Commentary from December 29, 2002
Well, I decided not to wait a year to do this one. I got the idea for this one watching a DVD of the movie on Christmas Day, and smacked myself for not thinking of it earlier. I ended up doing it anyways because I don’t have the patience to wait a year, and I don’t do nearly enough parodies as it is.
It was a bit of a blast to work in B&W … it’s so much easier than color, though I feel it is a little plainer than colour. The reason for doing it in B&W, is, obviously, because the original movie was in B&W.
I’ve always hated that movie; all but one of the guy’s problems go unaddressed and side-stepped. Sure, people pool together to make-up for the stolen money, but he is still a chump who is used and abused by everyone around him. The angel shows how everyone else’s lives would’ve been worse if he hadn’t been born, yet that had NOTHING to do with why he wanted to kill himself to begin with! Killing himself wouldn’t undo all the good he had already done, and now that he knows for a fact that heaven exists in that universe he should be even more willing to kill himself as his first act of self-interest in his life!
The only thing about the movie which could possibly annoy me even more is that everyone seems to think its a great ‘christmas classic.’ People just assume that because it’s replayed so often on TV, but it’s really just because the filmmakers forgot to renew the copyright on their terrible C-rate flick. 😡