Looking at the new Hallmark Channel holiday movie lineup this year I can see it’s all the same retreads of Christmas movies with all the tired themes of big town girl and small town boy. The Hallmark Channel should consider updating their content to reflect the current temperature of the times. Below are two holiday movies I would love to pitch and get the green light.
Santa Baby
Santa Baby is the story of Bethany, a 30 something lady that is losing her grip on life and love. She spends her days swiping on the apps and lunch hours swiping her credit card for yet another destination wedding of yet another friend that hit the jackpot with a man that has both a positive net worth and an excellent credit score. Bethany is slipping deeper into debt and depression; but, she keeps telling herself the same lie that this year is gonna be different. “I’m not gonna let the holiday blues in this year,” she says to herself. “I’m not gonna let no man, no money, no future get in the way of my happiness.” This time she’s really serious, because she successfully hit the gym for a total of 2 days before stopping at the liquor store and falling back into familiar hopelessness. She spends her nights death scrolling on her phone and opening another bottle of wine. Tonight, she sees a reel that has a sea of Santas getting wasted at Santa Con. She immediately forwards this clip to her group of friends and everyone confirms they will join her at Santa Con this year dressed as sexy reindeers.
She and her friends all meet at a dive bar to pre-party before heading over to Santa Con because they all won’t fit into Bethany’s no elevator efficiency apartment. After her third shot of Jameson and her fourth white claw, Bethany is primed and lets her friends know she’s going to hookup with a rando today. They all hear a jingle bell ringing in the distance and giggle amongst themselves. The sexy reindeers sashay over to Santa Con and go from bar to bar and hold their own against the Santas. Christmas came early this year for this little herd of sexy Reindeers as all their drinks have been paid by Santas. The girls get separated from each other in all the chaos of Santa Con. Bethany sees a cute Santa alone and drunk in the back corner of the bar near the rest rooms. She approaches this Santa with her red lighted nose and asks if he’s lost? He jumps up in joy and asks her if she’ll guide his sleigh tonight. She says, “Why wait until tonight?” They bang one out in the bathroom stall where another Santa is puking his peppermint schnapps out one stall over. Her phone’s dead and Santa’s phone’s dead and they can’t exchange information and Bethany’s friend Jolene finally finds her and says they gotta go because Jenny is passed out on a bar stool and recently married and hot mess of a friend Stacy disappeared with another Santa over an hour ago. In one last ditch effort, Bethany tells Santa to meet her here next year under the mistletoe. He orders two shots and they take a solemn oath to return here next year after delivering one final sloppy kiss that misses the mark.
Bethany slides back into the holidays alone and depressed, but hopeful that the coming new year’s “New Year, New Me” mantra is gonna stick past dry January. Her biggest regret is hooking up with that rando at Santa Con and vows to never do that again. Her sexy reindeer days are behind her now. Before she can take a step in the right direction she finds out that she’s pregnant with Santa’s baby and chooses to keep the baby because it’s a Christmas miracle. Everyone in her family asks Bethany who the father is and she says Santa because she forg0t to ask this rando’s name. Deep into her second trimester she sees Santa walking into the JP Morgan building in midtown Manhattan wearing a Patagonia vest and loafers (finance bro uniform) and tries to keep up with him, but she can’t waddle that fast. She spends the next weeks stalking this guy and enlists the help of sexy reindeers Jenny, Jolene, and Stacy to help build a dossier on this guy. Entering her final trimester, Bethany has everything she needs to know about “Santa.” Most importantly, Santa is rich and comes from old money and runs in society circles in the Upper East Side. Santa’s real name is Ryan Lipton with family ties all the way back to Plymouth Rock and the Mayflower. His recent engagement has been announced in the New York Times.
Bethany delivers a healthy baby boy on September 21st and names him Rudy (short for Rudolph). This new momma is all in on Rudy and wants the best for him. Bethany joins Jolene and Jenny at the gym every day while Stacy watches Rudy. Bethany sheds all that baby weight and marks her calendar for Santa Con on December 13th. On Thanksgiving Day she successfully is able to put on her sexy Reindeer costume once again and celebrates with a piece of pumpkin pie with extra extra whipped cream dolloped on top. This year she accessorizes her outfit with a string of Christmas lights so she can shine bright at the rendezvous point under the mistletoe.
Sure enough, Santa is waiting for her under the mistletoe and yells “Rudolph!” when he sees her walking towards him. She tells Santa that her name is Bethany (she, her) and that “All I want for Christmas is You!” Excited, he tells her his name is Ryan (he, him) which falls flat and she breaks the awkward silence by telling him that she lives around the corner where they can carry on in a more intimate setting. Bethany sweetens the deal by sucking suggestively on a candy cane. She’s got this douche Ryan Lipton under her command and she drinks both shots that he got for the two of them (she pumped before she went out). They sashay out of the bar and over to her tiny efficiency apartment where he realized she doesn’t have a doorman or an elevator. The feeling that he’s really going slumming with Bethany feeds his enormous ego. They enter her apartment and he notices all the moving boxes stacked on one side and asks Bethany where she’s moving to. She smiles and says, “Uptown! Park Avenue!” and tells Santa to sit down and have a drink while she slips into something more comfortable.
She emerges from the bathroom with Santa’s baby and introduces Rudy to his daddy Santa (aka Ryan). Rudy was being held by Stacy in there. There’s a knock at the door where a process server dressed as an elf who has been tracking Ryan since the bar serves Ryan Lipton with with papers for a paternity test and lawsuit filed by Bethany a few days ago. Ryan Lipton is now stone cold sober and asks her how much for this “problem” to go away. She lets him know that his daddy can’t get him out of this one and offers him another shot of Rumplemintz to calm his nerves. He exclaims that he’s engaged to be married and this was his last rendezvous before his wedding in a few weeks. Bethany says she knows and won’t let him off that easy, since she spent her pregnancy reading self help books about empowerment that are now paying off. Bethany asks for $2M and Stacy tells Ryan to GTFO of Bethany’s house because she can’t stand to be next to such a miserable turd. Rudy is better off not knowing this jerk. One court ordered paternity test for Ryan and one gratifying week later for Bethany, she gets a knock at the door. It’s the Lipton family lawyer, Mr. Snow, with an NDA and a check for $2M. She and the lawyer sit down to sign the paper where we can hear a jingle bell ring in the distance.
Fast forward one year. The final scene takes place in Literary Walk in Central park showing a Bethany walking tall and pushing a stroller with little Rudy wearing a lit up red nose. She walks past Ryan Lipton and his pregnant wife. Their eyes lock for a second where a bell can be heard ringing in the distance. ‘Tis the season!
Holiday Bonus
In Holiday Bonus, Roger is one of these “work hard, play hard” Wall Street traders that is out in NYC spending some of his Christmas bonus on sushi, prostitutes, and cocaine. As he leaves the strip club in Times Square on Christmas Eve to get home to his wife and newborn, he gets lost in a sudden white out and wanders into the subway tunnel for shelter and passes out on the train tracks. The #2 train comes through and runs over his legs making him a paraplegic. The first thing he sees after coming to after the accident is a homeless person wearing his alligator skin loafers before getting carted away in the ambulance.
Fast forward six months. Roger’s wife has left him and took his seven figure settlement from the New York City Transit Authority. He lost his high profile job and nobody will hire him because he’s addicted to cocaine and painkillers. Roger takes the greyhound bus to Las Vegas where he thinks his luck will change and spends his time and disability check on lap dances at the Olympic Gardens (OG) Gentlemen’s Club off the famous Las Vegas Strip.
He won’t STFU to the strippers on how he was a successful bond trader in NYC. He spends his time studying bond pricing charts and eating his lunch from the buffet in the back booth of the OG. When his lap dance money runs out, he talks to anyone that will listen about the once in a lifetime bond trade that is forming this year around Xmas. All the strippers except one thinks he’s crazy. Her name is Stephanie Merlot and gives him $10,000 to trade on the last day of trading for the year. This trade nets her $1M. Roger’s prayers have been answered and he can now afford to get a handicap van with a ramp to get back to his life in NYC, because Stephanie Merlot is gonna split the money with him. This poor sap actually believed the stripper likes him.
In the final scene, Stephanie Merlot gives him a free lap dance in the Champagne Room to “Baby It’s Cold Outside,” snorts a few lines of cocaine with him, and leaves him with a small duffel bag that he presumes is full of cash. She blows him a final snowflake kiss and walks out to her boyfriend Silver Dollar Johnny waiting in an idling car. They drive away to catch a flight for Christmas in Hawaii. Roger opens the duffel bag to find some coal and a voucher for a sushi buffet. He rolls to the Bellagio for his last meal and ends it all on Christmas Eve, rolling himself into oncoming traffic where a bus hits him. The final scene shows the ironic advertisement on the bus: “It’s okay not to feel okay this holiday season.”
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