Ralphie's Gibberish Rage Against Scut Farkus In A Christmas Story Was Actually Scripted
Bob Clark's 1983 holiday classic, "A Christmas Story," has become a traditional watch for countless people across the globe. Based on Jean Shepherd's semi-fictional anecdotes in his 1966 book "In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash" and set during the winter of 1940, "A Christmas Story" is arguably one of the most recognizable Christmas films ever made. Ralphie's pink bunny pajamas, Flick licking a frozen flag pole, the constant chant of "you'll shoot your eye out," the secret Ovaltine commercial, and of course, "the soft glow of electric sex gleaming in the window" from the old man's leg lamp have all become Christmas cultural staples of the holiday season.
Since 1997, TNT has been airing a 24-hour marathon dubbed "24 Hours of 'A Christmas Story,'" which means plenty of people have watched the film so many times, it's not unlikely that someone could recite any random line from the script from memory. I'll fully admit that I'm known to recite, "I like 'The Wizard of Oz' ... I like the Tin Man," in a nasally voice whenever stuck waiting in line at the store, much to my wife's chagrin. "A Christmas Story" is littered with quotable moments, but one of the most memorable scenes is the hardest to imitate — the fight between Ralphie Parker and Scut Farkus.
Finally fed up with Farkus' bullying on an already crummy day, Ralphie snaps and sticks up for himself by beating the proverbial brakes off him. In between punching Scut's yellow teeth in, he goes on a Yosemite Sam-like rant of swearing insults. Ralphie's tirade sounds like a flurry of gibberish, but as actor Peter Billingsley said on an episode of the "A Cinematic Christmas Journey" podcast, the whole rant was scripted.
'It was very, very hard to learn'
"A Cinematic Christmas Journey" is a new podcast created by Vince Vaughn and hosted by Peter Billingsley and Nick Schenk, looking to explore, according to the show's official description, "the nostalgia of classic holiday films while answering the question — why do people love holiday movies so much?" In the episode focusing on "A Christmas Story," Billingsley confessed that Bob Clark looked to Jean Shepherd to write Ralphie Parker's speech of swears during his big fight with Scut Farkus.
"They wanted me to be able to repeat it to cover it from numerous angles, and it was on note cards." Billingsley said that the swearing speech was given to him only two weeks before they shot the scene, and remembers, "it was very, very hard to learn." It makes complete sense that the scene was scripted, considering how many different camera setups are shown during the fight, but Billingsley's delivery has such an effortless "stream of consciousness" sound to it, it sounds like improvisation.
Billingsley even remembers how the rant starts, after having had to say it so many times. "The beginning was 'craden rat, stinkin, hot-poffin snogger,' and then I don't remember the rest." So while Ralphie was absolutely letting Scut Farkus know exactly what he thought of him, Shepherd was kind enough to not make the child actor list the seven words you can't say on television.