Revisionist HistoryWhat happens when the biggest movie star in the world directs the smallest Christmas film on basic cable? A holiday miracle.
Today on the show: The never-before-published, extremely bizarre story of the making of ‘Christmas in Connecticut’... the remake.
Bushkin.
Christmas is one week away, and how am I celebrating with restraint and circumspection. In the Glabew family, we do a mid century modern Christmas spare elegant, minimalist, lots of the Baby Jesus in a tasteful Scandinavian leather and rosewood manger. No Santa, no reindeer, no elves. Not so for my colleague Ben ad Alf Halfrey. The Globows impose a dollar limit on gifts, like price controls in some socialist state that at a half Halfreys spend months thinking of what to get one another. The Globows buy a tree at the last moment, and would be happier if we could just move the whole operation outside around the Douglas Pine. In the backyard, Ben's family has a tree, a little model village covered in snow and is fos vintage electric train set, plus a little metal tree with ornaments that's up year round. So when I told Ben that I had never watched It's a Wonderful Life, he was stunned. Then he reached out to me as the good smartan did to the traveler lying beref by the side of the road. How could this be, he asked me gently, because, as you can imagine, within the daph Haffreys, It's a wonderful life is a sacred text. Then Ben told me another story about what, in his mind is an even more important Christmas tale, a story that he regards as the apotheosis of all Christmas movies, a story not in a film, but of the making of a film. Welcome to revisionist history. I'm Malcolm Gladwell. Today in our show, Ben the alf Halfrey relays for the very first time in history, the truly spruy story of the making of the oddest Christmas film of all time. Trust me, you have never heard this story before ever, nor have you ever seen the movie in question, unless you're a member of the extended no Deaf Halfway Clan or were recently incarcerated in a state that limits prisoner's streaming access to obscure television movies in the nineteen nineties.
But when you listen to.
What follows, you're going to ask yourself the same question I ask myself when Ben first told me this story.
How do I miss this? Unlike Malcolm, I am a great lover of Christmas movies. Every year as soon as Thanksgiving is over, I'm firing up the Bishop's Wife, Miracle on thirty fourth Street. Or It's a Wonderful Life. And then there's my favorite Christmas movie, a little less famous, the nineteen forty five romantic comedy Christmas in Connecticut. I've watched it pretty much every year since I was little. Barbara Stanwick Play is a magazine columnist who's famous for entertaining on her grand Connecticut farm. She's known as a great cook. It's the end of World War Two and her magazine's publisher has an idea for a great feature. Jill hosts a returning war hero for Christmas on her farm. There's just one problem. It's all a lie. She doesn't live in Connecticut. She lives in a tiny apartment in New York. And she has no clue how to cook.
My fun? Oh yes, my fun?
Oh my fine?
And you want to see you right away to arrange it.
Arrange it?
Are you crazy?
Where am I going to get a farm?
I haven't even got a window. Boss, That's just it.
We'll have to star him off, you know what, to stick to years for the truth. If he ever finds out we've been making all this up.
You'll fire the both of us.
Chaos ensues. It's a classic screwball comedy and a total delight. But the thing I really want to tell you about in this episode is what happened after I discovered, quite by accident, that there was a remake of this favorite Christmas movie of mine, an action packed, star studed, joke filled, really very different version of the original, made for TV and directed by none other than Arnold Schwarzenegger. A kind of shocking twist if you ask me, I mean, why would the Terminator take on Christmas in Connecticut? So I did what any good Christmas fiend would do. I talked to a dozen people about something that happened thirty years ago for way too many hours to get the real story, and I discovered in the process what I have come to regard as the greatest Christmas tale of all time.
I've told this.
Story many times, I've never told it all the record. It's a big story, So if you've got the time, I will tell it to you.
That's Stan Brooks in the early nineteen nineties. He was an independent made for TV movie producer.
So I'm developing movies and a friend of mine goes and gets the job at TNC and I make the very first movie for him.
TNT launched in nineteen eighty eight, at the start of the cable television revolution. Then, as now, cable was expensive, but it was growing. The whole game was trying to raise awareness to get people to sign up, and with channels running twenty four to seven, there was a lot of space to fill, which led to a boom and made for TV movies. Stan's first film on TNT was a big success. So he got another bite at the Apple and he.
Calls me, He goes, what do you want to do next?
So they said, like Nami years, would you ever let me do a remake from the MGM library because that's what Ted owned, And he said, yes, just pick one.
Christmas movies always do well, and there is one Stan loved Christmas in Connecticut, and I.
Know the Barber Stanlet movie, and so I said, well, this could be a good one. It was right as Martha Stewart was exploding. I thought, well, what if this is Martha Stewart. What if she's on TV and has an empire and it's all fake? And so they love that take, and so off we went to the races.
He got a writer to work up the script in television.
It was It was great because you can get your stuff made.
This is Janet Brownew, one of the all time great Bards of TV movies, writer on Elouise at the Plaza, Twelve Dates of Christmas, Days of Our Lives and the uncredited rewrite of Tim Allens the Santa Claus all Brownew she loved the original Christmas in Connecticut. I mean it is.
It's a charming and in fairst to me, the original draft was very close.
Janet wrote the draft of the script for Stan's remake.
And we turn it in and they go, this is this is do me in a Christmas movie.
So now I have and I'm I have a nice little Christmas programmer and nothing more.
It's the middle of nineteen ninety one in Hollywood. Janet and Stan's low budget television movie remake isn't really the sort of thing to get people talking, but they're making progress. He's got the old school movie star Diane Cannon cast in the lead as the Martha Stewart character, and an offer out to a director. And then one day his phone rings. His assistant says, it's a big Hollywood agent named Lou Pitt.
Now I understand I'm in the television movie business. These guys are never calling me, so if they do call.
Me, it's never good.
And and he he gets on the phone and he says, the other director for your Christmas in Connecticut movie.
And I said, uh, well.
Almost yeah, we may have an offer out And he said, okay, Well if he doesn't say yes, I want you to consider my client. And I go okay, and wait to hear the name, and I go who He goes, Arl Schwarzenegger, and I burst out laughly.
Oh he was.
He was totally shocked.
Lou Pitt, legendary agent Arnald Schwarzenegger.
That's hilarious. No, seriously, is this a joke? Is this a joke?
He goes, no, seriously, and he goes, I'm Schwartzeker's not going at Christmas movie for tat.
To be clear. Arnold had just finished shooting James Cameron's epic Terminator two Asta La Vista Baby. Terminator two is the one where Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a killer cyborg sent from the future to protect young John Conner from a different killer cyborg also sent from the future to kill him. As you can imagine such a plot necessitates a lot of elaborate production work. He was movie making on a scale that was practically unheard of, especially in Los Angeles.
The production actually changed the course of a river to shoot high speed chases in the extensive clood control channels of Los Angeles.
Anyways, back to Stan and Lou the agent.
I go, Lou, why on earth were Arnold Swartz there? He says, Well, here's why.
Arnold Schwarzenegger was forty four years old, he had two kids. Nobody is an action hero forever. Maybe it was time to explore some alternatives.
And so he was tired after tea two and he said to Blue I would like to direct a movie.
The directing thing was kind of out of the box, at a left field, and.
They said, well, okay, we'll put together a big feature act. He goes, no, no, no, I want low risk. If I do a terrible job, I don't want anyone to be upset. I don't want a big budget, and I want it to be family friendly because I don't want anything to be controversial nothing.
I just want something very simple. And the only one that.
Fit the bill was Christmas, Connecticut. So I said okay, I'll I'll call you if this guy passes. And I ham the phone.
Of course, my parts.
Jumping out of min I go what and and I said, yeah, I'm serious.
I read it.
I think he'd like it, so get me an offer.
Stan gets the green light from the executives at TNT. There's some negotiating and they offer Schwartzenegger one hundred thousand bucks. And then one night stands phone rings.
I pick it up and I hear Sam brooks, yes, please hold for Armschzenegger and now serious.
I can see my heart beating, and he goes hello. I go Arnold, are you're the guy with this Christmas script? I said yes. He says it's fantastic. I'd love to direct. I go okay.
He goes, but I have to shoot in Los Angeles, knight to do it in these days, and he goes a nice some notes of the script.
I go, okay, can you be here in an hour?
And I go, uh no.
He goes, can you be on Wednesday? I go, yes, I could be there on Wednesday.
He goes over for a meeting at Arnold's offices in Santa Monica.
So now I'm going to see me on Wednesday, and you walk in and there's this giant lobby and and the first thing you see is the exoskeleton, the metal thing with the red eyes from Terminator. So there's no doubt.
I mean, the posters are up on the wall, but there's no doubt. When you walk in and you see this seven foot thing, you go, oh, craft, I know where I am. My heart's beating and I go in and he's in his office, which is massive. It's like you know, signs.
Of a football field, and he's on one. You walk in on this end and he's on the other ends.
You go walk past all the you know, the props and stuff, and then he's at a big, huge desk with a big giant chair, and behind him is a bookshelf but with all of the Mister Universe awards, not film stuff.
It's all his bodybuilding awards.
And I remember we were going through the script and I said, hey, I want to use the restroom and he pointed to me by putting up this bicep and pointing it like this, and his bicep comes cleaning.
He goes this, dot what And I go, was that just to show me your boy step? And he goes I have to show the you know, the guns whenever I can.
And I realized, okay, so this guy definitely has a sense of heart by himself.
They sit down, Arnold has notes on the script he will he wanted a.
More humor and a little more jeopardy, and so we added in like this like sort of big action sequence at the beginning where he rescues.
The kid, and all of a sudden, Janet Brownell, who wrote the original script for the remake, is looking at a very different movie.
The whole thing took this like one hundred and eighty degree turn.
At that point, it was just like what is and Stan just did not want.
To lose him, And I'm like, okay, I truly don't see this.
But if it gets a film green light, I don't give a shit.
Arnold wants them to get someone else to come in and punch up the script.
He wanted more humor, and as it happened, my best friend in the world had written.
Commando Commando, the nineteen eighty five action film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, which the critic from the La Times referred to as a quote gory crowd pleaser and a glorified fireworks display.
And Arnold love them and said, if you think you get him to do a comedy.
Past, Jeff Low, the friend who wrote Commando, gets hired to do the rewrite with his writing partner.
We walk in.
He's sitting on a white couch maybe it's literally the length of the biggest limousine you've ever seen in your life, and he has his feed up on this white porcelain marble table. He's got a big cigar in his mouth and scripts all around him, and he doesn't say hello, He doesn't introduce himself, he doesn't do anything. He just the first thing out of his mouth is, so, what of you guys been doing since Commando?
Clearly not going to the gym.
I just have to say, everyone in this episode is going to do their own Schwartzenegger impression, which is good because even though we couldn't land an interview with him, I feel like he's here with us in spirit. Anyway. They settle in and start rewriting the film Commando style.
So that's where things kind of went off the rails for me personally, because it's like, Okay, this is becoming a completely different thing. It just Schwarzenegger eyed into like this thing that was bigger than life.
I mean, she just did an amazing job. We didn't make any real big structural changes.
That's all hers, but a dialogue pass and goes through it and try to find more Old's vision.
They start burning through the script. A big job for any director is giving notes on the rewrites. Schwarzenegger was calling in help from his director friends, including legendary comedy director Ivan Reitman, the guy who did Ghostbusters. Everyone was working to realize Arnold's vision.
Now you have to understand that on Commando he would do this all the time. He would go, I have a great idea. Listen, this is what I want to do. When the guy comes at me.
I want to throw a buzzsaw at him and it chops off his arm, and then I'm going to pick up his arm and punch me in his face with.
His old arm.
And we would go, well, we like the bus off part. Can we just do the bus off art? So like, our job is not to go I maybe that's not gonna work. Our job is to make it work. And it doesn't help that the next day he would say, Okay.
We're doing really well, We're really getting there.
It's really coming to where I wanted to be. So I gave it to Steve It.
And Stephen talked to me last night and he says, I have to really be careful that and this is what I want you to do. And again I'm like, is Stephen the guy at the jim is Stephen?
Who is Steve It?
And then suddenly as you go, you know, as he starts to sort of talk more, you go, he's talking about Steven Spielberg.
This is beginning to look like a train nobody would step in front of. Back at T and T, the executives had a dim sense of what was going on.
It's not it's not has done.
Now Lori Posmantier, one of the TNT executives.
Whether you're famous or not, as a director, that doesn't happen.
To let somebody go and change things as much as we're change.
Meanwhile, they've cast the rest of the film. Joining Diane Cannon would be Hollywood screwball legend Tony Curtis, probably best known for playing opposite Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot. Along with him would be ex country music star Chris Christofferson. Here's TNT's senior vice president of production at the time, Nick Lombardo.
Even when they cast it, I thought, well, that is the weirdest cast I ever heard of. I mean, the idea that these people fit together made no sense at all. I mean, Diane Cannon and Chriscus Dobinson in the same frame. It makes the star is Born when he's holding Barbara streissad look organic.
So armed with one of the all time weirdest, most stacked casts in the history of film, a comparatively small budget of three million dollars, a slot on an upstart cable network, and a script based on nineteen forty screwball comedy that's been punched up by two of the writers behind a big eighties blockbuster, An Austrian former bodybuilder, fresh off his repeat performance as a time traveling cyborg, prepared to direct his first Christmas film.
You don't, as a TV movie producer ever get near anything this hot, y, You just don't.
I mean, we're we're all a little nervous about the whole thing, you know, because it's like you're playing with matches and you know, oh yeah, that's that Arnold direct this. You know, it's like for US three million dollars was a lot of money.
I don't know, I don't know whatever.
It was like, Oh yeah.
He wanted to prove that he could be a director.
And everyone was about to find out whether or not he could. Christmas in Connecticut the remake began filming about two months before Christmas in Los Angeles. Because Arnold Schwarzenegger had never before directed a future film, though let the record show he had directed an episode of the TV show Tales from the Crypt, the production arranged for things to film more or less in the order they happen in the film. There's a lot less to keep track of continuity wise that way, but this also posed a problem. One of the anxieties of adapting a great work of art is figuring out how to make it your own. The nineteen ninety two made for TV remake of Christmas in Connecticut does this immediately by introducing its male lead, a park ranger named Jefferson Jones, mid workout routine in his mountain cabin. If you're looking for signs that this is not your grandmother's Christmas in Connecticut, the site of Chris Christofferson as Jefferson Jones, sweating after busting out some chin ups on a beam in his cabin is your first warning. A man on the television offers some brisk exposition while he cools down.
In the last hour, experts predict this shouldn't be the biggest storm to hit the Rockies in the last decade. More than four feet of snow has anticipated to blanket the area in the next twenty eight hours.
The phone rings. Another ranger is calling to tell Jones a kid has gotten lost in the blizzard. He has to go out and find him. This is the fabled action sequence Schwarzenegger had requested. They shot the blizzard on a sound stage. It's the moment Jefferson Jones becomes a hero, which is why he gets invited to be a guest of Elizabeth Blaine's for a Christmas special in Connecticut. It's gotta look epic. It's got to have that Arnold Schwarzenegger feeling unfortunately terminator. This is not Here's Jim Wilberger, director of production.
Yeah, there's a scene where Christofferson, you know, suddenly has rescued the kid and you see him roll down this little hill of snow which was shot on stage and trying to make more of more of it because there wasn't that much set for that little hill, and you know, and then suddenly you see all the people rush in to rescue you know. I mean, this was just not good blocking, okay, and that's just an experience.
Schwarzenegger wanted Jeopardy, but this kind of looks like a snowball fight gone awry. Jones stumbles over a very small hill holding a child that looks like it might be a mannequin. He's groaning and yelling, but his lips aren't moving, so tough start. Luckily, though, a lot of the film is set inside Elizabeth Blaine's fake Connecticut house where she's shooting a Christmas special in celebration of Jones. The bulk production happened there, so the whole crew set up at a house in South Pasadena for the real work. This introduced Arnold to the second problem of directing actor ego management in the issue of his trailer.
Arnold's trailer was like a house on wheels.
It was literally like you'd look at it from the outside and you'd say, wow, that's got all kinds of pop outs and the roof went off and everything.
But when you got inside, it was literally like you had just walked into like the Greystone mansion.
You know, it's probably almost three times as wide as a normal trailer, and that it was the length that became the issue. Diane comes in and she says, why is Arnold's trailer bigger than my trailer? Nobody's supposed to have a bigger trailer than me.
Diane Cannon was the star of the film, but she was maybe realizing that this production was all about the director. Schwarzenegger, though, was dealing with other problems. Namely, he had chosen one of the hardest genres for his first major directing for a screwball comedy is like dancing on the head of a pin. It thrives on chaos, but it has to be a kind of controlled chaos. With his big personality cast, low budget, short timeline, and hastily rewritten script, Schwarzenegger had an excess of chaos and a minimum of control. I mean, you have one somewhat disgruntled actress portraying fake Martha Stewart, and another who's a macho park ranger, but who, for no apparent reason, relays this backstory part way through the movie.
Actually, where I moved to Colorado, I lived in Chicago. I grew up there, taught comparative literature at the University of Container Really, I got offered tenure and head of the department. And it's what I thought I wanted. That's being caged in by concrete and crowds for the rest.
Of my life.
This is I'm pretty sure the only time in the entire film Jefferson Jones is past as chair of the University of Chicago's comparative literature department is mentioned. And I love Chris Kristofferson, but most of the rest of his performance veers between stiff and oddly sexually charged.
When he starts smearing the pine staff on her neck.
Yeah that it's it's it's just kind of transcendently weird.
Yeah.
Well, not to mention his two times he's like staring at her butt.
You know, there's an extensive shot of that.
But you can't buy that at Limingdon.
You're right.
So you've got two characters who really just barely hang together, and then you have to direct them in tightly choreographed zany sequences that have got to feel plausible yet also hilarious. For instance, the scene with the baby remember in Christmas in Connecticut. Elizabeth is a total fraud. She doesn't know how to cook, it's not even her house in Connecticut, and she's got this fake, staged family with her, including a fake baby. She had to keep up appearances for the sake of her column. In the original film, there's a lovely scene where she and Jefferson Jones give her fake baby a bath. She a supposed domestic goddess, is meant to bathe her child, which she suspiciously has no clue how to do. He steps in and does it for her like a total pro. It's part of why she falls in love with him, and because it's so well executed in the original film, we believe they're following in love in this totally implausible moment.
So oh, refer though she's eating the sil would like do what.
He her they are doing.
Oh really, you'd make a wonderful father.
Mister Jehan, You're you're not married yourself by any chance?
Are you?
No cards are stacked against me.
I guess every time I meet a girl I like, it turns out she's already married.
Oh that's too bad now.
This also happens in the Arnold Schwarzenegger version.
Maybe we should finish up for finish.
You know what, I just had the most wonderful idea, How would you like to bathere?
Me?
Sure?
I think it'd be fun for you here.
What happens next is the greatest travesty in the history of bath time. It's as if you gave two aliens a baby and said, give this a bath, not realizing that on the planet there from not only are there no babies or baths, but actually there's not even water. What do you remember about that?
Well, some of that was improvised.
What happens is they just drenched the baby in shampoo and then they barely wash in of it out. On the bad scale, it's two rubber duckies out of ten. But the premise of the scene is that Jefferson Jones is crushing it.
It was pretty hilarious, I thought, and also very clumsy, and they really grouped up with the kid's hair.
My god, I.
Don't know, I'm brought to a chap here's some soap, sweetie.
That's a director thing. I mean, that is a flat out director fail.
I mean that right.
But retake the scene and.
There probably were three or four versions of that.
That's the one he chose.
You know, it's not like that was the only one.
That you're off the shit of that for a bachelor, you know, you're sure you didn't have a whole stel of kids hidden somewhere.
Nursed a couple of bear clubs to their mother came back.
It's like on SNL when the actors break and laugh when Elizabeth's like, I'm not sure if we got all the soap out, and Jefferson's like, well we didn't. That's the true reaction and it must be improvised. But then they go back to the scripted version where Jones is doing a great job. Most of the people on set have some kind of moment.
Like this, you know, the forest with the snow and the sleigh that comes along, and there's even one shot I noticed where you can see the wheels under the sleigh.
I remember the day I was there, they were filming that scene where chaos RUPs, you know, and the tree falls down and all that. We had to do that scene quite a number of times. It was as chaotic as the scene is, but behind the scenes it was even more so.
It's a little like opening a bolode factory for cultural you know, it's sort.
Of like, what's going on in there?
Nothing good? Nothing good, don't ask anything. So it was kind of hectic on set. And yet I think you can hear in people's voices how much they love telling this story. Pretty much across the board, this was a happy memory for the people I spoke to, not least of all because they never lost sight of just how improbable it all was.
And then in the middle of all this is Arnold running around going, you know, move the top or overhead, I do this over here, let's go do this. No, I think it could be ten times funny.
I'll come on.
So there's Arnold's voice, you know, just bellowing out. And that was the other thing that I really remember was that while this is happening, while.
We're making this little trainy movie, he is in theaters with Terminator two and it's doing numbers that no one has ever seen before.
And we were on set when it crossed five hundred million dollars. But when you're standing next to the guy who's the star of that movie and his major concern is whether or not.
It didn't focus forehead.
Let's go the forehead thing. You're not the first person to bring that up several people mentioned to me that Arnold Schwartzenegger's favorite put down was to call someone a forehead. This actually made it into the movie. When Elizabeth Blaine and Jefferson Jones get pulled over by the cops mid sleigh ride, the one where you can see the wheels, this happens.
What's your hands? Where I can say, you're both under arrest?
Oh, come on, come on, you foreheads, get him up?
You what?
This is actually a big part of why I love this movie. It has a kind of free jazz improvisitory quality to it. It's oddly self referential and also very sweet. It's like how you can hear in someone's voice when they're smiling. That's how this movie feels. Because, even at the risk of himself being labeled a forehead who couldn't direct the movie, Arnold Schwarzenegger was showing up every day and putting in his all for the film, Buffs and the crew. It was a dream come true just to work with him or with a legend like Tony Curtis.
You know, it was a trip to oz that I knew was short lived, but it was.
Something I was going to take in and enjoy them as much as possible.
After twenty days of shooting the film wrapped, they had a party at Arnold Schwartzeninger's restaurant. It was around Christmas time, and they all got sweatshirts with the name of the film on the front.
And on the back was a picture of Arnold with a Santa hat on, wearing sunglasses and saying something about I can't remember the full thing anybody used for you forehead.
Later, Jim was kind enough to send me a photo of the sweatshirt. It said on the back more snow u forehead. There's my Schwartzeneger impression with the film in the can. Post production and premieres loomed. That's after the break. Before we get to the premiere of Arnold Schwarzenegger's nineteen ninety two Christmas and Connecticut remake, I want to tell you about something that happened earlier this year.
Thank you all for coming, Thank you Mitch for coming down from Try Yeah, thanks for having me here.
Malcolm interviewed Mitch Album live on stage at the ninety second Street Y Album is the best selling author of some ungodly number of books, but he's probably most famous for Tuesdays with Maury. He and Malcolm were there to talk about his new novel about the Holocaust, The Little Liar. They were warming up with some Mitch backstory about his time as a musician in New York.
I tried the whole starving musician thing, and I played in all the clubs around here on Monday nights.
I was backstage at this event peering out. I hadn't read Mitch's book. I was up to something else.
We should probably do this before we get too far afield on the music thing. If you're talking so much, you will note that behind you. Yeah, there's a corg.
At this point, the audience of people who had come that night to hear the author of Tuesdays with Maury discussed the Holocaust noticed the electric piano behind him.
And we have a request that you play one of your most famous compositions, which you know what I'm talking about. I'm talking about Cooking for Two from the legendary Arnold Schwarzenegger nineteen ninety two, made for TV movie Christmas in Connecticut.
Yeah, can you see the recognition?
Yes it was my keyboard, and yes I had planted it there.
Mitch, No, no, this For some reason, I have no idea. My colleague Ben is obsessed with this and really wanted us to do this, and I thought, how great would it be for you to sing one of our songs, just like just give us a little taste.
Well, I have to tell you this story. Tell tell Okay. So after I got out of the music business, I had a college roommate who went into the movie business.
That would be Stanley m Brooks, executive producer of Christmas in Connecticut. Stan and Mitch were roommates at Brandeis.
And he knew that I was a musician, and he was making a movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger as a producer, and Schwartzenegger was the director of Christmas in Connecticut. The remake sounds about as good as it was, I think, And they needed as a song because she played Diane Cannon played the lead and she was a cook on TV or whatever, so the song had to be about food. And they wanted to use Harry Connick's Recipe for Love or something like that, but they couldn't afford it. So stan calls me and says, we need a song that's kind of upbeat about food for Arnold Schwartzenegger's movie. Can you do it? You know, I said, well, what do you need it by Thursday?
You know?
It was Tuesday, you know. So I just went and wrote a little song. And my wife is a singer, a fantastic singer, and I said, honey, can you sing this song because we don't have time to go find anybody else. And he listened to it and he said, I liked a bun but the girl. And that's how the song was chosen. Yeah, yeah, I want you to play it. I really think you should.
So it went.
Now, remember it had to be about food. Food, So it went, let's go to the kitchen. I got something fixing, admanizing, and do here's a flood. We're cooking for two. They're inside the oven, something warm and loving. Friends would laugh and they knew.
That it's true. We're cooking for two. Here's the corn bridge.
I was a souper widirl.
Left nombers every night.
Ah, but once I tasted your kisses, I was dining my candlelight.
Here's a recipe for all the world to see.
We take some me and some you that.
It's too we're cooking for two.
I love you. We're cooking for two. That definitely ranks amongst one of the most embarrassing things I've ever DoD.
They planned to play it over the credits with a Mitch Album closing track in hand. Christmas in Connecticut was almost ready to debut. Most made for TV movies you just put out on television, but not this one.
First of all, TV movies don't have screenings.
If we have a screening, it's like ten people and you know, you were in a screening room somewhere like this was the big theater at the DGA, which holds I don't know, a thousand people, massive screen and there's a huge red carpet and a press line.
We had two theaters going and there were phil When I.
Tell you that there's never been a television movie before since, they had a press line. And he's walking down working the press and like, you know, and I you know, thet Blee person.
This is d Ambrose executive producer h Arnold.
According to san Ivan, Reitman and James Cameron were there, along with the whole slew of Hollywood Royalty. The screening was in LA. It was a media sensation.
Watch out Hollywood.
There's a new director in town and he's used.
To making a big impact that is in front of the camera.
When you act, sees such talent that directs as I've worked with, it inspires you.
Janet Brown, Now the screenwriter was not having sent for you to night.
I remember sitting at the screening with my agent and I was like crying.
I mean, I was like, oh my god, why were you crying?
I get so bad and my name is on this.
My agent was very fast to get me a drink at that point. I just remember outside there was kind of a Christmas theme sort of party, and just like I need to get out of.
Here, but there was no putting the genie back in the bottle. TNT was running promo's NonStop.
I love romantic comedies, so I made one myself, Christmas in Connecticut. It's a romantic comedy with all the trimmings.
What in the world could comfortably go wrong?
Christmas in Connectic directed by Arnold schwartzening you have a problem with that? TNT exclusive premiere Monday, April thirteen.
I don't know if you caught that, but the film came out in April, one week before Easter. As one review put it, quote, don't ask me why a Christmas movie is premiering in April. As his then wife Maria Shreiver reflected, he just does. He's a big one on. Don't think about it or talk about it.
Do it.
And then he goes, I think we want to scud into it again. That was too much fun.
I go, okay, I go see if I can organ I go no, I want to ski in Washington with my friend Jack Lent.
So now we all fight Washington.
And uh and it was it was a who's who of Washington, and it was senators and members of tabinet.
It was a seated dinner and I remember my wife and I sit down. We've been working the rooms.
So we sit last at our table and the guy next to me has got like a dress can of form on and I say, hey, Stan Brooks, I'm the producer, and he goes, hey, Oliver North.
Oliver North of Iran contra fame. The film was a big hit in the belt Way. Suff I sit to say this made for television Christmas movie had an unusually big reception, but it also didn't really do much to establish Arnold Schwartzenegger as a director. The reviews were mixed.
Well, I'm looking at IMDb right now it's like the rating is four point eight out of ten and they're not far off.
We nobody had any Oh my god, we're making it's a wonderful life.
I realize I've had a lot of fun with this movie and gun to my head. Do I think it's good? No? But do I love it? Obviously yes, because it's so totally weird and overcommitted to its bit that it has a kind of joyfulness to it that honestly gets me in the Christmas spirit and at its core, like the best Christmas films, The story behind the movie is a story of love and friendship between Arnold Schwartzenegger and San Brooks, two men brought together by a love of making movies. After the film, Stan and Arnold stayed in touch. Stan even moved into Arnold Schwartzenegger's office building. The kids played football together, and even though they never made another movie together, their collaboration had one more act. Almost ten years to the day from when Christmas and Connecticut began shooting, Arnold Schwarzenegger became the governor of California. At the time, there was a lot of handwringing over an issue called runaway production. Lots of states had started offering tax breaks to lure films into shooting somewhere other than California. It had become a real problem for Hollywood as an industry town. This was one of the crises Schwarzenegger would have to face in his new role as governor. Now, the way people talked about his becoming governor was the same way they talked about his becoming a director, So it only makes sense that he wanted stan Brooks in his administration.
So when he became governor, he was in about a year and he called me and he said, how would you like to be on the Film Commission? And I say, well, that's a dumb idea. He goes why, I said, well, because I don't shoot movies in California. I said, I'm like the worst person you could put on the film Commission because I take my movies out of state. And he goes, oh, that's why we want to because we want to try and pass the taxpayer.
Stan joined the California Film Commission, and over the next few years he was a key part of the lobbying efforts to pass the tax credits that would make it easier to film in California.
It was a hard fight, and so I ended up making a short film, a short documentary film where we interviewed some of the families that left on why, and that ended up being more powerful than any speech we could make in their office.
The first tax credits passed in two thousand and nine. They've been renewed ever since. So back to our original question, why did Arnold Schwarzenegger direct to this bizarre one off Christmas film? I found my answer in a story Stan told me.
He says to me one night we finished around seven or eight, and he goes, well you're doing and I said, I'm going home. He goes, he goes, Maria's making dinner. You want to come to the house. So oh yeah, yeah. So we both jump in our cars and we drive to Pacific Palis eate and at that dinner, I remember Arnold turn to me. He says, you have a good town. I own the stat Why don't get big speeches?
And I said, to be honest, I didn't get in the business to make big, famous movies. I got in the business to make movies, and I get to make two or three a year if I mean the future business, I'm lucky if I make one every other year.
Every three years. I go, I'm happy with my life. He goes, well, that's fantastic.
The story really had honed for me because I get what that's like to just love making something, even a kind of improbably dense story about the making of the remake of a Christmas movie. It's like Stan said, if you love making movies or anything, it's just a gift to get to make more, even if they're maybe not the best, especially if it's clear how much fun you had making when it is you're making. So to close, let me just share one quote from the very last page of Charles Dickens as a Christmas Carol, a passage about Scrooge after he's seen the light quote. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, But he let them laugh, and little heeded them, for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter. In the outset, his own heart laughed, and that was quite enough for him. Maybe Stan and Arnold didn't make It's a Wonderful Life, but it seems to me like their own hearts were laughing. So from all of us here at Revision's History. Happy Holidays, you foreheads, See you in the New Year. Revisionist History is produced by me Bennatt of Haffrey and Lucy Sullivan with Bird Lawrence. Our editor is Karen Chakerji. Fact checking on this episode by Sam Russick, a resident Schwarzenegger fan. Original scoring by Luis Gara, mastering by Jake Krsky. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. Special thanks to Sarah Nis, David Arnott, Linda Berman, Iris Grossman, and Scott Sassa. I'm Ben Mattahaffery.
Three two one.
We wish Eyal Berry Christmas. We wish you are mayor me Christmas. We will you are Merry Christmas New
What we do, guys,
