AFTER SHOW - The Jew Who Saved Christmas

H will be recording.
Ready, Yeah, okay, so let's pause that, David, let me
know when you're good. Yeah okay. So Sean Sharmer here
with table reepodcast sitting with Selena Warren and Marissa Reid team.
We're like, 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
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 we would do 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 want to go with
all the way.
So we were like, how do we get a Jewish
person to go with Santa to deliver Christmas?
We're like, got a drug them.
Something they 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?
Because we didn't want it to be like Christmas is
better than Hanukkah or the 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
Teams and m Just briefly, how did you meet and
then how did you get into writing? Because you're both
act and you both began primarily as performers, right, Yeah.
I was Maris's ra in college in Quotations. We went
to Amada American Musical Dramatic Academy.
We were tapped dancing and Leotard's mostly and drinking.
So I got fired as an RA and Maris 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 like
pretty quickly after we started writing together, and.
That was Foursome.
Then for some was a four season.
Four seasons on YouTube originals.
Well great, So then how many scripts have you written
in total?
Oh my gosh, We've never actually talied it out, but
I'm guessing we write both TV and features.
I wouldn't say maybe twenty yeah, wow, around twenty ten
of each.
Uh huh. 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, so 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 I rewrite that.
It's never quite relaxed.
So how Bernie is Selena or how Selena is Bernie?
H 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've smoked a little weed in my life,
but I wouldn't say in like a pothood. But I
would be this exact same way if I went on
Santa Slei and.
I'm exactly sotnek.
If you're wondering about that, that's me.
To a tee, 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 Chris
we have some fun banter like that, and bringing the
Christmas spirit to it.
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 republica pie shout out, and
we just started writing it and singing it into her
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 like looking for a Christmas film
like this, would you call it a Christmas movie?
I would say Christmas Hanica hybrid.
Okay. Yeah, 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 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 screens night sky with like a sleigh.
There's like a fun, cheaper version. But I think this
is like a twenty 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 budget, and you know they're going all across
the globe, so a lot of locations but.
This, Yeah, and there's a lot of like you know,
special effects and stuff that happens.
So what was the You had the comps in the trailer,
which is it was elf meat, Bad Santa? Okay, that's
what rating? Do you think? This is?
Thirteen?
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, we as like legal
just because it's not terally 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 the lens,
and Bernie needed to accept all her families 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'm gonna for each of you? So maybe
Marissa will start with you, what's a moment in the
writing that you're particularly proud of, Like a joke that
you particularly love from moment that you're proud of?
Well, I especially really loved writing all of the ELFs puns,
Like all the Christmas puns were so fun. We had,
like in the note 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
like come back and be like, we'll have to figure
it out because we can't spend two hours thinking about
this pun.
But those to me are super fun.
I especially loved fat Christmas Ham.
How about you, Selina, 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,
you know, 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 will 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
set 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 Marisa's said,
we'll reread it out loud, so it's basically a second
draft before we move on.
Yeah, so we're both like 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 to have some activity around. We
don't do well just like sitting in our apartment, we
get distrafted.
We do better earlier, So we usually start at like
nine o'clock. We'll ride our bikes to ate 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 going
to write before we write it so that we'll know
one will be done as opposed to just being like
we'll just take our time and enjoy. Like we're like,
we're going to do four cards a day to get
this done by xestate.
How has your writing process evolved or changed over the
course of what has it as long has it been
the last.
Like fifteen years, fifteen 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 like, hopefully we've gotten better as writers.
Our process has always been pretty similar to what it
is now.
I think we're more We outline much more heavily now,
like I think our outlines used to be like then
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 we'll be like Okay, you can have this one,
and we'll like come back to it later and be like,
do I 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 like letting the other person have a moment.
We're both really good at being like I'm not going
to fight this battle.
Yeah, we get in collaborative or creative fights, but we
for the most part share our brain and it's like,
like Selena said, we come back to it the next day.
We know we were fighting over 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 them. For the most palalent thing, 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 every script?
We we see so much value in table reads because
you know, we read the scripts out loud as the
two of us, but if we 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.
Also, like jokes aren't hitting like the.
Ned flansury blah blah, Okay, maybe that's hard, or like
even after you ever read through people of thoughts and
notes and like you'll hear things.
We usually have an assistant come, like a writer's assistant.
Come someone were mentoring, someone we're teaching from school. Come
and do check marks. For other times 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?
Does it start to lag? You know?
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. It's 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 twenty five,
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 you are you still
doing that today.
We didn't totally do it with Forsom.
That was a traditional studio job where like we pitched
on an idea and they paid for it and made
it happen and done all the hiring, like, but it
surrounded us by influencers, so like seeing them create their
own work, and also a lot of comedians like John
ol Heiser who did the reading he created, Like, I think,
being surrounded by people who make their own things, you
get inspired. And that definitely led us to starting to
make it.
But I include 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, whether you sold it,
you still took that initiative totally. 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 like it feels
like a lottery, Like 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 done.
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, you know, or even good.
Yeah, it has to be good.
And we're starting to really see the value in the
process and enjoying the process and enjoying the journey. And
every single time you create something, you know you're just
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 know you hope to work
with again and again. So we see so much value
in that, but it is hard, Like I think honestly,
we sold for some when we were twenty five years old.
It was the first professional writing job we had, and
like Selena said, you know, 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, Okay, what's a five page short that we
can budget under five thousand dollars and film it ourselves,
it felt like so much pressure going from something you know,
very glossy and clean to kind of doing it on
our own.
So it's something we're still kind of learning.
Same with like you know, your team, your reps, giving
you ideas, like, oh, you know, it's rom commons.
Right now is what everyone's in maundate.
We really need a rom comm And it's like by
the time you write a rom com, it's gonna be
something else. So like you gotta do what, like go
for it and like write a rom com, but at
the same time write something that you want to tell,
Like we really wanted to do this hybrid story that
nobody asked for and also like I would also say
o WA's open writing assignments. Sometimes you get these offers
for these jobs that like forty people are pitching on
that you don't own. So you have to spend a
lot of time on something that you might like have
been doing for no reason. But you should do them,
like 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 like when you
say where's the industry going, like those are the things
that are getting made right now. So like in addition
to making your own stuff and putting them up on stage,
like turning it into ash, like what you're doing with
these read throughs, you know, sound designing them and making
it so you're listening to the movie, Like that's what
you have to do is create new ways of getting
your material original material heard and seen and to make money.
Do there's ways and do both.
So how can people support you? What do you have
going on that people can support?
My bad.
Totally muffled. It wasn't even it wasn't good advice.
Okay, how can people support you? How can they find you?
And how can they support you?
You can find us on the Gram. I'm Marissa L.
Reed and I'm Selena w spelled out.
And we just actually wrapped. Speaking of creating our own opportunities.
An independent pilot that we filmed, we crowdsource it. We
crowdsourced for seventy thousand dollars to film this pilot. So
you could also check out our Instagram page for that, which.
Is at step front Underscore show there is if you
want to see what Making your Own that's a show
that we pitched that like nobody bought and like we're like,
you know what, they just don't see it.
We got to go make it.
And also for ourselves, like sometimes if you have something
you love and everyone says no, like go make it.
You never know what the next.
Iteration of it will be. Nothing's ever dead because everyone
ends up. We're looking at different companies, like the people
that said no won't be there in a year.
So well never say die.
Since this is coming out around Christmas, we'd love to
have each of you share a message for this Christmas
Hanukah hybrid season.
You go first, 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.
You're the best.