It's in the news today, but it was actually on TV Reload the podcast last week Nebline. Welcome back guys to TV Reload. My name is Benjamin Norris, and on this podcast I go behind the scenes with the biggest players in television. Each episode you will get a front row seat with content makers like executive producers, writers, editors, and casting agents, plus the talent that we see on
our screens. TV Reload reloads the shows that you are currently watching and gives you a better insight into our television industry and our streaming services. Today, on the podcast, I have director Nick Sweeney who is here to discuss his latest HBO documentary called Santa Camp, which premier is today on Foxtel. The feature film is a heartwarming true story following one organization's journey to incorporate more diversity in the Santa industry. Santa Camp is about Santa's in America
going on a summer camp each year. But I can tell you it is so much more than that. I personally came across this documentary and fell in love with it. It's not just a Christmas film explores the themes about diversity and inclusion in a way that I really didn't expect, and I also fell in love with these different Santas, which I'm sure you will too. I will ask the director Nick, how we came across this story, where and
what were the biggest surprises he unearthed. Along the way, we will talk about the need for community and where we are at with ignorance towards minorities. However, let's get started with today's guest. I'd like to welcome Nick Sweeney to TV reload.
How could this exist? How has nobody done a documentary about this? The issue we run into is that people just have a very specific idea of what Sander Struld look like. When I started making a documentary about Christmas and Santa Clauses, I had no idea that I would be standing face to face with white supremacists.
I want to be able to be black Santa for other families.
There's all this pressure that people have around you know what their Christmas should be and what the censor should look like. Have you always seen Santa's being white? Yes, the variety of stanswers that come at any differentiation. For a lot of misunderstanding of prejudice just comes from the fact that people aren't really exposed to people that aren't like that.
If I saw a Translanta when I was a kid, and what.
I made a difference for you? Yeah, I think audiences don't want to feel lectured or preached to or you know, judged by the things that they're watching.
Heinick, Thanks for coming on the podcast.
Thank you for having me.
Then, you know, Santa Camp is an interesting idea for a documentary because I don't even think I realized what I was in for.
I had no idea that this thing even existed. Like I had been interested in how Santa Clauses learned to Santa Claus and I had started looking at these different Santa schools that they have in America, and it being America, of course there was a summer camp for Santa Clauses, and you know, a real summer camp, like a summer camp where they sleep in bunk beds and where they go out on the lake and where they sit around
a campfire telling stories. And as soon as I found out about that as a documentary filmmaker, my mind just started spinning, like how could this exist? How has nobody done a documentary about this? Like where is this? How many of them are there, and so I made contact with the organizers of it, this established Santa Claus group called the New England Santa Society. And I mean, all of this just sounds so like surreal and far fetched,
but it's all real. And so I made contact with them and I just asked them all these questions, like how many Santas go and they were like around one hundred. I was like, what, Like what do they learn? And then they told me about some of the courses and then I was like, and is there anything this year that be a little bit different, Like is the Santa
industry changing? And they said, yeah, we've been getting requests for Santas from different backgrounds, like requests for black Santas or Santas who are LGBTQ, and you know, we don't have those people in our membership, so we've been wanting to do outreach. And as soon as they told me that, I was like, Wow, this is about so much more than just this completely ridiculous and insane summer camp. This is about this like big thing that's happening in the world.
People who are listening to this now they probably haven't seen this documentary, so which just you just have to watch this movie because it's so much more than what you think you're getting into. And I can imagine that's how you were. You're like, this sounds amazing, But I don't even think you would have known what you were.
Going to unearth by making, oh, this story.
No, I mean, when I started making a documentary about Christmas and Santa Clauses, I had no idea that I would be standing face to face with you know, white supremacists, like the groups that you know were involved in the January sixth insurrection. And I had no idea that I would be, you know, hearing some of the stories of what the Santors that we follow go through, which is very heartbreaking. One of those incredibly heartbreaking stories is the
Black center that we follow. His name is Chris. He's a huge Christmas fan and he had put up an inflatable black Santa Claus on his lawn and received a racist letter about it, and he was, you know, he was so shocked by this and taken aback that his way of pushing back against that racism was to go to Santa Camp and become Santa Claus himself for his community. So I certainly never thought that this would be as kind of multi dimensional. When I started making it, I
thought it might be a fun Christmas film. I never thought it'd be you know, it's very high stakes and dramatic and sometimes it's very heartbreaking.
Well to me, this isn't a story about Santa or Christmas. I think it's about division and communities and the example of how far we still the examples of how far we still have to go when it comes to tolerance and equality. And that's not what you think you're going to get when you're going to watch a whole bunch of men and women go to Santa Camp.
It's really not. I think people see Christmas movie and they think it's going to be like Reese with a Spoon loses her job in the city and goes home to the town that she grew up in and falls in love with her high school sweetheart. And that's not what Santa Camp is. And I'm really grateful that we got to make a Christmas movie that really like up ends people's expectations and hopefully makes them laugh and cry.
I still cry sometimes, Actually quite a few times, I find myself weeping at some of the things that we show in the film.
What do you think, though, do you think that people are set up to be surprised by the themes in this film.
I think people will be very surprised by what they see in the film. I think they kind of will go in and expecting it to be about, you know, these what they might think are kind of one dimensional Christmas performers, right Like, people might see this film and think it's going to be you know, about bleaching your beard or you know, dealing with kids that pee on your leg, which are obviously, you know, real problems that
Santa's do have to think about. But I think they'll be surprised to see how kind of big and important the themes that we follow are. And I mean another theme that's really fascinating is within the Sansor society that organizes this summer camp, the Missus clauses have been calling for equal pay and equal billing. And it's incredible that within this sensor community these same issues that affect women all throughout the world. These issues are bubbling to the surface.
And yes they may be dressed as Missus clauses and they may have like Christmas bells on, but they're still talking about these real issues that affect people like equality and representation and equal pay, and it's really fun to see how they like grapple with these issues in the film.
I just assumed that you wanted to go into this land of Christmas to talk about, you know, because this it unearths so much about equality and inclusion, and I just thought you must have gone, oh, this is a really safe or interesting space to get people to understand some of those themes a little bit better. But that isn't the way that you came into it.
I actual actually made a very controversial and complicated documentary about abortion rights before Santa Camp. That documentary was called Aka Jane Rowe and it was about the woman behind Roe v. Wade and reproductive rights, a heavy subject matter, and I had thought after that, let's do something really fun and accessible and bright, And that's what I thought
Santa Camp was going to be. I didn't think it was going to be this big, thoughtful, like, I really didn't think that this film was going to be about the most important issue in the world, you know, representation and diversity. Like I thought this would be fun because I had just made a very political documentary for the last one, and you know, I was a little exhausted by that. I thought Santa Camp was going to be a little more fun, and it is.
It is still has you haven't let that go.
And I think that's the beauty in the intelligence behind this is that it is.
Enjoyable to watch.
Even the emotion when you do find yourself tearing up with what's happening, It's still an emotive and enjoyable film to watch. There's nothing uncomfortable to me. I did learn a lot, and I've wanted to ask you do you think that, you know, educating people is getting harder and harder now that the term woke kind of has a bad connotation to it.
Absolutely, I think, and you know a little bit on your previous question about you know, what were the intentions, Like, obviously, these issues around representation and equality are very intriguing to me, and so when I found out that the censor of society were thinking about these things and kind of figuring out how to adapt CENTA to you know, the year twenty twenty two, I was definitely intrigued by that. It's
not something that we shied away from. And I think your question about like, is it hard to cover these things when there is a kind of stigma or backlash around the idea of wokeness. Yeah, I think audiences don't want to feel lectured or preached to or you know, judged by the things that they're watching. And I think think we're very lucky in this film because the characters are so fun and interesting and wild and they're liars,
you know. The characters that we follow go on these rollercoasters, you know, like the Santa with the disability that we follow early in the film, he says he wants to be in a parade and that's his dream, and you know, we see the twists in terms of his story as he tries to make his dreams come true. And so, you know, I don't think this film feels like it's educating people. I think it just feels like a very entertaining, immersive trip through the wild lives of some unconventional clauses.
It would bother me if the word work here.
I am bringing it up again and again, But it would bother me if people were thinking that this movie is like a woke film, because it's not.
You know, it's not what that is.
And that's why I was interested to know about your relationship with that term.
Well, I am Pakistani Australian and I'm gay. I feel like I, you know, have seen firsthand through my life experiences how important representation is. But I also really do see this backlash to the idea of anything that feels educational or preachy, like audiences really get turned off by that. And I think we've seen that with a lot of recent things, like you know, the movie Bros. For example, where I think, you know, audiences really show up for
that film. And so it is certainly something that you think about when you're making a movie like Santa Can. It's something that the producer Stacey, and the editor Lese and myself really thought about, you know, like how do we make this about the characters that we're following rather than any sort of like social issues feel which I think can turn people off.
I've been walking around talking about Santa Levi and Santa Chris and Fin set A Finn. Yes, I loved all of them. I just thought they were such gorgeous characters.
But I thought that, you know, the transcend element was interestingly placed up against the person of color Santa and the special needs Santa, because you are sort of cross polat across a few different broader topics, but each one of them kind of helped unearth a little bit more understanding out of the audience with the other story stacked up against it.
Yeah, I mean, each of the Santor's experiences are so different. I mean, this film takes place across three completely different parts of America. We've got Chris, who's a black Santa and he's in the South, and then we've got Levi, who's a transgender center he's in Chicago and the Midwest. And then we've got a cluster of Santors in the New England area. And so, you know, each of their
experiences are very different. And the way that for example, Chris the Center who's black, experiences racism and relation to being a you know, a black Santa is very different to what we see with Levi the transgender center, who when he puts on a event in Chicago where LGBTQ kids get to meet him, the Proud Boys show up, and you know, for anybody who doesn't know it doesn't
kind of follow that part of US politics. The Proud Boys are a white nationalist group who were involved in the January sixth insurrection, and you know, they are known for brawling. You know, it's it's easy to find videos of them online in these huge street fights, you know, punching people, and you know, many of them may be armed. And and so I think that the way that each of the Santas experience is pushback to the idea of censors who break the mold. There are similarities there, but there
are big differences as well. I think intolerance is intolerance however you see it. But it is very interesting in the way that each of the different centers experiences experiences that. And then Finn, who is a center with a disability, the way that he encounters intolerance is by people not believing that he can be, not believing that he's going to be a you know, a good sanser for kids.
And what they encounter is, you know, when they try to get gigs for Santa Finn, the center with the disability, which is spina bifita, they just people just don't call them back, you know, they try to get these gigs and people just kind of you know, find an excuse or say they'll call them back and never do. So, you know, the way that people experience discrimination is it's very different, but always very interesting and heartbreaking to see.
I love though, that kids don't know the difference, and that there's something very beautiful in that. You know, there's always these parents up in arms, Oh God, what are the kids going to think about this transcender or what are they going to think about Santa with the disability, all of these sorts of things. But children don't pick up on that. And so there's a lot of ideals that we have within ourselves that create this fear that are completely unnecessary.
So much of what the people that oppose the quote unquote unconventional senses that we follow are doing. So much of that opposition is this idea of we need to protect the kids. The kids are going to be confused or the kids are going to be indoctrinated. And I think that what you see in the film is that the kids really don't care. They want a Santa who shows them love and brings them joy and listens to
them and understands them. And I think in that sense, this film kind of illustrates that, you know, being Santa is from the heart. It's not about skin color or
you know, orientation or things like that. And I will say one of the things that I do remember after we started filming, had this kind of flashback to when I was young and all I wanted for Christmas was this special edition barbie that came with Asari because my mother's from Pakistan, and even at the age of like seven or eight, I was too afraid to ask Santa for that, Like I did kind of sense that it was not the right thing to be asking Santa for
as like a young ay kid. So I think that there is something to be said for Santas who are like us. I think we do have an idea of who we are at a very young age, and so having Santas that have that kind of natural empathy can hopefully be a good thing for young kids.
Do you think in some ways that we've become too fascinated with putting things in boxes and creating rules unnecessarily, you know, I think the origins of fear have something to do with our ideology that things need to be perfect or they need to be the way that we've always seen them.
It's such a good question, and I think that Christmas is this holiday that people really think has to be perfect and the same, and they have to see the perfect santswer to get the perfect photo and then have like the perfect gifts and the perfect Christmas lunch or dinner, and so there's all this pressure that people have around, you know, what their Christmas should be and what the
santor should look like. And I think, maybe you know, that is part of the reason why people are so I guess, you know, opposed to anything that breaks the mold. Like they have these very cookie cut of notions of whose ants should be and what Christmas should be, and they are very threatened by anything that goes against that, whether that's a transgender center or a black center. And I hope that people can relax a little bit. I mean,
we see the Santra Society and the film. They're the real deal, s answers like they fit the mold of what people expect Santa to be, and a lot of them are old guys, and they manage to get their heads around this idea that Santa can be anybody, and so the rest of us should be able to as well.
I'm sorry, I was giggling to myself, but that's because I find Christmas to be so funny, because people get so stressed out with trying to make the perfect Christmas lunch that goes wrong every year, you know what I mean, There's just so much room for error with Christmas and the expectation of holiday as well. You know, it's like, you know, it gets to the end of the year and I've got to go on holidays, and it has to be the best holiday that I can go on,
you know what I mean. And as soon as you start doing that to yourself, it's just leaves so much room for comedy in my mind.
Well, it's so interesting that you say that, because what we open the film with is the these slow motion montage of babies having tantrums on Santa's lap and they're inspired, yeah, thank you, And they're inspired by these amazing Jill Greenberg photos from the nineties. She was a photographer that you know, she took these photos of toddlers and kids in these
kind of tantrum states and they're quite amazing photos. And when we were thinking of how we would, you know, open the film, we were like, oh, what if we did something that you know, what if we just sat there with a Santa for a whole day and just filmed everything that happened and just kind of play some of that in slow motion, And of course a lot of the kids when they put on Santa's lap, they
just lose it. They start screaming and throwing their shoes and crying and you know, like just howling and reaching for their parents, and which I obviously think is hilarious because, you know, not just because it just looks so funny with you know, these kids dressed up in their best outfits for their yearly photo, but also because the comedy of failure in the sense that the families have such
high expectations for these photos. Like they've waited all year and they've got all dressed up and gone to this place to have a photo with Santa, and they want it to be perfect. And they wait in the queue and they finally get to the front and as soon as they sit on Santa's lap, their baby just starts screaming and have tears down their faces. So there's something very comedic about that.
You know, it is because Nick, the reason why it's so funny is because the type of people that take their kids to sit on a Sander's lap and the type of people who want to put up a photo of the perfect family. I mean, maybe that's my relationship with it, but there's just so much pressure for their kid to behave like a seal, you know what I mean, and to portray the perfect image of family. And I just think, no, wonder, these kids are freaking out. They're
not trained animals. They're not going to sit there and in a moment capture the idea of what you want other people to think of your family. I mean, I might be reading into this a little bit much, but that's what I think.
No, of course, I mean, if you put that much wh pressure, if you build up to that one moment where you know you have a few seconds to get to get a perfect photo with Santa, of course everything is going.
To go wrong. I wanted to ask you a question about something that's happening in the state to the moment, and I just thought this movie made me think about broader things, and with what was happening with the shooting in America this week, I was wondering, do you think that confusion and fear is responsible for some of those recent crimes against the LGBTI community.
I think that in recent years there's been a huge amount of hatred and you know, divisive sentiment directed towards the LGBTQ community. I've seen it as a gay man myself, just in the way that you know, in certain parts of America you do feel afraid walking around and being, you know, to use an elegant phrase, you know, to be visibly overtly gay, which I think that I am, and I have certainly felt that more in recent years.
I didn't feel that when I first moved here ten years ago, and I think that it was truly shocking to me in the context of the film. You know, when we started following Levi, who was a transgender Santa, we just did not expect that there was going to be the type of opposition to him that we see
in the film. We never thought that there would be protesters or white nationalists showing up to his event, an event that was purely designed to give young queer kids joy, and young queer kids and kids whose parents are that was who the event was directed at. So certainly it has felt more palpable in recent years, and I think even even with that, I was still very shocked at
what happened in the film. I was very shocked to be, you know, standing face to face with the brown boys and what you see in the film when they show up The first thing that we heard was them yelling keep Christ in Christmas, and then they started talking and talking about all of the you know, opposite that they had to this idea that Santa would be portrayed by
a trans person. They were very upset about that. And then at one point one of them starts saying, you know, and the Bible that I read says that this is a sin. And all I could think was that Santa's not in the Bible.
I loved that in the movie.
You know, it's at I kind of yeah, I mean, I kind of blurted it out. And they weren't pleased with that, but yeah, I mean, Santa's not in the Bible. And it's very shocking that anyone would care.
There's something so embarrassing and disgusting when you see violence and abuse because someone feels threatened by seeing another person getting joy from being who they are, or getting joy from something that is actually non threatening at all to anyone else.
It was very strange and very surreal, I've got to say it was. It was a very weird moment, and they were all, you know that these protesters were also talking about how a transgender Santa is. It's proof that communism and Marxism is taking over the country, and I just remember thinking, like, how these two things in any way related just made no sense, but it was very strange, and I just, you know, at one point they proudly started singing a Christmas carol, which isn't included in the film,
but yeah, it's very, very strange. And it's one of those moments of which there were many in the making of this film where I just thought, you know, if we weren't here with a camera and nobody would believe that any of this happened, because it just sounds so far fetched and strange.
It's kind of the magic of the documentary, though, Is there a way in which we can try and change the world, you know, without having so much hate and fear being pushed up against us.
I think so much of so much of people's insecurities or resistance to the idea of there being other people who are not like them comes from their lack of
familiarity with it. And I hope that with Santa camp By seeing these wonderful characters that we follow, you know, and their challenges and their victories and their you know, light moments and dark moments, I hope that by seeing that that it humanizes them for the audience and they get a sense of what people who are not like them, what those people's lives are like, because I think that a lot of misunderstanding or prejudice just comes from the
fact that people aren't really exposed to people that aren't like them. I hope that's where it comes from.
I think it's fear, like I see it in my own life, and I think I hated about myself. But in places that I have fear myself, like I'm worried, is usually the places where I do the worst things, do you know what I mean? So, I think when we are fearful, we behave badly. And I think that those things are quite tightly married together.
And so yeah, when you.
Have people who are just so scared of change that fear is a breeding ground for them to behave badly.
Yeah, I think that. I mean. The reaction to the diverse sensors that we see in the film is so extreme. You know, Chris, a Black Santa, simply puts an inflatable black Santa clause on his lawn and gets a racist letter about it. Who would who would bother to take the time to sit down, type out a letter, a racist letter, send it to somebody, you know, over a lawn decoration. And the same goes for Levi the transgender Santa.
Like the idea that somebody would feel so passionately that that a trans person can't portray Santa clause that they would like drive across town, make save Santa posters, which we see them carrying in the film, and protest about it. Is like, it's it's very it's it's just a lot of effort to put in to making somebody feel othered, and it's very surprising to see.
I thought the phone call was the thing that really I was like listening to this woman with such conviction and and such you know, anger and hate, you know, being bothered to ring someone and leave such a such a long voicemail.
Like I was like, what is wrong with this person?
And I'm like worried for her, you know what's happening in her life that she feels that that's where she's going to take that energy and that's where she's going to put it.
Yeah, the phone call that you're talking about is so shocking and so strange. It's this very long message that somebody leaves on the organizer of the Meat Transgender Santa events voicemail, and it just goes on and on and on and talks about communism and pedophilia and grooming, like all of these kind of go to concepts that are used to demonize other people. And I remember, you know, sitting there and listening to it and just being completely perplexed.
But also there was a part of me that wondered, is that is the person leaving business is just very bored. Do they just not have a lot else to do? I don't know. I mean what happened was when that when the Meat Transgender Center event was first announced in Chicago, the event posting went viral amongst people that were opposed to transgender people, and you know, the comments, some of which we see in the film are just really shocking.
They're very hateful. And then that group of people then mobilized and you know, decided to turn up and protest. So yeah, it's confronting. It's very confronting. It's not what you expect in a Christmas movie. And you know, a lot of the movie is very fun and funny and light hearted and slapstick, and you know, some of the stances talk about, you know, when kids poo on them when they're sitting on Santa's lap. Like, there's a real mix of different emotions from the very serious.
Yeah, And I focused on the serious because there's been some stuff that I'm like, I mean, Nick, I could talk to you about this movie for a very long time, and I'm sure that at this point you probably feel like I almost have. But I think there's so many things to talk about. I mean, I could see your love of Christmas and the love of tradition and your fascination with that throughout the whole film, even at its
bleakest points, and I wanted to ask you. You know, these days, it's quite common to have parents tell their kids that Santa doesn't exist because they believe it's important to never misinform their children. You know, what do you think of that common practice now with parents being like not even allowing their kids to ever believe in Christmas because they're worried that, you know, the kids are going to come back to them years later and say, you lied to me.
It's so interesting and it's funny. When we started filming, the Santa Society were actually concerned about the opposite. When we first said to them we would like to film at this camp, they were like, yeah, but if you film with us, then kids are going to watch this and see that Santa's not real because there's like a hundred of us sitting in a class learning how to
be Santa. And when they said that to me, I was like, Oh, I didn't even think of that, And I just didn't really know what to say because I was kind of like, it's.
Not a show for children.
It's what you say to people, like when people say to you about, you know, R rated films, law adult films late at night, and you're like, what are my children.
Going to think?
Well, your children shouldn't be up late at night watching R rated movies, Like you know, this is a film not for children.
Yeah, I mean, I think it's for kids that are kind of like ate and up, which is I think I understand is the agent which they stopped believing in Santa. In terms of parents not even telling their kids that Santra exists, I do get that. And one thing that I have heard that is similar to that is that I have heard actually a lot of black families saying that they don't teach their kids that Santa is real, because traditionally there's been so little representation if their family
is in the idea of Santa. There's an actress, Gabrielle Union, who I saw a quote from recently, and she was saying that like, she never taught her kids about Santa because she didn't want her kids to think that some white guy had broken into their house. And you know, I can see why a lot of diverse families wouldn't be that interested in kind of perpetuating this notion of
Santa when there is so little diversity around him. And I should say, for the record, we see in the film the Santas themselves talk about the fact that Santa Claus, actually Sint Nicholas, is from Turkey. One of the Santas says, Santa's from Turkey originally, and he probably would have been olive white. So you know, Santa's always changed.
And it's fine, Yeah, it's okay, yeah, and we all evolved exactly. I'm so sad that I'm almost running out of time because I have so many other things that I'm miss wanting to talk to you about. But everyone who joins the podcast gets asked this question, which is what's something from behind the scene, something that we won't see, kind of like a behind the scene secret.
Yeah, So when we got to when we found out how huge the campsite was where Santa Camp takes place. Once we saw it on a map, we were like, oh, we're going to need golf carts to get around this place. And the Santas themselves bring in some of their own golf carts, but we hired our own golf carts for the production crew. Because the things that were happening were
spread out over this huge area. We were always rushing around like we didn't want to miss anything, and we had three different crews that were each kind of like assigned to different things, and we were communicating in walkie talkies and we'd be like, you know, quickly get to blah, or like, something's happening by the lake, and we would
drive down there. And at one point the producer and I were driving in such a rush that the golf cart I almost drove us over the edge of a cliff because I got the accelerator and the break confused and actually drove like up onto the steps of one of the cabins, and the golf cart only stopped moving forwards because it like got stuck on the steps and it was like kind of like teetering like that while
the wheels were still spinning. And if it had not been teetering, then it would have gone forwards and gone over the edge of this ravine. And I mean, I think we would have died.
So that was I shouldn't be laughing.
You're like, I know we're going to say that I think we were going to die, And I'm like, well.
We were about to go over the edge of a ravine in a golf cart at Santa Camp And I just imagine like what the obituary would have said. It would have just been so ridiculous, Like it would have been one of those obituaries that people share and laugh about.
Like it's not how we want the documentary to end, Nick, with the end of the movie being that the documentary filmmaker is no longer with us. This is dedicated to God Black. We've got a Santa's floating.
In the river. We need the footage, we need them down there, you know.
Yeah, exactly. They could have been a very different film.
Nick.
I just want to say how much I enjoyed talking to you today. And talking to you about your film. I hope people check it out. It is out on FOXTELD today. It's a brilliant HBO documentary series. And for anyone that wants to join the conversation, please hit me up because I think I'm going to be talking about Santa Camp for a very long time.
Nick. Thanks, thanks so much, and all the best.
Thank you so much. I hope that everybody you know gets some Christmas joy and some emotion out of it as well. And it's been a pleasure talking to you.