Christmas comes just once a year; but for screenwriter Joany Kane, Christmas is always in the picture.
Her Hallmark Channel movie “The Christmas Card” is on view this season on television or online, for its 15th year.
It was a love story, written in the 1990s, at a time when the biggest on-screen Christmas movies were “Home Alone” and “Die Hard.” Kane said her first Christmas movie sparked the trend for Christmas movies that were also love stories.
“The Christmas Card” is the story of an American combat soldier in Afghanistan, who gets a greeting card from an American woman, who sent holiday cards to soldiers as part of a church project. When heading back home, he makes a detour to meet the woman whose card meant so much to him. Ed Asner plays the woman’s father.
And the picturesque mining town where the movie was made, Nevada City, Calif., is almost character in the film. Even after 15 years, the town still generates tourism from this movie, according to Kane.
May 19, 2010, was the official “Joany Kane day,” the Ashfield resident said.
The town also gave her a souvenir: a gold-nugget necklace with a diamond in the nugget, designed by a local artist. Kane said she wears it all the time.
Kane grew up in Northampton and started writing movie scripts in the 1990s.
“I knew I wanted to be in film production,” she said.
In 1987, Kane took a six-week film course at the University of Southern California. She also spent an instructive afternoon with filmmaker Steven Spielberg. Although she got a film job offer in California, Kane returned home, to live close to her family. She did a flurry of odd jobs, in the earliest days of her filmmaking, to pay the bills.
One of those jobs was at the Swift River Inn in Cummington, where Peter Laird, co-creator of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, was an investor. A friend encouraged her to write a workplace comedy script, which got the attention of Bette Midler. Kane was told that Midler liked the script but turned it down.
“I’ve optioned that script about a dozen times,” Kane added, “but it has never been made into a movie.”
Kane also worked as an associate producer at Florentine Films in Haydenville, whose founders include Ken Burns.
The idea for “The Christmas Card” came while Kane and her mother were watching a Christmas video of Vince Gill singing “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” in 1996 or 1997.
“He was (dressed) as a soldier, as if he were writing home to a loved one,” said Kane. “I thought it was a cool idea for a Christmas movie. I loved Christmas and I wanted to see Christmas romances. So I had this idea, and I also wanted to honor my mom. My mom was a prolific Christmas card writer. She would send out hundreds of Christmas cards, with handwritten notes inside. My dad was a medic in World War II. I wanted to honor him with a story line honoring service members. So I had that, but I didn’t have anything else. So, for two or three years, the story wasn’t coming.”
Then, during the week of Christmas 1998, Kane started another new job, at Lashway Lumber in Williamsburg. There, she met the love of her life — logger Dave Gillet of Ashfield.
“I was trying to get the story done because it was Christmas time,” she said. “I knew I had it in me. And then, the first Friday of January 1999, in walks this logger. The minute I saw him, it was love at first sight,” Kane recalled. “And the minute I saw him it was, ‘OK, I’m setting the story at a mill.’ And, I cranked out the story. I asked my bosses, ‘Can I go spend a day in the woods with Dave the logger, so I can learn about logging?’
“They said, ‘Yeah, sure. Go ahead, we know you have a crush on him.’ So I got to spend a day in the woods with him, and I learned all about logging. And I cranked out that story so fast, I had it done by March.”
She printed it out and brought it to his home in Ashfield “because I wanted him to have the very first script because he inspired it. So I gave him the script, and I never left.”
The Hallmark Channel, which started in 2001, bought the script in 2003 and premiered the made-for-TV movie in 2006.
“They weren’t expecting much. They did hardly any advertising. And it shattered ratings records,” said Kane. “There were almost 4.5 million viewers, which for them was a lot.”
Kane has gone on to produce more Christmas TV movies for Hallmark, Ion and other streaming services, including “A Christmas Kiss,” which is about an assistant interior decorator who unwittingly falls in love with her boss’ boyfriend.
In 2022, Kane will work on a new Christmas movie, called “Somewhere in Christmastime,” which she wrote and will co-direct with Jina Panebianco. As a fundraiser for UNICEF, Kane is selling copies of the script for $2 from romancingchristmas.com.
Ironically, the film’s producers cut the logger’s role out of “The Christmas Card,” “but that’s OK,” Kane said with a grin. “Because I have him in my life. Every day is still love at first sight.”
With her own story practically a Christmas movie come to life, Kane has written a memoir she calls “Romancing Christmas,” which talks about her own adventures in filmmaking and script-writing. Kane said she plans to release it from her own website, beginning Jan. 8.
“It’s not so much about Christmas, it’s about my journey. About how I came to meet Dave, and write the script. And about what’s happened ever since — how he’s inspired me, how he’s my muse. I’m just having it released through my website. It’s kind of just for fans.
“Of all these things I had written, if Bette Midler had said ‘yes,’ my life would have been totally different,” Kane mused. “I never would have gotten that job at Lashway. I’ve had so many ‘nos’ in my career that had gotten me to Lashway’s. Maybe that was meant to be.
“Another thing I hope to accomplish in 2022 is I want to set up a content entity in Western Mass. to start producing movies with a decidedly Massachusetts vibe of ‘horror and holiday.’ Because Massachusetts has so much history, you can’t swing a witch in flannel without hitting a haunted house or a Christmas tree farm. So it just seems that this is such a great area to produce content that would be perfect for the fall season, and for the holiday season,” she said.
“There’s so much Christmas history in Massachusetts. I would like to start a consortium of filmmakers making content that fits between the autumnal equinox and winter solstice.”
Just as people have favorite Christmas songs and carols, many people like to see their favorite Christmas movies over and over each year. Kane said her favorite Christmas movie is “White Christmas.”
“I even pay tribute to it in ‘The Christmas Card,’ swiping a line from the movie — ‘The best things happen when you’re dancing,’” she said.
“I loved the kid classics like Charlie Brown, which premiered the year I was born,” she added.
Kane’s “The Christmas Card” has a Facebook fan site. When asked why people like Christmas movies, and why they watch the same movie over and over, Kane said: “A reason for the enormous popularity of the holiday movies is that fans of these movies want to feel love, to feel hope, to feel nostalgia, to feel joy. It’s not about the saving the bakery. We all know how the movie ends, that the couple we’re rooting for ends the movie with a happily-ever-after kiss. What makes these movies magic for the fans is the journey they take us on.
“I want to be moved by the total experience on the screen, from setting, to music, to character interactions,” she continued. “Christmas lends itself beautifully to this experience because this is the time of year where we have the most hope, the most anticipation for something wonderful coming, whether that’s Christmas morning and all it represents or New Year’s Eve and the excitement for something new, for a fresh start. It’s the time of year when we were little we believed in the magic of Santa Claus. Christmas combines hope for the future and the nostalgia of the past. If a holiday movie can mix all of that in — not only the overall story but also individual scenes — that’s holiday movie magic.”