Christin Baker remembers a time when all holiday romantic comedies were the traditional, “boy meets girl” type. She’s happy that’s slowly changing.
In Baker’s new romcom “The Christmas Writer,” Noel (Shelby Allison Brown) is a well-known lesbian Christmas author who is dealing with the loss of her mother, a break-up, and a bad case of writer’s block. With a nudge from her agent, Noel visits her hometown to find inspiration and meets Callie (Callie Bussell), a single mother who owns the local bookstore.
Baker directed and co-wrote the film and is the CEO of Tello Films, which she describes as the Netflix of lesbian cinema. “The Christmas Writer” is not an autobiographical story, but there are similarities between Baker and Noel. Although Baker has not experienced the loss of a parent, she did move from Los Angeles across the country and considered herself a failure for doing so. She has also experienced writer’s block.
“That is an undercurrent for Noel not choosing Callie more quickly,” Baker said.
A lot of Baker’s inspiration for the film came from falling in love with her fiancé Stacey Lee Powell, who appears in the film as Jillian, Noel’s agent.
“Being willing to give up what you think are your dreams came from falling in love with Stacey,” Baker said. “The love story comes from our love. It hits on a lot of different levels for me personally.”
Powell had a few scenes in one of Baker’s earlier films, but this is her first major role. She is very different from Jillian, she said, and had to work hard to come up with a backstory so that she could perform well on set.
“That was hard for me, because it’s my first big role,” Powell said. “Christin was busy getting everything ready for the movie, and I didn’t want to be bugging her. I got my kids involved, reading lines. Preparing for the role was exciting and fun to do with my family.”
It’s exciting for Baker to have the movie hit around the holiday season, especially in what has been a tough year for the LGBTQ+ community. Hallmark also has a lesbian Christmas movie coming out in December called “The Christmas Baby.” Baker called the existence of both films “groundbreaking.”
“I love that we have two films that I know of for the community. Right now there is so much negativity and so much uncertainty in our lives,” Baker said. “We were very lucky that the Supreme Court did not take up marriage equality but that was a very real fear. There are a lot of [people] telling our community ‘You are not welcome, you are not normal, your stories do not matter.’ In these times when things can seem so frustrating, I think you need this kind of story.”
Baker said she wanted “The Christmas Writer,” and other films made at Tello Films, to upend tropes that are often found in movies about lesbian couples – for example, the “Bury Your Gays” trope, where queer characters often face a tragic end.
“That was part of the storytelling [for a while]. Are we going to live? Are we going to wind up together?” Baker said. “It’s this bizarre cycle that comes up every so often, and I am not sure why. But one of our rules at Tello is that we have no projects where lesbians die at the end.”
After a November 21 screening in Atlanta, “The Christmas Writer” will stream on Tello Films and other platforms.
