Exclusive Interview with James Gunn
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Scream Queens sounds interesting. Do you have to edit yourself or are you able to just speak your mind? Are you always conscious that the cameras are on you as a judge?
James Gunn: "No, I almost have the opposite problem. I’m expulsive anyway. I'm an expulsive personality and I have a hard time not saying what I think at all times. And when I get on camera it becomes even worse, which I think is good for the reality show - probably bad for my personal life.
It’s definitely been bad for my personal life as far as my blogging goes, but it’s something that I can't seem to quite…it’s just a part of who I am. And so that seems to work really well with the reality. I mean there are times when you're aware that the cameras are there, and in fact you have to move around sometimes to serve the cameras. But in terms of what I’m saying and what I’m doing, what I basically do on the show is I direct the girls in challenges. I’m actually directing them and working with them as a director, and then I do exactly what I would do if I was any director trying to get the best performance out of them I possibly could. Some of them aren’t so great, and some of them really have potential. And so I do exactly what I would do otherwise. Then I have to give all the comments at the end, in which case I’m extremely honest."
"It’s interesting and it’s a little bit difficult. I’m still learning the balance here of how to do it exactly, because as a director you have to have these people trust you.
And there's the guy at the end of the show who’s saying, 'Hey, you didn’t do this right and you could have done this better, and I really want to see you go harder here.' And plus I like being funny. So all the things together, it's difficult because they do get their feelings hurt and that goes against some of my instincts as a director where I really want people to trust me completely, directing with a very parental role. And now I’m, I guess, a little bit less like the parent I want to be and more like the parent my father actually was. I love my dad; he knows he was a sh--ty dad."
It sounds like you can work out some issues, just by being on this show.
James Gunn: "I’m working out my issues all the time."
You said some of the actresses are not so good. How did they qualify for the show?
James Gunn: "Well, you know, they each have something special. They each have something special about them so they're all great for the show. But, you know, listen, when I auditioned for Kylie, the young girl in Slither, I saw probably a hundred and fifty girls from both Los Angeles and Vancouver before I got to Tania Saulnier who got the role. I think there were two or three girls that might have been worth casting, but none of them to me were worth casting - and these were girls from big agencies, you know? It was very, very difficult finding women from their late teens to their early twenties who are good actresses and who have the ability and who are also beautiful. It’s a very, very, very difficult task finding people. When you find somebody who’s good, you're so lucky."
A competitor will get voted off each week or how does it work?
James Gunn: "Shawnee and John and I decide together who stays and who goes every week. One of them leaves every week. And I don’t want to say too much because there's a lot of great surprises in this show and we do a lot of things differently with the elimination process. But basically, yes, girls leave every week. And at the end the winner gets a role in [a Lionsgate film], which is a pretty fantastic prize. I mean that's a big, big movie. You know, who knows what it’s going to be like from the outside. But I can tell you from the inside I’m having a blast."
You're also involved with an X-Box project.
James Gunn: "Which I also love. More than anything else right now what interests me most in life is new media and helping to define what new media is, what the content will be for new media. By new media I basically mean internet content, gaming platform content, and mobile content. And what we did with this X-Box deal is I had an idea. I was talking to Rob Zombie and James Wan one day and I was telling them I was doing this Ben Stiller project. And they were like, 'Man, you know I really want to direct, to, do something that's comedy but people think of me as a horror director.' And I had a meeting with X-Box a couple of days later where they came to me and said, 'We're going to start producing our own original content for X-Box Live.' There's 10 million users on X-Box; there was a big, big audience. And, 'We’re going to start creating our own original content.' They came to me and said they were looking for young, edgy directors to create this stuff who were also X-Box fans, which I am. And I had thought of this conversation I had with Rob and James and I’m like, 'You know, what if we did a series of comedy shorts by horror directors?' And they just instantly went for it."
"It’s a blast. It’s a no-risk situation. We don’t spend much money on these things, but we have complete freedom to do whatever we want. And if they're great, that's awesome. And if they're not, who cares? It’s fun. So it's really been a great thing. So I've got James Wan and David Slade and Marcus Nispel and Lucky McKee to all come up with ideas for these comedy shorts. And it’s also a really fun situation. Normally I'm friends with these other directors - I've been friendly with James for a while and Rob and I'm friendly with. I’m friendly with David Slade and Lucky McKee. But to be able to work together on something which we’re not really working together but at the same time we are, has been a lot of fun to do that."
Page 3:Humanzee and the X-Box Live Series
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