A Christmas Story You'll Shoot your Eye Out

A Christmas Story Soundboard   Click here

Bunny production of a Christmas Story in a 30 second parody:

http://www.starz.com/features/christmasstory/

Directed by
Bob Clark

Writing credits
Jean Shepherd (novel)
Jean Shepherd (screenplay) ...
 (more)

Cast overview, first billed only:
	Melinda Dillon	....	Mrs. Parker
	Darren McGavin	....	The Old Man (Mr. Parker)
	Peter Billingsley	....	Ralphie Parker
	Ian Petrella	....	Randy Parker
	Scott Schwartz	....	Flick
	R.D. Robb	....	Schwartz
	Tedde Moore	....	Miss Shields

Red Ryder BB Gun
"An official Red Ryder carbine action two-hundred shot range model air rifle with a compass in the stock and this thing that tells time" Ralphie wants a BB Gun for Christmas, but his mother, the teacher, and even Santa give him a hard time. "You'll shoot your eye out kid!" This tale is the main storyline in the movie "A Christmas Story"
	Here's an ad for the Red Ryder as it appeared in the 1940 Montgomery Ward Winter Catalog.

    "Too bad Schwartz couldn't have been here," I said.
Flick grunted, busy with his change counting. We both knew that Schwartz had been shot down over Italy. They never found him.

The above text appears in the last chapter.

Goofs for
A Christmas Story (1983)

• Continuity: The packing material on the back of father, as he is digging in the box for the lamp.
  
  
• Anachronisms: 1980s cars can be seen passing by the school at the flagpole scene.
  
  
• Anachronisms: The toy wagons in the window of Higbie's Department Store have the 1980s "Radio Flyer" trademark.
• 
  
  • Plot holes: After nearly shooting his eye out, Ralphie comes back into the house through the back door. In the next scene, the Bumpus hounds are shown coming through the living room from left to right and moving on to the kitchen. The dogs would need to open the front door for this to be possible.
    
    
  • Anachronisms: The Mickey Mouse costume seen in the parade is the kind used in the Disney parks starting in the 1960s.
    
    
  • Audio/visual unsynchronized: When the lamp breaks it makes the noise of glass breaking, but later Melinda Dillon reveals to her husband that it was made of plastic.
    
    
  • Continuity: When the dad first pulls the lamp out of the box, there's no electrical cord attached to it, yet he plugs it into the wall seconds later.
    
    
  • Continuity: During Ralphy's fight with the bully, in the wide shot bright red blood is clearly visible on the bully's nose, but in the close up there is no blood visible on his nose/face.
    
    
  • Crew or equipment visible: In the first scene that has Ralphie's father going down to the basement to do battle with the furnace, you can see a crew member's foot quickly disappear from the shot in the next room just as the father crosses the kitchen and is about to open the basement door.
    
    
  • Continuity: Ralphie's mum's hat when his father returns to the car after changing the flat tire.
    
    
  • Continuity: While dad is unpacking the lamp, mom's necklace repeatedly changes position between shots.
    
    
  • Continuity: After the bully hits Ralph with a snowball, the snow suddenly disappears from his face as well as his coat.
    
    
  • Crew or equipment visible: Shadows of crew on kitchen chair when Randy is in the cabinet, worrying about Ralph getting killed by their father (for fighting) when he comes home.
    
    
  • Continuity: The little girl shown looking out the school window at Flick stuck to the flagpole was actually one of the last to leave her seat and head toward the window in the shot before.
    
    
  • Continuity: When Ralphie presents Miss Shields with the fruit basket the arrangement of the fruit changes.
    
    
  • Continuity: The mashed potatoes disappear and reappear on Randy's face between shots during the dinner scene ("show mommy how the piggies eat").
    
    
  • Continuity: When the father fixes the furnace in the basement, the switch in the kitchen is pushed one way by the mother, but when we see it again, it has been pushed in the opposite direction.
    
    
  • Crew or equipment visible: When Black Bart is escaping from Ralphie's backyard, the trampoline that he uses to jump over the fence is clearly visible (it was not there in the previous backyard shots, so it's not part of the "furniture").
    
    
  • Continuity: When Ralph defends the home against Black Bart, he shoots three times, hitting three thugs. Yet when the scene ends, there are four thugs lying dead, complete with x's over their eyes.
    
    
  • Continuity: Ralphie's chocolate milk at the start of the film.
    
    
  • Continuity: The broken lamp appears to be broken in several different ways. At one point, it's broken in tall, thin strips; later (when he's "fixed" it and it's in the window) it appears to be in chunks.
    
    
  • Continuity: As Ralphie begins to drift into his daydream about shooting desperadoes with his Red Ryder BB rifle, two boxes of powdered detergent can be seen on a counter attached to the kitchen sink. After the daydream ends a few minutes later, the boxes have been moved to a shelf next to the sink.
    
    
  • Factual errors: In the end titles, Melinda Dillon's name is misspelled "Dillion."
    
    
  • Continuity: When Ralph's mother is dressing Randy up for school, Randy's arms are clearly by his side before he suddenly announces that he can't put his arms down. The camera angle jumps back and forth twice between arms up and arms down before Ralph's mother pushes Randy's arms down, only to have them pop back up.
    
    
  • Continuity: After the ricochet of a BB knocks Ralphie's glasses off and they hit the ground, the glasses are undamaged. Yet after he steps on them and destroys them, one of the lenses is cracked in a fashion as if it had been struck by a BB.
    
    
  • Continuity: When Ralphie is decoding Annie's secret message in the bathroom, the text's case on his writing changes from lower case to upper case between shots (watch the "E/e" in "Be"... (Be sure to drink your Ovaltine)).
    
    
  • Continuity: In the Black Bart fantasy sequence and the scene in which The Old Man is getting water to fight the Oldsmobile, there is no cabinet under the sink. In a later scene, this is the location of the cabinet door behind which Randy is crying because "Dad is going to kill Ralphy".
    
    
  • Continuity: When we see the Chinese restaurant from the street, the shop owner is standing in front of the table conducting the singing waiters. When we move into the restaurant the song (Faa-Raa-Raa-Raa) has not missed a beat, yet the owner is now standing behind the table.
    
    
  • Continuity: At dinner, there is a jar of pickles on the table. In the next shot, the mother brings the same jar of pickles in and sets them on the table.
    
    
  • Continuity: Santa's dialog and the screams of the visiting children can be heard twice in the same scene (when Ralph and Randy go to visit Santa).
    
    
  • Crew or equipment visible: During Ralphie's dream sequence of soap poisoning, the reflection of the studio lights can be seen in his sunglasses.
    
    
  • Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Mr. Parker comes home after receiving the telegram telling him that he won the leg lamp, he runs out of the car, leaving it running and never turns it off, yet the car noises turn off by themselves.
    
    
  • Continuity: Both newspapers that Mr. Parker reads are the same for different days.
    
    
  • Anachronisms: The BB package is too modern for the time period. The package should be red with black lettering and crimped at the ends like a shotgun shell.
    
    
  • Anachronisms: A kid in a classroom scene forgot to take off his Dukes of Hazzard digital watch.
    
    
  • Revealing mistakes: A modern math book - not one used in the '40s - is seen sitting on the teacher's desk.
    
    
  • Anachronisms: In the night scenes showing street lights and also on the big ship docked across the road from the spot where Ralphie and Mr. Parker fix the flat tire, purplish mercury vapor street lights are shown, which had not yet been invented at the time.
    
    
  • Revealing mistakes: At the beginning of the movie when we see Christmas activities in the large town square, there's a red-and-cream "Peter Witt"-type trolley car, as well as an elevated view of a two-car trolley. There are no trolley tracks, nor are there overhead wires to power the trolley.
    
    
  • Continuity: After Flick is removed from the flagpole, the teacher then gives the class an assignment to write a theme. While she's saying this, the blackboard behind her says "The brown fox jumped over the lazy dog". Seconds later the blackboard says "A Theme What I Want for Christmas".
    
    
  • Anachronisms: Ralphie's mid-1940s-era school class contains both white and African-American students. Indiana public schools were not officially integrated until 1949.
    
    
  • Revealing mistakes: At the beginning of the movie, a modern TV antenna can be seen on the top of one of the houses.
    
    
  • Boom mike visible: When the kids run to their seats in the classroom after putting the wooden teeth in their mouths, a shadow of a boom mike is visible on the wall as the camera pans right to left.
    
    
  • Anachronisms: When the neighborhood bully is laughing at Ralphie, there is a close up showing the braces on his teeth. The braces are the type that attach to the front of the tooth with adhesive, which where not invented until many years later. Braces at that time would have been the type with a metal band going around the tooth.
    
    
  • Anachronisms: When Ralphie steps on his glasses outside in the snow after shooting his Red Ryder BB Gun on Christmas morning, a 3 barrel hinge on the temples are clearly visible. This type of hinge was not available until the 1980s.
    
    
  • Revealing mistakes: On Christmas morning as Ralphie and Randy are looking at the snow-covered trees, a field bare of snow can clearly be seen in the background.
    
    
  • Continuity: Before the radio announcer began to read off the numbers to Orphan Annie's secret message, he instructs the listeners to set their pins to "B-2." The first letter in the message would be the letter "B" in the word "BE" so if the pins were on "B-2," then the first number that he reads off should be "2." Instead, the first number he reads off is 12.
    
    
  • Continuity: As the workers are bringing the crate into the house the is a rope tied around the crate. Once they get it into the house the rope is no longer there.
    
    
  • Anachronisms: When the kids are gazing into the store window Christmas display, the Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls are Knickerbocker Toy Company dolls from the 1970s.
    
    
  • Anachronisms: At least one of the Lionel electric trains in Higbee's window is shown puffing smoke. The first production smoking Lionel train would not be available until years later in 1946. Some train cars shown, like the red transformer car, are at least post World War 2 items, some others are identifiable as 1980's production.
    
    

Trivia for A Christmas Story (1983) To find an American city resembling an Indiana town of the 1940s, director Bob Clark sent his location scouts to twenty cities before selecting Cleveland, Ohio, as the site for filming. The people of Cleveland were incredibly cooperative during filming, donating antique vehicles from every corner of the city. These vintage vehicles helped to enhance the authenticity of the production design. Ralph's school exteriors were filmed at Victoria School in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada. Parts of the movie, including the Christmas tree shopping scene, were filmed in Toronto, Ontario. One of Toronto's trademark red trolleys can be seen driving by the shot of the outside of the tree lot. The St. Catharine's Museum owns some props used in the film, including two pairs of Ralphie's glasses including the pair that was smashed, and two scripts. Director Cameo: [Bob Clark] Swede, the dim-witted neighbor, who marvels at the Leg Lamp from outside. The Radio Orphan Annie decoder pin that Ralphie receives is the 1940 "Speedomatic" model, indicating that the movie takes place in December, 1940. Different decoder badges were made each year from 1935-1940. By 1941, the decoders were made of paper Mrs. Parker's memory is correct. The Lone Ranger's nephew, Dan Reid, rode a horse named "Victor". He was the son of the Lone Ranger's horse, Silver. While reading the newspaper at the kitchen table the "Old Man" angrily mentions that the "Sox traded Bullfrog". This is a reference to long time Chicago White Sox pitcher Bill Dietrich who's nickname was Bullfrog. He pitched during the 1930s and '40s. Ralphie says that he wanted the "Red Ryder BB Gun" 28 times. Ed Suba Jr./Akron Beacon Journal/MCT The house on W. 11th Street in Cleveland, Ohio, that was used in the filming of "A Christmas Story" on November 15, 2006, has been refurbished and open to the public along with a museum dedicated to the movie. Here visitors can browse a collection of "A Christmas Story" memorabilia that includes Randy's snowsuit and toy zeppelin (whoopee!), a reproduction Red Ryder BB gun with a compass and sundial in the stock

	large view

Teacher Websites © 2009 SchoolWorld