Romantic 'Cape Cod Christmas' TV movie premieres as stars ride in Falmouth's holiday parade

FALMOUTH — It’s like life imitating art imitating life. At Christmas.

That’s roughly how Judy Laster, executive director of the Woods Hole Film Festival, jokingly describes what’s happening this weekend in connection with “A Cape Cod Christmas,” the TV romance filmed in town a year ago.

The movie by John Stimpson, writer/director/editor with Worcester-based H9 Films, will become available Thursday for streaming on the AMC+ service, ready for subscribers to watch anytime through Jan. 15.

The story about siblings gathering in Falmouth for one last Christmas before they sell the family vacation home, and one sister rekindling love with a local artist, will also be shown in two sold-out Woods Hole screenings this weekend to benefit the film festival. Stimpson will be on hand to talk about the movie, as will stars Katie Leclerc and Brent Bailey.

And because the screenings ended up coinciding with the town’s Holidays by the Sea celebration, the Falmouth Chamber of Commerce invited the movie stars to ride in Sunday’s 58th annual Falmouth Christmas Parade.

That parade, known as the largest in southeast New England, wends its way down the same Main Street where many of the actors’ movie scenes took place, among businesses that had decorated early last year for filming purposes.

This time, the two actors will be celebrating Falmouth's Christmas festivities for real.

"We're glad they're a part of it," said Michael Kasparian, chamber president and CEO, about asking the actors to join the parade. "We've very excited."

Stimpson couldn’t be more delighted that it all worked out this way. The film had been intended as an homage to the town that has figured so prominently in his life.

“I've spent so many years in that area and … we spend summers down there and it's such a special place for me,” Stimpson said of Falmouth. “It's a community that’s just such a piece of me, and the place means so much to me that I wanted to show it off in a holiday kind of way.”

On scene last year: TV Christmas romance films in Falmouth

Stimpson met his wife, Carolyn Crowley, in 1979 when both were working at a restaurant previously on the site of Bucatino Restaurant and Wine Bar in North Falmouth. The positive outcome when their family was faced with deciding whether to sell her family’s beloved vacation home inspired his screenplay for “A Cape Cod Christmas.”

A holiday industry

Small-screen Christmas movies have become big business in recent years, propelling frontrunner Hallmark Channel to become the most-watched entertainment cable channel among women 18 and older in the fourth quarter of the year for seven years in a row, according to statistics from that channel.

Lifetime and AMC are among the other cable channels and streaming services that draw in the huge holiday-season audience with classic fare and new original Christmas-romance content every year.

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Stimpson is a veteran of making seven TV Christmas movies, including 2019’s Worcester-filmed “Christmas a la Mode” that aired on Lifetime. That film also starred Leclerc (star of TV’s “Switched at Birth” series), and was also made with Stimpson’s longtime producing partner Matthew Donadio.

“A Cape Cod Christmas,” originally known as “The Cape House,” was bought by AMC after it was filmed entirely on the Upper Cape, largely over two weeks in November 2020 with a film crew returning later to get some snow shots. Strict COVID-19 protocols were in place as cast and crew members stayed at Falmouth’s ShoreWay Acres Inn.

Much of the movie’s setting is at a historical, waterfront 10-bedroom house in Cataumet owned by a friend of Stimpson's. Other scenes were shot on Falmouth’s Main Street, with Eight Cousins Bookstore as a prominent setting (Leclerc play’s a children’s author who does a reading there), and Coffee Obsession, Pickle Jar Kitchen and an art gallery. Decorations from the town green are featured in a Christmas Eve stroll scene.

“The town was super,” Stimpson said of the filming. “Everybody welcomed us with open arms and couldn’t have been nicer.”

The movie also showcases the beauty of the coast through swooping drone shots and peaceful water views, revealing beaches, Nobska Light, a ferry’s passage and more.

“I just wanted to craft a love story that happens down there but also shines a beautiful light on a place in the world that I just think is so special,” Stimpson said last week as he drove to the Cape to work with Laster on technical details for the film festival.

Sell-out movie screenings

People in the area are apparently eager to see the story and Falmouth on film. Laster originally scheduled one screening for 225 people in the reduced-capacity Redfield Auditorium at the Marine Biological Laboratory, and seats sold out within a day. She scheduled a second screening; the same thing happened.

“It’s terrific that there’s so much interest and I really do think that people are gonna love it,” Stimpson said. The movie “does a great job of showing off our little corner of the Cape.”

He and Laster are old friends, with several of his movies having been shown at the Woods Hole festival over the years and at her off-season events. Laster “has been a big supporter of mine, and I've helped out with the festival in the past, and so I just thought (benefit screenings) would be a perfect way to let the community see (the movie),” he said.

For her part, Laster calls Stimpson “one of the most prolific and one of the most generous filmmakers in Massachusetts.”

“He really tries to make sure that what he does is a community effort,” she said, “the community being the people who make films and the people who watch films. I love that.”

Stimpson and Donadio, who lives in Medford and has been a regular Cape visitor for a decade, said last year that it’s important to them to do film work in Massachusetts, which they’re able to do because of state tax incentives. Most cast members of “A Cape Cod Christmas” are in-state actors, including frequent Boston and Cape stage actor Lewis Wheeler, who just finished starring in “Dear Jack, Dear Louise” at Cape Rep Theatre in Brewster.

“We like to shine a bright light on communities in Massachusetts and hope it’s a win-win for them,” Stimpson said last year. It’s also “super rewarding” to create work for local professional actors and “we’re proud that we’ve created jobs.”

And apparently created interest in having movies filmed on Cape Cod, if the sell-out rush for tickets to the weekend screenings is any indication.

“So we're thinking we might do this every year and make (‘A Cape Cod Christmas’) kind of like the ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show’ of Christmas movies,” Laster said with a laugh, referring to the Halloween staple. “And the (‘Cape Cod Christmas’) movie is fun. It's accessible, it's upbeat. It's a real antidote to the pandemic.”

For those without a big-screen ticket for Woods Hole, the six weeks of small-screen streaming availability on AMC+ starts Thursday.

Contact Kathi Scrizzi Driscoll at kdriscoll@capecodonline.com. Follow on Twitter: @KathiSDCCT.

This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: 'Cape Cod Christmas' TV movie debuts, stars in Falmouth holiday parade