A Christmas Story‘s Scut Farkus says the role sparked public antagonism for years
Zack Ward, famous for playing Scut Farkus in A Christmas Story, says strangers would antagonize him over the role
Aux News Scut Farkus
Starring in one of the most iconic holiday films comes with its own rewards. However, when you’re playing the snot-nosed bully who terrorizes the lead character, the reputation you end up with may be less than savory. For Zack Ward, who at 13 appeared in A Christmas Story as the villainous Scut Farkus, the role has been a mixed bag of encounters with fans, from pleasantries to attempts at drunken brawls.
“In the last 20 years, it’s turned into a wonderful experience where people are really sweet and kind. Before that, they weren’t quite sure where they knew me from,” Ward tells Insider. “So they’d look at me like I kicked their dog. Cause they’d be like, ‘I know that guy’s a bad guy. Where do I know him from?’”
Some would take their internal beef with Farkus up a notch, and try to start fights with the actor over his character’s actions.
“If they were drunk, if I was in a bar or out at night and someone was a little in their cups, they would literally start to get in my face and start a problem, which was very discombobulating,” the actor explains.
Ward says the visceral reactions have cooled over the years, and most just share their pleasure at Farkus’ eventual comeuppance in the film.
“People just saw me and got a big smile on their face, and they’d usually say, ‘You got your ass beat.’ I’m like, ‘Yes, I did, I’m glad that brought you joy,’” Ward says.
Ward recently reprised the role of Farkus for the Warner Bros. Pictures sequel A Christmas Story Christmas, which follows Ralphie (played by Peter Billingsley) as he returns to Indiana for the holidays.
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Itâs really disturbing how often people canât tell the difference between fiction and reality. The actor who played Frank Burns on M*A*S*H received hate mail all the time and people were rude to him on the street. Iâve actually seen people claim that so-and-so would only have accepted the villain role because they agreed with the fictional villainâs POV. (One of these idiots now writes for Teen Vogue. Stupidity gets ad clicks.)
Gene Siskel once published the address of Betsy Palmer in his newspaper column because he didnât like Friday the 13th!
Taking inspiration, Spike Lee angrily tweeted the address of Betsy DeVos.
Well, thatâs not abusive behavior at all, is it?Geez, no wonder Parker and Stone had Siskel burning in Hell….
Dude, thatâs fucked up! Iâm glad he got read for filth by Ebert
Reminds me of the time I saw Beth Howland from TVâs Alice and I told her how stupid she was for thinking George Burns was actually God.
Everybody knows Clapton is God.
But the guy did indeed have a ferret face.
And I hear he eats worms.
Collin Baker, before he landed the role of Doctor Six, was accosted on the street ALL the time for being the heavy on the soap opera he was in.
Having only known him as the Harpo of Doctor Who, I just canât picture him being the heavy in a soap.
I know, right? But hereâs the proof:
âYes, now, item two…âI was cracking up. lol
I know two actors in real life, both were on soaps. One of them literally got slapped on the subway in NYC because her character was coming between a popular couple. Another got stalked so bad by someone mad at his character, he actually had to move to keep himself safe. Yeah, people are dumb.
Chris Hardwick had to start stating on Talking Dead that the show is a work of fiction, not a documentary, after the actress who played Andrea was getting death threats when her character shot Daryl.
Plus thereâs all the crap Anna Gunn has had to deal with for playing Skyler White.
Alison Arngrim, who played Nellie Olson on Little House on the Prairie (and was close friends with the actress who played Laura), was approached and yelled at for decades. She wrote a book about it: âThe Bitch on the Prairie.â Itâs a very entertaining read.
I agree that people shouldnât do this. That said, I canât stop myself rom laughing when I remember that William Atherton, who played Walter Peck in âGhostbustersâ, had a bunch of people on a bus yell âYo, Dickless!â at him on the street once.
Yes, itâs true.This man has no dick.
Heâll always be Dave from Titus to me.Does anyone remember Titus? Funniest show of the 2000s, imo. Need to bother someone at Disney to get it on streaming. Scared my DVDs are going to rot.Â
Christopher Titus posted the whole series to Youtube at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. They may still be up. They also made a follow-up reunion special in October 2020 thatâs available to purchase.
Thanks for this info. FYI, itâs still there. Though he didnât put the episodes in the correct order, which is unfortunate but better than nothing.Â
I remember Titus, but I only remember the title character, his girlfriend, and Stacy Keach.
Oh, I remember the girlfriend all right.
I remember there was an episode where Wardâs character was revealed to be a pregnancy expert because he once got so high that he remembered his own birth.Â
It took me a long time before I connected Dave to Scut.
It took me seeing his name attached to this article before making the connection.
I remember watching Titus and thinking Dave looks familiar, and IMDB confirmed he was Scut Farkus.
… oh, youâre not talking about the Julie Taymor, Anthony Hopkins Hsakespeare adaptation Was real puzzled there for. moment.
Thank you. Every time I mention Titus I feel like Iâm the only one who remembers it.
Heâs always going to be Rorschach in Watchmen to me.
that was Jackie Earle Haley but I can see why itâs easy to mix them up…
I was amusing myself because they look kinda similar.
COOOOOOOOOOOWS!
Pepperidge Farm remembers
Absolutely one of my favorite shows. Stacy Keach was amazing in it.
As Dave would say, “it belongs to the whole world… like the moon!”
I went to a taping of an episode (I was a big fan; the episode was the one where Christopher and Erin found out they cheated on each other), and met Christopher, Zack, and Stacy Keach afterwards, they could not have been nicer. And what a great show
That episode and the follow up where they get tested at the hospital are just chefâs kiss perfection. I genuinely remember finding the first two seasons on DVD in BestBuy in 2006 and losing my mind and asking my then gf to buy it cause I didnât have any money on me.I rewatch the show like once a year and ironically Iâm starting again tonight.
It was really neat too that they shot the show in real time without cuts, so it was basically getting a live performance of it, which was really cool. They even had the “empty room” scenes on monitors they would play for the audience where they were supposed to go in the story
Was a huge fan of the show and sent to see Titus live at a comedy club in Detroit. Ran into him in, of all places, the john. I was going to play âwho had the worse childhood growing upâ but I knew heâd win.
Haha, I met him a second time after a show in my college town of Chico, CA (his next show was the taping of âVoice in my Headâ), he signed his name and wrote âProzac Works!â on my program.Just an absolutely terrific guy. Even though the show ran late, he stuck around in the lobby for pictures and autographs for anyone and everyone. His podcast is one of the handful of ones I regularly listen to.
I LOVED Titus when it was on. Comedy from the 00s has not aged well at all, so I assume itâs best if I leave it in the 00s.
And yeah I think of Zack from Titus and Freddy Vs Jason as much as I do A Christmas Story
I just rewatched S1 yesterday, Titus holds up.Titus might have been ahead of the curve. Gave the mental health hotline at the end of an episodes, had episode about child abuse, did an episode in relation to Matthew Shepherd.Like maybe some specifics word choices donât hold up but the show generally is very much a be good, be kind, respect other people show. Itâs shockingly progressing and even with Ken Titus being racist and sexist, he generally gets his comeuppance for being racist and sexist.Â
Such an underated show
Yes! Was thinking the same thing. I was a kid when it was on, so maybe itâs not as good as I remember, but I loved that show.
I just rewatched S1 over the last two nights. It holds up.And as noted, itâs free Christopher Titusâ YouTube. Go and laugh.
I always found it weird his girlfriend called his dad âPappa Titusâ like can you not use his first name?
Wow, I thought I was the only one who called drinking âinto my cupsâ
I assumed it was a British expression
You… thought you were the only person who used a very old, well-known, and well-established phrase? One that has been around for decade upon decade upon decade?How is every comment that I ever see from you so dumb?
thatâs rickety cricketâs brotherÂ
I’m sorry I said that stuff about Carl Lewis.
Sounds like he got off easier than Joke Lloyd.
Uhhhhh…. that poor kid canât even catch a break about the Phantom Menace here in the comments, right?
Joke Lloyd, really?Â
That âkidâ is 33 not but itâs still shitty to be mean to him over his role in Star Wars. Even good actors looked like idiots in those movies because Lucas sucks at writing and directing people Also sounds like Lloyd has some major mental health issues heâs dealing with these days. So maybe itâs best we just send good vibes his way
Yep, that 33-year-old will probably have a part of him thatâll be 9 forever, simply because of the abuse. I hadnât heard of what he was dealing with lately, though. That sucks.
Really! I wonder if Ahmed Bestâs career has ever recovered from the âwinâ of playing Jar Jar Binks.
The fact that itâs Scut Farkus and not Scot Farkus escaped me only the first…. 30 or so times I viewed this film. WTF is a scut?
Yeah, I just found out like two years ago, after thinking it was âScottâ for decades.â
The band Less Than Jake further perpetuated the misconception by titling one of their songs âScott Farcas Takes It on the Chin.â They probably thought the characterâs name was âScottâ too. Theyâre the main reason I did for a long time. Discovering that itâs actually âScutâ was a shock.
I didnât notice until I read Shepâs book. âOh.â
What a rotten name!.
I unironically love Zack Ward in everything I see him in. I mean no disrespect when I say heâs my favorite C-list actor, because he tends to have only small roles in larger projects or big roles in terrible projects, but whatever it is, he makes it better. Heâs very briefly, like, the roommate(?) in The Curse of Sleeping Beauty, which is absolutely terrible, but his part made me smile. And heâs great in S2 of Dollhouse, which is my favorite of the Whedon projects.
He is also Red Dog the roadie in Almost Famous.
Id be way more worried about starting in Postal than being the bully in a Christmas Story. Anyway i thought he was like, the hottest ginger actor back in the early 2000s i bet the đ is unhingedÂ
He is just jealous because his toadie Brian Johnson had a better career than him.
Did Mike Judge model Beavis on him or what
Well, what do you expect when you have yellow eyes? So help me God, yellow eyes…
This dude reminds me of Malachi from âChildren of the Cornâ. âOutlander, we have your woman! OUTLANDER!!â
Canât say young Tyrannorabbit was crazy about how redhaired boys in TV and movies were inevitably bullies or twitchy weirdos.
I saw that in the sixth grade and he scared me so badly that I slept with a bible on my chest that night đ Athiest now.Â
If only his dad, Sid, didn’t make a pass at Estelle Costanza…
He was pretty good in the Epitaph episodes of Dollhouse.
Dude’s in Resident Evil, too.
Great job not using his actual name in the headline to, uh, hammer home the point I guess?
i always thought the name was âscott farkus.â
and Clu Gallagher!
yes! also…mccloud!
HUZZAH!
Gary Oldman kept getting shot after he played Lee Harvey Oswald.
Iâll always remember him as the lead in âPostalâjk, couldnât get through ten minutes of that garbage even with Dave Foleyâs weenie as baitsrsly though, Iâd have taken that job, good for him as a dependable working actor
He was also excellent in Uwe Bollâs adaptation of Postal.
I must be one of a handful of people who have NEVER seen A Chritmas Story. Whatâs funny is a few years ago my mom got me the Leg Lamp, not a replica type just a cheap one with Chsirtmas lights in it, and she didnât even know it was from the movie. I was like I have NEVER seen the movie and I know what itâs from, for the record she HAS seen the movie. Like I know exactly 2 things about the movie, the leg lamp and the SUPER racist scene in the Chinese restruant.