WWhat’s up, dudes? Is it a hallucination? No, it’s a funny Dickens classic with television executives, tiny antlers, and Bill Murray melting down on live TV! Chris and Kris from Christmas Time in the City join Gerry to talk Scrooged, the 1988 Richard Donner Christmas comedy that turns A Christmas Carol into a screaming, slapstick, late-’80s network nightmare. They get into Frank Cross, the ghosts, the production chaos, and why this movie is both deeply cynical and weirdly sincere.

Frank Cross is the ruthless president of IBC, a television network staging a live Christmas Eve broadcast of A Christmas Carol. Unfortunately, Frank is more interested in fear-based promos, ratings, and corporate power than goodwill toward men. After he fires Eliot Loudermilk for questioning a violent commercial and brushes off his old flame Claire, Frank is visited by the ghost of his dead mentor, Lew Hayward, who warns him that three spirits are coming to save him from becoming the same kind of lonely, unloved creep.

Of course, those spirits are not exactly the polite, candlelit ghosts of a Victorian parlor. The Ghost of Christmas Past is a cigar-smoking cab driver who drags Frank through his lonely childhood and lost love. The Ghost of Christmas Present is a gleefully violent fairy who clocks him with a toaster and shows him the people his selfishness has hurt. Finally, the Ghost of Christmas Future gives Frank a terrifying glimpse of Claire gone cold, Grace’s son institutionalized, and Frank himself headed for a very lonely cremation. Naturally, Frank crashes his own live broadcast, apologizes to everybody, reunites with Claire, and leads the whole studio in “Put a Little Love in Your Heart.”

Network ghosts? Check. Bobcat with a shotgun? Got it. Carol Kane committing holiday assault with household appliances? Definitely! So grab your antlers, cue the live broadcast, staple the little mouse ears on, and join us for this totally rad trip through Scrooged!

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