Bad Santa Writers Returning To Their Roots With Buddy Cop Comedy

Having been raised Jewish, I don't exactly get the same kick out of Christmas that others do. Sure, I enjoy the music and embrace the idea of togetherness, but it all comes from an outside perspective (Kyle from South Park sang it best). It is perhaps for that reason that I tend to embrace the "other" Christmas movies. While Christians are enjoying Miracle on 34th Street and White Christmas on December 25, I tend to sitting in front of a TV watching Die Hard or the collective works of Shane Black (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Long Kiss Goodnight, etc.). Also on that list is Terry Zwigoff's Bad Santa, which has been a holiday tradition of mine since it first came out in 2003. So when I hear that the film's writers, Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, are writing a script in the vein of their anti-Christmas classic, my ears perk up.

The Los Angeles Times recently spoke with Ficarra and Requa - they most recent film, I Love You Phillip Morris, came out last week - and the two revealed that they will be making a dark buddy cop comedy as their next feature and compare the tone to Bad Santa. With the exception of last week's release, the only other film that the two have written since 2003 was Richard Linklater's remake of Bad News Bears which, unlike the first film, lacked the amount of raunch fans would have expected. Said Requa, "We owe one to those people [who loved Santa]. Since Bad Santa, we haven't written for them. So we have one in mind for them." Unwilling to divulge any details about the plot, they did offer that the film would be much like "Lethal Weapon meets Bad Santa."

Color me interested. For the same reason I like movies by Jody Hill, I dig filmmakers who look at life pessimistically but can also make it funny. Let's just hope that the movie doesn't have the same problems as I Love You Phillip Morris so we can see it before the end of the next decade.

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