BTL Radio Show – 12/8/2025 with ADAM VOLERICH talking DRINK AND BE MERRY and CELIA ANISKOVICH discussing THE MERCHANTS OF JOY

Welcome to another week of BEHIND THE LENS and this week it’s all about Christmas as I welcome director/co-cinematographer/co-editor ADAM VOLERICH, talking about his feature directorial debut, DRINK AND BE MERRY, and director CELIA ANISKOVICH, who is filled with the Christmas spirit as she talks about her documentary, THE MERCHANTS OF JOY.

So, let’s get that cinematic sleigh going with Adam Volerich and DRINK AND BE MERRY.

At a struggling New York dive bar in the days leading up to Christmas 2019, Chet, a beleaguered bartender in a state of extended arrested development, must balance caring for his misanthropic, aging regulars – who have nowhere else to go, and rely on him for far more than pouring drinks – with his naive desires to muster some Christmas spirit. As Adam himself describes it – “You know this bar. Maybe you were a regular. Maybe you were just passing through. But you sat, and you sipped all the same. The Bartender treated you well. The Barflies bantered with each other. And the Jukebox was already playing someone else’s song. Wood paneling. Dirty bathrooms. Cheap drinks. No food. Cash Only. It’s a liminal space where the outside world exists only in the memories of those seated on the stools, and they’re all doing their best to forget it. The only window out is a TV tuned to the wrong channel. It’s warm. It’s comfortable. It’s cozy. That’s how you remember it anyway. DRINK AND BE MERRY is set in the days approaching Christmas 2019, a few months before every bar in the country will close its doors indefinitely.” Neither Chet nor his regulars know if this will be their last Christmas together, but for them, every day is just another day, but under the prettiest of holiday wrappings.

In this exclusive conversation, Adam talks about how his real-life experiences at the Assembly Bar in Queens inspired DRINK AND BE MERRY and how screenwriter Leon Winters put pen to paper to capture the lifeblood of a dive bar and its patrons. Set on Christmas Eve Day and Eve, the film was shot at the Elm Witch Pub in New Brunswick and looks extremely festive, as many dive bars do for the holidays. Jefferson White, best known as the beloved character Jimmy on “Yellowstone”, stars as Chet, a bartender with complex emotions, who cares about his regulars while his own life has no clarity or cheer. A strong suit of the film is the visual grammar developed by Adam and co-cinematographer Jack Mannion with some fantastic imagery that ranges from sparkling ECU’s to a B&W dreamlike sequence to night shoots of a post-closing time Chet walking the streets. That visual style emphasizes the contrast between the warm, nostalgic bar and Chet’s harsh, sparse apartment and the darkness and solitude of the night.  Listening to him discuss the visual magic, including the production design, is enlightening.  Adam also has much to say about his collaborative process, most notably between himself, Mannion, and co-editor Dominick Nero, and provides great insight into the challenges of transitioning from shorts to features.

DRINK AND BE MERRY is available now on Digital, Blu-ray, and DVD.

And now we move from the warmth of a cozy, nostalgic bar to the hustle and bustle of New York City with THE MERCHANTS OF JOY and documentarian CELIA ANISKOVICH.

A funny, heartwarming, and grounded documentary that follows five families who sell Christmas trees in New York City each holiday season, THE MERCHANTS OF JOY captures the cast of characters behind the city’s Christmas tree stands– small business owners who bring holiday cheer to the streets each season, along with a healthy dose of friendly (and sometimes not-so-friendly) competition with each other.

As you’ll hear Celia discuss, the project began with an Epic Magazine article about the Christmas Tree trade. Propelled by her own love of Christmas, filming THE MERCHANTS OF JOY was never supposed to feel like an extreme sport, but that’s exactly what it became for her. She dove into the project without a penny of funding—just stubborn optimism and a maxed-out stack of credit cards. With a tiny crew in tow, she found herself not only directing the film, but also driving the crew van, fetching coffee, and generally serving as the production’s one-woman power grid. This is truly lo budget/no budget/micro budget guerrilla filmmaking.

The Christmas-tree business, she quickly learned, runs on a schedule as unforgiving as the playoffs. Merchants have roughly fifteen frantic days to make their year, and Celia had those same fifteen days to capture… well, everything. There was no going back for reshoots. Miss a moment, and it was gone forever.  Logistics were less “organized production” and more “holiday treasure hunt.”  The vendors ping-ponged between multiple lots, drifting from point A to point B with no warning. Celia and her team simply showed up, cameras ready, hoping for the best and bracing for whatever version of chaos arrived. And through it all, they had a sacred rule: never interfere with the merchants’ income. If a vendor barked, “Get the fuck out of my way,” that was their cue to melt into the tinsel.  Because prep time was practically nonexistent, the film evolved into a verité sprint—raw, real, and absolutely unscripted. Celia wanted authenticity, not ornamentation, so the crew danced constantly between capturing magic and getting out of the way before they accidentally disrupted someone’s livelihood.

Winning trust might have been the trickiest job of all, and Celia explains how she had to convince the famously tight-knit tree-selling families that she wasn’t there to expose, mock, or dismantle Christmas as we know it. Big Greg, the real heart of the film, became her ambassador, dialing up the other families from his living room and vouching for her one by one. Bit by bit, walls lowered. Stories flowed. And the emotional honesty captured on camera came from people willing to share their hardest truths with a stranger who proved she genuinely cared.   And yes—there were other seasonal oddities, like trying to acquire Christmas trees in August for interviews. Celia can confirm: off-season evergreens are harder to find than a parking spot on Christmas Eve.

By the time Celia hit the editing room with her team, they were staring down a mountain of footage. The first cut ran six and a half hours—an epic holiday saga few mortals could survive in one sitting. Celia had to make brutal decisions, carving hundreds of hours of material into a tight, 89-minute Christmas movie that balanced character arcs, insider tree-lot lore, and genuinely emotional beats. A finishing editor, Ben Kaplan, eventually swooped in with fresh eyes to help trim the two-hour version into the final warm-hearted package.

As Celia admits, what began as a scrappy passion project grew into something deeply meaningful.  In the end, THE MERCHANTS OF JOY became exactly what Celia hoped for—a real Christmas movie. Messy, F-bomb-filled, heartfelt, and joyously human. Just like the people who sell the trees that bring holiday magic into our living rooms.

THE MERCHANTS OF JOY is now streaming on Prime Video.

FOLLOW US ON X (formerly Twitter):