My Summer Story | |
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Directed by | Bob Clark |
Screenplay by | Jean Shepherd Leigh Brown Bob Clark |
Based on | In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash and Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories and Other Disasters by Jean Shepherd |
Produced by | Rene Dupont |
Starring | Charles Grodin Kieran Culkin Mary Steenburgen |
Narrated by | Jean Shepherd |
Cinematography | Stephen M. Katz |
Edited by | Stan Cole |
Music by | Paul Zaza |
Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
Release date |
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Running time | 85 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $15 million |
Box office | $71,000 |
My Summer Story (originally released in theaters as It Runs in the Family) is a 1994 American comedy film directed by Bob Clark that serves as a sequel to his 1983 film A Christmas Story . Like the previous film, it is based on semi-autobiographical stories by Jean Shepherd, primarily from his book In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash .
The opening makes direct reference to the events of A Christmas Story, and the ending narration strongly parallels it; production delays forced most of the characters to be recast. Charles Grodin stars as the Old Man (Mr. Parker), Mary Steenburgen plays Mrs. Parker, and Kieran Culkin is Ralphie. Shepherd provides the narration, just as he had done for A Christmas Story.
Two sequels followed the film. The first, A Christmas Story 2 , was released straight to DVD in 2012. The second, A Christmas Story Christmas , was released on HBO Max in 2022 and features most of the original cast from the original 1983 film returning.
The film takes place in the summer of 1941, after the events of A Christmas Story, which took place in December 1939. It has several plotlines, one each for 10-year-old Ralphie, his father, and his mother, followed by a recurring subplot involving him and his dad on a fishing trip, that proves frequently fruitless until a single night when all fish are caught. This also feeds a needless obsession in Ralphie's 7-year-old brother Randy, much to Mrs. Parker's nerve.
Ralphie's plot for most of the film is to find a top tough enough to knock that of a bully's out of a chalk circle in a game of "Kill". Scut Farkus, the 13-year-old main bully, was demoted following the events of A Christmas Story, with a new head bully, Lug Ditka, taking his place and ruling over the school. Despite his firm standing, Ralphie's tops are always defeated by Lug's top Mariah, prompting Ralphie to look for outside sources that also backfire, such as a top bought from an Eastern shop that is painted with roses, giving Lug all the mocking material. During the Parker family's visit to the world's fair, Ralphie gets a top from a gypsy stand called "Wolf" just as powerful as Mariah, allowing Ralphie to challenge him again. At the climax of the challenge, both Mariah and Wolf end up disappearing into the sewer, never to be seen again; as a result, the game ends on a lose-lose draw.
Mrs. Parker's plot revolves around attempting to start a collection of celebrity dishes, one per each dish night, at the Orpheum Theatre run by Leopold Doppler. She acquires the first dish, a Ronald Colman gravy boat, though she accumulates more as Doppler announces the other dishes are unavailable due to 'misshipment'. The frustration of accumulating the gravy boats combined with the events throughout the film get Mrs. Parker over the edge, resulting with her throwing the gravy boat she won at the theater at Doppler's head. All other housewives, encouraged by Mrs. Parker's act, also start raining down the surplus gravy boats towards Doppler, enraged at the frustration and the apparent fraudulent scheme. Mrs. Parker is arrested for the act, though with a relieved smile on her face.
Mr. Parker's plot revolves around his odds with the Parker's hillbilly neighbors, the Bumpuses (or Bumpi, as the Parkers tend to refer them in plural), especially due to their loud overplaying of hillbilly music, obnoxious behavior and the constant harassment on Mr. Parker by the Bumpuses' forty-three Bloodhounds named Big Red. The escalation turns into war when the Bumpuses inaugurate an outhouse bathroom, which Parker clearly perceives as a health code violation. When Mr. Parker attempts forcing the Bumpus to demolish the outhouse, they respond by having Big Dickie, the largest of the Bumpus family, destroy their house's porch as a show of force. Parker attempts unsuccessfully to torment the Bumpuses with music, which they mistake for Parker calling a night party, prompting him to hurriedly escape to the fishing trip with Ralphie. Mr. Parker does a second attempt, this time with a sound effects record disk simulating a federal bust, but by the time he unleashes the sound disk, the Bumpuses have long moved away. Mr. Parker interprets this as a defeat, and the act earns the ire of the woken-up neighborhood, who strongly suggest to bring the Bumpuses back and be rid of Parker.
Shepherd had begun work on the film in 1989, after wrapping up production on the television film Ollie Hopnoodle's Haven of Bliss . He admitted making the sequel mainly as a money-making enterprise; when he saw the amount of royalties he was making off telecasts and re-releases of A Christmas Story compared to his television productions, he walked away from television and vowed to work almost exclusively on films. [2] Because the cast of A Christmas Story had aged to the point where they no longer fit their roles, it was entirely recast, with the exception of Tedde Moore, who returns as Ralphie's teacher, Miss Shields.
The film received mixed reviews. Entertainment Weekly gave it a B+, noting that the film improves on A Christmas Story, with better pacing and better-defined characters, but found Shepherd's narration to be "oh-so-drolly exaggerated" and "condescending". [3] Robert Butler at The Kansas City Star called it "a sequel worth seeing" which revisits the humor of the original. [4]
Upon the release of the film on DVD in 2006, DVDtalk wrote that "My Summer Story is reasonably good", while criticizing the casting, but praising Shepherd's narration as "the film's saving grace". [5] Christopher Null at MovieCritic.com referred to the film as a "lackluster sequel" with "little of the same charm" as A Christmas Story, and not "funny". [6] A 2011 summary of best and worst movies filmed in Cleveland called the film a "dog", which "features none of the original cast" and "none of the original heart". [7]
Released in few theaters, [8] the film grossed under $71,000. [1]
Prior to the making of the theatrical film, PBS co-produced a series of TV movies based on the Parker family for American Playhouse including Ollie Hopnoodle's Haven of Bliss , The Great American Fourth of July and Other Disasters , The Star-Crossed Romance of Josephine Cosnowski and The Phantom of the Open Hearth .
Mary Nell Steenburgen is an American actress, comedian, singer, and songwriter. After studying at New York's Neighborhood Playhouse in the 1970s, she made her professional acting debut in the Western comedy film Goin' South (1978). Steenburgen went on to earn critical acclaim for her role in Time After Time (1979) and Jonathan Demme's comedy-drama film Melvin and Howard (1980), for which she received the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Home Alone 2: Lost in New York is a 1992 American Christmas comedy film directed by Chris Columbus, and written and produced by John Hughes. The sequel to the 1990 film Home Alone and the second film in the Home Alone franchise, the film stars Macaulay Culkin, Joe Pesci, Daniel Stern, John Heard, Tim Curry, Brenda Fricker and Catherine O'Hara. The story follows Kevin McCallister as he is separated from his family on their holiday to Florida. He has another encounter with the Wet Bandits in New York City after their escape from prison.
Jean Parker "Shep" Shepherd Jr. was an American storyteller, humorist, radio and TV personality, writer, and actor. With a career that spanned decades, Shepherd is known for the film A Christmas Story (1983), which he narrated and co-scripted, based on his own semi-autobiographical stories.
A Christmas Story is a 1983 Christmas comedy film directed by Bob Clark and based on the 1966 book In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash by Jean Shepherd, 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, and follows a young boy and his family's misadventures during Christmas time in December 1939. It is the third installment in the Parker Family Saga.
Dorothy Lyman is an American television actress, director, and producer. She is most known for her work as Gwen Frame on Another World, on All My Children as the original Opal Sue Gardner, as Rebecca Whitmore on Generations, and on the sitcom Mama's Family as Naomi Harper.
Ollie Hopnoodle's Haven of Bliss is a 1988 American made-for-television comedy film written by Jean Shepherd and directed by Dick Bartlett, based on the 1968 short story by Shepherd. A satire of childhood recollections of annual family vacations, it follows the Parker family as they travel to a Michigan lakeside camp, the eponymous Haven. It was a co-production of The Disney Channel and PBS, and aired in that order, and was released on video.
Melinda Ruth Dillon was an American actress. She received a 1963 Tony Award nomination for her Broadway debut in the original production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her roles as Jillian Guiler in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and Teresa Perrone in Absence of Malice (1981). She is well-known for her role as Mother Parker in the holiday classic A Christmas Story (1983). Her other film roles include Bound for Glory (1976), Slap Shot (1977), F.I.S.T. (1978), The Muppet Movie (1979), Harry and the Hendersons (1987), Captain America (1990), The Prince of Tides (1991), To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar (1995), How to Make an American Quilt (1995), Magnolia (1999), for which she was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award, and Reign Over Me (2007).
Julie Beth Hagerty is an American actress. She starred as Elaine Dickinson in the films Airplane! (1980) and Airplane II: The Sequel (1982). Her other film roles include A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy (1982), Lost in America (1985), What About Bob? (1991), She’s the Man (2006), A Master Builder (2014), Instant Family (2018), Noelle, Marriage Story, and A Christmas Story Christmas (2022).
In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash is a collection of short stories by American humorist Jean Shepherd. It was first published in October 1966.
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 A Christmas Story and 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.
House From A Christmas Story(f/k/a "A Christmas Story House") is an attraction and museum in the Tremont neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio. The 19th-century Victorian house, which was used in the exterior and some interior scenes of Ralphie Parker's house in the 1983 film A Christmas Story, was purchased by a private developer in 2004 and has been restored and renovated to appear as it did in the film both inside and outside. The museum is part of a complex of four buildings devoted to the film and is open to the public year round.
A Christmas Story 2 is a 2012 American Christmas comedy film directed by Brian Levant and starring Daniel Stern and Braeden Lemasters. The film is a direct sequel to the 1983 film A Christmas Story and ignores the events of the 1994 film My Summer Story. The film, set six years after the original, follows fifteen-year-old Ralphie as he wishes for a 1939 Mercury Eight convertible for Christmas, but crashes the car before he even owns it. Now, Ralphie and his friends, Flick and Schwartz, must find a way to raise enough money to fix the car before Christmas.
A Christmas Story: The Musical is a stage musical with music and lyrics written by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, and a book by Joseph Robinett. It is based on the 1983 film A Christmas Story, itself based on the 1966 book In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash by Jean Shepherd. 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.
A Christmas Story Live! is an American television special that was originally broadcast by Fox on December 17, 2017. 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.
All I Want for Christmas Is You is a 2017 American animated Christmas film based on the song by Mariah Carey and the book by Carey herself. The film stars the voices of Mariah Carey, Breanna Yde, Lacey Chabert, and Henry Winkler.
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.
A Christmas Story Christmas is a 2022 American Christmas comedy film directed by Clay Kaytis from a script by Nick Schenk, who is also one of the executive producers. Produced by Peter Billingsley and Vince Vaughn along with Legendary's Cale Boyter and Jay Ashenfelter, Marc Toberoff and Irwin Zwilling, it is a sequel to the 1983 film A Christmas Story. Billingsley reprises his role as Ralphie Parker alongside Ian Petrella, Scott Schwartz, R. D. Robb, Zack Ward, and Yano Anaya returning as Randy Parker, Flick, Schwartz, Scut Farkus, and Grover Dill, respectively. Additionally Erinn Hayes, River Drosche, and Julianna Layne play Ralphie's wife and kids, with Julie Hagerty acting in the role of Mrs. Parker. Principal photography began in late February 2022 in Hungary and Bulgaria.
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.
The Star-Crossed Romance of Josephine Cosnowski is an American made-for-television family-comedy film, directed by Fred Barzyk, with a script written by Jean Shepherd. Produced by Olvia Tappan, the film is the fourth 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.