And no, that is not the story of my sex life.
I love the Christmas season. One of the things I love about it is the opportunity to see the traditional “Christmas movies”. Miracle on 34th Street ranks up among them.
There have been four versions of this movie produced since the original was done in 1947. The original, one in 1959, one in 1974 and the most recent-done in 1994. Of those movies, only two are worth discussing: the original with Edmund Gwynne and Natalie Wood and the 1994 movie starring one of the actresses I long have been desiring of having all night sex with, Elizabeth Perkins.
For a long time I was disdainful of the 1994 version-being a 34th street purist ( e.g. I need to watch it in the original black and white). Over the last few years I have started to warm to the 1994 movie. For one thing-and I hate to admit it- I think Richard Attenborough makes an equally charming Santa Claus. I am also intrigued at how the 1994 movie twists some of the drivers of the plot on its head-and does some things differently.
Did the original movie need to be remade? No. But the source material is good enough that any number of professionally done remakes would still be entertaining. If this 1994 version had been the original, people would already be crowning it with the classic tag.
But it is not the original. It strikes a decent compromise by keeping many of the original story elements, deleting some, updating others, and making additions. There are parts of the original I like and parts of this one I like too. There are also parts of the latter movie I thought were silly. That said, in the latter film I especially like the ” I believe campaign” with the people of New York turning out to support Kris Kringle-even though there is no rational reason to do so.
However, I can’t help but think and shudder at how the movie would be remade today. Santa would show up in New York and when the plot comes to a head we would have had Glenn Beck already at the chalk board showing us how Santa was a socialist plot to destory America. Sean Hannity would have been on TV, decrying the fact that Santa was fully prepared to give undeserving freeloaders the wealth that others had earned. After which he would have advised everyone within earshot that what the people needed to do was pull themselves up by their bootstraps and to give the f*cker a tax cut. He , at that point, would have started crying about how much he loved America-and how distressed he was at the number of folks who were willing to turn their hopes over to a “godless charlatan in a big red suit”.
The ACLU would have sued Coles for child molestation-and Fedex would have demanded equal competition for the delivery rights. Kramer would have been on CNBC decrying Mr. Bedford’s wasteful investment in a Cartier diamond-while on another network, Judge Harper would have been receiving a “worst person” award form Keith Olberman. All of that would have missed the real point of the movie-but would be in sync with the Tea Bag nation.
Anyway, I like both movies and no longer consider themselves in competition with each other. I think one should watch the original 1947 version first-just to get the story details down. ( The post office sending the Dear Santa mail is more accurate IMHO)-then watch the 1994 version to gain an appreciation of how story telling improved in 50 years. And to recognize that there are some things we can all join together on.
Now if I can just find out when the Grinch is on……….
P.S. I believe!