How “A Christmas Story” staged the flagpole scene

Scott Schwartz and Peter Billingsley there a Christmas Story. (Photo: Warner Bros.)

Yes, it was really cold. Yes, it really was a flagpole. And no, you shouldn't try the trick at home.

When Scott Schwartz sounds well rehearsed as he tells the story behind the story of his famous scene where he sticks his tongue to the frozen flagpole a Christmas Storythen it's probably because he is.

“I get calls every year from [reporters]”'Hey, we have a kid who stuck his tongue on a pole. 'Can you comment?'” Schwartz says. “I say, 'Yeah, he's an idiot.'” [Editor’s note: Sure enough, another kid got his tongue stuck to a frozen pole this year.]

Schwartz, now 50, played an idiot named Flick a Christmas Storythe nostalgic 1940s-set film that, despite briefly being a No. 1 box office hit, earned its Christmas reputation as a 24-hour marathon on cable television.

Looking back, Schwartz estimates he worked on the film for around six weeks, which was shot in the winter of 1983. Schwartz was 14 at the time (but he looked years younger) and came to the set as an experienced actor with a Richard Pryor film, 1982 The toyin his CV.

Schwartz was cast as Flick, loyal friend of aspiring Red Ryder air rifle owner Ralphie (Peter Billingsley), and traveled with the production to the now-closed Victoria School in Ontario, Canada. The teaching scenes were filmed there. The same goes for the flagpole scene.

If you've gotten this far – in this article or this century – without knowing what the flagpole scene is, then you need to get in front of a screen that's broadcasting it a Christmas Story.

Watch the full scene:

In a film full of oft-mentioned moments – the leg lamp, the “You'll shoot your eyes out!” taunt, the pink bunny outfit – the flagpole scene might just take the cake. It's an apt distillation of schoolyard politics, an example of how things quickly and painfully spiral out of control: Flick sticks his tongue to the icy flagpole during the “triple dog challenge” of a character named Schwartz (played by RD Robb). the school.

Flick's tongue cannot be loosened until the fire department and police intervene.

The story goes on

“Was it painful?” No,” says Scott Schwartz, asking and answering the expected question without being asked.

The actor didn't suffer from the fact that, unlike Flick, he had a props department that looked after him.

“They made a piece of plastic that they slid over [the flagpole],” he says. “There was a small hole in it with a suction tube that went into the snow – you couldn't see it, it was a small motor, like a small vacuum cleaner, [and] the hole opening [in the plastic] was about the size of your pinky fingernail. So if you put your tongue or your finger or whatever there, it just sticks.”

“I can do the sound effect,” adds Schwartz, “but you can’t write that.”

Sometimes, Schwartz says, he pulled too hard and his tongue immediately came loose. But again there was no pain. Weather conditions were another matter.

“The worst part about it was just the bitter, bitter cold that we had,” Schwartz says. “We were out there for two days and it was between 20 and 25 degrees below zero and the wind was chilly.”

From those two days, Schwartz got his slice of cinematic immortality. His bronze effigy – in the shape of a tongue reaching to the flagpole – stood in Hammond, Indiana, the hometown of a Christmas Story Author and narrator Jean Shepherd, since 2013.

And he once watched basketball star Michael Jordan reenact the scene in the Chicago Bulls locker room.

“He was perfect. He was absolutely convincing,” Schwartz says of Jordan. “I was just overjoyed. I was lit up like a Christmas tree inside.”

Sounds right.

[A version of this story ran in December 2015.]

Watch: Why a Christmas Story is a terrible Christmas movie:

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