Ernest Saves Christmas The Santa Clause and Golden Boughs The Killing of the Tree-Spirit Ritual

➡ The text discusses a podcast episode about the movie “Ernest Saves Christmas”. The hosts compare the movie to “The Santa Claus”, noting similarities in the plot. They also discuss the actor Jim Varney, who played Ernest, and his talent for comedy. The hosts plan to cover more Ernest movies in future episodes, matching them with the seasons.
➡ The text discusses a movie scene that resembles a scene from “Dumb and Dumber”. It also mentions the character Ernest’s humor and his impressions of John Wayne. The text further talks about the filming locations in Orlando, including the old Orlando Children’s Museum and the Disney MGM studio backlot. Lastly, it discusses the failed attempt to turn Central Florida into Hollywood and the changes in the distances between places in the movie.
➡ The text discusses the creation and success of the Ernest movies, particularly “Ernest Saves Christmas”. It mentions how the character Ernest was created for advertisements before becoming a movie character. The text also talks about the plot of “Ernest Saves Christmas”, where Santa is becoming senile and needs to find a replacement. Despite the expectation that Ernest would become the new Santa, the story instead focuses on another character, Joe. The text also mentions the financial success of the movie and the performances of the actors, particularly Jim Varney (Ernest) and the actress who played Harmony.
➡ The text discusses a movie featuring a character named Ernest who takes on multiple roles, including an auditor, a mother with a neck brace, and a southern madman. The text also mentions a skinny Santa Claus who seems more like a businessman and a discussion about the movie’s various references and inconsistencies. The text ends with a mention of a short-lived TV series called “Hey”.
➡ The text is a conversation about various movies, focusing on “Ernest Saves Christmas”. The speakers discuss the plot, where Ernest helps Santa Claus find his successor, Joe. They compare it to other Christmas movies, like “The Santa Claus”, and discuss the challenges of making a compelling Santa movie. They also mention the importance of Santa’s beard in the plot and how it magically grows back when Joe becomes Santa.
➡ The text discusses various topics, including the symbolism of Christmas, the shift of the new year from April to January, and the impact of this on different cultures. It also talks about the film industry, mentioning specific movies and actors, and their influence on the viewer’s perception of Christmas. The text ends with a discussion about the career of John Carpenter and the theory that Chevy Chase may have negatively impacted it.
➡ The speaker discusses various movies, including an Invisible Man film and Wicked, sharing their personal opinions and experiences. They also delve into a detailed analysis of the movie Ernest Saves Christmas, comparing its themes to the motifs found in James Frazier’s Golden Bow, a series of books about common patterns in global mythology. The speaker suggests that the movie missed an opportunity to elevate the character Ernest to a god-like status, similar to the cycle of gods in Frazier’s work. They also discuss the cultural significance of Santa Claus as a universal figure of authority and benevolence.
➡ The text discusses the concept of Santa Claus as a tool for teaching kids about morality, using the reward or punishment system. It also includes a conversation about various movies and podcasts, with a focus on Christmas-themed content. The text ends with a promotion for Paranoid American sticker sheets and a rap verse.

Is this the same plot as the Santa Claus? Is Ernest gonna kill Santa? Ask about Illuminati sister chart in the upbeat. Is it Disney mind control? Is this MKUltra Deluxe? Go dance. There we go. From real to real. I go this there bohemian roll and no more real business ask a b a co business teacher go to everybody a co business A wish upon a star A convincement you know not to J oh a con a new brand Pinocchio D. Merry Christmas this year, what do you good boys and girls get? An episode of the Occult Disney podcast.

Although I don’t know. For Ernest’s Christmas, I feel like I need to do a slightly more nefarious sounding Santa Claus. I’m not quite sure what the tone for that is though. He’s like. They go, oh, he, he seems like a little bit scary. Probably because he’s wearing like a tweed suit. I would have appreciated an earnest impression, but I myself would never try to impersonate earnest because I feel like you would just be trying to box with God. Yeah, that’s. Oh. My first thought was, can I do an Earnest. I was like, no, I guess I’ll do a general stereotypical Santa Claus.

You know what I mean? See, I can’t even do that right. I tried it. I can’t do it. You do like a. Like a John Wayne. That’s kind of an earth like it. Like. There you go, there you go. Okay. See, John Wayne’s an easier one. And then, oh, no, Ernest is, you know, Jim Varney. You can’t quite hit that vibe. Right. Which is, I guess why he did the character, which is an incredibly talented Shakespearean actor that somehow only really found a huge opening in slapstick physical impression comedy. Right. But in this movie, as in other Ernest movies, Ernest goes to jails.

The biggie where he has these other roles where he does get to kind of show his chop. So then you’re like, ernest, this guy’s an idiot. Certainly the actor is also an idiot. And then you also get all these little scenes where he’s actually, you know, it’s still broad, goofy comedy, but he’s doing very different things. You know, this one too. Let’s just get right into like just earnest lore, I guess, without getting too deep, but that this movie might not be. If you’ve never seen an Earnest movie, this movie assumes that you have. This movie assumes that you’re already in on Earnest’s character a little bit.

It’s not necessarily the one that sells you on the Earnest character, if that. If that makes sense. Which is kind of funny because I haven’t watched an earnest movie. I saw Jim Varney recently, and not in the flesh, obviously, but I watched Three Ninjas, High Noon, Omega Mountain, where he’s. He does a great villain turn. He’s a lot of fun, that movie. So I have seen him in a movie recently and Toy Story, of course, but, you know, But I. I haven’t actually watched Ernest for a long time. By the way, real quick, Matt here, paranormal American there.

Okay, good introductions out of the way just in case this is someone’s first episode. Although if your first episode of Call Disney is Ernest Saves Christmas, that is an interesting choice that you’ve made. And also, why are we watching Ernest Saves Christmas on a cult Disney? A, because Touchstone Pictures, which is technically Disney’s, like, adult, like, non Disney version of this. B, because it’s Christmas. And C, because this movie, Ernest Saves Christmas. And I’ll say. And an extension is the Santa Claus, which came after that. It was 94. This is 1988. I saw the Santa Claus for the first time, like, two weeks ago.

So watching this movie was extremely confusing. Oh, that’s actually really perfect. Right? Because it’s the same movie. It’s this. I know. That’s what I mean. I was like, is this a Santa Claus again? And I have in my notes, is this the same plot as the Santa Claus? Is Ernest gonna kill Santa? I’ll do you one better than that. This. Not only is it the exact same plot, but this is such an old, old motif. This is the same. If I can get conspiratory really quick, the JFK king kill 33, James Shelby Downard. Like, that whole Killing of the King ritual, it’s rooted in this exact story.

And I’m not. I’m not even talking about. Oh, you can draw correlations between the way that this story structured and the way this old. No, it is literally in Frazier’s Golden Bow, there’s a chapter called the Killing of the Tree Spirit. And there’s a more modern take on this, which is called the Holly King and the Oak King. The Holly King being Santa Claus, being someone that’s represented by, you know, Christmas trees in the winter. And then the Oak King is sort of the. The Midsummer King. And. And the entire premise is that when the Holly King’s reign comes to an end at around Christmas, right around the end of winter, that he dies of old age.

And because he literally loses his magic and he has to be replaced by a new king that has new, fresh magic, that is. That is exactly what’s happening in the Santa Claus and in Ernest. Say it directly. Yeah, of course. At the end of this movie, he turns. He goes back to being, what, a 150-year-old man named Seth Applegate. What did he do, die in two weeks? Right. He was born in the 1880s or something. Or. Or like. Yeah, so. So the version is the. Technically, the killing of the king is that the king dies in Ernest Saves Christmas.

He just reverts back into a mortal human being again and then, I guess, dies of old age soon after. Right. That’s. The implication is that he goes from God or an immortal back into an immortal. But. But it’s still the exact. In the Santa Claus, he does die. It is a literal killing of the king ritual. It was an accident. Okay. Of course. Have you seen the sequels to the Santa Claus? I don’t dislike any of them, to be honest. Oh, they just get so whack because you’re like, okay, we have to double down on really getting into the inner structure of Santa lore, which maybe this movie might have done as well if it, you know, had sequel.

It does have sequels, but they’re not Christmas sequels and involving Santa Claus, so they don’t get that sequels. This is just the Earnest Christmas movie is all it is. Yeah. And just for the listeners, we are doing four seasons of Earnest. We’re going into winter, so it’s Earnest Save Christmas. Sometime in spring, we’ll unleash Ernest Goes to Jail on you. In the summer, Ernest Goes to Camp. And next. Next Halloween, you’ll get Ernest Scared Stupid. I know that’s not the order the movies came out in. That’s the order that fits the seasons. And we’re saving, in my opinion, the best for last.

I do think that Earnest Scared Stupid is my favorite Earnest movie. Maybe more for nostalgic reasons than reasonable ones. Yeah, I guess we should talk a little bit about our Earnest history. One, I work at a company called Earnest, if anyone’s interested. So that’s kind of funny. I was actually saying. What was I saying yesterday? Oh, I was talking about Earnest, and someone thought I was just talking. Like, I was like, yeah, Earnest is really cool. And someone thought I was, like, just getting real, like, Kool Aid drinky about the company. Like, no, no, I’m talking about.

Here you get a promotion, all of a sudden. You don’t even know why. Yeah, we sometimes bring up that I’m a little older than you. So Ernest Goes to camp was 87, I think, and I didn’t see that in the theater. But we rented it, like, several times. And I love that movie. And I started, you know, like, I’d start renting Dr. Otto and compilations of Earnest commercials, because you could do that, you know. And then Ernest Saves Christmas came out, I guess, when I was 10 years old, 1989. And my dad and I went to the theater and we hated it.

I had a good time watching last night, don’t get me wrong. But just. I don’t know, maybe it’s because when I was, like, 7, 8 years old, earnest was the best thing ever. And when I. By the time you get to 10, you’re like, wait, I’m smarter in this. But Ernest Saves Christmas, a movie I enjoyed watching last night, is the first time I might have gone to a movie and been like, oh, maybe not every movie is the best thing ever. That. Well, I think I was five or six when I saw it, when it first came out.

So I probably enjoyed it as much as I probably could. It was sort of like the perfect demographic for this type of Earnest comedy. And I also, watching this movie, I kept seeing what I like references where other people would be like. For example, the movie starts out with Ernest driving to the airport. And it’s actually to the real Orlando airport, MCO, like an 88 version of it, but it’s still the MCO airport. And the way that he’s, like, driving and whipping around, he’s got the guy in the back that’s kind of scared, and he’s doing weird faces and voices.

I was like, this is the scene from Dumb and Dumber when Jim Carrey is driving the lady to the airport because she’s gonna miss it. And he’s, like, not watching the road and taught, like, every single be even down to making weird, silly faces. It almost feels like there wouldn’t be the Dumb and Dumber limo scene without Ernest Saves Christmas taxi scene. Oh, that makes more sense. I was thinking about Collateral. Instead of getting Santa Claus in your car, you get a psychopath played by Tom Cruise. You could have just had Tom Cruise. Yeah, yeah. Well, but I.

Vincent in the movie is a special kind of psychopath. That is we have to distinguish him a little bit from. From Tom Cruise. He’s a different kind of psychopath this movie. Also, there’s some nostalgic bias that are tying in. I. So for the record, I don’t know if this is a great Christmas movie. I don’t even know if this is a good movie, let alone Christmas movie. I like Ernest, so it gets a pass. And then there’s some nostalgic points to it. For example, the girl in it, which, for some weird reason, her character’s name is Harmony, but her real name was Noel.

Why wouldn’t you just let her use her real name, Noel, in a Christmas movie? Anyways, she has this, like. Yeah, my first nose. Harmony Poke Brewster. Yeah. Harmony Star is like the most porn star name ever. So, you know, who knows how she was running tricks? Plus, if your name’s Noel and you’re in a Christmas movie, is it that hard to just be like, let’s just recast the name as Noel. It’s perfect. But I was gonna say, like, she has the exact Punky Brewster aesthetic, which just. It’s a snapshot in time. There’s so many things. As I’m watching this movie and he’s doing these John Wayne impressions to this girl, I’m even thinking, like, is she getting what this impression even is? Does this girl watch enough John Wayne that she gets that he’s doing a John Wayne voice? And then I’m thinking, wait, is anyone in.

In 2025 watching this for the first time even getting that he’s doing John Wayne voices? I might have. I. I think John Wayne was always on your. Or I mean, you might have been flipping channels, but you’re going to run across some flipping channels on, you know, mid-80s Sunday afternoon television. Maybe, but these are real subtle ones. He’s not Full metal. Yeah, Full Metal Jacket certainly went on the John Wayne impression, didn’t it? Like, two years, they mention his name. They’ve got billboards in the background that, like, represent John Wayne. Right. But the. But in this one, he doesn’t even say the word pilgrim.

He would just like, I’ll take care of you, little lady. And. And that’s all you get. But, like, knowing Ernest’s specific flavor of humor and knowing that he constantly did this John Wayne impression, I know what he’s talking about, but I don’t think the girl does. And I don’t think someone the girl’s age in 2025 has any idea what the hell he’s doing. Well, six years later, you basically have Tom Hanks doing Woody and Toy Story, doing a. A one step removed John Wayne impression where he’s still kind of doing one. But it’s like, this is for people who definitely don’t know who John Wayne is.

And also, I feel that he. John Wayne’s grandfathered in. He seems like the kind of person that would be canceled if he was still alive long enough to be canceled. Oh, the other thing with Elvis is. Why am I saying Elvis now? I’m just, like, ripping off all the bad days. Is there an Ernest movie that would be a such a missed opportunity? Well, you get Boba Ho t with Bruce Campbell doing an elderly Elvis. That’s kind of funny. Okay. Yeah. Mummy Elvis. That’s your consolation prize. No, I didn’t notice that his taxi is also number 69.

So I thought that was funny. Yeah. Yeah, I guess so. They knew what they were doing. There’s. They’re also in. There’s so many scenes in this that all take place in Orlando. And I just had to make a note that it’s legitimately all in Orlando. I think the entire movie essentially was shot in old Orlando Children’s Museum, which isn’t the same thing anymore. Now it’s like a Shakespearean play thing, which I guess Ernest would actually probably appreciate that it’s at the actual MCO airport, even though it looks wildly different. And they even used a whole bunch of spots on the Disney at the time, MGM studio backlot.

Right. Only movies that actually did that. Exactly. This is, like, the biggest play to make that a real studio. Because 1989 is when that place opened. When it opened, it had the great movie ride and the backlot tour. And that’s about it, I think. So a big thing was like, they could drive you by and be like, hey, Ernest Saves Christmas. Shot this scene here, you know? Yeah, they did. Well, there’s a. There’s a few other movies I think, that we’ve seen that. There’s Hulk Hogan’s Thunder and Paradise, I think. And here I’ve got a little bit of insight as to how this all operates.

And I’ll just do, like, the quickest, least boring version of this. But the. The reason why it doesn’t happen anymore, the reason why they even built MGM Studios and wanted to start shooting movies here, and we’re enticing people, is that they’ll do it for, like, 10 years. And then they hope that enough people build up their businesses that rely on Florida or Orlando to be a place to shoot, and then they’ll rip out all the tax incentives. And then the. And the idea is, like, well, if you spent the last 10 years of your business setting up roots, you’re not just going to up and leave and go and shoot in Atlanta just because Atlanta’s got better tax credits.

Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened. And after Disney or after the Orange county government decided to, like, remove all those tax benefits that they were originally giving people in the 80s through the late 90s, it. It left and it never came back. And that’s when the back studio shut down. That’s when they replaced the animation buildings with, like, the Star wars rides. That was. It was a death knell. And they. They really overplayed their hand. They figured if you build it, they will come, and then if you drop the tax credits, they will stay. And neither of those things ended up being true.

Well, they never made much here. I mean, it was this. It was the Hulk Hogan show, probably a few other things, but they didn’t do much. Even the Universal version, you know, a few miles away, they. They did Nickelodeon shows there. Jimmy Buffett’s Fruitcakes. You can see that video is clearly shot there. And you know, that’s a handful of game shows that were shot on the MGM studio backlot that weren’t necessarily like Disney game shows. But again, it was never enough to turn Central Florida into Hollywood, which was what they were originally trying to do. And they gave it a good 10 years and it just didn’t pan out.

And. And being a pure tourist, I was like, oh, I didn’t recognize most of the Orlando places because one, I’ve never flown in or out, so I haven’t been to the airport. I was always. You wouldn’t, though, because MCO is unrecognizable from the version that you see the. The MCO that you see in Earnest Saves Christmas. Looks like a D. DMV in a small town. Right. But yeah, I’ve been, you know, I’ve been like, what? I drive. I’ve been to Universal, I’ve been to Disney. I haven’t really been to Orlando. You know, when I actually think about it, that’s pretty much everybody.

No one, really. You go to downtown, legit downtown Orlando in the middle of a day, it’s just ghost town. There’s no. There’s nothing and no one there. Ah, okay. Conversely, Atlanta now was very different because when I was growing up, Atlanta was a ghost town in the middle of the day. Where. When I was in Midtown a few weeks ago or two months ago, whatever it was, but I was like, oh, it actually feels like a city now, which it never did when I was growing up. So, you know, props to Atlanta for that, I guess.

I agree with that. I think things are closer together in Atlanta than they are. And another good point is that in this movie, they. One of the things they do is they sort of change how far away places are. So they’ll be at the airport and then they’ll be at the science museum or the children’s museum in this one. And. And they make it seem like they can just run from one place to the other. I mean, we’re talking like two completely different ends of Orlando in this case, which is typical of movies, but it’s just one of those things that you might actually be able to do that in other cities, not in Orlando.

Oh, yeah. Anyone watching. Anyone from Atlanta watching? Baby drivers like you cannot get from Buckhead to wherever they go. It’s someplace far away in that quick a time. So there’s other things. Yeah, you can’t do that. Something. I. I didn’t know this. You’re mentioning how Jim Marnie is like, you know, like a classically trained actor. And. And Ernest is. He was kind of assigned that character. John Cherry is the actual creator of Ernest, but not an actor. So he had to find a guy to do it. You know, he worked for an ad agency. And Ernest starts with a bunch of just ads.

So it’s like, I need to get. I have this character. I need to find the right guy to do it. And just kind of became weirdly symbiotic. And he directs, like all of the earnest movies, I think, even the ones that aren’t Disney. I didn’t look this up, and we don’t have to look it up right now, but I’m just trying to think. My introduction to Ernest. I don’t even think it was movies. I think that there was. It was either a series of the commercials put together or I think there was like a TV show or a variety show that he would, like, make an appearance on and talk to Verne constantly at the camera.

Yeah, it wasn’t like feature length. No, no. As I said, you know, we rented Ernest Goes to Camp and loved it. As a weird 78 year old kid, I found all those weird compilations and rented those too. So those were readily available in the 80s. I mean, you could probably watch them on YouTube now. You know, when I sent you several lists for this series, we set on four. Four series of Earnest. But I remember sending you three plans, one of which is like. And we do all the theatrical movies and we just do the four Disney ones or we do all the weird crap too.

You know, depending on how intentionally your. Your Earnest plane was burning, we can get there. Let’s. Let’s do the four big ones. Yeah, we’ll see if we may go farther. There’s not. This isn’t one of those rooms. There is a ton of production. Most of it is like they filmed it by your house, you know, so that’s, I guess, what, what we have going for it. I usually do spout out numbers. 6.5 budget, 28.2 million box office. This is the most successful of the earnest films, even if not the best, the most successful. Which makes sense because again, this is a retelling of a classic tale.

So someone that doesn’t even really know what they’re getting into might be drawn to this one. And I do think that Christmas movies probably do somewhat better than like a camp movie or a go to jail movie because it’s, it becomes a thing that you do constantly. And even if we’re just talking about opening box office weekend, for some people in the US Especially, Christmas day is like a big movie day for some reason. It was never for me. But they always have movies coming out because it’s when people are off work and they’re all together and they’re like looking for something to do, I guess.

Well, industry wise, you get a double bump, right? Because this came out November 11, 1988. It has its opening weekend, it tapers off, tapers off. Then in the middle of December, it starts coming back up in the box office. And then after January 1st, nobody watches this movie. So you do have to plan it, right, because you know, if you, if you open December, that’s already too late. You’re just gonna get the Christmas rise. And then come January, your movies out theater. So yeah, good point. No one’s watching a Christmas movie after New Year’s. I was surprised that people watch it until New Year’s.

I just assumed people would stop watching Christmas movies after December 25th, you know, but you got the week off. I guess you still might go. I don’t know though. You’ve opened your presents. Isn’t depressing to go see a Christmas movie after you’ve opened all your. As long as all the Christmas trees are still up and they’re not at the end of everyone’s driveways in the garbage. Yeah, I guess I just been living in Japan so long where Christmas is more like a Halloween sort of holiday. And December 26th, anything Christmas, it’s not gone. No, I mean, people hang on to Christmas, I think, longer than other holidays.

Yeah, I, I, Although I still at work, just yesterday I was handing the kids like Halloween snacks. We still have a bunch of like Halloween snacks left over, I guess so for the little kids snack. Then they’re like, Halloween. I’m like, yeah, it’s Halloween again. I started singing the Nightmare for Christmas Song as it’s programming. Right. Which is also a blend of Santa Claus and Halloween. Right, Right. Well, that one doesn’t kill any kings. I guess he just kind of. Well, they’re all dead. They’re all dead. Everyone’s dead already. They’re all dead. Okay, let’s see. Those are the killed kings.

Yeah, I’m. I’m basically having said all those numbers. I. I pretty. Okay, well, no, sorry, that wasn’t a thought. Anyway, that. That. That’s about all the info I got on, like, how this thing was made. I mean, there aren’t, like, exhaustive tomes on Earnest Saves Christmas. Like, before this, we were doing the. The Evangelion episode where I had to basically read a book of production stuff before the episode. This has, like, 1, you know, 5% of what that had. You know what, though, man? I feel like when you’re making an earnest movie, as long as Jim Verne is doing his thing.

Right. Then, like, you don’t necessarily need production, you just need him to do his thing. Yeah. You did just call him Jim Vern, though. I have to throw that out there. Oh, well, whatever. It makes sense. He’s got Vern. Yeah. And I got it. 1. Maybe this is why I was disappointed by this movie in the first place. And I did notice it last night, too. Ernest isn’t in this movie that much. I mean, Jim Varney’s not. There’s lots of scenes he’s not in. It’s not. It’s not about Ernest. Right. This movie is about Joe. Some random club that is like.

I don’t even. I don’t really get why he’s the one. He kind of creeps me out. In fact, Santa creeps me out. In fact, the very beginning of this movie, it’s all just about this old dude walking around in an airport and winking at children when their parents aren’t looking. And it was. It was creeping me out a little bit. Maybe Santa has. In this. In the earnest universe, Santa does need to be, like, a little creepy because Joe the actor is also, like. He doesn’t seem that charming, you know, And. And then actual Santa or the current Santa also, he’s not that.

Like you said, he’s given creepy wings. He’s not charming about it. No, because he’s starting to become senile. Right. So the. The premise is, instead of. In the Santa Claus with Tim Allen in 94, that one Santa dies and Tim Allen has to replace the dead Santa. But in this movie, Santa is becoming senile and he realizes he’s forgetting names, he’s forgetting his magic. He’s losing his magic. And he basically needs to retire and he has to find someone that’s going to fill in. And the whole time if I’ve erased my mind of like how I knew this thing was going to end, in my mind I’m like, Ernest is going to become Santa.

He has to. Ernest is going to become Santa Claus. That’s the only thing that would make sense to have him top billing. And it’s not. It’s about Ernest helping Santa help this other guy that doesn’t really have a lot of screen presence. No offense to the actor wearing a fake beard. And the only thing that I can tell is just because he’s fat, it’s the only reason that he makes a good Santa. And he reads the children for free. I guess the actor was Oliver Clark. I was just checking if he did something amazing and besmirching his name.

Still alive. But he didn’t really. He’s. He’s like. He was in a couple episodes of mash. He’s in the Golden Girls. So it’s not, you know what, the same thing for the girl, Harmony or Noel. Because I was like, man, she looks familiar, but I couldn’t recognize her. The other big thing that she was in was the Amy Fisher story. I believe it did seem like they were trying to star turn her a little more like, oh, maybe she’ll break out. Which I mean, she didn’t suck in this movie, but she was, you know, like she didn’t like break out or anything.

Right. I think she absolutely. Hell, this is not a movie critic show, but I think she absolutely held her own playing opposite of Jim Varney. She’s essentially the co star in this move. Maybe Santa is, but it’s like she’s the sidekick and I think she holds up. She. Even when Jim Varney dresses up as like the. The auditor and he’s kind of like, like laughing with like lots of teeth in his mouth, she’s like next to him, she dresses up like a schoolgirl or something that her daddy is the warden, her daddy’s the governor. I think they play it off well, like the, the energy between the two of them.

She doesn’t get overshadowed. Oh, one more thing on Oliver Clark. I went to his wiki and the photo of him is from 10 years earlier and I’m going to put it in the chat. But try to imagine this. He looks like a mix of Rick Moranis and Josh Brolin. Tried. Can you imagine that? I will. I’LL imagine. Okay. You’ll have. Actually, you might have to imagine it because I’m not able to copy and paste the picture. But if you go to his wiki page, I was like, this is a weird picture. He looks like halfway between Josh Brolin and Rick Moranis, which doesn’t make sense.

I think the. The movie careers, aside from Jim Varney with the movie careers of everyone else in this movie panned out the same way that Orlando’s movie career panned out. Okay. Yeah, that. That sounds about right. Douglas Seal as Santa Claus, who, by the way, is too skinny to be Santa Claus. Come on. Where’s his bowl full of jelly? He wasn’t a horrible Santa Claus. No, he just. He seemed more like a. Like a, you know, aggressive businessman, though to me, somehow, like, he seemed a little raw to be Santa Claus. Well, because he’s got dementia.

Yeah. Okay. We. If you want to throw this dementia, that’s fine. Again, I have. I’m crosswind with the Santa Claus, actually. We can do the Santa Claus on this. That’s just as much of a Disney movie as this is. So that maybe next Christmas we’ll actually hit next. Oh, yeah. We’ll have to do, like, all three or something like that. All three of them. That’s right. We have to do all three, because the. The they having gone through them recently, they just get so much more insane. And we’ll figure out a way to get home alone at some point.

Who knows? Yeah, that’s Fox. Well, hey, Fox owned by Disney now. Yeah, we can do. We can do them all on a long enough timeline. Disney owns everything. So technically we can just get ahead of the game and do every movie that we ever want to do. Because what they. Was it. Netflix is supposedly buying Warner Brothers or Paramount or something. So Disney buys them, and we’ve got one big media company to keep everything simple. There’s a silver lining here. It means that more occult Disney episodes. If one conglomerate swallows all of media and runs propaganda for the whole world, then we’ll have to just call it a.

Call it everything. A couple other references in this movie. And I know that this might not be a direct influence, but I need to point out that the scene where they look into Santa’s bag, Jim Varney does it first. He opens the bag and light shines in his face and he’s like, oh, my God. Like, what. What’s in here that predates Indiana Jones? I believe it predates the movie 7. What’s in the box? It predates Pulp Fiction when they Open up the box. And the. The glowing. So I almost feel that this is a. I have an earlier one for you.

Oh, no. What is it? There’s a Twilight Zone episode with one. One of the Honeymooners. Not. Not Gleason. Jackie Gleason, the other guy. And his name’s just like, escaping me. Anyway, he’s like a drunk Santa or whatever. And I think. I think he has a glowing bag. I’ll have to double check. But let’s still tv. We’re mentioning movies here, okay? We’re talking about movies. I’m sure that. I’m sure that Ernest Saves Christmas did not invent the motif of opening up a thing on camera and you don’t see in like, light comes out of it. But I’m just saying that.

That. Oh, yeah, films. The. The pop fiction one actually is supposed to be a reference to like a 60s French New Wave film, by the way, but. So it’s happened before, but not necessarily with a Christmas sack. There’s another one too, that we don’t get a visual on here because they didn’t have the same budget as Terminator 2. But Jim Varney is describing. Or Ernest is describing how he thought Santa worked because he didn’t have a chimney. And he’s like, yeah, Santa morphs down into this, like, molten liquid. And then he goes through my air ducts.

And then he like, sludges back out through the air ducts and refor. And I was just thinking that he literally just described the T1000 and the secret World of Alex Mack before either of those existed. He could also be wrong. So it is. It is Ernest P. Worrell telling you this. But he said it. But he’s. But he said the thing before the other. Anyways, I just thought that it’s interesting how prophetic this random mid Earnest movie from 88 really was. The Santa’s license says he was from Prussia, which I guess is that. That’s where the original guy was from, right? Seth Apple.

Whatever. It was Applegate. But yeah, I was just like, santa’s from Prussia. That’s a weird specific thing to say. I mean, you think his license would say North Pole, Right? And also, Seth Applegate doesn’t sound like the most Prussian name in the world either. Yeah, maybe Applegate’s a translation from the. From the German, I guess. Why are you speaking Prussia? Where was. I guess. But this is. He said 1880s is when he took over the role of Santa. Right. So, yeah, I just thought they. His current license should probably show the North Pole and not Russia.

So kind of a weird thing. Good. Big Marine, big Marine banner. They want you to join the Marines in here. The airport annoyances do feel accurate, especially today. I got the exact opposite read on this. I was like, man, TSA used to not exist. And going through the airport, the guy that had to pass you through, he was the one annoyed. Not you going through it, but the worker. And now that complete thing has inverted. Now it’s like they’re just sitting in the chair doing their job, and you’re the one that’s annoyed having to go through all this.

My most recent air journey was done during that. During the shutdown. So, yeah, nobody cared in security. They weren’t getting paid. What else did I got here? Oh, here. Here’s something that I don’t think you would find on the IMDb blooper page or like the inconsistencies page, but at the very beginning of this movie, when Ernest goes to the Children’s museum, at first, they come back the next day, and in that second scene, a huge blood vessel popped in Jim Varney’s eye, and it’s filled with blood. And it looks like they try and keep that side of his eye off the camera, but it was just a weird little thing that I noticed that maybe you wouldn’t have noticed in the.

The theatrical release in 88, when you’re watching it on like an old film strip or like a crt. But when I’m watching this thing upscaled, I was like, why is his eye filled with blood all of a sudden? And then they cut to him dressed up as another character, and then it’s gone again. So I don’t know. I just thought that was. That was interesting. So they didn’t quite get as good side. I. I do like when Santa tries to pay with his own money because I. I try to do that sometimes. I. I have. I have my own money here, so I feel like in the States, you could get jumped or arrested for doing that.

They are the wrong size, if that makes you feel better. This is. This is kind of how the George Floyd riot started too. So just. I wouldn’t want to start anything. Funny money. That’s how it started. Yeah. Started over funny money, actually. Well, when I was in the States that I did have the funny money in my wallet. I did not try and pay anyone using my funny money, though. I used actual money. What else here? The. The characters that we see in this movie are. Ernest has so many characters, and this one we really just get, I think, like four different ones.

Aside from the normal Earnest character I try to make. I’m making a mental inventory here though. But we get the auditor kind of aristocracy guy. I don’t really know a better phrase to give him. He kind of. He’s got his hair slicked back and he’s all teeth and it’s got the mother with a neck brace which is probably my absolute favorite Ernest character by like a large margin. And then we have the backwoods redneck hillbilly Ernest. Southern madman. Southern madman Ernest, which is also a pretty decent version of him. Right. And I think I love this other one.

Yeah, I, I was impressed that you were actually getting through all those so. Oh, by the way, you might have seen a short lived TV series called hey Vernon, it’s Earnest. That might. When you were talking earlier. 100. I did. I want to say it was on USA. Am I right about that? I don’t know what it was on. Well, I guess I think. I want. I think that I saw anyways. CBS Deke rerun on the Family Channel. What? You, you said usa. I thought it was usa. I could be wrong. It might have been. But cbs one season in the Saturday morning cbs.

Okay, that sounds familiar. That does sound familiar. And no, one of the things I had rented was the, the Dr. Otto movie which I was very confused by as a kid because there is a little bit of Earnest in it. But Jim Varney’s mostly playing other characters and I was too young and stupid to work out that the same guy was just doing a bunch of characters. Maybe that was another disappointment for me. When I saw Earnest Saves Christmas, I didn’t quite pick up that Ernest just. Or Jim Varney just does all these characters. I’m. Now I’m wondering what a version of Ernest Saves Christmas where he does all the characters would look like.

Like he’s Santa, he’s Joe, he’s Noel. Eddie Murphy does that. Okay. Yeah, yeah, go. You want, you want to see the clumps in that case? I kind of do. It’s not a bad, not a bad series. I, I do think Jim Varney works better when he has someone to play off of like him in a vacuum. It doesn’t. Unless he’s doing a villain monologue in a villain role. That could work. But. But him in a vacuum is the original Earnest because it talking to Vern who doesn’t even exist through a camera. You are Vern Ernest. Yeah.

You’re interacting with you, the viewer. That’s the charm of them, I guess. But. But also those are 30 second clips right this is the feature length movie. Yeah. 30 seconds. Yes. You can just have Ernest doing his crazy thing for 30 seconds. It’s fine. A 90 minute movie, you’re gonna have a little bit of trouble. Should Ernest have become Santa Claus to see that they six years later, five years later, they’re the balls to let Tim Allen become Santa Claus. I was expecting him to become Santa Claus. It would have made more sense for Earnest Saves Christmas and the again the Joe guy.

I just don’t get why they gave him all like the Santa Claus does what this movie is trying to do better, but it doesn’t have earnest in it. Right. So it’s like you want to earnest movie or not an earnest movie, but ultimately the Santa Claus does this plot 100 times better. Right. Although that movie looks like hot garbage, it was done by a TV director who, I mean, not that earnest Christmas looks particularly good either. But the Santa Claus looks like gray crap most of the time because we had a sitcom director who had no clue how to make something.

I don’t know if I’ve seen it since the 90s. So maybe we’ll have to do a re watch and really put these, these back because again, these are the same exact story. So it would, would, it would make sense to watch them back to back and then see what the comparison is. And again and again, let me just point back out since the Colt Disney that this is the retelling of the killing of the King ritual. But, and that’s the thing with the Christmas movie. We tend to compartmentalize those like, oh, Christmas movie, that’s like a different thing.

But those tend to be some of the most. Not like top box officer. But Christmas stories are generally quite successful and everybody sees them. You know, like more people have probably seen Santa Claus and I don’t know, like Star wars. Maybe not. But. Well, it’s just on your tv like around that season you’ve seen bits and pieces of it even if you didn’t see the whole thing, right? Where like Star wars you have to be like, I want to go watch Star Wars. Whereas the Santa Claus you’re just, you’re gonna see it no matter what, you know.

And I’ve, I’ve never in my life ever had that thought, I want to go see Star Wars. But I have had. I want to see a Christmas movie that has Santa in it. Sure. One of the more fun. Cracking the Chris the Santa movie is hard to crack. The Christmas movie is easy. But the Santa movie can be difficult again. And then when they have to do sequels with the Santa Claus movies. That. That’s where it just gets wildly entertaining in a weird way. Because a few years before this. Because it was a De Laurentius or whatever.

Or was it. Anyway, it’s the Superman movie. After they did Superman, they’re like, what other iconic character can we make into a cinematic thing? And they went with Santa Claus and made like Santa Claus the movie, which was a massive flop. I. Doesn’t even sound familiar to me. Oh, it’s weird. Superman the movie. So I just want to make sure I get the. I always mix up the producers and one of them made Flash Gordon and one of them made this. It’s the Flash Gordon Santa movie. Sounds good. That. Oh, yeah, sure. I could do that.

Why am I not finding their names here? Okay, I’m gonna quit looking for that. But Santa Claus. Anyway, let’s have a look. I’m gonna have a quick gander at that. That’s a movie that, like no one has seen. I think it came out in 1984. Had massive. Like, they had a breakfast cereal and stuff based around it. Like, real major push for. That’s how you know a movie is really good if there’s a breakfast cereal. Right. But the breakfast cereal came out before the movie came out. That’s. That’s where you’re. You’re hedging your bets. 30 to 50 million dollar budget, 23.7 box office for that one.

So that one just ate it. Salkin. That’s. That’s the name I was looking for that. Yeah, so it is. And this is another one where it’s like, how. How do we actually make Santa a character sustained on screen for an hour and a half? You know, it’s kind of difficult. They don’t do it in this one. I gotta say, Ernest Saves Christmas is not a great Santa movie. Even though it’s put him in a suit. It’s just a dude in a suit that’s not that fat. You know, it’s. It’s a little. What is it? Miracle on 38th street or I always get the number wrong.

But you know what I’m talking about. It’s like. I know what you’re talking about. Christmas movie. And that’s also Santa in a regular suit in a courtroom. Yeah. So this doesn’t have that. Well, it has a little. It has a police station. We don’t get in the courtroom this time. But you got to get Santa in with the police. I mean, there’s just no way around that. And not just the police in this movie. He gets locked up with a bunch of weird looking criminals in the 88, including one guy that has a edom raw midriff shirt and a very tan, like an entirely tanned body with lots and lots of pubes all over it.

I just thought it was such a, a very 1988 Orlando prison thing. Very like three different niches intersected together. It is interesting, I guess they were just like, we have to use the studio. So. But the Christmas movie in Orlando does not seem like the obvious choice. No. Usually when snow in your Christmas movie, a little bit of snow at least, right? There’s a. Here’s a interesting Christmas Santa. I mean they get the snow again, but it’s magical. Right? I want to understand how this works because this is like more canon rules of Santa, because early in this movie you see the real Santa and he meets this Joe guy, this, this guy Joe that reads stories the kids.

And Santa’s essentially has picked Joe to be the next Santa. He’s going to say he has a local TV show, right? He’s got a local TV show. And he meets him reading the kids in like a hospital or in like a library or in the children’s museum. But the Joe is conflicted because he’s being offered a role in a, in a Christmas movie where he’s going to be the feature and he’s going to make all this money and it’s going to be his big break into Hollywood and he has to balance that with this crazy guy telling him that he’s Santa and that he’s going to make Joe the new Santa.

And, and I guess the main thing that Santa’s telling Joe like, don’t shave your beard. And then the movie exec is like, joe, shave your beard. So the whole thing comes down to whether or not Joe’s going to shave his beard. But at the end he does shave his beard. Spoiler alert. I’m sorry if I ruined that for anyone. He shaves his beard so that he can be in the movie. But then he changes his mind. And when Santa magically transforms him into the real Santa, his beard grows back. So I was just thinking, why the hell does Santa care whether or not Joe shaves his beard at the beginning if he knows that Santa magic makes him regrow it instantly anyways? Because when it’s Santa magic, it’s just like an astroturf beard.

He’s like, you got it now just keep it, man. Just have the real thing. You don’t want an astroturf beard. So I guess. But ironically, his Quote unquote, real beard was an astroturf beard in this movie. It looked so fake. And that when he transforms him, the fake Santa beard looks more real as a beard. That’s the magic of Christmas. Okay, But I have such a weird thing on Christmas now because, like, I don’t. We don’t. We’re in Japan. We don’t put up a Christmas tree. We don’t really even give presents anymore. But I spend all week at work wearing a Santa suit and playing Christmas songs.

So in one. In some ways, I do more Christmas than most people. I love Christmas. Not because of. I mean, partly from the nostalgia, of course, but I think it is the most symbolic and most relevant holiday out of any of the holidays. Like the, like all of the symbolism, even if it’s not really Christ’s birthday, it’s. It’s him on the cross being resurrected and that. I can go on a whole wild tangent on this one, but essentially, if people are like, right, yeah, but, but the other, the other aspect of this too is that this is the actual rebirth, even though his resurrection story is supposed to be in April.

Because April was originally the beginning of the year. Because the old astro. Theological view of the world would look at April 1st being the first day of the new year back when the old calendars existed and then when the global shift changed to a new calendar system and also to this new concept of Christmas. That’s when April Fools was originally discovered. Is that if you, if you continue to celebrate the resurrection of God on April 1st, then you’re an idiot because you’re behind the times and you’re worshiping the old gods and that’s why it becomes April Fool’s Day.

That like you’re. You are a fool for continuing to use April as the first month of the year when everyone else has shifted to January as the first month of the year. In some ways, Japan’s like, in a lot of ways, April is the start of the year in Japan. Still, the calendars do say January 1st, where it’s supposed to. We. We celebrate the New Year’s holiday then. But it’s just conventionally, everyone’s like, new things start in April. New school year, you get a new job in April, you make your big changes in April. In mindset, April is the beginning of the year here.

Yeah, I mean, and that’s because it actually is the beginning of the new year. Like, that’s another reason, for example, the, the month March, which is named after Mars, the God of war. The reason why it’s Named after Mars is because that was the first time that the climate would be favorable to send your army back into war. So that became the sort of end, slash, beginning of the year because that’s when you could be active again. Prior to March, you’re kind of dormant. So you’re not the old way of looking at the way that the seasons work.

It’s not that the year starts when you’re dormant. It’s that the year begins anew when you’re ready to be refreshed and activities starting again, which would have been end of March, early April. Although it did work out for me going to an American school. Oops. Because in Japan, I was born in March. I’d be the youngest kid in the class. Whereas in America, I’m right in the middle of the class, age wise. So that worked out nicely. My nephew was born March 15th and he’s. He was through all of elementary school. You know, he’s a runt kid in the class because he was the youngest in the class.

There was one other thing in this movie that, that I didn’t fully get. I mean, I understood what they were going for, but it’s that they’re trying to show how pure of heart Joe is, the guy that Santa is eyeballing for his replacement. And Joe, he ends up doing the movie. And the movie is weird, man. It’s about like this weird Christmas tree monster that he shoots in the face. And then he says a bad word in the scene. But he doesn’t want to say the bad word because there’s children on set and they’re like, oh, don’t worry, they work in Hollywood.

You know, they hear these words all the time. He’s like, yeah, but I’ve never said a bad word in front of a kid. And this is what makes him leave Hollywood. And I’m just thinking, like, he actually wanted to be an actor. He wanted to go and do movies and he’s gonna stand up over. I don’t want to say a bad word in front of a kid. Thank God. I mean, Harvey Weinstein was active in this time period, right? Like, this is a. This is an actual world when Harvey Weinstein is doing his thing. And yet they’re trying to show that this pure of heart actor is just like, I won’t even say the F word.

If there’s a child in earshot, send that kid over here to my office after you’re done with them. And I need to, what, massively rip apart several more international films. That’s what he was doing at the time. He’s putting international films out in the States and then heavily editing them. Not. Not for content, just so they’d be shorter and you could play them more and stuff. I mean, yeah, let’s not get into like the man versus the artwork. He made a lot of movies happen that never would have happened. So. No. At this point though, this is when he.

He started out like kind of like intentionally ripping apart movies kind of. So there’s always that creative thing was never quite there. You don’t rip apart someone else’s movie for. For S’s and G’s, you know. Well, let me ask you. Does Ernest Saves Christmas? And you’re a freaking Japanese now, so I don’t even know if this even matters to you, but does Ernest Saves Christmas make your Christmas movie list? No, it didn’t at the time. Scrooged made the list very much about the same time this came out. Scrooged. I’m just gonna throw out. I do prefer Scrooged to Earnest Saves Christmas Christmas.

Do you have a ultimate Christmas movie? It might be Scrooge, to be honest. I like that we’re talking Bill Murray Scrooged. Yes, Bill Murray Scrooge, which was Paramount Picture. Sorry, just checking if it was touchdown or not. Other than that, I mean, you could always be, you know, like you could give the contrary an answer like it’s Die Hard. But I think we need to talk about actual Christmas movies here. Yeah, no, if I want to be. If I want to get like all snarky and like not be serious, I’ll say Silent Night, Deadly Night, which is one of first truly gruesome horror movies that I’d ever seen and it just happened to be Christmas themed.

But my, my current all time favorite Christmas movie is a fairly new one called Violent Night. And I think that it does one of the best jobs of doing this whole like retcon Sanda and, and St. Nicholas’s real background history is that he was like a VI. Like a Viking berserker warrior that just slowly morphed into this children’s character, but that ultimately he’s still this warrior and he is eternally fighting Satan. Oh, you know what? Also here’s. Here’s the one that gets me. And it came out three weeks after, as they did dare release IT in on December 1 is a national Lampoon’s Christmas vacation.

So. Okay. Yeah. Even this year that for me kind of just like instantly, you know, punted Ernest out of the. The pond, you know, Sorry. Yeah, that’s a. That’s a freaking good one, man. It’s really, really hard to not be nostalgic for that one. He even had. There’s even another movie with. With him that Scrooge was one year earlier. Just to throw that out there. Sorry. There was another Chevy Chase movie that takes place at winter, but it’s not necessarily about Christmas, but it’s when he moves to the town and everybody hates him, but, like, he’s trying to sell a house.

What is it? Oh, Funny Farm, maybe? Funny Farm. I think it’s Funny Farm, which. Which had, like, it comes to a climax during Christmas, even though it’s not necessarily a Christmas movie. Of course, then I had to make a movie with him. Chevy Chase is known for breaking people, and he makes movies with them. Most notoriously, he. Chevy Chase may have broken John Carpenter, which is kind of depressing, because up until Memories Memoirs of Invisible Man, John Carpenter’s run is just impeccable. And after that, he just can’t quite make a good movie again. I mean, they’re okay, but not really that good.

So the. The there is the Chevy Chase broke John Carpenter plot thread that you can still. I’m still waiting for a good Invisible man movie. There was a weird 2000s one that I want to say had Kevin Bacon. I might be wrong. Hollow Man. Yeah, that’s last American film. I. It was. It was interesting, but not a good movie. It was like, visually, it had some, like, interesting parts too, especially when there’s, like, this gorilla that they turn invisible and you can, like, see him slow. It’s like old cgi. Now, there was another one recently called the Invisible Man, I think that had the lady from Handmaid’s Tale and also from Mad Men.

I’m blanking on her name. And that was fantastic reviews. And I watched it and I was like. I saw it playing on other people’s screens on the airplane a few months ago. And I was like, yeah, whatever. Yeah. I don’t know, man. Sometimes movies come out and people go crazy over them. They’re like, oh, my God, this is the best movie ever. And I watch it, and I just wish that I hadn’t. On the plane. I did watch, like, I watched Wicked, right? The. The first one. And my controversial take on that movie is, like, it was fine.

I feel like people are like, oh, my God, this is the best thing ever. And I’m like, yeah, it was good. You know, I’m not a musical. Yeah, it is a musical, so you could. You could skip that one. Well, no, I Actually watched it when it came out, but I skipped all of the singing parts. That’s an interesting way to do it. So it was, it was only like a 40 minute movie out of what, like two and a half hours? I was like, I had a good time. Seven out of ten, you know. But yeah, people are like, best thing ever.

10 out of 10. What are you talking about? So earnest. What would I give Ernest Saves Christmas? I had a good time watching it, but I, I’ve just thrown out like three other Christmas movies made around the same time that are much better. I mean, it’s really a five, isn’t it? Yeah, I’m saying like a generous five. Yeah, I feel like I’m being a little generous with that. So that said, had a good time? You know, if I do watch Scrooge or National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, I am. I know those movies too well. So I watch this one.

At least I don’t remember everything or much of it. So when, when he says he fell on his puss, I’ll sit there giggling for two minutes, you know, it’s not bad. I’m glad maybe we’re starting out with this one as the first earnest movie because I do think that. And I don’t remember them all in that much detail, but I think that they’re all uphill from this one. Like this one, they leaned a little heavy into that. You already love Earnest. And they’re also leaning into. And you gotta love. And. And now you love Joe too.

That was, that was the bridge too far. I don’t love Joe. Joe’s creepy, man. I don’t know. I don’t know what it is about older guys that surround themselves with children. I’ve just, I’ve lived in a world I grew up in the satanic panic. So I don’t trust any adults that like to be around children. And. And we’ve got what? Wish.com Punky Brewster for you at five years too late. Yeah, that was weird. I mean, Punky Brewster was like already like pretty far in the past when this movie came out. And they like when you mentioned, I was like, oh yeah, that was absolutely what they were doing.

Well, it wasn’t necessarily her, but it was that aesthetic which was pretty. I mean that was a pretty straightforward aesthetic of like having little toys in your hair and like the side braid. Yeah. When I looked her up though, it’s like she was actually 17 when she did this movie, which is. I’m like, I would at least get someone that can be there all Day and without, you know, or maybe they’re just not paying attention. Labor rules. I don’t know. It’s like just tire someone. Two years later, you don’t have to worry about the labor rules.

I still don’t know why they didn’t rename her Noel. That seems like such a dumb thing to not take advantage of. Oh, well, these things happen. Well, anyway, we’ve. I guess your big take on this is the. The Killing of the King. And did you say. I feel like you might have more to say about that. I mean, how long do you have to talk about Frazier’s Golden Bow? It’s only the most important book series of all time, which is also somewhere around 7,000 pages. Unabridged, I believe. I have been contemplating. I don’t know if I’m gonna do it, but I’ve been contemplating doing a series made just a short form series called let’s Read James Fraser’s Golden Bow.

The unabridged version. Yes, all of it. And I think that, like, the title of the show is long because the content of the show is long. I don’t know, maybe. Maybe I’m like, it’s too meta. But I do think this is famously. There was a interview with Stanley Kubrick talking about how he went and saw one of the head of the. One of these studios, and he showed up with the entire unabridged version of the Golden Bow. Like It’s. It’s like 12 books long. Each book is 700 pages working out. Yeah. You get some extra shots.

And he’s trying to get this exec to, like, read it. He’s like, yeah, no, I got you this whole set. And the guy’s like, stanley, I don’t have time to sit down and read fairy tales for, you know, the next year. And his quote, which I’m gonna butcher and paraphrase, but it was like, these aren’t fairy tales. This is your life. And that, like, he took the importance of James Frazier and the Golden Bow so incredibly seriously that he truly wanted this exec to read this. But obviously, there were two different worlds. But the. The monumental importance of the Golden Bow’s work, which is really just James Frazier doing pattern recognition, saying, like, wow, that’s crazy.

Native Americans and Japanese and Europeans and Africans all seem to be following these exact same motifs over and over. The number one motif being this Killing of the King ritual. And one of the most obvious forms of that, again, was this particular one. It was. It was called the Killing of the Tree Spirit. And the trees were the holly King and the oak king. It’s the holly tree basically dying and then making way for the oak tree and then vice versa, this yin yang back and forth. So I, I dare you to find a better representation of that than Santa dying or retiring and having to find his replacement.

Especially because the, the golden bough motif that he points out is that almost always the newcomer is a fool, that he’s completely unexpecting what’s going to happen. And very often he’s immortal trying to take the place of a God. And then over the course of him taking the place of a God, he himself becomes a God. And then that cycle just repeats every single year. So essentially there should be a Ernest Saves Christmas again where Joe is retiring and he has to pass it on to some other creepy guy that’s reading kid books. Well, it has to be, what, a hundred years in the future anyway, but it has to be science fiction.

Although, yeah, this movie passed up the opportunity to make Ernest into a God. There’s, there’s a flaw if nothing else. I mean, yeah, I do like, why not make Ernest Santa? What, what the hell was the thinking behind here? They could have cut Joe out of this entirely and just made it about Ernest becoming Santa. And I can’t imagine this being a worse movie. For if we’re giving it a five and we’re looking through rose colored glasses and kind of boosting it up by at least a point, right? Or give it, at least giving it a half a point from a four and a half to a five, I can’t see how this would have gone down to a four with more earnest.

Yeah, for sure. I was sitting here thinking though, it was what you’re saying with the golden bow, though, sort of. Not, not to have my John Lim bigger and Jesus moment, but Santa Claus in Western culture basically is our. Subconsciously, he is our king of kings. Even if you’re very religious, you think of who, who’s the king that rules over all of us. It’s kind of Santa Claus, you know, he rules over all of December again. I think Santa Claus also is the, the even as an abstract archetype, right? Trying to explain a child Jesus dying for your sins and original sin and like salvation, it get, it gets murky, right? Like there’s a lot of ways to interpret it and once you start getting in the nitty gritty, a lot of it doesn’t line up.

But if you take that exact same concept and instead of trying to tell a kid about heaven and hell, it’s more like you either get a present or you don’t. And it happens on this day of the year on December 25th. If you were good, you get a present and if you were bad, you don’t get a present. It is the most direct analog. It’s the foundation that you can teach kids about morality in general. And like, this is how religion works. This is how the afterlife works. But you can’t really describe the afterlife to a freaking four year old.

But you can say you’re either going to get a Nintendo or you’re not going to get a Nintendo. Like, they understand that level. So I. I think that the Santa motif it. That’s probably why it’s like my favorite holiday, because it’s so direct. It’s like you don’t have to. You don’t have to understand it to feel the effects of it and to understand what it’s supposed to represent because it actually plays out in a very practical way. Did you ever get coal for Christmas as a joke? Yeah, there was like the little, you know, the little.

It’s got to be in the stocking once. Yeah, the skull goes in the stocking. Okay. Did you do something bad that year? No. I mean, well, every year, but that was just kind of normal. You got another thread that you would like to pull on? We’ll save the Golden Bow for the next time. Okay. Well, we’ll be saving every earnest movie. I feel there’s gonna be a Golden Bow connection. Well, we’ll see what happens in jail. I hope so. Camp. Does he become. He’s gonna take over. We’ve already seen Ernest in Jail. Oh, yeah, yeah. They’re repeating themselves.

I have seen. That’s the weird thing watching these movies. I have seen them all. It’s just I haven’t seen them for what, 30 years? So it is kind of like a weird fever dream. Least this one. Yeah. These. These kids today don’t know what they missed. Camp’s gonna be real weird because I know I watched it a lot as a kid and have not seen it since like it was 1980 something. So that. That should be very interesting to view. And I’ll say Ernest Scared Straight is my Hocus Pocus. That like, that is my Halloween town.

Okay. We’ll see if people agree by listening next. Next October. Then stick around. Watch every single episode from now until October. People came in for those. Those two. Shall we wind this one down for today then? Yeah, you do your plugs first. Okay, I’ll do my. Oh, I just. One more quote Santos Claus and then my Goodness my sack. I had to write down that quote. Talk got pretty funny after a while for me. Anyway, what’s up with me? It’s of course around Christmas time, I’m just getting into doing Jordan Peele’s Twilight Zone on Time Enough Podcast.

If you’re like, what about the original show? We did all of those and you can hear those back in the feed. Then we’re talking about the animated Planet of the Apes Return to the Planet of the Apes over at podcast 1999. And then, oh, I should mention this, over at Films and Filth where we usually do very high rate and very low rated movies, we got halfway through our list and decided to take a little vacation. It’s now Fast Films and Furious Filth where we will be covering all of the Fast and Furious movies. And we’re now to the ones that I’ve never seen because it’s I’m a first time view for most of them.

So we’re doing that. How about over on your side? I don’t know. I’m hoping that I do get this edited and uploaded before Christmas. So if you’re watching this, we also have the under the Dock series, which I’m also hoping to edit and have up for December because we did a bunch of Christmas related documentaries. Some of them fun, some of them not so fun. One of them, for example, is about a family that tries to survive the entire month of December without consuming or using anything at all from China. Which sounds as hard as. It’s exactly as hard as it sounds to do, especially in America.

And then there’s another one about a girl that dies on Christmas and no one finds her body for like three years and then she’s melted into her couch. So if you want some great holiday cheer, something to keep you up for those drives back and forth to grandma’s, go and check for under the docks anywhere you listen to podcast or just subscribe to Paranoid American podcasts and you’ll get it automatically on Mondays and Tuesdays. All right, Merry Christmas to all then. Even if it might be a little late. And I’d like $1,000,000 in small unmarked bills for Christmas.

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