By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com
Better Santa: Zwigoff sez
Terry Zwigoff describes his final, finally, cut of Bad Santa to Jeffrey M. Anderson at GreenCine: enabled by the ascension of Daniel Battsek to Miramax after the exit of the snip-happy Weinsteins. It’s three minutes shorter than the first theatrical release, but Zwigoff tells Anderson, “There are over a thousand changes… A lot of them are very small, but the cumulative effect is large, and a lot them have to do with shaping the characters. Comedy’s tricky… It’s quite difficult to pull off. Even if you’re working with great comic actors, it’s more than just being a traffic cop. There are a million choices you make and they’re all important. You have to make sure the characters are emotionally grounded in some sort of truth. If not… all you’ll be left with is a series of gags instead of a film.” … [C]heaper digital technology has allowed Zwigoff to complete his cut; no actual film print exists. For Roger Ebert’s 2006 Overlooked Film Festival this past April, the film was shown [in] HDcam, which Zwigoff says “looks great.” … “It was really going through those test screenings for Crumb years ago that made it easier this time for me stick to my convictions… Everyone said to take out Charles Crumb, but I felt I was right to keep him in. I drew on that experience. In retrospect, I know they were wrong. In any case, you can’t please everyone, so you might as well try and please yourself. I was right then and perhaps I’m right now.” Additions and deletions are delineated at the link, including that B. Bob Thornton’s “Willie can now be seen smoking while on the job and even inhaling amyl nitrate at one point, two vices extremely difficult to get away with in movies today.”