A Christmas Story (1983) on Netflix
Nine-year-old Ralphie Parker wants an official Red Ryder carbine action air rifle for Christmas. His mother, his teacher and a department store Santa warn him he will shoot his eye out.
- Netflix4.0/5
- IMDb7.9/10180,259 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes89%
Trailer
Plot summary
Adult Ralphie Parker remembers a Christmas in northern Indiana, when he was nine and growing up with his younger brother Randy and their parents. The gift at the top of his list was an official Red Ryder carbine action air rifle. His mother refused it, his teacher Miss Shields brushed the idea aside when he wrote about the gun in a class assignment, and the Santa at Higbee's department store gave the same reply as everyone else. At home, his father fought a furnace that would not behave, his mother worked on getting Randy to eat, and his friends Flick and Schwartz crossed paths with two local boys, Scut Farkus and Grover Dill.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about A Christmas Story (1983)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Peter Billingsley was Bob Clark's first choice for Ralphie, but fearing it was "too obvious" a choice Clark auditioned approximately 8,000 actors for the part, among them Keith Coogan, Sean Astin and Wil Wheaton, before deciding Billingsley was the right choice after all.
- For the scene in which Ralphie daydreams about saving his family with the BB gun, the prop man gave Peter Billingsley real chewing tobacco and it made him dizzy and sick. Clark yelled at the prop man for giving a 12-year-old real chewing tobacco, so the tobacco was eventually replaced with raisins.
- Author Jean Shepherd and director Bob Clark did not particularly get along: Clark did not admire Shepherd's attempts at trying to guide the actors with ideas about how the characters should be played, to the point where he had him barred from the set.
- On the DVD commentary, director Bob Clark mentions that Jack Nicholson was considered for the role of the Old Man. Clark expresses gratitude that he ended up with Darren McGavin instead, who later appeared in several other Clark films.
- In August 2011 Zack Ward, who played Scut Farkus, sued Warner Bros. and Enesco after the company authorised a figure resembling his character without his permission; a mishap with his contract had left him without any merchandising rights. The suit was dropped in January 2012 after Warner Bros. said the figurine showed a "generic face" used since 2006.
- A teacher called "Miss Shields" was Jean Shepherd's second-grade teacher at Warren G. Harding Elementary School in 1928, but Shepherd was several years older than Ralphie and had already graduated from high school by 1939, and he regularly obscured the line between fact and fiction in his writings.
