Lights, Camera, Action, Christmastime!
Editor
This is how it came to be that the Dorroh family home came to be the site picked for the Hollywood movie, Christmastime.
“So we fix and flip homes for a living, and we do a lot of remodels,” said Cynthia Dorroh. “Occasionally we get calls from location scouts who want to use one of our properties [to film] commercials.”
This year, one conversation led to another, and then another. A scout was looking for a nice two-story brick home and was having trouble finding something suitable in Boulder, the setting for a movie about a couple whose lives intersect with an angel. In the end, the scouts picked the Dorrohs’ house, on the corner of Forest Parkway and 19th Avenue.
In October – well before the Halloween candy was handed out and as the leaves were still in their full fall foliage – the house was decked out for Christmastime. Giant candy canes went up, a 30-foot spruce tree was planted in the front yard and draped with holiday lights, and fake snow covered the green lawn.
During the filming, the moviemakers offered to put the family up at the Marriott. But in the end, the Dorrohs – Cynthia and Craig, with their two daughters Joy, 7 and Zoë, 6 – opted instead to stay with friends in Stapleton, nearer to their home and to their daughters’ school, Park Hill Elementary.
The filming itself lasted for three weeks. But the filmmakers first had to prep the house, which involved painting rooms, changing out lighting – and then, trashing the place. That’s right, literally trashing the house with pizza boxes and containers with uneaten food, and the general world-turned-upside-down look of a bachelor who is going through crisis. It was all part of the storyline.
The film centers on a couple – Billy and Maire Taylor – who own a custom greeting card company and have separated. Maire, it seems, wants a divorce, but Billy isn’t so sure. An 8-year old runaway shows up and a series of events reveals that she is no ordinarily little girl. When she falls off a ladder, for example, she doesn’t actually fall, but instead flies. When the couple is giving the little girl a bath they see little marks on her back, just where little angel wings would be. And as all this is happening, Billy and Maire begin to remember all of the things that they like about each other.
“It’s just a very sweet Christmas story,” Dorroh says, “and very family oriented.”
The Dorrohs moved out of their house during filming, but since Craig and Cynthia run their business out of their basement, they worked from the home office for the duration. Some days, they would sneak upstairs to watch the action.
“These are veteran movie people, and it was just as you would imagine,” Cynthia Dorroh said. “We’d hear someone yell, ‘Camera Rolling’ – and everyone would freeze and it would get really quiet. And then a few minutes later, someone would yell, ‘Cut!’ Then you could move, and it was like the whole house takes a breath again.”
In the film, Maire Taylor is played by the actress Marley Shelton, whose past film credits include the films Grand Canyon, The Sandlot, Nixon, Pleasantville and Never Been Kissed. Her starring roles have included the 2001 black comedy Sugar & Spice and the slasher film Valentine. Billy Taylor is played by Christian Kane – whose television credits include Angel, and has appeared in the films Just Married and Secondhand Lions. (Kane is also the lead singer of the country-southern rock band Kane.)
The little angel is played by Mallory James Mahoney.
Other names associated with the film are far more known. Ernie Hudson, who was one of the Ghostbusters, has a bit part. The producer is Eugene Mazzola – who as a child was cast playing the Pharaoh Rameses’ son opposite Yul Brynner in the Ten Commandments, and has had subsequent adult success working on films including Twin Peaks and Little Buddha.
The director of the film is Michael Landon Jr., son of the late star of Bonanza and Little House on the Prairie.
The film is scheduled for release in theaters in time for Christmas, 2015.
The action was quite the talk of the neighborhood – not surprising since heavy equipment and trailers (including several marked for “stars”) lined the streets around the Dorroh’s house. Miraculously, none of the neighbors c omplained, Cynthia said, even when the fake snow was blowing around, and streets were shut down and looky-loos filed through to check out the spectacle.
“We knew it would be chaotic – which it has been – but it was an experience we couldn’t pass up,” Durroh said. “We thought we could watch it forever at Christmastime, and be able to remember the year that they made a movie in our house.”