Buckle in, kids, this is a long one. Saturday night at Comic-Con, Kevin Smith offered an update on a project we’ve been following with some interest for a month. On June 25th, Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier talked about that story of the guy seeking a roommate to dress up like a walrus in exchange for free rent. The podcast (Smodcast 259: The Walrus and The Carpenter) turned into a long brainstorming session about a horror movie version of this scenario in the vein of The Human Centipede. Enough people told Smith he should write the story down that he tweeted this first page of a script, called Tusk.
We didn’t report it at the time because Kevin Smith talks about doing a lot of stuff when he’s stoned and podcasting (which is about 18 hours out of the day). Then something amazing happened which makes us feel like a bunch of slouches. Three weeks after the brainstorming session, Smith announced 49 minutes into Smodcast 262 that he was already on page 70 of the script, and he was writing the part of the mad surgeon with Michael Parks in mind.
They continued talking about the script for the rest of the podcast. At the 53:30 point, he says, “Maybe I’m just too stoned.” *Jeff Foxworthy voice* If you knock out 70 pages about “Human Centipede, but with a walrus”, you miiiight be too stoned.
At 54:30 he offers, “This is like a sister to Red State but with no politics, no religion whatsoever, but it’s just unsettling.” He then says the movie is set in the backwoods of Manitoba, with stories from Canadian history woven into it. He adds that a French Canadian police officer is looking for the kidnapped man.
Near the end of the podcast, at 63 minutes in, he says this should be a message to anyone sitting around talking about what they’re going to do someday to just get up and do it already. But the funniest quote might have come a bit earlier when he says, “I’m not Stanley Kubrick, motherf–ker. I’m talking about making a movie with a motherf–ker in a walrus costume, man. This is all long story short of saying, like, it’s f–king crazy how close this is to being something actually good.”
A ringing endorsement if we’ve ever heard one.
But there’s more. In the same week, Kevin Smith announced on Twitter that the script for Tusk was done and he sent it to Michael Parks.
Then, on Saturday, Smith told a crowd at Hall H of Comic-Con that the 85-page script was “the most fucked-up, absurd movie ever” and is “the cuddly version of The Human Centipede“. He also said he has a meeting this week about financing. But here’s the best part.
He wants Quentin Tarantino to play the victim, and Smith has sent the script to Tarantino.
Tarantino isn’t involved at this point, but we wanted to emphasize that part. Quentin Tarantino has received an unsolicited screenplay from Kevin Smith in which Quentin Tarantino is surgically altered into a human walrus by an evil surgeon.
That happened.
(Banner images via OnceAndFutureLaura and Christopher Irwin via Creative Commons.)