Be careful what you wish for. I actually saw Christopher Lloyd play Scrooge two years ago at the Kodak theater. John Goodman was the Ghost of Christmas Present. It was a God-awful performance – forgotten lines, missed cues, poor stage blocking, and a total lack of energy. Probably the worst version of A Christmas Carol I’ve even seen, including community theater productions.
I like how you think.
Script by Neil LaBute, starring R. Lee Ermey.
I don’t know LaBute; I do know Ermey.
I was just about to take a swig when I read that! Good thing I didn’t!
Wait! How is it no one has thought of this one - All MIME!!!
Not meant to make anyone lol. Meant to rip the heart right out of the Christmas spirit and show people what it means to fully live in the real world where charity is mostly meant to quiet the moral turmoil of those who give. Did I mention that Scrooge scourges the ghosts and puts the Cratchits back in their places?
There’s no God bless us every one. There’s no God. There’s just them that has and them that has not. “I got your name! I got your ass!” - and he with the most power and the least silly illusions wins the day.
Heh. River would make a spooky Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, but she’d make an excellent off-the-wall Scrooge, too.
A Dead Like Me Christmas Carol would be easy; instead of being visited by ghosts, George would have her co-workers drop by in the wee hours for no damn reason, engaging her in oblique ruminating conversations that ultimately reveal the same point as the corresponding scenes in Dickens’s story. George’s old family would take on the role of the Cratchitts.
Rube = Marley; Daisy = Past; Mason = Present; Roxy = Future. Oh yeah.
Hmm, I would have figured someone would have done a zombie christmas carol
Declan
A Dilbert Christmas Carol - PHB as scrooge, Dilbert as Bob Cratchit, Alice as one of the ghosts, Wally… um, not sure what to do with Wally.
Hmm… The zombie musical from *Joan of Arcadia *would be a good template to use…
Lucy should be Scrooge! replace her with Peppermint Patty.
Linus should be Scrooge’s nephew so he can give his big speech to Lucy.
What I’ve always thought would be cool would be a slight alteration of the final scene, where Scrooge tricks Cratchit into thinking he’s about to fire him. In every version I’ve ever seen, the trick is given away to the audience in advance… we all know Scrooge is fooling. I’d like to see a version in which there is no giveaway. The Christmas Day scene at Fred’s fades out, and then we fade up on Cratchit running to the office the next morning and opening the door to face a scowling Scrooge, looking for all the world as if he has recovered from his momentary lapse of the previous day and is back to his old self… the fact that it’s a trick is not revealed until Scrooge himself reveals it to Cratchit.
Of course, everyone is so familiar with the story that this won’t actually fool anybody. Still, I think it would be a nice little twist.
I saw a great one years ago that should be shown again: takes place a year or more after the original, and Scrooge is now the most generous man in town. The ghosts visit him again, showing him how he’s swung too far in the opposite direction, and his extreme philanthropy is having negative results: people are taking advantage of him, and Tiny Tim grows up to be a fat, corrupt businessman even meaner than Scrooge, and Scrooge himself is buried in a pauper’s grave.
The part I remember best is Scrooge waking up the next morning:
“BOY! Run down to the butcher’s and get a goose!”
“What, the one as big as me?”
“NO! The one just big enough for a family of six! And deliver it to Bob Cratchett!”
“Half a crown for my trouble?”
“Tuppence, and not a penny more!”
“Ah, you’re a hard man, Mr. Scrooge, but you’re fair.”
A Gender-Reversed Christmas Carol has been done. More than once, I think. No whorehouse, though:
My church always did the Christian one, where the ghosts are replaced by angels, and Marley is replaced by the Big Guy Himself. And then we did a sequel with a plot I can’t remember.
ETA: Almost forgot–Tiny Tim gets healed in a miracle.