Insight with Chris Van Vliet - "Stranger Things" Star David Harbour On Playing Santa Claus In The New Movie "Violent Night"

Episode Date: November 23, 2022

David Harbour (@dkharbour) is an actor known for his roles in Stranger Things, Hellboy, Suicide Squad, Extraction, Black Widow and many others. He joins Chris Van Vliet from Budapest to talk about his new holiday movie "Violent Night" where he plays a version of Santa Claus with a twist. He also talks about putting a twist on other holiday characters like the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. For more information about Chris Van Vliet and INSIGHT go to: https://podcast.chrisvanvliet.com If you enjoyed this episode, could I ask you to please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcast/iTunes? It takes less than a minute and makes a huge difference in helping to spread the word about the show and also to convince some hard-to-get guests. Follow CVV on social media:  Instagram: instagram.com/ChrisVanVliet Twitter: twitter.com/ChrisVanVliet Facebook: facebook.com/ChrisVanVliet YouTube: youtube.com/ChrisVanVliet TikTok: tiktok.com/@Chris.VanVliet Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

All systems are going. Ladies and gentlemen, Chris Van Blitz! Oh, baby. Welcome back to another audio adventure on Insight. I'm CVV. I'm Chris Van Fleet. And in a proverbial sea of podcasts, there's millions of podcasts now. Thank you so much for choosing this episode right now.

And if you're a fan of Stranger Things, then you definitely know. David Harbour, he's Jim Hopper. But, I mean, how amazing was he in Suicide Squad? Hellboy, Black Widow, just to name a few. And he has a new movie coming out on December 2nd where he plays Santa Claus. It's called Violent Night and, oh, boy, is it violent? It's so much fun. But, man, we talk about it.

It's like, it's not what you expect when you hear about a Christmas movie and you hear about David Harbor playing Santa Claus. But I will leave it at that. He's much better at explaining this. before we jump into the interview, could I ask you to subscribe wherever you're listening right now? If it's Spotify, could you leave a rating? And it's been a while, but we're bringing back to shoutouts here on the show. So if you're listening on Apple Podcasts and you'd be so kind as to leave a review on there, I will be so kind as to read it out right here.

Or if you've already left your review, just go back in there, change a few words, add an emoji, take away an emoji, whatever it is. It'll refresh it. It'll pop right up to the top. and then we'll read it out here. So if you want to promote something, I mean, this feels like a really easy and also cheap slash free way to do that. This review comes to us from McComb 86, my new favorite podcast. CVV always has amazing guests. There's never a lull in the conversation. The topics are always super interesting. It's definitely one of the best podcasts out there. Well, thank you so much for that.

So yeah, beginning with this episode right now, we're going to start reading these. again because it's just my small way of being able to say, thanks. Like, thank you for being on this journey with me. And with that said, let's dive into this. Please welcome. David, Harvard. David, good morning. I guess, good afternoon where you are.

Good evening. I'm not even sure. Yes. Late afternoon, evening, yes. So good to see you again. When I saw the title of this film Violent Night, I thought, well, that's cute. You know, it's a play on Silent Night. And then I watched the movie and went,

I don't know if you got the title right. Like it should be like extremely violent night or very violent, and gruesomely violent night. Violent is not enough for you. The word violence is not enough for you. You need more adjectives. I'm sorry.

Violent sums it up. But yes, it has extreme violence, doesn't it? I mean, a lot. I'm curious. Is playing Santa like, you know, something that was on your bucket list? Is that something that an actor wants to do? No, never in a billion years. I mean, there's like, you know, Hamlet and King Lear and things like

that, but I don't, I mean, Santa, you know, the funny thing was, I just never thought I'd be invited into that world, so you don't really consider it. It's not really, I'm sure there's people out there that do, like, if I was like Wilford Brimley or something. I mean, I guess there are people who are like, one day I'll play Santa, but not for me because I've always been kind of a complicated guy and, you know, look at the characters that people like me for. They're usually complicated individuals. And so something about Santa that seemed. straight ahead. But when this came to me, I was like, oh, well, this is a Santa Claus movie that I could play

because this is a pretty complicated Santa Claus. But one of the great things is that I do like the fact that people have these movies they watch every year for Christmas that puts them in the holiday spirit. And the greatest thing about this movie in my mind is that it does have this extreme violence. And at the end, it feels like a Christmas movie. Like you walk out of theater feeling that Christmas. Christmas spirit when this magic happens at the end of the movie. And so I was, you know, once I got the part, once we started getting into it, I was really,

you know, the violence and the humor sort of took care of itself. It was really preserving that story of like, we want to make miracle on 34th Street. We want to make it's a wonderful life. We want to make these movies that even though you've gone through this wild ride, at the end of the day, you feel like you understand Christmas. But I feel like now we've opened the door to having R-rated, extreme violent versions of every holiday film. So what's going to be next after a Christmas movie that's R-rated? I mean, I've already pitched a bunch of my very cool actor friends,

you know, the Easter Bunny. That is a creature that is little understood. I mean, the great thing about this universe, the Santa's about a universe. We do have these things, like this guy in a red suit who comes down a chimney once a year and comes into your house and nobody cares nobody calls it calls your socks with right i mean who is this guy like what is his deal and so our movie tries to attempts to somewhat understand that guy and i feel like yeah there's a ton of other you know you got the easter buying it's like what's up with him and then the tooth fairy writing her letters and like she's coming to take your teeth and leave what's he doing with our teeth Where does you get all that money?

How does, you know what I mean? Who's funding the tooth fairy? We need to get to the bottom of this. When you play Santa, I feel like it is, the pinnacle thing here is getting the ho, ho, ho, correct. So how much time did you actually spend on nailing it for this version of Santa? I did spend a lot of time.

I mean, it's a sort of pivotal point in the movie. He talks about it a little bit, that it is his iconic thing. And in the beginning of the movie, he can't do it. It literally sticks in his throat until the end of the movie when he finds it. So it's funny, we did shoot it a bit sequential. So in the beginning, I had to do this thing where I had to look at the picture and sort of, but I couldn't find it. And as the movie went on, as we did all this fighting, all the heavy breathing that was going on in the middle of these jujitsu competitions I was doing, it sort of came out by the end of the film.

And I really liked what I found, but it sort of spontaneously grew inside me as we shot the movie. So I want to go through a few of your characters here and let me know if they would be on the naughty list or the nice list. So let's start with, let's start with Jim Hopper from Stranger Things. I mean, if my Santa doesn't make in the list, then yeah, you put him on the nice list. But the thing about it is he'd be too embarrassed to be on that list. even when I wouldn't know. This one might be easy, but Hellboy? Yeah, again, like,

Hellboy's on a nice list. Wow. Again, he's a guy that, like, saves the world. He's got some issues, absolutely. But you've got to look at people's actions in the gestalt of their behavior as opposed to simply their name. And one more.

How about your character from Black Widow? Red Guardian, yeah. I mean, unfortunately, he's the only one who's probably on the naughty list because he's just too much of a narcissist to really care about others at this point. He needs to overcome that. So Santa, you're just getting cold this year, pal. Well, thank you so much, sir. It's always a pleasure to chat with you. Congratulations on this violently entertaining film. Thanks, man. Appreciate it. Good talking to you. Love that mini interview with David Hurrah, that mini view, as I call these. Big thank you to David for finding the time. He was

in Utapest when he did this. And I woke up at 5.30 in the morning for us to do this interview. That's why at the start I was like, good morning, is a good evening? I don't know. It's a good afternoon. Violent Night hits theaters on December 2nd. It's so entertaining. It's so unlike anything you've seen before. And the backstory about how Santa Claus became Santa Claus is really interesting. And he's just an amazing actor. He's incredible in everything that he's in. I will leave you with the words of Wayne Dyer. DDP actually put this out on Instagram recently and I'm like, man, that's such a great quote. I've probably shared it here before, but it's such a good quote that I want to share it again as we head into the new year and everyone's doing their New Year's resolutions.

Although, let's be honest, you don't need January 1st to be the date on the calendar to make a New Year's resolution. You can just start making change tomorrow. Wayne Dyer said, if you change the way you look at things, the things, the things. you look at change. Be great and be grateful. We'll see you on the next one for some more insight. The Hammer Alley podcast, an 80s flashback mockumentary. Back in the 80s, there were a thousand bands trying to make it in the world of rock,

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