EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: JAMES GUNN (SLITHER)

Gunn’s been around for a while – you might remember him as the writer of the incredible Tromeo and Juliet, or the guy behind the Scooby Doo movies, or most controversially the man who reimagined Romero for the Dawn of the Dead remake. And of course there’s The Specials, the sublime superhero comedy Gunn wrote and stars in as Minute Man ("My-noot man! Do I look like a soldier from the revolutionary war? I don’t think so! Am I wearing a three-cornered hat?! No! I turn small! Think!").

Slither is pure Gunn, though, as he sits in the director chair for the first official time (the “Who directed Tromeo” controversy lives!). Pure Gunn, it turns out, is damn funny, and more than a little slimy. In real life pure Gunn is just as funny, and slightly less slimy. I had a chance to sit down with him the morning after the Slither premiere, a rollicking affair where I bumped into Joss Whedon coming out of a toilet stall. (For the record: I don’t know if he remembered me, and if he did, whether he connected my face with my infamous anti-Browncoats editorial. As usually happens in real life I didn’t say anything witty or interesting at the time; later Collider’s Mr. Beaks gave me the line I should have used: “Did you just drop a hate bomb in there?”)

The interview went twenty minutes, but it could have just as easily gone twice or three times as long. Gunn’s got a lot to say, but what makes him a good interview is that he says it in such an entertaining way.

Q: There were some cool people at the premiere. What were the reactions from some of the filmmakers who came?

Gunn: I don’t trust anything anybody says, because you just don’t know. But I did trust a couple of things, and the person I trusted the most was Judith O’Dea, the star of the original Night of the Living Dead, because she was sitting across from me. I saw her laughing for the whole movie, and that was awesome. We talked earlier about favorite horror movies, and man, Night was right up there. It was a huge movie for me when I was a kid, and to see her laughing so hard, sitting right across from me, the circle closed. The people who entertained me are now being entertained by me. That was exciting.

That was a great moment, and then Tobe Hooper was extremely complimentary. He said it was the best movie he had seen in a couple of years. He hadn’t had a better time in a theater for a long time, so that was a great compliment. And I’m friends with Eli [Roth], and I know Eli’s not lying to me and he had a great time. Zack Snyder. The guy whose opinions I really care about. I would say that Eli and Zack, I care about their opinions about as much as anyone out there. So to have both those guys respond so positively was just a huge compliment.

Q: So I guess I have to ask about Night of the Creeps. It keeps getting brought up by people.

Gunn: Yeah. I didn’t see it until after [the movie was finished].

Q: Really? Not that I think you were ripping it off, but I’m surprised you didn’t see it.

Gunn: Listen, I ripped off plenty of other movies, so there’s no reason for me to lie. The truth is that Night of the Creeps is probably inspired by a lot of the stuff that I’m inspired by – basically, It Came From Within; Shivers. Which is a huge inspiration to me, it’s one of my favorite horror films. It’s very strange to me that people keep going on about Night of the Creeps when there’s a much earlier precedent. It seems like they have a shallow history of horror.

Q: I think that people just only go back so far.

Gunn: I guess. There’s Shivers, and the things in Night of the Creeps looked like the things in Shivers, which look like the things in Slither. And also The Puppet Masters the novel, by Heinlein, because it has a similar sort – there have been a few things, there was an Outer Limits episode too that has a similar thing. I love parasites and I love these parasites that sort of drive humans. It’s a pretty old idea. Also The Blob. The beginning of my movie is completely taken from the original Blob.

Q: Right, where Grant Grant is poking the alien with the stick.

Gunn: Totally. 100%. I loved that scene when I was a kid, and that’s what I thought of when I did that scene. Same thing with Night of the Creeps. But the one thing that’s really uncannily strange is that [Fred] Dekker named his cops after directors and I did the same thing. That is weird.

And I liked [Night of the Creeps]. I liked it quite a bit.

Q: And it has that great line – “The good news is your dates are here. The bad news is they’re dead.”

Gunn: It has a lot of great lines in it.

Q: Speaking of great lines, you have a bunch in Slither. How do you balance the great, funny lines with being gross and scary?

Gunn: I was just trying to entertain myself as I was writing the script, and I was trying to create something creepy. I think the line between creepy and funny is very thin. Creepy is funny, and funny can be creepy. I also think that one of the things we tried to do was have the actors play it straight, so they’re reacting to everything as if it was real. And because it’s so absurd that’s exactly what makes it funny and that’s also what makes it scary – they’re treating it real and at the same time it’s ridiculous when Starla is talking to her deformed husband out in the field, telling him that maybe he can get a little help and he’ll be OK. Like there’s some ointment that will clear up the fact that he’s a giant slug.

Q: And is that also how you keep it from going into Scream territory? Is that how you keep it from making fun of the material?

Gunn: I never wanted to do that. I never wanted to comment on the material itself. For me the humor is from the characters – the characters are funny. I think the only way in which I’m post-modern, where I go outside of the film itself, is that I reference a lot of movies throughout, whether it be shots or scenes or character names or streets or bars. I wanted to have something that would stand up to repeated viewings by horror fans, where they could pick out those little touches. There are hundreds of things – every street sign, everything is named after a character from a horror movie or something.

Q: The mayor is named after Kurt Russell in The Thing. As a fan, do you think MacReady is The Thing at the end of the movie?

Gunn: No, I don’t think he is. Do you think he is?

Q: I don’t know.

Gunn: Sometimes there’s obviously no reality to whether he is or not, because it exists in the mind of the viewer. So if you believe he is, he is.

Q: There’s been talk of a remake. I doubt they would leave it so open in a new version.

Gunn: Strangely, Romero wants to remake it.

Q: Would you direct a remake?

Gunn: Depends what it is. Most likely not. I pretty much want to create original stuff. If I did remake something, I would do it the way I did with Dawn of the Dead, which is to change everything besides the central premise and the title. But for the most part, Dawn of the Dead allowed me to do this movie. That’s why I’m grateful for Dawn of the Dead, it gave me the ability to do something I wouldn’t have otherwise.

Q: Were you nervous about Dawn of the Dead? You had to know the response was guaranteed to be negative in advance.

Gunn: I wasn’t scared. Before I took it on I had no idea. I had no idea. I don’t think about those things when I am deciding what to do. I am blessed by idiocy at times. It has served me throughout my career. I did Scooby Doo, which I thought nobody would give a shit about, it was just a job. Then I wrote a novel [The Toy Collector] in which the protagonist was my own name. My family and friends freaked out on that, but I never thought about it once when I was writing the whole novel. Then I did Dawn of the Dead, thinking, “Sure, I’ll rewrite this movie, what a good idea.” I never thought about it until the backlash started. And it was hard, and it was hard because I really cared about the screenplay. I had more fun writing that screenplay than any writing experience ever. I was very passionately invested in that script. When I care about something so much and people perceive it as something that’s crass, it’s hard. I’m a human being, so I don’t like it.

But honestly, the truth is, certain people we know have great power. I’m at peace with Harry [Knowles]. I can say that now. But the truth is that he wrote a scathing thing that I was writing Dawn of the Dead and people flipped out. I got death threats.

Q: Really?

Gunn: Oh yeah. “Put a gun in your mouth, Gunn.” “Shoot yourself in the head,” “You’re better off dead.” All this shit. It’s like, fuck! And then a few weeks later he read the script and he gave it a really positive review on the same site and honestly, everything died out by 95%. Which is weird. So it really did come from that one thing.

Q: That’s so weird that in this fanbase that people can be so passionate and yet so horrible.

Gunn: The internet breeds a sort of negativity. I love going to the sites that celebrate stuff. I actually think that’s one of the cool things about MySpace right now. I think I just became your friend there.

Q: You did.

Gunn: It’s a positive place. Positive for child molesters. [laughs] No, but honestly, it’s got a different type of feeling. And I would that CHUD’s a pretty positive site in the bigger scheme of things [editorial note: LOL]. But certain places, man, it’s frustrated people at home getting negative. Everybody I know will on occasion read the message boards, and it’s just so negative.

From an outside perspective it’s interesting to see how, personally for me, things have changed over the years. Things have changed a lot, especially post-Dawn of the Dead. Because even though there are still those people who are so angry about Dawn of the Dead… I went to the Chicago FangoCon last weekend, and one of the first things someone screams out was, “Fast zombies suck!” People are always trying to discuss this with me – fast zombies versus slow zombies. They can’t run because they’re fucking zombies! Of course they can’t run, they can’t even walk slowly, there’s no such fucking thing! What are you talking about? Why do you care? Plus, I didn’t invent that, Return of the Living Dead did!

Q: It’s unreal that no one ever remembers that.

Gunn: These people who consider themselves huge horror fans, they know Night of the Creeps, but they don’t know fucking Shivers? It’s a classic, classic horror film. They don’t know that? That’s sad.

When I was a kid I watched everything – I watched the stuff from the 30s, the 40s, I like the silent films. Haxxon is one of my favorite fucking movies of all time. I wish people had a better sense of the history of stuff. But I don’t want to complain about stuff.

Q: I think that availability of movies on DVD actually hurts. Once upon a time you had to work to see something, so it was special. Now you just Netflix it.

Gunn: And I think that because we grew up in the cable era there was only so much stuff. You’re going to get trapped. You may not really want to watch a Hammer film that much, The Devil Rides Out may not be that interesting to you, but it’s the only horror movie on for two days, so you have to watch it! But then you watch it and you get something out of it. I’m the type of guy who’s a voracious filmgoer. I watch a lot of movies, still. I’m different because I do see movies from a filmmaker’s perspective, so if I see a movie that has something in it that I think is awesome, then I like that movie, even if 90% sucks. If it had one thing in there that I think is awesome, then it’s worth seeing that movie for me.

Have you ever seen Penn and Teller Get Killed?

Q: Yes!

Gunn: It’s not a great movie by a long shot, and I can’t believe those guys did some of the things they did in that film. But the ending –

Q: Everybody kills themselves.

Gunn: It’s this incredibly dark ending after something that’s like Weekend at Bernies! There he is, shooting himself in the head, and my God, that made the movie worth watching! For me that makes that a great movie.

My brother, Brian, is different. He likes all these movies that are well made. Like Jonathanemme – he makes good movies that are well made and whole together, but there isn’t much about them that jumps outside the box and does something incredibly interesting. They’re just really well made movies. That’s not something that turns me on. I’d much rather see something that was extremely flawed but had something extremely great in it.

Q: Is the Troma stuff more your speed? Or are you more into the grimness of Eli’s Hostel?

Gunn: I like it all, man. I love Hostel, I love Devil’s Rejects.

Q: Rob Zombie is in Slither.

Gunn: Rob Zombie played the voice of Dr.Carl. The film I’m writing now is much darker. It’s not like Hostel, though. I like all kinds of movies. I joke about Slither being like Capote all the time, but I really like Capote.

For me what I really like doing is dealing with stuff where it kind of pushes things into a deeper realm of imagination, that has a little bit of fantasy to it. Stuff that is dark and yet imaginative. That’s why as a kid I liked Stephen King so much. I was a huge Stephen King fan, and I met him a few times as a kid, I was very fortunate. His career was a real inspiration – and it still is an inspiration to me. He’s got hits and misses, things that are great and not so great, but his imagination is always going 1000% and he doesn’t stop it. It keeps going and going. Some of his ideas are great and some are not so great, but most of it is entertaining. So I like to do that. I like to create worlds. And I like to work with special effects.

Q: How much is CGI and how much is practical in Slither?

Gunn: It’s always hard to say. People ask me that all the time, but you can’t give a percentage. If you give a percentage of shots, it’s almost 90% practical because we have tons of practical stuff. I love the fact that the question comes up because it means you can’t always tell.

We have a lot of practical stuff, and what we did a lot of was puppeteer removal, which is one of my favorite things to do because you’re still dealing with something practically. You can’t really tell, like all the Grant stuff in the field was all practical stuff, but if you watch the original take there are these 12 guys dressed in black ninja costumes working him. They looked so ludicrous in person. And that was hell because we had to remove all those guys from between all those reeds, and they were jumping in front of Grant. But I love the effect because it may not look real, but you don’t know what the hell it is. You can’t quite figure it out, and that makes it a lot of fun. And the craftsmanship, the sculpting of what the creature really is, is a lot fun for me to watch, so I love that part of it.

But the tentacles at the end, we had those done in the same exact way and they ended up looking awful, so I had to replace the tentacles, almost all the tentacles with CGI tentacles. So the tentacles are for the most part CGI at the end of the movie. And for the most part the slithering things are CGI with some exceptions.

Q: What is the darker movie you’re working on now?

Gunn: I’m writing a movie about Satan. I think the guy deserves a break, so I’m trying to give it an objective point of view, see it from his point of view more and not be so one sided as most Satanic films have been. Let’s give him a break.

Q: It’s going to be set in Hell or on Earth?

Gunn: On Earth, yeah. I’m part of the way through it so I don’t want to talk about it too much.

Q: Are you directing it?

Gunn: Yeah.

Q: Are you directing from now on, or will you still write screenplays for other people?

Gunn: I’m going to direct as much as I can. I like it, I really do. I’ve run into problems being a screenwriter, and I almost feel like directing is like writing the final draft of the script. I really don’t find it that different from writing, it’s just taking the people and arranging them visually in a way that is the final draft of the script. It’s always been very frustrating for me to have other directors… fortunately I’ve worked with some good ones, Zack in particular, who was able to have his own vision of what I had written but keep the core of what I had written. That was exciting for me. But a lot of times it’s hard, and almost always people don’t know how to direct my dialogue. Never ever has anyone known how to direct my dialogue.

Q: Did it come naturally to the actors on Slither?

Gunn: I got to cast the movie so I got to cast people who understood the dialogue. And I got to work with them, to explain where we were going with everything. A lot of times I find that directors make people speak too slowly. I wanted stuff fast.