Christmas in Connecticut

0:00There are moments in each of our lives that seem to change everything. an unexpected diagnosis, the sudden end of a relationship, the loss of a job. As our lives veer off course, it can feel like time is dividing into a before and an after. I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist, and my new book, The Other Side of Change, Who We Become When Life Makes Other Plans, is all about how we navigate these inflection points. The Other Side of Change pairs singular, real-life stories with scientific insights to help us find meaning in the tumult of change. What if we saw the hardest moments in our lives, not simply as something to endure, but as an opportunity to reimagine who we can be?

0:42I'm thrilled to share that Booklist gave The Other Side of Change one of its coveted starred reviews, saying, quote, It's impossible not to be moved. The Other Side of Change is out now. Get your copy today, wherever you like to buy books.

1:05Bushkin.

1:31epic episode from last year about Arnold Schwarzenegger directing a made-for-TV Christmas movie that goes wildly off the rails. And if you're thinking to yourself, what? This is what you brought me for Christmas? A rerun? Yes, I did. And if you keep listening, you'll find that my antipathy to Christmas runs very deep. What am I doing right now? Probably sunning myself in bokeh and informing my children that 12 days of Christmas is 11 days too many. What's Ben doing right now? Ask Norman Rockwell. But first, listen to this. Christmas is one week away. And how am I celebrating? With restraint and circumspection.

2:18In 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 Nadav Haffrey. The Glavos impose a dollar limit on gifts, like price controls in some socialist state. The Nadav Haffreys spend months thinking of what to get one another. The Glavos buy a tree at the last moment and would be happier if he could just move the whole operation outside around the Douglas Pine in the backyard. 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.

3:07So 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 Nedaaf Haffries, 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. 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.

3:48Welcome to Revisionist History. I'm Malcolm Gladwell. Today on our show, Ben Nadav Haffrey 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 Nadav Haffrey clan, or were recently incarcerated in a state that limits prisoner streaming access to obscure television movies of the 1990s. 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.

4:27How did I miss this?

4:36Unlike 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.

5:16There's just one problem. It's all a lie. She doesn't live in Connecticut. She lives in a tiny apartment in New York, and she has no clue how to cook. My farm? Oh, yes, my farm. Oh, my farm. And he wants to see you right away to arrange it. Arrange it? Are you crazy? Where am I going to get a farm? I haven't even got a window box. 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. 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.

6:00An 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 and i discovered in the process what i've come to regard as the greatest christmas tale of all time I've told this story many times. I've never told it on the record. It's a big story, so if you've got the time, I will tell it to you.

6:46That's Stan Brooks. In the early 1990s, he was an independent made-for-TV movie producer. 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. 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. And he calls me, he goes, what do you want to do next?

7:27So 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. Christmas movies always do well. And there was one Stan loved, Christmas in Connecticut. And I had known the Barbara Stan 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. He got a writer to work up the script. In television, it was great because you could get your stuff made.

8:05This 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. It is. It's a charming, and in fairness to me, the original draft was very close. Janet wrote a draft of the script for Stan's remake. And we turn it in, and they go, this is good, this is still being a Christmas movie. So now I have, and I have a nice little Christmas programmer and nothing more. 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.

8:50But 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.

9:09Now 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 he gets on the phone and he says, do you have a director for your Christmas in Connecticut movie? And I said, well, almost. Yeah, we may have an offer out. And he said, OK, well, if he doesn't say yes, I want you to consider my client. And I go, OK, I'm waiting to hear the name. And I go, who? And he goes, Arnold Schwarzenegger. And I burst out laughing. Oh, he was he was totally shocked. Lou Pitt, legendary agent to Arnold Schwarzenegger. That's hilarious, Lou. No, seriously.

9:52Is this a joke? Is this a joke? He goes, no, seriously. I go, well, I'm Schwarzenegger's not doing a Christmas movie for TNT. To be clear, Arnold had just finished shooting James Cameron's epic Terminator 2. Hasta la vista, baby. 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 moviemaking 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.

10:39Anyways, back to Stan and Lou, the agent. I go, Lou? Why on earth would Arnold Schwarzenegger, he says, well, here's why. Arnold Schwarzenegger was 44 years old. He had two kids. Nobody is an action hero forever. Maybe it was time to explore some alternatives. And so he was kind of tired after T2, and he said to Blue, I would like to direct a movie. The directing thing was kind of out of the box, out of left field. And they said, well, OK, 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.

11:25Nothing. I just want something very simple. And the only one that fit the bill was Christmas in Connecticut. So I said, okay, I'll call you if this guy passes. And I have the phone and of course, my heart's jumping out of my, I go, what? And I said, yeah, I'm serious. I read it. I think he'd like it. So get me an offer. Stan gets the green light from the executives at TNT. There's some negotiating, and they offer Schwarzenegger$100 ,000. And then one night, Stan's phone rings. I pick it up, and I hear, Stan Brooks, yes? Please vote for Arnold Schwarzenegger. And now, I'm serious, I can see my heart beating.

12:05And 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 and I have to do it in these days. And he goes, and I have some notes on the script. I go, OK, can you be here in an hour? And I go, no. He goes, can you be here on Wednesday? I go, yes, I can be there on Wednesday. He goes over for a meeting at Arnold's offices in Santa Monica. 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.

12:51So 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. It's like, you know, signs 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 is a bookshelf, but with all of the Mr. Universe awards, not film stuff. It's all his bodybuilding awards.

13:31And 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, clinic he goes it's not what and i go it was that just to show me your bicep and he goes i have to show you know the guns whenever i can and i really okay so this guy definitely has a sense of humor about himself they sit down arnold has notes on the script he will he wanted uh more humor and a little more jeopardy and uh so we we added in like this like sort of big action sequence at the beginning where he rescues the kid.

14:10And all of a sudden, Janet Brownell, who wrote the original script for the remake, is looking at a very different movie. The whole thing took this like 180 degree turn at that point. It was just like, what is happening? And Stan just did not want to lose him. And I'm like, OK, I truly don't see this, but if it gets a film green light, I don't give a shit. Arnold wants them to get someone else to come in and punch up the script. He wanted more humor. And as it happened, my best friend in the world had written Commando. 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.

14:59And Arnold loved them and said, if you think you could get him to do a comedy pass. Jeff Loeb, the friend who wrote Commando, gets hired to do the rewrite with his writing partner. We walk in. He's sitting on a white couch. Maybe 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 anything. He just, the first thing out of his mouth is, so what have you guys been doing since Commando?

15:42Clearly not going to the gym. 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. 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 Schwarzenegger-ized into, like, this thing that was bigger than life. I mean, she just did an amazing job. We didn't make any real big structural changes.

16:18That's all hers. But a dialogue pass and go through it and try to find more of Arnold's vision. 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. Now you have to understand that 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.

17:01And 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, maybe 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 want it to be. So I gave it to Steven and Steven talked to me last night and he says, I have to really be careful. 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?

17:44And 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. It's not how it's done now. Laurie Pose-Mantier, one of the TNT executives. Whether you're famous or not as a director, that doesn't happen to let somebody go and change things as much as were changed. 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.

18:24Along with him would be ex-country music star Chris Christofferson. Here's TNT's senior vice president of production at the time, Nick Lombardo. 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 Chris Christopherson in the same frame, it makes A Star is Born when he's holding Barbra Streisand look organic. 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.

19:05An Austrian former bodybuilder, fresh off his repeat performance as a time-traveling cyborg, prepared to direct his first Christmas film. You don't, as a TV movie producer, ever get near anything this hot, ever. You just don't. I mean, we were all a little nervous about the whole thing, you know, because it's like you're playing with matches. And, you know, oh, yeah, let's Arnold direct this, you know. It's like, for us,$3 million was a lot of money. I don't know. I don't know. Whatever. I was like, oh my God. He wanted to prove that he could be a director. And everyone was about to find out whether or not he could.

19:51There are moments in each of our lives that seem to change everything. An unexpected diagnosis, the sudden end of a relationship, the loss of a job. As our lives veer off course, it can feel like time is dividing into a before and an after. I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist, and my new book, The Other Side of Change, Who We Become When Life Makes Other Plans, is all about how we navigate these inflection points. The Other Side of Change pairs singular, real-life stories with scientific insights to help us find meaning in the tumult of change. What if we saw the hardest moments in our lives, not simply as something to endure, but as an opportunity to reimagine who we can be?

20:35I'm thrilled to share that Booklist gave The Other Side of Change one of its coveted starred reviews, saying, quote, It's impossible not to be moved. The Other Side of Change is out now. Get your copy today wherever you like to buy books.

21:16a 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, the sight of Chris Christopherson 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. In the last hour, experts predict this should be the biggest storm to hit the Rockies in the last decade.

21:56More than four feet of snow is anticipated to blanket the area in the next 48 hours. 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 Wilberger, director of production.

22:32Yeah, 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 it because there wasn't that much set for that little hill. And then suddenly you see all the people rush in to rescue. I mean, this was just not good blocking. And that's just an experience. 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.

23:18So, 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 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. 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.

23:57You know, it's probably almost three times as wide as a normal trailer. And that was the length that became the issue. If 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. 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.

24:37With 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. Actually, before I moved to Colorado, I lived in Chicago. I grew up there. Taught comparative literature at the University of Chicago. Really? I got offered tenure and head of the department, and it's what I thought I wanted. But I meant being caged in by concrete and crowds for the rest of my life.

25:19This 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 Chris Christopherson but most of the rest of his performance veers between stiff and oddly sexually charged when he starts smearing the pine sap on her neck yeah that it's just kind of transcendently weird yeah well not to mention his two times he's like staring at her butt you know up close there's an extensive shot of that I bet you can't buy that at Bloomingdale's You're ready. So you've got two characters who really just barely hang together.

26:02And 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.