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Restoration by owner attracts fans
By David Giffels
Beacon Journal columnist
Published on Saturday, Nov 17, 2007
Brian Jones slept last night in the A Christmas Story house — his house — in a private bedroom on the third floor, one floor above Ralphie and Randy's room, two floors above the soft glow of electric sex emanating from the leg lamp in the parlor window, one city lot and one degree of separation from the Bumpus hounds.
Downstairs, a crew from the Today show is setting up lights and cameras to interview him about this house, this public museum, this prize piece of pop culture, the setting of a holiday movie that has become a touchstone for a generation that grew up on Rankin/Bass stop-animation and the Milbrook-sponsored Charlie Brown.
It bears repeating: Brian Jones owns the house that served as the center of his favorite movie. He paid for it by selling leg lamps. And the Today crew has stopped in to chat.
And yet — you ask him, and it's as though you've asked him if he knows how to tie his shoes.
Doesn't it seem like your life is
completely changed by this?
''Yeah,'' he says, and shrugs his shoulders. He might be agreeing because it's true, or he might be agreeing because he's the sort of nice guy who doesn't like to disagree. Probably both, but probably more the nice-guy part.
Dressed for television in jeans and a tan sweater with the collar of a red T-shirt peeking out crookedly, he comes across as spiritual kin to Jimmy Stewart and Tom Hanks (if they'd never heard of Hollywood), an all-American, everyday guy with a sneaky sense of humor who seems more concerned with the push-button light switch he's been trying to install than the presence in the parlor of NBC news personality Lester Holt.
But still. It is impossible for me not to believe Jones awakens sometimes in that upstairs room and wonders if he is stuck inside a dream, a dream in which he will suit up at dawn and head off to school with Flick and Schwartz. (If the need arises, Randy's snowsuit is downstairs, on display, waiting.)
A year ago this week, the A Christmas Story house and museum opened in Cleveland's Tremont neighborhood. Jones, whose primary residence is in San Diego, had bought the house on eBay for $150,000, refurbished it to appear exactly the way it did when it was used for exterior shots in the 1983 film, and opened it to the public.
The first weekend, lines stretched for blocks, with visitors waiting more than an hour to get inside. Residents of the working-class neighborhood propped handwritten cardboard signs on their front porches, advertising everything from bottled water to Polaroids with a leg lamp to the use of their bathroom.
Since then, nearly 40,000 people have visited. The house has become a destination for pop-culture pilgrims, drawing impressive traffic even in the summer. Leg lamps have appeared in windows along the streets leading to the house at 11th and Rowland.
A short drive away, C&Y Chinese Restaurant has partnered to become the ''official'' A Christmas Story restaurant. The owner, Jimmy Fong, a native of mainland China and a Buddhist monk, has added a department store-style Christmas display that surrounds the pre-existing ceramic Buddha statues on a small altar along the wall. There's a leg lamp in the window and a movie poster in the foyer.
Until last year, Fong had only a passing knowledge of A Christmas Story. Now his bill of fare includes a ''Red Ryder Roll,'' ''Leg Lamp Lobster,'' ''Ralphie's Chicken,'' ''Secret Decoder Rings'' and ''Stuck — Stuuuck! Shrimp.''
Fong has taken to wearing a blue silk waiter's jacket with a tab collar and serving ''Chinese Turkey'': He wheels a roasted duck in from the kitchen, singing ''Fa-ra-ra — ra-ra-ra — ra-ra-ra,'' then chops the head off with a meat cleaver and slips it impishly into his pocket.
So, yes. Brian Jones can be as nonchalant about all this as he pleases, but there is a certain amount of tangible evidence that his stroke of off-kilter entrepreneurship has brought plenty of change, to his life and to the lives of others.
Next weekend, the house and museum, in conjunction with the Renaissance Cleveland Hotel, will host the first A Christmas Story convention. Think Star Trek, but with Ian Petrella (Randy) in place of William Shatner (Capt. James T. Kirk) and ''Ralphies'' (Jones' word) in place of Trekkies.
The two-day event will include meet-and-greets with several actors from the movie; a Chinese turkey dinner at C&Y; a backyard BB gun shooting range (with safety glasses); a Ralphie look-alike contest; and the unveiling of two significant additions to the museum's holdings: a 1937 Oldsmobile Touring Sedan that appeared in the film, and the actual chalkboard on which Miss Shields wrote ''A++++'' in a movie dream sequence.
In the spotlight
The TV crew has its camera and bright light trained on Jones in front of a museum display, a fuzzy boom mic hovering overhead. He's telling about the snowsuit, an item on loan from Petrella and dropping movie lines in deadpan.
''My brother looked like a tick about to pop.''
He turns to the airship model behind him:
''Whoopee — a zeppelin!''
It would be wrong to mistake his low-key demeanor for indifference. He still watches the movie all the time — every year, he looks forward to the TBS 24-hour marathon — and his affection for its parts and its whole seems genuine.
It's just that he's watching a different movie than you and I are. We're following a story, and he's tracking its details — the shape of the kitchen chairs' legs, the precise style of the light switches, the color of the sedan that passes Higbee's, a sedan he now owns and has repainted to match.
He recites the movie lines just like we do, but he also does it in Spanish, because, well, sometimes even he needs a break from the English version.
But there's something slightly more to this, which I learn as I ride along for lunch at Jimmy Fong's place. Behind the wheel is Nancy Binzel Pierce, yet another person whose life was altered by Jones' house. The Stow woman started working at the house last year as a tour guide. A weekend job. Sounded like fun. Soon, however, it found its way into her career.
With the crush of interest, Jones needed someone to handle publicity. Pierce had her own firm, Zeal PR, and she was hired. (Getting reporters to come to the A Christmas Story house, she confides, is akin to shooting fish in a bucket.)
Pierce confirms the obvious: This isn't exactly how Jones thought his life would go. But buying the house is not the thing that changed his life. Something else did first.
Jones' childhood dream was to fly Navy fighter jets. Like his version of an official Red Ryder carbine-action, two-hundred-shot, range-model air rifle, it was all he ever wanted. He did everything right, attended the United States Naval Academy, graduated and then set forth to become a pilot.
But then he failed the eye exam. He couldn't fly.
He was crushed, and his parents, inspired by his favorite movie, cobbled together a gift to pick up his spirits. With a plastic leg, a fishnet stocking, a gaudy lampshade and a wooden crate, they sent him a ''major award'' for enduring such a setback.
A metaphoric light bulb went off in Jones' head, and soon he began making and selling leg lamps on the side. When his tour of duty was up, he devoted himself to the lamp business full time. In 2004, he bought the Cleveland house and generational nostalgia has taken care of the rest.
He's only 31, but this part of his back-story suggests a certain kind of first-stage wisdom, an understanding that life won't always go the direction you want it to, and sometimes it's better to give in and follow its lead.
More simply, he seems to have learned — at A++++ level — not to take himself too seriously.
This, children, is what happens when you drink your Ovaltine.
Be like Ralphie
Any blond-haired kid with horn-rimmed glasses and a distaste for Lifebuoy soap is a potential candidate for glory.
As part of the A Christmas Story convention, a Ralphie Parker look-alike contest will serve as a semifinal for a Daisy BB-gun contest.
The top children age 10 or older will have their picture submitted to Daisy Outdoor Products for consideration to star as Ralphie in a Daisy Red Ryder BB-gun advertisement for the 25th anniversary of A Christmas Story in 2008.
The event will begin at 4 p.m. Saturday at the Renaissance Cleveland Hotel on Public Square.
The contest will be judged by Ian Petrella, who played Randy Parker in the movie, and Scott Schwartz, who played Flick.
Convention details
The A Christmas Story House Convention will take place Friday and Saturday at the Cleveland Renaissance Hotel at Public Square, the A Christmas Story House and C&Y Chinese Restaurant in Cleveland.
The event will include actors from the 1983 movie who played Randy parker, Flick, Scut Farkus, Grover Dill, Miss Shields and the evil elves.
The A Christmas Story House is at 3159 W. 11th St., Cleveland.
The phone number is 216-298-4919.
Full details are at http://www.achristmasstoryhouse.com Here'a s partial schedule:
FRIDAY
10 a.m. to 5 p.m. - Actors will meet fans and sign autographs in the hotel's Ambassador Ballroom.
10 a.m. to 5 p.m. - A Christmas Story house and museum open, with BB gun range in the backyard. Tickets are $7 for adults, $6 for seniors, $5 for children ages 7 to 12, free for ages 6 and under.
7 p.m. - Chinese Turkey Dinner at C&Y restaurant with movie actors. Dinner tickets are $45 for adults and $22.50 for children. Reservations can be made at the Web site.
SATURDAY
10 a.m. to 8 p.m. - A Christmas Story house and museum open.
10 a.m. - First Lolly the Trolley trip departs from Renaissance Cleveland Hotel for the house. Trolley departs every half hour until 5 p.m. Round-trip tickets are $5 for adults, $3 for children.
Noon to 1 p.m. - House owner Brian Jones and producers of two A Christmas Story-related documentaries will speak at the hotel's Ambassador Ballroom.
1 to 10 p.m. - Actors will meet fans and sign autographs in the hotel's Grand Ballroom.
4 p.m. - Character look-alike contest; prizes include leg lamps.
6:30 p.m. - Winterfest tree lighting ceremony, parade and fireworks show at Public Square.
David Giffels is a Beacon Journal columnist. He can be reached at 330-996-3572 or at dgiffels@thebeaconjournal.com.
Brian Jones slept last night in the A Christmas Story house — his house — in a private bedroom on the third floor, one floor above Ralphie and Randy's room, two floors above the soft glow of electric sex emanating from the leg lamp in the parlor window, one city lot and one degree of separation from the Bumpus hounds.
Get the full article here.
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