Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.0

I Am Santa Claus Blu-ray Movie Review

This Documentary Knows When He's Been Bad and Good

Reviewed by Michael Reuben November 23, 2014

I Am Santa Claus is one of those documentaries that uses an unlikely subject to challenge our notion of what's credible and likely. It began with a few questions: Who are the men in red suits and white beards who reliably show up in malls and stores every December as stand-ins for the real St. Nick that no one ever actually sees? Where do they come from? What do they do for the other eleven-plus months of the year when they're not listening to children's wishlists and posing for pictures? With the help of a Kickstarter campaign, director Tommy Avallone and his producer, Derek Lindeman, spent several years traveling the country with portable digital cameras, meeting as many Santas as they could and getting to know their real lives beyond the boots and reindeer.

One of their big breaks was the discovery that three-time WWE Heavyweight Champion Mick Foley, a/k/a "The King of Hardcore", was a Christmas fanatic with a deep desire to play Santa Claus. Foley became one of the film's executive producers and one of the five main Santas around whom Avallone and his co-editor, Derrick Kunzer, eventually organized the hundreds of hours of footage acquired on their travels. The result is a backstage pass into a world that you couldn't make up if you tried.

The film opens with a sweet montage of kids describing who Santa is. The idea, as the commentary confirms, is to remind us that the men we are about to meet perform an important job, which is to help sustain an all-too-fleeting illusion for little children at Christmas. Although many, indeed most, of these men face typical challenges of the adult world, a common theme among them is the sense of a "calling" to deliver a moment's joy to the children who come to see Santa looking for a touch of holiday magic.

Santa Russell Spice of Michigan is divorced, has been unemployed for years, lost his home and now lives with his daughter and grandchildren. He gets by on Social Security and his annual earnings from work as Santa Claus. He can be irascible and, in one scene where he drinks too much on St. Patrick's Day, he overshares about his family life. But Russell takes his work seriously. You can tell by the cane he uses as a walking aid; it's a "candy" cane. His car is covered with Christmas-themed messages and bumper stickers. From his desk in his daughter's home, he maintains contact with Santas all over the U.S. (On the commentary track, Avallone and Lindeman confirm that Santa Russell was their major entree into the Santa community.)

Santa Mick Foley is at the opposite end of the spectrum financially, thanks to his successful wrestling career. His basement is decorated for Christmas throughout the year. He can afford to have a Santa suit custom-tailored for him, and he can also pay for a realistic white wig, instead of suffering the periodic peroxide dye that other Santas must undergo to maintain their white hair. (The beard is a different story.) Still, when Mick greets kids at Santa's Village in Jefferson, N.H., accompanied by his son Hughie playing Santa's elf, the scene is no different from that in any other mall or department store in America. The little ones don't know there's a world-famous wrestler inside the suit. If they did, Foley wouldn't be doing his job.

Santa Bob Gerardi is a real estate agent in Orange County, California. He's also a singer, who regularly lends his voice at his church and who, as the holiday season approaches, cuts a Christmas CD at his own expense in the hope of selling enough copies at least to break even. (At the time of the film's completion, he was still trying.) Bob also like to work "out of season", helping the Easter Bunny in the spring.

Santa Frank Pascuzzi from Long Island is credited as "Santa Claus", because, when we first see him, he is in line at the DMV getting himself a new driver's license, with a court order in hand to prove that his name has been legally changed. With tattoo-covered arms and a dream of starting his own BBQ business, Frank does mall work as Santa and also makes house calls on request. His distinctive Long Island accent does not seem to undermine his credibility in character.

Perhaps the most poignant character in the film is Santa Jim Stevenson of Ft. Worth, Texas, who says he's never had a problem as an openly gay man. Indeed, he is a winner of the "Mr. Texas Bear Round-Up" competition at the gathering he attends annually, and he's proud of the achievement. Jim's greatest sadness in life is that the man that he loves lives in Denver and cannot get a job transfer to Ft. Worth; nor is Jim able to relocate his antique business to Denver. As a result, they can spend only limited time together. Santa Jim is an openly emotional man, for whom tears flow easily, especially when he describes how children react when they see him in character at Christmas.

These brief sketches are poor substitutes for the vivid characters who appear in I Am Santa Claus. Avallone wisely chose Santas who presented themselves effectively and made a strong impression on camera. Mick Foley, of course, is an experienced performer, but a point that becomes clear by the end of I Am Santa Claus is that performing talent is an essential quality for anyone who undertakes to represent the spirit of Christmas. Speaking on camera may not be a familiar milieu for most of these Santas, but their innate ability to connect with people is unmistakable. In this particular world, they're stars—and their fans adore them.

I Am Santa Claus Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

In the do-it-yourself spirit of low-budget filmmaking, director Avallone shot much of I Am Santa Claus himself, with additional photography by his co-editor Derrick Kunzler. They used Canon DSLR cameras both for portability and because those could be carried on airplanes without question. The result, after digital editing and color correction, is a remarkably clean and detailed image that is capably represented on Virgil Films' 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray. Some shots are limited in detail by the source, especially where lighting was inadequate, but in general the people and locations are sharp and clear, and the colors are photo-releastic. Noise and interference are never an issue. At a running time of 89 minutes, the digital film compresses easily onto a BD-25 with an average bitrate of 20.00 Mbps, which is adequate for a work where so much of the footage consists of talking heads.

I Am Santa Claus Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The film's original 5.1 soundtrack is presented in lossless DTS-HD MA, but this is a typical documentary mix, where the action is almost entirely focused in the front where people are speaking. The unobtrusive score by John Avarese (My Dog Tulip) gets room to breath, but otherwise this is a track for listening to voices.

I Am Santa Claus Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary with Director Tommy Avallone, Producer Derek Lindeman and Executive Producer (and Featured Santa) Mick Foley: Because Foley signed on as executive producer after Avallone and Lindeman discovered him as a Santa, he asks many questions about the development of the film before his participation. His prompting elicits interesting background about how the director and producer found their way into the Santa community (mostly through Russell Spice) and their adventures on the road over several years of filming. Foley himself is an enthusiastic commentator about his own adventures as a Santa, and his apparently limitless energy inspires his colleagues, because (as they acknowledge at the outset) they are doing this commentary for the second time, Lindeman having failed to record the initial session.



• Santa Vs Santa: The Santa Wars (1080p; 1.78:1; 23:29): This short film recounts a story that Avallone discovered while making I Am Santa Claus that wouldn't fit into the main film but was far too unusual and interesting to leave in obscurity. How many other films begin with a disclaimer like the following?
  

  The views and opinions expressed in this movie are those of the Santa Clauses interviewed as they remember them and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Filmmaker.

  
  As with any other group of individuals involved in a common pursuit, a number of Santas formed a kind of trade organization that was eventually incorporated as the Amalgamated Order of Real Bearded Santas, or AORBS. The president was Santa Tim Connaghan, a particularly entrepreneurial Santa who published instructional manuals, founded a Santa school and was a popular speaker. But organizations come with baggage, including hierarchy, competition, resentment and, of course, politics. Santa Vs Santa chronicles the rivalry, from several perspectives, that led to Connaghan's being asked to step down as president of AORBS, after which he left the organization and founded the Fraternal Order of Real Bearded Santas, or FORBS.
  
  AORBS proceeded to tear itself apart among competing factions to the point where the president who succeeded Connaghan is shown performing the ultimate repudiation of Santa-dom by sitting down in a barber's chair to have his beard shaved off. FORBS itself was later hijacked and had to reincorporate under another name. The story is a classic example of how, as one NPR journalist points out, issues that mean nothing to the rest of the world come to dominate the lives of those involved because they have invested so much of their identity in a particular organization or pursuit. (Several of the participants in I Am Santa Claus are among those interviewed.)

I Am Santa Claus Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I Am Santa Claus lists Morgan Spurlock as an executive producer, and the one-sheet and Blu-ray cover prominently declare "Morgan Spurlock Presents". In a hyper-competitive media world, studios understandably look for familiar names to attach to works by unknown filmmakers, and ever since his debut film, Super Size Me, Spurlock has been a celebrity on the documentary scene. But I Am Santa Claus is nothing like Spurlock's films. As a director, Avallone maintains a traditional position behind the camera, letting his subjects do the talking while he remains invisible. Avallone doesn't need to put on a show. The Santas do that just by being themselves. Highly recommended as an addition to your Christmas library.