Half the fun of Scrooged (1988)
is seeing which dead star will pop up next in the movie: Robert Mitchum – that’s
right! Buddy Hackett – indeed! Miles Davis – no, shit! And there’s plenty more
where that comes from – and by-gawd the Solid Gold Dancers!
So much has already been written about Scrooged, which turns 30 this year, but here are some ponderable tidbits for your Freak Show viewing:
- David Johansen is a blast as the taxi-driving, Bobcat-booze-snagging Ghost of Christmas Past. But his former bandmate in the New York Dolls, Arthur “Killer” Kane, had fallen far from the limelight when he saw Johansen in his Scrooged role while watching television. In his excellent 2005 documentary about Kane, New York Doll, Greg Whiteley uses Johansen’s appearance in Scrooged to frame Kane’s trip to rock bottom and subsequent recovery and reunion with the New York Dolls. It goes something like this: Kane sees Johansen in Scrooged; he get incredibly drunk on Peppermint Schnapps; he assaults his wife; his wife leaves him; he jumps out of his apartment window, leaving him alive but with permanent damage to his body; he converts to Mormonism and goes to work at a Mormon library, where he is loved; more things happen; Morrisey says, “Hey, the New York Dolls should reunite”; and the New York Dolls reunite. Sadly, Kane would die just a few weeks after the reunion shows in 2004.
- Screenwriters
Mitch Glazer and Michael O’Donoghue adapted Scrooged for the screen from Charles Dickens’ oft visited A Christmas Carol. Most famous for
his work on Saturday Night Live
and the cult spoof, Mr. Mike’s Mondo Video, O’Donoghue was a major meanie about the finished
movie. He is quoted in The Big Bad
Book of Bill Murray, calling Scrooged
a “piece of unadulterated, unmitigated shit.” “The only good thing is that
big checks came out of Scrooged,
which allowed me to get a home in Ireland,” says O’Donoghue, who died in
1994.
- As I
mentioned earlier, Scrooged is juiced
on star
power, and I’m not just talking about Mary Lou Retton as
Tiny Tim. Thunderbird
wine plays a prominent
part thanks to Anne Ramsey, who passed
away the same year. And lucky you, the
word is again Thunderbird!
