HNR talks to Writer/Director James Gunn Darren Lindwall chats with the man behind Slither March 16th 2005 07:20am | Posted by: Editor-in-Chief Recently, Darren Lindwall chatted with screenwriter/director James Gunn. Gunn penned last year's Dawn of the Dead remake and also wrote both of the Scooby Doo movies. He is currently in Vancouver, directing Slither, his first feature for Universal due out this Halloween. James knows exactly what the fans want when it comes to horror as he proved with Dawn and he has a great future ahead of him. Slither revolves around an alien plague that infects a small town, turning a local into a killer bent on a murderous spree. The local's wife teams up with an old flame to stop her husband and the invading extraterrestrials. As Gunn told Fangoria: "Slither has been specifically designed to urinate freely and proudly onto PG-13 horror. It will be the hardest R ever!" The below picture is from the set of Slither and was posted on the Troma Website. Left to right is Troma’s Lloyd Kaufman, writer/director James Gunn, actors Jenna Fisher, Nathan Fillion and Greg Henry. James Gunn: Hello! Darren Lindwall: Hello, James! JG: Hey, how are you? DL: Pretty good, yourself? JG: Very good, very good. We’re shooting one of the best scenes in our movie here, so I’m really excited! DL: Great! Well, I’ve got some questions for you so… JG: Fire away! DL: How has your experience been so far shooting Slither in Vancouver? JG: Oh, it’s been the best. You know I was here for five months before so I love it up here. It’s one of my favorite cities and our crew and our cast are probably the best people I’ve ever worked with…period. It’s been a fantastic experience. It’s an extremely hard movie to shoot, there’s a lot of stuff, a lot of special effects, a lot of prosthetic effects…a lot of heavy duty action scenes, all being done in one bundle, so it’s a hard shoot. Physically and emotionally…it’s also so damn cold up here, but ah…but it’s been a great experience. Very cool filming. DL: Are you paying homage to the older horror movies because you miss what the genre offered before or is it because you want to be an innovator in reestablishing the tonalities and vibe of what they stood for? JG: You know, I think it’s more…this is a horror movie that takes different things from different eras. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligary, The Golem and all those really old silent films…up through, you know, the 70’s movies that I love, the 50’s science-fiction movies, the 30’s and 40’s Universal horror films…I just love all of it! This movie, you know, I think the center of it is we’re bringing back some of, you know…the 80’s feel to horror films because it’s just larger than life. Big…you know…disgusting action sequences and really over-the-top stuff. But at the same time, tonally, you know, we’re…my favorite horror film is Rosemary’s Baby and there’s a lot of stuff that’s tonally, very down-to-earth, very realistic. The performances are played very subtlety…we worked hard on casting the movie, just so we could get the best actors around instead of the biggest stars. There are just different things from different eras. Also, this is a story about a man who, who loves a woman, who becomes…the man becomes a monster and continues to love the woman. So there’s a sort sadness to it that I think the old Universal horror films had…The Creature from the Black Lagoon and Frankenstein…these monster movies where you really felt something for the character himself. It wasn’t just a, you know, an alien…an unthinking alien you know? DL: Was the studio supportive of your choice to go with proven, nose-to-the-grindstone actors over marquee status? JG: Yeah they were! They were really quite supportive. Universal has been awesome this whole trip and I’ve been really happy with them. They’ve gone…since the beginning, they’ve said they’ve just wanted the best actors possible and right away…we cast Michael Rooker and Elizabeth Banks who are two of my favorites and, you know, we just kept going in that direction…with the best actors. I mean, even up here, a lot of our local Vancouver actors are just awesome. We have an actress named, Brenda James who, you may never heard of but she’s just amazing! She has a very key role in the movie so…I’ve been really happy. DL: Thank god you didn’t cast out of the WB’s list of available “talent”. JG: Yes! No, that was a…that was a big thing that we kept saying we didn’t want WB actors for this. I mean, with Dawn of the Dead too it was, you know, it was a similar thing because I didn’t want to have…I wanted to have adults in the movie you know? And…and so, this is the same way. We have a young actress named, Tania Saulnier, who’s a younger actor who’s quite gorgeous and she’s terrific, and she’s from up here, but…most of our characters are adults. It’s an adult themed film. DL: Are you partial to dogs (a dog lover) as all of his scripts thus far have featured dogs in them? Any chance the zombie dogs we all heard about that were eliminated from the Dawn script (or was that internet bullshit) will make an appearance in Slither? JG: (laughs) No! That was internet truth! We ah…we have a…we have some ah…I can’t let the cat completely out of the bag, but we do have a lot of…a lot of dead animals, as well as some diseased critters down the way in this film. So we have a lot of different things in this movie. But I am a huge dog lover…dog’s are my passion. I love ‘em! DL: You stated that CGI will be used sparingly. What is it about practical effects that you are partial to and why? JG: I like a lot of the CG effects but the truth is…there’s a craftsmanship to the old prosthetic effects. Movies like The Thing, The Fly…all of Cronenberg’s films, that is exciting to see as an artist. I like to see really great physical effects and the truth is, technology has grown a lot over the past twenty years…not only in CGI but in prosthetic effects as well. They are able to do a lot of things they weren’t able to do before with silicone and other substances, so I think this is a real opportunity to show off some of that new technology in a big way. Stuff you don’t normally get to see. DL: Did the use of practical effects in Dawn influence your decision at all to go for a more analog approach to the effects work in Slither? JG: I’ve always, you know…absolutely, Dawn influenced me in a lot of ways, but I’ve always loved the old prosthetic effects of the older B-horror movies and I really wanted to do that. We do have CGI, we have a lot of parasites that are…slithering everywhere and we have, you know, like thirty-five thousand of them in one scene and so…that’s pretty difficult to do with practical slithering creatures, so we have CGI effects. But the bulk of our effects are prosthetic. DL: Do you think that we could see a resurgence of these types of effects in horror pictures? JG: Yeah actually, I do. I think we’re going to see a lot more because I think people are aware of the technology and how much it’s grown and how great it can look. I don’t think a CGI creature is as scary as one that’s really there…yeah, I think we will. DL: You really proved yourself to a lot of fans with Dawn and now with the direction you’re taking with Slither, are you going to stick around the genre for a while? JG: Absolutely! I love horror movies. I’m going to keep making genre films. I love horror, I love science-fiction…I plan on sticking with it! DL: Was shooting in HD ever an option for you? JG: Um…no. I mean, the truth is, I’ve always worked with 35mm film all the way back to Tromeo & Juliet, so I’ve always worked with film. Even as a young kid, I would shoot on super 8 so that’s my area of knowledge. Hopefully I can become verse in HD at some time, but…I’m not. That’s what I know. DL: Now that you are directing you’re first feature that you wrote. Do you think its easier conceiving a scene on the page, then translating it to film, rather than working from someone else’s vision? JG: Well, you know, I’ve never…as a writer, everything’s always been with me first. With ‘Dawn’, I wrote the script and there was no director. With Scooby-Doo, I wrote the script and there was no director so, ah…it’s always been sort of my own thing. But of course, I’d always seen these movies, for the most part, as if I had directed them so this is a big relief. It’s a lot of fun to be able to see, you know, how I imagined things, at least some approximation of how I imagined things becoming real and taking shape. So it’s been a lot of fun in that way and plus, I love acting…I love working with actors, so that part of it is a blast! DL: How does James Gunn start a script? JG: James Gunn starts a script in many different ways. He sometimes takes a lot of notes…just sits around and takes notes for a few weeks, and then starts writing. Other times, I just start on page one and see what happens. I really change how I write a script every time I do it. Nothing ever stays the same. DL: Was there anything in the original Dawn script that was removed before or during principal that he was partial too? JG: (laughs) You know…little, little lines here and there you know, mostly little lines here and there were removed that I didn’t like…that I miss. But besides that, I think Zack (Snyder) stayed pretty true to the original vision of the script and what it was about so…I think he was awesome and that he stayed real true to, you know…to how hardcore the movie originally was. He stayed true to both the action and the horror, and I think he did an awesome job. I’m real happy with Dawn. DL: Whose idea was it for the zombies to run in Dawn of the Dead? JG: Originally the idea…originally in the script, in the first draft, some of the zombies ran and some of the zombies were slow, depending on the rate of decomposition. As we went on, before we went to film, it became…we didn’t want to cloud things up with so many rules about the zombies and make it too complex so that people were confused, so…we just made it simple and made ‘em all run. DL: Well, that’s all the questions I’ve got for you now, James. JG: Great! DL: I’m excited to see the movie. It sounds like it’s going to be one of the greatest horror movies ever! JG: (laughs) I don’t know about the greatest horror movie ever, but I love, I mean I love horror movies and to be able to go about it this way, and to really put all the stuff I love from horror movies in our picture is just…a fantastic thrill. I’m real excited! And honestly, I was being serious…we’ve got a great group of people! We’d like to thank James Gunn for fitting us into his busy schedule and also for his assistant Dan West for doing the actual fitting of us into the schedule! Also Cheers to Clint @ Moviehole. Photo used courtesy of Lloyd Kaufman at Troma Source: HNR In: Interviews |Visit the HNR Forums

.