Bad Santa

When 'Bad Santa' hit theaters in 2003, audiences got a filthy, chaotic Christmas classic. What they didn’t get was the movie director Terry Zwigoff or producers the Coen Brothers intended to make. In this episode, Chris and Lizzie uncover how Bob Weinstein became the real villain of 'Bad Santa'—seizing Zwigoff’s cut, alienating the Coens, and waging war on anyone who tried to protect the film. Plus: why Billy Bob Thornton was nowhere near the first choice to play Willie, and why Zwigoff’s controversial director’s cut is the Christmas miracle you absolutely need this year. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lizzie Bassett?

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• 0:45Lizzie Bassett?

  reality contestant in TV history be able to keep the family happy? And if they're overthrown by the mob, who will step up and become the new Don? Let the games begin. Watch The Mob, now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+ for bundle subscribers. Terms apply.

• 1:04Chris Winterbauer?

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• 2:05Speaker 02

  What went wrong? What went wrong? What went wrong? What went wrong? What went wrong? Writers are striking actors are fighting suits are demanding budget cuts. Someone puts a VCP in all sorts. Kevin Costner's wife just bought a horse. Ken Wilton's drowning Spielberg is drowning. Lynch is compounded. Cole all around you. Maybe might be a psycho and Terrence Malick is staring at a bird. Donna Wager's through her pissing room and the ghost is killing. Grover shot the oven. We're never covering the greatest showman. Toots and Pouting, Yoda, Mom shouting, Tom. Herbert thought cats had an Oscar shot.

• 2:49Chris Winterbauer?

  Hello and welcome back to another episode of What Went Wrong? Your favorite podcast, full stop, that just so happens to be about movies and how it is nearly impossible to make them, let alone a good one, let alone the feel bad, feel good movie of the holiday season. As always, I am Chris Winnebauer, joined by my ever misanthropic co-host, just kidding, that's Billy Bob in this movie, Lizzie Bassett. Lizzie, how are you doing this evening?

• 3:15Lizzie Bassett?

  I'm doing great and I am honestly unbelievably excited to talk about Bad Santa, which is the movie we have, not only is this our first of the Christmas season and we are doing a couple of Christmas episodes, this episode and the next episode. And then for the second half of December, we have a little surprise in store for you all that truly is-

• 3:35Chris Winterbauer?

  We've already told them what it is.

• 3:36Lizzie Bassett?

  That's true, I'm sorry. The Christmas gift of James Cameron. We're gonna do a lot of James Cameron. It's gonna be a very Cameron Christmas for the last two weeks of December.

• 3:44Chris Winterbauer?

  Yep, Aliens and Avatar, what he gives his wife every year for Christmas.

• 3:47Lizzie Bassett?

  No.

• 3:48Chris Winterbauer?

  No, I'm just kidding. Yeah, Lizzie, I am also really excited. I had never in a million of years would have thought that you would have picked Bad Santa. Not that there's anything bad about this movie or that I wouldn't, but I just wouldn't have expected it. So I'm excited and explain yourself.

• 4:03Lizzie Bassett?

  I will explain myself. So you know what? I also would not have expected to pick Bad Santa, but what happened was, you know, we knew we wanted to cover some Christmas movies and so I was looking around, doing some digging, trying to figure out what I wanted to do. And this movie kept popping up and I was just like, I don't know, like what? What are we even going to talk about here?

• 4:22Chris Winterbauer?

  Had you seen it?

• 4:23Lizzie Bassett?

  No.

• 4:23Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, wow.

• 4:24Lizzie Bassett?

  I also realized that I did not know this was a Terry Zwigoff movie at all.

• 4:29Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 4:29Lizzie Bassett?

  For some legitimate reasons. I didn't know that. And so I started to dig into it and it's just, it is honestly one of the more fascinating behind the scenes fights I think that we have ever covered. We get the introduction of the Coen brothers to the podcast. They're going to enter the chat for the first time on this episode.

• 4:50Chris Winterbauer?

  They kind of entered the chat, to be fair, on Evil Dead.

• 4:53Lizzie Bassett?

  That's true.

• 4:53Chris Winterbauer?

  When Sam Raimi was like forcing one of them to carry film for him and making him his bitch. But fair enough.

• 4:59Lizzie Bassett?

  They're going to enter it a little more substantially today. We have a tussle with the other Weinstein, Bob.

• 5:04Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh.

• 5:05Lizzie Bassett?

  But most of all, Chris, this is a really fascinating study in the power of editing, I think. So.

• 5:11Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, that's my question or suspicion. It's long been my suspicion about this movie.

• 5:16Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. So this is my question for you. A, what is the first version of this movie that you saw? And B, what did you watch ahead of today's podcast?

• 5:24Chris Winterbauer?

  I believe I've only ever seen the theatrical cut of Bad Santa. Because I believe that's what's available on streaming. I saw this movie when it came out.

• 5:34Lizzie Bassett?

  So that's the theatrical, yeah.

• 5:36Chris Winterbauer?

  And I believe I saw, the version I watched felt true to what I watched in the theatrical cut.

• 5:43Lizzie Bassett?

  Let me ask you this. In the version that you watched, was there a sequence where Thurman Merman, one of my favorite names ever for a character, learns how to box with Billy Bob and Marcus?

• 5:53Chris Winterbauer?

  Yes.

• 5:53Lizzie Bassett?

  You watched the theatrical cut.

• 5:54Chris Winterbauer?

  That's what I thought. So you had talked to me about the directors versus theatrical and I actually specifically sought out the theatrical and I have a theory that I want to test with you. I have not looked up anything about this movie. I don't know anything about it.

• 6:06Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, great. Oh, you're in for a wild ride.

• 6:08Chris Winterbauer?

  So I first saw Terry Zwigoff, I think many people, Ghost World.

• 6:12Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 6:13Chris Winterbauer?

  Was the introduction for a lot of folks with Terry Zwigoff. But I did watch the Crumb documentary that he made.

• 6:18Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, I watched that for this. I really loved it.

• 6:20Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah. Why? And I watched it a long time ago. My wife's parents are big Terry Zwigoff fans. And

• 6:26Lizzie Bassett?

  I love that. That makes sense.

• 6:27Chris Winterbauer?

  And they like Crumb and they Ghost World. If you were to look at a photo of my wife in middle school, you'd be like, oh yeah, she loves Ghost World. Like she, she totally loves.

• 6:35Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh my God, I want to see.

• 6:36Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah. And they were big Ghost World fans. Anyways, this was long before I ever met my wife, but I had seen Ghost World and I really liked it. And I was into Todd Solons at the time and what I would call like.

• 6:46Lizzie Bassett?

  He's gonna come up.

• 6:46Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, like dirtbag cinema is what I've always called it. I believe it's actually called American eccentric cinema. It includes like Wes Anderson and the more mainstream Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jones relative to these folks. But anyway, I got into this like very anti-traditional type of cinema. And then when Bad Santa came out, I feel like it was marketed as this like raunchy Wedding Crashers style R rated comedy. And then I saw that Terry Zwigoff directed it and I was like, what?

• 7:11Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 7:12Chris Winterbauer?

  It would be like Todd Solons directing Superbad. Like it just didn't make sense to me. And then when I saw the movie, it feels so torn between those two worlds. There are moments of melancholy that feels so Terry Zwigoff. And then there are also these just stupid moments that feel so National Lampoon. And so I always have wondered like, was that just a concession he made? Or as you mentioned, was there a fight? All to say, I actually really like this movie.

• 7:40Lizzie Bassett?

  I do too.

• 7:41Chris Winterbauer?

  It's really funny and it has great performances at the center of it. And it is sweet at the end of the day, although I don't think it's overly saccharine. So yeah, I'm just excited to learn about it because I, uh, I'm a fan.

• 7:53Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, I watched both the theatrical cut and the director's cut for this episode. I unfortunately could not find Bad or Santa, which is the unrated version.

• 8:04Chris Winterbauer?

  Right.

• 8:04Lizzie Bassett?

  I feel okay about that because I did do quite a bit of digging into what is in that version. And my understanding is that it's not a huge departure from the theatrical. It's kind of just what they were doing in the early 2000s when they wanted to, you know, release like a.

• 8:16Chris Winterbauer?

  It's like more nudity and cursing, basically.

• 8:18Lizzie Bassett?

  It's more F bombs. That's it. That's pretty much all that's in there. There might be some extended things, but not a ton.

• 8:23Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 8:24Lizzie Bassett?

  I'm very excited to talk about this. The theatrical cut, I agree with you. It feels confused and I still really enjoyed it.

• 8:32Chris Winterbauer?

  Mm hmm.

• 8:32Lizzie Bassett?

  It's fun. I love Billy Bob Thornton.

• 8:35Chris Winterbauer?

  He's great.

• 8:36Lizzie Bassett?

  Great.

• 8:37Chris Winterbauer?

  He holds this movie together even though he's a total piece of shit.

• 8:40Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, he really does. He is, you know, he manages to convey, he's just disgusting, but he also manages to convey a real sweetness by the end. That's true across both versions, but I will tell you, the timing for me in the theatrical cut is very strange. It feels like they're holding on some takes too long, they're not doing enough in other, like the comedic timing feels a bit off and tonally, it's strange. It's a bit of whiplash. And as you'll learn, there's one director who you haven't mentioned yet, who is involved and is part of the reason why you're, you know, you're mentioning National Lampoons, you're mentioning like, I'm not going to say the movie that he directed immediately after this because it'll give it away. But yeah, I love Terry's Weigoff. Ghost World was my introduction to him. I also really

• 9:25Lizzie Bassett?

  enjoy Art School Confidential.

• 9:27Chris Winterbauer?

  It's such a weird movie.

• 9:28Lizzie Bassett?

  I love it though.

• 9:30Chris Winterbauer?

  No, it's good. And it captures, I have heard it captures the vibe of 80s like art school existence very well.

• 9:36Lizzie Bassett?

  It captures like acting school vibes quite a bit. Like even there's similarities there, which is maybe why I loved it so much.

• 9:43Chris Winterbauer?

  A very weird John Malkovich performance. It's like, it's just a very weird movie. And again, it's like within that, the salons, the milieu of, you know, characters that are, it's this like very difficult type of personality. I actually feel like Paul Giamatti existed in this world a little bit. Like, did you see American Splendor in the early 2000s? Early, even Sideways has a little bit of this vibe.

• 10:06Lizzie Bassett?

  Totally.

• 10:06Chris Winterbauer?

  So I'm with you. I think they're great.

• 10:08Lizzie Bassett?

  I miss this vibe. The thing that strikes me about Terry's Weigoff's films, honestly, including Bad Santa, particularly the director's cut, is that he is not afraid to show characters who are pieces of shit, but you can tell he still cares about them. He still likes them. Like, these people aren't necessarily great. They don't have some big revelatory moment where they change and, you know, for the better and update their lives. They just kind of like go about their days and generally are garbage to people a lot of the time. But they're also like human, very human and doing sometimes really miraculous things. Also a very strange Jim Broadbent performance in Art School Confidential that I always

• 10:50Lizzie Bassett?

  have enjoyed. If you look at Terry's Weigoff's filmography, he's directed five films.

• 10:54Chris Winterbauer?

  Right.

• 10:54Lizzie Bassett?

  We're gonna talk about all of them. We're gonna dive into his backstory quite a bit because I think it's important to understand what happens on Bad Santa. But Bad Santa is just nothing like the other four films. I should clarify, the theatrical cut of Bad Santa is nothing like the other four films. And I will tell you, Chris, I highly recommend you watch the director's cut because not only is it honestly an amazing movie, it is a Terry Zwigoff movie through and through. And it is enormously different. Without changing the plot or the basic structure of the movie, it is a completely different movie. So as a Christmas exercise for everyone, I recommend watch them both.

• 11:34Chris Winterbauer?

  We'll put it on.

• 11:35Lizzie Bassett?

  Back to back.

• 11:36Chris Winterbauer?

  Because it's a big winner in our household, apparently.

• 11:39Lizzie Bassett?

  All right. Well, let's get the info out of the way. So this is directed by, of course, Terry Zwigoff. The budget was around 23 million. I've read anywhere between 18 and 23 million. Executive produced by the Coen Brothers, among others. Written by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, released November 26, 2003. And it is starring Billy Bob Thornton as Willie T. Soaks, Tony Cox as Marcus, Brett Kelly as Thurman Merman, Lauren Graham as Sue.

• 12:08Chris Winterbauer?

  Also, the name reveal comes so late in the movie.

• 12:11Lizzie Bassett?

  That's also one of the funny things. Your name is Thurman Merman? Yes, Bernie Mac as Gin and of course, John Ritter as Bob Chapeska. And I have to say, the last thing I'll say before we get into this, those two, Bernie Mac and John Ritter. Oh, my God.

• 12:28Chris Winterbauer?

  It felt like there was some improvisation going on in fun ways. I can't tell. Some of the dialogue is so funny in this movie. And they're so good when they're talking about the sexuality of man and like.

• 12:39Lizzie Bassett?

  My God, I was crying laughing.

• 12:42Chris Winterbauer?

  God forbid I tell the president what he does. Yeah. I mean, I also just, some of the lines that Thurman has, Grandma, are you spry? Like, there are just so many random funny lines.

• 12:52Lizzie Bassett?

  Also, Chloris Leachman is the grandma. The cast of this is absolutely amazing. She is amazing. But it made me sad that we lost both Bernie Mac and John Ritter. You know, too young for both of them. They are genuinely comedic geniuses and it is on display, particularly for me in the director's cut. They're good in both, but there's just some faces that John Ritter makes that like I can't get out of my head and they make me laugh every time I think about them. The IMDb log line is, "A miserable con man and his partner pose as Santa and his little helper to rob department stores on Christmas Eve, but they run into problems when the con man befriends a troubled kid." Okay, so let's start with Terry Zwigoff. And bear with me, this is gonna be a little bit more background maybe than we'd normally do, but I think it's important.

• 13:37Lizzie Bassett?

  So he was born in 1949 in Appleton, a very small town in Wisconsin, to a family of Jewish dairy farmers. And he told the New York Times that they were probably the only Jewish dairy farmers in the entire state. His earliest memories of Christmas were mostly happy ones. He actually did have a decent amount of experience with the holiday. His uncle had married a non-Jewish woman, so they had a tree and they celebrated. And he really loved it when he was very little. But this was tempered by his experience with his parents. His parents were not religious at all. In fact, he said his mother's religion was fear. And in one of the only photos he has of himself as a child on Christmas, he was opening a flashlight as a present. And he explained that his mother told him it was just in case the lights go out. And he's four.

• 14:21Chris Winterbauer?

  You know what? It's never too early.

• 14:24Lizzie Bassett?

  It is too early.

• 14:25Chris Winterbauer?

  To teach your child about the precarity of the power grid.

• 14:29Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 14:29Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 14:30Lizzie Bassett?

  It might be a little too early. He also actually never visited a mall Santa because his mother was afraid to take him, not because he didn't want to go.

• 14:37Chris Winterbauer?

  Because of the Santa or because of the mall?

• 14:39Lizzie Bassett?

  Unclear. I'm not sure. But there's, clearly there's more to explore with his relationship with his mother that we don't have time for.

• 14:45Chris Winterbauer?

  Can I share just one like parent overstepping, or not parent, this was a grandparent, but putting a little too much fear in a child? My mom will deny this when I was very little, probably eight or nine. And my grandma, my mom's mom was from Puerto Rico, was visiting. And we were all like at the mall. And it was me and like all my, I only have girl cousins and sisters. So I was the only boy and I hated going to the mall and they would all go shopping. And I said, I gotta go to the bathroom. My mom says, you gotta wait so I can take you. And I said, no, like I'm a grown man. I'm eight years old. I can go to the bathroom by myself and. And my grandma, rather than just say no, Tata, as we call her, turns to me, you know, Christopher, listen, and she says, back home, a little boy I heard about went to

• 15:26Chris Winterbauer?

  the bathroom without his parents. And when he was in there, he stayed in there, he didn't come out and they finally sent in someone to find him. And someone had slit his throat from ear to ear. I was just like, what?

• 15:40Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, my God.

• 15:42Chris Winterbauer?

  And she's like, and that's why we always go with our parents. And then that was it. We just moved on. So, anyway.

• 15:46Lizzie Bassett?

  And you never went to the bathroom again?

• 15:48Chris Winterbauer?

  I haven't.

• 15:49Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 15:49Chris Winterbauer?

  I've been holding it for years. Yeah.

• 15:52Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, I don't think Terry's mother went that far, but his family did pretty swiftly move to Chicago, where he experienced a kind of weird, like, half-Christmas, half-Hanukkah situation, probably pretty common, especially in non-religious families, to celebrate both. But it sounds like their heart wasn't really in either. And he also found Chicago to be pretty grim and grimy. In the early 70s, he graduated from University of Wisconsin-Madison, majoring in psychology, and then headed straight for San Francisco. And this is where he started working as a printer for an underground comic book outfit. And that is how he met Robert Crumb. So you mentioned the documentary Crumb a little bit. Are you familiar with Robert Crumb?

• 16:32Chris Winterbauer?

  Just some of, you know, his work. I mean, I guess he's probably most famous for depictions of very, like, large, sturdy, sexualized women and the small men who yearn for them. That's how I would describe Robert Crumb.

• 16:44Lizzie Bassett?

  There's a lot of those. A lot of those. Yeah, he was, you know, a huge artist in the underground comics movement in the 60s. It was the countercultural movement of the comic book world that was really standing up against the repressive comics code authority, which we've actually talked about in a couple of our superhero episodes.

• 17:02Chris Winterbauer?

  Yep.

• 17:02Lizzie Bassett?

  You will recognize his drawings for sure, I think. Some of the most famous are Fritz the Cat.

• 17:06Chris Winterbauer?

  Yep.

• 17:06Lizzie Bassett?

  As Chris pointed out, a lot of them are very sexual. They're very strange.

• 17:10Chris Winterbauer?

  Ralph Bakshi, who came up during our Lord of the Rings episode, was kind of a contemporary of Crumb on the animated side and directed the Fritz the Cat movie, based on the comic's character by Crumb.

• 17:21Lizzie Bassett?

  So Crumb and Zweigoff became very good friends to the point where Zweigoff met Crumb's strange and complicated family. But in 1985, Zweigoff broke into filmmaking with the documentary Louie Bluey about obscure blues musician William Howard Taft Armstrong, AKA Louie Bluey Armstrong. And he had met Louie Bluey while writing an article about him. And he found him so interesting that he was like, someone needs to make a documentary about this guy. And everyone said, no, thank you. Who is this man? And so Zwigoff was like, whatever. All right, fine. I'll take all of my savings and I'll do it myself. And so that's what he did. And this movie really gets his name out there in the documentary space. I mean, it's not like super well known, but a lot of people really liked it.

• 18:02Lizzie Bassett?

  So he kept coming back to Robert Crumb and in particular, Crumb's family. And he thought that they would make an excellent documentary. Crumb had really enjoyed Louie Bluey, so he agreed. So, starting in 1985, Zwigoff spent six years filming what would become Crumb, another three editing it. And a lot of what he captured was pretty disturbing, much of which ends up on screen, particularly in regards to his brother, Charles, who is mentally ill and who very sadly would commit suicide before the film came out. But in 1994, it did come out and it absolutely blew critics away. It won the grand jury prize for documentary at the Sundance Film Festival, Best Nonfiction Film at the National Society of Film Critics. So many critics put it on their list of the best films of the year, but it came at a cost.

• 18:46Lizzie Bassett?

  Zwigoff told NME, quote, "I was averaging an income of about $200 a month and living with back pain so intense that I spent three years with a loaded gun on the pillow next to my bed, trying to get up the nerve to kill myself." That's a taste of Terry Zwigoff's style, I would say.

• 19:03Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah. And I think it's interesting, there's a lot of really interesting documentary work from this period. American movie would come out a few years later, which I've also referenced. It's like the American eccentric documentary is how you might describe it. It's these looks at artists who are viewed as really incredible, but very outside the mainstream. I feel like the movie Junebug kind of does something a little similar with some of their characters.

• 19:28Lizzie Bassett?

  I love that movie.

• 19:29Chris Winterbauer?

  It's a great movie. Like that art dealer who's interested in the folks that, you know, in these rural areas who are doing remarkable, yet probably schizophrenic work.

• 19:38Lizzie Bassett?

  Outsider art, yeah.

• 19:39Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, outsider art, yeah.

• 19:44Lizzie Bassett?

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• 20:26Lizzie Bassett?

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• 21:28Lizzie Bassett?

  The thing that's kind of remarkable about this documentary is, and I think about Swagoff's work in general, he is not afraid of showing The bad and the good.

• 21:38Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, it's a very warts and all approach.

• 21:40Lizzie Bassett?

  Big time. There's stuff in this where you're like, ooh, that was rude or weird or bad or, you know, a little like sexual harassy or, you know, but he asks you to watch it all and take it as a whole. And I think that's what's so remarkable about his work.

• 21:58Chris Winterbauer?

  There is something a bit Grey Gardensy about it, too.

• 22:01Lizzie Bassett?

  Totally. But the thing that he had a lot of trouble with was working with Robert Crumb, who was his close friend, was really difficult. He didn't make it easy on Zwigoff. He kind of refused to play along. When Zwigoff needed him to tell a story he'd already heard or repeat a line to camera, he just wouldn't do it. He'd make fun of Zwigoff. You can hear little bits of this in the documentary where you can tell this guy was just a giant pain in the ass to make this with. And to add insult to injury, considering this movie took almost 10 years to make, it did not get a Best Documentary nomination at the Academy Awards. Neither did Hoop Dreams, by the way, which caused quite a lot of ruckus because everybody agreed those two were some of the best documentaries of the year. This is actually the year the Academy was forced to change the way that

• 22:43Lizzie Bassett?

  documentary nominations work. Little fun fact, Roger Ebert was the one who found out that apparently the way they used to screen documentaries is that everybody had a flashlight in the audience and they could just blink the flashlight when they were done. And if everybody's flashlights were up, or a majority of flashlights were up, they would just turn the movie off. So Hoop Dreams got like 15 minutes and Crumb got like maybe 50 minutes. Like it's

• 23:06Chris Winterbauer?

  It's horrifying.

• 23:07Lizzie Bassett?

  It's really bad, but they don't do that anymore because of this year, actually. So all of these difficulties in terms of making this documentary and also the lack of recognition that it ended up getting, it does end up pushing him towards narrative features. I think mostly he had a lot of difficulties working with non-actors because of the unwillingness to do what he needed them to do. And he was getting a ton of feature scripts thanks to Crumb. And according to Terry, they were all terrible. But then his wife, Melissa Axelrod, gave him a copy of a graphic novel that she really loved, and it was Daniel Klaus's Ghost World.

• 23:39Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 23:39Lizzie Bassett?

  This would, of course, become his real breakout hit, 2001's Ghost World, starring Steve Buscemi, Thora Birch, Scarlett Johansson. It's so good. Honestly, it's probably one of my, I would say, top 20 favorite movies for sure.

• 23:52Chris Winterbauer?

  Certainly coming of age movies, like if I were to just limit it to that category. Yeah, it's great. Great Buscemi performance.

• 23:59Lizzie Bassett?

  So good. So sweet.

• 24:00Chris Winterbauer?

  This was like Trees Lounge. This is a peak indie Buscemi back in the day.

• 24:05Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 24:05Chris Winterbauer?

  Plus Con Air, of course, where he's.

• 24:08Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, also peak indie Buscemi. Yes.

• 24:13Lizzie Bassett?

  So this time, though, he did get an Oscar nomination alongside Daniel Klaus for adapted screenplay.

• 24:18Chris Winterbauer?

  Right.

• 24:18Lizzie Bassett?

  A little fun fact, later, when Zwigoff received the script for Juno to consider for directing, he turned it down because he felt like it was just a gross imitation of Ghost World.

• 24:29Chris Winterbauer?

  It has, I can see the inspiration, the vibes.

• 24:32Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 24:32Chris Winterbauer?

  You know what I mean? I think because Jason Reitman is, who's a great director, but he's so much more of a traditional director than a Zwigoff. It doesn't feel like Ghost World that much to me in its final, you know, iteration.

• 24:43Lizzie Bassett?

  Agree. So Zwigoff was officially a success, but he refused to play along with corporate America over and over again.

• 24:51Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 24:52Lizzie Bassett?

  He's not a fan.

• 24:55Chris Winterbauer?

  This guy's like, I survived on $200 a month with a loaded gun next to my pillow.

• 24:59Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 25:00Chris Winterbauer?

  There's nothing you can offer me.

• 25:01Lizzie Bassett?

  That's exactly right.

• 25:02Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 25:03Lizzie Bassett?

  And you mentioned Todd Solons. He famously turned down a Gap billboard campaign that would have paid $10,000 or more alongside, quote, "hip, young filmmakers like Todd Solons and Spike Jones." And he did so because he said, quote, "I'm sure they never even saw the film. If they saw that film, it'd be clear to any thinking person, this is the last guy who's going to endorse the Gap. It's like six years of my life went into making some big statement against like corporate consumers and sweeping the planet and ruining the earth. I said I wasn't interested. I hate having my picture taken and to be on a billboard, I can't imagine anything more embarrassing."

• 25:36Chris Winterbauer?

  But I also find it hilarious that Gap wants to put on a billboard Todd Solons, who I guess maybe this is before Happiness, but his movie, one of the main plot points is the pain between a father and son because the father will molest the boy's friend but won't molest the son.

• 25:50Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, my God.

• 25:51Chris Winterbauer?

  Like, this is Todd Solons.

• 25:53Lizzie Bassett?

  I don't think they watched any of the movies.

• 25:54Chris Winterbauer?

  I don't think they did. The movie ends with the son masturbating successfully for the first time in the last movie of the film, is him happily turning to his mom and saying, "I came." Like, that's the end of Happiness.

• 26:04Lizzie Bassett?

  And that's a Gap ad.

• 26:07Chris Winterbauer?

  "I came in my Gap pants."

• 26:12Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, all right. Well, sometime in 2002, Zwigoff was sent two different and yet similar scripts. And one was Bad Santa.

• 26:21Chris Winterbauer?

  Okay.

• 26:21Lizzie Bassett?

  And the other was another very different Christmas movie that would also make it to the screen very close to the same time as Bad Santa. Any guesses?

• 26:29Chris Winterbauer?

  2003, 2004.

• 26:31Lizzie Bassett?

  Both were 2003. They were literally three weeks apart in terms of their release, and they both involve mall Santas.

• 26:39Chris Winterbauer?

  They both involve mall Santas. It's not The Family Stone. That was before this. I love The Family Stone.

• 26:46Lizzie Bassett?

  It's a big one.

• 26:46Chris Winterbauer?

  It's a big, oh my, I don't know, Jingle All the Way, that was too early. I don't know. What is it? Tell me. I'm, I'm blowing it.

• 26:52Lizzie Bassett?

  Elf.

• 26:53Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, that's right. I forgot he was offered Elf.

• 26:57Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 26:58Chris Winterbauer?

  I actually now remember that because it, again, was so insane.

• 27:02Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 27:02Chris Winterbauer?

  But also, that sounds kind of great.

• 27:04Lizzie Bassett?

  Can you imagine a Terry Zwigoff elf? I think it would have been amazing. But he hated it.

• 27:09Chris Winterbauer?

  Would not have cast Will Ferrell. Like, you couldn't.

• 27:11Lizzie Bassett?

  No. And Will Ferrell was attached, and he thought Will Ferrell was super funny. And his wife was like, "You should do this. This is gonna make millions of dollars." And he said, "Absolutely not." He did not find it funny at all. He didn't relate to any of the characters. He felt that it was full of contrived silliness, is what he said.

• 27:27Chris Winterbauer?

  Which it is. I still really like Elf.

• 27:29Lizzie Bassett?

  I love Elf.

• 27:30Chris Winterbauer?

  Like Elf is great.

• 27:31Lizzie Bassett?

  It's not his thing.

• 27:32Chris Winterbauer?

  It's not his thing at all. Maybe if James Caan had been the elf, then, right? Like, raging alcoholic.

• 27:41Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, terrifying.

• 27:43Chris Winterbauer?

  Then it works.

• 27:43Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, on the other hand, he loved Bad Santa. So let's talk about the original script. Writing partners Glenn Ficarra and John Requa had been working as a writing team for Angry Beavers on Nickelodeon.

• 27:55Chris Winterbauer?

  I love Angry Beavers. This was like the peak weirdness. CatDog.

• 28:00Lizzie Bassett?

  CatDog, Angry Beavers, Rocco's Modern Life.

• 28:03Chris Winterbauer?

  Then there was obviously Ren and Stimpy, early SpongeBob.

• 28:05Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, yeah. Very strange.

• 28:06Chris Winterbauer?

  Very strange.

• 28:07Lizzie Bassett?

  Excellent, all around. So in 2001, these guys broke out with the movie Cats and Dogs. I don't know if you remember this. It's about literal cats and dogs in a war with each other.

• 28:16Chris Winterbauer?

  Son theaters.

• 28:17Lizzie Bassett?

  I'm sure I did too. And at some point in the early aughts, they met the Coen Brothers. And as any young writing duo would, they shot their shot.

• 28:24Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, of course.

• 28:25Lizzie Bassett?

  They were like, we want to write a movie for you two to direct. And the Coen Brothers were like, bah, no. They said, we only direct scripts that we have written, but they had an idea, Chris, that they'd been kicking around for a while. And they said, why don't you guys write this and we'll produce it? So Glenn and John are like, great, what is it? And Joel and Ethan Coen tell them, quote, "We have this idea for a movie we want you to write. It's about a bad Santa. He drinks beer and stuff."

• 28:52Lizzie Bassett?

  That's it.

• 28:53Chris Winterbauer?

  I would have assumed that their contribution actually would have been the small town caper crime element of it.

• 28:58Lizzie Bassett?

  No.

• 28:59Chris Winterbauer?

  That's awesome.

• 28:59Lizzie Bassett?

  This was the entire log line.

• 29:01Chris Winterbauer?

  I love how they're like, he drinks a lot of beer.

• 29:03Lizzie Bassett?

  They're like, he's bad.

• 29:04Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 29:04Lizzie Bassett?

  He's a bad Santa. And these guys are like, okay, sure, you got it. They did say that they wanted something similar to the Bad News Bears, but they had one major requirement. It needs to be a redemption story, but the redemption must not come until the very end. This is important. Glenn and John agreed to take on the project. They decided to turn it into a dark comedy with, as you pointed out, a bit of a crime caper involved. And they still very much wrote it with the hope that the Coens would break their rule and direct. But when they read the final script, they obviously still declined to direct it. They did, however, do a pretty substantial writing pass on the screenplay. This allegedly added in a bunch more jokes, cut out anything that they felt crossed a line, including apparently a bunch of Down Syndrome jokes that I'm very glad did not wind up in the final cut here.

• 29:47Chris Winterbauer?

  There is still one.

• 29:48Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, there is. Those are rough.

• 29:51Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, the M word. And well, he uses a lot of R words in this movie, obviously.

• 29:55Lizzie Bassett?

  As everyone did in the early 2000s, yes.

• 29:57Chris Winterbauer?

  No, no, I know.

• 29:58Lizzie Bassett?

  Honestly, is like the least funny part of this movie for sure, but there were way more that were cut. So they also asked John and Glenn to write it specifically for an actor that they had just worked with, who they thought would be perfect for the lead. Do you know this?

• 30:10Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, no, I assumed it was the man who wasn't there.

• 30:13Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, it is the man who wasn't there. That is the movie they had just done.

• 30:17Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, but they're writing it for Gandolfini?

• 30:19Lizzie Bassett?

  That's right, James Gandolfini.

• 30:20Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, who makes more sense as a Santa physically?

• 30:23Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 30:23Chris Winterbauer?

  But the Billy Bob voiceover, like, so the man who wasn't there is all Billy Bob voiceover, right? And it's so good. I actually really love that movie. And also Scarlett Johansson to connect to Ghost World. But anyway, I always assumed, oh, they must have written it for him because he has that wonderful laconic drawl that they're gonna, you know, use, but that's so interesting.

• 30:42Lizzie Bassett?

  No, James Gandolfini. So the rhythm of the dialogue was written for James Gandolfini, which is very different than, obviously, the way that Billy Bob speaks. And there is some debate as to how much the Coens changed in the script. Zwigoff says 90% of what's in the film is John and Glenn. Others have said the Coens have more input than that. It's very hard to tell, especially because of how chopped up this thing ends up being in the final product. But they're great writers, so I don't doubt that a lot of it is them. So since the Coens weren't going to direct it, they start sending the script around town, and that's where it landed with Terry Zwigoff's agent. His agent sent in the script with a note saying, quote, "You're gonna love this, but it'll never get made, so don't get your hopes up." But Zwigoff did indeed love the script, especially the dialogue.

• 31:24Lizzie Bassett?

  He really loved the precision and the crassness, and one line in particular won him over. It's one of Bernie Mac's, and it's "Sweet Jews for Jesus." He loved it.

• 31:34Chris Winterbauer?

  Bernie Mac has some good lines in this movie.

• 31:36Lizzie Bassett?

  He's got some amazing lines that I cannot repeat here because I would be canceled.

• 31:41Chris Winterbauer?

  Also, "Your soul is dogshit" is one of my favorite lines that...

• 31:46Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. I mean, Tony Cox is also so funny in this.

• 31:49Chris Winterbauer?

  "Every once in a while, she gets up and plays soccer with her tits" is another great line. Also, "This is Pricks Fix."

• 31:58Lizzie Bassett?

  That sequence is way funnier in the director's cut, I will tell you. There's a lead up to Pricks Fix that makes it make more sense. So Zwigoff figured, you know what, I've been sent a bunch of clinkers. It's not gonna get better than this. Plus, he's gonna get to work with the Coen Brothers producing. He's like, I can learn a ton from them. This seems like, you know, a win-win. So with him on board, they start shopping it around to a bunch of studios, all of whom said... Absolutely no.

• 32:21Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 32:21Lizzie Bassett?

  In fact, Universal told one producer exactly why they'd passed on the script. They said, quote, "It was the foulest, disgusting, misogynistic, anti-Christmas, anti-children thing we could imagine," which is exactly why that producer they were talking to greenlit it. And unfortunately for us all, that producer was Bob Weinstein. He snatched it up from Miramax's genre-focused subdivision dimension films. We mentioned them briefly, I think, with The Crow. So a few months later, Zwigoff received a call from Bob saying Harvey had seen Ghost World, loved it, wanted to work with Zwigoff, so they were off to the races. This is a little weird, by the way. I don't know why he would say my brother has seen Ghost World, because Bob is the one who is involved in this. Harvey isn't, isn't really. But anyway.

• 33:01Chris Winterbauer?

  Maybe Harvey had the bigger name at the time.

• 33:04Lizzie Bassett?

  Maybe, yeah.

• 33:04Chris Winterbauer?

  I don't know.

• 33:05Lizzie Bassett?

  Who knows? So this is gonna go great, right?

• 33:08Chris Winterbauer?

  Hundred percent. From what we learned with Peter Jackson's experience with Bob on Lord of the Rings.

• 33:14Lizzie Bassett?

  He's gonna come up.

• 33:15Chris Winterbauer?

  Great notes, easygoing guy, like, keep it loose.

• 33:20Lizzie Bassett?

  Chill dude.

• 33:21Chris Winterbauer?

  Chill dude. Scott Rudin, another really chill guy. Just a bunch of these chill guys at the time.

• 33:27Lizzie Bassett?

  So, once officially on board, Zwigoff did make some adjustments to the script. He removed a bunch of flashbacks that were depicting Willie as a child with his father.

• 33:35Chris Winterbauer?

  Good idea, as we just discussed on Frankenstein.

• 33:40Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, you don't need it. All of his tweaks are really good. He rewrote the sequence in which Bernie Mac's character is killed, making it way more violent. By the way, what do you remember about that sequence from the theatrical cut?

• 33:50Chris Winterbauer?

  I, I don't know he's dead until they say he's dead.

• 33:53Lizzie Bassett?

  Exactly.

• 33:54Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, I think they broke his legs.

• 33:56Lizzie Bassett?

  Let me tell you this, you know he's dead in the director's cut, big time. They run over his head with the car.

• 34:02Chris Winterbauer?

  Right.

• 34:02Lizzie Bassett?

  Anyway, so he toned down a lot of elements of redemption throughout the story, and he added the scene where Willie yells at the woman during his lunch break, which was inspired by David Sedaris's The Santa Land Diaries, which was a great moment. He then showed it to his wife, who helped to inject some warmth into it. And then he's got a script that everybody's really very happy with. Now, we know that they wrote the part with Gandolfini in mind and he was the Coens' first choice. He didn't work out. I could not figure out why, but again, he was in the midst of shooting Sopranos at this time. It might've been really difficult to schedule things.

• 34:32Chris Winterbauer?

  I think Sopranos, it's difficult to schedule things. I think he was in a tough mental spot, as we later learned with his work on The Sopranos.

• 34:41Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 34:41Chris Winterbauer?

  And he was in some pretty difficult negotiations with HBO throughout The Sopranos. I believe we're in, they basically said, we're going to give you a bunch of money to not do other things.

• 34:51Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, interesting.

• 34:53Chris Winterbauer?

  That was more on the television side, so that may not have had anything to do with this. But his shooting windows were limited, I know.

• 34:59Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, but he didn't say anything about this. I don't think it was like a not wanting to work with them, but he did not work out. So Jack Nicholson was also considered, but reportedly was already committed to Some Things Gotta Give. So that wasn't going to work. Robert De Niro was on board to do this, but he also fell through.

• 35:15Chris Winterbauer?

  Robert De Niro was like, could he be a bad grandpa? Could we do that?

• 35:18Lizzie Bassett?

  And they're like, actually, yes.

• 35:19Chris Winterbauer?

  In 20 years?

• 35:20Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, but finally, there was one name that everyone agreed would be absolutely perfect.

• 35:25Chris Winterbauer?

  It was not Billy Bob Thornton?

• 35:26Lizzie Bassett?

  No, dude, Billy Bob's the bottom of the barrel choice on this, and I don't know why. No one thinks of him.

• 35:33Chris Winterbauer?

  Who was it?

• 35:34Lizzie Bassett?

  It's another Bill. It's Bill Murray.

• 35:36Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, that, this is what, within two years of Lost in Translation?

• 35:40Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 35:40Chris Winterbauer?

  Probably Broken Flowers is going to be somewhere around this time. He's kind of the ultimate misanthrope.

• 35:45Lizzie Bassett?

  Sure.

• 35:45Chris Winterbauer?

  He's the OG.

• 35:46Lizzie Bassett?

  Of course.

• 35:46Chris Winterbauer?

  I mean, Nicholson would have been really good, too.

• 35:48Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, well, look, Zwigoff's very excited about this, I think for all the reasons you just said. But he was told, forget about it. He's never going to return your phone call because famously, he had fired his agents in 2000, reportedly because they called him too much.

• 36:01Chris Winterbauer?

  And you had to like leave him a weird voicemail to like get ahold of him.

• 36:04Lizzie Bassett?

  You had to leave him a voicemail, yes, and he'd never checked the messages.

• 36:07Chris Winterbauer?

  No.

• 36:07Lizzie Bassett?

  So it was impossible to get ahold of him. But much to Zwigoff's shock, Murray responded within a week and said, just tell me the time and place and I'll show up.

• 36:17Chris Winterbauer?

  Wow.

• 36:18Lizzie Bassett?

  So by February of 2002, he was supposed to be in final contract negotiations. But when the time came to sign the contract, he just disappeared.

• 36:27Chris Winterbauer?

  This has happened a number of times. Yeah.

• 36:31Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. So Zwigoff told the New York Times, it got to the point where I left a couple of messages saying, if you want to do this thing, great. And if you don't, just let me know because I have to move on. But he just disappeared. I can't blame him. If I had that kind of money, I'd be doing the same thing. I'm just not in the mood today. Sorry, find somebody else. No, Terry, you would not be doing the same thing. This is a dick move. You can respond to somebody who is trying to make a movie that would revolve entirely around you.

• 36:56Chris Winterbauer?

  But even Ghostbusters, I remember there was a lot of concern.

• 36:59Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, yeah.

• 36:59Chris Winterbauer?

  Was he going to show up to shoot that movie?

• 37:02Lizzie Bassett?

  So finally fed up with waiting for Bill Murray, the script made its way.

• 37:05Chris Winterbauer?

  Waiting for Bill Murray.

• 37:07Lizzie Bassett?

  The last choice, Billy Bob Thornton. And he, as you pointed out, had also just worked with the Coen Brothers on The Man Who Wasn't There. And he loved collaborating with them. Why would, you could have gone to him eight people ago. And this was actually not his only Christmas movie this year. You may remember, he also plays the gross American president in Love Actually.

• 37:26Chris Winterbauer?

  That's right, he does.

• 37:27Lizzie Bassett?

  Must have been really feeling the Christmas spirit this year.

• 37:30Chris Winterbauer?

  Midice humbly suggests that of all the actors mentioned, I would argue, for whatever reason, Thornton has the weird sexual energy necessary to really bring this role to life.

• 37:43Lizzie Bassett?

  100%. He is the only one of everyone we just mentioned that I think could and did pull this off.

• 37:49Chris Winterbauer?

  Can I, it's, this is very crass. That guy fucks. That is what I think when I see Billy Bob Thornton, especially in this role.

• 37:57Lizzie Bassett?

  Listen, no one can explain it, but everyone agrees with you. It's just true. So his manager called him and said, wait until you read the script. I've never seen anything like it. And initially Billy Bob thought it sounded like a career ender. But once he finished reading it, he couldn't stop laughing. And so finally, they had found their Willie T soak. They didn't even bother to update the dialogue for poor Billy Bob. So he's reading like James Gandolfini New York dialogue in a

• 38:22Chris Winterbauer?

  It's great.

• 38:23Lizzie Bassett?

  Southern accent.

• 38:25Chris Winterbauer?

  Also, the fact that he is so damn thin just makes it even funnier.

• 38:29Lizzie Bassett?

  It's true. He looks so wrong. And you're right, it is amazing.

• 38:32Chris Winterbauer?

  So the entire thing hinges on the fact that he works with a little person. That's what's also so funny about it.

• 38:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 38:37Chris Winterbauer?

  Tony Cox's character is so essential then as a result, right? But Billy Bob is so essential to him because he has the ability to get into the safe. It actually makes it a greatly dependent relationship.

• 38:48Lizzie Bassett?

  It works really well. And I also, you end up having a lot of sympathy for Tony Cox's character, Marcus, because Billy Bob is such a mess that he is dragging around and completely supporting.

• 38:58Chris Winterbauer?

  A nightmare.

• 38:59Lizzie Bassett?

  A total nightmare. So casting Thurman Merman proved even more difficult. Now, to hear Terry Zwigoff tell it, it was the studio who was pushing for a more Disney-esque child actor. It's just a more generically cute kid. To quote Bob Weinstein in the Irish Times, quote, "Terry can drop dead. That's not how it happened. The Coens wanted Angus T. Jones from Two and a Half Men."

• 39:20Chris Winterbauer?

  That makes a lot of sense.

• 39:21Lizzie Bassett?

  Terry, Billy Bob, and I all said, "Are you kidding?" Because they had all fallen in love with eight-year-old Vancouver-based Brett Kelly, who had a couple of very small credits to his name, but this was not a Hollywood kid. This is very much like a real kid. And he's so cute and weird, and I love him, and I'm so glad that they did not go with Angus T. Jones. So nothing against him, but like Zwigoff pushed hard for Kelly and got him against the Coens' wishes. Although I do want to say, all of the oral histories and commentary around this movie, the Coens declined to be involved in. So anything you're hearing is coming from Billy Bob Thornton, Zwigoff, and Weinstein.

• 40:01Chris Winterbauer?

  I totally buy that Zwigoff wanted Kelly.

• 40:03Lizzie Bassett?

  I don't buy that Weinstein did, but anyway.

• 40:05Chris Winterbauer?

  That's my point. I think Weinstein picks the winner after the fact.

• 40:07Lizzie Bassett?

  A hundred percent.

• 40:08Chris Winterbauer?

  Potentially. It's also worth mentioning, you know, I think Salons very famously broke ground for just normal-looking kids with, in a lot of, I mean, there's obviously like Gummo and kids and the Harmony Corinne stuff, but with Welcome to the Dollhouse and Heather Materazzo, like, that was such a great example of casting someone who doesn't look like your traditional, you know, young Disney princess. And she's so good in that movie. Like, that movie works because of her.

• 40:32Lizzie Bassett?

  I think it works really well here as well. But Chris, probably the most difficult part to cast in the entire movie was Marcus. Peter Dinklage auditioned, but was deemed not funny enough by Zwigoff, which I don't, he's very funny, so I don't know how that went, but...

• 40:47Chris Winterbauer?

  But maybe not at that point in his life. He would have been a very young man.

• 40:50Lizzie Bassett?

  He's an elf and he's amazingly funny an elf.

• 40:53Chris Winterbauer?

  I guess that's true.

• 40:54Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, it's fine. He wound up in, Peter Dinklage did fine.

• 40:58Chris Winterbauer?

  I was thinking of the station agent, but yeah, you're right. Elf, he was, that was the same year. I'm an idiot. Yeah, he's very funny.

• 41:03Lizzie Bassett?

  You're a big idiot. Get out of here. But anyway, you know, look, parts for little people were and still are very hard to come by. So the number of people who auditioned for this role was just astronomical. But perhaps the most shocking actor to audition for the role was.

• 41:19Chris Winterbauer?

  Gary Oldman, fresh off of Tiptoe. I'm just kidding.

• 41:22Lizzie Bassett?

  It's honestly weirder than that.

• 41:24Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, okay.

• 41:25Lizzie Bassett?

  It's Mickey Rooney.

• 41:30Chris Winterbauer?

  There's a movie there.

• 41:32Chris Winterbauer?

  I don't know if it's good.

• 41:33Lizzie Bassett?

  I don't know if I want to watch it.

• 41:40Lizzie Bassett?

  Mickey Rooney, at 82 years old and five feet, two inches tall, would have been a weird choice for a lot of reasons.

• 41:48Chris Winterbauer?

  I thought you were going to say DeVito. That's who I was thinking would be.

• 41:52Lizzie Bassett?

  That makes way more sense than 82 year old Mickey Rooney, but he really wanted it.

• 41:59Chris Winterbauer?

  Hey, it's a great script.

• 42:00Lizzie Bassett?

  It is a great script.

• 42:01Chris Winterbauer?

  Shoot your shot.

• 42:02Lizzie Bassett?

  They had a problem though. I'll read you this quote from John Requa in a Collider interview. The whole thing is that Mickey Rooney, he'd be doing the scenes and you know, the profanity was at the time, the most F words in any movie. And Mickey Rooney would be doing the scene and the time would come for him to say fuck. He would just go and pause and then he would go on and then another like a shit. And he paused and he would go on and then Terry said to him, uh, Mickey, why aren't you saying the dialogue? And he goes, there's a lady present. Mickey, there might be some women present when you film the scenes.

• 42:36Chris Winterbauer?

  This is how Mickey made sure women didn't get hired in Hollywood.

• 42:39Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, like what are the sets you're working on that there's zero women involved? Anyway, needless to say, they had to let Mickey down easy.

• 42:46Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, that's tough. It's just not the right fit. Not the right fit.

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• 43:32Lizzie Bassett?

  One actor did immediately impress Terry Zwigoff, and that was Tony Cox. He had not broken out in any big roles yet. He had just been in Me, Myself and Irene, opposite Jim Carrey. But he really was looking for something bigger, because as we discussed, there are not a lot of roles for little people. So he went all out for this audition. And Alabama-born Cox would later tell CBS, "In 23 years working as an actor at that time, I had never seen a role like that. Those are the roles you dream of." And it went great. Terry Zwigoff was laughing his ass off during the audition. Zwigoff told Cox afterwards, though, "I have good news and bad news. The good news is, that was a great reading. The bad news is, this role wasn't written for an African-American." Feels like a weird... You don't need to tell him that.

• 44:17Lizzie Bassett?

  Also, just rewrite it. Which, to his credit, Tony Cox told the Irish Times, "My heart sank. I thought, well, why did you call me in? But he said, I have to rethink this. And all I could do was hope that that was true." So, not a great interaction. But, in Terry Zwigoff's defense, at least his response was, "This isn't how this character is written. I don't want to just slot you into a character and expect you to do it without any changes. I actually want it rewritten for you."

• 44:42Chris Winterbauer?

  And Billy Bob's like, could I get some of that? And he says, shut up, Billy. Go away.

• 44:45Lizzie Bassett?

  And they're like, no, absolutely not. Last choice goes to them. But Zwigoff was up against a bigger hurdle than just tweaking the character, which again, to be clear, he was not opposed to, which is that the Coen brothers really hated Tony Cox for the part. And again, I have to say, their commentary is not available on this, so take all of this with a grain of salt. But apparently they wanted Danny Woodburn, best known for Seinfeld at the time. And now this is according to Zwigoff in an interview with the Playlist in 2012. Quote, "They said they couldn't see the guy being black. I said, I don't see the guy being black. I think the fact of him being three foot six is the overriding characteristic. I don't think it matters. I just think this guy is really funny in the part and they thought that would ruin the film."

• 45:27Chris Winterbauer?

  Weird.

• 45:28Lizzie Bassett?

  Really weird. I looked into this a lot. He's not the only one involved in this who said that this was the issue here. So I don't know. It's a strange thing to push back on in this character. Terry Zwigoff spelled it out pretty much perfectly there. Like, the important thing is that he's a little person.

• 45:46Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, that's the whole plot mechanism.

• 45:48Lizzie Bassett?

  Right.

• 45:49Chris Winterbauer?

  Right. Is the elf element to it.

• 45:51Lizzie Bassett?

  Right. I don't know why it would matter at all that he's black. But Terry Zwigoff does not give up. And finally, the Coens relented. And according to Terry, they told him, well, you're the one who has to direct it. So good luck. That is what it is. Now, because we can't do an episode involving the Weinsteins without Harvey's horrible troll paws getting into everything, we also have to talk about the role of Sue, because it almost went to Mira Sorvino.

• 46:18Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh.

• 46:19Lizzie Bassett?

  Terry Zwigoff really wanted to cast her, but in a now deleted tweet from 2017, here's what he said happened. Quote, "I was interested in casting Mira Sorvino in Bad Santa, but every time I mentioned her over the phone to the Weinsteins," please note that is plural, "I'd hear a click." What type of person just hangs up on you like that? I guess we all know what type of person now. He ended the tweet with, "I'm really sorry, Mira." Harvey's lawyer would later claim, "This was Bob's project through Dimension Films. Harvey had nothing to do with it." But that's complete bullshit, especially because we know from Peter Jackson that both Weinstein steered him away from Mira Sorvino and Ashley Judd. It's pretty hard to believe, obviously, I wasn't in the room, but that Harvey Weinstein would not be involved in these kinds of decisions.

• 47:03Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, and I mean, again, all Lauren Graham, wonderful actress.

• 47:07Lizzie Bassett?

  She's great.

• 47:08Chris Winterbauer?

  Big Gilmore Girls fans over here, my wife, me through my wife. There is a, especially at the time, I think, kind of like gravitas to Mira Sorvino that she's a movie star, right?

• 47:19Lizzie Bassett?

  Right.

• 47:19Chris Winterbauer?

  Lauren Graham is a TV star and she's a movie star. And Billy Bob was kind of a movie star, but there are so many reasons why Mira would be so good in this. A, she can do anything, right? She'd proven she could do.

• 47:30Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, she's an amazing actor.

• 47:32Chris Winterbauer?

  Comedy, drama, everything. But B, I think she has that pedigree. She's an Oscar winner at that point in time.

• 47:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. Well, as you said, the role went to Gilmore Girls Lauren Graham, who I do think is really great in this part.

• 47:43Chris Winterbauer?

  She's really fun.

• 47:43Lizzie Bassett?

  And I will tell you, in the director's cut, her character is one of the ones that is extremely better served by that edit. It makes way more sense. She's not, she's pretty nonsensical in the theatrical one.

• 47:56Chris Winterbauer?

  She's just a girl with a Santa fetish.

• 47:58Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, and like, that's not lost in this one, but there, just the way that it's edited, the takes of her that he kept in, it's a better performance in the director's cut. And obviously, that's nothing to do with her. That has to do with how they edited it. Reportedly, her audition was the fuck me Santa scene, and she had to hump a chair. Now, on the one hand, gross. On the other hand, I kind of understand needing to see that the actors can do that kind of physical comedy and not shy away from it. And she didn't. She also really loved being in the movie, loved Billy Bob, said that he was delightful. Pretty much everybody, maybe with the exception of Teri Zwigoff, really liked Billy Bob. We'll get to that. Of course, we have to mention, I think, probably my two favorite performances in this entire movie, which is John Ritter as Bob Chapeska and Bernie Mac as Jen Slagel.

• 48:39Chris Winterbauer?

  Who are basically in their own movie, just the two of them.

• 48:41Lizzie Bassett?

  And I would watch it for...

• 48:43Chris Winterbauer?

  Talking, yeah.

• 48:44Lizzie Bassett?

  A hundred years, yes. They're amazing. And you may have noticed, the film is dedicated to Ritter. He had been friends with Billy Bob Thornton for a long time. I have to imagine that's probably why he wound up in this movie. They had met shooting the sitcom Hearts of Fire, and then, of course, Billy Bob cast him in Sling Blade, which is so, he's, maybe my favorite part of that movie is John Ritter. So filming kicked off July 8th, 2002, but before they could even roll cameras, chickenpox struck Brett Kelly.

• 49:12Chris Winterbauer?

  Not the chicken I was expecting.

• 49:14Lizzie Bassett?

  No, Brett Kelly came down with the pox and had to be sent back to Canada because Billy Bob Thornton had never had it and was not immune.

• 49:23Chris Winterbauer?

  Didn't want to get shingles, so they just said,

• 49:25Lizzie Bassett?

  Didn't want to get shingles.

• 49:26Chris Winterbauer?

  Get out of here. Oh, no.

• 49:28Lizzie Bassett?

  Kelly almost lost the part because of this and he had to go find a doctor who would write him a note saying he wasn't contagious so that he could go back.

• 49:37Chris Winterbauer?

  Wow.

• 49:37Lizzie Bassett?

  And he went to a bunch of doctors. Somebody finally did it, so he was able to get back. Also, 11 days into filming, Billy Bob announced his divorce from Angelina Jolie. And as far as I understand it, this was a very amicable split, pretty much due to their lifestyle differences, but probably not a fun time for Billy Bob.

• 49:54Chris Winterbauer?

  Also, wasn't this when she was picking up with Brad Pitt on Mr. And Mrs. Smith?

• 49:59Lizzie Bassett?

  No, that comes later.

• 50:00Chris Winterbauer?

  Okay.

• 50:01Lizzie Bassett?

  So unrelated, or perhaps related, Billy Bob decided to take a pretty method approach to playing Willie.

• 50:07Chris Winterbauer?

  Drinking heavily?

• 50:09Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 50:09Chris Winterbauer?

  Okay.

• 50:10Lizzie Bassett?

  He had previously experimented a bit on the man who wasn't there with method acting. And to hear Ethan Cohen tell it, quote, "It was very entertaining watching Billy Bob give haircuts between takes. The sad thing is that Billy Bob actually thinks he's good at it. He's like one of those guys who trains to be a boxer for a boxing movie and then thinks he can beat people up."

• 50:27Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, it's Mark Wahlberg.

• 50:30Lizzie Bassett?

  That's from Far Out Magazine. He's a Mark Wahlberg everybody actually enjoys hanging out with.

• 50:34Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, he's not claiming that he would have given those terrorists on 9/11 really good haircuts and gotten them not to crash the plane.

• 50:40Lizzie Bassett?

  No, he's not. So he would later crap all over method acting. This is Billy Bob saying, quote, "I've been poor, I've been rich, I've been moderate, I've been left, I've been right. And so anytime I play a character, I don't go sit in a closet for three fucking weeks to become a dark guy. People want there to be a science to acting and that science is interesting. It makes it seem so fucking smart. And I believe you're either a good actor or you're not." And yet he did lean into the character of Willie on set. According to Tony Cox, he once said to Billy Bob, "You really look like you're high. Are you high?" And Billy Bob said, "Every day." Tony Cox said, "I don't know if he was teasing. He's a hell of an actor."

• 51:19Lizzie Bassett?

  I think he was not joking.

• 51:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:21Lizzie Bassett?

  Based on what we're about to learn. Now, in the scene where he shows up on the escalator, when it kind of dumps him up at the top of the stairs, he was, in fact, completely and utterly hammered. He told People TV, "I drank about three glasses of red wine for breakfast. Then I switched over to vodka and cranberry juice, and then I had a few Bud Lights. And by the time I got to that scene, I barely knew I was in a movie." So here's Billy Bob on The Dan Patrick Show explaining what happened next.

• 51:49Speaker 04

  There's a scene in Bad Sound on an escalator. And I remember that day, I'd kind of overdone it.

• 51:58Chris Winterbauer?

  Did you have somebody there to catch you in case you fell?

• 52:02Speaker 04

  Well, there was this poor girl, she was a P A.

• 52:05Chris Winterbauer?

  A runner, whatever.

• 52:06Speaker 04

  And she was in charge of starting the key on the escalator when they rolled. Because the idea is that Tony, he's waiting for me and I'm late and all this kind of stuff. And I end up with a broken liquor bottle in my hand at the top of the escalator. It kind of dumps me out up there. And I said to the girl, because this was in the morning. So as soon as I got to work, I went to work.

• 52:30Chris Winterbauer?

  Went to work.

• 52:32Speaker 04

  And so I told her, I said, "Look, I'm on the verge of maybe passing out here. And so if you don't mind, just nudge me when they call action, will you? Because I'm going to lay down here for a minute." I wasn't supposed to be laying down in the scene. And they started up the escalator and she couldn't wake me up evidently. And so it kind of dumped me out up there. And I woke up and I'm like, "Oh, yeah. I'm in this movie."

• 53:10Speaker 04

  And so I stumbled up there and I beat up this plaster jackass and all this kind of stuff in the scene. Yeah, it worked out nicely.

• 53:18Lizzie Bassett?

  Not for that poor P A. Who's traumatized for life.

• 53:22Chris Winterbauer?

  Did you see the Colin Farrell interview recently on Colbert where he talks about showing up basically drunk on Minority Report? It's pretty funny if you guys want to go look it up.

• 53:31Lizzie Bassett?

  They're both very charming men. Now, Zwigoff was not quite so impressed. It's not what he had in mind for that scene, but he did get what he needed. So I don't think he fought Billy Bob on it. But he would later tell the New York Times to quote the late, great Leo McCary, "I can't say that I bask in the memory of it. Ultimately, I was able to get from Billy Bob what I needed, and I hope that by now he appreciates what I brought to the party." These two, I do not think, I don't even think Billy Bob realizes that they didn't see eye to eye is the impression I get. But Terry Zwigoff, I do not think had a particularly good time working with him.

• 54:05Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 54:05Lizzie Bassett?

  Just because of the partying. And again, like Billy Bob owns up to this. He told the Irish Times, "A couple of times I was drunk, but not every day. I showed up with a hangover a few times. There were times when I'd be with my pals until 3:30 a.m. and have to be at work at 7:00. So I wasn't the most pleasant guy to be around."

• 54:20Chris Winterbauer?

  Does work for the character in the end.

• 54:23Lizzie Bassett?

  It does. But I can see that how that would be unpleasant.

• 54:25Chris Winterbauer?

  Would not be fun.

• 54:27Lizzie Bassett?

  In his autobiography, The Billy Bob Tapes: A Cave Full of Ghosts, Thornton said, quote.

• 54:32Chris Winterbauer?

  There's the title.

• 54:33Lizzie Bassett?

  I know. He said, quote, "I was single. It was after Angie and I had split up. We'd have 30, 40, 50 of the cast and crew here on school nights when we had to be at work at 7:00. It was probably the craziest time I ever had." He referred to it as a pretty dark set, but he also said, "If I could go back to any time in my life and relive it, it would be when I was making The Alamo Bad Santa or when I was working for the Arkansas Highway Department back in 1979."

• 54:57Chris Winterbauer?

  And that is the first time I have thought about The Alamo since I saw it in theaters. I did not remember The Alamo.

• 55:05Lizzie Bassett?

  You forgot. Well, so he enjoyed himself on this. And one good thing did come out of the movie for Billy Bob. He met his sixth and current wife Connie Anglin through her sister, who was the makeup artist on set. So he said, I needed somebody to meet me because I was going through kind of a lost weekend. Do you know what I mean?

• 55:21Chris Winterbauer?

  I don't, Billy.

• 55:22Lizzie Bassett?

  I don't. I kind of do. I also don't, but he got a happy ending. Even though this is set in Arizona, it's shot all around Southern California. And fun fact, the mall is the same mall used in Jackie Brown. So filming wrapped in September of 2002. And other than Billy Bob being a drunken loon, it went pretty well. Everyone on set mostly got along. Terry Zwigoff was very happy with what he shot. The problems really started in post-production.

• 55:46Chris Winterbauer?

  September of 2002?

• 55:48Lizzie Bassett?

  Mm hmm.

• 55:49Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, just clocked that. Okay, continue.

• 55:52Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, it comes out November of 2003.

• 55:54Chris Winterbauer?

  13 months later, which could mean nothing, but it can mean something.

• 55:58Lizzie Bassett?

  It means something. It actually had an initial release date slated for December of 2022.

• 56:03Chris Winterbauer?

  That's what I was wondering.

• 56:03Lizzie Bassett?

  Which would have been tight, but possible.

• 56:06Chris Winterbauer?

  Or like go for a summer comedy release. I just think there's a couple of ways you could release it. Yeah.

• 56:11Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, by all accounts, Zwigoff was thrilled with the cut that he had. It was faithful to the script, which he really liked. And he liked the writers. He wanted to, you know, do right by them with the movie. It was dark. It was not necessarily, you know, a yuck, yuck of a watch. But that's what he wanted. And again, that's also exactly the way it was written and exactly what the Coen brothers had asked for with this initial prompt. But when the movie went into test screenings, Bob Weinstein freaked out. Why? Well, it depends on who you ask, Chris. According to screenwriter John Riqua in the New York Times, quote, "The audience went ape, but they gave it a terrible score. They were like, this thing needs to be buried in a hole, but I loved it." Now, according to Weinstein, the test screenings were disastrous.

• 56:55Lizzie Bassett?

  But Jeremy Smith, AKA Mr. Beeks, who was at the time writing for Ain't It Cool News, saw one of the original test screenings in Pasadena, and he told a very different story to slash film later on. He said, quote, "The worst part of being in that test audience was realizing that the deck was heavily stacked against Terry Zwigoff. I participated in the 20-person focus group and watched in horror as people who'd howled at the film were coaxed by the moderator into declaring Willie unlikable, which he was by design, to the extent that he needed redeemable qualities. One of the best studio comedies of the post-New Hollywood era was ruined that night."

• 57:31Chris Winterbauer?

  I can actually say from experience, I've seen almost this exact same thing happen.

• 57:36Lizzie Bassett?

  Really?

• 57:37Chris Winterbauer?

  I can just share now, when we did Moonshot, which is no bad Santa, I'm not saying it is, but we did Moonshot and on the first test screening, people seemed to like it. And it was an audience picked out, you know, who should like a young teen rom com. And the moderator is just doing his job, I'm not suggesting otherwise, but the problem becomes that the company that you hire to moderate things, because this is an independent company, they are looking for, I think in a sense, they want to justify the expense, right? So it's like, they want to provide you with a lot of information. So they really pick at everything.

• 58:06Lizzie Bassett?

  Right.

• 58:07Chris Winterbauer?

  And what started very well spiraled extremely quickly on the issue of, is this character likeable? And a lot of people thought Cole's character was funny, Cole Sprouse. And then one person said, it kind of feels like the movie is making fun of him, which we were. And he was in on it, Cole, by the way, he thought it was funny too. The whole joke is he's dumb, like in the movie, but wow. Everybody started going right down that direction. And the mandate after that test screening was, we can't make fun of his character. And look, would it have been a fundamentally different movie? Probably not, but we lost some pretty funny jokes that were about him being dumb.

• 58:45Lizzie Bassett?

  I believe it.

• 58:46Chris Winterbauer?

  I'm kind of bummed, you know, because people laughed at them.

• 58:48Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 58:49Chris Winterbauer?

  And then later they said, oh yeah, but, but we are making fun of him and we probably shouldn't do that.

• 58:53Lizzie Bassett?

  It's an interesting thing and I'm sure it's very common. I have a slightly different take on what I think may have happened here. And I could be totally wrong, this is complete conjecture. I do not believe that audiences hated this movie so much that it needed to be completely reworked. I don't believe that every test screening came back this negative, especially because there are people who were in those test screenings who said that they did not.

• 59:16Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, also it just depends on what the bar is, right? If they're saying it has to be a 90 and it's doing an 82, you know what I'm saying? It's like, you can kind of set it any way you want.

• 59:25Lizzie Bassett?

  This is my Detective Basset take on this, from what I have read.

• 59:29Chris Winterbauer?

  Very famous Detective Basset.

• 59:31Lizzie Bassett?

  A famous detective, yes. Detective Basset, if we're gonna go the Crusoe route. I am guessing that it left people feeling weird, as it should. It's a Terry Zwigoff movie, and I'm betting that they didn't do test screenings for his other Terry Zwigoff films like this.

• 59:46Chris Winterbauer?

  No, Ghost World was not tested, I'm guessing.

• 59:48Lizzie Bassett?

  No, he doesn't tie things up neatly in a little bow, as we have discussed. And he believed he had made a great film. Jeremy Smith very much agreed. Many people in that audience agreed. What I think happened is Bob Weinstein saw the cut and freaked out when he realized what he had bought. I think he wanted reshoots and potentially was able to swing the narrative of the test screenings in that direction. Again, I don't know this. This is just me kind of making a guess, but from what people said about those test screenings, it feels almost intentional, the way that the moderation was directed. And I don't know, but I know that Bob Weinstein really did not like what he saw, and he's a very powerful man.

• 1:00:30Chris Winterbauer?

  Also, it could have been just divisive in general with the audience, right? Where like half the audience loved it and half the audience was really weirded out by it.

• 1:00:38Lizzie Bassett?

  Totally.

• 1:00:38Chris Winterbauer?

  Which, by the way, would yield a terrible score, but that's why some of these scores are kind of useless unless you really drill down on them.

• 1:00:45Lizzie Bassett?

  Right. And also, if your criticism is, oh, Willie's unlikable, it's like, sir, that's the movie you bought. So that should not be a problem. But unfortunately, what Bob Weinstein wanted, Bob Weinstein got. They bumped the release way back to Q4 of 2003, and he insisted that they needed to make Willie seem much more redeemable much sooner. He told Zwigoff, quote, "We're not trying to ruin your movie, but there's absolutely no heart in it. So we put a little heart in it. We didn't make it vanilla. We weren't trying to make it not so good, Santa." And when he says they put a little heart into it, what he means is they went around Terry Zwigoff and hired Todd Phillips.

• 1:01:27Lizzie Bassett?

  One month before his breakout with Old School.

• 1:01:30Chris Winterbauer?

  Director of one of my least favorite movies in the last 10 years.

• 1:01:32Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, you love Joker.

• 1:01:33Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:01:37Lizzie Bassett?

  I actually did enjoy Joker. Joker 2 is terrible. I, whatever.

• 1:01:40Chris Winterbauer?

  I thought Joker 2 was better than Joker 1.

• 1:01:43Lizzie Bassett?

  Chris, you're on drugs. Get out of here.

• 1:01:44Chris Winterbauer?

  No, but it's so diff- it's, you know what? Look, Todd Phillips is a good director and he's obviously an extremely successful director. I mean, if the Hangover films have made a billion dollars, I liked The Hangover. But he's kind of the Antichrist to Terry Zwigoff.

• 1:01:57Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 1:01:57Chris Winterbauer?

  And I feel like he is the studio version, right, of Terry Zwigoff? He's like the version that's affected to the studio and now he's gonna like make sanitized, but seemingly dirtbag movies. And Terry Zwigoff's like, I make real dirtbag movies.

• 1:02:12Lizzie Bassett?

  It's true.

• 1:02:13Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:13Lizzie Bassett?

  And I'm curious, can you spot the sequences in the theatrical cut that Todd Phillips directed? And to be clear, they did try to get Terry Zwigoff to do the reshoots. He said, no. He was like, I'm not doing this. And that's when they bring in Todd Phillips.

• 1:02:27Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, you mentioned the boxing scene.

• 1:02:29Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, which, when you think about it, is big, is so clearly Todd Phillips.

• 1:02:33Chris Winterbauer?

  Kicked in the nuts. Yeah.

• 1:02:34Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, everyone's kicked in the nuts. Also, Billy Bob looks a million times healthier in all of the reshoots.

• 1:02:41Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah. I don't know. I mean, the part where he gives him the stick is really weird. And I kind of feel like that's-

• 1:02:47Lizzie Bassett?

  The stick is still in there.

• 1:02:48Chris Winterbauer?

  That's right. That's Terry.

• 1:02:49Lizzie Bassett?

  The Christmas pickle?

• 1:02:50Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, the Christmas pickle. That feels like Terry. It's like kind of sweet, but also really weird.

• 1:02:54Lizzie Bassett?

  But there's another gift.

• 1:02:56Chris Winterbauer?

  Is it the elephant at the end?

• 1:02:57Lizzie Bassett?

  No.

• 1:02:58Chris Winterbauer?

  No. Okay.

• 1:02:59Lizzie Bassett?

  The whole advent calendar sequence.

• 1:03:01Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, where he fixes it?

• 1:03:02Lizzie Bassett?

  Yep. Is all Todd Phillips.

• 1:03:04Chris Winterbauer?

  The candy corn?

• 1:03:05Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, the candy corn and the advent calendar.

• 1:03:07Chris Winterbauer?

  I did think the candy corn was kind of funny.

• 1:03:09Lizzie Bassett?

  I'm not saying those scenes aren't funny. They're not necessary. I will tell you, when you watch the director's cut, you don't need them.

• 1:03:16Chris Winterbauer?

  The boxing sequence is the one that really stands out to me because it feels like the movie goes in a completely different direction for one scene for kind of no reason.

• 1:03:23Lizzie Bassett?

  So Zwigoff, in that 2012 Playlist interview, said, quote, "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 someday 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 fucked. You don't want to do anything these people like." Some of them, I go to Target, Terry.

• 1:03:45Chris Winterbauer?

  I go to Target all the time.

• 1:03:47Lizzie Bassett?

  I like your movies. But yeah, I listen, I get it. But this is how we wind up with the theatrical cut. There actually also was a whole sequence that had Sarah Silverman in it that we'll see why later, but does not make the final cut.

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• 1:04:44Lizzie Bassett?

  So after getting exactly what he asked for from a very different director, Bob Weinstein is like, great, it's time to show the Coen brothers what we've got here. And Chris, how do you think that went?

• 1:04:54Chris Winterbauer?

  I'm guessing it didn't go well, but I don't, you know.

• 1:04:57Lizzie Bassett?

  It went about as badly as it could possibly go.

• 1:05:00Chris Winterbauer?

  I'm wondering why they hadn't seen it yet. Or that maybe they had seen it earlier, but now they're being shown.

• 1:05:05Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, they'd seen Terry's cut.

• 1:05:07Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, they had. Okay, good. I thought, sorry, I misunderstood you. Yeah, I'm sure it did not go well.

• 1:05:11Lizzie Bassett?

  No, they're seeing the cut that Bob Weinstein has redone with the reshoots. He shows it to them. They lost it.

• 1:05:20Chris Winterbauer?

  It's like when George Clooney reveals the dildo machine.

• 1:05:22Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 1:05:24Chris Winterbauer?

  Burn after reading, you're like, this is what you've been talking about this whole time?

• 1:05:27Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. They said, you've turned it into American Pie. And according to Zwigoff, they told him it was a piece of shit now. It devolved into a screaming match with everyone yelling, fuck you, no, fuck you, to each other over and over again. And at this point, the Coens basically were just like, we don't want anything to do with this.

• 1:05:46Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, man.

• 1:05:46Lizzie Bassett?

  And they back away completely from the movie after seeing Bob Weinstein's cut. Billy Bob seemed a little bit more understanding, at least of the Weinstein's power. He basically was like, listen, if a studio is pouring millions into a movie, you kind of have to do what they're asking. But Terry Zwigoff's like, wait a minute, I actually don't have to do what they're asking because I have final cut. Chris, can you explain final cut?

• 1:06:11Chris Winterbauer?

  How has this not come up yet? Terry, well, final cut means who has contractual control

• 1:06:18Lizzie Bassett?

  Right.

• 1:06:19Chris Winterbauer?

  over the final version of the film that is sent to distributors and screened for the public, commercialized, monetized. At the end of the day, it's very unusual, especially now, for a director to have final cut. It's usually reserved for, the Blank Check podcast covers them, you know, the big, big auteur directors who have a hit early in their career and the Spielberg's, maybe the, like, the Fincher's, the Nolans, for example.

• 1:06:43Lizzie Bassett?

  The PTAs.

• 1:06:44Chris Winterbauer?

  The PTAs, not the Zweigoffs, necessarily.

• 1:06:47Lizzie Bassett?

  That's right. But, you know what? He was right. He did have final cut. And in fact, he had taken a pretty substantial pay cut in his salary in order to get it as part of his contract, because he was adamant that he needed it. But Bob Weinstein doesn't care.

• 1:07:03Chris Winterbauer?

  No.

• 1:07:03Lizzie Bassett?

  He is so powerful at this point in Hollywood that he continued to push his version of the movie, even though legally Terry Zwigoff should have been able to tell him to fuck right off.

• 1:07:13Chris Winterbauer?

  But Terry would have had to take him to court.

• 1:07:15Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. So that's exactly what happens. Zwigoff goes to his lawyer and is like, what the actual hell? I took a pay cut to get this in my contract. And she's like, yeah, if you want to actually fight him on this, you would have to hire outside litigators at $35,000 a day, and my office doesn't do that. Zwigoff could not afford that because he's not a Weinstein. And so instead, he went to the DGA. A DGA arbitration followed, and the end result allowed Zwigoff to complete a final edit of Bad Santa that at least got it a little bit closer to his original version. He told the playlist, a lot of what they shot, they tested and it didn't work, so they got rid of it right away. Then I got to work to push it closer to my original version. It was damage control at that point. So that's how we get the theatrical cut of Bad Santa. It is a weird mishmash.

• 1:08:00Chris Winterbauer?

  That's what I was gonna say. It actually, it could be so much worse, based on what you're describing to me.

• 1:08:05Lizzie Bassett?

  I think he did a pretty remarkable job. And I also think that he, to be honest, he could have been a total stick in the mud and probably tried to cut way more than he did, and he didn't. I think he just wanted to be done with this at this point.

• 1:08:17Chris Winterbauer?

  He could have done the Alan Smithy and he could have, he could have gone to the DJ and said, "Take my name off of it."

• 1:08:22Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, and he did it.

• 1:08:22Chris Winterbauer?

  Or give it to Todd Phillips. You know, Phillips wouldn't have directed enough to get the credit.

• 1:08:26Lizzie Bassett?

  No.

• 1:08:27Chris Winterbauer?

  That's brutal.

• 1:08:28Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, but kudos to him. He finished the job. He didn't love what the end result was, but he did it.

• 1:08:33Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:34Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, tragically, on September 11th of 2003, before Bad Santa was even released, John Ritter passed away from a heart attack during rehearsals for Eight Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter. He was only 54 years old. Swagoff said he was the sweetest, kindest guy and so quick and funny. He had this facial expression that was so funny, I couldn't stand it. I told him, "John, I'm gonna have to move 30 feet back because I can't keep trying to muffle my laughter behind the camera."

• 1:08:59Chris Winterbauer?

  He's so funny. He's such a good straight man. It's ridiculous.

• 1:09:02Lizzie Bassett?

  He's amazing. I really love and very much miss John Ritter.

• 1:09:06Chris Winterbauer?

  Wasn't Bernie Mac also like 53 when he passed away?

• 1:09:09Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, he was not, not old at all. Both of them were lost way too soon. Bernie Mac, I believe, passed away in 2008, so not very far behind us at all.

• 1:09:18Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, no, I knew it was a few years later.

• 1:09:20Lizzie Bassett?

  On November 26th, 2003, Bad Santa was finally released in theaters. Again, only a couple of weeks behind both Elf and Love Actually. It debuted alongside The Haunted Mansion, The Missing and Timeline, and no one really expected Bad Santa to do much of anything, especially because it had been such a mess to make.

• 1:09:41Chris Winterbauer?

  But did you just listen to those three movies you listed?

• 1:09:43Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, I did.

• 1:09:44Chris Winterbauer?

  Holy crap, a murderer's role of stankers. I love all of them with all of my heart. They are my little stinky children. I saw all of those movies in theaters.

• 1:09:55Lizzie Bassett?

  Wow.

• 1:09:55Chris Winterbauer?

  All of them. And I was excited.

• 1:09:58Lizzie Bassett?

  And they're bad.

• 1:09:59Chris Winterbauer?

  Even at 14, I thought, "Oh, these aren't, these aren't great."

• 1:10:05Lizzie Bassett?

  But Chris, as you pointed out, and much to everyone's surprise, Bad Santa massively exceeded expectations, bringing in over $76 million worldwide on a budget of somewhere between $18 million and $23 million, depending on the source. Now, you might hear that number and be like, "Well, Elf made like, you know, whatever, over $200 million." Elf is not rated R. This is a really impressive turnout.

• 1:10:29Chris Winterbauer?

  Elf is a four quadrant family movie. This is a hard R anti-family movie.

• 1:10:34Lizzie Bassett?

  Hard R anti-family Santa robbing malls movie, and it made 76 million dollars worldwide.

• 1:10:41Chris Winterbauer?

  You know what I also think this proves without having seen the director's cut, but the core concept is so good.

• 1:10:47Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 1:10:47Chris Winterbauer?

  You want to see it, right? And I think the director's cut would have done just as well. It has nothing to do with the redeemability of Billy Bob Thornton's character. It is.

• 1:10:55Lizzie Bassett?

  I completely agree.

• 1:10:58Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, I kind of want to see the movie about the fucked up mall Santa. Like, that sounds great.

• 1:11:01Lizzie Bassett?

  We're going to come back to the director's cut in a minute because it's still, it takes quite a while to come out. So obviously not everyone was happy with many shocked that Miramax's parent company Disney would allow such garbage to be released.

• 1:11:13Chris Winterbauer?

  I know.

• 1:11:13Lizzie Bassett?

  Especially when they had declined to release Fahrenheit 9/11, I believe. But Bad Santa's fine. I get it. But also Disney bought Miramax in the first place. It's pretty hard to believe they didn't know anything about the Weinstein's. So there's that. And people were also mad that the film ruined the sanctity of Christmas. But as Billy Bob Thornton points out in his autobiography, well, first of all, I've read the Bible and I promise you it doesn't mention Santa Claus anywhere. So you're getting your stories mixed up. Santa Claus has nothing to do with Jesus, other than for some reason they made some arbitrary birthday for Jesus and tied Santa Claus into it.

• 1:11:45Chris Winterbauer?

  Thank you, Billy.

• 1:11:46Lizzie Bassett?

  Thank you, Billy. Spot on.

• 1:11:47Chris Winterbauer?

  I also think this movie is all about the spirit of Christmas. I do.

• 1:11:51Lizzie Bassett?

  Kind of is, yes. Well, it's at least sort of.

• 1:11:54Chris Winterbauer?

  It's somebody's Christmas.

• 1:11:55Lizzie Bassett?

  I think especially when you watch the director's cut, it's very much the lesson that he learns is about greed, which is an interesting one for Christmas.

• 1:12:04Chris Winterbauer?

  It's a found family movie.

• 1:12:06Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 1:12:06Chris Winterbauer?

  Right? Which I always love found family movies. I also am a big Krampus fan. I'm a big dark Christmas lover.

• 1:12:12Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, Chris, you and all the critics, because they loved this movie. It did really well, both critically and commercially.

• 1:12:19Chris Winterbauer?

  I remember being surprised at how good I thought it was when I saw it when it first came out. I really thought this is going to be, you know, like, like a Todd Phillips movie. It's gonna be like old school, right? Or something like that. It's gonna have a few funny scenes.

• 1:12:29Lizzie Bassett?

  Old school's pretty good, but yeah.

• 1:12:30Chris Winterbauer?

  Old school's fine, but it's not. I don't think it's Bad Santa is my point.

• 1:12:33Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree. In 2004, Miramax capitalized on the success of the film with a home video release called Badder Santa. And this is, of course, you know, going with the unrated trend for raunchy comedies at the time. It's a marketing gimmick. Yeah.

• 1:12:46Chris Winterbauer?

  They did it with The Girl Next Door because I bought it and I was like, there's the same number of amount of nudity in this movie.

• 1:12:53Lizzie Bassett?

  In this one.

• 1:12:53Chris Winterbauer?

  Where is Alicia Keys' birthday nudity in this one? I actually really liked The Girl Next Door. It's kind of a sweet movie.

• 1:12:59Lizzie Bassett?

  It's good.

• 1:12:59Chris Winterbauer?

  You expect it to be very raunchy.

• 1:13:01Lizzie Bassett?

  I like it too.

• 1:13:01Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, and it's just very sweet. Anyway, it was just such a way to get people. It was a way to get target people to buy more DVDs, which worked.

• 1:13:08Lizzie Bassett?

  It was a big thing, yes. So we keep talking about it. It's finally coming. In 2006, three years after the movie came out, Zwigoff released his director's cut. And according to Jeremy Smith, again, going by Mr. Beeks at the time, who wrote for Ain't It Cool News and saw that original test screening, the director's cut that was released comes very close to what he saw, but it wasn't exactly it. We may never know what that audience really saw, but here's an excerpt from his original review. "I am hopeful that Bad Santa's move to 2003 is not indicative of some internal vote of no confidence at Dimension. After all, we're well aware of the Weinstein's predilection for shelving films that aren't absurdly easy to market, and then shelving a select few that are. Yes, Terry Zwigoff's film is going to piss off a hell of a lot of people,

• 1:13:53Lizzie Bassett?

  but there is an audience out there primed for something this mean and tasteless." I mean, he hit the nail on the head there without being behind the scenes at all. This review was actually published again when Roger Ebert chose to screen the director's cut at his annual Overlooked Film Festival. Ebert said, quote, "Since we are presenting what Terry Zwigoff describes as the world premiere of his director's cut, my review of the R-rated version of the film would not apply. Mr. Beeks of Ain't It Cool News saw a test screening of an early uncut version, which Zwigoff tells me was about as close to my version as any test audience got to see." So I want to talk about the director's cut just a little bit here. I actually, I'm shocked by this. People hate the director's cut.

• 1:14:34Lizzie Bassett?

  People on Reddit are like, "It's mean. It's dark. The tone is weird. Why would you ruin a perfectly good theatrical cut?" I couldn't believe that commentary because I had the complete opposite experience with the director's cut of this movie. I do not agree that it's quote-unquote "meaner" or even necessarily darker. Like, yes, you see Bernie Mac, you know, get his head run over and like, there's things like that, that sure, verge on a quote-unquote darker movie, but it's kind of, the original movie is dark. The original movie- Movie is mean. This one just tonally makes sense over the course of the whole movie. All of the characters make sense. The motivations make sense.

• 1:15:15Lizzie Bassett?

  The timing is better. The comedy is better. It's 10 minutes shorter, or not 10 minutes, it's like five minutes shorter. It's hands down, without question, as far as I'm concerned, a substantially better movie. And honestly, it's a great movie. Like, everyone should watch this. There's some pretty big changes. There's no narration at the top of it, Chris. He does exactly what we've been asking every director to do. He just drops you right into it.

• 1:15:40Chris Winterbauer?

  Fantastic.

• 1:15:41Lizzie Bassett?

  There's no sequence where Willie is talking to Marcus in the bar about like, I'm gonna get my life together. And Marcus is like, you're just gonna wind up in Florida again. Don't need that. Just cut straight to Florida. Where he's already been there and it's Christmas time again.

• 1:15:53Chris Winterbauer?

  I was wondering about that. Yeah, because that, it does delay things in a weird way when we get that.

• 1:15:58Lizzie Bassett?

  There's so much in the theatrical cut that when you actually watch this next to it, you don't need it. And this moves so much faster. It's so much zippier. Lauren Graham's character is actually like, there's like a beautiful sadness to her that's very much missing from this version. To me, it's actually not a meaner cut because these seem much more like real people. And that ends up being more heartwarming in some ways at the end.

• 1:16:23Chris Winterbauer?

  But that would make your average Reddit user pretty uncomfortable.

• 1:16:26Lizzie Bassett?

  That's true. That's true. Maybe I was in the wrong forum.

• 1:16:30Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, I mean, it's too bad. It's funny. I wonder actually if the final director's cut is also shorter than the original test cut.

• 1:16:36Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, maybe.

• 1:16:37Chris Winterbauer?

  My theory, again, just from personal experience, like, so when we shot Worm, we had like a gap between when it was released after. We did a film festival run and there was a big gap because nobody was buying it. And between when it, then when it finally got bought. And during that gap, we like trimmed, because I just had some distance from the movie. And all of a sudden I could see like, oh yeah, you don't need these scenes. I think we cut over 10 minutes of the running time. I don't think that's why it sold. But my point is like, when you get that perspective on the movie, I do think it tends to just tighten up in most instances. Because the things that you thought were important, you realize, wow, yeah, no, people will get it. We don't need that.

• 1:17:14Lizzie Bassett?

  Right. Maybe. All right, so let's do a little where are they now, Chris? Despite the behind the scenes drama, Brett Kelly had a great time on set. In a 2022 interview, he called Billy Bob Thornton one of the nicest people even to this day I've ever worked with. He said, on the weekends, we'd go over to his house. I'd be hanging out with his kids, swimming in the pool. He was very welcoming and made me and my whole family feel at home the entire time we were shooting. Also, this movie did not really dramatically change his life. He never moved to LA, his family never moved to LA, and after filming, he returned back home to Vancouver. Zwigoff has only made one movie since Bad Santa. And as we discussed, it's art school confidential, which I think we both really enjoyed. But it failed to make the same waves as really any of his previous films had.

• 1:17:54Chris Winterbauer?

  My recollection was that was kind of his worst received movie critically and commercially.

• 1:18:00Lizzie Bassett?

  It was, which I think is sort of surprising because I did really enjoy it. I mean, I need to rewatch it, but.

• 1:18:05Chris Winterbauer?

  I liked it, but it's also my least favorite of the movies I've seen of his. I haven't seen Louie Bluey.

• 1:18:09Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, I think that's fair. So 13 years after Bad Santa, Bad Santa 2 was released and it absolutely bombed. Zwigoff had no involvement in it. His lawyers did call him to say he was entitled to some financial compensation. And he's like, yay, how much? And then they were like, oh, actually, that part of the contract just expired, so $0.

• 1:18:28Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, no.

• 1:18:29Lizzie Bassett?

  Terry, get different lawyers.

• 1:18:32Chris Winterbauer?

  Clearly.

• 1:18:32Lizzie Bassett?

  He has had many projects that have failed to fully materialize over the years, including a series with screenwriters John Requah and Glenn Ficarra. So it seems like they kept in touch and liked each other. They've obviously gone on to be incredibly successful, both writing and directing movies like I Love You Philip Morris, Crazy, Stupid Love, and many, many more.

• 1:18:50Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, Crazy, Stupid Love is the one that I always think of when I think of them. And it's so weird because that movie, I like Crazy, Stupid Love a lot, basically just on the comedic interactions between Ryan Gosling and Steve Carell, which are fantastic.

• 1:19:01Lizzie Bassett?

  It's great.

• 1:19:02Chris Winterbauer?

  But that movie's very conventional compared to something like Bad Santa.

• 1:19:05Lizzie Bassett?

  Mm hmm. Also, I believe John Requah is working on the Guys and Dolls version that Rob Marshall is doing. So we'll have to see how that turns out. Since 2003, it sounds like Zwigoff has mostly only kept in touch with Tony Cox from the cast. They talk every month and have said that they're great friends. However, he has addressed any tensions with the Coen brothers, telling Vanity Fair, quote, One thing I beg you to keep in this interview that everybody cuts out is that I think they are the greatest writers and directors alive today, and they were very, very nice to me. All that ever gets printed is that we had a disagreement over casting. That gets played up as he hates the Coen brothers. I generally like their stuff. Gee, now, of course, I have to get nitpicky. I like their dramas more than their comedies. Put it

• 1:19:49Lizzie Bassett?

  that way. Thanks, Terry.

• 1:19:51Chris Winterbauer?

  Totally fair.

• 1:19:52Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, that wraps up our coverage of Bad Santa. I hope this inspires people to watch both versions. I hope this inspires people to watch all of Terry Zwigoff's films as a Christmas present to yourself. I really love him. I loved him more after learning about the making of this film. I love that he didn't abandon it. Yeah, Chris, what went right?

• 1:20:12Chris Winterbauer?

  I have to give mine. I'll let you take Mr. Zwigoff. I'll set him aside. I'm gonna give mine to Billy Bob Thornton.

• 1:20:23Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, I think he deserves it.

• 1:20:24Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, you know, I get, he is weird casting from a lot of perspectives. Physically, he's not obvious, although I do think it makes for a great joke.

• 1:20:32Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 1:20:33Chris Winterbauer?

  He's not a star in the way some of the other folks, you know, were stars at the time. And Billy Bob never did ever really break out as a top tier, you know what I mean? Like, he's gonna headline the movie. I mean, you have things like Friday Night Lights and The Alamo. They're all more ensemble-y in my mind. But he's a great actor. He's a great actor. And man, is he well-suited for this role. And he, I mean, I'm sorry, I'm sad to hear that he was dealing with a lot and dealing with a divorce. And I'm sad to hear that that was stressful for Terry Zwigoff because he was dealing with his alcohol abuse. It seems to have worked because it's a really good performance. It's one of my favorites of his.

• 1:21:07Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree. I think he's wonderful in this. It was nice learning more about him. I couldn't find anybody really saying a bad thing about him. I mean, obviously, him showing up drunk on set is not good and not professional and irritated Terry Zwigoff. But as a person, in terms of like, as a human being to other human beings, all I could find was that he was very kind.

• 1:21:25Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:26Lizzie Bassett?

  And that makes me happy because I do, I love me some Billy Bob. Yes, I do have to give my what went right here to Terry Zwigoff. I think he could so easily have walked away from this project so many times and he didn't do it. And I really appreciate that. I also appreciate that in the end result, he did keep some of the stuff that they had reshoot. He didn't say, no, my way or the highway at that point, even after going through a DGA arbitration. And I understand that he qualified it as damage control, but I think he did the best he could. And I think he actually did a pretty generous job with that theatrical cut. I just think he's a remarkable director. I miss his work. I would love to see what he would do today.

• 1:22:10Lizzie Bassett?

  And I really hope that something that he's working on comes to fruition because I think we need a little Terry Zwigoff. I think we need to be more comfortable with the warts and all approach to storytelling. So that's my what went right. I really enjoyed researching this. I really enjoyed watching all the different versions. And yeah, I would encourage you all to, to put on a bad Santa marathon this Christmas.

• 1:22:31Chris Winterbauer?

  Thank you, Lizzie, for walking us through the Mall of Misanthropy, uh, the Mall of Misanthropes, as we'll call it. That is the Terry Zwigoff Cinematic Universe. Next week, we have a movie made by a bit of a misanthrope. It turns out, uh, we're talking Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life.

• 1:22:51Lizzie Bassett?

  That movie was the only Christmas movie Terry Zwigoff really liked.

• 1:22:56Chris Winterbauer?

  It's a good movie.

• 1:22:57Lizzie Bassett?

  It is a good movie.

• 1:22:57Chris Winterbauer?

  And it's got a very interesting development history, production. It came out at a very interesting time and I'm excited to talk about it. And then I'm excited to get into a James Cameron Christmas.

• 1:23:08Lizzie Bassett?

  A James Cameron Christmas, what we all want.

• 1:23:10Chris Winterbauer?

  What we all want under our tree.

• 1:23:14Chris Winterbauer?

  The whole Avatar box.

• 1:23:15Lizzie Bassett?

  An angry, angry man.

• 1:23:17Chris Winterbauer?

  Very excited. All right, guys, if you're enjoying this podcast, there are a few easy ways to support us. You can just tell a family member or a friend, hey, check out what went wrong. It's pretty good. You can leave us a rating and review on whatever pod catcher you are listening to us on. If you're interested in bonus episodes, we now offer bonus episodes through Apple. You can subscribe through the app for $99 a month and you will get all of our bonus reviews. We just did one on ...Frankenstein, we are going to be covering James Cameron's Avatar Fire and Ash pretty soon. If you guys are interested in even more content, you can join our Patreon. It's www.patreon.com/whatwentwrongpodcast. Patreon is a platform that connects podcasters like ourselves with dear listeners like you. You can join for $5, get an ad-free RSS feed,

• 1:23:59Chris Winterbauer?

  which you can listen to on Spotify, Apple, wherever you listen to podcasts, and all of our bonus episodes, of course. And for $50, you can get a Bad Santa-style...

• 1:24:10Lizzie Bassett?

  Billy Bob shout-out.

• 1:24:12Chris Winterbauer?

  Billy Bob, piece of coal in your stocking shout-out, just like one of these.

• 1:24:16Lizzie Bassett?

  Alright, alright, let's see here. Adam Moffett, Adrian Pang Korea, god damn it, are you fucking with me? Angeline Renee Cook, Ben Schindelman, Blaze Ambrose, Brian Donahue, Brittany Morris, Brooke, Cameron Smith, C. Grace B. Alright, next, god damn it, next, this is not the DMV. Chris Liel, Chris Zaka, the hell kind of name is, David Friskalanti, DB Smith, Darren and Dale Conklin, Don Schible, Ellen Singleton, Sweet Jews for Jesus, M. Zodiac, Evan Downey, Felicia G., Film It Yourself, better film it yourself, Santa's not gonna

• 1:25:00Lizzie Bassett?

  film it for you, Frankenstein, Galen and Miguel, The Broken Glass Kids, wanna see some magic? Okay, let's watch you disappear. Grace Potter, Half Greyhound, James McAvoy, Jason Frankel, JJ Rapido, let's wrap this up, Jory Hillpiper, Jose Salto, Karina Kanaba, Kate Ellington, Kathleen Olson, Amy Elgashlager McCoy, Merry Christmas, or whatever, Lon Relad, Lena LJ, Lydia Howes, Matthew Jacobson, Michael McGrath, Nate the Knife, Nathan Santeno, Rosemary Southward,

• 1:25:43Lizzie Bassett?

  Rural Jer, Sadie, just Sadie, Scott Oshida, Solman Chianani, Steve Winterbauer, Suzanne Johnson, The Provost Family, The O's Sound Like O's, what, you're my fucking mom now?

• 1:25:58Lizzie Bassett?

  You know, I'm on my fucking lunch break, goddammit. There is no spoon? There is no spoon? Merry Christmas, or whatever. Why don't you wish in one hand, shit in the other, and see which one fills up first? Happy holidays.

• 1:26:13Chris Winterbauer?

  Alright guys, thank you so much for listening. We will see you next week for Jimmy Stewart!

• 1:26:17Lizzie Bassett?

  It's your wonderful life.

• 1:26:19Chris Winterbauer?

  It's wonderful life! Uh... It's gonna be full of terrible- Ollie Hunter as Jimmy Stewart. Full of terrible Jimmy Stewart impressions. We have a week to work on it. Oh, can't wait. Great. Alright guys. See you then. Bye.

• 1:26:32Speaker 05

  Go to patreon.com/whatwentwrongpodcast to support What Went Wrong. And check out our website at whatwentwrongpod.com. What Went Wrong is a Sad Boom Podcast, presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer. Post-production and music by David Bowman. This episode was researched by Laura Woods and edited by Karen Krupso.