THIS CHRISTMAS CELEBRATES MOTHERS

This Christmas honors the matriarch of the Whitmore family, the director’s mother.

This Christmas is based on the life of director Preston A. Whitmore II who wrote the script to honor his mother and how important her role is to the family especially during the holidays.

Loretta Divine is the matriarch of the Whitmore family who tries to bring her children together physically and emotionally all under one roof to celebrate the joys of Christmas even though there is a lot of drama going on. Loretta says she wanted to do justice to Preston’s memories which are all in the film.

“We all had marks that we wanted to hit for him because I was supposed to be his mom, his image of what his mom was like for him and Joe Black is a real person to him. And so when you have those marks to hit everything becomes even more important as far as the portrayal of it. And it’s an incredible cast. And it’s a beautiful film. It starts out so beautiful in the grove and you see some of the prettier parts of Los Angeles at the height of the season which was at the beginning of the Christmas holiday so it has so much of that going for it.”

The Whitmore family reunites after four years and no matter how old everyone is, or what they’ve accomplished, Loretta says they all still put their mother on a pedestal.

“She’s a total character and everything focuses back to her in some way which is what family life is about. Everything is about the mom. I want to do this because I want my mom to be proud. I want to be the best, I want my mom. It’s all about doing stuff to impress your mom and that’s what this family is about. All these kids have gone off, they’re on their own, they’re grown, they’ve had their own kids but they still ‘I’m not telling mom I did such and such,’ so you know which is family and that’s what’s wonderful about it.”

This Christmas which came in at number two at the box office over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend is hoping to keep it’s legs throughout December to become a Christmas classic.