Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with the second and final part of my extremely long conversation with James Gunn. The first part can be read here!!!! As I said in the intro to the first 45 minutes or so that went up last week, this interview is atypical to my usual interviews. This chat lasted for 2 1/2 hours and it was just me, my pet sea monster, Kraken, and James Gunn having a normal conversation. We're all horror geeks, so we talk about all things. We do spend a lot of time talking about SLITHER, but we spend an equal amount of time talking about obscure flicks DEATHBED, the Bed That Eats People, and John Carpenter movies.
Because this is a conversation, you'll find it flows like a conversation, not an interview. Thoughts are changed mid-sentences, tangents become the next topic of conversation, etc. Rest assured this will not be the norm for my interviews. As it was, everything all told (Part 1 and Part 2) clocked in at over 15,000 words. I wouldn't have been able to do this without the transcribing help of our new intern/zombie killer "Selena." I think for certain very special instances, this kind of interview is really interesting. These kinds of conversations are the kinds that I have off the record with filmmakers, the kind of conversations I have with my friends and, I'm sure, the kind of conversations many of you readers have with your friends.
Part 2 is very much filled with spoilers. Now that SLITHER has been released, hopefully you've gotten a chance to see it and all the talk about the end of the movie (and possible sequel) won't ruin anything for you. Also remember that this conversation took place right at the end of SXSW, about 3 weeks ago. We left off with Gunn, Kraken and myself throwing out obscure horror titles at each other. Gunn threw out "Dr. Humpp" and here's the next bit. Enjoy!!!
QUINT: How about“Deathbed”? The bed that eats people! Patton Oswalt was talking about it during his stand-up bit, saying that they just put out this master negative of this movie, that was made in the ‘70s and never came out, on DVD called “Deathbed”, the bed that eats people.
KRAKEN: Where a demon got killed and its blood got on this bed and now it’s modern day 1977 and anybody that has sex on the bed is eaten or something.
QUINT: And he’s like I can’t wait to see this, but at the same time, he’s pissed off because it’s like comedy gold…
KRAKEN: And he’s like, “You know I’ve written some scripts and I don’t think they’re bad scripts, but… Some guy in the ‘70s was writing this thing… Did he have trouble getting through the script or did he just promptly sit down and write about a people eating bed and it’s even worse that maybe he had some thoughts, maybe he had some doubts but got to keep writing.” Like, “Wait, is this crap? No! No! I got to do it, I got to do it, this is right.” And then goes to somebody and somebody goes I think I want to make that.
JAMES GUNN: Yeah so many times I hear about those ideas and then I see the movie and their just so boring…concept is better than the execution. But so few of them actually have like, they might be bad or good, it’s all relative but it’s like only so many of them have enough screams twists and turns that you actually stay alive during the movie that perk you up and you go wow what the fuck is going on.
QUINT: I hope that “Snakes on the Plane” is one of them, I really want that…
KRAKEN; You’ve got to see “Devil’s Fetus”, oh geeze it’s this 80’s horror, it’s this crazy Japanese movie. It’s on DVD now and I wanted to get it cause it’s great.
QUINT: It’s the Asian version of “Poltergeist” and by the Asian version I mean they throw some wacky ass shit at you…
JAMES GUNN: Is there a fetus in the movie?
QUINT: Um… you have to see the movie, it will be on your top ten list.
JAMES GUNN: I’ve got this personal obsession with pregnancy and fetuses and stuff which is like an almost…
QUINT: Like Guillermo del Toro?
JAMES GUNN: ….oh yeah, well I have it like, I mean even with in “Dawn of The Dead”, the baby and in TROMEO & JULIET… with the baby coming out… there’s this scene where her stomach bursts open and it’s got popcorn and rats in there.
KRAKEN: Even when you think about it man, cause I’ve had a lot of friends that have had kids and I asked them during their pregnancy, I was like doesn’t it weird you out to know that there’s something growing inside of you. Sure, it’s human but it’s growing inside of you.
JAMES GUNN: Yeah the fact they’re human making machines, it’s weird…
KRAKEN: Yeah, everybody’s like oh it’s a miracle, I’m like no it’s creepy.
JAMES GUNN: Well Rene (something, sorry couldn’t figure this one out) is this comic artist who I really love a lot. She like, she totally thinks of the fetus as like a parasite, you know.
KRAKEN: I guess by technical definition we kinda are.
QUINT: Again, going back to Patton Oswalt, part of the stand up he was talking about how all of his friends have been harassing him to have a kid since he got married. And he’s like, so now I finally give the answer to that. “No we did, we did, we had a baby, it’s an invisible baby and we named it 10 Hours of Solid Sleep. It’s great man, we can leave him at the house unattended and go see a movie, come back and he’s fine.
JAMES GUNN: Yeah, he’s funny man.
QUINT: Yeah he was trying to make it to the movie last night but he had to start his stand-up act at 10pm and he’s the last act so I guess he just ran out of time.
JAMES GUNN: Oh, that’s too bad, I never met him, we have some common friends cause he’s friends with Bob Odenkirk and god who else…
QUINT: David Cross?
JAMES GUNN: Yeah, see I don’t know Cross really but I’m pretty good friends with Odenkirk.
QUINT: Well, I think Oswalt is doing another bit tonight at Cap City if you want to go I can pull some strings.
JAMES GUNN: I gotta leave. I got a 3:15, I’m getting picked up and going back to LA.
QUINT: Okay, so you hate Patton Oswalt.
JAMES GUNN: I do I do, I think he’s scum sucking dick. (laughs)
KRAKEN: So is this your first time to Austin?
JAMES GUNN: Yeah besides like… I used to play in bands and I think I drove through here one time on the way to somewhere else. All I remember is 7-11. And then the reason I remember that is because what’s the Linklatter film? “Suburbia”.
QUINT: I saw the premiere of “Suburbia” here a long time ago.
JAMES GUNN: Did you get to see “Scanner (Darkly)”? Was it good, did you see it?
QUINT: I was in Vegas when it played South By…
KRAKEN: I saw it.
JAMES GUNN: Did you like it? You know it’s my favorite Philip K. Dick novel.
KRAKEN: It’s a little vague and it’s also a little campy. I haven’t read the book but I understand the book is not campy?
JAMES GUNN: No.
KRAKEN: And the book is straight forward where the movie tries to be a little bit, um by the end you’re not sure what’s going on. And I talked to a friend, Marcus, who read the book and he’s like it’s alright, but the book was not confusing, you knew what was going on. And that Robert Downey Jr. and Woody Harrelson… it verges on the edge of being slapstick humor. I hadn’t read the book and I really enjoyed, I thought the movie had confusing parts but it all kind of came together in the end and I thought the animation was great.
JAMES GUNN: It doesn’t get on your nerves after an hour? Because sometimes that stuff gets on my nerves. It gets a little too “Take on Me” video.
KRAKEN: Yeah, I could see that man.
QUINT: You see the “Family Guy” movie? You know where they have, you know how “Family Guy” one of the best things that they do is that they take a joke and they stretch it and stretch it and stretch it and take it to the next level.
JAMES GUNN: Yeah they do, they go to the point where the joke should be done and then they keep going and that’s when it’s funny, you know it’s really not that funny until they go too far.
QUINT: Well, they have the guy reach out and take Chris and they, like, go through the whole music video, the background dancing, and through the whole song, it’s the whole thing. And then he gets thrown back out and they’re like what the hell happened, and he’s like (Chris voice) “I don’t know where I am.”
JAMES GUNN: (laughs) I’m excited about seeing the movie (SCANNER DARKLY), I mean it’s not, I don’t think the movie has to be like the novel but I rarely see movies based on novels I love that are any good because novels are necessarily not movies because they’re longer. A novella is movie, you could make a good movie out of a novella if you want, it’s like out of the same size, or a long short story. But in a novel you loose so much stuff that they always look like you read the abridged version of something. So it’s just like a rare time that I like a novel, I mean there’s plenty of novels I don’t like that I like the movies but, it’s rare that I like the novel and I like the movie.
KRAKEN: “Scanner’s” good, I didn’t hear anybody say they disliked it. I heard a lot of mixed, you know like people were like I liked this, I didn’t like that. I didn’t hear a lot of positive either, but I definitely didn’t hear any negative.
QUINT: Yeah, well that’s Richard Linklater though. I mean it has to go through this filter…
KRAKEN: Yeah if you like Linklater’s stuff I’d imagine that it’s probably…
JAMES GUNN: I do, I love his stuff. I mean I’ve liked almost all of his movies and I like the fact that he does different things, it’s like a modern Howard Hawkes in a way. It’s different stuff all the time, and that’s cool.
QUINT: So what are you doing now? You’ve got the movie put out and you have two more weeks of traveling with the movie…
JAMES GUNN: I do, I actually have another week of traveling with the movie and then I’m back home. I’m writing a screenplay at the same time which had been a weird experience for me because normally I just kind of go away and write and write and write, and I’m writing spottily. And so I’m kind of frightened by that actually because I think I’m, it feels good, it feels like it’s tight you know, seems like it’s tighter than usual and maybe in some ways it’s good that I’m able to keep my brain out of it and come back and see it a little bit more clearly. But I’m writing in a way that I’ve never written before.
QUINT: Another horror movie or genre flick?
JAMES GUNN: Yeah it’s another horror movie. It’s different from “Slither” it’s not as comedic as “Slither”, it’s darker, it’s about Satan and kind of seeing things from his point of view a little bit. He’s got a point. God is jealous. So I’m having a… I can’t tell you I’m having a good time writing it, it’s actually kind of dark, it’s kind of fucking me up some days, I’m not in a real bad space but I like it, I do like it.
KRAKEN: Is that mostly what you want to do, genre writing or do you have desire to do your kids comedy some day?
JAMES GUNN: You know I think the only kid comedy I’d ever want to do is being done by someone far better than me which is “Where The Wild Thinks Are”.
KRAKEN: Your action film, your drama….or do you just like working on horror flicks?
JAMES GUNN: You know I wrote this romantic comedy for Warner Bros. and I actually think it’s quite funny, and it’s interesting but it was hard for me to keep my juices flowing through the whole thing. And I kept saying this is really great but wouldn’t it be better if there was a monster. I kept having this desire to put a monster in the middle of this.
Right now I feel like writing another horror thing, I mean I really, the truth is that it was hard for me to pump up this movie because I was offered you know “Underdog” and every fucking thing you could imagine and I just, I really don’t know how I ended up wringing “Scooby Doo” in the first place. So then to have all this other stuff and I worked so hard and then finally I got “Dawn of the Dead” which for me was a huge thing because I remember talking to Universal, they were meeting with writers on “Creature From the Black Lagoon”. You know and I was like that’s one of my favorite movies you know and they were like, really? Or no, I remember what it was, I was, they were talking about doing “Alien Vs. Predator” and I was like aw, that’s great you know I love that comic. And I’m like that could be a great great movie, you know?
Well, like that they’re like really? We want you to write this fucking Jimmy Fallon thing over here, you know.
So “Dawn” was like a huge break for me and the fact that it did well was a huger break for me. It was such a relief because when I was writing that movie, I was writing the movie that… I wasn’t writing a movie that I’m like, my brain is over here thinking about what people are going to think about the movie. Whereas these other movies, when I wrote “Slither”, when I wrote “Dawn”, I was just kinda writing the movie that I wanted to write you know. And I love writing my creative and imaginative stuff so that leads me towards fantasy but I’m attracted to dark things which leads me to horror movies. And I never really, I mean I’ve always loved horror movies and it was never necessarily because they scared me. It was because of the dark imagination of them…
QUINT: The villains are always the most interesting thing in any movie, so horror movies have the ultimate kinda villains.
JAMES GUNN: I think I related to the monsters, you know the old Universal horror movies. And I think at the heart of “Slither” it’s really a classic Universal horror movie because it’s about a monster who falls in love and gets destroyed by that love. So it’s like all of those creatures, Bride of Frankenstein, King Kong. All those stories are kinda the same and it had like the sort of feel or the energy of the 80’s movies, but and it’s hard, I wanted to create a, you know I mean when I wrote the movie I related to Grant. I mean he’s just ambitious, a monster, we wants to take over the world and destroy it and he’s torn between this aggressive nature and this love, you know.
QUINT: So what’s your what’s your hope for “Slither 2”, do you want to make a sequel out of it or are you just kind of like yeah this is a one shot…
KRAKEN: ‘Cause you leave a lot of things open, she could be pregnant, whatever.
JAMES GUNN: I actually have a whole idea for what the sequel is in my head and in fact when I first wrote the script the disease does a lot more stuff like, that’s like the first part of the disease, but it keeps progressing. Where we saw it in the final stage in the movie is not really where it progresses to, it goes way further and a lot of other mutations and things start happening, so this disease works as an overall system to sort of destroy whatever planet it’s on.
What it does is it just waits till the planet is done. I wish I could have gotten it out a little more. We actually had more of it in the movie that I cut, there’s like stuff in the outtakes, but just the fact that it’s this creature that’s like so fucking lonely, I mean it’s kinda like us. It started from nothing and then it’s this lonely lonely lonely creature but it’s never really had the ability to feel that lonely because it’s only been in bodies of lower life form things. And now it’s a human being, it’s got the capabilities, he loves being a human being, he appreciates it more than a human being does cause he’s been something else before.
KRAKEN: Let me just bring something up cause Quint asked me about it and I gave him my thoughts.
JAMES GUNN: Yeah, go ahead.
KRAKEN: The thing is the spine, right? Not the creature that we see, but the spine that shoots into Grant ‘cause remember the girl said his face was a needle.
JAMES GUNN: Yes, that thing grows around him to sort of transport him and take care of him whatever, you know, whatever it can. Yeah, haha I know, it’s a very complicated… In my head it fits together, it does it all makes logical sense and at a certain point I was like, you know cause something the studio had said, cause this was really an independent movie, which makes it cool because it was financed by Gold Circle. So I could do whatever I wanted.
One of the big things that the studios always do is that they want you to explain everything all the time, like you’ve seen “Final Destination 2” where there’s that long explanation in the middle of everything, just like what the fuck, who cares you know?
QUINT: The more it goes unexplained the more the mystery is saved.
JAMES GUNN: Yeah, and it’s like you know, I’d rather have people be a little bit confused and stay in for the ride than have people be pulled out.
But the spine thing, it looked like a brain so you almost think of it as the brain. The thing that shoots the spine out, it looks like a brain.
KRAKEN: That’s what I thought it was at first.
QUINT: It looked like FIEND WITHOUT A FACE. It looked like a fucking crawling brain man.
JAMES GUNN: Yeah yeah yeah, it looks more like a vagina to me. Everything in the movie did end up looking like a vagina or a penis. In fact when we originally, we did some original tests for the tubules, in the script it was originally one tubule and it came out but it just looked too much like a big cock coming out of it.
QUINT: Well I mean the first time you see it, it’s essentially a rape.
JAMES GUNN: Oh yeah, it’s like the roughest thing in the movie.
KRAKEN: And I love the concept that one carries the sperm and one carries the egg.
QUINT: And when the stuff comes leaking out you know exactly what it is covering Nathan Fillion.
KRAKEN: Well you got the sequel on your hands, so if the movie does well will you make the sequel?
JAMES GUNN: I don’t know I mean the thing that would make me want to do it is because I liked doing this movie and I liked the people. Um, but I don’t want to do it next and I’ve actually already, it’s already come up a number of times and they wanted me to start developing it already.
But here’s the thing. They’re going to want to do the sequel probably and then if I don’t do it especially they’re going to want to do a sequel where like, this stuff goes on and it’s not the same characters, and to me the thing that I would like to see in the sequel is what happens to those three characters, whose lives have been totally fucked up by this. I mean those people at the end it’s sort of… I don’t want to give away the ending but it is. You know but, their lives, their lives are FUCKED, and especially the young girl. So I’d like to see what happens to them and where they go on to and what their lives are.
QUINT: Well especially when you think about it because it’s like, they’re in a town full of dead bodies… they’re covered in blood, you know what are they going to do, are they going to run? What are they going to say to the police? Aliens took over the town, so we had to kill them all?
KRAKEN: And it’s still three very interesting characters, cause you’ve got the lady who may or may not be you know, with child and you’ve got the girl that has seen the mind…
JAMES GUNN: Yeah, and that’s why I think the girl is the most fucked up because she’s been, she’s had half her consciousness filled with this…
QUINT: A billion years of information.
JAMES GUNN: Yeah filled with this other information, so she’s just nuts. All of their families have been killed, I mean cause all their families live in that same place so they’re all dead. So, I would like, to me what I like about doing the movie actually was playing with those characters and dealing with those actors and so I would like to see what happens to the characters.
KRAKEN: Well, just like ALIENS, man, I mean it’s like you couldn’t have made ALIENS without Ripley.
QUINT: Though apparently you can make an ALIENS sequel great without Michael Biehn… (Yes, that was sarcasm).
KRAKEN: Yeah, but you see what happened there, when continuing a sequel like ALIEN 3 without the characters that have gone through the shit. You know what’s the point?
QUINT: I think you could start off the sequel with you know, killing off a character or two, but for real… not in a credits montage.
KRAKEN: Have another meteor with another monster that just hits him then it starts all over again.
JAMES GUNN: I have some actual surprises like that. It’s true, in my sequel.
KRAKEN: And in 20 years from now, somebody will fuck up “Slither versus The Blob”, it will be rated G.
JAMES GUNN: Yeah, and the sad thing is that I, you know we became really tight through doing this movie and the people… I’m sure you always hear people say how great it was to work with people on a movie, but I really really like the people I did the movie with. Nathan is cool , he’s great, Elizabeth is like, I love her I love her you know and then Rooker and I are… You know, he’s totally insane, totally insane, but we’ve become really close and I’ve become really close with Greg Henry.
And so it’s like two of those people are gone. You know Jack’s especially gone. So uh, so it’s like that would be kind of a bummer. I’d almost rather… I keep trying to think of ways to get those guys to take Elizabeth, Nathan, and Jack, Greg, and Rooker and give something else to those same actors. Because it was fun.
QUINT: Pull a Leone.
JAMES GUNN: Yeah, yes. Well he’s my favorite, my favorite director. It was just, it was fun. And it’s like I’ve done, it’s like my 7th well it depends on how you think of how I’ve done movies because I’ve acted in a bunch of low budget stuff so. I’ve done a lot of movies and there’s only two movies where I became really tight with the people. The other was my first movie “Tromeo and Juliet”, and then this one, and they were both like the best experiences. And the only two movies I can stand watching. No that’s not true, I like watching “Dawn of the Dead”. But yeah.
KRAKEN: I really really like “Dawn of the Dead”
JAMES GUNN: Yeah, I do too.
KRAKEN: Are they still trying to make a sequel?
JAMES GUNN: Yeah, they’re trying but I am definitely not doing it, I’m not going to do it.
KRAKEN: Well, it’s stilly to call it “Dawn of the Dead 2” anyway.
JAMES GUNN: Exactly, it’s the sequel to the remake of a sequel.
QUINT: They’re already making “Day of the Dead”
JAMES GUNN: Yeah, what is up with “Day of the Dead?
QUINT: Steve Miner’s doing it. There was a poster that came out that’s, we already talked about how things keep repeating. It’s like every Zombie thing that has to come out now, even though “Land of the Dead” didn’t do well, it’s like copying that style because the look for the poster for “Day of the Dead” is very much like the “Land of the Dead” poster. You know, with the hand coming up out of the ground, with the same grainy, drab colors, pastels, you know like the cheap dark drab colors. I don’t know I’m a big Steve Miner fan though. I loved “Lake Placid” I loved the “Friday the 13th” movies that he did, I even really dug “H20” which I’m in the minority on.
JAMES GUNN: I don’t know, man, I’m getting a little doubtful about all the zombie movies. People seem to… I mean there’s people that seem to love love love zombie movies. And I always loved Zombie movies but not in the same way.
KRAKEN: Well my mom’s a huge horror freak. Loves werewolves, vampires, aliens, demons, whatever… hates zombies. She thinks it’s the most boring, you can’t even get her to watch a zombie movie.
JAMES GUNN: I love them, I just don’t know how many times you can keep telling… how many permutations there are.
QUINT: Have you read The Walking Dead comics?
JAMES GUNN: I’ve read some of it.
QUINT: Do you like it?
JAMES GUNN: I love it, they probably aught to turn that into a movie huh?
KRAKEN: I love that the book is about the characters. The Walking Dead is not about the zombies, it’s about the living.
QUINT: But then there’s the gore so you’re not saying oh well I’m making a drama with a couple of zombies in it. It’s a zombie movie but its focus is the characters. It’s a very Romero approach without copying him.
JAMES GUNN: I have to read more of those cause so many people, this is like the 4th time it’s come up in the past two weeks.
QUINT: Well it’s funny cause you know, I remember when I watched “Dawn of the Dead” I found I really wished that Ving Rames and his crew didn’t go to the mall. The story that I don’t think has really been told much is what if they stayed on the road, you know and they kept moving. So I remember thinking that when I saw “Dawn”, I’m just like man I wonder what that story would have been like if they had kept going. The Walking Dead was very much like that.
JAMES GUNN: Did you read the script for DAWN OF THE DEAD?
QUINT: Yes, the thing that I remember the most was the idea, and it looked like they were just setting it up in the movie and then they just completely dropped it, was the idea that zombies will only eat living things of their own species… That part is there, but what I really loved was when the zombie dogs came in and were after the living dog running food and ammo.
JAMES GUNN: I know and that was like the most controversial thing, you know what, it wasn’t that controversial with people who read the script. People who read the script seemed to like that scene, when people heard zombie dogs they flipped out, but that was my favorite scene in the whole script. It’s the one thing that changed, you know and what happened with the movie was that certain things went further, like went more “Slither” style.
So you know there was like the little fetus was crawling around, that sort of stuff, and then they cut everything off a little bit, you could say, a little bit more of a realistic point. And also a lot of the character stuff got whittled down
QUINT: I remember liking your script a lot more than I liked the movie and you know what… I liked a lot of what the movie did it’s just…
JAMES GUNN: There’s great stuff in the movie.
KRAKEN: Well, the stuff with the guy at the gun shop across the way.
QUINT: That stuff is great.
JAMES GUNN: That stuff, that never changed in the script at all that was all pretty much… People loved the first fifteen minutes and they loved that, that’s what people liked best.
QUINT: Yeah, the opening was killer and that’s such a great…
JAMES GUNN: The little girls creep me out, they always have. Ever since Night of the Living Dead with the little girl in the basement.
QUINT: Well, obviously… with the twins in SLITHER…
JAMES GUNN: I love those girls yeah, I love those girls.
QUINT: Well see that was actually a point in the movie where I’m watching and I’m like, ok so this is where the movie’s gonna have to make a choice. This is the fork in the road. Either the older sister’s gonna get to the room, she’s going to save the girl and it’ll be that movie. Or she’s going to get into the room and they’re going to be “infected” and it’s going to go that way. Well I mean not really for good or bad, but harming kids is certainly still taboo and I like to see these movies push the limits.
JAMES GUNN: You know, I find it fun to do things that are… it’s like in some ways it’s traditional filmmaking but then to do things, just those little things that, you know those little girls, the grenade, the way Bill kills Jack at the end. Maybe that’s real, that would have really happened in the face of something that’s ludicrous. But yeah a lot of guys, it’s the weirdest thing, after a screening because there’s a lot of guys that come up and say thank you for killing those little girls. And I’m like whoa, ok. They’re basically saying the same thing you said, they’re thanking you for… you know.
Listen I did get stopped because I originally showed the little girls getting killed. Originally she came in and the one little girl was done and the other little girl that’s on the floor had the things crawling up on her and the sister went over and tried to save her and we saw the thing go into the little girl’s mouth and zip down her. So, we would have seen the actual death.
QUINT: Well, I love the kids in the original DAWN OF THE DEAD. When you see those little bastards try to eat Peter…
JAMES GUNN: What about in INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE, when the little girl kisses the man you know, that’s the most perverse thing in any movie ever.
KRAKEN: I loved, too, that you kept the townspeople dead after they killed Grant, you know it’s like I’m thinking, oh you know everybody’s going to wake up and think the worms dies in their head and they wake back up.
JAMES GUNN: Oh, there’s no way they’re driving around. Yeah I mean the little girls, those little girls were so fun to work with too, those girls were hilarious. But it was, yeah I couldn’t show them getting killed cause they started getting on me about that because in Europe they’re really touchy about kids, and they’ll freak out on us.
QUINT: You see everybody else is dead, so you don’t need to show the girls falling down. We know they’re gonners.
JAMES GUNN: But you do kinda see them dying. They did that when I was with Troma… they had this movie “Beware: Children at Play”. Have you ever heard of this movie? It is awful, but there’s only one good thing in the movie and that is like there’s all these little children that become evil children and the whole movie is kinda boring but then at the end of the movie, all the children are evil children and the adults are like we gotta strike back and they go out there with a couple of shot guns and they just start blowing them away, one kid after the other after the other.
So we cut this trailer that had no integrity whatsoever. We cut a trailer that was essentially just scenes of “Beware: Children At Play” and having these guys slaughtering kids right. It was like completely shocking but it was something that would go on like the VHS’s and the Troma fans would love ‘em, but, we went to the Cannes Film Festival, and this was the year that I won that, you know for the market part.
We went to show it at the market screening and worked hard getting out millions of flyers to get all these buyers at the screening, all these buyers show up and Lloyd puts on the “Beware: Children at Play” trailer before it, and honestly like, there were like 75 people at the screening and by the end of the trailer I think there were 12. Everybody freaked out and left.
QUINT: You know, if I saw that happen I would have just thought I was trapped in “Kentucky Friend Movie” or something because that seems like such a spoof…
KRAKEN: And you would have been one of the 12 that stayed.
QUINT: I woulda been laughing and cheering, and that probably would have scared more people off.
JAMES GUNN: Yeah exactly, well I forgot about that until just now. I gotta get that trailer, it’s disturbing. You just don’t see children wholesale slaughtered too often.
QUINT: Well that’s one of the great things about horror films is that they can challenge taboos: you can’t kill kids, you can’t kill pets. You killed quite a lot of animals.
KRAKEN: You probably got the most animals right? I mean it’s gotta be a record.
JAMES GUNN: Well just cause we’ve got a room full of dead animals, but we don’t really see any of them get killed. The one time I was upset, you know cause I can see any type of gore and I’m so far removed from it now, it doesn’t effect me. But the only thing that really really disturbed me on the set of “Slither” was that dog. Because we’d just worked with a real dog that looked exactly like that, the day before and then they brought in the dead dog with its throat slashed, and it, I couldn’t even look at it.
And then we also, we did have some real dogs in there too, we had real stuffed dogs that were you know, we had a Dalmatian that was a real dead dog and it was all curled up and I found that was really, that was gross. But we did have a dog that looks exactly like Scooby Doo in there. There’s one shot I call the Scooby shot. Cause it looks exactly like Scooby Doo. But the um, yeah, great dog. So what are you guys up to today?
QUINT: Tonight I’m seeing “American Dreamz”, I’ve heard mixed things…
JAMES GUNN: I love those guys (Weitz Brothers), they’re great, I think “American Pie” was like the best teen comedy, almost ever….
QUINT: It’s like what we were talking about earlier, it’s gone the “Police Academy” route, people forget how good the first one was because of how repetitive and progressively crappy the sequels were.
JAMES GUNN: So good, and the characters are great, you feel for them.
QUINT: I remember it was a controversy seeing it though, I mean I went the day that “American Pie” came out and then went to the Dobie theatre, now Landmark bought it out but it was the UT campus theatre and they were showing that night at midnight this 3-D John Homes movie called “Disco Dolls in 3-D” or something like that. Harry was like, “You have to see this flick! It’s John Holmes in 3-D!” But I went to see American Pie first and I got carded like 4 times at “American Pie”. When I bought my tickets, when I tried to enter the theater, etc. and I came up to the Dobie and I just bought a ticket for the actual porno, It was so fucked up because not only did they card me but the theatre people were like, “You do realize, there are graphic scenes in this movie…”
JAMES GUNN: Well would it have been a liability or what? I mean it wasn’t that graphic was it?
QUINT: No, not especially, especially for somebody who grew up on “Porky’s”
JAMES GUNN: Yeah “Porky’s”, I know. When I was a kid I thought “Porky’s” was the best thing I’d ever seen in my life. I love “American Pie” and I love “About A Boy,” too.
QUINT: You know I haven’t “About A Boy” yet, I heard everybody…
JAMES GUNN: I think it’s great. I mean it’s a really, really good movie. It was one of my favorite movies that year.
QUINT: So I’m looking forward to AMERICAN DREAMS, I hope it’s uh…
JAMES GUNN: I bet you’ll find that even if you don’t like it, I bet there’s great stuff in it.
QUINT: Well definitely, I mean that’s why I’m excited. It’s just because it’s almost a win win situation. Even if the movie’s not a complete success, when you have somebody that can kinda guarantee a certain level of quality, and you know there’s a good cast… I can’t wait to see Willem Dafoe play Dick Chaney.
JAMES GUNN: I know yeah. I’m going to see it, I don’t care if the reviews are bad. I bet there’s many things I will find great about it.
QUINT: Then after that I’m going to go see the only movie I’m repeating at the festival. It’s my favorite movie at the festival this year. It’s this indie movie, real low budget, it’s like of like a “Man Bites Dog,” but cut with “Scream” a little bit. It’s called “Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon” and it takes place in this universe where the events on Elm Street really happened, the events at Camp Crystal Lake really happened, in Haddonfield, Illinios Mike Meyers did exist, all that stuff really happened.
So, in this world, like this, these kind of masked killers are like the Ted Bundy’s and Ed Geins are for us. And so this guy is training to become a masked killer and so he invites these journalism students from college to document him as he trains to become the next masked killer.
JAMES GUNN: Is it shot documentary style?
QUINT: Well, this is what I really love about the movie is that half of it’s documentary style but then the other half is like movie style, and it cuts out at weird times but then you start seeing, like eventually they split completely and it’s just a movie.
JAMES GUNN: Who did it?
QUINT: It’s these new guys, completely brand new guys, the guy that directed it, his name is Scott Glosserman.
JAMES GUNN: Is somebody going to release it?
QUINT: Right now it isn’t picked up, but I heard that since the movie played at the festival I hear they’ve been getting lots of inquiries.
JAMES GUNN: Aww, I got to see it.
QUINT: It’s a good movie, but I’m worried about overhyping it because it was a movie I went into with no idea what I was going to see. Essentially, I just saw it because it was a midnight movie. And it’s a movie that really fucking worked for me. You know it’s really funny and of course they put in recognizable faces in the movie, there’s a small role for Zelda Rubenstein from “Anguish” and “Poltergeist” and it’s great seeing her. But there really aren’t any names in the movie
JAMES GUNN: What was the budget, did you hear?
QUINT: It couldn’t have been more than a million or so. It might even be under a million. You know it goes so far to me when a movie, especially a genre movie, looks good, when it’s well shot. I mean that’s almost 80% of it to me. I mean, these low budget flicks don’t have to look like a John Carpenter film, but if they don’t have at least a half decent production value to them I get pulled out of the film.
JAMES GUNN: Do you think “Prince of Darkness” is the best of John Carpenter?
QUINT: I think “Prince of Darkness” is his scariest movie, I don’t think it’s his best movie, but I think it’s the scariest he’s done.
JAMES GUNN: It gave me a stomach ache when I was a kid. Yeah, the slime man, getting inside, I like it, yeah it does, it looks nice. I was a little kid though when I saw it…..
QUINT: Carpenter had a run like no one else. From ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 to HALLOWEEN, THE THING, BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA, THEY LIVE, ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, STARMAN…
JAMES GUNN: I’m liking “In The Mouth Of Madness.” I love “They Live”, “They Live” is great. Especially the first 2 acts, the third act’s a little weird but the first 2 acts….
QUINT: Have you ever seen the trailer?
JAMES GUNN: Um, I’m sure that I have.
QUINT: I collect film so like along time ago I got the 35mm trailer for “They Live” and I took it to the and he screened it before a movie and it’s fucking great. It starts off and it’s just the 80’s voice guy going “They!” and then the word goes up on the screen, “They!” and then “They” goes up on the screen, you know and he keeps repeating that and then the words “They Live” turn into the graffiti like in the beginning of the movie.
JAMES GUNN: When I saw that movie when it first came out, I fucking saw it alone, that was my, when I saw it, it was my favorite Carpenter movie after I was already a huge Carpenter fan. Cause I love, love “Escape From New York”, I loved “The Thing”.
Unfortunately, the tape ran out just after this statement. Our conversation went on for at least another half hour, mostly covering TV talk, which revolved around his lovely wife, Jenna Fischer, who plays Pam on the US Office.
I hope you guys enjoyed this fly on the wall experience. It's a bummer that SLITHER hasn't been doing well in the box office (and that the inoffensive, yet still crappy PG-13 STAY ALIVE has been doing so well), but the movie has its audience and that audience really digs it, which I guess is all that matters for us horror lovers.
I'll be back soon with some more goodies, including a standard interview with a much loved character actor. 'Til then this is Quint bidding you all a fond farewell and adieu.
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
