Why have I never noticed this before--and, much more to the point, why has nobody else?
I scanned the Internet looking for acknowledgement of Bad Santa's overt homage to Taxi Driver, in the form of its parallel ending, and was surprised to find that nobody, that I could readily find, had acknowledged this gift any more than I had. But it's been lying right there under the tree all along.
Watching the movie just yesterday, for the first time in a few years, I started thinking Taxi Driver as soon as the camera went bird's-eye on the carnage of Willie (Billie Bob Thornton) lying there all shot up by the police. This line of thought was only encouraged further by what came next: the revelation that Willie has survived, and the way this revelation is made to the audience by a post-survival letter read in voiceover, and the way Willie's distorted priorities have been perverted to stand as a kind of heroism, and the way this is all a great dark joke, a Commentary on Our Society and all. It's never a happy occasion to have to admit that something so blatant has eluded you for so long, but the discovery itself is perfectly happy: as meaningless and wonderful as Christmas itself.
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