Have Yourself a Very Merry Mumblecore Christmas w/ Stefanie Davis

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We begin the Christmas week run of Parallax Views with by bringing back the original Parallax Views theme as a gift to long-time listeners and then talking with filmmaker Stefanie Davis, director and writer of the unorthodox holiday-themed mumblecore movie The Christmas Ride. For the uninitiated mumblecore is a genre of independent film popularized by filmmakers like Joe Swanberg (Drinking Buddies, Happy Christmas, Kissing on the Mouth), Mark and Jay Duplass (The Puffy Chair, Cyrus, Baghead) and Andre Bujalski that generally empashizes low-budget, dialogue over plot, naturalistic acting, and heavy use of improvisation over scripting.

Filmed with an outline of scenarios rather than a traditional script and featuring performance that were improvised and directed by the use of color psychology through color palettes meant to guide the actors in terms of what emotions they'd be displaying in the scene, The Christmas Ride isn't you're traditional Hollywood blockbuster for the holidays season. However, while The Christmas Ride may not be the Tim Allen-starring The Santa Clause movies or in A Miracle on 34th Street in terms of it's mumblecore characteristics or micro-budget, it does a sincere meditation on holiday hardships and what the Christmas spirit is really all about where Hollywood's holiday blockbuster sometimes manage to miss the mark. The synopsis, courtesy Stefanie Davis herself, is as follows:

Georgia is a hard working young woman. On Christmas Day, she decides to spend the day driving to make some extra cash. As she takes on various riders, she finds that not everyone has a very merry Christmas. Many are not with their families, experiencing loss, and just not in the spirit. As a self-aware woman, she takes on the hardship of her riders and tries her best to overcome the energy surrounding her. Strangers have a tendency to open up to her. Will the magic of Christmas be enough to keep Georgia's spirit alive?

Stefanie joins us on this edition of the show to discuss how The Christmas Ride, now available for streaming on Amazon Prime, about as well as providing details on the highly improvisational approach she took while making it including the use of color psychology and scenario outlines rather than detailed scripts in order to create a more naturalistic tone. We also delve into Stefanie's relationship to Georgia, the film's protagonist who serves as the symbolic embodiment of the Christmas spirit and experiences a crisis of faith in regards to her own holiday cheer. We also delve into the theme of active listening and empathy that pervades the film and why it is so important in this year of the COVID pandemic and political. Moreover we discuss the film's exploration of expressing vulnerability in interpersonal relationships and why we made need to apply that in our real lives much more often. All that and more on this edition of Parallax Views.