Watching A CHRISTMAS STORY (1983) for the First Time Ever // Nostalgia meter is full!! 

I got a heartfelt rush at that great moment. I went rt back to my past in his vision and not a whole lot of entertainment out there has done that. It's really gotta be something special that makes it immediately personal.

Its the line, "I got one when I was 8 years old..." that does it for me. There was never a chance Ralphie *wasnt* going to get that b-b gun.

I know when I was a kid, I loved my dad but was also kinda scared of him (for no reason, he wasn't a mean or abusive man). I mostly talked to my mom during the day, so she would be the one who would "field" our Christmas toy requests. It always blew my mind how my dad would get us the presents my mom never would. Even when I believed in Santa, I somehow also knew my dad was behind certain gifts. They were always the coolest ones that really understood what I was into, and he was always overjoyed to watch me play with them. I think this show nails the relationship between Ralphie and his dad. It really gets me on a more emotional level as an adult.

Tough exterior and a soft heart.

I got a shotgun when I was 8 at Christmas and I was just as excited as Ralph. The only difference was I only got to use it while squirrel hunting with my dad.

It always slays me.

What about the f dash dash dash word?

@@christhornycroft3686 fudge?

THAT SON OF A BITCH, WOULD FREEZE UP IN THE MIDDLE OF SUMMER ON THE EQUATOR!!! That’s my vote for best line, but I do love the, “Randy lay there like a slug,” line too.

Yeah statue

My family have been Shep fans for decades. My brother Bri & I treated our Mom & Dad to a showing of this back when it was first released, and we all really enjoyed it.

He was the angry man in the Santa line and his wife next to him that helped him write

@@mem1701movies the one that told him where the line began?

@@jejohnson1982 Yes.

Jean Shepherd (the narrator) told stories on his radio show, for many years. These radio episodes are on RU-vid. Shep's original stories are somewhat different from the way they are in the movie. For one thing, in the radio version, the Bumpass hounds stole a ham, not a turkey.

@@OofusTwillip the ham makes sense when you consider the line about it giving him worms if he eats it raw.

oh yeah her unscripted reaction is my favorite!! you can totally tell!

Oh yeah that was so so fun!! All of it is a hazy Christmas memory, but that makes it all the more heightened. Like everything happens all at once kind of deal

He isn't an unreliable narrator, yu dumbass. It is literally Jean Shepherd's ( thr narrator) autobiography. It is a true story of him as a kid.

​@@MrParkerman6 No, it's not his autobiography. It's based on semi-autobiographical anecdotes of his childhood that featured fictionalized versions of people and locations that were *inspired* by the people he knew and places where he lived. They were in no way literal, factual accounts of those events, and even Shepherd himself frequently stated in interviews that these stories were works of fiction and not memoirs. Furthermore, this film is an adaptation that made its own fair share of changes in the transition from novel to film, such as turning it into a single cohesive narrative focused entirely on his childhood as opposed to a series of short stories being reminisced upon by Ralphie as he discusses the current state of his hometown with Flick in the latter's bar. And none of that is even taking into consideration that, when looking at actual human memory, we often *are* unreliable narrators the further removed we are from the events we're recalling, because humans are generally pretty garbage at accurately recalling details over long periods of time. If anything, an autobiography is going to have arguably unreliable narration by default due to human error, while the reliability of the narration in a work of pure fiction is based entirely on the author's whims. In this case, Ralphie is pretty obviously intended to be an unreliable narrator who is reflecting on his childhood with rose-tinted glasses decades after the fact.

@@ShanelleRiccio I love you 💕💕💕💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜

Mine hangs in the garage😊. Got it 10 years ago at an antique mall when I was 40.

My wife got me one last Christmas and made me tear up.

you should get him the leg lamp this year.

That's sooo cool. It's a timeless film. Yeah I got one back in the late 80's, lever action with medallion in stock and leather fringe tied on it. Just a great little gun. I was 8 when I got it I think. But I recommend a pellet gut because those bb's ricochet. I actually drank some ovaltine last night too. haha, that stuff lasts forever

My mom always used the "you'll shoot your eye out" defense against me bringing "a firearm" in our home. AND, she was an emergency room nurse who'd seen that happen. I was TRAPPED. But she did pay for me to take a hunters safety course and that was cool because we got to shoot .22 rifles!!

In 1996 my brother (9 years old) and I (10 years old) both got bb guns for Christmas, clearly because of this movie. Never found out if it was both parents or just Dad, but regardless it felt magical to have a (superficial) connection to a movie the family watched every December.

EXACTLY! His Old Man knew...

I saw the website! I want to go!! $15 admission for a trip into movie bliss

@@ShanelleRiccio you can also sleep over in the top floor. It’s an inn

So much fun. You can put on the bunny outfit, put soap in your mouth, hide under the sink lol. Too much fun and hope you get a chance to get out there.

I've been there also, so much fun.

@@ShanelleRiccio The part where the boy's tongue gets stuck to the pole was a suction device that simply held his tongue to the pole.

My Grandmother grew up in the Depression and was the exact same way...you gonna eat something

Anecdotes are awesome. Just saying. 🙂

Same with my farming grandparents. You had to save and re-use everything. Nothing was wasted. Grandma had a 2 acre garden and we were harvesting and canning the end of summer into fall; tomatoes, green beans, carrots, peppers, and multiple types of pickles. Making multiple gallons of sauerkraut that I still don't like. lol Grandpa planted a field of potatoes and a field of sweet corn. Even at 4 yrs old I was out in the field picking up potatoes. We would unload a pickup truck full into the cellar via a coal shoot. We canned and froze corn for days and days. We even canned our own creamed corn. Our pantry shelves were full!

Peter Billingsley. He was also a co-producer on Elf.

Why have I always been under the belief that Ralphie, aka Messy Marvin, died shortly after filming this, due to childhood cancer? That is a very specific set of memories to have believed my whole life. Is it a mandela effect or something?

_Elf_ is low brow trash. Who cares about it?

@@greenpeasuit nope. It's just a poor memory, just like every so called Madela effect thing.

I enjoyed his work on "Titus"

@@coreymeyer6488 Titus was very underrated, very funny show.

😂😂😂 dont touch my girl!! I’m dying at that

@@ShanelleRiccio Haha he always had a great sense of humor. I hope your channel continues to grow

That was my favorite running gag! Each time so heartbreaking 😂

Ouch the pain lol

I would absolutely love to visit this place!! Would be so fun. Maybe one day I’ll make the road trip :) I’m happy I’m in the club now -having finally seen A Christmas story

@Marty McFly II I have not!

Same

I did see it. It was more like the stage play version. Yes there is a stage version of this. I don't know if the stage version is strictly done here in Cleveland or not. I would guess not though, since it's a classic movie...but it's incredibly popular here though. They perform it here at Playhouse Square anually....except of course for this year. But yes, i saw the live TV version of it. I didn't like it as much as the movie. I liked it, but not nearly as much. The way they did it, is like they do it on stage. Ralphy as an adult is actually shown taking us to the places in the story, as opposed to simply narrating it. I didn't care for that part too much.

Now I saw the part where you read about that. ;)

This is another one that @Shinelle Riccio needs to see.

Great memory!

He could step away IF the crew turned off the air pump. At one point, they didn't. On purpose.

My most memorable reenactment of the frozen tongue stick was that of Jeff Daniels from Dumb and Dumber.

Wrong! There is a small tube placed in the hole that has the suction that his tongue is against. Get your facts Straight!!!!

I figured it was vacuum suction. Thanks for confirming.

Is that the straight dope? Like from The Fireman's Certified & Approved Training Manual?

He also directed Couples Retreat, which gets a bad rap but makes me laugh.

He was a casting director on Jon Favreaus's movie Zathura. You will see the leg lamp in the house.

im amazed how much Cleveland looks like Hammond, the town this is supposed to be. really hard to tell the difference and ive lived here most of my life.

sounds like my sister. My mom once gave her all our Christmas ornaments... she tossed them out, and her tree was plastic with every ball ornament identical.

LOL! My family actually used to put up the tree and decorate it on Christmas Eve... but we left it up into the New Year for a while, at least. lol At some point, my family halted doing that and we had the tree up much earlier.

This is Christmas, not Bastille Day!

I feel for you!! But waiting for that yelling/whooping is like THE WORST kind of waiting. I felt Ralphie's pain!

yep. ive lived in NW Indiana most of my life and you can tell he is one of us!

For kids, there will always be an age of innocence, even if you're a barefoot slum kid in Juarez living in a wooden pallet house.

I didn’t clock his voice! So different sounding when it’s narrated

Also the Radio DJ in Jingle All The Way.

He was also the Santa Claus at Higbees.

@@caspence56, no. He was the man who pointed out where the line starts.

Well said. What it tells me is that parents are more aware of things than kids think they are, and especially at Christmastime you realize they really do love you and want the best for you and love to see you happy, and they aren't just an obstacle to be overcome. "My parents are cooler than I thought" is a sentiment kids feel a lot at Christmas.

And the one that told Buddy that he wasn't a "cotton-headed ninny muggins", he's just special

I knew he became a big shot producer!! But didn’t realize he was still acting also!

Yeah, those eyes are unmistakable!

@@ShanelleRiccio He became friends with Vince Vaughn when they did an afterschool special. (Not sure if that's still a thing or not, but it was a sort of ongoing anthology series of nothing but Very Special Episodes about teen problems. I think theirs was about steroids.) Then I think through Vaughn he became friends with Jon Favreau and became a producer on his films as well as doing a cameo in Favreau's first IRON MAN movie.

Peter's aunt is Barbara Billingsley, who played Mrs. Cleaver on "Leave It to Beaver". They're also related to Sherman Billingsley, who owned the Stork Club, a world-famous NYC nightclub, in the 1930s-1960s.

The tone of his voice mirrored my kid memories. How ridiculously important we thought those events of childhood were.

Thank you!!

And played the father in A Christmas Story 2...

welcome aboard! thank you for watching!! and yeah I love when you and your friends all get that same awesome present, you get to all be in on the joy.!!

Always loved that. The one person he didn't figure would care about it ended up being the one who actually did. His reaction to watching Ralphie open it is great. He is remembering his own childhood and is happy to see Ralphie happy. He turned out to be a great dad.

The old man’s comment at the end of the “Higbee’s”scene: “He knows. He always knows,”

I remember being chagrined in second grade with how mean kids could be to each other, even tho I'd been mean to a few as far back as Kindergarten. Mom waited til I was 15 to tell me that my Kindergarten teacher told her that the only thing she saw in my future was a stiff rope and a short drop. We had a good laugh after I swallowed hard, know that my nefarious side had been revealed 10 years before.

Sorry to disagree but the line the old man speaks at that moment is just intended as more flustered gibberish, like all the rest of his swearing.

@@cliffchristie5865 I was merely referring to what the phrase means. 💁

That's right! I was sent to the grocery to buy a carton of Pall Mall straights at age 7 for a widower/family friend who was about to turn 80. All the checker said to me was, "Looks like you're gonna be doin' a lot of smokin'."

Ahhh thanks!!!!

Plastics were in their infancy at this time, a lot of plastic items were absolute crap. That's why "plastic" got such a bad rap.

@@ffjsb This. One of the oldest plastics would be something like polystyrene which comes in 2 forms, one of which is considered a glassy form. In fact, the trays in your refrigerator may be made from this. This isn't as flexible and can break or shatter easily depending on how it is made.

So scary! You’ll shoot your eye out!! My neighbors would shoot with the plastic Bebe’s and then make the little siblings collect them 😂😂

Some Walmarts actually sell that brand of Rifle. Same box design too.

BB's.

I want to visit the house!

I live about a mile and a half from the bridge where Ralphie said THE word. There's a documentary DVD called "Road Trip For Ralphie", that tracks down all of the locations, including the studio where the interior scenes of Ralphie's house were filmed. It's the same studio where the last few seasons of "SCTV" were done.

There's a lesser known sequal from 1994 titled "My Summer Story", starring Charles Groden, the Dad from Beethoven and Mary Stienbergen as Mom and Dad Parker. Ralphie and Randy are played by the brothers of Maccully Culkin. That movie takes place the summer after the events of "A Christmas Story" They used the same house, but I'm not sure if Toronto was used at all in that one. That movie wasn't as good as it's Christmas counterpart. It wasn't at all bad either though...in my opinion anyway. In "My Summer Story", they introduce the Parkers" Hillbilly neighbors, The Bumpases, with all the dogs.

Some of it was shot in Canada.

@@ffjsb yes...thats what i said. Cleveland and Ontario.

Simple: don't watch reactions to films you HAVEN'T seen.

Thats a great compliment and she deserves it. She is so insightful and fun.

@@jimchabai3163 you obviously didn’t get what I mean. Watching a beloved movie get butchered and ruined by some idiot reactor.

She didn't say there weren't scheming and deceitful. She said they were authentic. Authentic doesn't mean, as far as my pea brain understands it, doesn't mean virtuous. It just means that they have not fully learned how to hide themselves from themselves yet and then convey that falseness to the world as if it were the real them. Thats a convoluted way to describe it, but being unauthentic is convoluted. :)

@@CraigKinsey okay... you win. :)

In the 1960's, I thought our family's 1910 house was ancient as a little kid. Now, 2023, I live in a house that was built when Nixon was President, just 50 some years ago, looks pretty modern to me, LOL.

Ralphy suffered all the insurmountable roadblocks to achieving his heroic potential that I did, yeah.

yess!! thank you so much for watching! I'm having so much fun doing these. hope to keep you entertained :)

Thanks so much Paul!!

Yup, Shanelle has insight!