Greetings, Santa Walter! I'd like to forward this to you in the hope that you can share this with your Santa e-News readers. "Revenge of the Kringle" is a pretty neat story; I hope after you've had the chance to read it you'll understand why it took me so long to write it.
 
Thanks,
 
Santa Richard
 
This is an article I had originally intended to write for the Washington Post; alas, they never got it. (Drat!) Still, I thought that a few my old fellow Santas, and a few of my never fellow Elves, might want to have a look at this one again. That said, please enjoy

"REVENGE OF THE KRINGLE."

On November 21st, 2004, the Washington Post's film critic, Stephen Hunter, wrote a mean-spirited, single-sided, anti-Santa Claus movie rant entitled "Empty Suit." In it, Mr. Hunter ascertained that the various films and television programs that have been made for much of the last century --- projects that, for various reasons, either involve or deal directly with Santa Claus --- have no meaning to a modern-day film community plagued by the twin horrors of cynicism and pessimism. Indeed, Mr. Hunter dared to describe Santa himself as "a fusion of marketing and cleverly twisted mythology." While some might agree with that assessment, I don't. In fact, I would tell you that if you were to take a look at the bigger picture, you would discover that there is far more to the history of Santa Claus as a film character than the rest of the world would even bother to realize.
 

The 2005 Christmas season, after all, marked the 100th Anniversary of the production of the first American-made motion picture entirely devoted to the subject of Santa Claus. Directed by Edwin S. Porter, the 1905 film was, as one might suspect, an adaptation of Clement Clarke Moore's A Visit from St. Nicholas, a/k/a 'Twas the Night Before Christmas. With a length of approximately 800 feet --- which would make it the longest-rolling theatrical motion picture of its period --- Porter's Night Before Christmas was groundbreaking in that several major scenes were photographed in color, using a limited two-tone process. While there are today very few people alive who recall actually having seen this particular film, the Porter Night Before Christmas represents only the first tentative stepping stone in Santa's film career .... a career that had been born in London, in 1898 --- eight short years before --- when a filmmaker named George A. Smith produced The Visit of Santa Claus, a film which, like so many other primitive movies produced in those days, used a combination of special effects and tabletop trick photography to depict some of the more traditional elements associated with Santa.

When I first learned that Smith's Visit of Santa Claus and Porter's Night Before Christmas had been produced and, for a short time, had in fact existed, I became aware of this knowledge only by having read a sidebar article in a 1986 edition of the original version of Cinefantastique Magazine. The information contained in that side article was included as part of a larger article that focused on the film which I have since made a part of my every holiday season almost from the moment of its original theatrical release: the Alexander and Ilya Salkind Production Santa Claus: The Movie. Over 20 years have now passed since this magical holiday odyssey, bringing together the versatile talents of Dudley Moore and John Lithgow, was first presented to the public .... November 27th, 1985.

Yes, the father-and-son production team that had made the world believe that Superman could fly was now about to turn their attention ($50 million worth of it, to be precise) to the Man of Steel's next-door neighbor up at the North Pole. And the journey was not, obviously, an easy one to undertake. By 1984, the popularity of the Superman movies had begun to wane. Conflicts between Ilya Salkind and Christopher Reeve over creative differences on Superman III had led the late actor to consider quitting the role. But the die had been cast only the year previously, when, in a by-phone interview with the New York Times, Alexander Salkind revealed that his next immediate project would be Supergirl, with Santa Claus to follow within two years.

I share this saga with you, and, I am forced to admit, I do so in the interests of full disclosure, because Santa Claus: The Movie has made so much of a difference in my own life that I decided to devote an entire website to the film. I'll tell you that story, along with why I soon would find myself defending that site against Stephen Hunter's angry remarks, in a moment, but first:

I continue to find myself in complete agreement with Santa Claus' director, Jeannot Szwarc, when he describes the existence of a "vicious circle" that militates against the genre of family-oriented movies and TV shows. As Jeannot explained to Christian Science Monitor film critic David Sterritt: "The research seems to indicate that the greatest audience [that can be attracted to a motion picture] is between [the ages of] 8 and 14. So the studios make their films for that audience; but eventually, the kids get so turned off, they won't even bother to see what's playing. I have friends who call me up every year around Christmas, and they ask me what movie can I take my kids to see. I don't know what to tell them!"

With Santa Claus: The Movie, Jeannot Szwarc was not just looking for a way to answer that question, he was also seeking out a means to prevent that aforenoted vicious circle from affecting family entertainment in some small way. In the late fall of 2002, filmmaker Joe Camp --- creator of the world's favorite huggable hound, Benji --- revealed a similar first-hand account of what can sometimes happen if that vicious circle is left unchecked. Having recently become a born-again Christian, Camp, who had just completed Benji: Off the Leash, explained on http://www.benji.com that, shortly after 9/11, he had been having difficulties getting the project financed. According to Camp's story, he'd had a conversation with a young, clean cut studio executive who told him point blank that today's moviegoing audiences wanted only "poop jokes, and sex, and titillating language, and action (violence), and special effects. It's all about the economic bottom line, and to have that bottom line, you gotta give the audience what they want."

"I asked him if he had kids," says Camp. "He said he did, and I asked him if he gave them [his kids] what they wanted, or what he felt they should have. He got angry, and the meeting ended right there --- because in order for him to have answered that question honestly, he would have had to say: 'I care about MY kids; I just don't care about yours.' " Frustrated by that attitude, Camp soon decided that, if Benji: Off the Leash were to have any chance at securing theatrical release, he would need to self-finance and self-distribute the film on his own terms, using practically the same methodology that had made Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" possible.
 
In 1985, however, Jeannot Szwarc could not make those kinds of decisions on the spur of the moment. There was a tried-and-true formula that the Salkinds had developed on all their films since Superman; that formula would apply here with Santa Claus as well.
 
Santa Claus: The Movie is divided into two basic parts. The first part, which explains Santa's backstory, introduces us to Claus (portrayed by David Huddleston), a simple and honest woodcutter, who, along with his wife Anya (Judy Cornwell), spends the holidays making and delivering toys to local children in an unknown village, somewhere in the 14th Century. On one particular Christmas Eve, the Clauses and their faithful reindeer, Donner and Blitzen, are trapped in a violent blizzard which seemingly freezes the four of them to death .... but in fact somehow spirits them to "the ice mountains, way at the top of the world, under the North Star." Here, they make their first contact with the creatures known in their own ancient Human tongue as the Vendequm ("We prefer to be called Elves, if you don't mind," explains their curmudgeonly leader, Dooley [John Barrard]). Before long, the Elves treat both Claus and Anya as their equals, Dooley further explaining that Claus himself represents the fulfillment of a prophecy that one day a man would come -- the Elves' "Chosen One" --- whose love for children would rival theirs; that Chosen One would become the person who would deliver their gifts to everyone, everywhere.