While I always watch the film on the DVD my wife bought me for Christmas years ago, Scrooged (1988) was on AMC this afternoon while I was doing cardio. I noticed a serious cut in the film that really bothered me. It concerned Ghost of Christmas Past (David Johansen) carrying Murray's Frank Cross in a visitation to his parental home as a child. After Frank's reminded of his unpleasant meat market butcher father's disregard on Christmas Eve, bringing a cut of veal home for a "present", and his pregnant mom's departure includes a goodbye to her little boy, adult Frank starts to well up and cry while Christmas Past seems assured of "Niagara Falls" due to this memory. In the AMC cut, once Frank cries, the "time counter" in Christmas Past's taxi clocks them forward to a Christmas Party held by television CEO, Lew Hayward (John Forsythe). There is an entire moment cut right after Murray's tears as Frank and Christmas Past leave the house. Frank says his tears weren't about that whole ordeal with an unloving, uncaring father and a mother unable to get the grumpy grouch to realize his error in attitude towards his son but the value of the veal dropped before him. Not only that, Frank runs through a list of life experiences Johansen's Ghost corrects him on...those experiences were from television shows featuring kids that Frank grew up watching as a child. I think that is an absolute shame that AMC would feel that such a conversation, which describes how Frank sunk himself in television to escape his rather unfulfilling, unsatisfying upbringing and domestic disappointment, was so easy to completely scissor out. And this cut of the film will be what many viewers watch this year. Sure, I get that time sometimes must be trimmed for advertisement purposes. But a whole dialogue scene just seems egregious.
***There was another edit that I recognized on replay. Frank wins some television award. In the unedited film, he leaves the award behind in a taxi. It shows us how insignificant accolades are. People like an old lady about to get in a cab, he just brushes aside and takes her spot like the asshole he is.***
- With every annual viewing, I still find Frank's treatment of the wonderfully sweet, Claire (Karen Allen) sometimes outright unsettling, especially when he tells her to just "fire" her charitable volunteers working for the homeless and those in need, and takes her to task for choosing those suffering instead of tending to him right then and there. Not to mention, how Frank just brushes her off in the past, re-emerges years later and expects Claire to just take him back.
- Murray yelling a lot and all out uncaged in his performance--Donner mentioned that Murray was difficult on set--can be more than a bit jarring and hard to take if in the wrong mindset. But considering this is based in corporate, capitalist New York, with "trips" to "hard times" New York when Murray wasn't a television mega-exec, that attitude does seem to fit.
- So Murray is a wealthy, abusive, demanding capitalist workaholic, looking to overwork his struggling single mom secretary (Andre Woodard; who does get in more than most others are allowed) and entire staff scared to confront him about his unreasonable expectations, including a horror show version of Scrooge that actually causes an elderly woman to croak...one does (Bobcat Goldthwait) challenge him over his version of Scrooge (which takes from horror and action films their extreme violence and unsavory elements) and is fired. There might be a reason why this film remains a cult classic today as it definitely calls to mind plenty of the corporate elite who are so narcissistic and self-serving they fail to see anyone as human beings.
- I wish I could remember what year that was when USA Network showed this during like a 24 hour period during a December Christmas season. I believe I might even have a recording of the film during that marathon. I'd have to deep dive in my VHS collection for it. That could take a while.
- I have tried to delay any serious Christmas viewings right now because Thanksgiving hasn't even happened (its still two weeks). But 2020 has been such a dumpster fire, I just need these films in my life.
- In other times in the past, the film's ending hasn't been quite as successful as it was this evening. I missed the opening of the film, but this AMC cut will not be my official viewing of "Scrooged". I can't feel right not watching it once in its unedited form. I'll always be curious as to how cool the rumored SE would have been had everything worked out for the film. We'll probably never know. I don't think Murray has ever went on record as being very proud of "Scrooged". This came right before "Ghostbusters II". Still "Scrooged" was a big hit. Murray had serious clout considering for four years he stepped away from film.
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