20 facts you might not know about 'Scrooged'

The writers of the screenplay for “Scrooge” were Mitch Glazer and Michael O’Donoghue. O’Donoghue is a bit of a comedy legend, as he was the first head writer of “Saturday Night Live” and a key contributor to “National Lampoon.” Glazer is also a former “SNL” writer and has worked on a few Bill Murray projects, including this one.

While the movie is called “Scrooged,” Murray doesn’t play a character named Ebenezer Scrooge, or even a more modern name like Dave Scrooge or something. He plays a character named Frank Cross, and he’s the president of a TV network. We do get all the ghosts and tropes, though, and his network does put on a version of “A Christmas Carol” in the movie, in case you missed out on the parallels.

In that TV special version of “A Christmas Carol” within the movie, Buddy Hackett, Mary Lou Retton, and Jamie Farr all play roles. On top of that, Robert Goulet and Lee Majors have cameos as themselves. Paul Shaffer and Miles Davis are also in the film as street musicians.

Bill likes to work with his brothers, and so you can often find one of his brothers in his movies. However, “Scrooged” feels appearances from all three of his acting brothers. Joel just has a cameo, but John plays his brother. Somewhat oddly, eldest brother Brian Doyle-Murray plays Bill’s father.

David Johansen plays the Ghost of Christmas Past. While he’s acted, he’s probably best known as a musician. Johansen was a member of the seminal band New York Dolls, although you may know him better as his alter ego Buster Poindexter, who did the song “Hot Hot Hot.”

It took a little convincing to get Murray to sign on to star in “Scrooged.” He was feeling burnt out from “Ghostbusters” and then had seen his passion project “The Razor’s Edge” flop. This led to a four-year hiatus from acting, at which point his “SNL” buddies Glazer and O’Donoghue talked him into taking this movie.

Most of “Scrooged” was shot on sets in Hollywood. However, they needed a building to serve as the IBC Building in the movie (IBC is the network that Cross runs). They landed on the skyscraper known as the Seagram Building in New York City.

Carol Kane plays the Ghost of Christmas Present, and her character is quite rough on Frank. Murray didn’t want her to pull punches, sometimes literally. When the script called for Kane’s character to hit Murray’s, he insisted she actually hit him. It got to the point where the inside of Murray’s lip got split open when Kane pulled on it too hard.

Richard Donner, probably best known for directing “Superman” and the “Lethal Weapon” movies, directed “Scrooged.” Murray did not see eye to eye with a lot of what Donner was doing. Over the years he has expressed frustration with the experience and that he and Donner had different ideas of what the film should be. In fact, Murray has gone as far as to say that he experienced a “fair amount of misery” shooting “Scrooged.”

Murray had issues beyond having beef with Donner. He has said that the fake snow used in the film left him coughing up blood at one point.

Screenwriters Glazer and O’Donoghue were also unhappy with Donner, and they were more to the point about it. O’Donoghue, never one to mince words, said that Donner simply did not understand comedy and eschewed subtlety for “loud” moments. Murray has also said that Donner kept asking him to do takes louder so that tracks.

Donner was diplomatic about the experience working with Murray, but he didn’t exactly love the relationship either. While Donner called Murray “superbly creative” he also called him “as difficult as any actor” to work with.

David Johansen has no problem being loud and boisterous, but he still can’t quite hold a candle to the original option for the Ghost of Christmas Past. The first plan was to hire the screaming standup Sam Kinison. Instead, they hired Johansen, who was friends with Murray.

There’s a reason they put “Caution: Wet Floor” signs out. In one scene Frank splashes a waiter with water, but that left the stairs actually wet. Murray actually slipped and fell in that scene, and the take made it into the movie.

In the film, Robert Mitchum’s character Preston Rhinelander says that IBC should start gearing programs towards cats and dogs to grow their audience. This is meant as a joke, but of course these days there are actually channels for cats and dogs. Maybe Preston was onto something.

Toward the end of the film, Murray started to do a lot of adlibbing and improvising. This includes at the end of the film when everybody is singing “Put a Little Love in Your Heart.” One of the things that Murray says is, “Feed me, Seymour!” This is a line from a song in the musical version of “Little Shop of Horrors.” In that film, Murray has a small role as a masochistic dental patient.

Al Green and Annie Lennox did a duet of the song “Put a Little Love in Your Heart” for the “Scrooged” soundtrack. It proved successful, as it spent 17 weeks on the Billboard charts, climbing as high as ninth on the Hot 100.

Murray was still basking in the glow of “Ghostbusters” by the time “Scrooged” was coming out. The marketing team behind his new movie was happy to play off of that. One of the taglines for “Scrooged” was, “Billy Murray is back among the ghosts, only this time it’s three against one.”

“Scrooged” was released over the Thanksgiving weekend in the United States and debuted at number-one at the box office. It suffered a bit of a drop for its second week, though, and was actually not all that popular by the time Christmas rolled around. Nevertheless, it made $60.3 million domestically and $40 million overseas against a $32 million budget.

The Academy Awards gave “Scrooged” just a smidge of love. The team of Tom Burman and Bari Dreiband-Burman were nominated for Best Makeup. However, they lost to “Beetlejuice.”