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Episode: A Very Terminator Christmas

Author: Pushkin Industries
Duration: 00:44:18

Episode Shownotes

What 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.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Full Transcript

00:00:06 Speaker_02
Pushkin. Christmas is one week away. And how am I celebrating? With restraint and circumspection. In the Gladwell family, we do a mid-century modern Christmas. Spare, elegant, minimalist.

00:00:24 Speaker_02
Lots of the baby Jesus in a tasteful Scandinavian leather and rosewood manger. No Santa, no reindeer, no elves. Not so for my colleague, Benedaf Haffrey. The Gladwells impose a dollar limit on gifts, like price controls in some socialist state.

00:00:41 Speaker_02
The Nadaf-Hafris spend months thinking of what to get one another. The Gladwells 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.

00:00:55 Speaker_02
Ben's family has a tree, a little model village covered in snow, and his father's vintage electric train set, plus a little metal tree with ornaments that's up year round.

00:01:07 Speaker_02
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 Samaritan did to the traveler lying bereft by the side of the road. How could this be, he asked me gently.

00:01:21 Speaker_02
Because, as you can imagine, for the Nadaf Hafriz, 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.

00:01:34 Speaker_02
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.

00:01:51 Speaker_02
Today on our show, Ben the Naff-Haffrey relays, for the very first time in history, the truly screwy story of the making of the oddest Christmas film of all time. Trust me, you have never heard this story before, ever.

00:02:06 Speaker_02
Nor have you ever seen the movie in question unless you're a member of the extended Nedaf-Hafri clan or were recently incarcerated in a state that limits prisoners' streaming access to obscure television movies of the 1990s.

00:02:19 Speaker_02
But when you listen to what follows, you're going to ask yourself the same question I asked myself when Ben first told me this story. How did I miss this?

00:02:36 Speaker_15
Unlike Malcolm, I'm a great lover of Christmas movies. Every year, as soon as Thanksgiving's over, I'm firing up The Bishop's Wife, Miracle on 34th Street, or It's a Wonderful Life. And then there's my favorite Christmas movie, a little less famous.

00:02:52 Speaker_15
The 1945 romantic comedy, Christmas in Connecticut. I've watched it pretty much every year since I was little. Barbara Stanwyck plays a magazine columnist who's famous for entertaining on her Grand Connecticut Farm. She's known as a great cook.

00:03:06 Speaker_15
It's the end of World War II, and her magazine's publisher has an idea for a great feature. She'll host 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.

00:03:21 Speaker_15
She lives in a tiny apartment in New York, and she has no clue how to cook.

00:03:27 Speaker_13
Chaos ensues. It's a classic screwball comedy and a total delight.

00:03:50 Speaker_15
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.

00:04:00 Speaker_15
An action-packed, star-studded, 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.

00:04:16 Speaker_15
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 30 years ago for way too many hours to get the real story.

00:04:31 Speaker_15
And I discovered in the process what I've come to regard as the greatest Christmas tale of all time.

00:04:39 Speaker_10
I've told this story many times, I've never told it on the record. It's a big story, so if you've got the time, I will tell it to you.

00:04:46 Speaker_15
That's Stan Brooks. In the early 1990s, he was an independent made-for-TV movie producer.

00:04:53 Speaker_10
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.

00:05:00 Speaker_15
TNT launched in 1988, 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.

00:05:12 Speaker_15
And with channels running 24-7, there was a lot of space to fill, which led to a boom in made-for-TV movies. Stan's first film on TNT was a big success, so he got another bite at the apple.

00:05:25 Speaker_10
And he calls me, he goes, what do you want to do next? So I said, in a million 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.

00:05:35 Speaker_15
Christmas movies always do well. And there was one Stan loved. Christmas in Connecticut.

00:05:42 Speaker_10
And I'd known the Barbara Stanwyck movie. And so I said, well, this could be 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?

00:05:54 Speaker_10
And so they loved that take. And so off we went to the races.

00:05:59 Speaker_15
He got a writer to work up the script.

00:06:01 Speaker_04
In television, it was it was great because you get your stuff made.

00:06:05 Speaker_15
This is Janet Brownell, one of the all-time great bards of TV movies. Writer on Eloise at the Plaza, 12 Dates of Christmas, Days of Our Lives, and the uncredited rewrite of Tim Allen's The Santa Claus. All Brownell.

00:06:18 Speaker_15
She loved the original Christmas in Connecticut.

00:06:21 Speaker_04
It is. It's charming. And in fairness to me, the original draft was very close.

00:06:28 Speaker_15
Janet wrote the draft of the script for Stan's remake.

00:06:31 Speaker_10
and we turn it in and they go, this is good, this is good, we need a Christmas movie. So now I have a nice little Christmas programmer and nothing more.

00:06:42 Speaker_15
It's the middle of 1991. 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.

00:06:52 Speaker_15
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.

00:07:09 Speaker_10
Now 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 he gets on the phone and he says, do you have a director for your Christmas in Connecticut movie?

00:07:27 Speaker_10
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, I'm waiting to hear the name. And I go, who? And he goes, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

00:07:42 Speaker_10
And I burst out laughing.

00:07:43 Speaker_09
Oh, he was, he was totally shocked.

00:07:46 Speaker_15
Lew Pitt, legendary agent to Arnold Schwarzenegger.

00:07:50 Speaker_09
That's hilarious, Lou. No, seriously. Is this a joke? Is this a joke? He goes, no, seriously.

00:07:57 Speaker_10
I go, I'm Schwarzenegger's not doing a Christmas movie for TNT.

00:08:02 Speaker_15
To be clear, Arnold had just finished shooting James Cameron's epic Terminator 2.

00:08:06 Speaker_12
Hasta la vista, baby.

00:08:09 Speaker_15
Terminator 2 is the one where Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a killer cyborg sent from the future to protect young John Connor from a different killer cyborg also sent from the future to kill him.

00:08:20 Speaker_15
As you can imagine, such a plot necessitates a lot of elaborate production work. It was moviemaking on a scale that was practically unheard of, especially in Los Angeles.

00:08:31 Speaker_19
The production actually changed the course of a river to shoot high-speed chases in the extensive flood control channels of Los Angeles.

00:08:39 Speaker_15
Anyways, back to Stan and Lou, the agent.

00:08:43 Speaker_10
I go, Lou, why on earth would Arnold Schwarzenegger, he says, well, here's why.

00:08:49 Speaker_15
Arnold Schwarzenegger was 44 years old. He had two kids. Nobody is an action hero forever. Maybe it was time to explore some alternatives.

00:08:58 Speaker_10
And so he, he was kind of tired after T2 and he said to Lou, I would like to direct

00:09:05 Speaker_06
a movie. The directing thing was kind of out of the box, out of left field. And they said, well, OK, we'll put together a big feature.

00:09:12 Speaker_10
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.

00:09:27 Speaker_10
And the only one that fit the bill was Christmas at Connecticut. So I said, OK, I'll I'll call you if this guy passes. And I hang up the phone and I'm forced, my heart's jumping out. I'm like, I go, what?

00:09:39 Speaker_06
And I said, yeah, I'm serious. I read it. I think he'd like it. So get me an offer.

00:09:46 Speaker_15
Stan gets the green light from the executives at TNT. There's some negotiating, and they offer Schwarzenegger $100,000. And then one night, Stan's phone rings.

00:09:56 Speaker_10
I pick it up, and I hear, Sam Brooks, yes, please vote for Arnold Schwarzenegger. And now, seriously, I can see my heart beating. And he goes, hello. I go, Arnold, are you the guy with this Christmas script? I said, yes. He says, it's fantastic.

00:10:15 Speaker_10
I'd love to direct it. I go, OK. He goes, but I have to shoot in Los Angeles, and I have to do it in these days. And he goes, and I have some notes on the script. I go, OK. Can you be here in an hour? And I go, uh, no, he goes, can you be on Wednesday?

00:10:30 Speaker_10
I go, yes, I can be there on Wednesday.

00:10:33 Speaker_15
He goes over for a meeting at Arnold's offices in Santa Monica.

00:10:36 Speaker_10
So now I'm going to be on Wednesday and you walk in and there's this giant lobby and the first thing you see is the exoskeleton, the metal thing with the red eyes from Terminator. So there's no doubt.

00:10:52 Speaker_10
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, crap. I know where I am. My heart's beating. And I go in and he's in his office, which is massive.

00:11:05 Speaker_10
It's like the size of a football field. And he's on one. You walk in on this end and he's on the other end. So you walk past all the props and stuff. And then he's at a big, huge desk with a big giant chair. And behind him,

00:11:21 Speaker_10
is a bookshelf, but with all of the Mr. 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.

00:11:35 Speaker_10
And he pointed to me by putting up his bicep and pointed like this, his bicep comes, he goes, it's that way. And I go, was that just to show me your bicep? And he goes, I have to show, you know, the guns whenever I can.

00:11:51 Speaker_10
And I was like, okay, so this guy definitely has a sense of humor by himself.

00:11:56 Speaker_15
They sit down. Arnold has notes on the script.

00:11:59 Speaker_10
He wanted more humor and a little more jeopardy. And so we, we added in like this like sort of big action sequence at the beginning where he rescues the kid.

00:12:10 Speaker_15
And all of a sudden, Janet Brownell, who wrote the original script for the remake, is looking at a very different movie.

00:12:18 Speaker_04
The whole thing took this like 180 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 greenlight, I don't give a shit.

00:12:37 Speaker_15
Arnold wants them to get someone else to come in and punch up the script.

00:12:40 Speaker_10
He wanted more humor. And as it happened, my best friend in the world had written Commando.

00:12:46 Speaker_15
Commando, the 1985 action film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, which the critic from the L.A. Times referred to as a, quote, gory crowd pleaser and a glorified fireworks display.

00:12:59 Speaker_10
And Arnold loved them and said, if you think you can get him to do a comedy pass,

00:13:04 Speaker_15
Jeff Loeb, the friend who wrote Commando, gets hired to do the rewrite with his writing partner.

00:13:09 Speaker_08
We walk in, he's sitting on a, 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 feet up on this white porcelain marble table.

00:13:24 Speaker_08
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 have you guys been doing since Commando?

00:13:42 Speaker_15
Clearly not going to the gym. I just have to say everyone in this episode is going to do their own Schwarzenegger 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.

00:13:54 Speaker_15
Anyway, they settle in and start rewriting the film Commando style.

00:13:59 Speaker_04
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 Schwarzeneggerized into like this thing that was bigger than life.

00:14:12 Speaker_08
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 go through it and try to find more of Arnold's vision.

00:14:30 Speaker_15
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.

00:14:44 Speaker_15
Everyone was working to realize Arnold's vision.

00:14:51 Speaker_08
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.

00:15:01 Speaker_08
And then I'm going to pick up his arm and punch him in his face with his old arm. And we would go, well, we like the buzzsaw part. Can we just do the buzzsaw part? So like our job is not to go and maybe that's not going to work.

00:15:18 Speaker_08
Our job is to make it work. And it doesn't help. that the next day he would say, OK, we're doing really well. We're really getting there. It's really coming to where I want it to be.

00:15:29 Speaker_08
So I gave it to Stephen and Stephen talked to me last night and he says, I have to really be careful. And this is what I want you to do. And again, I'm like, is Steven the guy at the gym? Who is Steven?

00:15:44 Speaker_08
And then suddenly as you go, you know, as he starts to sort of talk more, you go, he's talking about Steven Spielberg.

00:15:51 Speaker_15
This was beginning to look like a train nobody would step in front of. Back at TNT, the executives had a dim sense of what was going on.

00:15:59 Speaker_05
It's not, it's not how it's done now.

00:16:03 Speaker_15
Lori Pose-Manteer, one of the TNT executives.

00:16:06 Speaker_05
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 changed.

00:16:14 Speaker_15
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.

00:16:24 Speaker_15
Along with him would be ex-country music star Kris Kristofferson. Here's TNT's senior vice president of production at the time, Nick Lombardo.

00:16:32 Speaker_21
Even when they cast that, I thought, well, that is the weirdest cast I've ever heard of. I mean, the idea that these people fit together made no sense at all.

00:16:40 Speaker_21
I mean, Diane Cannon and Chris Christopherson in the same frame, it makes a Star is Born when he's holding Barbara Streisand look organic.

00:16:49 Speaker_15
So armed with one of the all-time weirdest, most stacked casts in the history of film, a comparatively small budget of $3 million, a slot on an upstart cable network, and a script based on a 1940s screwball comedy that's been punched up by two of the writers behind a big 80s blockbuster, an Austrian former bodybuilder, fresh off his repeat performance as a time-traveling cyborg, prepared to direct his first Christmas film.

00:17:14 Speaker_10
You don't, as a TV movie producer, ever get near anything this hot, ever.

00:17:19 Speaker_07
You just don't. I mean, 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, let Arnold direct this, you know. It's like, for us, $3 million was a lot of money.

00:17:34 Speaker_04
I don't know. I don't know. Whatever. I was like, oh my God.

00:17:38 Speaker_07
He wanted to prove that he could be a director.

00:17:41 Speaker_15
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.

00:17:59 Speaker_15
Because Arnold Schwarzenegger had never before directed a feature 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.

00:18:12 Speaker_15
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.

00:18:22 Speaker_15
The 1992 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.

00:18:34 Speaker_15
If you're looking for signs that this is not your grandmother's Christmas in Connecticut, the sight of Kris Kristofferson as Jefferson Jones sweating after busting out some chin-ups on a beam in his cabin is your first warning.

00:18:46 Speaker_15
A man on the television offers some brisk exposition while he cools down.

00:18:51 Speaker_17
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.

00:19:13 Speaker_15
They shot the blizzard on a soundstage. It's the moment Jefferson Jones becomes a hero, which is why he gets invited to be a guest of Elizabeth Blaine's for her Christmas special in Connecticut. It's got to look epic.

00:19:23 Speaker_15
It's got to have that Arnold Schwarzenegger feeling. Unfortunately, Terminator, this is not. Here's Jim Wilberger, director of production.

00:19:32 Speaker_07
Yeah, there's a scene where Kristofferson, 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 it because there wasn't that much set for that little hill.

00:19:51 Speaker_07
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. And that's just an experience.

00:20:05 Speaker_15
Schwarzenegger wanted Jeopardy, but this kinda 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.

00:20:20 Speaker_15
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.

00:20:28 Speaker_15
The bulk of 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, and the issue of his trailer.

00:20:42 Speaker_10
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 up and everything.

00:20:52 Speaker_10
But when you got inside, it was literally like you had just walked into like the Greystone mansion.

00:20:57 Speaker_07
You know, it's probably almost three times as wide as a normal trailer. And that 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.

00:21:16 Speaker_15
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.

00:21:26 Speaker_15
Namely, he had chosen one of the hardest genres for his first major directing foray. 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.

00:21:37 Speaker_15
With his big personality cast, low budget, short timeline, and hastily rewritten script, Schwarzenegger had an excess of chaos and a minimum of control.

00:21:46 Speaker_15
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 partway through the movie.

00:21:59 Speaker_14
Actually, before I moved to Colorado, I lived in Chicago. I grew up there. Taught comparative literature at the University of Virginia.

00:22:08 Speaker_03
Really?

00:22:09 Speaker_14
I got offered tenure and head of the department, and it's what I thought I wanted. But I met being caged in by concrete and crowds for the rest of my life.

00:22:19 Speaker_15
This is, I'm pretty sure, the only time in the entire film Jefferson Jones's past as chair of the University of Chicago's comparative literature department is mentioned.

00:22:28 Speaker_15
And I love Kris Kristofferson, but most of the rest of his performance veers between stiff and oddly sexually charged.

00:22:36 Speaker_07
when he starts smearing the pine sap on her neck. It's just kind of transcendently weird. Yeah, well, not to mention his two times he's like staring at her butt, you know, up close.

00:22:51 Speaker_15
There's an extensive shot of that.

00:22:53 Speaker_03
Bet you can't buy that at Bloomingdale's.

00:22:59 Speaker_15
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.

00:23:13 Speaker_15
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.

00:23:24 Speaker_15
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.

00:23:32 Speaker_15
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.

00:23:45 Speaker_15
And because it's so well-executed in the original film, we believe they're falling in love in this totally implausible moment.

00:23:53 Speaker_13
Soap? Um, soap, uh, there. Oh. Oh, Roberto, she's eating the soap! What'll I do?

00:24:00 Speaker_01
What hurt her? They all do it.

00:24:01 Speaker_13
Oh, really? Oh, you'd make a wonderful father, Mr. Jones. You're, uh, you're not married yourself by any chance, are you?

00:24:11 Speaker_01
No, cards are stacked against me, I guess. Every time I meet a girl I like, it turns out she's already married.

00:24:17 Speaker_13
Oh, that's too bad.

00:24:19 Speaker_15
Now this also happens in the Arnold Schwarzenegger version.

00:24:23 Speaker_14
Maybe we should finish up for her.

00:24:24 Speaker_03
Finish up what?

00:24:26 Speaker_14
The bath.

00:24:27 Speaker_03
You know what? I just had the most wonderful idea. How would you like to bathe her?

00:24:32 Speaker_18
Me?

00:24:32 Speaker_03
Sure! I think it'd be fun for you. Here.

00:24:35 Speaker_15
What happens next is the greatest travesty in the history of bath time.

00:24:40 Speaker_15
It's as if you gave two aliens a baby and said, give this a bath, not realizing that on the planet they're from, not only are there no babies or baths, but actually there's not even water.

00:24:49 Speaker_07
Uh, what do you remember about that? Well, some of that was improvised.

00:24:55 Speaker_15
What happens is they just drench the baby in shampoo, and then they barely wash any of it out. On the bath scale, it's two rubber duckies out of 10. But the premise of the scene is that Jefferson Jones is crushing it.

00:25:07 Speaker_07
It was pretty hilarious, I thought, and also very clumsy. And they really gooped up the kid's hair, my God.

00:25:15 Speaker_10
I don't know, I'm sure the prop guy put it too much shampoo.

00:25:19 Speaker_03
Here's some soap, sweetie. Here's the soap, here's your duck.

00:25:23 Speaker_04
That's a director thing. I mean, that is a flat-out director fail. I mean, that right there.

00:25:28 Speaker_15
Like, retake the scene.

00:25:29 Speaker_04
A hundred percent. 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.

00:25:36 Speaker_03
She sure likes that. You're awfully good at that for a bachelor, you know? You sure you don't have a whole slew of kids hidden somewhere?

00:25:41 Speaker_14
I nursed a couple of bear cubs till their mother came back.

00:25:45 Speaker_03
This is better than bear cubs.

00:25:47 Speaker_14
Can you see her beauty?

00:25:49 Speaker_15
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.

00:26:00 Speaker_15
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.

00:26:07 Speaker_07
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.

00:26:18 Speaker_05
I remember the day I was there, they were filming that scene where chaos erupts, you know, and the tree falls down and all that. We had to do that scene quite a number of times.

00:26:29 Speaker_05
It was as chaotic as the scene is, but behind the scenes, it was even more so.

00:26:34 Speaker_21
It's a little like opening a bologna factory for cultural, you know? It's sort of like, what's going on in there? Nothing good. Nothing good. Don't ask anything.

00:26:47 Speaker_15
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.

00:26:59 Speaker_15
Not least of all because they never lost sight of just how improbable it all was.

00:27:04 Speaker_08
And then in the middle of all this is Arnold running around going, you know, Move the camera over here. Do this over here. Let's go do this. No, I think it could be 10 times funnier. Come on. So there's Arnold's voice just bellowing out.

00:27:22 Speaker_08
And that was the other thing that I really remember was that while this is happening, while we're making this little tiny movie, he is in theaters with Terminator 2. And it's doing numbers that no one has ever seen before.

00:27:44 Speaker_08
And we were on set when it crossed $500 million. But when you're standing next to the guy who's the star of that movie, and his major concern is whether or not, is it in focus, forehead, let's go.

00:28:02 Speaker_15
The forehead thing, you're not the first person to bring that up. Several people mentioned to me that Arnold Schwarzenegger's favorite put-down was to call someone a forehead.

00:28:13 Speaker_15
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.

00:28:22 Speaker_17
Put your hands where I can see them. You're both under arrest. Oh, come on! Come on, you foreheads. Get them up. You what?

00:28:30 Speaker_15
This is actually a big part of why I love this movie. It has a kind of free jazz improvisatory 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.

00:28:43 Speaker_15
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.

00:28:55 Speaker_15
For the film buffs in the crew, it was a dream come true just to work with him, or with a legend like Tony Curtis.

00:29:02 Speaker_10
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 as much as possible.

00:29:12 Speaker_15
After 20 days of shooting, the film wrapped. They had a party at Arnold Schwarzenegger's restaurant. It was around Christmas time, and they all got sweatshirts with the name of the film on the front.

00:29:23 Speaker_07
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, but he used the word, you forehead.

00:29:42 Speaker_15
Later, Jim was kind enough to send me a photo of the sweatshirt. It said, on the back, MORE SNOW YOU FOREHEAD. There's my Schwarzenegger impression. With the film in the can, post-production and premiere has loomed. That's after the break.

00:30:08 Speaker_15
Before we get to the premiere of Arnold Schwarzenegger's 1992 Christmas in Connecticut remake, I want to tell you about something that happened earlier this year.

00:30:17 Speaker_02
Thank you all for coming.

00:30:18 Speaker_15
Thank you, Mitch, for coming down from Detroit.

00:30:21 Speaker_11
Yeah, thanks for having me here.

00:30:23 Speaker_15
Malcolm interviewed Mitch Albom live on stage at the 92nd Street Y. Albom is the best-selling author of some ungodly number of books, but he's probably most famous for Tuesdays with Maury.

00:30:35 Speaker_15
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.

00:30:45 Speaker_11
I tried the whole starving musician thing and I played in all the clubs around here on Monday nights.

00:30:52 Speaker_15
I was backstage at this event peering out. I hadn't read Mitch's book. I was up to something else.

00:30:59 Speaker_02
— Wait, we should probably do this before we get too far afield. On the music thing, if you've been talking so much, you will note that behind you, there is a corg.

00:31:08 Speaker_15
— At this point, the audience of people who had come that night to hear the author of Tuesdays with Morrie discuss the Holocaust noticed the electric piano behind him.

00:31:17 Speaker_02
— 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 1992 made-for-TV movie Christmas in Connecticut. Yeah.

00:31:39 Speaker_11
Can you see the recognition?

00:31:42 Speaker_15
Yes, it was my keyboard. And yes, I had planted it there.

00:31:47 Speaker_02
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.

00:31:59 Speaker_11
Well, I have to tell you the story of the song. Yeah, tell the story. Tell the story. OK. Uh, after I got out of the music business, I had a college roommate who went into the movie business.

00:32:10 Speaker_15
That would be Stanley M. Brooks, executive producer of Christmas in Connecticut. Stan and Mitch were roommates at Brandeis.

00:32:18 Speaker_11
And he knew that I was a musician, and he was making a movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger as a producer, and Schwarzenegger was the director of Christmas in Connecticut, the remake. Sounds about as good as it was, I think.

00:32:34 Speaker_11
And they needed it as a song because she played, Diane Cannon played the lead and she was a cook on TV or whatever.

00:32:43 Speaker_11
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 Schwarzenegger's movie.

00:32:59 Speaker_11
Can you do it? I said, well, when do you need it by? Thursday. It was Tuesday. 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?

00:33:15 Speaker_11
Because we don't have time to go find anybody else. And he listened to it. He said, I like the one with 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, uh.

00:33:31 Speaker_11
Now remember, it had to be about food. So it went, uh. Let's go to the kitchen. I got something fixing up.

00:33:54 Speaker_11
there inside the oven something warm and loving friends wouldn't laugh if they knew that it's true we're cooking for two here's the accordion bridge i was a soup for one girl leftovers every night oh but once i tasted your kisses i was dining by candle

00:34:17 Speaker_11
Here's a recipe for all the world to see. We take some me and some you. Let it stew. 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 done.

00:34:52 Speaker_15
They planned to play it over the credits. With the 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.

00:35:05 Speaker_10
First of all, TV movies don't have screenings. If we have a screening, it's like 10 people, and you're in a screening room somewhere.

00:35:13 Speaker_10
This was the big theater at the DGA, which holds, I don't know, 1,000 people, massive screen, and there's a huge red carpet and a press line.

00:35:24 Speaker_05
We had two theaters going, and they were filled.

00:35:28 Speaker_10
When I tell you that there's never been a television movie before or since that had a press line, and he's walking down, working the press, and you're like, you know, and I, you know, the TNT publicity person, this is Stan Bruce, the executive producer.

00:35:39 Speaker_10
Uh-huh. Arnold!

00:35:41 Speaker_15
According to Stan, Ivan Reitman and James Cameron were there, along with a whole slew of Hollywood royalty. The screening was in L.A. It was a media sensation.

00:35:50 Speaker_00
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.

00:35:57 Speaker_12
When you act and you see such talented directors as I've worked with, it inspires you.

00:36:06 Speaker_15
Janet Brownell, the screenwriter, was not having such a good night.

00:36:10 Speaker_04
— I remember sitting at the screening with my agent, and I was, like, crying. I mean, I was like, oh my god.

00:36:17 Speaker_15
— Why were you crying?

00:36:18 Speaker_04
— Because it's 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-themed sort of party, and just like, I need to get out of here.

00:36:30 Speaker_15
— But there was no putting the genie back in the bottle. TNT was running promos nonstop.

00:36:40 Speaker_12
I love romantic comedies.

00:36:42 Speaker_20
So I made one myself. Christmas in Connecticut. It's a romantic comedy. With all the trimmings.

00:36:49 Speaker_03
What in the world could possibly go wrong?

00:36:52 Speaker_20
Christmas in Connecticut. Directed by Arnold Schwarzenegger. You have a problem with that? A TNT-exclusive premiere, Monday, April 13th.

00:37:01 Speaker_15
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 Shriver reflected, he just does.

00:37:15 Speaker_15
He's a big one on don't think about it or talk about it, do it.

00:37:20 Speaker_10
And then he goes, I think we want to screen it again. That was too much fun. I go, okay. I go, I'll see if I can organize. He goes, no, I want to screen it in Washington with my friend Jack Valenti. So now we all fly to Washington.

00:37:33 Speaker_10
And it was a who's who of Washington. And it was senators and members of the cabinet. It was a seated dinner. And I remember my wife and I sit down. We wouldn't work in the room, so we sit last at our table.

00:37:49 Speaker_10
And the guy next to me has got like a dress uniform on. And I say, hey, Stan Brooks, I'm the producer. And he goes, hey, Oliver North.

00:37:56 Speaker_15
all over north of Iran-Contra fame. The film was a big hit in the Beltway. Suffice it to say, this made-for-television Christmas movie had an unusually big reception, but it also didn't really do much to establish Arnold Schwarzenegger as a director.

00:38:11 Speaker_15
The reviews were mixed.

00:38:14 Speaker_07
Well, I'm looking on IMDb right now, it's like, the rating is 4.8 out of 10, and they're not far off.

00:38:21 Speaker_10
We, nobody had any, oh my God, we're making It's a Wonderful Life.

00:38:26 Speaker_15
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?

00:38:33 Speaker_15
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.

00:38:42 Speaker_15
And at its core, like the best Christmas films, the story behind the movie is a story of love and friendship between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Stan Brooks. Two men brought together by a love of making movies.

00:38:57 Speaker_15
After the film, Stan and Arnold stayed in touch. Stan even moved into Arnold Schwarzenegger's office building. Their kids played football together. And even though they never made another movie together, their collaboration had one more act.

00:39:13 Speaker_15
Almost 10 years to the day from when Christmas in Connecticut began shooting, Arnold Schwarzenegger became the governor of California. At the time, there was a lot of hand-wringing over an issue called runaway production.

00:39:25 Speaker_15
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.

00:39:34 Speaker_15
And 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.

00:39:46 Speaker_15
So it only makes sense that he wanted Stan Brooks in his administration.

00:39:51 Speaker_10
So when he became governor, he was in about a year and he called me and he said, uh, how would you like to be on the film commission? And I said, well, that's a dumb idea. He goes, why? I said, well, because I don't shoot movies in California.

00:40:05 Speaker_10
I said, I'm like the worst person you could put on the film commission because I take my movies out of state. He goes, no, that's why we want you because we want to try and pass the taxpayer.

00:40:15 Speaker_15
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.

00:40:25 Speaker_10
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 wide. And that ended up being more powerful than any speech we could make in their office.

00:40:40 Speaker_15
The first tax credits passed in 2009. They've been renewed ever since. So back to our original question, why did Arnold Schwarzenegger direct this bizarre one-off Christmas film? I found my answer in a story Stan told me.

00:40:55 Speaker_10
He said to me one night, we finished around seven or eight, and he goes, what are you doing? And I said, I'm going home. He goes, Maria's making dinner. You want to come to the house? So, yeah.

00:41:06 Speaker_10
So we both jump in our cars and we drive to Pacific Palisades. And at that dinner, I remember Arnold turned to me and he says, I don't understand why you don't do big features.

00:41:17 Speaker_10
And I say, 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'm in the feature business, I'm lucky if I make one every other year, every three years."

00:41:30 Speaker_10
I go, I'm happy with my life. He goes, well, that's fantastic.

00:41:37 Speaker_15
This story really hit home 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.

00:41:47 Speaker_15
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 whatever it is you're making.

00:42:01 Speaker_15
So to close, let me just share one quote from the very last page of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. A passage about Scrooge after he's seen the light. Quote,

00:42:15 Speaker_15
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.

00:42:29 Speaker_15
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 Revisionist History, Happy holidays, you foreheads.

00:42:48 Speaker_15
See you in the new year. Revisionist History is produced by me, Ben Natafhafri, and Lucy Sullivan, with Nina Byrd-Lawrence. Our editor is Karen Shakerji. Fact-checking on this episode by Sam Russock, a resident Schwarzenegger fan.

00:43:08 Speaker_15
Original scoring by Luis Guerra. Mastering by Jake Korski. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. Special thanks to Sarah Nix, David Arnott, Linda Berman, Iris Grossman, and Scott Sassa. I'm Ben Nadafafri.

00:43:50 Speaker_02
Three, two, one. We wish you a merry Christmas.

00:43:58 Speaker_22
We wish you a merry Christmas. We wish you a merry Christmas. And a happy new year. That was the worst.

00:44:14 Speaker_16
What's the matter with you guys?