‘Blue Christmas’ film noir making its Iowa rounds

When Max Allan Collins of Muscatine combines “The Maltese Falcon” with “A Christmas Carol,” the result is “a holly jolly homicide” he calls “Blue Christmas.”

The film noir indie film with plenty of holiday twists is making its Cedar Rapids debut at Collins Road Theatres at 7 p.m. March 13. It will return there for two showings during the Cedar Rapids Independent Film Festival, at 9 a.m. and 1:05 p.m. April 6. Then it goes to sleep until the 2024 holiday season.

While you’ll see a character called The King on-screen, he’s not the Christian King of Kings, unless your vision of God Incarnate wears a bedazzled white jumpsuit. And don’t expect to hear Elvis singing “Blue Christmas” on the movie soundtrack. The rights were too much for a $14,000 shoestring budget.

This 80-minute film — from the writer of the Academy Award-winning “The Road to Perdition” — began life as a 50-page novella Collins wrote in a Christmas Eve flurry in 1992.

Titled “A Wreath for Marley,” the novella is a detective tale set primarily in 1942, in which shady private eye Richard Stone, played by Rob Merritt of Cedar Rapids, realizes at his office Christmas Eve party that his even shadier partner, Jake Marley, was killed exactly one year ago that night. Stone never bothered to find the killer. Which bothered Marley enough to make a ghastly ghostly visit to Stone — followed by more ghostly visits during a rattling night of reckoning.

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All of this was born from chapter in Collins’ life that rattled his bones.

How it all began

The day before Thanksgiving 1992, the Muscatine native found out via mail that not only was Tribune Media Services releasing him from the “Dick Tracy” comic strip he had been writing for 15 years, but Bantam Books also was dropping his “Nate Heller” detective novels, just weeks after “Stolen Away” from that series won the “Best Novel” award from the Private Eye Writers of America.

That two-fisted blow KOed the prolific author into his first case of writer’s block. But during the ensuing Christmas Eve writing marathon, the words came tumbling out of his head, and he was back on track.

“It got me back up on the horse to ride. That was really important,” he said. “I’m very enthusiastic about my work. … But that particular story, I thought was special. Being able to combine two things that I really loved into a third thing was extremely gratifying.”

Then he kept getting sidetracked by more and more writing projects, and the thought of turning “Marley” the book into “Blue Christmas” the movie kept getting shoved aside.

The timing was right in 2023 to dust it off and perhaps film a stage version of the story, like he had done with “Encore for Murder,” which started life as a “Mike Hammer” radio-style play performed several times. Then on the fly, Collins and his “filmmaking cronies” decided to shoot two dress rehearsals and the fundraising performance in Muscatine, then edited that footage into a film released on DVD in 2022.

“All of a sudden, I was kind of back in the indie movie business,” Collins said. “It got my juices flowing, and we decided to try to do ‘Blue Christmas.’ I had an idea for how it could be done more simply — doing it basically in one location. The way it was originally written, you went to all of the different locations that are in the story. I rewrote it to be done as a smaller-budget movie, where everything basically happens in the private detective’s imagination.”

The action plays out in Stone’s office.

“I actually like it better than the original version, because it has a certain style that I think really works,” Collins said. “One interpretation of ‘A Christmas Carol’ is that it’s just dreams.”

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His own dreams came true in Cedar Rapids, when Merritt agreed to tackle the lead role and Alisabeth Von Presley said yes to being the Ghost of Christmas Past, in the form of Bonnie Parker from Bonnie and Clyde fame. The rest of the talent on-screen and behind the scenes came from Muscatine and the Quad Cities.

“These people are all really gifted,” Collins said. “It’s nice to be able to present them and let them shine a little bit.”

Another dream piece of the puzzle came when Muscatine Community College, which he attended, allowed Collins and crew to transform its black box theater into a film scene for a week in October. The scenery was left in place for the school’s next play production, creating a win-win scenario.

Even though Von Presley has plenty of experience before the cameras as a contestant on ABC’s “American Idol” and NBC’s “American Song Contest,” as well as onstage in Corridor plays and as a touring musician, “Blue Christmas” is her first real film role.

“I’m pretty sassy,” she said of her character. “This was the first role I’ve gotten to have prosthetic bullet wounds, which was really neat. My character takes Rob on a journey back into his past to reassess the situation as an adult, to learn from mistakes, just as Bonnie wishes that she could go back and change her decisions. (She’s) just trying to give Rob's character some insight.”

In the process, Von Presley, 36, gained some valuable insight.

“Acting on stage, you get one shot, the audience is watching you in real time,” she said. “Acting for the camera, you can cut, you can go back, you can redo. You can fix any mistakes. If a hair got out of place, you can tuck it behind your ear and try again.

“I think there was something really neat about that, and also very unfamiliar for me. I'm used to a one-and-done and it's out there. It's permanent. But to have the opportunity to get to try it again, to get to fix a flubbed (line) was really bizarre.

“It also was tricky to try and get into the flow of emotion when they’re like, ‘OK, we’re going to do these two lines now and then we’re gonna switch camera angles.’ You have to try and remind yourself of where you were with your intent when you switch the camera angle, so it was cool. I love the challenge of it. I love being in front of the camera. This was definitely a new style for me,” she said.

She also loved working with Merritt, who she’s known for 20 years through various stage projects, and with Collins.

“Max was very supportive in whatever acting decisions that I made,” she said. “I remember I did my first take for the camera, and then he applauded me after that. I'm a confident performer, singer, dancer, but as an actress, I feel a tad bit insecure. So to have his support after my first run-through gave me that confidence boost.”

Like Collins, now 75, Merritt, age 47, also is a prolific writer of books, stage plays and screenplays. Merritt also is a veteran stage and film actor — and a huge fan of the Dick Tracy comic strips he read in his youth, when Collins was writing them.

Being asked to work on “Blue Christmas” made him anything but blue.

“I was thrilled because I’ve always been a big fan of Max Allan Collins’ work,” Merritt said. “And so getting an opportunity to do a project with him was pretty thrilling.”

His first assignment after being cast was to watch “The Maltese Falcon” and “Chinatown.”

“That’s the kind of mood (Collins) wanted,” Merritt said.

“One thing that Max mentioned to me, is that he didn't see Richard Stone as having this huge revelation at the end, where he completely changes his life. He saw it more as this character does learn something, and he has an objective he has to get to.”

Merritt also was happy to be working with Von Presley again, especially in this new realm.

“This is the first time we ever got to work on a film together, and that was really fun,” he said. “Alisabeth is just incredible on-screen. She was so much fun to work with, and blew everybody away with her work. She'll try to tell you she’s not an actress. Don't listen to that.”

Even with all of his work in film and her work on TV, both were nervous to see “Blue Christmas” in its Des Moines debut Feb. 24.

Von Presley had a good time, but said “watching it was a little difficult. I thought, well, I could have said this a certain way, and could have moved my hands a certain way. But, you know, there’s a first for everything.”

Merritt, who guesses he’s been in about 30 movies, still gets the jitters over seeing himself on-screen.

“Everybody’s their own worst critic, or at least I am,” he said. “All you see is everything you did wrong. …

“Going into opening night of a theatrical show feels very, very different from opening night of a film. Theater, it always feels like you can still get better, you can still make changes. Films, it’s locked. That's what you did, and as an actor, personally, I find that very stressful.

“I love the process of making movies,” he said. “I am mortified by the process of watching myself.”

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