Ah, the holidays. Times for family, cheer, tiny little elves and the glowing nose of a reindeer. Everything about Christmas is wholesome, right? Right? Well, mostly. Billy Bob Thornton’s role in Bad Santa was one of those times in which the naughty received more than a lump of coal for Christmas. Bad Santa was for a segment of the population who likes to turn their coal into a diamond through a heavy stream of fart and sex jokes… And hundreds of f-bombs.
Director Terry Zwigoff was able to join forces with Billy Bob Thornton (after Jack Nicholson and Bill Murray decided that a sex-crazed, drunk Santa wasn’t a role they wanted) to create a masterpiece of awful wrapped in a tight little holiday bow. Thornton, a method actor, really was drunk during filming. Because playing a sloshed Santa is a job for only the truly dedicated.
In fact, Zwigoff had to fend off the studio in order to make Bad Santa as bad as it always supposed to be:
“The studio wanted to mess with it and make it more mainstream and pour some fake sentiment on it for the people that stumble around the mall. Go to Target some day and look at who your target audience is. Look at the people who are out there going to films and you realize you are totally f*cked, you don’t want to do anything these people like. But that director’s cut is exactly the script I got. I wanted to protect the script.”
Of course, there’s plenty of other horrible, horrible things you didn’t know about Bad Santa, so watch the video while you decide whether or not Billy Bob was naughty or nice for digging in his butt. Then thank Saint Nick for the upcoming Bad Santa 2.
