'Violent Night’ Screenwriters Pat Casey and Josh Miller on Creating a New Christmas Classic
FilmSpeak talks to screenwriters Pat Casey and Josh Miller on reinterpreting the legend of Santa Claus.
Tommy Wirkola’s Violent Night has the opportunity to become a new Christmas classic by reinterpreting the legend of Santa Claus (David Harbour) into a badass action hero. And while many Christmas movies are being made each year, few R-rated Christmas movies exist, and even fewer R-rated Christmas action movies exist. For co-screenwriter Josh Miller, Violent Night fills a gap in the offering of Christmas movies:
“In recent years, every Christmas, we get more and more Christmas horror movies, which I love watching. But we’re still watching the same Christmas movies we've been watching since the 90s, none of which are actually about Santa. They just take place at Christmas and are about normal people. We set ourselves a challenge from writing the script: can we make an R-rated Christmas movie about Santa Claus?”
Screenwriter Pat Casey added that they “liked the idea of a version of Santa who is like that classic detective getting mixed up in an adventure. We’re adding a lot of 90s action tropes, but at the same time, some Christmas elements throughout. Killing all of these bad guys gives Santa his Christmas spirit back, and it just seemed funny to us.”
The script was always written with David Harbour in mind as Santa Claus, though there was no guarantee that he would board the project. Miller explains that their writing process ensures they “always pick actors we like for the roles. We must ensure we're picturing the same people for most of the more important parts. We’re not fantasy casting because we sometimes pick dead actors.”
Casey expanded upon that and said they chose David Harbour while having “no way of knowing if we could get him or if he would want to do it. That's just who we are. We chose him totally because we liked how he could represent a sort of grumpy guy who is also a hero at heart.”
Reinterpreting Santa Claus meant giving him a new backstory, which, according to Miller, “ fit in with the subgenre tropes. It falls into a Rambo-like plot of a one-man army where everyone's like, “Who is this guy?” And then, at some point, mid-movie, he's like, “I used to be a green beret.”
Casey explained that they “had a vision about Santa’s backstory, where he is a Viking, with all his adventures that led to him becoming this immortal gift-giving guy. Of course, we have a lot more to say about that. But we had to squeeze it down to just a little bit for the movie because it had to be contained.”
On approaching a film that blends many genres simultaneously, Miller explained that they had to “take in any scene individually. This is the action movie scene. What would the action movie version of this be? Then you switch it over to Trudy and her parents, and that’s the Christmas drama or Christmas comedy portion of the movie, and you wonder what this scene would be like. But they all weave naturally together.”
Casey added, "Santa’s conversation with Trudy (Leah Brady) fits into the action movie trope when your hero gives us dramatic monologues about why he's doing what he does. That’s something plucked straight out of First Blood and Die Hard, with the walkie-talkie conversations. And finding the right balance and rhythm just comes from instinct. If it doesn’t feel good, we will keep rewriting it until we are confident about it.”
The two writers hope that, through their film, they filled a void that audiences didn’t know they had when it came to R-rated Christmas movies, with Casey stating, “People just want a fun time at the movies. We didn't want to make anyone feel like they were doing homework. Just come to the movies and have a good time. This is a movie that is just good old-fashioned pure fun. That's all we were going for it. I like to think we achieved it. And it seemed like people embraced it.”