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During a cast reunion at the Christmas Story House, Petrella befriended Brian Jones and kept in touch with him. The child actor quit acting a few years after the film came out and transitioned into a graphic designing career. Ian Petrella, who played Ralphie's kid bro Randy, lived in the Christmas Story House for a few months. After a six-figure renovation, A Christmas Story House and Museum opened to the public in 2006 and is now a year-round tourist attraction. He decided to transform the house into a museum, replete with set pieces and details to look like the Parkers actually lived there (interiors of the house were filmed on a soundstage in Canada). Jones didn't know where Cleveland was, let alone what to do with the house. The asking price was $99,900, but Jones paid $150,000 to ensure he'd get the house. At that point, it was a duplex rented out to tenants and didn't have any amenities featured in the movie, including a staircase. Brian Jones was living in San Diego and encountered the house for sale on eBay. (There was the fear if a pregnant or married woman stood in front of a classroom, the students would imagine their teaching boning, and that was improper etiquette.) Moore added some padding to cover up her baby bump.Ī Californian man bought the Christmas Story house sight unseen off eBay in 2004. Since the film was set in a time period when female educators weren't allowed to teach while impregnated, it wouldn't be kosher for her character to be pregnant in the movie. Actress Tedde Moore was seven months pregnant when she agreed to play the unsympathetic school teacher Miss Shields. Miss Shields was pregnant during production, but you can hardly tell. Clark contributed an additional $150,000 of his own money to finance the film that went on to gross $19 million in the theaters. But when Porky's was released in 1982 and became one of the highest-grossing films of the year, MGM gave Clark a $4.4 million budget to make his Red Ryder BB gun saga. Clark and Shepherd wrote the script for Christmas Story (working title was In God We Trust after Shepherd's play), but back then the studios didn't think Clark had enough clout to direct a holiday film. Before making the warm and fuzzy Christmas Story, Bob Clark directed horror film Black Christmas and puerile teen comedy Porky's. So, it was literally cold enough for Flick to get his tongue stuck.Ī Christmas Story only got made because Porky's was a smash hit. A dearth of snow almost caused the flagpole scene to be delayed, when on the last day of filming at the school a cold front moved in and brought snow and subzero temperatures. They used an admixture of potato flakes, shredded vinyl, firefighters' foam, and a wind machine to make it "snow." When production moved up north to Canada, the crew ran into a similar problem. It was a rather warm winter in Cleveland that year, so when production began the crew had to generate white stuff for the parade sequence.
#Charles grodin christmas story movie
Much of the snow in the movie is artificial. The children who appeared in those classroom scenes were actual students at the school and received a measly $1 each in return for donating time to the school district. Harding school (where Flick gets "triple-dog-dared") were shot at Victoria Public School in St.
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The Santa Claus visit inside Higbee's the parade that opens the film and exteriors of Ralphie's house were filmed in Cleveland, but the scenes at Warren G. Only two of the nine weeks of filming occurred in Ohio the rest of the movie was filmed in Canada, where director Bob Clark received tax incentives for the production and also had a home. Most of the film was actually filmed in Canada, not Cleveland, Ohio (but it takes place in Indiana). Here are a few things we learned from reading Gaines's book. From the unexpected merchandising (bobbleheads!) to the hit Broadway musical, A Christmas Story has made everything right with the world. Conducting interviews with the cast, crew, and others involved with the film's history, New Jersey writer Caseen Gaines compiled a fascinating book entitled A Christmas Story: Behind the Scenes of a Holiday Classic, describing the film's growing cultdom over the years (it was only a moderate success at the box office). Whether you were alive when it came out, everybody at least remembers the first time they watched Ralphie Parker practically shoot his eye out. This year the beloved holiday film A Christmas Story turned three decades old, and TBS will be running it on a 24-hour loop starting tonight.
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