INTERVIEW: New documentary celebrates nostalgia at Santa’s Workshop in North Pole, NY

Top photo: Guests can find Santa’s Workshop in North Pole, New York, a theme park on the side of Whiteface Mountain in the Adirondacks. Photo courtesy of the filmmaker / Provided with permission.

There’s a slice of nostalgic Americana tucked away on the side of Whiteface Mountain in the northern reaches of the Adirondack Mountains in New York. Although it’s many miles away from the Arctic Circle, somehow magic has worked its wonders, and visitors find themselves at Santa’s Workshop in the North Pole.

North Pole, New York, that is.

This quaint and charming theme park has been an institution in the town of Wilmington, New York, for decades, stretching back to the bygone days of the 1940s. Somehow it has survived the many developments in American culture that have shaped and reshaped how people take vacations. In 2018, Santa’s Workshop is still open, like a real-live sepia-toned postcard, ready for children and their wide-eyed amazement, and adults and their fond memories of sitting on the big man’s knee.

The story of Santa’s Workshop is the subject of a new documentary called North Pole, NY, which will play Friday, July 27 at the Indie Street Film Festival in Red Bank, New Jersey. Director Ali Cotterill and producer Christa Orth will be in attendance, along with guests from the film. Moviegoers should expect a “Christmas in July” after-party as well.

“I’m originally from New Jersey, and I went to a bunch of these family-owned places,” Cotterill said in a recent phone interview. “I didn’t go to Santa’s Workshop as a kid actually, but I have a connection to those places. … And I was doing research about theme parks, and I saw that Santa’s Workshop was one of the first ones. And I was like, ‘Oh, we’ve got to check this out,’ and we were going to make a bigger thing about theme parks in the area. And then we went up there, and we were totally enchanted with their story and made the whole feature about them.”

At the theme park, visitors can see Santa in his workshop and send in present requests for the next Christmas holiday. There is a rollercoaster, some children’s rides, many song-and-dance shows, characters dressed up as elves and snowmen, and a “trip down memory lane” museum.

That museum is run by a person who goes by the name Julie Jingles. She is a local in the Wilmington area and ran her own antique store, that is until Hurricane Irene wreaked havoc on the Adirondacks in 2011. After closing up shop, she moved over to Santa’s Workshop to help the park preserve its history of memorabilia, which includes snow globes, customized stockings, postcards, brochures and artistic renderings by Arto Monaco, the chief designer of the park’s look.

Julie Jingles is one of the central characters in North Pole, NY, and it seems like most people in this Adirondack hamlet were open to Cotterill’s camera.

“They were really into it,” the director said. “The way that we make movies is we go do a test shoot, so we did a weekend test shoot with these guys. And we met a bunch of people that ended up in the movie.”

After the test shoot, Cotterill and Ortho headed up to Santa’s Workshop for a few days every summer and winter from 2012 to 2016. In all, they had 45 filming days, either at the park or interviewing people who had been impacted by the park.

“Julie, the historian, is a performer, so she was so comfortable on camera,” said Cotterill, who has directed many short films but is making her feature-length debut with North Pole, NY. “The town was becoming more important as we were filming, so we wanted to zoom out. … And everyone was like, ‘Talk to Roy [Holzer]. You have to talk to Roy.’ So we went and talked to him. He used to be the [town supervisor], so he’s also super comfortable, really well-spoken and super comfortable public speaking and all that stuff. So he was also very natural on camera, so, yeah, we really lucked out with everyone we met.”

Cotterill’s camera also caught testimonies from many children who were enjoying the park. She would ask their parents first, and most of the adults became quite excited that their little elves might appear on the big screen. But there was one issue with the age of the children selected.

“The only problem that we had is if kids are really young, like under 4, sometimes they’re scared of Santa,” the director said. “That’s the main problem is they’ll get scared. Sometimes kids will cry and be like freaked out and not know what’s going on, so there’s this perfect window of 4 to 9, where they won’t be so young that they might get scared, but they’re still believers.”

Another voice in the film is of a New Jersey father who was brought to the park as a child and now brings his own children for an annual Christmas visit. It’s a heart-warming part of the documentary, showing a dedicated parent keeping a nostalgic tradition alive. What could make this story cooler? Bobby Getchell, the father, also performs as Paul Stanley in a KISS tribute band in New Jersey.

“Bobby is the best,” Cotterill said. “We met [him] through Julie. We said, ‘Oh, we want to talk to people that come every year,’ and she actually pointed him out. We were in the museum filming with her, and she pointed him out. He was standing at the North Pole, and they were all wearing the matching outfits. I was like, ‘All right, they seem perfect.’ So I talked to him, and he was just so nice. He was documentary gold because he filmed them every year, so he had all that home movie footage. And he had all these old photos of his family, so not only were they good on camera, but he also had all this archival stuff. … His parents went when it was first opened, and then they brought him. Then he brought his kids every year, so it was the third generation visitor. There’s a fair amount of people doing that. That’s a big thing that keeps them going is the nostalgia and the fact that it’s Christmas tradition, so they do it every school year.”

Not everything involving Santa’s Workshop is red and rosy. Like most themed attractions, times can be difficult, and cars sometimes stop pulling up to the parking lot. The director doesn’t shy away from the difficulties or the uncertainties that the North Pole has faced throughout the years. From the interviews on the screen, it would seem that the townspeople of Wilmington want (and perhaps need) Santa’s Workshop to stay open. The park employs many people, and this small town can be eclipsed by its neighbor down the block: Lake Placid.

Santa’s Workshop is woven into the fabric of Wilmington.

“There was a ton of situations where it was like the mom works at the bakeshop, and her son is one of the elves,” Cotterill said. “I mean, it’s a small town, so you’re bound to get that. They love the generational thing, as workers as well as visitors. It’s kind of like a rite of passage in that town to be an elf, so most of the high school kids end up doing that at some point.”

She added: “The part that really appealed to me is the idea that something like this is still going on in 2018. … It requires imagination in kids, and I think that’s the part that really hit me because I didn’t really think about it as intensely until I was into making the movie. But I went to all these places as a kid. I’m the last generation, I would say, that grew up without the Internet. The Internet came out when I was in high school, so, yeah, there’s something about fostering that sense of imagination. It was always natural for every generation before, and now I think you really have to specifically foster that in a kid.”

Santa’s Workshop and the documentary North Pole, NY focus on that powerful word: nostalgia, which has become a major business. Think of all the 1980s-influenced TV shows, classic music acts and revived fashion styles. It makes sense that a theme park — a Christmas-infused slice of Americana in upstate New York — should hope for that nostalgic dollar to stretch a little further.

“The power of nostalgia, obviously I knew it was powerful, but making this movie, it is so powerful,” Cotterill said. “People who would come back would be like, ‘Oh, my God.’ And, of course, we all have places like that, but seeing people keep having that moment, it’s like, oh, this is the key way that this place stays open. People just love to do that. I like doing photo projects, and I have one where I sometimes will go somewhere that I went as a kid and take a photo in the same spot. Like if I drive past somewhere we went on family vacation, I’m like, oh, I’m going to hop out and snatch this photo. I feel like that’s part of the same thing. People like that stuff. There’s something about it that’s kind of nice.”

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

North Pole, NY will play Friday, July 27 at the Indie Street Film Festival in Red Bank, New Jersey. A “Christmas in July” party will follow the screening. Click here for more information and tickets.