Dana Nachman is an award-winning filmmaker of both fiction and documentary films. The Walt Disney Company hired Nachman to remake her 2018 Slamdance festival documentary “Pick of the Litter” as a limited original series for Disney+. Nachman served as one of the showrunners of the series and also directed three of the episodes. Her other credits include 2019 narrative short “Hook Up 2.0” and 2015 doc feature “Batkid Begins.”
W&H: Describe the film for us in your own words.
DN: “Dear Santa” is about the hundreds of thousands of letters that get sent to Santa and about what happens to those letters. For 108 years the United States Postal Service has been working with Santa to help him fulfill these letters and last Christmas USPS gave us full access to their program, Operation Santa.
W&H: What drew you to this story?
DN: I learned about Operation Santa about eight years ago. My mom had bought me a picture book to read to my kids. She found it at her local post office. The book was called “Letters to Santa,” and the USPS released it on the 100-year anniversary of the program. Every year I would read it to my kids on Christmas and think that the book would make an amazing film.
To me, Operation Santa signifies everything beautiful about Christmas. It’s about the magic of Christmas. It’s about childlike wonder. It’s about giving back and paying it forward — all of the things that resonate with me as a person and a filmmaker.
W&H: What do you want people to think about after they watch the film?
DN: Obviously when we set out to make this film last fall we had no idea what 2020 would bring, but even so we knew that our nation was deeply divided and only getting more so by the day. I wanted to showcase an America where people from all over come together to help one another.
I’ve had a hard time feeling patriotic over the last several years, and while I was traveling around the country shooting “Dear Santa,” I realized that Operation Santa signified the best of our country.
I hope people come away from “Dear Santa” feeling a bit more hopeful about our country and our path forward.
W&H: What was the biggest challenge in making the film?
DN: People might think that the fact that our post-production fell during in the middle of a pandemic with our three primary crew members — me, Chelsea our producer, and Jennifer our main editor — having seven children combined home from school while we were on a June deadline to finish was the biggest challenge in making “Dear Santa.” But actually that went surprisingly well and was much easier than production.
Most letters to Santa come in between Thanksgiving and Christmas. We were ready to shoot, but really had to wait until the letters came in. Once we were able to read the letters, we would choose the ones we were interested in. Those letters were all redacted because the USPS cannot give out personal identifying information, so USPS sent out an express mail letter to the parents of each letter writer telling them that their child’s letter had caught the attention of a filmmaker, and if they were interested in hearing more about it — and possibly participating — they should call me. We were all on standby waiting by the phone, and just waiting to be able to shoot.
It was very stressful waiting knowing that we had to shoot the whole film before Christmas so we only had about four weeks to get it all done. Once the parents called me and said yes we learned where they lived and started booking flights!
W&H: How did you get your film funded? Share some insights into how you got the film made.
DN: I called over to USPS back in December 2018 and my goal was to get access to the story. They responded right away and one call led to another and on our fourth or fifth call there were about 15 people from USPS on the call and one of them was from their media agency. He ended up becoming one of our producers and he and his team raised the money to make the film.
W&H: What inspired you to become a filmmaker?
DN: I was a television journalist for many years. In 2002 I was working at the NBC station in the San Francisco Bay Area. My boss assigned me a documentary on 9/11. He wanted me to do a 60-minute piece and before that I had been doing 90-second stories for most of my career. I was very nervous, to say the least, about this project but once it was done, I realized what an amazing gift time was and that it was so much better to be able to tell a more in-depth story. I went on to do two more documentaries for the TV station.
Then, in 2004, I started working on my first independent documentary that was based on a series I had done at the TV station. One of my colleagues from work and I partnered on this. He and I ended up finishing the film in 2008 and it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival that year. That was the film that launched our career.
W&H: What’s the best and worst advice you’ve received?
DN: The best advice I have ever been given is to just keep creating. This is also the advice I constantly give myself. I think creativity begets creativity. Stagnation is the worst thing for me; I feel it when I am not in forward motion. One project leads to another that leads to another.
The worst advice I was ever given really threw me for a loop for quite some time, but then I talked to enough friends who told me it was very bad advice, so I didn’t get side tracked for too long because of it. The advice came when I started dabbling in fiction filmmaking. I had written my first short that I was planning on shooting. It was a short romantic comedy. I sent it to a writer acquaintance and she told me that my brand was hard-hitting documentaries and that it would not be a good idea to pivot so drastically from my brand. It really threw me for a loop and I almost didn’t make the short.
I’m so glad people talked me out of listening because my now two rom-com shorts have stretched me as a storyteller and I really see now how bad that advice was. What if I become a better rom-com director than I ever was as a doc director? I never would know if I didn’t try. I now know that putting filmmakers into a box is really dangerous for creativity and obviously very limiting.
W&H: What advice do you have for other female directors?
DN: I always give this advice to my interns or younger filmmakers that reach out: we call it “don’t overthink it!” Just keep moving forward in your projects. Keep embracing ideas. They don’t need to be perfect ideas, perfect scripts, perfect rough cuts — just keep moving forward.
If we keep stepping down because we are insecure we will never succeed. It’s hard to get rejected, but if you are going to be a filmmaker you have to become OK with rejection, so take that as a fact of life of being a filmmaker and don’t let the rejections or specter of rejections stop you.
W&H: Name your favorite woman-directed film and why.
DN: “Wonder Woman” is my favorite female-directed film. The film is so massive and complex and I love that Patty Jenkins got to be at the helm of such an important film for little girls to see during their formative years!
I had also read about how long Patty had wanted to make the film for and all that she had to do to get the gig. I admire her tenacity, which mirrors what so many of us have to do to get to where we want to in our careers.
W&H: How are you adjusting to life during the COVID-19 pandemic? Are you keeping creative, and if so, how?
DN: I have been working on “Dear Santa” for basically all of 2020 and I am so thankful for the project because it has kept me busy, very creative, and working with my team, which makes me so happy. Soon after the film comes out I will need to embark on a new project so am looking for the best fit now and once I figure it out I hope to jump in. Keeping busy is important to my sanity.
W&H: Recent protests in the U.S. and abroad have highlighted racism and anti-Black police brutality. The film industry has a long history of underrepresenting people of color onscreen and behind the scenes and reinforcing — and creating — negative stereotypes. What actions do you think need to be taken to make Hollywood and/or the doc world more inclusive?
DN: I know that as I look toward my next project I am going to be very proactive in hiring more people of color. For the last several projects of mine, I have been very focused on hiring women, and now that I have found a great network of women to work with, I am going to do the same with people of color.
I think if all of us who are in the position to hire people make a serious effort to broaden our networks and make our crews as diverse as possible it will go a long way toward making the end products more representative as well.
