Donald Fagen meets Jean Shepard:
http://www.slate.com/id/2207058/pagenum/all
very interesting, especially if you've seen AChristmas Story more times than you can count. But (like Fagen) I really WAS a Shepard fan when I was 12, so this article was quite amazing to me.
funny, my daughter's fiance's family has a tradition of seeing AChristmas Story every year on TV. I've never seen the movie. I did however want a BB gun when I was a kid, and my mom did say no, it would poke your eyes out. The point is, I didn't understand who this kid with the glasses was when I first saw this post, and had to scour the message boards to relocate this! It doesn't seem like that good a movie to me, is this a true classic?
I don't think it's a classic in the same way that It's a Wonderful Life or Miracle on 34th Street are classics. More likely, because it aired at a time when a good percentage of today's adults were kids or teenagers, they saw it and it gradually worked its way into their consciousness in the same way that other Christmas TV specials like A Charlie Brown Christmans or Rudolf the Red Nosed Raindeer did--they're not great art, but they're a pop culture artifact. IMO, it's kind of a cheesy show, but people eat it right up.
Well, it helps to have been a Jean Shepard fan. (He wrote the book on which the movie is based and was the film's narrator). Shepard was on the radio in NY from the '60s thru the '80s, and like Fagen I discovered "Shep" when I was 11 or 12 (even tho' Fagen is older than me) and Shepard's stuff is ideally suited for boys at that age -- not old enuf for sex but thinking of yourself as too old for "kiddie stuff". He was on every night at 10 for an hour, telling stories about his childhood, his Army days, etc. A true raconteur, a lost art in many ways. At 13 I discovered Rock'n'roll with a passion and outgrew him; in the '70s he did some wonderful stuff for PBS and I rediscovered him again. I was one of the few people who actually saw the film in a theater in 1983 (it was only a moderate success, box-office-wise) and fell in love all over again.
I agree that it has become a "classic" thru repetition; Ted Turner discovered that he owned it after buying the MGM library and decided to start running it every Xmas. And it caught on with people old enuf to remember that era who then watched it with their kids and so on. But I also think it's very sweet and funny (it's certainly the best movie Bob Clark, best known for
Porky's of all things, ever directed) with a terrific recreation of time and place despite a fairly small budget. And I'm watching it right now.
