A Very Terminator Christmas

What happens when the biggest movie star in the world directs the smallest Christmas film on basic cable? A holiday miracle. Today on the show: The never-before-published, extremely bizarre story of the making of ‘Christmas in Connecticut’... the remake. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:09Speaker 00

  This is Jacob Goldstein. When you're a business owner interested in expanding to new markets, there's a lot to consider and countless questions to answer before making the call. The most important one being, are you ready? That's where ChatGPT comes in. Give it a goal, add your files, and ask Chat to help you map out different scenarios for the future of your business. So when growth is on the table, you've got an expansion plan ready to implement. Get started today at ChatGPT.com.

• 0:37Malcolm Gladwell?

  This is a paid message from Apple Card. It's easy, I think, in the hubbub of our lives to lose track of our spending. We pay the bills and move on and don't understand the deeper patterns in our spending, the many different decisions we're making knowingly or unknowingly. You have to understand where your money is going in order to make better decisions about it. That's one reason Apple Card stands out to me. You can earn unlimited daily cash back on every purchase you make. I also appreciate the simplicity. Apple Card doesn't have annual, late, or over the limit fees. No fees ever. There's even an option to open a high-yield savings account through Apple Card. And while I haven't done it yet, if I do, my daily cash can grow automatically over

• 1:21Malcolm Gladwell?

  time without any extra effort. When you better understand your spending habits, it's easier to make your money work harder for you. Apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval, variable APRs for Apple Card range from 17.74% to 27.99% based on credit worthiness. Rates as of October 1, 2026. Existing customers can view their variable APR in the Wallet app or card.apple.com. Savings is available to Apple Card owners, subject to eligibility. Savings and Apple Card by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City Branch, Member FDIC. Terms and more at applecard.com.

• 2:08Malcolm Gladwell?

  Christmas is one week away. And how am I celebrating? With restraint and circumspection. In the Gladwell family, we do a mid-century modern Christmas. Spare, elegant, minimalist. Lots of the baby Jesus in a tasteful Scandinavian leather and rosewood manger. No Santa, no reindeer, no elves. Not so for my colleague, Ben Nadaf Hafrey. The Gladwells impose a dollar limit on gifts like price controls in some socialist state. The Nadaf Hafreys spend months thinking of what to get one another. The Gladwells buy a tree at the last moment and would be happier if we could just move the whole operation outside around the Douglas pine in the backyard.

• 2:51Malcolm Gladwell?

  Ben's family has a tree, a little model village covered in snow, and his father's vintage electric train set, plus a little metal tree with ornaments that's up year round. So when I told Ben that I had never watched It's a Wonderful Life, he was stunned. Then he reached out to me, as the good Samaritan did to the traveler lying bereft by the side of the road. "How could this be?" he asked me gently. Because, as you can imagine, for the Nadaf Hafreys, It's a Wonderful Life is a sacred text. Then Ben told me another story about what in his mind is an even more important Christmas tale.

• 3:31Malcolm Gladwell?

  A story that he regards as the apotheosis of all Christmas movies. A story not in a film, but of the making of a film. Welcome to Revisionist History. I'm Malcolm Gladwell. Today on our show, Ben Nadaf Hafrey relays, for the very first time in history, the truly screwy story of the making of the oddest Christmas film of all time. Trust me, you have never heard this story before, ever. Nor have you ever seen the movie in question, unless you're a member of the extended Nadaf Hafrey clan, or were recently incarcerated in a state that limits prisoner streaming access to obscure television movies of the 1990s.

• 4:16Malcolm Gladwell?

  But when you listen to what follows, you're going to ask yourself the same question I asked myself when Ben first told me this story. How did I miss this?

• 4:33Speaker 02

  Unlike Malcolm, I am a great lover of Christmas movies. Every year, as soon as Thanksgiving's over, I'm firing up The Bishop's Wife, Miracle on 34th Street, or It's a Wonderful Life. And then, there's my favorite Christmas movie, a little less famous: the 1945 romantic comedy, Christmas in Connecticut. I've watched it pretty much every year since I was little. Barbara Stanwyck plays a magazine columnist who's famous for entertaining on her grand Connecticut farm. She's known as a great cook. It's the end of World War II, and her magazine's publisher has an idea for a great feature. She'll host a returning war hero for Christmas on her farm. There's just one problem: it's all a lie. She doesn't live in Connecticut.

• 5:18Speaker 02

  She lives in a tiny apartment in New York, and she has no clue how to cook.

• 5:24Speaker 03

  My farm? Oh, yes, my farm! Oh, my farm.

• 5:28Speaker 04

  And he wants to see you right away to arrange it.

• 5:30Speaker 03

  Arrange it? Are you crazy? Where am I going to get a farm? I haven't even got a window box.

• 5:34Speaker 04

  That's just it. We'll have to stall him off. You know what a stickler he is for the truth. If he ever finds out we've been making all this up, he'll fire the both of us.

• 5:42Speaker 02

  Chaos ensues. It's a classic screwball comedy and a total delight. But the thing I really want to tell you about in this episode is what happened after I discovered, quite by accident, that there was a remake of this favorite Christmas movie of mine. An action-packed, star-studded, joke-filled, really very different version of the original, made for TV and directed by none other than Arnold Schwarzenegger. A kind of shocking twist, if you ask me. I mean, why would The Terminator take on Christmas in Connecticut? So I did what any good Christmas fiend would do. I talked to a dozen people about something that happened 30 years ago for way too many hours to get the real story.

• 6:27Speaker 02

  And I discovered in the process what I have come to regard as the greatest Christmas tale of all time.

• 6:35Speaker 05

  I've told this story many times. I've never told it on the record. It's a, it's a big story. So if you've got the time, I will, I will tell it to you.

• 6:43Speaker 02

  That's Stan Brooks. In the early 1990s, he was an independent made for TV movie producer.

• 6:49Speaker 05

  So I'm developing movies and a friend of mine goes and gets the job at TNT. And I make the very first movie for him.

• 6:57Speaker 02

  TNT launched in 1988 at the start of the cable television revolution. Then as now, cable was expensive, but it was growing. The whole game was trying to raise awareness to get people to sign up. And with channels running 24/7, there was a lot of space to fill, which led to a boom in made for TV movies. Stan's first film on TNT was a big success, so he got another bite at the apple.

• 7:22Speaker 05

  And he calls me, he goes, what do you want to do next? So they said, in a million years, would you ever let me do a remake from the MGM library? Because that's what Ted owned. And he said, yes, just pick one.

• 7:32Speaker 02

  Christmas movies always do well, and there is one Stan loved, Christmas in Connecticut.

• 7:38Speaker 05

  And I know the Barbara Stanwyck movie. And so I said, well, this could be a good one. It was right as Martha Stewart was exploding. I thought, well, what if this is Martha Stewart? What if she's on TV and has an empire and it's all fake? And so they loved that take. And so off we went to the races.

• 7:55Speaker 02

  He got a writer to work up the script.

• 7:58Speaker 06

  In television, it was, it was great because you could get your stuff made.

• 8:02Speaker 02

  This is Janet Brownell, one of the all time great bards of TV movies. Writer on Eloise at the Plaza, 12 Dates of Christmas, Days of Our Lives, and the uncredited rewrite of Tim Allen's The Santa Claus, all Brownell. She loved the original Christmas in Connecticut.

• 8:18Speaker 05

  It is.

• 8:19Speaker 06

  It's a charming, and in fairness to me, the original draft was very close.

• 8:25Speaker 02

  Janet wrote the draft of the script for Stan's remake.

• 8:28Speaker 05

  And we turn it in and they go, this is good. This is good. We need a Christmas movie. So now I have, and I'm, I have a, a nice little Christmas programmer and nothing more.

• 8:39Speaker 02

  It's the middle of 1991. In Hollywood, Janet and Stan's low budget television movie remake isn't really the sort of thing to get people talking, but they're making progress. He's got the old school movie star Diane Cannon cast in the lead as the Martha Stewart character and an offer out to a director. And then one day, his phone rings. His assistant says it's a big Hollywood agent named Lou Pitt.

• 9:06Speaker 05

  Now, understand, I'm in the television movie business. These guys are never calling me. So if they do call me, it's never good. And, uh, and he, he gets on the phone and he says, uh, do you have a director for your Christmas in Connecticut movie? And I said, uh, well, almost, yeah, we have an offer out. And he said, okay, well, if he doesn't say yes, I want you to consider my client. And I go, okay, I'm waiting to hear the name. And I go, who? And he goes, Arnold Schwarzenegger. And I burst out laughing.

• 9:40Speaker 07

  Oh, he was, he was totally shocked.

• 9:43Speaker 02

  Lou Pitt, legendary agent to Arnold Schwarzenegger.

• 9:46Speaker 05

  That's hilarious, Lou. No, seriously.

• 9:48Speaker 07

  Is this a joke? Is this a joke?

• 9:51Speaker 05

  He goes, no, seriously. And I go, what? I'm Schwarzenegger's not doing a Christmas movie for TNT?

• 9:58Speaker 02

  To be clear, Arnold had just finished shooting James Cameron's epic Terminator 2.

• 10:03Speaker 00

  Astellabista, baby.

• 10:06Speaker 02

  Terminator 2 is the one where Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a killer cyborg sent from the future to protect young John Connor from a different killer cyborg also sent from the future to kill him. As you can imagine, such a plot necessitates a lot of elaborate production work. It was movie making on a scale that was practically unheard of, especially in Los Angeles. The production actually changed the course of a river to shoot high-speed chases in the extensive flood control channels of Los Angeles. Anyways, back to Stan and Lou, the agent.

• 10:40Speaker 05

  I go, Lou? Why on earth would Arnold Schwarzenegger? He says, well, here's why.

• 10:45Speaker 02

  Arnold Schwarzenegger was 44 years old. He had two kids. Nobody is an action hero forever. Maybe it was time to explore some alternatives.

• 10:55Speaker 05

  And so he was kind of tired after T2 and he said to Blue, I would like to direct a movie.

• 11:03Speaker 07

  The directing thing was kind of out of the box, out of left field.

• 11:07Speaker 05

  And they said, well, okay, we'll put together a big feature. He goes, no, no, no. I want low risk. If I do a terrible job, I don't want anyone to be upset. I don't want a big budget. And I want it to be family friendly because I don't want anything to be controversial. Nothing. I just want something very simple. And the only one that fit the bill was Christmas in Connecticut. So I said, okay, I'll, I'll, I'll call you if this guy passes. And I hang up the phone and I'm forced like hearts jumping out of my, I go, what?

• 11:36Speaker 07

  And, and I said, yeah, I'm serious. I read it. I think he'd like it. So get me an offer.

• 11:42Speaker 02

  Stan gets the green light from the executives at TNT. There's some negotiating and they offer Schwarzenegger a hundred thousand bucks. And then one night Stan's phone rings.

• 11:53Speaker 05

  I pick it up and I hear Sam Brooks, yes, please hold for Arnold Schwarzenegger. And now I'm serious, I can see my heart beating. And he goes, hello? I go, uh, Arnold, are you the guy with this Christmas script? I said, yes. He says, it's fantastic. I'd love to direct. I go, okay. He goes, but I have to shoot in Los Angeles. I have to do it in these days. And then goes, and I have some notes on the script. I go, okay. Can you be here in an hour? And I go, uh, no. He goes, can you be on Wednesday? I go, yes, I could be there on Wednesday.

• 12:29Speaker 02

  He goes over for a meeting at Arnold's offices in Santa Monica.

• 12:34Speaker 05

  So now I'm going to be on Wednesday and you walk in and there's this giant lobby and the first thing you see is the exoskeleton, the metal thing with the red eyes from Terminator. So there's no doubt. I mean, the posters are up on the wall, but there's no doubt when you walk in and you see this seven foot thing. You go, oh crap, I know where I am. My heart's beating. And I go in and he's in his office, which is massive. And it's like, you know, size of a football field. And he's on one, you walk in on this end and he's on the other end. So you gotta walk past all the, you know, the props and stuff. And then he's at a big, huge desk with a big giant chair and behind him.

• 13:18Speaker 05

  Is a bookshelf, but with all of the Mr. Universe awards, not film stuff. It's all his bodybuilding awards. And I remember we were going through the script and I said, hey, I want to use the restroom. And he pointed to me by putting up his bicep and pointing it like this. His bicep comes, he goes, this dot what? And I go, was that just to show me your bicep? And he goes, I have to show you know, the guns whenever I can. And I was really, okay, so this guy definitely has a sense of humor by himself.

• 13:52Speaker 02

  They sit down. Arnold has notes on the script.

• 13:56Speaker 05

  He, he wanted more humor and a little more jeopardy. And so we, we added in like this, like sort of big action sequence at the beginning where he rescues the kid.

• 14:06Speaker 02

  And all of a sudden Janet Brownell, who wrote the original script for the remake is looking at a very different movie.

• 14:15Speaker 06

  The whole thing took this like 180 degree turn at that point. It was just like, what is, and Stan just did not want to lose him. And I'm like, okay, I truly don't see this, but if it gets a film green light, I don't give a shit.

• 14:34Speaker 02

  Arnold wants them to get someone else to come in and punch up the script.

• 14:37Speaker 05

  He wanted more humor. And as it happened, my best friend in the world had written Commando.

• 14:43Speaker 02

  Commando, the 1985 action film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, which the critic from the LA Times referred to as a quote, gory crowd pleaser and a glorified fireworks display.

• 14:55Speaker 05

  And Arnold loved them and said, you think you could get him to do a comedy pass?

• 15:01Speaker 02

  Jeff Loeb, the friend who wrote Commando, gets hired to do the rewrite with his writing partner.

• 15:06Speaker 07

  We walk in, he's sitting on a, on a white couch. Baby, it's literally the length of the biggest limousine you've ever seen in your life. And he has his feet up on this white porcelain marble table. He's got a big cigar in his mouth and scripts all around him. And he doesn't say hello. He doesn't introduce himself. He doesn't do any.

• 15:30Speaker 05

  He just, the first thing out of his mouth is, so what have you guys been doing since Commando? Clearly not going to the gym.

• 15:42Speaker 02

  I just have to say, everyone in this episode is going to do their own Schwarzenegger impression, which is good because even though we couldn't land an interview with him, I feel like he's here with us in spirit. Anyway, they settle in and start rewriting the film Commando style.

• 15:56Speaker 06

  So that's where things kind of went off the rails for me personally, because it's like, okay, this is becoming a completely different thing. It just Schwarzeneggerized into like this thing that was bigger than life.

• 16:09Speaker 05

  I mean, she just did an amazing job. We didn't make any real big structural changes. That's all hers. But a dialogue pass and, and go through it and try to find more of Arnold's vision.

• 16:27Speaker 02

  They start burning through the script. A big job for any director is giving notes on the rewrites. Schwarzenegger was calling in help from his director friends, including legendary comedy director Ivan Reitman, the guy who did Ghostbusters. Everyone was working to realize Arnold's vision.

• 16:44Speaker 05

  And you have to understand that on, on Commando, he would do this all the time. He would go, I have a great idea. Listen, this is what I want to do. When the guy comes at me, I want to throw a buzzsaw at him and it chops off his arm. And then I'm going to pick up his arm and punch him in his face with his old arm. And we would go, well, we like the buzzsaw part. Can we just do the buzzsaw part? So like, our job is not to go, I think that's not going to work. Our job is to make it work. And it doesn't help that the next day he would say, okay, we're doing really well. We're really getting there. It's really coming to where I wanted to be.

• 17:26Speaker 05

  So I gave it to Steven and Steven talked to me last night and he says, I have to really become.

• 17:31Speaker 02

  And this is what I want you to do. And again, I'm like, is Steven the guy at the gym? Is Steven, who is Steven? And then suddenly, as you go, you know, as he starts to sort of talk more, you go, he's talking about Steven Spielberg. This was beginning to look like a train nobody would step in front of. Back at TNT, the executives had a dim sense of what was going on.

• 17:56Speaker 03

  It's not, it's not how it's done now.

• 17:59Speaker 02

  Laurie Posmentier, one of the TNT executives.

• 18:03Speaker 03

  Whether you're famous or not as a director, that doesn't happen to let somebody go and change things as much as we're changed.

• 18:11Speaker 02

  Meanwhile, they've cast the rest of the film. Joining Diane Cannon would be Hollywood screwball legend Tony Curtis, probably best known for playing opposite Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot. Along with him would be ex-country music star Kris Kristofferson. Here's TNT's senior vice president of production at the time, Nick Lombardo.

• 18:29Speaker 07

  Even when they cast it, I thought, well, that is the weirdest cast I've ever heard of. I mean, the idea that these people fit together made no sense at all. I mean, Diane Cannon and Kris Kristofferson in the same frame, it makes A Star is Born when he's holding Barbra Streisand look organic.

• 18:45Speaker 02

  So armed with one of the all-time weirdest, most stacked casts in the history of film, a comparatively small budget of $3 million, a slot on an upstart cable network, and a script based on a 1940s screwball comedy that's been punched up by two of the writers behind a big 80s blockbuster. An Austrian former bodybuilder, fresh off his repeat performance as a time-traveling cyborg, prepared to direct his first Christmas film.

• 19:10Speaker 05

  You don't, as a TV movie producer, ever get near anything this hot, ever. You just don't. I mean, we're, we're all a little nervous about the whole thing, you know, because it's like you're playing with matches and, you know.

• 19:24Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah, that's Arnold direct us, you know, it's like for us, $3 million was a lot of money. I don't know. I don't whatever. It was like, oh, yeah. He wanted to prove that he could be a director.

• 19:38Speaker 02

  And everyone was about to find out whether or not he could.

• 19:48Speaker 00

  This is Jacob Goldstein. With ChatGPT, you can do more than get answers. You can get things done. When you're running a business and looking to expand, you need a clear view of the landscape before making any decisions. ChatGPT can help you prepare. Connect your Google Drive, point to relevant files and reports, and ask it to research competitors, industry forecasts, and market signals. It can turn the findings into a strategic deck in your team's template that you can review before presenting to your leadership team. Growing a business is ambitious, and ChatGPT can help you do it with confidence. Get started today at chatgpt.com.

• 20:25Malcolm Gladwell?

  This is a paid message from Apple Card. It's easy, I think, in the hubbub of our lives to lose track of our spending. We pay the bills and move on and don't understand the deeper patterns in our spending, the many different decisions we're making knowingly or unknowingly. You have to understand where your money is going in order to make better decisions about it. That's one reason Apple Card stands out to me. You can earn unlimited daily cash back on every purchase you make. I also appreciate the simplicity. Apple Card doesn't have annual, late, or over the limit fees. No fees ever. There's even an option to open a high-yield savings account through Apple Card.

• 21:06Malcolm Gladwell?

  And while I haven't done it yet, if I do, my daily cash can grow automatically over time without any extra effort. When you better understand your spending habits, it's easier to make your money work harder for you. Apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval, variable APRs for Apple Card range from 17.74% to 27.99% based on credit worthiness. Rates as of October 1st, 2022. 26. Existing customers can view their variable APR in the Wallet app or card.apple.com. Savings is available to Apple Card owners subject to eligibility. Savings and Apple Card by Goldman Sachs Bank,

• 21:48Malcolm Gladwell?

  USA, Salt Lake City Branch, Member FDIC. Terms and more at applecard.com. These days, there are more people than ever telling you how to manage your health. And we've all gone down an internet rabbit hole, exploring the latest health trends. Your social media feed is packed with wellness advice, telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeart Media's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube,

• 22:33Malcolm Gladwell?

  talks to health influencers, real people, and most importantly, doctors, to separate fact from fiction. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 22:53Speaker 02

  Christmas in Connecticut: The Remake began filming about two months before Christmas in Los Angeles. Because Arnold Schwarzenegger had never before directed a feature film, though let the record show, he had directed an episode of the TV show Tales from the Crypt, the production arranged for things to film more or less in the order they happen in the film. There's a lot less to keep track of continuity-wise that way. But this also posed a problem. One of the anxieties of adapting a great work of art is figuring out how to make it your own. The 1992 made-for-TV remake of Christmas in Connecticut does this immediately by introducing its male lead, a park ranger named Jefferson Jones, mid-workout routine in his mountain cabin. If you're looking for signs that this is not your grandmother's Christmas in Connecticut,

• 23:38Speaker 02

  the sight of Kris Kristofferson as Jefferson Jones, sweating after busting out some chin-ups on a beam in his cabin, is your first warning. A man on the television offers some brisk exposition while he cools down.

• 23:53Speaker 04

  This should be the biggest storm to hit the Rockies in the last decade. More than four feet of snow is anticipated to blanket the area in the next 48 hours.

• 24:00Speaker 02

  The phone rings. Another ranger is calling to tell Jones a kid has gotten lost in the blizzard. He has to go out and find him. This is the fabled action sequence Schwarzenegger had requested. They shot the blizzard on a soundstage. It's the moment Jefferson Jones becomes a hero, which is why he gets invited to be a guest of Elizabeth Blaine's for her Christmas special in Connecticut. It's got to look epic. It's got to have that Arnold Schwarzenegger feeling. Unfortunately, Terminator, this is not. Here's Jim Willberger, director of production.

• 24:32Speaker 05

  Yeah, there's a scene where Christopherson, you know, suddenly has rescued the kid and you see him roll down this little hill of snow, which was shot on stage. And trying to make more of, more of it because there wasn't that much set for that little hill and, you know, and then suddenly you see all the people rush in to rescue. You know, I mean, this was just not good blocking. And, and that's, that's an experience.

• 25:05Speaker 02

  Schwarzenegger wanted jeopardy, but this kind of looks like a snowball fight gone awry. Jones stumbles over a very small hill, holding a child that looks like it might be a mannequin. He's groaning and yelling, but his lips aren't moving. So tough start. Luckily though, a lot of the film is set inside Elizabeth Blaine's fake Connecticut house, where she's shooting a Christmas special in celebration of Jones. The bulk of production happened there. So the whole crew is set up at a house in South Pasadena for the real work. This introduced Arnold to the second problem of directing. Actor ego management and the issue of his trailer.

• 25:42Speaker 05

  Arnold's trailer was like a house on wheels. It was literally like you'd look at it from the outside and you'd say, wow, that's got all kinds of pop outs and the roof went up and everything. But when you got inside, it was literally like you had just walked into like the Greystone Mansion. You know, it's probably almost.

• 26:00Speaker 03

  Three times as wide as a normal trailer. And that was the length that became the issue. Diane comes in and she says, "Why is Arnold's trailer bigger than my trailer? Nobody's supposed to have a bigger trailer than me."

• 26:16Speaker 02

  Diane Cannon was the star of the film, but she was maybe realizing that this production was all about the director. Schwarzenegger, though, was dealing with other problems. Namely, he had chosen one of the hardest genres for his first major directing foray. Screwball comedy is like dancing on the head of a pin. It thrives on chaos, but it has to be a kind of controlled chaos. With his big personality cast, low budget, short timeline, and hastily rewritten script, Schwarzenegger had an excess of chaos and a minimum of control. I mean, you have one somewhat disgruntled actress portraying fake Martha Stewart and another who's a macho park ranger, but who, for no apparent reason, relays this backstory partway through the movie.

• 26:59Speaker 03

  Actually, before I moved to Colorado, I lived in Chicago. I grew up there. Taught comparative literature at the university for ten years. Really? I got offered tenure and head of the department. And it's what I thought I wanted. But that's being caged in by concrete and crowds for the rest of my life.

• 27:19Speaker 02

  This is, I'm pretty sure, the only time in the entire film Jefferson Jones is passed as chair of the University of Chicago's Comparative Literature Department is mentioned. And I love Kris Kristofferson, but most of the rest of his performance veers between stiff and oddly sexually charged.

• 27:36Speaker 03

  When he starts smearing the pine sap on her neck.

• 27:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, that, it's, it's, it's just kind of transcendentally weird.

• 27:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, not to mention his two times he's like staring at her butt, you know, up close.

• 27:51Speaker 02

  There's an extensive shot of that.

• 27:54Speaker 03

  I bet you can't buy that at Bloomingdale's. You're right.

• 27:59Speaker 02

  So you've got two characters who really just barely hang together. And then you have to direct them in tightly choreographed, zany sequences that have got to feel plausible, yet also hilarious. For instance, the scene with the baby. Remember, in Christmas in Connecticut, Elizabeth is a total fraud. She doesn't know how to cook, it's not even her house in Connecticut, and she's got this fake staged family with her, including a fake baby. She had to keep up appearances for the sake of her column. In the original film, there's a lovely scene where she and Jefferson Jones give her fake baby a bath. She, a supposed domestic goddess, is meant to bathe her child, which she suspiciously has no clue how to do. He steps in and does it for her like a total pro.

• 28:43Speaker 02

  It's part of why she falls in love with him. And because it's so well executed in the original film, we believe they're falling in love in this totally implausible moment.

• 28:53Speaker 04

  Soap?

• 28:53Speaker 03

  Soap, there.

• 28:57Speaker 03

  Oh, Roberto, she's eating herself, what'll I do?

• 28:59Speaker 04

  Well, it hurt her, they all do it.

• 29:01Speaker 03

  Oh, really?

• 29:04Speaker 03

  You'd make a wonderful father, Mr. Jones. You're, you're not married yourself by any chance, are you?

• 29:11Speaker 04

  No, cards are stacked against me, I guess. Every time I meet a girl I like, it turns out she's already married.

• 29:16Speaker 03

  Oh, that's too bad.

• 29:19Speaker 02

  Now, this also happens in the Arnold Schwarzenegger version.

• 29:23Speaker 04

  Maybe we should finish up for her.

• 29:24Speaker 03

  Finish up what?

• 29:26Speaker 04

  The bath.

• 29:27Speaker 03

  You know what? I just had the most wonderful idea. How would you like to bathe her?

• 29:32Speaker 04

  Me?

• 29:32Speaker 03

  Sure, I think it'd be fun for you, here.

• 29:35Speaker 02

  What happens next is the greatest travesty in the history of bath time. It's as if you gave two aliens a baby and said, "Give this a bath," not realizing that on the planet they're from, not only are there no babies or baths, but actually, there's not even water.

• 29:51Speaker 02

  What do you remember about that?

• 29:53Speaker 07

  Well, some of that was improvised.

• 29:56Speaker 02

  What happens is they just drench the baby in shampoo, and then they barely wash any of it out. On the bath scale, it's two rubber duckies out of 10. But the premise of the scene is that Jefferson Jones is crushing it.

• 30:07Speaker 07

  It was pretty hilarious, I thought, and also very clumsy.

• 30:11Speaker 05

  And they really gooped up the kids' hair. My God. I don't know. I'm sure the block I put in too much shit.

• 30:19Speaker 03

  Here's some soap, sweetie. Here's the stuff.

• 30:23Speaker 06

  That's a director thing. I mean, that is a flat out director fail. I mean, that right there. Like retake the scene. Hundred percent. And there probably were three or four versions of that. That's the one he chose. You know, it's not like that was the only one.

• 30:36Speaker 03

  She sure likes that. You're awfully good at that for a bachelor, you know? You sure you don't have a whole slew of kids hidden somewhere?

• 30:43Speaker 03

  I nursed a couple of bear cubs till their mother came back. This is better than bear cubs. Can you see her beauty?

• 30:49Speaker 02

  It's like on SNL when the actors break and laugh. When Elizabeth's like, I'm not sure if we got all the soap out. And Jefferson's like, well, we didn't. That's the true reaction, and it must be improvised. But then they go back to the scripted version where Jones is doing a great job. Most of the people on set have some kind of moment like this. You know, the forest with the snow and the sleigh that comes along. And there's even one shot I noticed where you can see the wheels

• 31:16Speaker 06

  under the sleigh. I remember the day I was there, they were filming that scene where chaos erupts, you know, and the tree falls down and all that. We had to do that scene quite a number of times. It was as chaotic as the scene is, but behind the scenes, it was even more so.

• 31:35Speaker 00

  It's a little like, like opening a baloney factory for cultural, you know, it's sort of like, what's going on in there? Nothing good. Nothing good. Don't ask anything.

• 31:47Speaker 02

  So it was kind of hectic on set. And yet, I think you can hear in people's voices how much they love telling this story. Pretty much across the board, this was a happy memory for the people I spoke to. Not least of all, because they never lost sight of just how improbable it all was. And then in the middle of all this is Arnold running around going, you know.

• 32:09Speaker 05

  Move the camera over here. Do this over here. Let's go do this. No, I think it can be ten times funnier. Come on. So there's Arnold's voice, you know, just bellowing out. And that was the other thing that I really remember was that while this is happening, while we're making this little tiny movie, he is in theaters with Terminator 2. And it's doing numbers that no one has ever seen before. And we were on set when it crossed

• 32:49Speaker 05

  $500 million. But when you're standing next to the guy who's the star of that movie, and, and his major concern is whether or not, is it in focus forehead? Let's go.

• 33:02Speaker 02

  The forehead thing. You're not the first person to bring that up. Several people mentioned to me that Arnold Schwarzenegger's favorite put down was to call someone a forehead. This actually made it into the movie when Elizabeth Blaine and Jefferson Jones get pulled over by the cops mid sleigh ride. The one where you can see the wheels. This happens.

• 33:22Speaker 07

  Put your hands where I can see them. You're both under arrest.

• 33:25Speaker 03

  Oh, come on. Come on, you foreheads. Get them up. You what?

• 33:30Speaker 02

  This is actually a big part of why I love this movie. It has a kind of free jazz improvisatory quality to it. It's oddly self referential and also very sweet. It's like how you can hear in someone's voice when they're smiling. That's how this movie feels. Because even at the risk of himself being labeled a forehead who couldn't direct the movie, Arnold Schwarzenegger was showing up every day and putting in his all. For the film buffs in the crew, it was a dream come true just to work with him or with a legend like Tony Curtis.

• 34:02Speaker 05

  You know, it was a trip to Oz that I knew was short-lived, but it was something I was gonna, you know, take in and enjoy as much as possible.

• 34:12Speaker 02

  After 20 days of shooting, the film wrapped. They had a party at Arnold Schwarzenegger's restaurant. It was around Christmas time and they all got sweatshirts with the name of the film on the front. And on the back was a picture of Arnold with a Santa hat on, wearing sunglasses.

• 34:33Speaker 02

  And saying something about, I can't remember the full thing, but he used the word "you forehead." Later, Jim was kind enough to send me a photo of the sweatshirt. It said on the back, "More snow, you forehead." There's my Schwarzenegger impression. With the film in the can, post-production and premiere has loomed. That's after the break.

• 35:06Speaker 00

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• 35:44Malcolm Gladwell?

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• 36:28Malcolm Gladwell?

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• 37:11Malcolm Gladwell?

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• 37:51Speaker 02

  Before we get to the premiere of Arnold Schwarzenegger's 1992 Christmas in Connecticut remake, I want to tell you about something that happened earlier this year.

• 37:59Malcolm Gladwell?

  Thank you all for coming. Thank you, Mitch, for coming down from Detroit. Thanks, yeah, thanks for having me here.

• 38:06Speaker 02

  Malcolm interviewed Mitch Albom live onstage at the 92nd Street Y. Albom is the bestselling author of some ungodly number of books, but he's probably most famous for Tuesdays with Maury. He and Malcolm were there to talk about his new novel about the Holocaust, The Little Liar. They were warming up with some Mitch backstory about his time as a musician in New York.

• 38:28Malcolm Gladwell?

  I tried the whole starving musician thing, and I played in all the clubs around here on Monday nights.

• 38:34Speaker 02

  I was backstage at this event peering out. I hadn't read Mitch's book. I was up to something else.

• 38:42Malcolm Gladwell?

  Wait, we should probably do this before we get too far afield on the music thing. If you've been talking so much, you will note that behind you. Yeah. There is a corg.

• 38:52Speaker 02

  At this point, the audience of people who had come that night to hear the author of Tuesdays with Maury discuss the Holocaust noticed the electric piano behind him.

• 39:01Malcolm Gladwell?

  And we have a request that you play one of your most famous compositions. Which, you know what I'm talking about. I'm talking about Cooking for Two, from the legendary Arnold Schwarzenegger 1992 made-for-TV movie, Christmas in Connecticut. Yeah. Can you? See the recognition?

• 39:25Speaker 02

  Yes, it was my keyboard, and yes, I had planted it there.

• 39:29Malcolm Gladwell?

  Mitch, no, no, this, for some reason, I have no idea, my colleague Ben is obsessed with this and really wanted us to do this, and I thought, how great would it be for you to sing one of our songs? Just like, just give us a little taste. Well, I have to tell you the story of the song. Yeah, tell us the story. Okay, so, after I got out of the music business, I had a college roommate who went into the movie business.

• 39:52Speaker 02

  That would be Stanley M. Brooks, executive producer of Christmas in Connecticut. Stan and Mitch were roommates at Brandeis.

• 40:00Malcolm Gladwell?

  And he knew that I was a musician, and he was making a movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger as a producer, and Schwarzenegger was the director of Christmas in Connecticut, the remake.

• 40:13Malcolm Gladwell?

  Sounds about as good as it was, I think. And, and they needed, it's a song, because she played, Diane Cannon, played the lead, and she was a cook on TV or whatever. So the song had to be about food, and they wanted to use Harry Connick's Recipe for Love or something like that, but they couldn't afford it.

• 40:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:35Malcolm Gladwell?

  So Stan calls me and says, "We need a song that's kind of upbeat about food for Arnold Schwarzenegger's movie. Can you do it?" You know, I said, "Well, one of you..."

• 40:43Speaker 07

  You need it by Thursday, you know. It was Tuesday, you know. So I just went and wrote a little song. And my wife is a singer, a fantastic singer. And I said, honey, can you sing this song? Because we don't have time to go find anybody else. And he listened to it and he said, I like the one with the girl.

• 41:06Speaker 07

  And that's how the song was chosen.

• 41:08Malcolm Gladwell?

  Yeah, yeah. I want you to play it. I really think you should.

• 41:12Speaker 07

  So it went, now remember it had to be about food. So it went.

• 41:25Speaker 07

  Let's go to the kitchen. I got something fixing appetizing and new. Here's a clue. We're cooking for two.

• 41:36Speaker 07

  They're inside the oven, something warm and loving. Friends would laugh if they knew that it's true. We're cooking for two. Here's the accord of the bridge. I was a soup for one girl. Leftovers every night. Ah, but once I tasted your kisses, I was dining by candlelight.

• 42:00Speaker 07

  Here's a recipe for all the world to see. We take some me and some you, then it's stew. We're cooking for two.

• 42:10Speaker 07

  I love you. We're cooking for two.

• 42:29Speaker 02

  That definitely ranks amongst one of the most embarrassing things I've ever.

• 42:34Speaker 02

  They planned to play it over the credits. With the Mitch album closing track in hand, Christmas in Connecticut was almost ready to debut. Most made-for-TV movies you just put out on television, but not this one.

• 42:47Speaker 05

  First of all, TV movies don't have screenings. If we have a screening, it's like 10 people. And you know, you're in a screening room somewhere like. This was the big theater at the DGA, which holds, I don't know, 1,000 people. Massive screen. And there's a huge red carpet and a, and a press line.

• 43:06Speaker 06

  We had two theaters going and they were filled.

• 43:10Speaker 05

  When I tell you that there's never been a television movie before or since that had a press line and he's walking down, working the press and like, you know, and I, you know, the TNT, the busy person, this is Stan Brooks, the executive producer. Uh huh. Arnold.

• 43:24Speaker 02

  According to Stan, Ivan Reitman and James Cameron were there, along with a whole slew of Hollywood royalty. The screening was in LA. It was a media sensation. Watch out Hollywood, there's a new director in town and he's used to making a big impact that is in front of the camera.

• 43:39Speaker 05

  When you act and you see such talented directors as I've worked with, it inspires you.

• 43:48Speaker 02

  Janet Brownell, the screenwriter, was not having such a good night.

• 43:53Speaker 06

  I remember sitting at the screening with my agent and I was like crying. I mean, I was like, oh my God.

• 43:59Speaker 02

  Why were you crying?

• 44:01Speaker 06

  Because I get so bad and my name is on this. My agent was very fast to get me a drink at that point. I just remember outside, there was kind of a Christmas themed sort of party and just like, I need to get out of here.

• 44:15Speaker 02

  But there was no putting the genie back in the bottle. TNT was running promos nonstop.

• 44:22Speaker 02

  I love romantic comedies, so I made one myself.

• 44:26Speaker 04

  Christmas in Connecticut. It's a romantic comedy. With all the trimmings. What in the world could possibly go wrong?

• 44:35Speaker 04

  Christmas in Connecticut, directed by Arnold Schwarzenegger. You have a problem with that? A TNT exclusive premiere, Monday, April 13.

• 44:44Speaker 02

  I don't know if you caught that, but the film came out in April, one week before Easter. As one review put it, quote, "Don't ask me why a Christmas movie is premiering in April." As his then-wife Maria Shriver reflected, "He just does." He's a big one on, don't think about it or talk about it, do it.

• 45:03Speaker 05

  And then he goes, I think we want to screen it again. That was too much fun. I go, okay. I go, I'll see if I can organize. He goes, no, I want to screen in Washington with my friend, Jack Blent. So now we all fly to Washington and, uh, and it was a, it was a who's who of, of Washington and it was senators and members of cabinet. It was a seated dinner. And I remember my wife and I sit down, we, we were working in the room. So we sit last at our table and the guy next to me has got like a dress uniform on. And I say, hey, Stan Brooks, I'm the producer. And he goes, hey, Oliver North.

• 45:39Speaker 02

  Oliver North of Iran-Contra fame. The film was a big hit in the Beltway. Suffice it to say, this made for television Christmas movie had an unusually big reception, but it also didn't really do much to establish Arnold Schwarzenegger as a director. The reviews were mixed.

• 45:56Speaker 05

  Well, I'm looking on IMDb right now. It's like the rating is 4.8 out of 10 and they're not far off. We, nobody had any, oh my God, we're making It's a Wonderful Life.

• 46:08Speaker 02

  I realize I've had a lot of fun with this movie and gun to my head, do I think it's good? No. But do I love it? Obviously yes. Because it's so totally weird and overcommitted to its bit, that it has a kind of joyfulness to it that honestly gets me in the Christmas spirit. And at its core, like the best Christmas films, the story behind the movie is a story of love and friendship between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Stan Brooks. Two men brought together by a love of making movies. After the film, Stan and Arnold stayed in touch. Stan even moved into Arnold Schwarzenegger's office building. Their kids played football together.

• 46:49Speaker 02

  And even though they never made another movie together, their collaboration had one more act.

• 46:56Speaker 02

  Almost 10 years to the day from when Christmas in Connecticut began shooting, Arnold Schwarzenegger became the governor of California. At the time, there was a lot of hand wringing over an issue called runaway production. Lots of states had started offering tax breaks to lure films into shooting somewhere other than California. It had become a real problem for Hollywood as an industry town. And this was one of the crises Schwarzenegger would have to face in his new role as governor. Now, the way people talked about his becoming governor was the same way they talked about his becoming a director. So it only makes sense that he wanted Stan Brooks in his administration.

• 47:32Speaker 05

  So when he became governor, he was in about a year, and he called me and he said, "How would you like to be on the film commission?" And I said, "Well, that's a dumb idea." He goes, "Why?" I said, "Well, because I don't shoot movies in California." He said, "I'm like the worst person you could put on the film commission because I take my movies out of state." He goes, "No, that's why we want to. Because we want to try and pass the tax period."

• 47:57Speaker 02

  Stan joined the California Film Commission. And over the next few years, he was a key part of lobbying efforts to pass the tax credits that would make it easier to film in California.

• 48:07Speaker 05

  It was a hard fight. And so I ended up making a short film, a short documentary film, where we interviewed some of the families that left and why. And that ended up being more powerful than any speech we could make in their office.

• 48:21Speaker 02

  The first tax credits passed in 2009. They've been renewed ever since. So back to our original question. Why did Arnold Schwarzenegger direct this bizarre one-off Christmas film? I found my answer in a story Stan told me.

• 48:36Speaker 05

  He says to me one night, we finished around seven or eight, and he goes, "What are you doing?" And I said, "I'm going home." He goes, "Maria's making dinner. You want to come to the house?" So, "Oh, yeah, yeah." So we both jump in our cars and we drive to Pacific Palisades. And at that dinner, I remember Arnold turned to me and he says, "You're a bad town. I don't understand why you don't do big features." And I said, "To be honest, I didn't get in the business to make big, famous movies. I got in the business to make movies. And I get to make two or three a year. If I'm in the feature business, I'm lucky if I make one every other year, every three years." I go, "I'm happy with my life." He goes, "Well, that's fantastic."

• 49:20Speaker 02

  This story really hit home for me because I get what that's like to just love making something, even a kind of improbably dense story about the making of the remake of a Christmas movie. It's like Stan said, "If you love making movies, or anything, it's just a gift to get to make more, even if they're maybe not the best, especially if it's clear how much fun you had making whatever it is you're making." So, to close, let me just share one quote from the very last page of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, a passage about Scrooge after he's seen the light. Quote, "Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heated them. For he was

• 50:04Speaker 02

  wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset. His own heart laughed." And that was quite enough for him. Maybe Stan and Arnold didn't make It's a Wonderful Life, but it seems to me like their own hearts were laughing. So, from all of us here at Revisionist History, happy holidays, you foreheads. See you in the new year. Revisionist History is produced by me, Ben Nattif Hafrin, and Lucy Sullivan, with Nina Bird Lawrence. Our editor is Karen Shakurji. Fact checking on this

• 50:47Speaker 02

  episode by Sam Russell, our resident Schwarzenegger fan. Original scoring by Luis Guerra, mastering by Jake Korski. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. Special thanks to Sarah Nix, David Arnott, Linda Berman, Iris Grossman, and Scott Sassa. I'm Ben Nattif Hafrin.

• 51:32Malcolm Gladwell?

  Three, two, one. We wish you a merry Christmas. We wish you a merry Christmas. We wish you a merry Christmas. Happy New Year.

• 51:53Speaker 02

  Dreadful.

• 51:54Speaker 06

  Oh my goodness.

• 51:55Malcolm Gladwell?

  That was the worst.

• 51:56Speaker 06

  I couldn't handle it.

• 51:57Malcolm Gladwell?

  What's the matter with you guys?

• 52:00Malcolm Gladwell?

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• 52:44Malcolm Gladwell?

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• 53:30Malcolm Gladwell?

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• 54:13Malcolm Gladwell?

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