A Round Up Of Little-Known Christmas Movies From Years Ending in 4

Hey Everybody,This seemed like an appropriate replay for Christmas day. Brandon joined us to discuss his exploration of little known Christmas films. By complete chance, he started looking at films from years ending in 4 (1934, 1964, etc.). That seems a little random, but when you stop and think about it, it’s as good a method for doing a survey of Christmas films as anything else.He brought up ‘A Christmas Carol’ and that reminded me of my age. We were still watching the George C. Scott version when I was growing up. Today, however, that story has kind of fallen out of favor.Think of it! Dickens first published ‘A Christmas Carol’ in 1843, and it remained a holiday classic until the 1980s at least. That’s kind of stunning. I believe Brandon said he found around 400 versions.For about 150 years, people just sat through ‘A Christmas Carol’ every damn year. Then, around 1985, some hotshot executive said, “Let’s make a film about a beautiful city girl with a great job who goes to some small town and falls in love with some farm dude.” They made about 86,000 films with an identical plot, and a few decades later, nobody’s thinking about Scrooge.There’s some important lesson that writers can take away from that, but heck if I know what it is. Anyway, in this talk we come up with a few good Christmas film suggestions. As for me, I still recommend the peak Cage trilogy of ‘Con Air,’ ‘The Rock,’ and ‘Face/Off.’ Those are Christmas movies, he gives away a bunny in the first one. “Why couldn’t you put the bunny back in the box?”He even kind of looks like Jesus 🤣I hope this talk has enough laughs for you to make it appropriate for Christmas day! I also hope you’re all having a nice time with your family. I’ve been trying to post some lighter content lately, have I succeeded? Let me know in the comments!Thanks everybody!Thank you Eagle, Kevin Lawrence, Sharon Barnes, Lisa GK, and many others for tuning into my live video with Brandon Ellrich and Ben Ulansey! Join me for my next live video in the app.You all make this newsletter happen! Thanks for your sponsorship! I have payment tiers starting at as little as twenty dollars a year.Upgrade at 30% offUpgrade at 40% offUpgrade at 50% offUpgrade at 60% offI’m so happy you’re here, and I’m looking forward to sharing more thoughts with you tomorrow.My CoSchedule referral linkHere’s my referral link to my preferred headline analyzer tool. If you sign up through this, it’s another way to support this newsletter (thank you).I'd Rather Be Writing is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to I'd Rather Be Writing at walterrhein.substack.com/subscribe