Making gravy: Why Australians are producing so many Christmas films
On a warm May afternoon in the far south-western suburbs, Heath Davis is directing a low-key Christmas scene in a rundown house that has been donated for the shoot.
The resourceful DIY filmmaker, best known for the rugby league drama Broke and the wry high school comedy Book Week, has Steve Le Marquand playing a famous actor, Chris Flint, who gets a job just out of rehab as a shopping centre Santa in the comic drama Christmess.
Heath Davis directs Steve Le Marquand, who plays a famous actor fresh out of rehab who gets a job as a shopping centre Santa in Christmess.Credit: Brook Mitchell
Flint tries on his red suit for his two amused halfway housemates: his cheerful sobriety sponsor (Darren Gilshenan) and a free-spirited musician (Hannah Joy). “This is going to be the best character you’ve ever played,” the sponsor says.
Everything about the production – the tough-times setting, the shooting location in Campbelltown on Sydney’s outskirts, the gritty look and even the title – indicates Christmess is not a traditional Christmas film. While it has a warm heart, it lacks the sentimentality and the cheerful “most wonderful time of the year” trappings of a hugely popular genre.
Davis calls it “a real Christmas movie” that is about “the stresses, the anxieties, the tears and the laughs” that are all too common as friends and families get together at this time of the year.
One of the batch of Christmas films commissioned by streaming services: A Sunburnt Christmas.Credit: Stan
While Australian Christmas films used to be rare – notable exceptions are the two versions of Bush Christmas in 1947 and 1983 – there is a tinsel-trimmed boom going on.
The list includes about 10 films since 2020, including one based on Paul Kelly’s How to Make Gravy that finished shooting in Queensland recently.
Christmess, which opened in cinemas this week, follows Madeleine Dyer’s comedy A Savage Christmas, which opened two weeks earlier.
Poster for Mistletoe Ranch: a Christmas romance about a rising photographer (Mercy Cornwall) who heads back to the small American town she grew up in and finds sparks with her ex-fiance (Jordi Webber).Credit: Steve Jaggi Company
And Queensland producer Steve Jaggi, whose specialty of “uplifting, positive, female-driven stories set in idyllic locations” included the Netflix hit Love Is In The Air this year, has become such a prolific maker of Christmas films set in the US that he owns four snow machines.
After making Sit. Stay. Love in 2021 and Mistletoe Ranch last year, Jaggi has produced three more this year – Christmas Keepsake, Mistletoe Moments and one more that is currently shooting.
Jaggi says the popularity of such modern classics as Love Actually, Home Alone and Elf – not to mention older films like It’s A Wonderful Life and Miracle On 34th Street – shows there has long been an audience demand for festive films.
The cast of Jones Family Christmas (from left): Tahlee Fereday, Nicholas Denton, Max McKenna, Heather Mitchell, Ella Scott Lynch, Neil Melville and Dushan Philips.
He believes the rise of streaming services has eroded federal agency Screen Australia’s “gatekeeping” preference for funding culturally significant films instead of popcorn movies.
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“What you’re seeing is the loss of Screen Australia’s ability to control the cultural narrative,” he says. “You’re more and more moving into territory where filmmakers are making films that are audience-focussed, which is what we do, rather than films based on a cultural agenda.”
While he is run off his feet with other work, Jaggi says his company could make another four Christmas films next year.
“Hopefully we’ll be in a position where we can make one or more Christmas movies that are fully set in Australia and fully explore the Australian experience,” he says. “We’d love to be the home of Christmas in Australia.”
All the Australian streaming services seem keen to commission Christmas films but Stan has led the way with A Sunburnt Christmas, Christmas on the Farm, Christmas Ransom and Jones Family Christmas since 2020.
Ironically, Davis originally thought Christmess would be a rarity.
Australia has produced 10 Christmas films since 2020, including Christmas Ransom.Credit: Stan
“When I set out to write it, it was because we hadn’t made an Australian Christmas movie in forever,” he says. “But by the time I got going [after another film fell over when the pandemic hit] it had become a trendy thing. But our film is very different to everything else out there.”
It took crowdfunding, grants, contributed locations and favours to get Christmess made.
“I thought if we do a decent job, it might get licensed every year,” Davis says.
Schuyler Weiss has gone from producing Elvis to Nick Waterman’s How To Make Gravy, which streaming service Binge is hoping becomes a fixture around Gravy Day – December 21 in the song – for many years.
Part of a boom that suggests Australia is the new tinsel town: A Savage Christmas.Credit: Bonsai
Musician Megan Washington wrote the script with Waterman and their cast is headed by Daniel Henshall, Hugo Weaving, Kate Mulvany, Damon Herriman and France’s Agathe Rousselle.
Weiss is hoping that How To Make Gravy and other new Australian Christmas films are more than just festive releases.
Festive meal in a halfway house in Heath Davis’ Christmess.Credit: Bonsai
“Australian cinema is at its best and its most beloved around the world when you take something like the trials of family life and pressures to get married – these really universal dramatic themes – and you tell it with this signature Australian humour,” he says.
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“And it’s great for Australians to see our own idiosyncratic and unique Christmas traditions on screen. It’s not just a hot Christmas we have in Australia. It’s a hot Christmas with ornaments of snowmen.”
Email Garry Maddox at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter at @gmaddox.
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