Easy Riders, Singing Muppets: Part 2.
"How's a guy like Santa Claus -- who's built like a dump truck -- how's he gonna come down all those skinny little chimneys, huh? That's like trying to get a basketball into a ginger ale bottle!" – Oscar the Grouch.
Holiday double-bill suggestion (aside from the usual Black Christmas/Silent Night, Deadly Night): pair EOJ-BC with another frequently-overlooked, late-'70s masterwork: Christmas Eve on Sesame Street (1978, Jon Stone).
There's too many highlights to cite here, but I'll note four:
1. Carol Spinney delivers some of his most powerful Big Bird work. Feathers decidedly ruffled by Oscar's query, BB goes on a frantic quest (with Kermit's help) to determine how Santa's gonna shimmy his plump frame down the Sesame St. chimneys. BB ends up emotionally spent, culminating with a migration to the roof on Christmas Eve, icicles dangling from his beak. A distraught Patty (Debbie Chen: Then and NOW!) eventually lures a sleepy, frozen BB back down into the warmth of Gordon and Susan's present-filled apartment, where the True Meaning of Christmas (singing with racially-diverse friends) is revealed.
2. The Sesame take on "The Gift of the Magi": Bert sells his paper clip collection to buy Ernie a soap dish for Rubber Ducky; Ernie sells–you guessed it!–Rubber Ducky to buy Bert a cigar box for his paper clips. Mr. Hooper (Will Lee in top form) saves the day.
3. Grover and this hilarious kid.
4. Snuffleupagus in a Santa hat.
After you're done with the EOJ-BC / CEoSS screening, grab a quart of egg nog, fire up the old Atari, and run over some otters in GTA: Frogtown Hollow. [There's a secret code -- Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, then hit that red button 666 times -- that allows you to machine gun the entire audience during the talent show and drown Ma Otter while she's doing laundry in the river.]
Hark!, here's some Sesame Christmas tracks:
"Sesame Street Christmas Overture"
"We Wish You A Merry Christmas"
"Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas"
Bonus Muppetverse track: "Fraggle Rock Theme" [Fraggles in "outer space" in 2006!]
Comments
I enjoyed reading this article! I now have the movie on VHS and I first saw it on TV in 1994 I believe, so it had been a while! It was nice to see the picture of Debbie Chen "now". How did you get ahold of that?
The only thing I was a little dissapointed with in the movie is that Patty did not go up to the roof with Big Bird!
Take care!
Michael Ducker
Posted by: Michael | August 1, 2006 3:14 PM