The 12 Screenings of ‘Christmas’

The movie “A Christmas Story” was originally released the week before Thanksgiving in 1983 and was out of the theaters by Dec. 16. Yet its stature has so grown in the 14 years since that the film is taking over TNT today.

Beginning at 5 p.m., “A Christmas Story” will be shown for 24 hours straight--a first for the cable channel. That means you’ll have 12 opportunities to catch it.

“This is a great holiday movie and it seemed like a nice thing to do,” says Lisa Mateas, senior vice president of programming for TNT. “Hopefully, TV isn’t people’s first priority on Christmas, but here are a bunch of opportunities to watch a really great movie that we think everybody likes and truly is a family classic in the best sense of the word.”

Set in the 1940s and adapted from humorist Jean Shepherd’s novel “In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash,” “A Christmas Story” stars Peter Billingsly as Ralphie, a young boy determined to get a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas, despite the fears of his mother (Melinda Dillon) that he’ll put his eye out. One of the most memorable scenes is Ralphie’s surreal visit to see Santa Claus at a local department store.

Whimsically narrated by Shepherd, the episodic comedy features Darren McGavin as Ralphie’s “Old Man,” an eccentric who is constantly battling an errant home furnace and has a strange infatuation with a lamp that looks like a a woman’s leg.

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“I guess it’s very flattering,” Bob Clark says of TNT’s marathon. He produced, directed and co-wrote “A Christmas Story.”

Clark says the reason the film didn’t have a better run originally wasn’t that it suffered poor box-office returns but rather that there was too much movie product for the holidays and not enough theaters. Mateas says its reputation has grown with repeated showings on the small screen.

“Just like ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ was made by television into a classic,” she says, “this is one which was certainly made by television exposure.”

Clark, who also directed “Porky’s” and “Tribute,” says he believes the movie has struck a chord because it deals with a “special time and special feeling. Shepherd’s material had the truth and heart in it.”

He says he realized just how popular it had become several years ago while he was sitting with his ex-wife and children in a New Hampshire restaurant.

“We thought we were hearing ‘A Christmas Story’ on TV,” Clark recalls. “We leaned over and, in the booth across from us, a family was acting out the movie--the entire movie. They sat at dinner and they played all the roles. We couldn’t believe it. It really astounded me.”