Macaulay Culkin, Joe Pesci, Chevy Chase, Peter Billingsley and Will Ferrell will receive more air time this Christmas than Santa himself. And they deserve it.
These famous actors will forever be linked to the Christmas classics they starred in. “Home Alone” and “Home Alone 2,” “Elf,” “Christmas Vacation” and of course this season’s classic — “A Christmas Story” — are debatably the greatest Christmas movies of our time. Here’s some trivia and obscure facts about the movies, as provided by IMDB.com, to impress your friends and family over the holiday season.
“Home Alone” was released before Thanksgiving in 1990 and proved so popular the movie stayed in theaters for weeks after Christmas.
[/media-credit]
Daniel Stern, the actor who played Marv, one of the “Wet Bandits,” actually put the tarantula on his face for one take. The screaming was mimed and was dubbed into the film later to make sure the spider didn’t get scared.
Can you name the six items Marv steals in broad daylight in “Home Alone 2”? Mittens, one scarf, one cowboy hat, one wrapped present, earmuffs and a beanie.
What was Macaulay Culkin’s salary for the movie? $8 million. The biggest paycheck ever to a 12-year-old actor. He really was “Richie Rich.”
The first screenplay for “Elf” surfaced in 1993 and originally had Jim Carrey cast as Buddy the Elf. The elf Ming Ming, who appears briefly at the beginning of the film, is played by Peter Billingsley, the actor who starred as Ralphie in “A Christmas Story.”
While filming the movie, Will Ferrell caused several car accidents when he strolled through the Lincoln Tunnel because drivers were so shocked to see Ferrell dressed in an elf costume.
“Christmas Vacation” holds a special place in everyone’s heart. For some reason everyone can relate to an over-zealous father caught up in the Spirit of Christmas, like Clark Griswold.
Perhaps the most memorable scene of the movie is when the cat bites into the Christmas tree lights and get’s electrocuted. The film’s executives wanted to cut the scene because they feared an electrocuted cat would offend viewers. After much begging by the director, the executives agreed to keep the scene, which scored as the number one favorite scene among test audiences.
Perhaps the greatest Christmas film of our generation was released before most BYU students were born in 1983. “A Christmas Story” was received with mixed reviews and didn’t gain popularity until the ’90s. In 1997 TNT began the “24 Hours of a Christmas Story” marathon starting Christmas Eve. In 2002 more than 38 million viewers tuned in to watch the movie, one sixth of the country’s population. As of 2009, the film had been shown more than 250 times on the Turner family of networks.
Even though we’ve all seen the movie hundreds of times, can you count how many times Ralphie says “Red Ryder BB Gun” in the movie? 28 times.
How did the director get Flick’s tongue to stick to the frozen flagpole without harming the actor? A hidden suction tube was hidden into the flagpole to create the sticky illusion.
Ralphie’s house, located in Cleveland, was sold to a buyer on eBay in 2005. The owner of the house spent the following year restoring the house to look exactly as it did in the movie. In 2006 the house opened up as a tourist attraction.
