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‘Jingle Bell Rocks’ documentary uncovers Christmas musical oddities

A charming documentary about obscure Christmas music, “Jingle Bell Rocks” (at The Vic this week) opens with footage of a very tall, somewhat ungainly man wandering into that rarest of retailers — the music store — and riffling through a bin of CDs.

“Sinead O’Connor singing ‘Silent Night’? Buck-99? I’ll take it,” he says, and puts it in his basket. Flipping through each bin, he is frantic and frenzied and seems lost in his own head.

“They’re going to kick us out soon, and I haven’t even hit the vinyl yet.” He shifts over to the albums and stops on a record called “Santa Ain’t Coming to Town.”

“Oh, I missed that one the first time around,” he says, and adds it to the pile. By the time he is done, he leaves with a stack of records that is two phone books thick.

A consumer of the strange and unexplored, the man we are watching is Mitchell Kezin, the film’s director. Based in Vancouver, he is one of only a handful of people who are serious collectors of rare and peculiar Christmas music.

“Right around Christmas 2004 — my gosh, a long time ago! — I bought a Christmas record on eBay,” he told me. When the package arrived, tucked inside was an article about esoteric and underground Christmas music.

“It blew my mind because I was like: Wait a minute, you mean there are other people out there doing this? I thought I was the only person in the world collecting weird Christmas music. But, of course, there are other people doing it. It just never dawned on me that there were legends in this realm. There’s like five of them in the world.”

One of whom is based in Chicago. A quiet but steady presence in the film, Andy Cirzan is a vice president at Jam Productions, and he appears every year on the radio show “Sound Opinions” (hosted by Jim DeRogatis and Tribune rock critic Greg Kot) with a new batch of Christmas songs — strange, unknown, eccentric and sometimes wonderful — that he has unearthed in flea markets and secondhand stores.

Cirzan and others like him may as well be archaeologists, pawing through dusty piles, searching and preserving.

“We’re largely pasty, white, middle-aged men who aren’t in the best of shape,” Kezin said. “We spend a lot of time sitting in dark rooms digging for records and then going home and listening to them.”

Kezin will be in Chicago for a Q-and-A after Friday’s screening.

Cirzan said he may attend a screening as well, though he told me he prefers to “keep a pretty low profile in public” and doesn’t plan on participating in any post-show discussions. Fair enough.

“Andy was gracious to allow me to film with him,” Kezin said, “but he had his ground rules, and he was very difficult (to get to open up) in the initial few years. He didn’t want to talk about what was really behind his obsession with this music. But he’s pretty much the king of our world in terms of the stuff he manages to discover and share every year.”

Kezin has enough energy and deeply invested enthusiasm to make up for Cirzan’s reserve. And when he teams with former Def Jam record exec Bill Adler (a gregarious sort who also is a collector of this music), the movie takes on an oddball charisma.

Adler’s collection appears to straddle the line between kitsch and unlistenable peculiarities. One album he pulls out is called “Navidades 1981” from Jose Luis Carrasquillo, featuring a photo of the singer (at least I think that’s who it is) standing behind a pig roasting on a spit, holding a machete with the words “Puerto Rico” printed on the blade.

Kezin also tracks down many of the artists themselves, including the man behind 1962’s “Blue Xmas,” a jazzy kiss-off to materialism written and sung by bebop pianist Bob Dorough (best known for composing the songs of “Schoolhouse Rock!”) and backed by Miles Davis.

“When you’re blue at Christmas time,” goes one lyric, “you see right through/all the waste, all the sham, all the haste/and plain old bad taste.”

“It was the first time that I heard a Christmas song that was critical of the holiday,” Kezin says in the film.

Finding Dorough wasn’t hard — “I Googled him, up he came on his little homespun website, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, he’s alive!'” Kezin told me — but getting the rights to the song was another story.

“It’s a very arcane process. (The record labels) won’t talk to you, they won’t engage with you — you’re dealing with people you can’t even call on the phone. Your request is either accepted or denied, and that’s it.”

Kezin said he took the risk of shooting the entire film before securing rights to any of the songs. “We were having real trouble getting ‘Blue Xmas.’ Man, that was a scary time for me. I had many sleepless nights thinking, ‘I can’t release this film without that song in it!'”

Ultimately, much of the film’s budget went to securing those rights. (The opening credits, by the way, are especially witty, depicting a series of spinning 45-rpm records.)

“There are 32 songs in the film, and you’d think, some of them are so obscure, they must be owned by some tiny label, and they’re not going to charge us much. But those small labels have all been acquired now by one of three or four big labels. Universal and BMG, they own everything now. And it took a long time to clear some of the songs. It was a difficult process.

“It’s the reason why, sadly, we don’t have a soundtrack companion album. It was just too expensive to acquire those additional rights.”

That’s a head-scratcher. These songs are so little known, I can’t imagine any are making money for the record labels. Kezin’s documentary is a rather convenient (if unintentional) advertisement for a lot of this music. You would think the labels would want to capitalize on that and re-release these songs on an album tied to the movie.

Doesn’t it seem as if there hasn’t been a big new Christmas pop song in a while? I’m surprised more people in the music industry aren’t focused on this, because if a holiday song hits, you can make an outrageous amount of money. But here’s what you realize while watching “Jingle Bell Rocks” (which you can also stream, for a fee, from the film’s website): In fact, quite a lot of people have tried (and continue to try) to write iconic Christmas songs — and for whatever reason, they just don’t stick.

“It’s especially hard in this day and age,” Kezin said. “There’s a reason why ‘White Christmas’ and those classics have endured. They’re powerful songs. They come from an era of songwriting and craftsmanship that is long gone. People just don’t write songs like that anymore.”

Which has led to his next project. “I’m leery of becoming the Christmas film guy,” he said, “but it’s going to be a film about the fact that over 75 percent of all the major Christmas hits have been written by Jewish songwriters. It’s such a strange, ironic thing to realize. Everything from ‘White Christmas’ to ‘Silver Bells.’ You name it.”

I asked Kezin if he could distill his attraction to Christmas music.

“Can you imagine the holiday without the music?” he said. “They’re so entwined that there would be no meaning if the music was lost.

“Without fail, people who celebrate Christmas always have that one song that announces the holiday to them — that one special song that until they hear it, until it comes on the radio, the season hasn’t begun for them. That’s part of their whole ritual. The start of the holiday each year.

“And that’s when the whole world around you becomes transformed. It’s in the air and the airwaves. It’s all-encompassing, and I love that about the holiday, and I try to tap into that every year through the music.”

“Jingle Bell Rocks” screens Friday through Dec. 25 at The Vic Theatre. Go to brewview.com or jinglebellrocks.com. Director Mitchell Kezin will be at Friday and Satuday’s screening for a post-show discussion.

Chicago reality

Ryan Seacrest is producing a new reality show that’s taping in the Chicago area, confirms Betsy Steinberg of the Illinois Film Office.

Unlike Seacrest’s other reality offerings — including the various Kardashian shows — this one looks to be more of a serious docu-series than a showcase for celebrity egos.

The ABC Family series is called “My Transparent Life,” and it will center on Ben, a teenager “who learns his parents are going through a divorce and that his father is becoming a woman,” according to the description on Seacrest’s website.

“The docu-series will follow Ben as he supports his father’s unexpected transformation from Charlie to Carly.

The unscripted show will also closely document Charlie’s emotional journey of transitioning from male to female.” For more info go to ryanseacrest.com.

“A Christmas Story,” grown up

Three of the child actors featured in “A Christmas Story” (specifically, those not named Peter Billingsley) come to town this weekend for a screening of the 1983 film.

The trio, who will share behind-the-scenes stories about the making of the film, will include Zack Ward (Scut Farkus), Ian Petrella (Randy, Ralphie’s little brother) and Scott Schwartz (Flick, the one who got his tongue frozen to a flagpole). Go to hollywoodpalmscinema.com.

Sing along between the movies

The Music Box Theatre offers back-to-back screenings of “White Christmas” and “It’s a Wonderful Life” through Christmas Eve , along with Santa and an organist, leading the crowd in carols between each film. Go to musicboxtheatre.com.

nmetz@tribpub.com

@NinaMetzNews