Thanksgiving!

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OK, I buy films for just about every holiday. This is one of them. I probably own the bulk of what is out there, but as soon as I think that, I will find out about many more. Well, I hope so. I'm not saying that all of these are great movies, but this is what I own so far. Do you know of any others?

A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (1973)


Planes, Trains & Automobiles (1987)


Dutch (1991)


Home for the Holidays (1995)


What's Cooking? (2000)


Pieces of April (2003)


Son in Law (1993)


I feel like I am forgetting something . . .



I have all of Woody Allen's movies, but then again, I have all of Martin Scorcese, Pedro Almadovar, Lina Vertmuller and I also like Guy Richie and Anton Fuqua and Sam Peckinpah, go figure.



Martha Stewart Holidays: Classic Thanksgiving
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Addams Family Values


Wait! We cannot break bread with you. You have taken the land which is rightfully ours. Years from now my people will be forced to live in mobile homes on reservations. Your people will wear cardigans, and drink highballs. We will sell our bracelets by the road sides, and you will play golf, and eat hot hors d'oeuvres. My people will have pain and degradation. Your people will have stick shifts. The gods of my tribe have spoken. They said do not trust the Pilgrims, especially Sarah Miller. And for all of these reasons I have decided to scalp you and burn your village to the ground. ~ Wednesday


Sorry... I couldn't resist....
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AiSv Nv wa do hi ya do...
(Walk in Peace)




Caity, is Addams Family Values a Thanksgiving day movie? That's a cute post, but it's made me curious. I have that movie, but it's for my kids. Not that they want it. The same goes for Charlie Brown. Although they do want that movie. I just can't remember the Addams Family movie. Either way, I wanted any "Thanksgiving Day" movies listed to be more-so for my age. You know . . . old! I was simply listing everything I had, so that no one would re-list them.

7thson, you missed the part about it needing to be a movie. It's a good thing!

Cinemafan, you pretty much missed everything. If this will help you any, there will more than likely be many people surrounding a large dinner table, eating a lot of food. There will be a big dead bird in the center of the table. Unless it's a depressing Thanksgiving day movie. Which means I probably won't want it.



Well Thanksgiving isn't Christmas. There aren't dozens of films about it and more added each year. The main one is Planes, Trains & Automobiles. After that is Jodie Foster's wonderful Home for the Holidays and the very good indie Pieces of April.

Those are the big three.

What's Cooking is fine, but not as good as Foster's movie or Pieces of April. Dutch is just an embarrassing retread of everything John Hughes did so much better in every single way in PT&A.

And nobody over the age of forty should forget Alice's Restaurant (1969), the film version of Arlo Guthrie's comic and satirical epic ballad about dumping trash and avoiding the Draft.



Then there are a bunch that, like Woody Allen's Hannah & Her Sisters, use the Thanksgiving holiday as the setting for the film, but aren't really about Thanksgiving Day. These would include The Ice Storm (1997), The Myth of Fingerprints (1997) and The House of Yes (1997)...apparently 1997 was a watershed year for using Thanksgiving as an ironic setting for dark family tales. Tadpole (2002) is also a Thanksgiving weekend setting. Love that little movie, but it's hardly a "Thanksgiving" flick. There are a couple others that use Thanksgiving as a backdrop in this way, but those are the major entries.

And yes, Addams Family Values (1993) does have that hysterical scene where Wednesday and Pugsley lead a violent revolt with the other misfit kids against the sunny counselors (Christine Baranski & Peter MacNicol) and the snobby, snotty, privileged, perky pretty children at camp during the Thanksgiving pageant, kicked off with Wednesday's glorious proclamation, "And for all of these reasons I have decided to scalp you and burn your village to the ground."

It's probably the single best moment in either of those two Addams Family movies of the early '90s. Little Christina Ricci is so great doing deadpan dark comedy in those two flicks, and that is her crowning moment.



Although it's much more than JUST a Thanksgiving movie, Barry Levinson's wonderful Avalon (1990) has a few key scene set during the holiday as we watch one Jewish-American family drift apart over the decades. The Thanksgiving dinner tradition is actually one of the things that fractures them. After some of the Krichinsky clan move to the suburbs and the dinner is held there instead of one of the downtown Baltimore homes it always had been, one of the brothers is late. He is always late. Rather than wait for him this time, his brother Sam (Armin Mueller-Stahl) makes the decision to cut the turkey and start without them. When his annually tardy brother does finally arrive, he is hurt that they did not wait and storms out, causing the extended family to choose sides. It's the third of Levinson's "Baltimore Films", following Diner and Tin Men, and is a great movie.


Miracle on 34th Street of course starts with Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, but it's a Christmas movie through and through.


And that's about it. If I were a filmmaker looking to add something to the holiday canon, I wouldn't mess with the overcrowded Christmas scene but instead try and distinguish myself in the smaller Thanksgiving field.
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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra



Most sitcoms and many television dramas over the years have all had their Thanksgiving episode or episodes. There are some good ones like the "Cheers" food fight, the popped Macy's float in "Seinfeld", the reunion on the first season of "Archie Bunker's Place", "Roseanne" and the "Friends" gang had a few and it goes all the way back to "I Love Lucy", but the most memorable, by far, has to be "WKRP in Cincinnati" and the brilliant "Turkeys Away!", with the ill-fated radio promotion that newsman Les Nessman relays in Hindenburg-like horror and Mr. Carlson sums up with the sincere and deadpan, "As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." It's now available on DVD in the first season set (it's the seventh episode of the series, and truly unforgettable).




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Cinemafan, you pretty much missed everything. If this will help you any, there will more than likely be many people, surrounding a large dinner table, eating a lot of food. There will be a big, dead bird, in the center of the table. Unless it's a depressing, Thanksgiving day movie. Which means I probably won't want it.
I don't know what kind of Thanksgiving dinner you have, but you paint a pretty grim picture, as if it should be held in a morgue. My Thanksgivings are a happy, noisy, drinking affair with Italians and Irish thrown in the mix, so for us a good comedy is not out of the question, even though we do prefer our jokes live.



Originally Posted by Ðèstîñy
7thson, you missed the part about it needing to be a movie. It's a good thing!
Were you under the impression that CBS' Emmy-winning "A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving" was a theatrical release?




And that's about it. If I were a filmmaker looking to add something to the holiday canon, I wouldn't mess with the overcrowded Christmas scene but instead try and distinguish myself in the smaller Thanksgiving field.
Thanks so much for the list, TV shows included. I couldn't agree more about this. I can't think of how many Christmas movies have been made these past few years that I haven't even bothered viewing. I love collecting those as well, but anything new isn't worth it.

Were you under the impression that CBS' Emmy-winning "A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving" was a theatrical release?
Nope! You know me. The only way I see a film (or a TV special), is in a house. Usually mine. I don't keep up with all movies that go straight to DVD or are made for TV, but as far as I know, all the Charlie Brown movies were made for TV. Although I may be wrong.



Tatanka's Avatar
Certifiably troglodytic.
In Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind, Richard Dreyfuss calls someone a turkey after asking them how to get to Cornbread.

How many non-thanksgiving movies are there that reference in the same sentence multiple foodstuffs that may be eaten on that holiday?

(I obviously couldn't come up with anything for the original post but was happy to get in a Close Encounters reference nonetheless) .



Well, there's turkey and a parade. I guess it qualifies. There's even some guy getting an early Christmas present. Too bad he loses his head over it.

In Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind, Richard Dreyfuss calls someone a turkey after asking them how to get to Cornbread.

How many non-thanksgiving movies are there that reference in the same sentence multiple foodstuffs that may be eaten on that holiday?
That reminds me of the Thanksgiving dinner in For Keeps. Molly Ringwald's mother is talking about how the French make their stuffing with apples, raisins, and cinnamon. Kenneth Mars ... Mr. Bobrucz: "That's not stuffing. It's fruit!"

Now that I've posted this, I have no clue why your post reminded me of it.