A Christmas Story Live! | |
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Genre | Musical |
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Written by |
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Directed by |
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Starring | |
Narrated by | Matthew Broderick |
Composer | Pasek & Paul |
Country of origin | United States |
Production | |
Executive producers |
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Producers |
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Production locations | Warner Bros. Studios, Burbank, California [1] |
Running time | 180 minutes (with commercials) 133 minutes (without commercials) |
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Original release | |
Network | Fox |
Release | December 17, 2017 |
A Christmas Story Live! is an American television special [2] that was originally broadcast by Fox on December 17, 2017. [3] It was a live, televised musical remake of the 1983 film A Christmas Story , and incorporated the 2012 stage musical version A Christmas Story: The Musical . The live musical was executive produced by Marc Platt and Adam Siegel, directed by Scott Ellis and Alex Rudzinski, and starred Matthew Broderick, Andy Walken, Maya Rudolph, Chris Diamantopoulos, and Jane Krakowski.
A Christmas Story Live! is based on "the short stories of humorist Jean Shepherd and is set in 1940's Indiana. It follows 9-year-old Ralphie Parker and his unrelenting desire to get his hands on a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas". [4]
The Parker Family
School characters
Other
Two songs were created exclusively for the live broadcast that were not present in the original Broadway production: "Count On Christmas" and "In the Market for a Miracle". In addition, three songs from the Broadway production were cut or reworked. "Overture" and "Parker Family Singalong" were both cut, while "Act One Finale" was reworked as "Ralphie's Nightmare". The song "Up on Santa's Lap" was included in the television broadcast but not included on the A Christmas Story Live! album. [9]
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The production was based on A Christmas Story: The Musical , which in turn was based on the 1983 film. Marc Platt reprised his role as co-executive producer from the live television musical of Grease: Live (2016), joined by Adam Siegel, and television director Alex Rudzinski and theatrical director Scott Ellis. It was broadcast from the Warner Brothers Studios in Burbank, California, primarily using outdoor sets. Ellis noted that emphasis on the "feeling of family" was an important aspect of the production, as "it's not just razzle-dazzle stuff and big musical numbers. Our challenge is to never lose sight of the family aspect. And I think — I hope — we've succeeded in that". Songwriting duo Pasek & Paul, who wrote the songs for A Christmas Story: The Musical, wrote three new songs for the production, including "In the Market for a Miracle" for Mrs. Schwartz, "Ralphie's Nightmare" for the Parker family, and the opening theme "Count on Christmas". [4]
Pasek noted that the team had to try to maintain a balance between preserving the familiar and iconic aspects of the film, while also expanding upon it through its musical format. He explained that "there are certain moments where we want to stay true to what people remember and then there's other moments where we have permission to do what only musical theater can do and turn the dad's fantasy into a tap dancing number". Platt remarked that, when working on a project such as this, "you prepare for the unknown. That's what makes live TV exciting. There are certain things that happen that you can't anticipate". [4]
Unlike previous years, NBC did not broadcast a live musical for the 2017 holiday season; while it did plan to produce a version of Bye Bye Birdie executive-produced by and starring Jennifer Lopez, it was delayed and eventually abandoned. [2] [4] The broadcast ultimately competed against ABC's annual presentation of the film The Sound of Music , as well as NBC's Sunday Night Football between the Dallas Cowboys and Oakland Raiders. [10]
During the special, Fox also broadcast a live, 2-and-a-half-minute commercial for The Greatest Showman , a then-upcoming musical film that also featured songs written by Pasek and Paul. The spot, which was directed by Michael Gracey and Beth McCarthy-Miller, and also simulcast on Facebook, featured a performance of the number "Come Alive" with the film's stars Hugh Jackman, Zac Efron, Keala Settle, and Zendaya. The presentation was billed as the first live television commercial for a film. [11] [12]
A Christmas Story Live! received generally negative reviews, with the general audience reacting more harshly than professional critics. [13] On Rotten Tomatoes, the production received a 43% rating based on 14 reviews. [14] The show's three-hour length and musical numbers drew the most negative reactions, as Fox did not promote the program as a musical, and the lavish Broadway musical numbers were perceived to clash with the story's Midwestern setting. [15] However, most of the individual actors' performances were positively received, as were the technical aspects of the special (such as scene and wardrobe changes).
The Los Angeles Times praised the performers: "...Matthew Broderick, who found his own, gentler way through Shepherd's pointy prose...Maya Rudolph was affecting as Ralphie's mother, Chris Diamantopoulos gruff if less than epic as his father, the Old Man...Andy Walken was a good visual match for the movie's Peter Billingsley,...The whole company of kids, in fact, was energetic and on their marks,... Schwartz's mother, previously an offended voice on the other end of a phone call, was here gloriously embodied by Ana Gasteyer, who brought in a Hanukkah theme..." but noted that "...the virtues that have made the movie a seasonal perennial were somewhat swallowed by the narrative digressions and showstopping gestures of the musical". [16]
The overnight Nielsen ratings were a 2.8 rating/5 share with 4.52 million viewers, [17] as compared to the Fox network live telecast of Grease: Live in January 2016, which earned a 7.4 overnight and 12 million viewers. [18]
Fox reran A Christmas Story Live! in an edited two-hour time slot December 24, 2019. This telecast earned 1.11 million viewers, a 0.3 overnight rating and a 2 share. [19] The rerun was also notable for going up against the original film in the first airing of its annual marathon on TBS; the original drew more than twice the number of viewers. [20]
Award | Category | Nominee(s) | Result |
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70th Primetime Emmy Awards [21] [22] | Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics | Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (for "In the Market for a Miracle") | Nominated |
34th Artios Awards [23] | Outstanding Achievement in Casting – Live Television Performance, Variety or Sketch Comedy | Bernard Telsey, Tiffany Little Canfield, Rachel Hoffman, & Rachel Dill (Associate) | Nominated |
Matthew Broderick is an American actor. His roles include the Golden Globe–nominated portrayal of the title character in Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986), the voice of adult Simba in Disney's The Lion King (1994), and Leo Bloom in both the Broadway musical The Producers and its 2005 film adaptation. Other films he had starring credits in include WarGames (1983), Glory (1989), The Freshman (1990), The Cable Guy (1996), Godzilla (1998), Inspector Gadget (1999), You Can Count on Me (2000) and The Last Shot (2004). Broderick also directed himself in Infinity (1996) and provided voice work in Good Boy! (2003), Bee Movie (2007), and The Tale of Despereaux (2008).
Ana Kristina Gasteyer is an American actress, comedian and singer. She is most notable for her tenure as a cast member on the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live from 1996 to 2002. She has since starred in such sitcoms as ABC's Suburgatory, TBS's People of Earth, NBC's American Auto, and the film Mean Girls.
A Christmas Story is a 1983 Christmas comedy film directed by Bob Clark and based on Jean Shepherd's semi-fictional anecdotes in his 1966 book In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash, with some elements from his 1971 book Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories and Other Disasters. It stars Melinda Dillon, Darren McGavin, and Peter Billingsley. Widely considered a holiday classic in the United States and Canada, it has been shown in a marathon annually on TNT since 1997 and on TBS since 2004 titled "24 Hours of A Christmas Story", consisting of 12 consecutive airings of the film from the evening of Christmas Eve to the evening of Christmas Day annually. It is the third installment in the Parker Family Saga.
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Peter Billingsley, also known as Peter Michaelsen and Peter Billingsley-Michaelsen, is an American actor and filmmaker. He is best known for portraying Ralphie Parker in the 1983 movie A Christmas Story and its 2022 sequel A Christmas Story Christmas. He also played Jack Simmons in The Dirt Bike Kid, Billy in Death Valley, and Messy Marvin in a series of commercials for Hershey's Syrup in the 1980s. While an infant, he began acting in television commercials.
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Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, known together as Pasek and Paul, are an American songwriting duo and composing team for musical theater, films and television. Their works include A Christmas Story, Dogfight, Edges, Dear Evan Hansen, and James and the Giant Peach. Their original songs have been featured on NBC's Smash and in the films La La Land, for which they won both the Golden Globe and Academy Award for Best Original Song for the song "City of Stars", and The Greatest Showman. Their work on the original musical Dear Evan Hansen has received widespread critical acclaim and earned them the 2017 Tony Award for Best Original Score. In 2022, they won the Tony Award for Best Musical for serving as producers for the Broadway production of Michael R. Jackson's Pulitzer Prize-winning musical A Strange Loop.
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A Christmas Story: The Musical is a stage musical version of the 1983 film A Christmas Story. The musical has music and lyrics written by Pasek and Paul and the book by Joseph Robinette. The musical takes place in the 1940s in Indiana and focuses on a child named Ralphie, who wants a Red Ryder BB Gun for Christmas.
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Andy Walken is an American actor, known for his role as William Cleary in The Kids Are Alright and Ralphie Parker in A Christmas Story Live!. In 2022, he won the first-ever Children's and Family Emmy Award for Outstanding Younger Voice Performer in an Animated or Preschool Animated Program for his work as Young Durpleton in Centaurworld.
The Parker Family Saga, is a collection of American family-comedies based upon the stories of author Jean Shepherd. The stories originated on Shepherd's radio programs and in his books before being adapted into a stage play, two theatrical films, four made-for-TV films, one straight-to-home video film, one unaired pilot episode for a planned television series, one musical adaptation, one live television adaptation of that musical and one made-for-streaming film.
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The Phantom of the Open Hearth is an American made-for-television family-comedy film, directed by Fred Barzyk and David R. Loxton, with a script written by Jean Shepherd. Produced by Loxton, the film is the first screen adaptation to feature Shepherd's character Ralphie Parker, and is notable for influencing studio interest in A Christmas Story years later. Based on Shepherd's book, In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash and similar to all the other Parker Family films, the film depicts fictionalized events from his real-life childhood.
The Great American Fourth of July and Other Disasters is an American made-for-television family-comedy film, directed by Richard Bartlett, with a script written by Jean Shepherd. Produced by Olvia Tappan, the film is the second installment in the Ralph Parker franchise. Based on Shepherd's book, In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash and similar to all the other Parker Family films, the film depicts fictionalized events from his real-life childhood.
widely panned by both viewers and critics