Bad Santa (2003) on Netflix
Willie T. Soke and Marcus Skidmore rob department stores each Christmas, Willie as Santa and Marcus as his elf. In Phoenix, a boy named Thurman Merman believes Willie is the real Santa.
- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb7.0/10168,656 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes78%
Trailer
Plot summary
For Willie T. Soke and Marcus Skidmore, the Christmas season means a robbery: Willie takes a seasonal job as a store Santa Claus, Marcus works beside him as an elf, and Marcus's wife Lois drives the getaway car on Christmas Eve. This year the pair is hired at the Saguaro Square Mall in Phoenix, Arizona. Willie, a cursing alcoholic and drug addict, shocks Bob Chipeska, the mall manager, who asks security chief Gin Slagel to look into the pair. Willie meets a bartender named Sue, who has a fetish for Santa Claus, and the two start a sexual relationship. Thurman Merman, a gullible boy bullied by skateboarders, lives with his grandmother and believes Willie truly is Santa Claus.
Cast
- Alexandra Korhanas Girl on Santa's Lap
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Bad Santa (2003)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Universal Pictures originally rejected the script outright, calling it the foulest, most misogynistic and anti-Christmas thing they could imagine, which is part of what convinced Bob Weinstein at Miramax to greenlight it instead.
- The Coens initially tailored roles for specific actors, such as James Gandolfini as Willie, since they had worked with him on The Man Who Wasn't There; Bill Murray, Jack Nicholson and Robert De Niro were also considered for Willie before it went to Billy Bob Thornton, and Mickey Rooney auditioned for Marcus.
- Upon learning of Cox's casting, the Coens told Weinstein that they "hate" him, and according to Zwigoff, Dimension was pining for "a more Disney-like generic cute kid" to play Thurman.
- John Ritter's turn here was his last live-action film appearance before his death on September 11, 2003, and the finished film was dedicated to his memory.
- The Blu-ray edition carried a 27-minute Q&A with Zwigoff and Hoffman moderated by Roger Ebert, recorded in April 2006, under three months before Ebert lost the ability to speak following surgery for salivary gland cancer.
- All of the Saguaro Square Mall scenes were filmed in the northeastern wing of Del Amo Fashion Center in Torrance, particularly the former Montgomery Ward building that played the fictional anchor store Chamberlain's; the wing was vacant then and has since been demolished for an open-air lifestyle center.
- An editorial in The Washington Times called the film an "evil twin" of Miracle on 34th Street and criticized Disney for letting Miramax, then one of its subsidiaries, tarnish Santa Claus this way.
