Xasablanca Xmas

The only holiday movie you'll need.

Ext. Christmas Eve, 1941, Casablanca.

Major Heinrich Strasser, Nazi commandant, and his Obsequious Military Lackey are being driven through the dark streets of Casablanca.

Maj. Strasser: I hate these Christmas Eve truce parties. No trashing Free French nightclubs, no references to exterminating Jews, and it always ends with a stupid little happy dance in the kitchen. What’s my Secret Santa present, by the way?

Lackey: A Klimt. We got a great deal on it when it was stolen from a rich Jewish family in Austria.

Maj. Strasser: Perfect. (His Christmas spirit blooming.) Did we get them anything?

Lackey. Zyklon B. It should be delivered about now.

CUT TO:

Rick’s place, upstairs over the café.

The party is mobbed with Christmas regulars: Bill Murray, in a Dickensian nightcap, is having a nightcap. Will Ferrell, in an Elf costume, is telling a wingless angel named Clarence it would have better if he had never been born, as he doesn’t know his real family which has given him a compulsion to sit on people’s laps, which is creepy. Hugh Grant, the English prime minister, is making the rounds, stuttering adorably. Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan are bickering about whether you can orgasm more satisfyingly over the pastrami and rye at Katz’s or the blintzes at Ratner’s.

Yvonne, Rick’s sometime girlfriend, is carrying a small torch and compulsively eating Christmas cookies, because when she’s depressed, she medicates with sugar. Sam, the piano player, is playing “Fairytale of New York.”

Rick: Goddamnit, Sam, I told you never to play that song again. It’s depressing.

Sam: I can’t help it, boss. It starts going through my head in December and I can’t stop it, no matter how much French champagne I pour down my throat. “It was Christmas, in the drunk tank…” Oh, Lord, make it stop!

Rick sideswipes Sam off the bench and he falls to the floor, with a probable concussion.

Yvonne: (Looking on tenderly.) I know Rick’s a bitter, narcissistic alcoholic, but I love him. ARE THERE ANY MORE COOKIES IN THIS DUMP?

Ilsa Lund, the most beautiful woman ever to set foot in Casablanca, walks in, accompanied by her husband, Victor Laszlo. They’ve obviously had one of those marital spats which happen when you realize your husband is a bore whose only interest is politics and you’d rather be with an chilly alcoholic who yells at his employees, treats people desperate for his respect like dirt and belittles the woman he’s been sleeping with.

Nobody notices Ilsa as she makes her entrance, so she flips the light switch on and off a few times in a subtle bid for their attention. The guests turn towards her, annoyed. There’s a collective, horny/jealous gasp, depending on how you sexually identify and whether you have genitals.

Clarence: That woman is unhappy. I can tell from her breasts. They droop slightly. I better go over and try to cheer them up and convince them that life is worth living. Oh, God, I wish I had a penis. Hey, Big Guy, can we make a deal? A dick instead of angel wings?

Major Strasser: Hubba hubba! That is what you call a genuine Norwegian hot tomato. I wonder: Did we kill any of her family when we invaded? Oh, hell, it was a year ago. And I have the dapperist uniform in here. Is that a word? Dapperist?

Will Ferrell: Mommy!

Billy Crystal: Shiksa! No wait, I’ve got one of those.

Rick: (Yanking Sam the piano player off the floor, sitting him down on the piano bench.) Quick, play, “Fairytale of New York, because now I’m really depressed.”

Hugh Grant: Absolutely not! Make it, “Jump for my love!” It’s Christmas, damn it! And I’ve got the cutest little butt here. Let’s all get up and shake it!

CUT TO:

The party, a few hours later.

Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan have left, to see if there’s anyplace you can get a bagel with a shmear in Casablanca at four in the morning.

Victor Lazlo is huddled on the couch with Yvonne, who, it turns out, can really rock La Marseillaise.

Hugh Grant and Major Strasser, in a coup de foudre that could rival the A-bomb tests in Nevada, have fallen hard for one another.

“You know,” Strasser murmurs, “I never saw anyone shaking their tushie like that. It is most..beguiling. Perhaps we should put an end to this stupid war and buy a little place in Dresden. Before they start rebuilding and prices go up.”

Across the room, Will Ferrell is sitting on Ilsa’s lap, and she is apologizing for giving him up for adoption.

“I was only fifteen at the time,” she says. “And the North Pole — Norway — they were not so far away. And you were always doing, how you say, the mugging and the sappy jokes. You were such a needy little thing, you got on my nerves.”

Clarence sticks his head out of the bedroom where coats are piled on the bed.

“Ilsa, darling, could you come in here and help me find your wrap?”

Ilsa disappears into the bedroom. A few minutes later, a heavenly bell rings.

****

Still looking for that perfect holiday gift to put under the menorah? Get Joyce’s “The Satyr in Bungalow D”, a comic novel about satyrs in the Borscht Belt in the summer of ‘63. Because we both know Bubbe didn’t go to the mountains for the trees.