.

[02:25:44] So you didn't have you didn't have time to mull over the ridiculousness of the situation or right? Yeah, I think you're going to do that kind of film well. You have to do it with some you have to do it with some pace.

[02:25:57] You don't give the audience time to sort of pick holes. Right. True. In the world building on the plot. So yeah. But it's also interesting, the audience knows who the killer is the whole time. Although the others that twist that it's dad, although I figured that out

[02:26:11] a little bit before they revealed it. Yeah, I actually thought that Bernie was going to be one of the murderers for a while because it's like because at one point I thought that it looked like

[02:26:22] one of the angel killers had boobs, but maybe that was just the folding of the fabric or a stunt person who knows. But also the whole thing about like the theater is the only thing he hasn't

[02:26:31] bought so I'm like, oh, well, she must be in on it then. But I guess I'm glad it didn't turn out that way. I thought that like when he was going to have to be friend, Bernie to save her from doing that because Bernie was treated so badly

[02:26:41] by everyone else. Yeah. But I thought it was cool that there was it felt like a reference to actually two would happen one Christmas when Bernie talks about her dad catching her mom with Henry Waters. Yeah, I guess. But I do wonder what was up with the,

[02:27:02] you notice all the crowds eyes turn green in the alternate reality when they're being transfixed by Henry Waters. So so what are we thinking? Demonic possession. Yeah, it seems like it. I mean, I guess they it was the same color green as the Aurora Borealis.

[02:27:18] So I guess it's supposed to be like to that. And then of course they descend on him and destroy him. But yes, but did I am I miss remembering or did she she didn't get like she didn't get in she got rejected from college?

[02:27:29] We know that. But that wasn't remedied at the end, was it? No, it wasn't. No, but she was just like, that's OK. That's OK. She's from Bernie. It's not like a bunch of people showed up with college applications. Yeah, that was.

[02:27:43] Do you think after discussing those six movies, do you still rank them the same way you did at the beginning? Yeah, I think I do. I'm going to I'm definitely going to watch It's a Wonderful Knife again. I think that could become part of my Christmas rotation.

[02:27:59] I'm going to try very hard never to think about Clarence ever again. Oh, my gosh, it makes me laugh. I love it. I'm going to like it's so bad. I won't go out my way to watch It's a Wonderful Knife.

[02:28:12] But if it's on TV, I'll happily I'll happily watch it. OK. And yet now I'm not going to watch the Muppets again, because if I want to watch a Muppets Christmas film, I'm going to watch it. I'm up at Christmas Carol.

[02:28:24] Yeah, I just want to acknowledge that there are, of course, other films of all this format that we haven't talked about. So like I know like the Santa Claus 3, the escape clause is kind of like this, where are you Christmas?

[02:28:36] As I mentioned on the hallmark, Shrek Forever After Back to the Future Part Three can be argued to be based on this. And then, of course, I already mentioned The Family Man, the Nicholas Cage movie from 2000. And I just wanted to credit Necessary Range 3261 from Reddit said,

[02:28:56] yeah, The Family Man is my favorite. It's a wonderful life type movie because you wind up rooting for the life that could have been. So instead of this is how awful things would be without you. It's more of an example of there being so many different versions

[02:29:09] of what success looks like in life, a success being rich and having anything you want as soon as you want it or a success putting in years of work and sacrifice for a loving happy family. Yeah, that's a good point actually. I like Family Man.

[02:29:24] It's not on rotation at Christmas, but one of those films I will watch if it's on. Yeah, exactly. I could have been on this list just as easily. So before we finish, I just wanted to ask you, what's your favorite non? It's a wonderful life. Christmas movie.

[02:29:43] Oh, gosh. You know, I have like these soft spots for the short specials from when I was a kid, like the Charlie Brown Christmas and also Chua's The Night Before Christmas, which is a 70s cartoon special. I don't know.

[02:29:56] I mean, I guess there's so many racing through my head as I attempt to answer this question. Like I'm thinking about the cheesy favorites like Love, Actually and The Holiday and I do like, you know, a good horror movie like Violet Night or now

[02:30:12] this one's It's Wonderful Night is being added to the list. You were watching Crampus the day because it was. Yeah. Yeah. Crampus is OK. There's I think I like the Dutch version called Sins Better, but it's also

[02:30:25] because the Dutch version is just like jankier and apologetically B movie. What about you? So I was thinking about this and it's it's two films that I can't separate in my head. I watch it's tradition in my house that we watch both of these on Christmas Eve.

[02:30:43] OK, actually, there are three, but I'm not going to get into whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie or not. It's a Christmas movie. It takes place at a Christmas party. This is much of a Christmas movie movies. It's a wonderful life.

[02:30:55] Yeah. So the two I have in mind are National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. Yeah, I can watch it last year. I can quote that film for beta. Yeah. What you know, that's been that's been sort of a hard

[02:31:08] repeat on Christmas Eve in our house since since we were kids. Although watching it last year because I thought, do I introduce my nieces to this? There's a lot more cussing in that film. Yeah, fair.

[02:31:20] Yeah, last year my my friend and I who's the same age as I am, we introduced it to two younger friends in their 20s and they were very skeptical and one of them even dared malign my taste in movies in general. Which but they both really liked it.

[02:31:36] Where are you going to put a where are you going to put a tree that big grizzled? Bend over and I'll show you. What's your other one? The other one and I know this is not a Christmas movie.

[02:31:48] So don't at me, but I'm a Brit and we don't do Thanksgiving. It is transitive in its own to the fields. Because I really relate to Neil Page, the Steve Martin character, because I have a long difficult journey to get home for Christmas.

[02:32:04] And I just that film, the last scene in that film where they walk up to Neil Page's house and he introduces Dale to his wife every single time that makes me cry, just reliably reduces me to tears every single year.

[02:32:21] And I just I love the scene with the rental car. Which is the stream of the phone. Yeah, well, I can tell I'm getting a sense of your of your holiday movie humor because you also referenced Airplane earlier too, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the holiday film.

[02:32:37] I know it's not holiday, but it's sort of feels like the same genre as the other one. Well, yeah, I think I don't know what I'm going to be watching with my family this year. We often end up watching Emmett Otter's Jug Band,

[02:32:49] which yes, is a Muppets movie, but my mom loves it. Talk about movies that are kind of depressing, but it's also kind of well, it's about a family, it's community coming together to pay back someone who's

[02:33:01] been good to them. So it's got a it's a wonderful life choice to it. But I'm yeah, I'm doing my 25 advent calendar holiday movies. And I think I'm like on number 18 now. So we'll see if I can finish it.

[02:33:14] OK. Next up is next up is the Greta Gerwig Little Woman, Little Women. Good film. But next up for us in this podcast feed is we're going to be breaking down Beacon 23 and actually we found out thank you to Ferralisa for bringing this to my attention before recording.

[02:33:33] So it turns out that they're going to release episode seven and eight on the 17th. So yeah, I guess they didn't want to release the final episode on Christmas Eve. Probably a good idea.

[02:33:44] So Luke and I are going to be recording a breakdown for episode six through eight in one episode next week. And then that will be up basically as soon as I can get it edited over the holidays. And then in January, we'll be back with the Dune series.

[02:34:00] So we're going to start with a book and then go through Hodorowski's Dune, the Lynch movie, the sci-fi series and talk about Villeneuve's movie and get you ready for Dune part two when that releases much first.

[02:34:14] And after that, the next thing we're going to be tackling is the three body problem on Netflix. And in the meantime, in the book club, we're going through the silo books. So you've got shift coming up this month, then dust and silo stories next month.

[02:34:28] And then the rewatch episodes. And you can, of course, find us on Twitter and Blue Sky to share your thoughts on it's a wonderful life or anything else we're covering. You can find me at Alicia C. B. and Luke.

[02:34:40] You can find me at LF Middop, both on Twitter and on Blue Sky. And just to say on my other podcast, it could be said with Will and Simon. We were doing our review of we were doing a review of the year episode this week.

[02:34:55] I think that will be out tomorrow. Cool. Yeah. Listening. And you can also get in touch with me on the Discord for the Lorehounds, which is our parent network. And you'll find that link in the show notes.

[02:35:08] And you can also get in touch with us with any feedback or the thoughts or questions you have at wool shift dust podcast at gmail.com. And also coming up the Lorehounds, we're going to have a breakdown of the Doctor Who specials, the 60th anniversary

[02:35:24] specials and also a breakdown of the New Zack Snyder film on Netflix, Rebel Moon and also in the MC Universe side of things. We're going to have a preview episode setting up what if recapping season one,

[02:35:38] getting ready for season two, which we'll also be covering and then covering Echo in January, which I'm especially excited about. And of course there's properly Howard's if you want funny movie reviews with a theologian and a comedian and the properly Howard guys and the Lorehound

[02:35:56] guys have gotten together and they're doing a severance podcast. So recapping season one right now, setting up to cover season two when that gets launched. And as for us, we'll see you back in the speed very soon to wrap up Beacon 23.

[02:36:11] And until then, we'll be listening for ringing bells and thinking about why we're grateful that we were born. Merry Christmas. Happy holidays, everybody. Happy holidays.

[02:36:53] OK, David, this is where we're supposed to choose a side, green or black? John, my soul is as black as night. Your turn. I am black for life. So we're not fighting. I thought this is where HBO wanted us to like pick sides and fight and stuff.

[02:37:12] Don't worry, I'm sure we'll find plenty to disagree about on the pod. But we seem to agree on one thing. We both really like the show. The politics, the drama, the lore, it was made for the Lorehounds. And since we just finished recapping season one,

[02:37:26] we couldn't be more ready to defend our black queen in the Dance of the Dragons. And with the season pass option and Supercast, listeners can get early, ad free access to each weekly scene by scene deep dive. Plus our custom show guide with all the characters and connections.

[02:37:41] See you in the Lorehounds podcast feed each week for our dragonfire hot, but probably positive takes. The Lorehounds House of the Dragon Covers is also safe for team green consumption. Side effects may include a deeper understanding of Dragon Lore,

[02:37:53] a hardened conflict with itself and an inescapable urge to read the book fire and blood by George R.R. Martin. Dragon seeds may experience burning.