This year, my Christmas present to both you and me is something that feels less like a gift and more like a calling: curating the second MEA Film Fest December 15-22. I’ve poured myself into this project with a kind of giddy, boyhood passion—the same spark I felt at age 24 when I wrote my full screenplay, Fourplay, and secretly imagined a life behind the camera.
What makes this festival so meaningful isn’t just the films. It’s the experience we’re creating. For one extraordinary week at our MEA ranch in Santa Fe, sixty filmmakers, actors, actresses, and storytellers will gather—not just to screen their work, but to engage, reflect, and connect in ways most festivals never allow. It will be immersive, intimate, and profoundly human: a creative village pulsing with talent, curiosity, and conversation. Here’s the schedule for the week. We have just a couple rooms left and the other (more affordable) way to experience the Film Fest is our Commuter Pass.
Curating this lineup has been like assembling a mosaic of soul-stirring narratives, each chosen not simply for artistic merit but for the emotional and philosophical questions they provoke. These are films that stay with you. Films that deepen you. Films that make you grateful to be alive.
And selfishly? It feels like I’m honoring that young man in me who once dreamed of being a filmmaker but took another path—founding companies, writing books, mentoring leaders. He’s still in there, wide-eyed and hungry for beauty, and this festival gives him a seat at the table.
My Christmas gift is the chance to bring you into this dream with me—to spend a week with artists who see the world differently, to celebrate creative courage, and to explore what stories can teach us in midlife and beyond.
I can’t wait to share this unforgettable week with you. And, we’re doing this at a time when we’ve just launched our Spacruzzi in our Juniper retreat center. So, come watch some sizzling films, take a steam bath with your favorite director, and then hop in the hot tub and tool around the pond with me.
-Chip