One of the other holiday movies that inevitably makes its way to our VCR (Yep, haven't repurchased on DVD yet) each year is Bill Murray's immortal classic, Scrooged. As with Miracle on 34th Street, I've seen this movie thoroughly enough that watching it has the same effect on me that Breton tried to achieve by holding his fingers over his eyes—namely, that my attention can wander to the tiny details of the story.

So here goes...

• Early in the film, Frank Cross pleads to his cubist Picasso hanging on the office wall to help him. A few minutes later, he accosts his secretary about her child's painting she's hung in her workspace:

  Grace: That's Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus.
  Frank: How many fingers does Mrs. Claus have in this picture?
  Grace: Eleven.
  Frank: Exactly. It's crap, I don't want it on the walls.

• When Cross and the Ghost of Christmas past spy on Claire in the bathtub, she's smoking a joint. I realized that two of Karen Allen's other memorable parts also feature substance (ab)use: dope smoking with Donald Sutherland in Animal House and drinking a hairy guy under the table in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Maybe she got typecast in the 80s. That's why we don't see her much anymore--she got pushed out by the Mary Steenbergens and the Andie Macdowells, who didn't have the drug albatross hanging around their necks.
• Another oddity. on returning to the present from his trip with Buster Poindexter (the G of CP), Cross hears Ebeneezer's girlfriend say to him, "I hope you're happy with the life you've chosen." Frank responds thusly.

  Frank: Yes, I am happy with the choices I've made, thank you very much.
  Ebeneezer [angry at the ruined scene]: What are you, crazy?
  Frank: That's right buddy, I'm crazy like a fox.

  Seems fine, right? But the weirdness is that the actor playing Ebeneezer is Buddy Hackett, and the Scrooge show is a show-within-the-movie. So B.H. is also playing himself. And Frank knows who he is (as the executive producer). Thus, the line could have been:

  Frank: That's right Buddy, I'm crazy like a fox.

  I wonder whether the script made the distinction.
• The film, made in 1988, uses a few detail shots in the control room to set the stage. One of the shots is a sign that says "Free South Africa."
• New favorite line. As Frank is telling the world about how to embody the spirit of the holidays, he talks about calling folks you haven't seen in a while:

  You can call a college roommate or an old army buddy. You can call your personal banker.

• Finally, despite all the times I've seen the film, I never bothered to read this sign before. When the physically abusive Ghost of Christmas present shows up, she first appears at the far end of the room, standing by a sign, with "The Dance of the Sugarplum Fairies" from The Nutcracker Suite playing in the background. This time around, I puzzled out what the sign says:
  
  The Ballbreaker Suite