Table Read - AFTER SHOW - The Jew Who Saved Christmas

Episode Date: December 31, 2024

  "Table Read Podcast - The Jew Who Saved Christmas Aftershow" In this spirited aftershow, Team S&M—Selena Warren and Marissa Reed—sit down to unpack the hilarious and heartfelt journey behind The Jew Who Saved Christmas. From crafting the ultimate holiday hybrid story to juggling CGI elves and wild budget dreams, the duo delves into the creative highs and chaotic moments that brought their script to life. They share their unique writing process, the joy of table reads, and the challenges of making their voices heard in a shifting entertainment landscape. Equal parts insightful and irreverent, this episode is a festive deep dive into storytelling, creativity, and what it takes to make a holiday classic that’s anything but traditional. The Jew Who Saved Christmas When Bernie Gold, a sarcastic, weed-toting Spirit Airlines agent, accidentally doses Santa Claus with a magical edible, she finds herself on a chaotic, high-flying quest to save Christmas—or risk becoming history’s most hated Jew. Packed with razor-sharp wit, irreverent humor, and surprisingly heartfelt moments, The Jew Who Saved Christmas is a fast-paced holiday comedy that blends absurd mishaps with touching lessons about family, identity, and the power of embracing the unexpected. It’s the ultimate Christmas-Hanukkah hybrid that will leave you laughing, cringing, and maybe even tearing up.

Jeff will be recording. It's rolling. So rolling. You guys are ready? Yeah. Okay, so let's pause that David let me know when you're good. Yeah. Okay. So Sean Sharma here with Table Read podcast sitting with Selena Warren and Marissa Reed team. We just did our session recording The Jew Who Saved Christmas, a hilarious comedy, instant Christmas classic. Hope you really enjoyed it and wanted to give you all just a glimpse into where this wacky, fun story came from. So please, how did you even conceptualize The Jew Who who saved Christmas?

Well, I was raised Catholic and Selena's Jewish, so we always kind of wanted to do a Hanukkah-Christmas hybrid. So that's originally what sparked it. And then I think there was this thing for Hulu called, Hulu does something called Huluween, and they do a Christmas, a holiday version of that. So we had to come up with a bunch of ideas for shorts, and we had a short idea about Santa

going to the wrong house, and like what if it was a Jewish person's house, and what would their reaction be? And we were like, oh, they'd wanna go with all the way. So we were like, how do we get a Jewish person to go with Santa to deliver Christmas? We were like, gotta drug him. Something we really pondered and struggled with a little bit when we first started writing this story was like, got a drug on. Something we really like pondered and struggled with a little bit

when we first started writing this story was like, what's the takeaway, what's the message? Cause we didn't want it to be like, Christmas is better than Hanukkah or that, you know, Bernie's missing out on something. So we really wanted to make sure the message was kind of not holiday based. And we thought it was fun to see Christmas

through a grown woman's eyes, but with kind of that childlike wonder. That's great. For people who don't know the story of Team S&M, just briefly, how did you meet and then how did you get into writing? Because you're both actors and you both began primarily as performers, right?

Yeah. I was Marissa's RA in college, in quotations. We went to AMDA, American Musical Dramatic Academy. We were tap dancing and leotards mostly. And drinking. So I got fired as an RA and Marissa got kicked out of student housing, and then we became best friends and we're like, we make great decisions together. And then we were both acting and we saw the future of our careers in the hands of other people. And we were like, this can't be sustainable. So we started to write our own material.

And that's kind of how we started. And the first thing we sold happened to be pretty quickly after we started writing together, and that was Foursome. And Foursome was a FourSeason? FourSeasons on YouTube Originals. Well, great. So then how many scripts have you written in total? Oh my gosh. We've never actually tallied it up. But I'm guessing we write both TV and features. I would say maybe 20.

20, yeah. Wow. Around 20. 10 of each. So what was it like for you today to just focus on being performers? It was so fun. It was a dream. It's hard for me because I never can just focus on being a performer.

But it was a blast. Everyone did such an amazing job. So it was just a fun, joyous. But I'm constantly like circle that line, remember that for later, rewrite that. It's never quite relaxed. So how Bernie is Selena? I don't know how Selena is Bernie. I'm not quite as much of a mess, well I don't think I am, as she is. But we both are afraid of flying, we're both Jews.

I have smoked a little weed in my life, but I wouldn't say in like a pot hood. But I would be this exact same way if I went on Santa's sleigh. And I'm exactly Sotnik, if you're wondering about that. That's me to a T, fully based on me. But, you know, getting aside though, is there a character that you feel

is like very Marissa in the piece? Maybe more Eve, I would say. Like bringing the Christmas, we have some fun banter like that and Bringing the Christmas spirit So what was the like thought behind having a song in the middle of this piece? Well, it was one of the miracles we thought up and naturally we had to go all out and we were at a coffee shop, Republic of Pi shout out, and we just started writing it and singing it into our voice memos and then Jason Curry, our friend who is a composer, came on board and composed this

original song and it became what it is. So for anybody who's looking for a Christmas film like this, would you call it a Christmas movie? I would say a Christmas Hanukkah hybrid. Okay, so for anybody who's like, okay, this is great, what's the vision? Do you have like a budget in mind? Is there any kind of like, what's the pitch? She's expensive, she's expensive. Although you could, there is a world in which, like we were talking about making the short ourselves as a proof of concept, and there's a world in which you do like green screen, night sky with like a sleigh, there's like a fun cheaper version. But I think this is like a 20 million and above feature. It

feels like a theatrical or like a Netflix Christmas time release. We really envision the elves as being CGI, which of course automatically ups the budget. And you know, they're going all across the globe. So a lot of locations. But this fit, yeah, and there's a lot of special effects and stuff that happens. And what was the, you had the comps in the trailer which is it was Elf meets? Bad Santa. Okay, that's right.

What rating do you think this is? PG-13. Yeah. I think the weed automatically kind of makes it edgier. People tend to hear weed, and they're like, uh-oh, it's going to be like pineapple express, which it really isn't. You know, weed is legal just because it's not federally legal. Yeah, it's really funny.

It's not something we thought as being super edgy. Even in Elf, you know, he gets drunk in the mail room and we kind of just viewed it like that, but there still is a stigma on it. Just because it's not legal everywhere. So what for you is the message of the film? That everybody needs help. That you have to accept help in order to get better. You can't grow without collaboration.

So like Santa needed Bernie to go on this journey to like be refreshed and see Christmas through new lens and Bernie needed to accept all her family's help and Santa's help and like learn a new lesson about herself to grow. And allow Eve to kind of push her into this next step of her life, this next phase of becoming a flight attendant. You can't have like reward without risk.

So what's, I mean for each of you, so maybe Marissa we'll start with you, what's a moment in the writing that you're particularly proud of? Like a joke that you particularly love or a moment that you're proud of? Well, I especially really loved writing all of the elves' puns. Like all the Christmas puns were so fun. I laughed at every one of them. We had like in the notes section of our phone, a list of just every Christmas word or phrase we could think of.

Those were really hard. And even sometimes we'd have to come back and be like, we'll have to figure it out because we can't spend two hours thinking out this pun. But those to me are super fun. I especially loved Fat Christmas Ham. How about you, Selena? What's a moment that you're proud of?

That was gonna be my answer because we're the same person. But another really fun part was the song and collaborating with Jason to get the song and thinking of like a melody that felt both Hanukkah and Christmas and that's, we're musical theater majors so that was really fun to do. What's your writing process like working together?

Well, we physically write together, like we sit together. We pretty much talk out loud the story. We'll say the dialogue as if we're the characters. And we just workshop aloud. And I would say I usually type. We collaborate, we'll sit across from each other and collaborate on final draft so that we both can see everything changing live.

And then every time we finish a scene, like Marissa said, we'll reread it out loud. So it's basically like a second draft before we move on. Yeah, so we're both saying the dialogue out loud as we're writing it and then rereading it too. And we usually write at a coffee shop. And we do like to be out, have some activity around. We don't do well just like sitting in our apartment. We get distracted.

We do better earlier. So we usually start at like nine o'clock. We'll ride our bikes to get your blood moving, to get to the coffee shop and then work for about four hours and then a break and then maybe another two, three hours on. And we try to like put, we try to map out what we're gonna write before we write it so that no one will be done. As opposed to just being like,

we'll just take our time and enjoy it. We're like, we're gonna do four cards a day to get this done by X date. How has your writing process evolved or changed over the course of what, how long has it been, the last like, 15 years? 15 years. How long has your writing process evolved?

You know, it's funny, I feel like it hasn't shifted too much other than the fact that we used to sit side by side and now we sit across from each other. And hopefully we've gotten better as writers. Yeah, but our process has always been pretty similar to what it is now. I think we outline much more heavily now. I think our outlines used to be like, this kind of happens, and now we know every beat and what the theme is before we go to write

the script. How have you maintained like a good working relationship over all this time? Well we're best friends first and family. We love each other. We've been through so much together. So I think at our core that's most important to us. So we always, I mean like like Selena said, we ride our bikes and as we hop on our bikes to ride away, we say like, I love you, good job. We end pretty much every day saying that to each other. And we get annoyed with each other

and we'll be like fighting for an idea, but like we always, we either will be like, okay, you can have this one and like come back to it later and be like, was it, I just annoyed in the moment? Do I really care about that one wording of something? And you never really do. So it's like, I think compromise and letting the other person have a moment.

We're both really good at being like, I'm not gonna fight this battle. Yeah, we get in collaborative or creative fights, but we, for the most most part share a brain. And it's like, like Salina said, we come back to it the next day, we know we were fighting over it, but we don't even necessarily remember

who was fighting for what side. So it's like, we don't let creative fights get us in real fights for the most part. I don't think we've gotten in very many actual fights that stemmed from a creative debate. What do you think the value is of table reads, of having your scripts read? Do you do them as part of your process? Every script will have a table read.

We see so much value in table reads because we read the scripts out loud, just the two of us, but we wrote it. So if someone else is reading even just the stage direction and they're fumbling on it, it's apparent that it's probably not written in the most organic or natural way of saying something. You can tell if jokes aren't hitting. Like the Ned Flansery blah blah blah von Tresor. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Wow, drag a shot. Like, okay, maybe that one's hard. Or like, even after you have a read through, people have thoughts and notes, and like, you'll hear things, we usually have an assistant, like a writer's assistant come, someone we're mentoring, someone we're teaching from school, come and do check marks for every time something

gets a laugh, we write comedy, and then we'll go back through and we'll look at pages and be like, how many laughs per page, and does it start to lag? So it's like a joke punch purpose. And also people have ideas and notes that make your script. Collaborating, that's why we're partners, is the most important piece of, I think,

any creative endeavor. So a couple other things on my mind. One being, one of the things when we first met that was so inspiring and motivating for me, and something that I think is more important than ever, is the idea of not waiting for someone else to give you permission to be a storyteller, and especially

with the industry contracting, with some of the issues that the industry is facing right now, people are even saying things like survive till 25, which is heartbreaking, because we can be telling stories every day, and we can be finding ways to create our own content and build our teams that can do the things that we don't want to do or aren't good at doing. So you both did that earlier on in your careers

to create Forsome, and are you still doing that today? We didn't totally do it with Forsum. That was a traditional studio job where we pitched on an idea and they paid for it and made it happen and did all the hiring. But it surrounded us by influencers. So seeing them create their own work, and also a lot of comedians like John Neale Heiser,

who did the ratings. I think being surrounded by people who make their own things, you get inspired. And that definitely led us to starting to make our own stuff. But I include for some in what I'm talking about because it wasn't just waiting for an audition. It was actually creating a project, whether you filmed it yourself or whether you sold it, you still took that initiative. And I feel like especially with the impact of what self-taping has done and how many more people are seen for roles

and we hardly get in the room anymore and there's so little transparency around the casting process that it feels like a lottery. Every audition is now a lottery. And that's not necessarily sustainable. So I'm constantly encouraging people to create their own stories, their own projects, whether they sell them, make them themselves, whatever. So I'd love to hear kind of your advice

for people with that and kind of your thoughts on where the industry is right now. Yeah, I mean it's... Run! It's something that we're still learning to do and getting the courage to do. I think a lot of people feel scared that if they create something, it has to be perfect. Or even good. Yeah, it has to be good. We're starting to really see the value in the process and enjoying the process and enjoying

the journey. Every single time you create something, you're just striving to be better and to learn something and to enjoy the people that you're working striving to be better and to learn something and to enjoy the people that you're working with and surround yourself with a crew that you hope to work with again and again. So we see so much value in that, but it is hard. I think honestly, we sold for someone when we were 25 years old. It was the first professional writing job we had. And like Selena said, it was more of a typical studio job where our budgets, while they were small for a half hour

show, they were still in the millions. And so going from that to scaling it back and being like, OK, what's a five page short that we can budget under $5,000 and film it ourselves, it felt like so much pressure going from something very glossy and clean to kind of doing it on our own. So it's something we're still kind of learning. Same with your team, your reps giving you ideas.

Like, oh, it's rom-coms right now is what everyone's like. Yeah, the mandates. We really need a rom-com, and it's like, by the time you write a rom-com, it's going to be something else. So you got to do what you, like, go for it and write a rom-com. But at the same time, write something that you want to tell. We really wanted to do this hybrid story that nobody asked for. And also, I would also say, OWA is open writing assignments. Sometimes you get these offers for these jobs

that 40 people are pitching on that you don't own. So you have to spend a lot of time on something that you might have been doing for no reason. But you should do them. You should do everything because it's a good exercise for your creativity. It might lead to something else. You could always turn it into something.

And when you say, where is the industry going? Those are the things that are getting made right now. So in addition to making your own stuff and putting them up on stage, you're turning it into a, what you're doing with these read-throughs, sound designing them and making it so you're listening to the movie,

that's what you have to do is create new ways of getting your original, heard and seen. And to make money, do those OWAs and do both. So how can people support you? What do you have going on that people can support? Where's your mic? Oh, thank you. My bad.

This is totally muffled the entire time. It wasn't even good advice. It won't be muffled. OK. How can people support you how can they find you and how can they support you um you can find us on the gram I'm Marissa. I'll read and I'm Selena double. Yeah spelled out And we just actually wrapped

Speaking of creating your own opportunities We just actually wrapped, speaking of creating your own opportunities, an independent pilot that we filmed. We crowd sourced $70,000 to film this pilot. So you could also check out our Instagram page for that, which is. At Stepfront underscore show. There it is.

If you wanna see what making your own, that's a show that we pitched that nobody bought. And we're like, you know what? They just don't see it. We got to go make it. And also for ourselves. Sometimes if you have something you love and everyone says, no, go make it, you never know what the next iteration of it will be.

Nothing's ever dead because everyone ends up working at different companies. The people that said no won't be there in a year. So never say die. Since this is coming out around Christmas, we'd love to have each of you share a message for this Christmas Hanukkah hybrid season. You go first. Oh.

I say, like be present. Let the present be your present. Try and like not be on your phones this holiday season and not focus on what everyone else is doing and really enjoy where you are. And I say, do what makes you happy. You know, the holiday season can be also a hard time. So, do what makes you happy, whether or not that's flying and

being stressed out and doing everything perfect. Just literally do what makes you happy and it makes you feel cozy and eat all the good treats. I'm so so glad we got a chance to do this together. Thank you so much for talking with us and for allowing us to bring the story to life in a way. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, are you kidding me? You're the best.