Scott Schwartz is funniest when a boy's confidence meets a difficulty he cannot talk his way out of. A Christmas Story uses that gift well; The Toy asks him to carry a premise its script cannot manage.
Fi1m perspective
In A Christmas Story (1983), Flick has his tongue stuck to a frozen flagpole, and Bob Clark keeps the camera on Scott Schwartz's face. The bell rings, and the other children head back to class. We laughed out loud because their departure leaves him stuck there while the school day carries on without him. Schwartz makes the discomfort convincing enough that the joke needs no further encouragement.
He had already played the lead child role in Richard Donner's The Toy (1982), as Eric Bates, the boy allowed to choose any present he wants. He chooses a man, played by Richard Pryor, and Schwartz holds his own alongside Pryor and Jackie Gleason, who plays Eric's father. The opening has some good comedy, but Carol Sobieski's screenplay never finds a satisfactory way to stop the chosen man becoming incidental. As the message takes over, Eric and the others become characters required to deliver it.
Clark gives him less to do and makes better use of him in the supporting part. Flick's predicament has a simple cause and a visible consequence, so Schwartz can concentrate on the immediate discomfort instead of helping to explain what the film means. Tedde Moore's Miss Shields supplies the clipped adult response, treating the incident as though it has happened before. Her lack of surprise makes the boy's embarrassment funnier, and nobody has to stop for a lesson.
The child roles continued with the entrepreneurial Dickie Cessna in Kidco (1984), though major parts became scarcer after the mid-1980s. Schwartz returned to occasional mainstream acting from the mid-2000s and played Flick again in A Christmas Story Christmas (2022). His reputation still rests chiefly on those two early films.
Biography
Scott Schwartz is an American actor. Born on 12 May 1968 in Sacramento, California, he grew up in New Jersey and attended the Professional Children's School in New York from 1983 to 1985.
He began his career as a child actor, appearing in The Toy (1982) as Eric Bates and Kidco (1984). Schwartz is best known for playing Flick in A Christmas Story (1983) and reprised the role in the 2022 sequel A Christmas Story Christmas. His television credits include an episode of 21 Jump Street (1987).
Since 1987, Schwartz has managed a sports and movie memorabilia store with his father. He has served as president of A Minor Consideration, an organisation supporting child performers, since 2014.
