It\u2019s no surprise that Bad Santa<\/em> is a movie where the people involved in making it were just as pissy, bitter, and unprofessional as the characters onscreen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Anyone who knows the history of the anti-holiday favorite\u2013where Billy Bob Thornton stars as Willie \u201cTugboat\u201d Soke, an alcoholic, safecracking, department-store Santa who robs the stores he works at with his diminutive, elf suit-wearing partner Marcus (Tony Cox)–knows that the vile, vulgar comedy was heavily retooled before it hit the screen. (The New York Times<\/em> ran an oral history in 2016<\/a> featuring most of the principal players.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n Santa<\/em> was really the foul-mouthed brainchild of executive producers Joel and Ethan Coen, who hired uncredited Looney Tunes: Back in Action<\/em><\/a> writers Glenn Ficarra and John Requa to write a comedy about a Kris Kringle who \u201cdrinks beer and stuff.\u201d As Ficarra told the Times<\/em>, \u201cThey said: \u201cWatch Bad News Bears<\/em>. We want something like that.\u201d (Incidentally, Ficarra and Requa would later write a Bad News Bears<\/em> remake in 2005, directed by Richard Linklater and starring Thornton in the Walter Matthau role.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ficarra and Requa came back with a script for the Coens, who added some dirty jokes and took out the more problematic ones. (\u201cThe Coens cut all our Down syndrome jokes,\u201d Ficarra later said. \u201cThey thought that was going too far. I\u2019m thankful for that.\u201d) The script was picked up by Bob Weinstein\u2019s Dimension Films after Universal passed on it. Weinstein remembered a Universal exec telling him, \u201c\u2018It was the most foul, disgusting, misogynistic, anti-Christmas, anti-children thing we could imagine.\u201d Harvey\u2019s brother had one response: \u201cThat\u2019s exactly why I bought it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Terry Zwigoff, the Crumb<\/em> documentarian who became a critical darling when he brought Daniel Clowes\u2019s graphic novel Ghost World<\/em> (where blossoming starlets Thora Birch and Scarlett Johansson played uber-sarcastic teens) to the big screen in 2001, was just the correct, cynical sumabitch to direct. While some of his casting choices didn\u2019t sit well with the Coens (they wanted Danny Woodburn, who played Michael Richards\u2019s little-person sidekick on Seinfeld<\/em>, for Cox\u2019s role), Zwigoff ultimately came with the cantankerous, comedic goods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If there was ever a Christmas movie for people who hate Christmas movies, Santa<\/em> accurately fits that description. Thornton plays Willie as a boozy, horny fuck-up. (James Gandolfini, Jack Nicholson, and Bill Murray were a few of the heavy hitters who were offered the role.) When he\u2019s not drunkenly asking kids what they want for Christmas, he\u2019s having quickies with any woman he can find. He engages in some dressing-room action with a lady in the big-and-tall section (\u201cYou ain\u2019t gonna shit right for a week,\u201d Willie tells the gal mid-fornication); the store\u2019s manager (John RItter, who died two months before the movie\u2019s release) catches him in the act, and alerts the cowboy-gear wearing head of security (an exuberantly in-his-element Bernie Mac), who blackmails Willie and Marcus for a hefty cut of their booty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Willie finds a fuck buddy in a Jewish bartender (Gilmore Girls<\/em> mom Lauren Graham) who apparently always wanted to smash Santa Claus (she constantly yells \u201cFuck me, Santa!\u201d as she and Thornton get it on). Most of the time, he\u2019s laying low in the home of a pudgy, naive kid (Brett Kelly) who thinks Willie\u2019s really Santa. With the mom dead and the dad in jail, the boy\u2019s only guardian is his clueless, sandwich-making grandma (Cloris Leachman).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Zwigoff followed the Coens\u2019 implicit instructions of keeping Willie in a state of drunken amorality until the final act. However, according to Bob Weinstein, a \u201cdisastrous\u201d test screening had him telling Zwigoff to throw in some scenes that prove Willie does have a heart underneath all that bile and Old Granddad whiskey. Writer\/critic Jeremy Smith, who used to be \u201cMr. Beaks\u201d on Ain\u2019t It Cool News<\/em>, was at that screening and wrote a praise-heavy review<\/a>. \u201cBAD SANTA is *that* relentlessly funny,\u201d he wrote, \u201cbut with a biting sense of satire that could garner a good deal of critical praise, as well.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Needless to say, Zwigoff didn\u2019t want to add anything to his hilariously misanthropic masterpiece. Besides, he was most likely tired of dealing with Thornton, whom he said was an actual, alcoholic mess on-set. (Thornton later admitted<\/a> he got his drink on for certain scenes.) There was a YouTube interview clip that no longer exists (but I heard it!) where Zwigoff says he was contacted by the late filmmaker\/comedy god Harold Ramis, who wanted to cast Thornton in his black-comic, 2005 Christmas film The Ice Harvest<\/em>. He asked Zwigoff what it was like working with Thornton. Zwigoff kept his personal feelings to himself, thinking Thornton might get along better with the more seasoned Ramis. A pissed-off Ramis later hit up Zwigoff and asked him why he didn’t warn him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Anyway, Bob Weinstein hired Todd Phillips, fresh off the successes of his frat-boy comedies Road Trip<\/em> and Old School<\/em> (he would later direct Thornton in 2006\u2019s School for Scoundrels<\/em>, also produced by Dimension) to direct reshoots where Willie warms up to the snot-nosed kid. (You can tell which ones are reshoots because Willie \u2014 and Thornton \u2014 are clearly sober.) These scenes also give Willie a sense of self-awareness. Yeah, he\u2019s a miserable, self-loathing drunk \u2013 but he\u2019s a drunk who knows, especially during his non-blackout moments, that he needs to do better. Thankfully, these scenes stick to the film\u2019s caustic, gleefully low-brow tone, like the slapsticky scene where Willie and Marcus teach the kid how to box, ending with all three of them on the floor after getting hit in the nuts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The $23 million Santa<\/em> came out in November 2003 and raked in $76.5 million. The critics loved it too. (\u201cThis is the lump of coal you’ve been longing for,\u201d raved<\/a> former Time Out New York<\/em> critic Mike D\u2019Angelo, who put Santa<\/em> in his top-ten list that year<\/a>.) As was par for the course with raunchy comedies of that era, an \u201cunrated\u201d version (titled Badder Santa<\/em>) was released on DVD, at the same time as Santa<\/em>\u2019s home video release. It includes alternate takes, extended scenes that amp up the naughtiness (the dressing-room scene goes on a couple beats longer), along with a deleted sequence where Willie steals a car, robs the car owner\u2019s house, and picks up a stripper whom he slides a $5 lottery ticket in her G-string. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Two years later, Miramax released a Zwigoff-approved director\u2019s cut on DVD that got rid of all the Phillips scenes (as well as opening narration from Thornton) and restored the brazenly bitter tone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even though Zwigoff, who went from Santa<\/em> to a little-seen, big-screen version of Art School Confidential<\/em> \u2013 another graphic novel from Clowes \u2013 hasn\u2019t directed a movie since (several years ago, he talked to Vanity Fair<\/em><\/a> about all the high-profile projects he almost made), people still have a soft spot for Santa<\/em>\u2019s R-rated madness. Bad Santa 2 <\/em>dropped in 2016, with the directing duties handed off to Mark Waters (who directed Mean Girls<\/em>, Freaky Friday<\/em>, and the Miramax-released The House of Yes<\/em><\/a>) and bombed hard, making $24.1 million against its $26 million budget.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Personally, I\u2019ll stick with the theatrical version I saw first two decades ago. After I attended a press screening, I told my mother and grandmother, both fans of raucous, raunchy humor, that this was right up their alley and they should go see it. As crazy as it sounds, the smutty shenanigans of Bad Santa<\/em> made me get closer with my family one holiday season. And that\u2019s one yuletide memory I\u2019ll never fuckin\u2019 forget. <\/p>\n\n\n\n All<\/em><\/a> <\/em>three<\/em><\/a> <\/em>versions<\/em><\/a> of <\/em>Bad Santa are available to rent or buy on Apple TV. If you just want to watch the theatrical version, it\u2019s available to stream on <\/em>Paramount+<\/em><\/a> and <\/em>PlutoTV<\/em><\/a>.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/bad-santa2-1024x685.jpeg\")
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