For many, watching A Christmas Story is a holiday tradition. The 24-hour marathon airing on TBS while families make their Christmas Eve cookies to the melodic chimes of "You'll shoot your eye out!" has helped turn the film into a classic, and nearly 30 years later, the long-awaited sequel, A Christmas Story Christmas, is set to premiere.
Actor Zack Ward was 13 years old when he played the role of the menacing neighborhood bully, Scut Farkus, a lanky redhead who's famous for twisting kids' arms and making them scream "uncle." Despite all the time that's passed between the original and its new sequel, Ward says playing Farkus is second nature.
"It's part of my life that I really couldn't separate away from," Ward told Newsweek in a recent interview. "And I'm sure the day that I die, they'll be like, 'Oh, by the way, Scut Farkus has passed, and his other name was Zack Ward.' So it's like being Batman, I guess."Anyone who has seen the 1983 film can probably picture Scut Farkus—his gleaming yellow eyes and his iconic raccoon hat—terrorizing protagonist Ralphie (played by Peter Billingsley) and his friends outside of school. To Ward, though, Farkus is a beloved persona.
"I started doing charity fundraisers about 11 years ago, and I was working with bullying prevention programs, and then me and the other boys would do Christmas events across the country."
Ward explained that at one particular charity parade while wearing the infamous hat, he began to pick kids out of the crowd and provoke them, a la Farkus.
"All these parents picked up their kids like, 'Do my kid next!' and I'm like, 'Who wants a beating?'" Ward said. "And that's when Scut Farkus really clicked for me as an adult. People love to hate him, but they love him because he's just a jackass. He's just a jerk. So for me, playing Scut Farkus is very organic, shall we say?"
Besides Ward, the new film—which premieres on November 17 on HBO Max—sees the return of Billingsley, Ian Petrella as Randy, Scott Schwartz as Flick, and R. D. Robb as Schwartz as they reconcile and reconnect in the 1970s, roughly 30 years after the events of the original film. While the first movie focused on Ralphie's obsession with swaying his parents into getting him a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas, the sequel sees Ralphie, now an adult, return to his childhood home on Cleveland Street with his own children for Christmas.
Ward said that coming back for the sequel with the original gang was "a fantastic experience."
"Doing this with the rest of the cast is huge," he said. "Being back on the set, there were moments where we'd turn and look at each other, and we just get this big smile on our faces and give each other a hug. It was pretty exciting."
Ward added that back when a lot of the main cast members were kids in A Christmas Story, the on-camera tension carried over a bit to the set.
"We didn't really hang out much," Ward said of himself and some of the other kids, including Billingsley. "[Director] Bob Clark wanted to separate the bullies from the lead kids so that we still had a natural intimidation effect on them. Which we did because I was about eight inches taller than everybody else."
Arguably one of the most iconic scenes in the 1983 film is when Ralphie snaps and finally beats up Farkus. In a blind rage, Billingsley's character knocks Ward's neighborhood bully to the ground and pummels him—a scene that Ward remembers clearly to this day.
"The mittens that were hanging off [Billingsley's wrists] were leather, soaked from the snow, and frozen again, so it's like being slapped in the face with pork cutlets. So when you see my face, it's bright red. That's because I'm getting slapped over and over and over and over again. So that was fun," Ward said.
"Doing the big fight sequence there... they embedded a mattress underneath the snow so that when I get knocked back by Ralphie, I fall into a mattress and don't get hurt," Ward explained. "And I felt like a stuntman. I felt like the Six Million Dollar Man when I did that, that was exciting. I thought it was really tough getting beat up, but Peter was a professional. He never landed a blow."
Though fun to film, Ward added that the scene is a pivotal one for Farkus, a cathartic experience when the bully finally gets knocked down.
"Bob Clark [is a] genius. When Farkus gets beaten up, his hat falls off, and he's got a little bloody nose, and he's just a kid. So you know, they take the mask off of Darth Vader, and you just reveal that it's a person, and they're not that scary anymore," Ward said.
While the original A Christmas Story is considered a classic now and is finally getting a sequel, it wasn't the most popular upon its original release. First considered a sleeper film, it made roughly $2 million at the box office on opening weekend; overall, it made about $19 million, according to A Christmas Story House and Museum in Cleveland, Ohio, which many considered good, but not great.
Ward said he had been surprised when he realized the movie was becoming a cult favorite.
At a celebration for the film's 20th anniversary, while doing a fundraiser for Toys for Tots with other members of the original cast, Ward recollects, "Before the theater opened, I stuck my head out to look down the street, and there were about 10,000 people." He said that a large wave of cheers echoed through the crowd, "and I was like, 'Oh my god.' So it was from that point...I realized, 'oh, this is a thing. This is a real thing for everybody.'"
A Christmas Story Christmas premieres on November 17 on HBO Max.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Emma Mayer is a Newsweek Culture Writer based in Wyoming. Her focus is reporting on celebrities, books, movies, and music. ... Read more
To read how Newsweek uses AI as a newsroom tool, Click here.
