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There is an underground world of music fanatics/collectors who can be found scouring record stores and yard sales looking for obscure Christmas albums. One such aficionado, Mitchell Kezin, narrates and directs "Jingle Bell Rocks!"
The film opens with Kezin entering a record store as it nears closing. For him, there doesn’t seem to be enough time as he digs through crates of albums, finding hidden gems that only a true connoisseur would recognize. His obsession began with a Nat King Cole rendition of “The Little Boy That Santa Claus Forgot”; the character in the song was forgotten by Santa Claus on Christmas, which was an experience that resonated with Kezin’s own childhood experience. It seems to be a nostalgia he recaptures with each album that he finds.
To the casual observer, a person digging for Christmas records in the back of a store may appear to have an obsessive compulsion that borders on a psychological disorder. I mean, who thumbs through records looking for Christmas albums, anyway? Early in the film, Kezin even asks a record store employee if they carry a section of Christmas vinyls. The employee quips, “I find it perverse that you’re asking.”
"Jingle Bell Rocks!" doesn’t seek to rationalize or justify this obsession; rather the film is more like Kezin’s Christmas gift to the viewers, as we are privy to a collection of songs that took him decades to compile. Through its narrative, viewers find that Kezin, as well as many others, have a deeply rooted allure to this “magical time of year.” He interviews former A&R reps, musicians, radio DJs and everyday individuals who share this sentiment.
Wayne Coyne, the lead singer of the Flaming Lips (one of many celebrity interviews in the film), puts it best when he says that some people have a passion for something in their life that’s like an itch begging to be scratched. For Kezin, this insatiable quest to acquire the best Christmas songs every year translated into "Jingle Bell Rocks!," a creative endeavor that is a pleasure to watch as he shares in his recaptured childhood nostalgia.
3 Yaps
"Jingle Bell Rocks!" is an entrant in the 2014 Indy Film Fest.
If you want to see more, click here to read the interview writer/director Mitchell Kezin gave The Film Yap.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wUIIssu9_E