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THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS
"Surviving Christmas" first came to the attention of producing partners Jenno Topping and Betty Thomas when a writing team they knew pitched them an idea for a movie. "They came to my office and said they had an idea for a movie about a man who returns to his childhood home, and persuades the people living there now to let him spend the holidays with them. It was only the one line at that point, but it seemed really funny to us."
The final screenplay became a collaboration between Kaplan & Elfont and the writing duo of Jeffrey Ventimilia & Joshua Sternin.
The producers then turned to finding the right director to helm the project. "For me, Mike Mitchell had the perfect combination of sensibilities," Topping offers. "He understands physical comedy, but he also has a quirkier side. He is just offbeat enough and, at the same time, just commercial enough to get what the movie is really about. He doesn't need a cookie cutter model, and he is not afraid of having genuine emotions in a broad comedy."
Mitchell says the first and most important thing that drew him to the project was the script. "It always starts with a great script, and I thought this one was very funny," he remarks. "For me, it was the story. Here is this lonely, rich guy who doesn't have anyone to spend Christmas with. He returns to the house he grew up in, but, of course, a different family lives there now. So he does what anyone with nothing but money would do: He rents the people living there to be his family for the holidays for a cool quarter of a million. I just thought that was such a funny idea."
Casting had already gotten underway when Mitchell was set to direct "Surviving Christmas." "The interesting thing about our cast is that each one was our first choice, which was incredible," Topping notes. "The chemistry between all the actors turned out to be amazing. We couldn't have asked for better."
THE CAST
"I thought it had such a strong central premise, which was very funny and gave me a lot of mileage to have fun with the character," says Affleck, who stars as Drew Latham. "Drew is kind of an unusual guy. He's very energetic and thinks outside the box, and he's been very successful because of that. But even though he has all the money in the world, he has nothing else in his life to show for it and no one to spend Christmas with, so he becomes sort of unhinged. He goes to his boyhood home and meets the Valco family, whose house it is now, and decides, 'I'll have Christmas with them.' He's the kind of guy who only thinks about what he wants and will throw money around to make it happen."
With each new Christmas tradition imposed on the family, Drew seems to be working the last nerve of the head of the family, Tom Valco, although Tom has only himself to blame because it was he who immediately accepted Drew's offer out of hand. James Gandolfini, who stars as Tom, explains, "Two hundred and fifty grand is a lot of money to a guy like that, so he thinks he can deal with whatever he has to do to get it, but he doesn't realize what he's getting himself into."
"The first thing Drew makes Tom do is put on a Santa hat. Then he makes him sing 'O Christmas Tree' before they light up the tree, which is very humiliating, but so funny," Mitchell laughs.
"I'm sure that will go down in film history as one of my most embarrassing moments ever," Gandolfini says of having to sing in "Surviving Christmas." "Ben has a lot of guts; he really went for it, whereas I didn't really have to, because Tom is supposed to be miserable about it, so it was okay."
With Tom's grudging donning of the Santa hat, the Valco family proceeds to play along with Drew's carefully orchestrated Christmas. But a wrench is put in Drew's plans when the Valcos' daughter Alicia arrives home for the holidays. Mitchell notes, "Drew made his deal with the family not knowing they had a daughter. When Alicia shows up, she wants no part of the deal and she can't be bought off. Drew is used to throwing money at problems to get his way, but this is one time that the person is not buying into that, so it makes for a cool, very funny dynamic."
Cast in the role of Alicia Valco, Christina Applegate adds, "Alicia comes home for Christmas to find this lunatic in her family's house, who has completely persuaded her family to participate in this strange fantasy that he has about making them his family for lots of cash. The role of Alicia was wonderful--smart and silly at the same time--and the script was incredibly funny. I loved the concept that money can buy you everything but still get you nowhere."
No rented family would be complete without a mother. The mom in Drew's temporary family is Christine Valco, played by Catherine O'Hara.
The family member most displaced by Drew's "home invasion" is the Valcos' son Brian. The filmmakers cast Josh Zuckerman in the role of the teenager whose room Drew confiscates. Topping says, "We needed to cast someone who would appear to be the most tortured by a person like Drew Latham crashing in his house. Josh conveyed this energy that seemed so put upon, like he's carrying the weight of the world. The more he was like that, the more it made us laugh to see him with this ridiculously hyperactive 'brother' trying to make him have fun when there is no fun to be had."
"Brian's philosophy of life was already that everything pretty much sucks, but then he definitely gets the short end of this deal," Zuckerman comments. "He's probably not getting any of the $250,000, but he still has to go along with the whole thing. He feels like everything is stacked against him and everything that happens only seems to confirm it. First he gets displaced from his room, then more people show up and he's displaced again. He finally ends up sleeping in the garage. I had a lot of fun exploring all his frustration and teenage angst."
When Tom Valco agreed to rent his family out for the holidays to Drew, he had no idea it would be a package deal that would come complete with a fake grandfather, affectionately called "Doo-Dah." Veteran actor Bill Macy joined the cast in the role of Doo-Dah, who he says, "fits into this family because I don't consider Doo-Dah normal and this family is not normal. He's a community theatre actor who becomes the hired grandfather, but he's not very grandfatherly because he's quite irreverent."
As it turns out, Doo-Dah is starring in the local theatre production of "A Christmas Carol," so when his rehearsal schedule conflicts with dinner plans at the Valcos, he naturally sends in his understudy. It becomes a real case of "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" when the Doo-Dah Understudy, who happens to be African American, shows up unannounced right in the middle of an impromptu visit from Drew's girlfriend, Missy Vangilder, and her parents. Rounding out the main cast of "Surviving Christmas" are: Sy Richardson as the Doo-Dah Understudy; Jennifer Morrison playing Missy; and David Selby and Stephanie Faracy as Missy's parents, Horace and Letitia. Udo Kier also appears in the role of Heinrich, an eccentric photographer hired by Drew to give Christine a makeover.
IT'S BEGINNING TO LOOK A LOT LIKE CHRISTMAS
Principal photography began on "Surviving Christmas" in Chicago in the dead of winter. Executive producer Patricia Whitcher remarks, "We wanted it to take place in a city that actually has a winter, so it needed to be somewhere other than Los Angeles. You can't really duplicate winter in Los Angeles on the scale we needed to, so we decided to shoot in Chicago." After two weeks in Chicago, the production moved to Mammoth Mountain, the ski resort area in California, for the scene where Drew coerces Alicia and Brian to go tobogganing with him. After the biting cold of Chicago, the winter landscape of Mammoth "was like a beach," jokes Mitchell. The company then returned to Los Angeles for the remainder of shooting on soundstages, where Drew's bachelor apartment and the interior of the Valco home were built.
ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS
MIKE MITCHELL (Director) first gained critical attention when he co-wrote, produced and directed the short film "Herd," which won several film festival awards, including the Spirit of Slamdance Award at the 1999 Slamdance Festival. That same year, he made his feature film directorial debut with the comedy "Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo," starring Rob Schneider.
Mitchell is currently directing the comedy "Sky High," about a high school for the children of superheroes, starring Kurt Russell and Kelly Preston. He is next set to direct the fantasy "Fraud Prince."
Hailing from Oklahoma, Mitchell came to Los Angeles to attend the California Institute of the Arts. Working for such filmmakers as Tim Burton and Spike Jonze, Mitchell became an accomplished illustrator. His credits include story and storyboard work on "Antz," "James and the Giant Peach," "Monkey Bone," "Shrek 2" and the upcoming "Shrek 3." In addition, he did writing and storyboard work on the animated series "The Ren & Stimpy Show," and wrote for the animated series "SpongeBob SquarePants." He also directed the pilot and three episodes of Fox's "Greg The Bunny."
In addition, Mitchell worked in development at several major studios, including Disney, DreamWorks, MTV/Nickelodeon, Universal and Sony. He has numerous commercials and music videos to his credit, many involving animation or puppets. He also worked with Sid and Marty Kroft and Hanna Barbera as a writer, puppeteer and storyboard artist.
DEBORAH KAPLAN & HARRY ELFONT (Screenplay/Story) are both from Philadelphia, but did not actually meet until they were attending New York University's prestigious Tisch School of the Arts. They later moved to Los Angeles, where they formed their writing and directing partnership.
Kaplan and Elfont co-wrote the hit comedy "A Very Brady Sequel," which continued the big-screen send-up of the classic sitcom "The Brady Bunch." The duo also wrote and directed the comedy "Can't Hardly Wait," which marked their directorial debuts. More recently, Kaplan and Elfont wrote and directed the live-action comedy adventure "Josie and the Pussycats," which adapted another cartoon favorite for the big screen. They are next set to direct the film "Married in the Morning," from their own screenplay.
JEFFREY VENTIMILIA & JOSHUA STERNIN (Screenplay) make their feature film writing debuts on "Surviving Christmas," though both have had long and illustrious careers in television.
Friends since Junior High, Ventimilia and Sternin began their professional partnership in animation, writing for the short-lived but well-regarded sitcom "The Critic." They went on to write for the groundbreaking series "The Simpsons" and the critically acclaimed "Duckman." They then segued into live action as writer/producers on the Emmy Award-winning series "Murphy Brown," executive consultants on the sitcom "3rd Rock From the Sun," and executive producers on the series "That '70s Show." Ventimilia and Sternin subsequently created "The Grubbs" for Fox Television.
Currently, they are working on several feature film projects, including the romantic comedy screenplay "It's Not You…It's Me," which is in development at Paramount, and another comedy for DreamWorks, to star Eddie Murphy. They also have a television development deal at Twentieth Century Fox.
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