Last year, we wrote an open letter to Hallmark, imploring them to film one of their classic holiday movies in our city. Spoiler alert: It didn’t work, so we’re calling in some reinforcements.
We sat down with Dan and Bran from “Deck the Hallmark,” a Christmas movie podcast created and recorded right here in our city by two proud Greenvillians.
We asked them to help us draft a synopsis for a Greenville Hallmark movie, and here’s what we came up with (using their ideas as our foundation).
Yeah, That Christmas (Dan’s title)
Molly McIntyre is visiting Greenville for the holiday season. Her grandfather was a Christmas tree farmer at Mcintyre Farms that once provided the City of Greenville’s official tree, but it’s been replaced with the current faux tree that stands in front of M. Judson Booksellers.
She’s determined to help Jack Holliday, the Scrooge-y city official who bought the fake tree to save money in the long run, see that the magic of Christmas — and a real tree — is important to Greenville’s holiday traditions.
One morning, Molly grabs a cup of coffee from Spill the Beans and is crossing the Liberty Bridge when she bumps into Jack. He’s hurrying to an event in Falls Park, and she’s annoyed he didn’t see that he knocked her coffee down her coat in his flurry. She realizes who he is, and it makes her even more angry.
The two of them have a few more chance encounters along Main Street before she barges into City Hall to confront him. As he’s giving her the cold shoulder, she gets an idea.
“Why don’t we just go ice skating?” The Ice on Main rink is, literally, right there. He claims to be too busy, but her persistence pays off. The two hit the ice rink and, as will come as a shock to no one, they fall in love over hot cocoa and a ride down Main Street in Santa’s Sleigh. Jack’s cold heart melts, and the holiday magic transforms the tree into a massive fir.
To see Dan + Bran’s synopsis that inspired our plot, plus other questions we asked some of the holliest and jolliest Greenvillians we’ve ever interviewed, read our Q+A.
