Just in time for a post-Christmas read, here’s a conversation with Charles Poekel, the writer/director of Christmas, Again, a wonderful little movie about a lonely Christmas tree salesman, played by Kentucker Audley.
Poekel’s been working in the industry for years, moving from documentary to narrative fiction in his directorial debut. We talk about that transition, owning a Christmas tree stand and making Christmas lights look like tiny Christmas trees. Check out the conversation below.
So you still have that tree stand where you filmed the movie?
Yeah, yeah. I think this is the last year I’m going to do it. I’m doing it still just kind of — well, I enjoy it. I kind of fell in love with it. But also for promotional tie-ins with the movie and that kind of stuff. So a lot of my customers are excited about the movie so that way I can keep interacting with them.
That’s great to hear. Starting off in that direction, you’re the sole writer/director on the movie, which I saw at Sundance and really enjoyed. What compelled you to dive into this very specific story about a very specific occupation and time period?
I’d been living in New York for maybe two years and I didn’t quite… I saw the guys selling trees but I didn’t pay much attention to them and then, I think my second or third year, I went to buy a tree at like midnight and for some reason I was very alert and had all these questions. So I became immediately fascinated with the job because it was so unique and something I hadn’t seen before. And I thought it would just be great to set a movie at a tree stand. So I immediately started about thinking and about writing but I didn’t know anything about tree stands, so I interviewed a bunch of tree salesman and I even volunteered selling trees. But I didn’t really feel that I was learning the nuts and bolts of it — the nitty gritty. So that’s when I decided to open my own tree stand. Also I could help fund the film with the profits from the trees, and this way I had a location that I had full control over. It just kind of made sense I guess, to start selling trees to understand it better and make the movie.
So the idea came before the tree stand.
Yeah. I opened the tree stand solely to make the movie: to write the screenplay, to have all of the material for it. And I knew when it came to shooting, no tree stand in New York would let me take over their tree stand to make a movie. They’d be like, “Get outta here. We’re trying to make our money and get out.”
So when Noel [Kentucker Audley] is selling trees in the movie, are those real sales taking place?
Some of them, yeah. A lot of the smaller ones, where a couple of words are exchanged in a montage, are all actual customers. The longer conversations he has with customers were cast.
It was great to see Hannah Gross in the film. I went into the film somewhat blind at Sundance. I had seen her is I Used To Be Darker, which she is wonderful in. She really has a presence here.
Yeah, she’s fantastic. She was the first person I cast actually.
And to that end, what results in Kentucker getting cast as the lead?
Well, Hannah was the first person I cast. I guess I first saw her in Dustin Guy Defa’s short Lydia Hoffman Lydia Hoffman, and a friend of mine had just acted in Nate Silver’s Uncertain Terms, and had said, “Oh, I just worked with this actress she’s great. You’ll love her.” And then it was a coincidence that it was the same person and then I saw her in I Used To Be Darker and I was like, “Oh, she’s fantastic,” and so I met with her in the fall and she loved the script and kind of signed on immediately. And then, yeah, we started looking for a lead and we had some really good options, but we wanted to explore all of the different options we had out there. And she said, “What about Kentucker?” and she kind of laughed and said, “Yeah of course.” And he loved it and called me kind of immediately and had all of these ideas for it. And then we brought him in to read with Hannah and the second they started reading together it was clear that they were the perfect match.
Going a bit more macro here, what’s the story of how you become a filmmaker? What’s led you on on this path? I saw you’ve got a cinematography credit on the doc Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon.
I always wanted to work in narrative features and out of college I got a really great internship that turned into a full-time job for a documentary film company called 4th Row Films in Manhattan. I knew the basic tenants of documentary film, but I didn’t love it. I didn’t know much about documentaries, to be honest. And I fell in love with them there. I was doing everything from cinematography to post-production to a little bit of producing and that is where I met [editor] Robert Greene and [cinematographer] Sean Price Williams.
And the last thing I worked on before I left 4th row was shooting for the National Lampoon documentary, which Sean also shot part of. So yeah, I kind of learned everything about the film business working there. And working on some of Robert Greene’s films, like Fake It So Real and Kati With An I, I gained a strong appreciation — through Sean’s cinematography as well — for verite and more naturalistic stories and appreciating more subtle moments in film. I think that’s all stuff I tried to fuse into Christmas, Again.
When you’re making a film like this, with your documentary background and what not, is there a particular filmmaker you’re pulling from for reference? When you’re picking lenses with your cinematographer – I know you guys shot on 16mm film – what style are you going for?
Early on Sean brought up the idea of using Zeiss lenses with 3-blades irises so all of the Christmas lights are out of focus for the most part, except when you’re wide open. They look like little Christmas trees, little triangles. You’ll see them used in some 70’s films and a few Godard films.
There wasn’t any particular visual style other than to work with the film and the grain to create this warm texture with all the elements that are playing there at the tree stand, whether its the vintage feel of the trailer or the needles or the Christmas lights. We just wanted it to feel the same way a box of ornaments feels when you pull it out after a year or 20 years. It just feels warm.
It’s admirable how the movie opens without much of a hook. As a viewer, you’re wondering if that film is simply going to be about selling Christmas trees and then Kentucker’s performance reels you in. Was there ever a pressure to inject a bit more conflict earlier on in the film?
Yeah, it was tough. I remember in editing, that first 20 minutes was always what gave us the most grief. It’s kind of a slow build, so if you can make it past that first 20 minutes you’re good. We never were really happy with it. We also shot the film in order, so I personally see a little bit of us warming up as a unit with all of those early scenes.
What’s the next move for you?
I’m writing a script right now with my wife, which we’re nearing the end of, and that’s been going well. We went through the IFP [Independent Filmmaker Project] Emerging Storytellers Program in September during [IFP] Film Week. So that was fun — it was nice to just start pitching the project, thinking more about it in different ways, speaking with potential investors and that kind of stuff. So we’re hoping to finish that up in the next couple of months and shoot it next year or as soon as we can.
Christmas, Again is now in limited release and available on Fandor (and Amazon Prime).