The following New Year’s Eve, Clark brought on even more musical acts, including Billy Preston, Tower of Power, The Pointer Sisters, and Linda Ronstadt. Once again, Clark anchored in Times Square while the festivities came to us via the Queen Mary for the second year in a row. However, this time around, the Queen Mary portion of the show was hosted by George Carlin, who kicked things off with a joke about the ship and how, during the previous year, “6 and a half million people paid a million and a half dollars to walk on a ship that isn’t going anywhere.”

Throughout the show, Carlin checks in with Clark to see how things are going in New York and introduces the different musical guests. He also does stand-up a couple times, mostly utilizing material from his albums, like the “White Harlem” routine from Occupation: Foole and the “Some Werds” bit from Toledo Window Box (“Refrigerator-freezer is entirely too long. It should be refrigideezer.”) In between these segments, Carlin appears in a few short sketches where he plays the ship’s captain, Captain Flotsam. After the ball drops, we’re even treated to the rare sight of Carlin dancing—in case you needed any more reasons to check out the show.

In 1974, New Year’s Rockin’ Eve switched to ABC, where it’s remained ever since. Clark stayed with it as the anchor until he had a stroke in 2004. He then passed the duties over to Ryan Seacrest, who continues to host the show to this day. Clark died in 2012.

You can watch the entire 1973-1974 New Year’s Rockin’ Eve broadcast with George Carlin below.

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Miss Sophie invited four of her friends to her 90th birthday celebration, even though none of them are currently living. James then has to assume the roles of the deceased guests, drinking a toast to Miss Sophie on behalf of each of them and getting progressively drunker as time goes on. “The same procedure as last year, Miss Sophie?” he asks. “The same procedure as every year, James,” she replies.

Originally broadcast on the German TV station NDR in 1963, it was awarded the Guinness World Record for “Most annual airings of a television comedy sketch” in 2021. Even with the language barrier, Germans evidently can’t get enough of it, and it keeps being shown repeatedly throughout the day on December 31. The Guardian reported that over 12 million people tuned in to see Dinner for One in 2017 alone. That’s not including the 100,000 who watched it from places like Switzerland and Scandinavia that year.

Odd as it may seem, the tradition has yet to catch on in English-speaking countries. Though Dinner for One originated as a British stage sketch and it stars two British actors, it wouldn’t be shown on TV in the UK until 2018. Its success in Germany was in part due to its being developed specifically for NDR by German comedian Peter Frankfeld. The popularity of the sketch has spawned cookbooks, a commemorative stamp, and, more recently, a spin-off series on Prime Video.

Check out the original 1963 version of Dinner for One in its entirety below.

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3. THE APARTMENT

Billy Wilder’s classic 1960 romcom The Apartment stars Jack Lemmon as insurance clerk C.C. Baxter, who lends his bachelor pad to his bosses so that they can carry out their extramarital affairs discreetly. Baxter changes his tune, however, when he finds out that the woman he’s been pursuing (played by Shirley MacLaine) has been utilizing his apartment with the personnel manager. The climax begins at a New Year’s Eve party just before midnight, where MacLaine’s character learns that Baxter decided to quit the firm. If you start the movie at 9:58 p.m. without pausing at any point, the New Year will arrive just as the partygoers start singing “Auld Lang Syne.”

2. WHEN HARRY MET SALLY…

Released in 1989, Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan star as Harry and Sally, respectively, in Rob Reiner’s When Harry Met Sally… The two attempt to be friends despite having wildly different opinions on men and women, and on whether they can maintain platonic relationships. They eventually bond over their failed romances and end up falling in love with each other, with Harry opening up about his feelings for Sally at a New Year’s Eve celebration. Starting the film at 10:30:28 will sync up with the countdown to midnight during the finale’s party.

1. GHOSTBUSTERS II

The Ghostbusters get back to business five years after the events of the first film in 1989’s Ghostbusters II. This time, the team must investigate a river of slime flowing through the subways that appears to be linked to an increase in paranormal activity. They find out that the river flows to a local art museum and break in to save the city from the spirit responsible. Press play at 10:27:53 and the Ghostbusters will descend into the museum at midnight, just as Bill Murray says, “Happy New Year!” 

The post You Can Time These 3 Comedy Movies So That You Ring in the New Year With the Characters appeared first on VICE.

On April 10, 2007, Dane Cook took the crown from Pryor by doing a set that lasted three hours and 50 minutes. Just five days later, Dave Chappelle dropped by and blew Cook out of the water with a performance that clocked in at six hours and seven minutes. By the end of that year, Chappelle broke his own record after putting on a slightly lengthier show. His reign wouldn’t last much longer, however, as Cook took the stage less than a month later with a seven-hour and 34-minute set that’s yet to be topped.

Chappelle attempted to best Cook the following year, but things didn’t go according to plan. Five hours into his performance, Chappelle stepped off stage to use the bathroom and got himself disqualified. “There are only two rules,” club owner Jamie Masada said at the time. “You have to continuously tell jokes that are funny, and you can’t leave the stage, even to go to the bathroom.”

At one time, the Laugh Factory also held the Guinness World Record for the longest stand-up comedy show featuring multiple comedians. The 80-hour production included appearances from both Cook and Chappelle, among many others. In 2015, the record was beaten by NashvilleStandUp.com, with a show lasting 80 hours and five minutes. The record for the longest show by an individual (at least for now) belongs to Memphis comedian Benny Elbows, who performed for 40 hours and 16 minutes in April 2025; he was allowed a five-minute break every hour.

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The script Stern was working on that day was for The Honeymooners, which was still only a sketch on Jackie Gleason’s variety show in 1953—it would get spun off into its own half-hour series for the 1955-1956 television season. As luck would have it, Price showed up just as Stern was trying to think of an adjective to describe Ralph Kramden’s new boss’s nose. Price was there to do some editing on a book project, and Stern apologized for having to delay things, assuring him that they’d get to it in a moment. “No, we won’t,” Price said. “You’re in your idiosyncratic-pursuit-of-a-word mode. I could be standing here for hours. Do you want help?” 

Stern told him that he was looking for an adjective, and before he could get to what it was for, Price blurted out, “Clumsy and naked.” Stern couldn’t help but laugh out loud at the suggestion. “What’s so funny?” Price asked. Stern explained that because of him, Ralph Kramden’s boss now had a clumsy nose—or, even better, a naked one. That’s when the two realized they were onto something.

They abandoned the Honeymooners script and the book they were supposed to be polishing up and spent the day coming up with stories with certain words excluded. Their new game was tested out later that night at a party, and everybody loved it. It would take five years before Stern and Price came up with a name for it, however. As they were eating at a restaurant in the summer of 1958, the two overheard an actor telling his agent that he was going to “ad-lib” an interview; the agent told him it was a “mad” thing to do. 

Just like that, Mad Libs was born. The books are still in print all these years later, and over 110 million copies have been sold to date.

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According to Blues Brothers director John Landis, who was there that night, “It was a huge altercation.” “They were big guys and really going at it,” Landis explained. “They were slapping at each other, screaming at each other, calling each other terrible names.” One insult in particular left a lasting impression on Landis: Supposedly, while all of this was going on, Murray pointed at Chase and yelled out, “Medium talent!”

Murray described the incident as more of a “non-event.” Chase, for his part, told Howard Stern in 2008 that he and Murray have since made an effort to get to know each other and have managed to put everything behind them. The two buried the hatchet shortly after the fight and filmed a memorable scene for 1980’s Caddyshack, in which their characters smoke a joint together. “Buddies for life,” Murray’s character says to Chase’s as the two are about to part ways:

The way Chase made peace with Murray at a party they were both attending in 1979 might’ve been even more memorable, though. As author Nick de Semlyen tells it in his book Wild and Crazy Guys: How the Comedy Mavericks of the ‘80s Changed Hollywood Forever, “Chase put down his drink and marched toward Murray, a furious glare on his face.” “Murray tensed up,” Semlyen continues, “But just as he reached him, Chase dropped to his knees and began to unzip Murray’s pants.” From there, Chase mimed like he was about to perform oral sex on his former foe. Within seconds, they were both laughing, and the ice was officially broken, opening the door for their Caddyshack collaboration the following year.

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In an interview from 1994, Reiner opened up about how things went wrong during a run-through for what was supposed to be his second appearance on the show. In the middle of one scene, Reiner started improvising a bit and, according to him, that was all it took for Arnaz to lose his temper. “I pay $10,000 a script, what are you doing?” Arnaz screamed. “I don’t like these improvisational actors!” he continued, before storming off the stage. Despite being warned not to, Reiner followed after him.

“I was shoved by him,” Reiner said. “Physically shoved by him.” “Maybe that’s the way they do it on the Van Dyke Show,” Arnaz barked at him, referencing Reiner’s father’s hit sitcom starring Dick Van Dyke. “But we don’t do that on this show,” he went on, while pushing Reiner up against the soundstage. At that point, Reiner suggested that Arnaz might want to get another actor to play the part. Arnaz apologized to him for the outburst and complimented him on his acting, but Reiner ultimately decided not to go on with the show under the circumstances. 

Arnaz’s negative attitude toward The Dick Van Dyke Show is especially odd to hear about because that series was filmed at Desilu Studios, which Arnaz co-owned with Lucille Ball, and it did very well during its five-year run regardless of any improvisation. Interestingly, Reiner’s dad, Carl, didn’t have the highest opinion of Arnaz’s earlier sitcom, I Love Lucy, either. “I didn’t like the show because it wasn’t reflective of what I know about love and marriage,” the elder Reiner told PBS in 2015. “I wrote about two against the world. They wrote about two against each other.” It’s probably for the better, then, that he didn’t tell Arnaz that while they were filming at his studio.

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It would certainly explain a lot. Remember when Joe Pesci’s character poses as a cop at the beginning of the original movie? The first thing Peter asks when Pesci says he’d like a word with him is, “Am I under arrest or something?” The so-called “Wet Bandits,” Harry and Marv (Pesci and Daniel Stern), are also unusually fixated on the McAllister home for some reason, which they refer to as the “Silver Tuna.” That’s to say nothing of the McAllister family’s affinity for gangster movies like Angels with Filthy Souls—and when Marv hears the audio from the movie coming from their house later on, he doesn’t think twice about there being some mob activity going down inside.

Was any of this actually intentional, though? When director Chris Columbus appeared on The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast in 2024, he was asked about what Kevin’s parents did for work. Columbus revealed that he and John Hughes, who wrote and produced Home Alone, once had a chat about the whole job situation. Kevin’s mom, Kate, he said, “was a very successful fashion designer.” All the mannequins they have lying around the house are pretty clear evidence of that.

Columbus couldn’t recall what they settled on for Peter, however. “The father could have, based on John Hughes’s own experience, worked in advertising, but I don’t remember what the father did,” he explained. The criminal theory did get enough attention that Columbus had heard about it, though, and he addressed the speculation in that same interview. He laughed off the suggestion and responded by saying, “No organized crime—even though there was, at the time, a lot of organized crime in Chicago.”

The post Was Kevin’s Dad From ‘Home Alone’ in the Mob? appeared first on VICE.

The concept was also famously spun off into a successful sitcom featuring Tony Randall and Jack Klugman as Felix and Oscar, respectively. The series ran for five seasons on ABC between 1970 and 1975 and led to its own reunion with its two stars in 1993. Matthew Perry and Thomas Lennon even took a crack at a revival show for CBS in 2015. Simon’s old idea proved to be strong enough to get three more seasons’ worth of material out of it that time around.

One version we unfortunately never got to see, however, would’ve involved the legendary Dick Van Dyke. The sitcom veteran, who turned 100 earlier this month, revealed during a Q&A this past May that he was planning to reboot The Odd Couple with Ed Asner at one point. Asner played the boss of Van Dyke’s former TV wife, Mary Tyler Moore, on The Mary Tyler Moore Show in the 1970s (and Santa Claus in Elf, for the younger readers). “That would’ve been such fun, and we lost it,” Van Dyke said. “I’ve lost a lot of friends.”

It’s unclear when their take on The Odd Couple was supposed to have happened, but Van Dyke’s reference to losing friends seems to imply that the idea was still on the table up until Asner’s death. Van Dyke also shared recently that he and Asner had a bit of a friendly rivalry during their television days. “I remember Ed Asner had seven Emmys, and I had six,” Van Dyke explained. “And one year, I won two Emmys…and I called him up, and I said, ‘I gotcha, buddy!’ He was the greatest guy, Ed.”

The two would continue to work in both television and movies into their 90s. Asner passed away in 2021 at the age of 91.

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4. RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER

The 1964 Rankin/Bass special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer spawned several sequels over the years, including Rudolph’s Shiny New Year (1976) and Rudolph and Frosty’s Christmas in July (1979). However, one that quickly faded into the background was the 2001 direct-to-video effort Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and the Island of Misfit Toys. Featuring the voices of Richard Dreyfuss, Rick Moranis, and Jamie Lee Curtis, the CGI-animated film follows Rudolph and his friends as they try to foil the plans of the evil Toy Taker (Moranis), who—you guessed it—has been going around stealing people’s toys.

3. JINGLE ALL THE WAY

2014 saw the release of Jingle All the Way 2, a direct-to-video sequel to the original 1996 movie, this time starring Larry the Cable Guy. Like Arnold Schwarzenegger in the first movie, Larry competes to get his kid the hot new toy for Christmas. In his case, the person he’s competing with is his ex-wife’s husband.

2. A CHRISTMAS STORY

There have actually been a few follow-ups to A Christmas Story, but only two of them are Christmas movies. The straight-to-DVD movie A Christmas Story 2, released in 2012, takes place six years after the original and features a different actor as the now-teenaged Ralphie, who’s hoping for a convertible instead of a BB gun this time around.

Then there’s 2022’s A Christmas Story Christmas, which features several cast members from the first movie, including Peter Billingsley as Ralphie. After his father’s death, Ralphie returns to his hometown to be with his mother for the holidays.

1. NATIONAL LAMPOON’S CHRISTMAS VACATION

Randy Quaid and Miriam Flynn reprised their roles as Cousin Eddie and his wife, Catherine, in the 2003 made-for-TV movie National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation 2: Cousin Eddie’s Island Adventure. After getting fired from his job at a nuclear facility, Eddie takes his family on vacation in the South Pacific, where they get shipwrecked and have to celebrate Christmas on a desert island.

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