How a Road Trip Christmas Flick Will Inspire ‘Breakthrough’
By Movieguide® Contributor
Masey McLain and Taylor Kalupa, the writers behind A CHRISTMAS LESS TRAVELED, not only hope that audiences are entertained by the road trip flick but also hope it inspires “breakthrough” in their lives.
“A CHRISTMAS LESS TRAVELED follows Desi, who is the best person on the planet. She loves her people,” McLain told Pure Flix Insider, who starred in I AM NOT ASHAMED. “She owns this really, really charming diner and she gives and gives and gives to everyone around her. But she’s kind of walled off her heart and she’s still dealing with the loss of her father until one day she finds a cassette tape hidden in his truck…”
McLain recalled a piece of wisdom her father passed along that has stayed with her and ties into the theme of the movie.
“I’ll never forget, my dad one time said to me in a really hard season of [life], ‘You can wall off your heart, but you’re going to miss out on the best parts of life.’” she recalled.
McLain went on to say, “And that really stuck with me. And I think a lot of us do that [when] we get hurt. But the consequences of walling ourselves off is you miss out on the best parts of life. So, we wanted to kind of explore what that would look like to break free from that.”
Speaking of wisdom from older generations, Kalupa said another theme of the movie is how the “younger generation doesn’t really ask a lot of questions from their parents or their grandparents.”
“[W]e just really wanted to explore this space where all of the lessons and all of the experiences that someone had that they didn’t get to share, gets to be told to their child later and how that affects them and how [the parents] wish that they had done it when they had the chance when they were still alive,” she said.
A synopsis of the newest release from Great American Pure Flix reads:
In A CHRISTMAS LESS TRAVELED, “The Dine and Dash” diner has a stack of mounting unpaid bills, forcing its owner, Desi [Candace Cameron Bure] to sell her beloved, mint condition, cherry red 1964 Ford F-100, a gift from her deceased father. As Desi visits the vintage truck one last time, she discovers a recorded message from her dad on an old audio cassette. Desi’s Dad’s voice sends her and “Old Red” out to retrace her family’s most memorable moments one last time. Just as the journey begins, Desi meets Greyson [Eric Johnson] who offers her a generous payment in exchange for a ride to “close the most important deal” of his life. Little do Desi and Greyson realize the less traveled road will reveal more about each of them than they could have ever known.
Kalupa said a favorite moment on the set was seeing “characters coming to life,” especially the part of Desi played by Candace Cameron Bure, calling it a “dream come true.”
“We look like proud crazy parents behind the monitor watching. We’re just hanging on by a thread, watching their performances, looking like crazy people, jumping up and down, sobbing,” Kalupa said.
She went on to say, “I would say that is definitely one of my favorite memories too, [to see] these characters, that you become so close with, when you’re creating them, and all of a sudden to see an actual physical person embody them is wild and they’re just killing it. It’s so special.”
For McLain, she said her favorite part of making the movie was the impact the story has had on people even before its release.
“Another favorite memory [of mine] would also be…to see how many people the story is touching…Just so many people have said, ‘Hey, I’ve read the script, dozens of times and I cry every time. This really hits a chord with me,'” she said.
What McLain and Kalupa hope viewers get from A CHRISTMAS LESS TRAVELED is the message of forgiveness and that we can overcome obstacles in our lives.
“We really hope the audience takes away that you can move forward, you can have a breakthrough, and Christmas is the best time for that,” McLain said.
Bure also shared that she sees forgiveness as a major theme in the Heather Hawthorn Doyle-directed movie.
“Faith plays a role in this film, in that there’s little seeds that are planted along the way,” Bure explained. “The biggest thing that Desi’s character learns throughout her journey is really all about forgiveness, and isn’t that what God has done for all of us? He’s forgiven us.”
“There’s a lesson to be learned in forgiving yourself, but also forgiving others, because God forgave us first,” she continued.
You can stream A CHRISTMAS LESS TRAVELED on Great American Pure Flix.
Great American Pure Flix has a wealth of other Christmas movies in their 2024 lineup, including A CINDERELLA CHRISTMAS BALL and Sight & Sound debut feature film I HEARD THE BELLS.
READ MORE: GAF JUST RELEASED ITS 2024 CHRISTMAS MOVIE LINEUP!
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