Traditions, Movies, And A Thanksgiving Hello

Holiday weeks can feel chaotic, so we kept it simple: a warm check-in, real traditions, and a stack of movies that make the season sing. We open up about why Thanksgiving sets our cinematic tempo—kicking off with Home Alone after dinner, then winding down with Christmas Vacation—before branching into new favorites like Red One for a lighter, PG action-Santa hit and Moana 2 for big-screen joy we’re not ashamed to chase. If you’re steering clear of Black Friday madness, consider this your cozy queue and a friendly nudge to watch what actually lifts your mood.

Voiced by Brian Plaideau

Transcript

Live Check-In And Holiday Hello

SPEAKER_01 0:07

Welcome to NOLA Film Scene with TJ Play-Doh. I'm TJ, and as always, I'm Play-Doh. This episode of NOLA Film Scene is brought to you by the Law Office of Janet McCaffrey.

SPEAKER_00 0:18

We're live on YouTube.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

Cool. We're live on the tube, y'all. So we want to say happy Thanksgiving. Today is the day before Thanksgiving.

Break Over And Guests Teased

SPEAKER_00 0:27

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.

SPEAKER_01 0:29

And we're back from a little bit of a break. We had to catch up, we had to record with some of our friends and met some new friends. In December, we've got it loaded up. We're ready. And we got plenty of guests who bring us into the new year, too.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

That's right. Yeah, we'll start dropping episodes next week, and the video versions are gonna start being uploaded again.

Thanksgiving Plans And Black Friday Avoidance

SPEAKER_01 0:53

We're giving them the content piece by piece.

SPEAKER_00 0:55

So Thanksgiving, my family normally goes camping with other family. A tradition we did for over ten years, maybe eleven or twelve times. But plans changed this year. It didn't work out. So we are Thanksgiving Thanksgiving? Is that a word? Thanksgiving?

SPEAKER_01 1:17

It isn't, I like it. Nice. Yeah. My wife and I we just go to my in-law's house and I will be working in the morning while y'all are waking up watching the parade. Be cleaning a couple bars so I don't have to go in on Black Friday.

SPEAKER_00 1:31

That's good.

SPEAKER_01 1:32

I don't have to get on the street. Although my wife and I'd we're gonna make this a rock Thanksgiving for us. We're planning on seeing Red One and Moana 2 sometime between now and Sunday.

Holiday Action Movies And Moana 2

SPEAKER_00 1:45

Nice. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:46

Red One looks so great. It's an action Santa Claus movie, action Christmas movie. We've had Violent Night with David Harbour in the past few years, which was a more like an R-rated Santa action. And then Fat Man with Mel Gibson, which it was good. I liked it. I don't know how to describe it other than Tough Guy Santa.

SPEAKER_00 2:06

Yeah, just a completely different take.

SPEAKER_01 2:08

Yeah, I think this is more PG and maybe more fun to a different crowd, but that looks good. And Moana too, I'm a Disney adult. I'm not ashamed of it. The songs were great in the first one, and I'm gonna trust them that the second one's gonna be good too.

SPEAKER_00 2:21

Nice. We're just not gonna venture out with all the madness of Black Friday weekend.

SPEAKER_01 2:28

I totally understand that. I've never been get there at 6 a.m. so you can save X amount of dollars on the TV, which they really just marked up and then drop that to the regular price. Never been my thing.

SPEAKER_00 2:38

I was actually just getting ready to ask you if your mom did the go wait at Mervin's because they were about to open, you're sitting outside the doors waiting. Remember? Remember Mervyn's?

SPEAKER_01 2:48

I know I do remember Mervyn's and all that. She didn't do that, but she did do the layaway.

SPEAKER_00 2:52

Yeah.

Childhood Christmas Decor Memories

SPEAKER_01 2:53

Stuff would be prepped. She my mother was from Maine and she grew up kind of poor. Christmas was her thing. You know what I mean? We even have you ever snowed the windows with the stencils? Yeah. So and we snowed an artificial every tree every year.

SPEAKER_00 3:06

Wow. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 3:07

So then you, when you take your stuff off and you pack it up, no matter how much you try to clean it, you're gonna get the yellow, crusty snow when you open up the box the next year.

SPEAKER_00 3:14

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

And we had an ornament. So top of the tree, picture a metal star, like a frame with a light bulb in the middle. And around that light bulb, first is like a cup. How do I describe it? You take a needle that goes above the light, you put the cup on it, and on the top of the cup are vents that are slanted. So the heat from the bulb turns that cup and the and it's colorized, you know, it's gels. And then on the outside of that, it's it was like a plastic and it was little square. So the lights would dance around the room. I've never seen that ornament, that tree topper, except for one person, and that was my best friend Dwayne Ransom growing up. He's resting in peace now, but we're the only two people who ever had that. So I don't know what that means.

SPEAKER_00 3:55

That's kind of cool. I don't I've never seen one of those. My dad's favorite tree was a white flocked tree with all blue bulbs. We have recreated that a couple times over the years. Sometimes we get a flocked tree, sometimes we don't. And we always try to get our tree the weekend right after Thanksgiving and try to get it up as soon as possible. Christmas is just my favorite time of year. Totally, mine too.

SPEAKER_01 4:21

I don't uh invest in the decorating as much. Sorry.

SPEAKER_00 4:24

We we do a tree. We we don't go crazy with lights. Sometimes we put a string of lights out across the porch, but that's that's it. We don't do yard decorations, it's too dark for people to see it anyway. We're off the sticks, there's no street lights.

Dream Yard Displays And Local Light Shows

SPEAKER_01 4:38

I gotcha. If I had unlimited money, my dream would be outside giant statue of Santa, and on the other side of the house, a giant Jack Frost, animatronic, 18 foot tall. And when Santa, let's say he waves his hand, all the lights go multicolor and they go towards Jack. And then once it hits for a second, Jack would have face blowing, and then all the lights would go like ice, blue and white and silver back at him, and like have them have a Christmas uh winter fight, you know. Right. That'd be money, but it'd be like Copeland's display. I don't know if you were around for that. Yeah, but yeah. Every town has it, the people who decorate with every ounce of rich money they got.

SPEAKER_00 5:13

Right.

SPEAKER_01 5:14

I want to be that guy one day. I'd like to be rich on a star, but that'll be nice too.

SPEAKER_00 5:18

Maybe one day. His his continued on after his death, too. I mean, we used to travel to go see it.

SPEAKER_01 5:23

Yeah. He's in City Park now, a lot of it.

Sponsor Message: Janet McCaffrey Law

Holiday Movie Traditions And Home Alone Quest

SPEAKER_00 5:25

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We need to take a quick break to pay the bills. Have you been injured through someone else's negligence? New Orleans-based actor Janet McCaffrey has been practicing law in Louisiana since 1999, specializing in personal injury since 2008. Janet takes helping others very seriously. So if you've been injured, she's offering a free consultation and a reduced fee to fellow members of the Louisiana film industry. She's committed to helping the injured, and she will handle your case with professionalism and determination from start to finish. Information in the description below. Now let's get back to the episode. So last year I didn't go back and re-listen to the episode, but I think we still were under strike conditions and weren't being specific with movies and whatnot. So I was going to share one of my traditions, something that I've been doing probably since right after the movie came out. Every year, Thanksgiving, after Thanksgiving dinner, I watch Home Alone, the first one. That every year, that's the first movie. And then before bed, I watch Christmas Vacation. Nice. Those are my two Thanksgiving Day first Christmas movies of the season movies. After that, the order doesn't matter, but I try to watch or at least start one every day. Last year with all the editing, didn't really follow up on that. When I was on deployment, I could not find home alone. We had a so there was a center where you can go check out movies, DVDs, our CDs for music. The recreation center, it was free. You check it out and then take it back. It was like a video store, but you didn't have to pay. They didn't have home alone. And I didn't have a copy of it with me. I figured I'd be able to get it there. I downloaded it through iTunes. And because of the internet connection, we we had Wi-Fi cards, and you just go to the little store and refill it. Uh they were prepaid Wi-Fi cards. And it took me a whole a whole thing, like 40 bucks and 24 hours to download home alone. Plus what I had to buy it for on iTunes. Anyway, that's my uh Christmas movie.

24-Hour TV Marathons And Wonderful Life

SPEAKER_01 7:33

Yeah, and your Thanksgiving movie. Did you know Christmas Vacation is going to stream for 24 hours? And I think it's Thanksgiving Day. And I believe it's Elf will also stream for 24 hours on Black Friday.

SPEAKER_00 7:43

Do you know what network?

SPEAKER_01 7:44

Either both on TNT and TBS, like Christmas Story does, or one then the other. You know what I mean? The commercial said TNT and then TBS, and I don't remember the order or which movies which, but like Christmas Story, they might do both and it'd be like, hey, now we get two days off instead of just one. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 8:00

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:01

I miss it's a wonderful life being on every channel.

SPEAKER_00 8:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:05

When when can you yeah, kind of when we were growing up, so it was late 80s, mid eighties through the 90s. Kids, we didn't have any internet, and on Christmas Eve, you could just flip through the cable channels and you would go from wonderful life, one of like, because it was public domain.

SPEAKER_00 8:20

Right.

SPEAKER_01 8:20

And you might be like, Oh, I'm at an hour and twenty-three, you just I'm gonna flip and be on the exact same thing on another channel, or 20 minutes earlier, it just you couldn't get away from it, and it was great. It would piss people off around me because I kept watching. Like, how can you watch that again? Because it's great.

SPEAKER_00 8:35

And it's a long movie, it's almost almost three hours long.

SPEAKER_01 8:39

Well, on network TV because they had all the commercials.

Star Trek Short Recommendation: Unified

SPEAKER_00 8:41

Commercials, that's right.

SPEAKER_01 8:42

Yeah, they stretch it out. And I am Facebook friends with the girl who played Zuzu, the little girl who had the rose petals. So we're Facebook friends. I don't know if I can get her as a guest, maybe one day.

SPEAKER_00 8:51

And I think cool if you did.

SPEAKER_01 8:53

Yeah, she's she's not a girl anymore, but she's a wonderful lady.

SPEAKER_00 8:56

That's very cool. So I just thought of this. If you are a Star Trek fan, this doesn't have to do with Thanksgiving or Christmas, but something I just watched today, unified. Go find it. It's a short and watch it. Don't look up anything about it, don't research it. It will spoil it. Go watch it. It gave me chills and I cried. And I don't I think it's maybe 15 minutes long, maybe 12.

SPEAKER_01 9:20

And it's it's on YouTube.

SPEAKER_00 9:21

And it's absolutely incredible.

SPEAKER_01 9:23

Yeah, it's kind of unofficial. It's not made by the people make Star Trek. We don't want anyway. But yeah, I am going to check that out.

Sign-Off And Cranberry Debate

SPEAKER_00 9:29

So yeah, that was a hard-hitting movie. I'm getting emotional thinking about it again. It was just it was that good. It was just incredible. Very cool. Anyway, we just wanted to jump on, say hello.

SPEAKER_01 9:40

We didn't forget.

SPEAKER_00 9:41

Hello, everybody. Happy Thanksgiving.

SPEAKER_01 9:43

Happy Thanksgiving. Get stuffed, but in a good way.

SPEAKER_00 9:45

Get stuffed. I see what you did there.

SPEAKER_01 9:47

Thank you. Thank you. Quick question cranberries from the can or freshly made?

SPEAKER_00 9:51

Fresh. Fresh.

SPEAKER_01 9:52

That's how my family, you know, orange zest, all that good stuff in the pot. But my wife's family is from the can, and I kind of like that too.

SPEAKER_00 9:59

Interesting. All right.

SPEAKER_01 10:00

I'm that kind of guy. I work both sides of the fence.

SPEAKER_00 10:03

I hear you. All right, Brian. Happy Thanksgiving.

SPEAKER_01 10:05

Happy Thanksgiving. Next Wednesday, new episode.

SPEAKER_00 10:08

Stay tuned. See you all next week.