Only Scrooge in ‘Scrooged’: Scrapping ‘A Christmas Carol’ in a Christmas Classic 

Posted on 03/28/2025 by ericmcclanahan

Hello, all. So, if you didn’t know, I’ve spent the past few years working towards a Bachelor’s Degree in English, and today I submitted my final assignment towards that goal: a Capstone Research Paper which I chose to write about the omission of the title “A Christmas Carol” from the 1988 film Scrooged. I was pleased with the final product so I thought I’d share. Enjoy.

Abstract 

The 1988 Holiday classic film Scrooged directed by Richard Donner, starring Bill Murray, and written by Mitch Glazer and Michael O’Donoghue is a “modern” retelling of Charles Dickens’ novella A Christmas Carol. Curiously, the words “A Christmas Carol” are never featured in the film, despite its status as a metacommentary on the novella’s repeated adaptation. The film features a misanthropic television executive named Frank Cross overseeing a production of Dickens’ classic while he, himself, is visited by spirits in an effort to turn his heart toward charity and compassion. The production within the context of the film is called Scrooge and never A Christmas Carol. The purpose of this research paper is to determine what factors led to the decision to omit the novella’s original title in its adaptation.  

Background information is provided about the creation of Dickens’ original novella, the many adaptations that have surfaced in the years since its creation, and the factors surrounding the ideation and production of Scrooged. Research strategies are examined and the literature unearthed and reviewed, concluding with the finding that the question has no definitive answer. The author presents their own interpretation of the phenomenon’s effect on the film’s theme and enduring legacy. An annotated bibliography elucidates the research and each source’s revelations in reference to the conclusion. 

KEY WORDS: Scrooge, Scrooged, Richard Donner, Bill Murray, Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol 

Introduction 

In Richard Donner’s 1988 dark comedy film Scrooged, starring Bill Murray, a television executive named Frank Cross is visited by three spirits (four if his former associate Lew Heyward is to be counted) on Christmas Eve while also dealing with the stress of mounting a live production of Charles Dickens’ timeless classic A Christmas Carol. Interestingly, the production within the film is always referred to as Scrooge, whether by the televised adverts within the film, the dialogue of its characters, or even the prop book as read by John Houseman. The film, itself, is a clear retelling of the Dickens tale, with all of the relevant plot points and overall theme of redemption. It should be curious to even a casual viewer as to why the original novella is never once referred to by its proper name, A Christmas Carol. This phenomenon seems worthy of investigation. 

Adaptation is the highest form of flattery, as when a piece of literature is adapted to film, television, stage play, or graphic novel. In the era of metacommentary, when a piece of art refers to itself, it’s even easier for an adaptation to wear its influence on its sleeves. The deliberate omission of a source work’s title in metacommentary is itself a statement. It is this relationship between source material and adaptation that brings Richard Donner’s Scrooged under the microscope in the discipline of English studies. Examining the myriad reasons that an adaptation or derivation of a source might choose to distance itself from that source is at the root of the question why the words “A Christmas Carol” are never spoken aloud in the 1988 film adaptation Scrooged. Is it meant to illustrate the distance of understanding Dickens that the fictional executives within the film must experience or is it a damning distillation of the misunderstandings of the actual executives who made Scrooged, itself? Clearly there’s a disconnect between Dickens and “Scrooge” within Scrooged but who is ultimately to blame? 

At times, a character can transcend their literary bounds and become emblematic of the story that introduced them principally, their name becoming shorthand for their story. This is metonymy, as in when referring to the institution of royalty as “the crown” – it distills the work into its defining characteristics. While precedent has been shown throughout history for referring to Dickens’ A Christmas Carol as Scrooge, the question to be studied is to what purpose has this metonymy been applied to the metacommentary within Scrooged? Was this a stylistic choice or one of necessity? If the decision was indeed deliberate, as one must believe it was, to whom does one attribute such a decision: the production studio, the screenwriters, or the director? What lessons can be learned from this particular adaptation and the deliberate choice to alter the original author’s chosen title? 

History 

A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas by Charles Dickens was written and published in 1843 over the course of a scant six weeks under extreme financial pressure (Beete). Dickens’ story is an extension of his life’s work to illustrate the disparity between the wealthy and poor, serving as social commentary to open the hearts of those with means and power to the lives of the poor. Historians have posited that Dickens based the character of Ebeneezer Scrooge on John Elwes, an eccentric miser and member of Great Britain’s parliament in the late 18th century (Carlson). A Christmas Carol is the story of rich miser Ebeneezer Scrooge, who refuses to spend his wealth on his community or even himself, valuing money over humanity. Scrooge’s frugality jeopardizes the security of his family, his employees, and their families – most notably the young Tiny Tim, the disabled son of Scrooge’s underpaid clerk Bob Cratchit (Dickens). Scrooge is taught to value human connection by the visitation of three spirits who show him his past, present, and future, convincing him to become a steward of compassion. While the lead character of Scrooge is introduced as a miser and misanthrope, it is Dickens’ story of redemption that make it such a treasured classic. Critical analysts praise the story for its core moral message of charity and the damnation that “what we hoard for ourselves in this life we must carry in the next” (Bruner). 

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens has been adapted countless times, with many scholars believing it to be the most frequently adapted literary work of all time. The first film adaptation of A Christmas Carol was made in 1901, though even it is believed to be an adaptation of a stage adaptation of the novella (Davidson). A living document begun three years ago on IMDb.com lists 228 film adaptations in the 145 years since the story’s publication (IMDb.com). An aggregated list on the same site finds that the most beloved versions are the 1951 film Scrooge with Alastair Sim as the titular miser and The Muppet Christmas Carol from 1992 with Michael Caine as Ebeneezer. The classic story structure has been used as the storyline for many morality tales in television, such as in Family Ties, Boy Meets World, and Married… with Children. The original novella has been adapted into ballets, operas, and countless stage plays. Film adaptations that eschew the Christmas Carol moniker are plentiful, such as Spirited, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, and An American Carol (Schaffstall). 

Interestingly, the first film adaptation in 1901 used the metonym Scrooge, entitled Scrooge, or, Marley’s Ghost, likely due to the source material still being under copyright protection, to encapsulate the spirit of the piece. Further adaptations have omitted the title to focus on the synecdoche of the core character in 1913, 1922, 1935, 1938, 1951, 1970, and 2012. These derivations of the material gave birth to the 1988 Richard Donner film Scrooged, which finds an analog to Ebeneezer Scrooge in its character Frank Cross. 

Scrooged features television executive Frank Cross visited by three spirits on Christmas Eve while supervising a live television production of the classic Charles Dickens tale, though it is never referred to as “A Christmas Carol.” The film updates the technology, urbanization, and commercialization of Christmas. The depictions of television, its creation and distribution, and mass media are all made hyperbolic to illustrate the separation from the source material of the novella. The metacommentary of an adaptation within the adaptation adds a level of disassociation from the novella, stripping it of its influence. The film features many analogs to the novella, however, such as a Marley-esque character in Lew Heyward, Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future, a Cratchit character and a Tiny Tim, as well as Cross’s eventual redemption. Screenwriters Mitch Glazer and Michael O’Donoghue adapted the original novella for the film’s script, with Glazer noting “we read [Charles] Dickens’ book a thousand times and annotated it” (Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences). Lead actor Bill Murray was also reported to have had script access and editing privileges, telling Starlog magazine “we tore up the script so badly that we had parts all over the lawn. There was a lot I didn’t like” (Murray, qtd in Spelling). These factors may have some pertinence to the omission of “A Christmas Carol” in the final film. 

Research Strategies 

The challenge of this particular research question is that there is either one definitive answer to the question or there are none. The research should be conducted on background information on the original text, its many adaptations, and the propensity for metonymy to supersede an artistic work’s original title in favor of synecdoche. While the scope of this project is quite narrow, the broader questions it may raise are significant. What is the duty of a creator working in the public domain to an artist’s vision, and is there ever a good reason to completely appropriate a work with no reverence to its original title? 

Some key concepts that must be researched are the history of film adaptations of A Christmas Carol, the limitations or expectations of derivative works of adaptation, and the dissolution of primary inspiration through repeated adaptation. Essentially, how often can a property be revisited, re-imagined, and re-made before it no longer resembles the original? 

The research journey for this answer has been a tough one. Saddled with both a hyper-specific question and a medium so enriched in the zeitgeist, it proved difficult to research this question through academic channels. The journey began at EBSCO but yielded little; beginning with the database “Academic Search Premiere” and the search term “Scrooged,” after noting that a search of Scrooged without quotes brought about any instance of letters arranged with double os and any derivation of the name Scrooge, the only useful find was an article in Vulture magazine that gave insight from actresses Karen Allen and Carol Kane about the film’s production (Abrams). Expanding the EBSCO database search to include “eBook Collection,” “ERIC,” “Points of View Reference Source,” “Library, Information Science, & Technology Abstracts,” and “Literary Reference Source” and its companion eBook Subscription resulted in too many hits from the “Scrooged” prompt, many of which contained little else than listings on television guides or curt reviews. Combining “Scrooged” and the boolean search term AND as well as the director’s last name Donner revealed, surprisingly, no results. Pivoting towards the larger question of adaptation and divorce of source material with a search that included “Adaptation,” “Dickens, Christmas Carol, and “Scrooged,” all quotes intentional, little of merit was discovered. 

The next academic database to search was JSTOR, but “Scrooge” and “Donner” found a 1984 adaptation of Charles Dickens’ classic called A Christmas Carol directed by Clive Donner (no relation), so “Murray” was added to the search terms. Of several sources of interest, one author noted, in direct criticism of Scrooged, how closely The Muppets’ Christmas Carol hews to Charles Dickens’ original text (Davis). While that might seem perfunctory, it does ultimately attach itself to this thesis’ core tenement: that the source material matters. Upon further digging, another article found in a scholarly journal called Dickens Studies Annual offered the first palpable argument for a thesis answer: that Scrooged is presenting the text in a context that might “bind the text in a web of authoritative, incorporative, and incorporated terms” (McCracken-Flesher). 

Before moving on to Google and its subsidiaries, a Hail-Mary effort was made to contact the surviving screenwriter of Scrooged, Mitch Glazer. An email was sent to his agency and an open call for comment on social network boards Twitter (or X) and Reddit. Neither of these efforts yielded any results. 

Moving to Google Scholar, a wealth of information was revealed by scholars who have studied this film and its tethers to literature and adaptation. One such text was a book titled A Pound of Flesh: A Perilous Tale of How to Produce Movies in Hollywood by Art Linson, the producer who originally envisioned the idea for what would become the film Scrooged. As Linson recalls while in a meeting with studio head Jeffery Katzenberg, he is struck with the idea of adapting A Christmas Carol, noting that “updating it with the venality of a Hollywood backdrop would be extremely funny and telling” (52).  

Moving onto Google yielded foundational knowledge of Dickens and the writing of A Christmas Carol, historical knowledge of the material’s adaptation to film and frequent renaming, and firsthand accounts from actors and screenwriters on the film’s production as well as early critical reaction. Notably, many critics misidentify the production within the film’s framework as A Christmas Carol despite the fact the film always refers to its production as Scrooge.  

Finally, a search of “Scrooged” was conducted on the video platform YouTube, opening up a slew of video essays and archival footage. While many prolific “YouTubers” sounded off on their reactions and criticisms of Scrooged, the best find was a video titled “Scrooged 1988 (Bill Murray) Making of & Behind the Scenes,” a fifty-minute compilation of studio archival footage surrounding the making of the film. This repository included interviews with director Richard Donner and production designer J. Michael Riva, who offer valuable insight into the film’s theme. 

Literature Review 

Thematically, the works selected and rejected combine to create a portrait of the adaptation journey. From Beete’s “Ten Things to Know,” a foundational knowledge is laid for the creation of the original text, its intent, and its endurance. A stop at the Internet Movie Database, or IMDb.com, illustrates the proliferation of the story as a source of inspiration, identifying the first iteration as 1901’s Scrooge, or Marley’s Ghost. Seeking more information on that foundational title, a visit to the British Film Institute’s site noted that the particular 1901 film adaptation was likely influenced by a stage adaptation, adding to a dissolution of the source’s original themes and intentions. Noting that the first film adaptation chose to focus on the source material’s main character, the research demanded a deeper look into the character of Ebeneezer Scrooge and the shared qualities of Frank Cross, his counterpart in Scrooged. This led to the articles from Bruner and Carlson, diving into the enduring characteristics of both Scrooge and Dickens, himself. 

When turning to the construction and execution of the film Scrooged, firsthand accounts play a major role in understanding how the story came together. Linson is its father, and screenwriter Mitch Glazer told the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences that he and screenwriter Michael O’Donoghue drew heavily from Charles Dickens’ novella, referring to a thoroughly annotated copy they shared between them while writing Scrooged. Lead actor Bill Murray told Starlog magazine about his heavy involvement in shaping the script, a claim corroborated by Karen Allen in the article in Vulture. These revelations go back to the original exploration of adaptation and derivation. Finally, there is the critical and academic response to the film and its adherence to Dickensian tradition. Tellingly, very few content creators, critics, or film historians even notice the omission of A Christmas Carol in Scrooged. The film works as such a cynical indictment of commercialism, Hollywood, over-sentimentalization, and studio excess that the absence of “A Christmas Carol” in this Christmas Carol adaptation goes unnoticed. Isn’t that, in itself, a testament to the efficacy of such a small change in dialogue and approach? Essentially, the text has been commodified, commercialized, and repackaged as Christmas candy rather than a story with heart and a resonant theme. Burying that message within a film that seeks to cash in on seasonal interest and recurring holiday sentiment is a cheeky and winking move by the executives behind Scrooged – they can get away with their cash grab because they’ve shown the viewer that they’re in on the joke. 

Venerated critic Roger Ebert saw that, also, but it didn’t persuade him that he should let them off the hook for their overt cynicism, even though he knows that they know they’re committing the sin while committing it. “It was obviously intended as a comedy, but there is little comic about it, and indeed the movie’s overriding emotions seem to be pain and anger” (Ebert). It would stand to reason that if a filmmaker wanted to champion the “pain and anger” of Dickens’ story that it would behoove them to name the story after its most pained and angry character. With that rationale, it makes sense to call the production within Scrooged “Scrooge” because it sets the tone for the mirror through which the viewer sees Bill Murray’s Frank Cross. Frank Cross is Scrooge; by calling the production he’s spearheading “Scrooge,” the filmmakers wipe every other character off the board and avoid ambiguity. 

Discussion 

Combing through Art Linson’s book A Pound of Flesh: A Perilous Tale of How to Produce Movies in Hollywood, screenwriter Mitch Glazer’s interview with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Bill Murray’s interview with Starlog magazine, and Richard Donner’s comments on the behind the scenes featurettes on Scrooged all proved that there is no definitive answer to the thesis question: why is “A Christmas Carol” absent from the adaptation Scrooged? This leaves the researcher to view the film through the accumulated knowledge of his research and divine the answer for himself. The many incarnations of Dickens’ material in other mediums shows a precedence for using the metonym “Scrooge” to refer to A Christmas Carol but still doesn’t answer the question of the deliberate choice of the production within the film adaptation. One has to wonder if the decision was deliberate at all or if the omission was merely an oversight. Close examination of the film, its themes, its placement in history, and the overall cynical comedic thread throughout point to an oversight as improbable. One still has to consider the principle of Hanlon’s Razor, though – “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” Are we attributing cynicism where a simple case of forgetfulness could be the culprit? 

The presentation of Scrooged as an indictment of studio greed and executive removal from art all but assure that its choices are intentional. Film is a medium of many moving parts, and very little is put on screen without intentional meaning or purpose. While it is true that many viewers and critics didn’t even notice the omission, the few who did understood the overarching theme of the film. Roger Ebert noted this when eviscerating the character of Frank Cross as appropriately vile, saying “his next production will be a live multimillion-dollar Christmas Eve performance of ‘Scrooge’ and we follow him through the wreckage of his life as he attempts to wreck the TV show, as well” (Ebert.com). Here Ebert is admitting that Frank Cross doesn’t have any reverence for Charles Dickens or A Christmas Carol. He’s mounting this production because he knows that “it’s cold. People are home watching TV. Ad revenues jump thirty percent” (Scrooged).  

Charles Dickens had a very different view of Christmas, which is why he wrote A Christmas Carol as a means to “alter social attitudes around poverty” during Britain’s Industrial Revolution (Crable). The irony in this is that Dickens’ view of Christmas, which championed family, feasts, and charity, is now sold back to the public every season as early as November first – we celebrate the holidays in an over-commercialized manner due largely to his influence on our culture. While the characters in Scrooged might not recognize that, the filmmakers who made the film assuredly did. This ties directly into one of the first tenets of filmmaking – mise en scène. 

Mise en scène “combines set design, costumes, lighting, color, composition, actor movements, and props that weaves the tapestry of a visual story, immersing the audience in a world of imagination and emotion” (Hellerman). What that means in the context of Scrooged is that every decision, from the lighting to the names of the characters and the names they give their actions, lends itself to support of the overall theme of the film. The theme of Scrooged is the loss of Christmas spirit, as evidenced by its main character Frank Cross, though he is a product of his environment, so everything around him informs his ideas of what Christmas is, or should be, and how it should be marketed for maximum profit. 

Conclusion 

Curiously, a definitive answer as to why Glazer or Donner or Murray or any other decision-maker attached to Scrooged chose to omit the words “A Christmas Carol” from the production remains elusive. What has surfaced, however, is the crux of the discipline of arts and letters – analysis, interpretation, and theory. Scholars have posited theories about the adaptation’s intentions, and some have interpreted the film as a deliberate commentary on 1980s American excess and cynicism. Production designer J. Michael Riva corroborates this idea, saying “we were making a movie about a rather dark, black view of the television corporate world and television specials […] about very, very wealthy narcissistic people” in charge of creating such programming (“Scrooged 1988”). The production being staged within the narrative of Scrooged is being made by these people with a skewed view of reality. Richard Donner elucidates the many layers of separation between his production and the source material when he cheekily says “”What we were doing was somewhatof a sendup of ourselves of a sendup of what was once a sendup andnow there was going to be a parodyof a sendup, which we parodied” (“Scrooged 1988). These glimpses into the production process go all the way back to Linson’s original vision of the “venality” of Hollywood producers. 

Frank Cross isn’t the sole driving force behind the production of “Scrooge” within the narrative of Scrooged; he’s just the schmuck saddled with steering it. The production is the property of IBC broadcasting, the network over which he presides. The sleek, industrial functionality of the black offices they inhabit serve those within with space to work and nothing in the way of distraction. It is in this vacuum that they’ve created their holiday programming schedule, along with an action film wherein Lee Majors fights off terrorists at Santa’s workshop. In a biting instance of prescience, the network isn’t paying homage to Charles Dickens… they’re creating content. They never call the production “A Christmas Carol” because to them it isn’t. It’s “that Scrooge story.” This aspect of the mise en scène works in concert with other hints that the executives at IBC don’t quite “get” Christmas.  

Frank Cross’s name is no accident, nor is naming his assistant Grace. Elliot Loudermilk is named so as a nod to its Germanic roots to dairy farmers and purity; he’s meant to be a lamb among the wolves. Everything about the composition of Scrooged screams “this is what misanthropic people think regular people think Christmas is.” Their misanthropy is illustrated all throughout the film, so when the viewer sees their overblown production of “Scrooge,” they understand that the executives don’t understand the source material. Frank Cross demonstrates that he’s familiar with Dickens’ story, but it’s made clear that he considers it content fit for regurgitation to be spoon-fed to his viewers, which he sees as nothing more than revenue generators for his advertising partners. The “Scrooge” that viewers see in Scrooged is Dickens commodified, focus-grouped, commercialized, incentivized, and beamed out as marketable content. To remove a bit more of Cross’s culpability, it is shown in the film that he has a boss: Rhinelander, who suggests to him that he add programming into the production to appeal to cats and dogs. That is the hyperbole of marketing detachment from reality and human connection. 

Though it is never clearly stated by any individual who worked on the film, the decision to call the production within Scrooged by the name “Scrooge” and not “A Christmas Carol” is a deliberate action meant to illustrate the removal of the theme of Dickens’ classic morality tale, A Christmas Carol, in favor of corporate interests. For this reason, Scrooged stands on its own foundation as a scathing indictment of American greed, excess, and commercialization in the eighties. The film, itself, shows reverence for Dickens’ original message by offering Frank Cross the redemption that was offered to Ebeneezer Scrooge, and breaks the fourth wall to offer this message to viewers:  

“You have to do something. You have to take a chance. You do have to get involved. There are people that are having… having trouble making their miracle happen. There are people that don’t have enough to eat, or people that are cold. You can go out and say hello to these people. You can take an old blanket out of the closet and say ‘Here!’, you can make them a sandwich and say ‘Oh, by the way, here!’ I… I get it now! And if you… if you give, then it can happen, then the miracle can happen to you! It’s not just the poor and the hungry, it’s everybody’s who’s gotta have this miracle! And it can happen tonight for all of you! If you believe in this spirit thing, the miracle will happen and then you’ll want it to happen again tomorrow. You won’t be one of these bastards who says ‘Christmas is once a year and it’s a fraud’, it’s NOT! It can happen every day, you’ve just got to want that feeling” (Scrooged). 

While this speech is heavily improvised by Murray at the film’s conclusion, its meaning and theme are present in the original script. “There are people around you who are having a terrible Christmas. They’re cold and they’re hungry. Things couldn’t be worse. Hey, if you’re not doing anything – and you’re not; you’re just sitting around watching me on TV – why don’t you drop by and see ‘em? Give ‘em a sweater, and old blanket. Make ‘em a sandwich” (Glazer, O’Donoghue). This sort of dialogue is in keeping with Dickens’ “desire to alter social attitudes around poverty” (Crable). Glazer, O’Donoghue, Donner, Murray, et al have crafted a Christmas comedy that honors the original theme of the novella on which it is based, but to create a contrast within the framework of the film, itself, they’ve created the overblown spectacle that is IBC’s seasonal production of “Scrooge.” To allow the executives at IBC to call their production “A Christmas Carol” is to give Cross and Rhinelander and the rest of these “very very wealthy narcissistic people” (Riva, qtd in “Scrooged 1988”) too much credit. 

Annotated Bibliography 

Abrams, Simon. “Carol Kane and Karen Allen Spill on Scrooged.” Vulture Magazine. 2018, Dec 5. https://www.vulture.com/2018/12/carol-kane-and-karen-allen-scrooged-interview.html 

Abrams interviewed Carol Kane and Karen Allen about their involvement with the film Scrooged thirty years after its release, and the actresses corroborated the claims that Bill Murray took umbrage with the script as it existed and made multiple changes throughout the film’s production process. This “too many cooks” situation could’ve led to the omission of “A Christmas Carol” in the film’s finished product. 

Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. “Writing a Holiday Classic: Scrooged co-writer Mitch Glazer Tells Us How It’s Done.” Medium.com. 2018, Dec 20. https://medium.com/art-science/writing-a-holiday-classic-170c2d9bb11a 

Screenwriter Mitch Glazer talks to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, the governing body behind the coveted Academy Awards, about the writing process of Scrooged shared with Michael O’Donoghue. Glazer admits that the film is a direct update and adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, noting a heavily annotated copy of the novella that he and O’Donoghue referenced throughout the process. He does not, however, make any reference to the deliberate omission of “A Christmas Carol” in the film. 

Beete, Paulette. “Ten Things to Know About Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.” The National Endowment for the Arts. 2020, Dec 4. https://www.arts.gov/stories/blog/2020/ten-things-know-about-charles-dickens-christmas-carol 

Paulette Beete compiles a list of ten factoids about Charles Dickens’ and the writing of A Christmas Carol, including the author’s financial struggles during the novella’s writing. It is this telling bit of information that further elucidates Dickens’ desire to create a work that celebrates empathy and the wealthy caring for the beleaguered.  

Bruner, Michael. “Why A Christmas Carol Still Sings.” Reformed Journal. 2004, Dec 16. https://reformedjournal.com/2004/12/16/why-a-christmas-carol-sings/ 

Bruner illustrates the enduring legacy of A Christmas Carol by noting its core message of empathy and human connectedness. He notes that Ebeneezer Scrooge was a man in need of redemption and further elaborates on the wages of the sin of selfishness and misanthropy. 

Carlson, Brady. “Ebeneezer Scrooge Might Have Been Based on These Real People.” BradyCarlson.com. 2022, Dec 19. https://www.bradycarlson.com/ebeneezer-scrooge-might-have-been-based-on-these-real-people-cool-weird-awesome-907/ 

In order to further cement the analog of Frank Cross to Ebeneezer Scrooge, and to seek further information on the original novella’s composition and inspirations, Carlson’s deep dive into the real-life counterparts of Scrooge was consulted. Brady Carlson is an adjunct professor and historian. 

Crable, Margaret. “How Charles Dickens Created Christmas As We Know It.” USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, & Sciences. 2024, Dec 11. https://dornsife.usc.edu/news/stories/how-charles-dickens-created-christmas-as-we-know-it/ 

Crable further illustrates the socioeconomic conditions surrounding Dickens as he wrote A Christmas Carol and the subsequent changes in the celebration of the holiday in England spurred by the novella’s popularity. 

Davidson, Ewan. “Scrooge, or, Marley’s Ghost (1901).” British Film Institute Screenonline. n.d. http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/698299/index.html 

Davidson is a film historian working under the banner of the British Film Institute who curates cinematic works of great importance. His insight on this first filmed version of an adaptation of Dicken’s A Christmas Carol offers a view of how and why the subsequent works may choose to alter the name; in the case of W.R. Booth’s film, it is believed that the picture was based on J.C. Buckstone’s stage version of the novella. 

Davis, Hugh H. “A Weirdo, A Rat, and A Humbug: The Literary Qualities of The Muppets’ Christmas Carol.” Studies in Popular Culture, vol 21, no. 3, 1999, pp 95-105. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/23414536 . Accessed 16 Feb 2025. 

Hugh Davis praises The Muppets’ Christmas Carol for being what is likely the most faithful adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, further illustrating the disconnect and cynicism present in Glazer and O’Donoghue’s version Scrooged. 

Ebert, Roger. “Scrooged.” RogerEbert.com. 1988, Nov 23. https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/scrooged-1988 

Roger Ebert, venerated critic for The Chicago Sun Times, eviscerated Scrooged upon its initial release for its cynicism and mean spirit. However, he is one of the few critics who, whether at the time or in the almost forty years since its release, noted the subtle detail that the production within the film is referred to as “Scrooge” and not “A Christmas Carol.” 

Glazer, Mitch & O’Donoghue, Michael. Scrooged. Directed by Richard Donner. Parmount Pictures. 1988. https://assets.scriptslug.com/live/pdf/scripts/scrooged-1988.pdf 

Mitch Glazer and Michael O’Donoghue’s original screenplay for Scrooged before Bill Murray’s many, many improvisations on set offers a look at the original creative vision of this darkly comic update of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. 

Hellerman, Jason. “What is Mise en Scène? (Definition and Examples).” NoFilmSchool.com. 2024, Jan 30. https://nofilmschool.com/mise-en-scene 

The entire crux of this thesis is that the decision to call the production within the metacommentary Scrooged “Scrooge” and not “A Christmas Carol” was a deliberate choice. For the layperson to understand that every decision made in the composition of even a single scene of a film is deliberate, the definition of mise en scène must be illustrated. 

IMDb.com. “A Christmas Carol – All Versions.” List created by user mballardc32. N.d. https://www.imdb.com/list/ls577200923/ 

This living document created over three years ago catalogs every adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol to screen. The list, currently sitting at 228 titles, allows a researcher to see the myriad titles, re-imaginings, and mediums that this timeless classic can take. 

Linson, Art. A Pound of Flesh: A Perilous Tale of How to Produce Movies in Hollywood. Grove Press, New York, 1993. Google Books Edition. https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_Pound_of_Flesh/tDxJcdhq6HQC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA1&printsec=frontcover 

Art Linson is a prolific film producer whose nonfiction book A Pound of Flesh features the story of how he originally conceived the idea of Scrooged. During a meeting with studio head Jeffrey Katzenberg (Disney, 1984-94), Linson had something of an out-of-body experience as he watched them discuss a possible remake of We’re No Angels and noted that their desire to maximize profit all but prevented them from creating a product with heart and soul. This struck him as funny and he pitched the idea for an update of A Christmas Carol that featured an out-of-touch and misanthropic television executive at the reins of a production of the adaptation while himself experiencing a transformative visit from spirits bent on redeeming him. 

McCracken-Flesher, Caroline. “The Incorporation of A Christmas Carol: A Tale of Seasonal Screening.” Dickens Studies Annual, vol 24, 1996, pp 93-118. JSTOR. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44372458 . Accessed 16 Feb 2025. 

McCracken-Flesher notes in her scholarly paper “The Incorporation of A Christmas Carol” that the impetus to continually adapt Dickens’ story is rarely about preserving its message but rather about profits. Christmas, as a holiday, has become a commercial cash grab, and everything from decorations, albums, and films find a boon in production during the season to corner a bit of that market. McCracken-Flesher specifically calls out Scrooged in its awareness of the entertainment industry and their eagerness to profit from sentimentality, nostalgia, and evergreen properties, like A Christmas Carol. 

Schaffstall, Katherine. “A Christmas Carol: 16 Movie and TV Show Versions of Charles Dickens’ Classic Tale.” The Hollywood Reporter. 2022, Dec 21. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lists/a-christmas-carol-best-movie-tv-show-adaptations/the-odd-couple-1970/ 

Schaffstall profiles sixteen adaptations of A Christmas Carol across film and television, and notes that Murray’s Cross is mounting an “over-the-top” adaptation within the metacommentary of Scrooged. She does not, however, note that the production is called “Scrooge,” and misidentifies it as “A Christmas Carol.”  

Scrooged. Directed by Richard Donner. Paramount Pictures. 1988. 

Scrooged was released in 1988 by Paramount Pictures, directed by Richard Donner. Donner was known at the time as the director of such hits as Superman (1978), The Goonies (1985), and Lethal Weapon (1987). Despite his work on Goonies and The Toy with Richard Pryor, Donner was unsure of his skill at directing comedy, which brought him at odds with Bill Murray, a comedy actor with a deep history of improvisation. The set was admittedly a difficult one, with Murray taking umbrage with the script and making changes as he saw fit, much to the chagrin of O’Donoghue, who disavowed the film before his passing in 1994.  

“Scrooged 1988 (Bill Murray) Making of and Behind the Scenes.” DVDFilmBonus. YouTube.com. 2023, Dec 30. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuS1v08iKO0&list=WL&index=29 

This collection of special features accompanied the film’s 35th Anniversary 4K DVD release in late 2023, offering insight into the production process and words from the director as well as the production designer, who both hint at the film’s intent to portray the executives within as disconnected and misanthropic. 

Spelling, Ian. “Bill Murray Ain’t Afraid of No Ghosts!” Starlog Magazine. Issue 140, March 1989. Transcribed by Mark Brown for SpookCentral.tk. https://www.spookcentral.tk/sclib/ghostbusters-ii-starlog-140-bill-murray-interview 

This interview from 1989 appearing in Starlog magazine features Bill Murray discussing his involvement with the film and his notorious handling of its script.  

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“Must have been mid afternoon…”

Posted on 09/25/2024 by ericmcclanahan

You’re 17. You moved around a lot in your younger years, but still in the same general area. The walls and boxes around you changed shape but you generally had the same neighbors. There was some impermanence but not so you’d notice.

But maybe you did. You couldn’t wait to “grow up,” to be in control of your own destiny. Hang your hat in places that feel like home to you, stay when you want to stay, or go when you want to go. You wanted to drive, because to drive was to get away, to be your own person. Choose where to be, what to eat, how to pass the time.

You couldn’t wait. A couple years back, when your dad left to work overnight, you took the keys to the truck left in the driveway and decided you should practice driving. You got the truck stuck in the driveway. Thank goodness – if you’d passed out on to the street with your limited skills you could’ve killed someone. You brought down a world of trouble, but you deserved it. It’s not because you tried to escape, but because you endangered others. I hope you see that.

But now you’re 17. You’re a senior in high school, you’re a licensed driver, you have the blessing to drive that very same truck you almost wrecked. You’ve got a job. You work the window at a fast-food burger joint. You worked late shifts over the summer and met interesting people. One night you met Elvis. It wasn’t Him, to be sure, but He couldn’t be convinced. Now you’re back in school, planning to graduate, and then you’ll be free. Free to go. You likely don’t even care where, so long as you can go.

But you’ve got to graduate, which means you need to keep your grades up. You and your parents are agreed on this – if your grades are suffering you’ll lose access to the truck, thereby losing the job, and your access to your own money. So you need to focus.

You say you will. Hell, you probably meant it. But you don’t. You don’t keep your grades up. The first progress reports come mid-semester and you’re failing – badly. Grades in the twenties and thirties. That kind of underperformance takes a concerted effort. How did you even do that?

But you know what this means. You’re losing the truck, you’re losing your job, you’re losing the means to get “out.” You might be trapped here forever. You might not be able to “go.”

But what’s so wrong about that? You’re fed, the house is warm, you’ve got cable, your own room. You’re isolated, sure; we’re kind of in the middle of nowhere, but you’ve got a powerful imagination. Maybe that’s the problem, though? That powerful imagination poisoned your mind with fantasies of what it will be like to be “gone,” free, elsewhere. Anywhere else.

You know you’re in another heap of trouble. You might be conflating that amount of trouble, because you haven’t endangered anyone else with this transgression, but your fear has taken hold. The fantasies are fleeting away.

So you can’t get out. Not that way. What do you do? Just go ahead and kill yourself? That seems extreme, doesn’t it?

But you do. You kill yourself. You tell a few friends goodbye, not forever, not enough to alarm them, but you make sure the words are said. You get home before anyone else, get your Bible off the shelf, and find a passage that fits your mood. You settle on Psalms 55:

Listen to my prayer, O God,
    do not ignore my plea;
2     hear me and answer me.
My thoughts trouble me and I am distraught
3     because of what my enemy is saying,
    because of the threats of the wicked;
for they bring down suffering on me
    and assail me in their anger.

4 My heart is in anguish within me;
    the terrors of death have fallen on me.
5 Fear and trembling have beset me;
    horror has overwhelmed me.
6 I said, “Oh, that I had the wings of a dove!
    I would fly away and be at rest.
7 I would flee far away
    and stay in the desert;[c]
8 I would hurry to my place of shelter,
    far from the tempest and storm.”

9 Lord, confuse the wicked, confound their words,
    for I see violence and strife in the city.
10 Day and night they prowl about on its walls;
    malice and abuse are within it.
11 Destructive forces are at work in the city;
    threats and lies never leave its streets.

12 If an enemy were insulting me,
    I could endure it;
if a foe were rising against me,
    I could hide.
13 But it is you, a man like myself,
    my companion, my close friend,
14 with whom I once enjoyed sweet fellowship
    at the house of God,
as we walked about
    among the worshipers.

15 Let death take my enemies by surprise;
    let them go down alive to the realm of the dead,
    for evil finds lodging among them.

16 As for me, I call to God,
    and the Lord saves me.
17 Evening, morning and noon
    I cry out in distress,
    and he hears my voice.
18 He rescues me unharmed
    from the battle waged against me,
    even though many oppose me.
19 God, who is enthroned from of old,
    who does not change—
he will hear them and humble them,
    because they have no fear of God.

20 My companion attacks his friends;
    he violates his covenant.
21 His talk is smooth as butter,
    yet war is in his heart;
his words are more soothing than oil,
    yet they are drawn swords.

22 Cast your cares on the Lord
    and he will sustain you;
he will never let
    the righteous be shaken.
23 But you, God, will bring down the wicked
    into the pit of decay;
the bloodthirsty and deceitful
    will not live out half their days.

But as for me, I trust in you.

It’s an odd choice. You’ve never been terribly religious, that we recall. But maybe you were. You found that passage quickly enough, and it certainly seems to apply. You’re a mystery, never to be solved.

You get your father’s shotgun from under his bed, load it with the first shells you find, and go to the back yard. You sit down on the steps of the new house he’d been building, set the Bible beside you, place the note you’ve written in the pages to mark the passage, and put the barrel in your mouth. You pull the trigger. You blow the back of your head off, but thankfully your face is intact.

You’re dead.

You’re “out.” You’ve “gone.” You’re “free,”

—

We find you later that day. More specifically, I find you. You… don’t look good. I wail. My stepmother cries. My mother cries. My father reads your note and cries. God dies underneath my fingertips as I feel his shoulders tremble.

Soon everyone is crying. Everyone who knew you, loved you. Strangers appear telling us what you meant to them, how you made them smile, laugh. How they loved your laugh, your fiery red hair, your easy demeanor and quick wit. They write poems and tributes. You move the entire town.

You could’ve done anything, You could’ve been anything, anyone. I often wonder what you might’ve been. I’ll never know. You’re a mystery, never to be solved.

It all happened so fast. Did you decide that day? Did you think to yourself a week, a month, prior “I swear to God if things don’t go my way this year, I’m just going to end it”? Did you have alternatives in mind, or just careen down the parkway to “Kill Yourself”? Were there exits along the way for “Talk to Someone,” “Make a Plan,” or “Fucking Anything Else”? Or did you just look at your fate in your hands and think “No, thank you. I’d rather have nothing”?

I wish you’d known. You can talk to someone. You can make a plan. You can do literally fucking anything else. You could have tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that. I can’t promise infinity, or next week, or three days from now, but you could’ve had tomorrow. I wish you’d had just one more day – one more day to talk about it. I’d like to think that’s all it would take. One more day, and we could have a nice talk. You’d wake up to a new day and think “I could keep doing this…”

If you’d given yourself one more day, maybe we could’ve had the last thirty years. I wonder what we could’ve done together? I’ll never know. We’re a mystery, never to be solved.

—

If you’re reading this, you can take a day. One More Day. Talk about it, choose to listen, let someone help you make a plan. Try again tomorrow.

I’ll be here tomorrow. I hope you will, too.

If you’re considering ending it all, call 988. Call a friend. Call an enemy, tell them you want to persevere just to spite them. Call me. Take the exit, and give yourself One More Day. It could lead to tomorrow, which could lead to more.

988

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Wildcat, The Dancing Village: The Curse Begins, and 100s of Beavers

Posted on 05/01/2024 by ericmcclanahan

Wildcat, directed by Ethan Hawke

When one hears that Ethan Hawke has co-written and directed a feature film about celebrated author Flannery O’Connor and cast his daughter, Maya Hawke, in the lead role, one can easily fear a mess of nepotism and self-righteous academia that would be impossible to stomach. But one would be wrong. Wildcat is a delightful film, swimming in flowery dialogue that is light and fresh on the nose rather than pungent and heady. 

Maya Hawke soars as Flannery, a headstrong young woman who knows her worth while doubting her faith, which is the main throughline of the film. Flannery envisions her stories throughout, casting herself as her heroines and her mother (a rapturous Laura Linney) in each matronly role, while the men are an endless parade of wicked demons in genteel skinsuits. The muted palette helps to tamper the Southern Gothic horror beneath every face, similar to Donald Ray Pollock’s dark vision in The Devil All the Time. This film has awards season on its radar and we would do well to keep an eye on it as that time draws near.

The Dancing Village: The Curse Begins, directed by Kimo Stamboel

The Dancing Village is the prequel to KKN Di Desa Penari, so one would imagine that it contains all the information one would need to make sense of this tale. And one would be wrong. The Curse Begins opens in 1955, then flashes forward to 1980, keeping the picture as a period piece throughout, and sees a typical foursome of young folk traveling to a faraway village as Mila, the protagonist, tries to help her mother recover from a mysterious ailment. 

The source of her mother’s sickness is the evil Badarawuhi, a sinister spirit that frankly doesn’t seem all that sinister and dances through every scene she’s in. The scariest thing about her is how eerily similar her movement is to the cast of CATS, which is honestly pretty terrifying. Despite her needing a cursed bangle that she lost in the opening of the film, she’s still powerful enough to curse Mila’s mother from a distance, several other villagers, and command an army of ravenous shirtless men who demand dancing. It is this unexplained power that makes the tension and conflict seem manufactured.

Filmed in IMAX, the film is a visual feast and the atmosphere is spot on, but a complete lack of terror, one-dimensional characters, and a lackluster plot make this film a slog at over two hours’ runtime.

100s of Beavers, directed by Mike Cheslik

From the title alone, one can expect a wild ride with Hundreds of Beavers, and one would be pleasantly assured that this film is exactly that. Hundreds of Beavers plays out like the filmmakers grew up on video games, Chuck Jones animation, and Star Wars then decided to make a Buster Keaton film. 

There is very little in the way of dialogue, a feat that appears effortless in the hands of lead actor Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, who plays Jean Kayak, the local proprietor of an Applejack brewery. When beavers chomp away at its foundations, the brewery is destroyed in catastrophic fashion, leaving Kayak to survive by his wits and strength as he discovers a new way of life. 

The gags are hilarious, and repeated with perfect comedy chemistry, just shy of being overdone. Kayak contends with extreme cold, flies, woodpeckers, wolves, skunks, fish, and yes, hundreds of beavers. Using mixed media animation, some frames of the film look like Terry Gilliam tried to make Frank Miller’s Sin City, and the action is so superbly choreographed that the whole film is a delight to behold. 

This movie is getting rave reviews everywhere it plays, and while that may seem incongruent with its name, it is a rich investment for any film lover who is looking for something different, wholly original, yet firmly rooted in the traditions of silent-era comedy. This might be the best film I’ll see all year, and I would liken its big heart and commitment to pure cinematic joy to Boy Kills World. Both of these films know exactly what they are, and if they’re your cup of tea, I beseech you to drink them down immediately.

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Eric McClanahan, originally published at NoRestfortheWeekendPodcast.com on 2024, Apr. 28

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“How can you still be alive?” – Dethklok

Posted on 03/11/2023 by ericmcclanahan

I am writing my memoir, in earnest now, as I tentatively started to about twenty years ago.

It’s a long, slow, grueling process, lurching forward in sporadic, drunken spurts. I am, as of this typing, 25k words into it. My lofty goal is 144,000 words, which would put it on par with Dave Egger’s Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, which is the arbitrary meter stick by which I’ve chosen to measure my work. My minimum, and likely achievable goal, is 90k words. We’ll see.

Anyway, I was writing tonight about the implication (accusation?) that I’m a “survivor” and the guilt I feel at the utterance of the moniker. After refuting it heavily I banged out this paragraph, which I don’t hate:

What I learned in the wake of earth-shattering loss is that surprisingly little changes. I found a body in my backyard so I got a few days off school, but I was expected back and ready to learn within a few days. My Father-in-Law died but his mortgage didn’t stop accruing interest. Aliens can come down from the sky and liquify Chicago but we’ve still got to set our clocks an hour ahead on March 12th. There is no loss that can truly shatter the Earth, aside, I suppose, from a meteoric collision akin to that which gave pause to the dinosaurs. Short of that, time marches mercilessly forward. You will lose everyone you’ve ever loved and it won’t change a thing outside of your seating arrangements around the holidays. You will move on because you’re not allowed to stop.

It’s strange to have had such a substantial event in my life at the young age of sixteen but, and I can’t stress this enough, it wasn’t even about me. Nothing happened TO me but something impactful most definitely happened AROUND me. People thought I was supposed to curl up like a pill bug and stay in the corner for the rest of my life but I didn’t because, despite what we’ve been led to believe is acceptable and expected behavior, that shit doesn’t fly. You’re still alive, so get back to it. We all have a function, even if we don’t know it, so take a break, catch a breath, drink some water, then get back to work. You’re woven in the tapestry as long as blood pumps through your veins so get to it. This is the harsh truth of “Life.” This is “Reality.” You’re going to die one day and only then you’re off the hook. In the meantime, bury your loved ones and get back on the board.

Doesn’t that seem sick to anyone else?

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“Been here before / though there’s something in the air this time…”

Posted on 09/29/2022 by ericmcclanahan

I don’t know if your high school experience was like mine, but I often felt unloved, misunderstood, and alien to those around me. I felt like some anomaly in the halls. I wasn’t conventionally attractive, not particularly sharp or acute, and most certainly devoid of athletic ability. I was a picture perfect assemblage of mediocrity. Not ugly enough to be a circus wonder, not quiet enough to be a wallflower, not loud enough to stand out from the throng. I was there. I occupied space.

I waited for it to be over.

I had fantasies, and they varied as I grew. I’d assimilate new information and imagine some new fantasy for myself. I’d be a poet; no, a rock star; no, a novelist; no, a screenwriter; no, a restaurant manager, far away from the rural background of my uninteresting upbringing. I’d be something else, and if not that, I’d be elsewhere. My fantasies were myriad.

But I had one that I kept returning to, and it made no sense. Not to me, for certain, and if I ever shared it I believe it’d have been lost on anyone else, though I never dared. Yes, if I had one fantasy that I could tell you kept bubbling up in my subconscious it would be this:

I wanted to sneak into the high school football field on a random night and take a shit on the fifty yard line.

It’s a mystery even to me: I didn’t care for high school sports, nor did I care for its near inescapable hold on my small Texas town. People loved it, and I felt no animosity towards their attraction to it. I, literally, didn’t want to shit on their dreams. But something in me did.

I didn’t want this fantasy, but I couldn’t rid myself of it. I knew if I did it, it would anger soooooo many people. It would be inconvenient, messy, disappointing, and would likely scar anyone who saw it or heard about it. It would end whatever life I’d eked out for myself, as no one would ever remember me as anything other than “the kid that shit on the 50 yard line.” I’d close myself and try to will it away but it’d keep coming back, often larger than ever.

I kept it to myself, obviously. You can’t bring this sort of thing up in anything resembling casual conversation, and certainly not polite company. I sat with my family and friends, smiling and nodding, and never letting them know that I wanted to shit on the 50 yard line. There were times I even convinced myself I didn’t want it. But, when it got quiet, and the platitudes of camaraderie faded away, I knew it was there, taunting me as my little dark secret.

Then, towards the beginning of my junior year, 28 years ago today, my brother, 13 months older than me, took a shit on the 50 yard line of the football field. The news spread like wildfire, and his life was over. He would always be known as the boy who took a shit on the 50 yard line of the high school football field.

Well, shit. Literally.

Now, even if I wanted to follow through on the disgusting fantasy that I swore up and down that I didn’t want, I couldn’t. Because let’s be honest, you can’t be the second guy in your town to take a shit on the fifty yard line of the high school football field. And to be the second guy in your family to do that? Forget about it! That option is off the table. The shame he brought my family; my mother, my father. I could never revisit that on them.

Now, this fantasy, that I will repeat I never wanted, was stripped from me. This disgusting act that had permeated my fantasies for years was suddenly voided. Return to sender, address unknown. I couldn’t do it. I had to carry on knowing I’d had this demon on my shoulders for so long and could never feed it.

I woke up one morning and realized that the fantasy that had followed me for so long would remain that: a fantasy. I hung it up, and tried to move on as though it had never entered my mind. I’m not the gut who ever entertained the idea of shitting on the 50 yard line of the high school football field. I mean, look at the guy who did! I’m not him, and I would never want to be. That guy was insensitive, and didn’t think of the larger consequences of his actions. What a dick! Fuck that guy.

But can I tell you that sometimes I am secretly jealous of him? That he did the unthinkable thing? And that I hate him for it? It was supposed to be me.

It was supposed to be me.

It’s been 28 years since I first realized I couldn’t ever shit on the 50 yard line of the high school football field. I’ve since become a restaurant manager, far away from the rural background of my uninteresting upbringing. I’m something else, or at least, I’m elsewhere.

But I feel like I can tell you: I still occasionally think about taking that shit on the 50 yard line of the high school football field*.

*This story is completely true, except that whenever I say “take a shit on the 50 yard line of the high school football field” what I really mean is “kill myself”. This is what it’s like to live with depression in the wake of a suicide.

It was supposed to be me.

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Riding the Dragon

Posted on 11/08/2021 by ericmcclanahan
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“Somebody leaves, someone arrives/Something is gone, and I’m still alive”

Posted on 09/17/2021 by ericmcclanahan

A colleague has passed away. Our contemporaries said someone should write something about it; about him. I didn’t actually like him. We had only one interaction and it wasn’t pleasant. By no means am I glad he’s gone; far from it.

But I don’t mourn him. I don‘t have anything negative to say about him but I can’t say anything nice, either.

He was forty-five years old. He leaves behind an autistic son. He was a filmmaker, a musician, a scholar, and a windbag. He could go on for pages and pages about his passions. As a passionate person he was a firecracker and was quick to temper. He could be difficult. He loved his son, advocated for the autistic community, and supported fellow filmmakers. By all accounts and tributes, he was a good dude.

He killed himself.

I have a strange relationship with suicide: I see it as an unforgivable act; selfish and cruel, immeasurably misguided and worthy of all the derision it invites. At the same time, I find it completely understandable and I’m constantly surprised more people aren’t doing it.

I didn’t particularly like him when he was alive, but now that he’s gone… I hate him. Not for the arrogance or anger he showed while he walked this world; A person alive is always in a position to be better. No, I hate the arrogance and anger that killed him, that guided him to kill himself. Now he can’t be better. Now he can’t prove me wrong, be the better man, show me to be the asshole as he moves through time improving the lives he touches while I bitterly writhe in jealousy.

No, we can’t change our relationship now. He’s gone and I’m here with my anger and unpleasant memories. Why? Why am I still here?

I was in awe of his productivity. I honestly didn’t think his work was particularly good but there was a lot of it. I was jealous that he could push himself to make so much content when I would go days without showering or eating; when the only thing I could care about was having another drink, actively working towards finding the one that would bury me. I was so jealous.

I once reached out to him to ask if he’d give some editing feedback for something I’d written. He never replied. I took it as a snub.

But maybe it wasn’t. Maybe he couldn’t. Maybe what I saw was the tip of his iceberg, and his voluminous works that plagued me so were but a fraction of his heart’s intent. That he, too, found himself frequently arrested by doubt and jealousy.

But I’ll never know. Because he’s gone and I’m still here. I’m still writing, and I’m still walking this earth.

I don’t know his particular “why” but I can understand it. I can’t forgive it, however. I understand wanting to go, but we just can’t. It’s just not what good people do.

As I reflect upon him with judgement and disapproval, I know unequivocally that I am not a good person. But I’m still here, so I can still be better.

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“Years have proved / to offer nothing since you’ve moved”

Posted on 03/29/2021 by ericmcclanahan

I’ve been depressed for the past week or two. Often I sit in my depression and look outwards but this time I’ve been looking in.

I was driving to work one morning on one of the worst days of it. Mornings are not ideal. The commitment of preparing myself for the day and subsequently propelling myself through it is tentative in those early hours. Anything can derail it. It’s easy to lose interest in a day you never wanted to begin with.

While thinking these thoughts I considered medication. Should I medicate my depression? What would be the benefits? Drawbacks? Is it worth it at this point in my life?

I thought about this because I didn’t want to sit in the thoughts I was having, and considered maybe there was a pill that would make them go away. But then I looked back inside at the thoughts that I’d tried to escape; that I’d planned to erase.

That’s when it hit me: my depression isn’t delusional. I’m not thinking things that aren’t real, manufacturing issues that don’t exist, or even peering through the half-empty glass darkly. I’m a pragmatist, though with a slightly defeatist lean. Let’s face it: defeatism isn’t negativity if it’s true. Bad news is still news.

I was thinking about the world; how shitty it’s getting to be. Everything is cheaper and everyone has more and enjoys it less. We’re quick to complain because we know it can be better, so everyone’s out there flapping their gums for a handout. We’re quick to throw away our shit because we can easily get new shit, so everyone’s stomping around the Earth throwing their shit and screaming. All this screaming and no one is saying what they mean:

That someday soon our bodies will quit and we can’t replace that. Someday soon our families will die and we can’t replace that. Someday soon our life will end and no amount of yelling at the manager will give us a do-over. Our time will end and we can’t replace that.

So we get on the Internet and we bitch about our lunch and we bitch about our car and we bitch about our coffeemaker and we bitch about our Internet. We fill the world with all this disappointment and hate then we wonder why we feel so unfulfilled and angry.

“Five Fucking G, my ass…”

Consider a restaurant with value option price points that are very appealing to the average consumer. It drives them in by the truckload, and they order the cheapest thing and then whine if it’s not perfectly aligned with their expectations. It took too long or the portion is too small or the air is too cold. They give so little and take so much. Everyday the people are spilling out of the entrances and exits like pins in a cushion and you’d think that one would take pride in working somewhere that everyone is clamoring to be, but that’s just it: None of them want to be there! If it were thirty cents cheaper they’d eat at a restaurant called Dogshit On A Plate.

We live in a strange nexus of economic affluence and cultural bankruptcy. More people have more money to buy more shit but it’s all cheap shit and rather than make them happy it beats them down and they run screaming into the streets to cry about their first-world problems and I just can’t deal with it anymore.

The Average American Consumer is arguably the Worst Person on Planet Earth on any given day.

Just because that’s defeatist doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

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“I rarely see you when you’re smiling / it really gets under my skin”

Posted on 01/06/2021 by ericmcclanahan

I am a man consumed. A passenger in a speeding cab on the Information Superhighway. In the cab the radio is tuned to a podcast; four or five excited voices vie for airtime. The driver is on his own diatribe, stabbing the air with a lit cigarette that never gets back to his mouth while he delivers a slam poem to the windshield. It’s all talk, talk, talk and I want out.

I have to talk to you today about love; what it might be, what it should be, and what it often is to those with depression and anxiety. i.e. – what it is to me.

“I’m working on a new song” is what I tell myself and others when there is a set of lyrics occupying all the space in my brain, but I think it’s really more of me trying to make sense of the words that I conjure. That’s certainly the case this go ’round.

I’ve been listening to a lot of Stars and Sarah McLachlan, which makes for a very specific headspace in which to explore the concept of love, and what I found is both beautiful and tremendously upsetting.

In the mornings lying next to you there should be someone
Who’ll kill themselves to make you happy; they’ll kill anyone.
In the winter they will keep you warm, in the summer keep you wet
They’ll rip out their own beating heart for your Last Christmas gift.

If I could I’d thank god that you’re here
And if I could I’d wish upon a star
If I could I’d whisper in your ear
“You should be happier than you are”

I don’t know how we failed you. Perhaps we didn’t try.
But we can make it up to you; we’ll set fire to the sky.
We’ll drain the oceans so your feet can take you where you see fit
And if you find a place you can do without we’ll scrub the Earth of it.
I’ll tear out my own tongue if I say something that makes you cry
and I’ll blacken both your eyes if you see something that you don’t like.

“You should be happier than you are.”

The concept is essentially the POV of a depressed person, A, looking at someone they claim to love, B, and needing them to be happy because that’s what A thinks love should be, and if B isn’t happy then what is A doing wrong? What more can A do, or in what way can A shape the world around B so that B is happy? If B’s loved, B’s happy, right? Otherwise, what is the purpose of love?

B’s happiness isn’t actually the goal for A, however, because A doesn’t intend for B to happy independent of A. A needs to be a catalyst for that happiness, because A needs to see B happy to believe in love, or validate A’s belief in what love means.

What I’m saying is, as a depressive, I have to see the people that I love happy, because i have to believe that love can make them happy, because I have to believe that love can make me happy. It’s unfair, it’s untenable, and it’s not the truth. But sometimes it’s what my mind makes me believe.

What love should be is the force that brings light to the world. It’s not a smile, or a laugh, or a content face resting without worry. It’s light. It’s belonging. It’s comfort in times of stress, safety in times of fear, strength in bouts of fragility.

What it is actually is often messy, often tearful, and often imperfect. And even then, in those instances, it is the force that brings light to the world.

I don’t know if the song will go darker or dip out towards the end. I hope to finish this song some time this year. I’ll keep you posted.

Posted in Depression, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

“Shame you left my life so soon, you should have told me, hey, but you left me Far Behind”

Posted on 01/06/2021 by ericmcclanahan

I am constantly, actively trying to be a better person. Better than what I revile, better than I’ve been, better than I am. It is an active and constant effort that I put forth every day.

Let me clarify: I am not saying that I am a good person. I am not. I know this. I am acutely aware of this, which is why I can say with genuine earnest that I am constantly, actively trying to be a better person.

I have misogynistic thoughts. They form in my brain, and I am the only one driving that thing, so I know they are mine. A part of me thinks these things, and then this active agent in my conscience recognizes them as wrong and shuts them down. I do not act on them, I do not own them, and I do not give them any credence. I eliminate them as soon as they form like an antibody taking out a virus.

I have racist thoughts. Classist thoughts. Elitist thoughts. Unconscious biases. Snap judgements. Thoughts of self-harm. Frequent, frequent thoughts of self-harm. There are things that appear in my head that I wish didn’t. Things that I wish I didn’t have to admit come from me. But they do, and I have to be brave enough to recognize that they are so that I can actively fight them, erase them, and reprogram that part of my head where they found life until they won’t anymore.

It is a constant, active effort that I put forth every day.

This active compassion has me taking stock of my expectations of others, as I would hope they would of me. We’re all struggling, particularly in this current version of existence. The year may have turned but the time has not. We’re still ostracized, fearful, angry, and fitful. 2020 has affected each of us differently, but it has undoubtedly affected each of us. As such, I try not to view others’ actions through the lens of my own experience. Some thrust themselves at their support circle, some minimize their presence, some disappear entirely. No one course is irrefutably right or wrong. We’re all doing our best.

So when a dear friend disappears from me entirely, I have to respect that they’re probably taking time to themselves, or their situation has changed to the point that they can’t be avaiable to me, or any other reason they’re distant that has nothing to do with me.

“It’s not always about me,” I tell myself.

“But what if it is?” I ask myself.

I think I may have been cancelled. I don’t know why. This raises a lot of questions, both about me and about my view of the interloper and the affected. First, as always, there is me.

What did I do? Or not do? I’ve combed through my social media output over the past year with a critical eye on what I may have said or admitted to or remained silent and therefor complicit towards. I am questioning every sentence I’ve ever uttered, every thought I’ve ever heard, every little thing that could have caused another discomfort or to feel marginalized in any way.

If you asked me if an accuser owes their attacker an explanation as to why they’re being punished or ostracized, I would shout “absolutely not!” If what makes you safe is removing yourself from the situation, do so and do so immediately. You don’t owe anyone an explanation; why even put yourself through that? Why assign words to their wrongdoing? Just cut ties and walk away. Cleanse yourself of it all. I support you.

But now I feel like I’m the attacker, and of course I want a fucking explanation. I want to be a better person, but I can’t do that if I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. The truth is, as much as I want to be a compassionate and considerate citizen of the world, I know in my heart that I am unpure and broken. As such, I am aware that I may be fucking up without being aware of it, because I know that I am not perfect and haven’t eyes to see or cognizance to know what is empirically right and wrong. I am not perfect, and would never be arrogant enough to assume that I know how to be. Therefor, I need to be told when I am wrong.

This of course is in direct conflict with my belief that the injured are obligated to any dialogue with their attackers. So, what now do I do with my injuries? Have I been cancelled?

Or is this, like most of the mechanics of the world I inhabit, not about me at all? Am I just viewing this through the lens of my own experience? It’s difficult not to when the only set of eyes I have are mine, and clouded by Depression and feelings of worthlessness. As a major depressive, I am almost always consumed by guilt that I’m doing everything wrong, so when I’m called out for such (or not called out, only punished) it stings that much deeper.

“I did not mean to treat you oh so bad, oh but I did it anyway.”

Posted in Covid-19, Decentness, Depression | Leave a comment