Title:
A Diva’s
Christmas Carol
Format:
TV movie
Country:
USA
Production
company:
Viacom
Productions, for VH1
Year:
2000 (first
broadcast on VH1 in the USA on December 13th that year)
Length:
89 minutes
Setting:
Contemporary
United States
Background:
If you’re
anything like me you’ll have been slightly taken aback at the network this was
made for, thinking, “Hang on, VH1? Isn’t that / wasn’t that a music channel?” The
answer is yes – a sister channel of the pioneering MTV, it was originally
designed to attract an older audience. In the 1990s they began producing more
programming such as documentaries rather than simply airing videos, and in 1999
expanded into drama with their own original TV movies under the ‘Movies That
Rock’ brand, usually biopics of bands or musicians or films which at least had
some sort of musical theme.
Cast and crew:
The relevant
‘Movies that Rock’ boxes are ticked here by several members of the cast being
better known for their musical careers – Vanessa Williams, of ‘Save the Best
For Last’ fame, is the star of the film as conceited pop star Ebony Scrooge,
and also performs a couple of original songs and a cover of ‘Sleigh Ride’ for
the soundtrack. Duran Duran bassist John Tayor, of all people, pops up as the
Ghost of Christmas Present, with Rozonda Thomas from TLC as Marli Jacob (see
what they did there…?). There’s even a guest appearance from Nile Rodgers.
Richard Schenkman
both wrote the screenplay and directed the film. Perhaps a flavour of his
background can be given by looking at some select credits from his CV – Playboy:
International Playmates… Hmmmm, okay, perhaps that was a one-off… Er… Abraham
Lincoln vs Zombies, anybody…?
 |
| Viva the Diva... |
Underdone Potato:
We begin with
Ebony – almost always referred to by her first name alone, Beyonce-style – shooting a music video for a cheesy Christmas song in Paris, during a stop of
her European tour. It’s made clear that she is an absolute megastar of a league
above what Williams had achieved in real life, but also that she’s a complete…
well… diva, as you probably guessed from the title.
We also learn
that she hates Christmas, and is not only selfish and narcissistic but also
immoral, or at least amoral, as well, deciding to have a charity gig
in New York on Christmas Day but wanting to make very sure she skims off most
of the profits and that very little will actually end up going to charity. She
also makes her band and tour staff stay in poor-quality accommodation, and
there are no complementary tickets to the charity gig so that they can at least
have their families with them on Christmas Day.
Her tour manager
is one Bob Cratchett – note the variation on the spelling – who seems to be an
old friend of hers, but there’s also an odd moment once she’s in her hotel in
New York when he tries to massage her shoulders, which sits oddly given that we
have been shown he has a wife at home and of course a sick child called Tim.
After a visit
from her niece Olivia inviting her over for Christmas the next day, when Ebony
is alone after pestering hotel staff about her food she is confronted by the
ghost of her former bandmate Marli Jacob. Marli does wear chains to represent
the wrongs she did in life, but rather than the clanking money boxes trailing
behind of a traditional Marley figure, they’re instead figure-hugging and
looking more like some sort of BDSM fetish gear – although the script does have
the wit to have Ebony comment on this.
There’s quite a
horror movie-type scene of Marli removing her own head to prove to Ebony she’s
a ghost, but when she then goes on to tell Ebony that the good condition of her
face is just a mask she wears for Ebony’s benefit, they shy away from showing
us the horror, only shooting it from behind. It’s probably more effective that way,
but I wonder if there was originally going to be a shot that they deemed either
unsuccessful or just too gory to use?
 |
| Marli's chains! |
Past:
The Ghost of
Christmas Past initially appears as a room service employee before quickly
revealing who she really is. She seems to have something of the… erm… spirit of
the ghost of the past from Scrooged, although she’s less shrill and more
pally.
We learn that
Ebony had an abusive father who hit her older brother, in what’s probably the
only scene of the film that I felt didn’t work very well. Something about it
just felt a bit over-the-top and not-quite right – suggestion rather than
showing might have worked better here.
She and her
brother were split up in care, with him later dying, very much the traditional
Fan role. We also learn that Ebony was originally part of a trio called Desire along with
Marli and another woman called Terry, all of them having grown up together.
After Marli was killed in a car crash in which two innocent people also died,
Ebony abandoned Terry and went solo, and we see the dire straits to which Terry has now been reduced.
It turns out that
Bob Cratchett also, perhaps uniquely, fulfils the Belle role here – before just
being Ebony’s tour manager he had also been her boyfriend. I’m not sure I would
have been too thrilled about him carrying on working for her all this time if
I’d been his wife, especially given that weird shoulder massage scene earlier,
although nothing more is made of that and I think it was simply a clumsy
attempt to hint at what’s revealed here.
Present:
John Taylor makes
for a fairly striking Ghost of Christmas Present, with his hat, manner and
accent all suggesting another familiar figure the Great British Christmas –
Slade guitarist Dave Hill. If you’re anything like me, it will be an impossible
impression to shake throughout the whole of the present segment.
He does the
present / presents gag which I’d only seen before in the 2006 animated version
– as this is a far better script than that, I do wonder whether or not it was a
direct lift, especially given something else which happens in the final section
which we’ll come to in a moment. Quite why the spirit is a louche rock star is
never made clear, but on the other hand it just sort of works and fits in with
the general tone of the whole film. The transition sequences of them zipping
around New York at super speed, as opposed to flying as might more usually been
depicted, are quite a fun idea.
We get fairly
typical Carol scenes of how badly ill Tim is, and Ebony being gently
mocked at her niece’s Christmas Party, as well as being very openly mocked by
all of her band in their shared hotel room. At the end of the section, the
spirit gives a mention to Ignorance and Want, but doesn’t show them – and
actually, Want’s name is changed to Greed, which suggest either a slightly
different intention or a minor misunderstanding of the original, as surely the
‘Want’ in the original is as in being in want of something, not as in coveting
something?
 |
| Ebony and |
Yet to Come:
In quite a clever
move, the spirit here doesn’t speak, and yet it does; it isn’t a single figure
or a person at all, but a television set. It shows Ebony a documentary – a Behind the Music programme on
VH1, of course – about her, which it quickly becomes apparent has been made
after she has died, showing how disliked she was and how quick her former
associates are to take advantage of her death for their own profit.
The programme
does contain the word “miserliness”, which I don’t believe any real VH1
programme in history has ever used. Well, apart from this one, obviously! But
given that it was a phantom vision rather than a real documentary we can
probably let it off.
Ebony is
confronted with her own dead body, and as with Marli at the beginning they
don’t go close up to see any detail. However, having insisted in a panic that
the documentary she was shown must have been about Celine Dion, there is then a
nice moment when Ebony sees the decaying corpse and cries, “It is Celine
Dion!”
What’s To-Day:
There’s a lot of
fun material in this section, starting with Ebony calling down to the ‘boy’
outside and responding to his complaint that he’s a fully-grown man by
apologising that she doesn’t have her contact lenses in yet. I also very much
enjoyed the way she genuinely doesn’t seem to know what to do, as
Scrooge claims he doesn’t in the original, even pleading for help somewhat
maniacally in a live TV appearance on Christmas morning about what she should
do next to help people.
She does, of
course, eventually figure things out, making sure all of the concert money goes
to charity, that her team can have their friends and family there, and she even
flies in Bob’s wife and son to save his marriage and allow Tim’s unspecified
illness to be treated at a top hospital in New York. There is, of course, lots
of showpiece concert footage – including Terri making a guest appearance,
somewhat recovered from the precarious state we’d been shown she was in the
preceding Christmas. Marli’s ghost watches them sing, in a white dress this
time having perhaps been freed of her chains because of Ebony’s redemption, an
idea also used in the 2006 animation which adds to my suspicion that someone
working on that had seen this one.
Unusually, we get
a ‘one year later’ coda scene, with Ebony and her great-niece and all her
friends and family enjoying Christmas together.
Review:
I had not
expected very much from this at all. In fact, to be absolutely frank about it,
I had expected it to be awful, schmaltzy rubbish, a typical pile-them-high,
sell-them-cheap American TV Christmas movie.
But do you know
what? It’s actually quite good.
Not, of course,
the most faithful adaptation of the Carol you will ever see, but it’s
surprisingly sensitively updated for its contemporary setting. Schenkman is
clearly a genuine admirer of the book, and gets in all sorts of references to
and adaptations of its original dialogue that most such versions wouldn’t
bother with.
There are
occasional misfires – the Bob/Belle thing didn’t work for me, and as I
mentioned the depiction of Ebony’s father just seemed wrong somehow, as well.
Almost as if it had been dropped in from a different film. But overall, the
year 2000 seems to have been a good one for modern-day versions of the Carol,
with this and the ITV version showing that you can use the power of the story
to tell an effective new interpretation in a modern setting.
In a nutshell:
Much better than
it has any right to be. If you’re interested in seeing a version of the Carol
in a non-traditional setting, then you could certainly do much worse than this.
Links:
The 3rd girl in Desire was TERRY, not Kelli.
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