Winter incentives

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This article was published 07/11/2024 (715 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

At least producer Kevin Downes knew what he was in for when he touched down in Winnipeg in December of last year to make the comedy The Best Christmas Pageant Ever over two wintry months.

Downes is the CEO and co-founder of Kingdom Story Company, specializing in making positive faith-based films. It was his second journey to Winnipeg following the making of Ordinary Angels, which shot here from March to May 2022. The fact-based drama starred Hilary Swank and Alan Ritchson and climaxed with a dramatic rescue operation during a blizzard.

The province famously obliged with a real-life blizzard during the movie shoot.

Downes says he deemed real winter conditions an essential part of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, an adaptation of a 1972 bestselling book by Barbara Robinson.

In the film, loving parents Grace (Judy Greer, 13 Going on 30, Arrested Development) and Bob (standup comedian Pete Holmes) face challenges when Grace is assigned to direct the town’s annual Christmas pageant, a task that gets considerably more difficult when the wrong-side-of-the-tracks Herdman family sign on to participate.

“We were so impressed with the film crews and the locations,” says Downes during a Zoom interview from Los Angeles, alongside director Dallas Jenkins.

“Obviously there’s a great film incentive up there and that’s always helpful, but we were shooting a Christmas movie, so we had two choices: to shoot it where there’s not any snow or somewhere where it’s so snowy and cold that it just looks real. So we decided to come back.

“Initially I had to convince Dallas, but once he visited, he came around pretty quick.”

“For me as the director, of course, I appreciate tax incentives and I appreciate convenience,” Jenkins says. “But my job is to make sure that the story we’re telling looks beautiful on film and sets a great backdrop for the characters. And what I saw when I visited Winnipeg was there was a great variety of locations.

“It felt modern but also classic.”

The director says he was looking for a setting with a timeless quality that could recall any past Christmas in viewers’ lives.

“I really wanted that when you watch it, you shouldn’t be able to tell what decade you’re in,” he says.

It’s a story that recalls another classic Christmas story, the 1965 TV special A Charlie Brown Christmas, which likewise centred on the organizing of a pageant, but didn’t shy away from explicitly Christian content (see Linus’s climatic reading of the scripture).

“Any good Christmas story should at least touch on the roots of the story, the fact that this happened 2,000 years ago,” says Jenkins, acknowledging that there are lots of holiday movies that gloss over any religious affiliation.

“And I love some of those movies. I’m not against them. I just think there’s just room for a mix. Since Charlie Brown Christmas, there hasn’t been a Christmas movie like this that gives a great nod to the roots of the story in a balanced, non-intrusive, non-preachy way.”

Jenkins also stresses the inclusive power of the Christmas story.

“I think it makes sense that a movie like this would come along, especially in a divided time, and remind everybody that, around Christmastime, we can put everything aside and see past some of our differences and come together,” he says.

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Comedian Pete Holmes is no stranger to caustic humour, as one can see in his Internet-famous Batman parody shorts Badman.

But those familiar with the Massachusetts-born comic’s background might know he’s a natural choice for a role in a faith-based film.

“I was on the track to be a youth pastor,” he says in an interview alongside co-star Judy Greer.

“But when I became a comedian, my mom said: ‘Close enough. You’re going to make people feel better and less alone, so (comedy) has a ministering quality.’”

Doing public speaking in preparation for ministering led Holmes, 45, into standup.

“But when I became a comedian, my mom said: ‘Close enough. You’re going to make people feel better and less alone, so (comedy) has a ministering quality.’”–Pete Holmes

“When you go to church as a kid, it’s show business,” says the Crashing star, whose memoir, Comedy Sex God, follows his journey from evangelical Christianity to a new model of faith.

“Teachers are in show business. Actors are in show business. Anytime you’re speaking to a group, that is a type of a show.”

Both L.A.-based actors had to adjust to the weather, says Greer (who has a memoir of her own, I Don’t Know What You Know Me From: Confessions of a Co-Star).

“I learned that you definitely want to have indoor parking for your car. I had a better apartment than Pete,” says the Reboot actor with a laugh.

“I had outdoor parking,” Holmes says. “My car was plugged in and it still wouldn’t start.”

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever opens in Winnipeg theatres today.

fparts@freepress.mb.ca