Why a grown-up Ralphie decided to make a sequel to A Christmas Story
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"You'll shoot your eye out!"
Peter Billingsley has been told that — by reporters, by strangers approaching him on the street — more times than he can count. "The truth is that Ralphie's really never left me," he confesses to EW while chatting about his new movie, a long-awaited follow-up to the 1983 cult classic A Christmas Story.
Billingsley, who rose to fame as a child star in the 1980s and has since become a cherished part of many families' Christmas viewing traditions, has been here the whole time, working in Hollywood as a producer. In fact, he and his producing partner Vince Vaughn (yes, that Vince Vaughn) have been behind a slew of Christmas movies, including Elf and Four Christmases.
But for his latest project, Billingsley decided it was finally time to metaphorically dust off the glasses and the pink bunny suit and return to the character that made him a household name when he was only 12. A Christmas Story has had a few sequels over the years, but none of them featured Billingsley (he confesses he hasn't seen them), so when he and his producing partners started developing A Christmas Story Christmas four years ago, they realized it was now or never.
Yana Blajeva/Warner Bros.
"It's a cool opportunity to look at Ralphie as a dad, as a husband," Billingsley says. "And we did the math and were like, 'Oh, it's kind of around 1973 and that's a pretty cool time.' We really wanted the original cast to come back. That was a timing thing. A lot of those buckets had to line up for us, and then you've got to say, 'We've got to go, or Ralphie is going to age out of this; he'll be Grandpa Ralphie.'"
Billingsley, who also produced A Christmas Story Christmas (on HBO Max now), is excited for audiences to return to this world. Before its streaming launch, we called him up to chat about getting the gang back together, re-casting his mother, and why every good family comedy needs a little tragedy.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Why, after almost 40 years, did you decide it was time to make a sequel?
PETER BILLINGSLEY: It was a little 'now or never.' We've been developing this movie for close to four years, and one of the things that was really fortunate was to have the resources to build the original house. We built 11 houses around the Parker family house, including the Bumpus house. We needed the right resources. But we also needed a little caution, a little being really sober about the approach and wanting to get it right. You don't want to mess it up or just revert back to a bunch of callbacks. A couple of criteria for those jobs is that you have to love the original. You really got to love it, not just like it. And you've got to want to protect it.
Yana Blajeva/Warner Bros.
You've spent the majority of your adult life working as a producer. Was it intimidating to step back into being the lead of a movie?
I think the last time I was the lead of a movie was when I starred in The Dirt Bike Kid in 1985. It's been a minute. I've had the good fortune to be best friends and producing partners with Vince Vaughn, and we've done stuff that I've cameo'd in throughout the years. He's a producer on this and we spoke with him a lot about it. He's very supportive. He said, 'You know that's never left you, it's in you. You can jump into this easily.' As both a producer and a friend, he gave me a lot of confidence.
Ralphie is a relentless guy. In the original, everyone's telling him no, Santa's kicking him in the face. He's just getting up, dusting off, and moving on. He's not going to stop trying to convince people to give him this BB gun. I love that quality. That's a good quality in an adult and in a protagonist. You want your protagonist to be relentless in pursuit of whatever his goal is. And he's a dreamer. I always say he's a dreamer and a nightmarer. He has visions of how he wants things to go and how they can go horribly wrong. That's relatable, if we're honest with ourselves. We all fantasize about the improvements we'd want or how we'd like things in life to go, and also some fears that we have. Those were the early pillars that I grabbed onto. I did rewatch the original a lot. You get in that balance where you don't want to be mimicking the things you did as a kid, but you want to be trying to channel him. Since he never left me, it took a minute, but he got right back in there.
I love that you went back and rewatched the original.
Over and over. We watched it over and over to be like, "See how they did that? Let's not make the mistake of not handling it like this." For example, not everyone is super nice to each other. It's okay to be a little mischievous. It's okay to allow the characters to be a bit flawed. That's what makes them real.
Yes. I've always loved that this family doesn't feel Disney-fied.
Exactly. That's exactly the word that I use. Because people ask me, "Why does this movie resonate?" Because it's a real family, man. By the same token, it's also not quite the super dark, indie, the "Oh, no, don't open that family door." It's not that family, but it's also not the Bradys or Disney-fied, as you said. It's real. The dad gets a little hot. The mother is overburdened. The brothers are at each other's throats. It's like, "Yep, that's my family."
Yana Blajeva/Warner Bros.
It's so wonderful to have much of the original cast return. How challenging was that? Surely, not all of them have been acting for the past 40 years?
Yes and no. And that didn't matter to us. They are these characters and we wanted them to come back. Fortunately, they all wanted to come back. What was really fun was thinking about, Okay, well what's Ralphie like as a dad, but what's Randy like? His little brother. It's been nearly 40 years, what's Scott Farkus been up to? What are Flick and Schwartz up to?' Being able to create dynamics that feel familiar, that those actors can step back into, but also an opportunity to use your imagination in terms of what these characters had become. You just couldn't imagine anyone else playing those roles.
Who was the hardest to track down?
The good news is that we had such a good experience on the original that everyone kept in touch. I've seen all the guys throughout the years. We've never been able to all be in the same place at the same time. So that was pretty cool. When we finished construction on the last house on the street — and we built 11 of them — we got that final coat of paint on. We're starting to blow snow for the next night's work. I looked around, and I was like, Oh, my gosh, we're here. And I called them I said, "You guys got to get down here right now. Just get out of the hotel, get over here." They came to set and got out of the van and were like, "Whoa, we're back." It's been 39 years, but having the sets be really replicating that detail helps you step right back into that role and feel like, Man, I am right back where things started.
Melinda Dillon, who played Ralphie's mom in the original movie, is is still with us but no longer acting. What made Julie Hagerty the right fit? Did Melinda have any input as to who would be taking on her role?
Melinda, as you say, has retired from acting and wished us the best in our pursuits. I had spoken to her about this. Julie has such an unbelievable comedic sense of timing. She has also the heart of the mother as a person and as an actress. Julie's been in a lot of very cool, very big movies. So, there was no sense of intimidation to come in and take on the role that someone else had played. What I love about Julie is this was her instinct from day one. She wanted it to feel familiar but wanted to make it her own. She also had the luxury of it being thirty years later. People evolve. So with that character being much later, she really made it her own. I've always loved the relationship with Ralphie and his mom in the first one. It was really great to be able to work with with Julie in this and allow her to make it her own but still feel that love. One of the relationships I love is the relationship with Erinn Hayes, who plays my wife. It's very real, that mother-in-law, daughter-in-law relationship. They love each other, but there's a little bit of competitiveness between them as well.
Yana Blajeva/Warner Bros.
The original movie is based on the writings of Jean Shepherd. Here, Ralphie is trying to become a writer. So, how much are you still turning to Shepherd's work in this story?
Whether Ralphie is autobiographical or at least inspired by a lot of Jean Shepherd's own childhood days and his experiences growing up, we were very inspired by that and wanted to make A Christmas Story Christmas an origin story to A Christmas Story. That was something that we really wanted to give a purpose to making the sequel and to the movie. We optioned a lot of Jean's other books for this movie. A lot of the words and phrasing in the voiceover that you hear and some of the dialogue that you hear is taken directly from his books, so Jean is very much directly a part of this movie. We're able to have his voice and get his words in it, which was something that early on I said, "I don't want to do this if we can't do that."
Ultimately, this is the story about your first holiday without a loved one. How challenging was it to thread that needle of having that humor and nostalgia in there, but also making something so moving?
It was definitely challenging. Some of the powers that be were very nervous of the ability to thread that needle. One thing that we pointed to is that nearly every Pixar movie, and certainly a lot of the original Disney movies and some of the new ones, do begin with something tragic like that happening. They seem to be able to get through those with a great sense of humor, so you want to navigate it carefully. But it gives great stakes to the world and to this Christmas in particular for Ralphie. The old man was such a part of Ralphie's life. The original was very much a coming-of-age story, a mythic tale of a little boy starting to beginning to grow up. This movie wanted very much to be a mid-life coming-of-age, to have a similar trajectory throughout. Ralphie has this idea of wanting to be this writer, but he's in no way pushing around where he should be looking for that. That gave me a good sense of direction to say, "Hey, that really worked in the first one. It is a coming-of-age film. The second one needs to feel like this." Ralphie is once again at a crossroads in his life and ready to break through a barrier to the other side.
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