Have yourselves a merry little Christmas…

“It all began with Public Access Television in Minneapolis, Minnesota which was a school-based program funded by the city where we grew up in the 1990s,” confessed screenwriter Josh Miller (Sonic The Hedgehog), half of the writing team behind Christmas movie, Violent Night. Miller and his writing partner Pat Casey filmed sketch comedies using high school students as the crew.  “It was the selfie of its era,” quipped Casey. “We loved Die Hard. We loved genre parodies,” he continued.

In an earlier incarnation of what became Violent Night, they created an episode where a group of terrorists took over and hosted the show. One of the cast members was “John McClane” and he saved the entire cast. During the following year, they repeated this Christmas theme, but used Santa as the McClane character. The loved the simplicity of the idea. It was easy to explain.

Josh Miller

After asking themselves what if this character was the real Santa, Violent Night was born. The concept was derided as being wildly ridiculous and lay dormant for decades. Despite the protracted rejection, Casey and Miller would not let the idea go. And the idea didn’t let go of them.

During their Public Access Television days, people compared Casey and Miller’s brand of comedy to another cultural phenomenon of the era, Wayne’s World. At the time, they were offended by the comparison because the show in that movie was decidedly low-rent. There’s was actually “good.” They also embraced the pre-taped segments where they interacted with a live audience. Despite the dizzying heights reached at their high school, their true loved was with scripted television.

Over two decades later, team Casey and Miller reworked their idea into a feature film far beyond the elevator pitch of “Die Hard Santa.” They also matured as writers. “We were sixteen back then. The whole thing was overly stupid and Santa was a bumbling idiot. Our biggest challenge was turning it into an R-rated comedy,” said Casey. “We also wanted to make it Miracle On 34th Street emotional PG Christmas movie you’d watch with your family.”

“When we were teenagers, we only went for the laughs. Over the years, we learned the importance of infusing stories with heart and giving audiences stuff to care about,” added Miller. “We wanted to make a real movie and fill it with as much movie magic as we could,” continued Casey.

The duo were cognzsant of the tropes to write an R-rated action comedy. The Santa tropes allowed them to lean heavily into Santa without him becoming a cliché. So long as the spirit of Christmas was retained, Casey and Miller could go to town with the action.

Pitching Violent Night

“We began our pitch at the North Pole,” said Josh Miller. Then they had to reinforce that this wasn’t a guy dressed as Santa to Universal Studios executives. “Nope. It was the real Santa.” We reinforced this, but gave Santa an alternative backstory to the common Coca-Cola can Santa. Universal greenlit the first draft of the script so the development process was relatively rapid.

Pat Casey and Josh Miller injected elements of Home Alone into Die Hard which also formed part of their initial pitch. “How do we fold the standard kid Home Alone plot and give it a Violent Night vibe?’” pondered Miller. They felt that the traps set by Kevin (McCaulay Culkin) would have probably killed the invaders. “We grew up with that movie and wanted to satirize those traps,” he continued. “We wanted to crank up the consequences of the violent traps in Violent Night,” said Casey gleefully.

Pat Casey

During the pitching session to Universal, they mentioned the television series, Succession as an influence. “We wanted Succession to be something to think about in terms of the wealthy family and the mansion and lean into the Christmas look,” said  Casey. “We wanted to repurpose the tinsel and twinkly lights for edgy action.”

Casting the hard-edged David Harbour for the role of Santa was Miller and Casey’s first choice. They didn’t want an ebullient Will Ferrell or jolly Kevin James type character for the role which would have made Violent Night a goofy comedy. “David Harbour would play Santa little drier and straighter,” said Miller. The comedy in his performance stemmed from this approach.

The pair added some perfectly-timed comedy act outs to their pitch since both have a performance background in sketch comedy. “We don’t read off a sheet of paper,” joked Casey.

The writers struck a tricky balance with the tone of Violent Night by adding cheesy, family moments to the edgy adult action. After all, it is a Christmas movie. “Thematically, it’s about the non-denominational power of belief,” said Miller. Santa’s the bomb! Christian or not, Santa waxes lyrical about the commercialization of Christmas. “It’s all about opening presents than giving a true gift.” Santa had lost his way to a point where no self-help guru could bring him back on track. Then Santa met the Lightstorm family.

“Christmas is about gathering with your loved ones and kindness,” added Casey. The writers never forgot this while writing.

Constructing the villains was an antidote to the well-oiled terrorist machine in Die Hard. The mercenaries in Violent Night were led by Scrooge (John Leguizamo) and his miscreants rather than Alan Rickman’s (Hans Gruber) Die Hard goons. They had a nerd, a psycho, and a not-so-smart one. “This had its own soap opera-ish subplot,” relished Miller.

As they refined the script, they differentiated the characters of each of Stooge’s thugs. “Candy Cane (Mitra Suri) and Gingerbread (Andre Eriksen) were the main ones,” said Casey. As the film progressed, they actually start believing in Santa as Scrooge becomes mad at them.

Fortunately for Josh Miller and Pat Casey, the studio didn’t have too many notes to give them. “It was a Christmas miracle,” exclaimed Miller. “Everyone’s notes were on point, but they were mainly budget-related.”

A key note after director Tommy Wirkola (Dead Snow) signed on, was to make Santa and Scrooge interact more. “This is when we added the sequence of Santa tied to a chair with Christmas lights,” said Casey.

Santa (David Harbour) & Scrooge (John Leguizamo) Photo courtesy Universal Studios

The removal of bigger action scenes gave way to smaller emotional scenes to make the film more interesting. Such scenes include the addition of a monologue of why Scrooge hated Christmas so much. It was a blessing. “It added more depth to his character,” said Miller. There was also the scene where Scrooge viewed Santa’s Christmas list separating the children into naughty and nice. He was distressed when he ended up on the wrong list.

The mansion the mercenaries broke into belonged to the loathsome Lightstone family. Santa was out to save their little girl Trudy (Leah Brady) and she was out to save him because he was the real Santa. An iconic moment between the two occurred when he finally rescues her and holds her hand with one hand and carries a sledgehammer with the other with a face covered in blood. “This image captured both shades of the film – John Wick meets Nobody,” said Miller.

“The thing that makes something magic is its unknowability. If we explained it, then it ceases to be magic,” added Casey. That’s Christmas. “Santa’s magic is powered by belief.” You can’t explain all the rules that Santa doesn’t even fully understand. “Santa believes in the magic even though he doesn’t fully understand it,” said Miller.

Santa is still trying to figure out the magic of Christmas by the film’s end although he’s in a better emotional state. “He has a new appreciation of how he should best use his magic,” said Miller. “Santa’s still slightly out of his element.“