Comic-Con International is more than a sneak peak into what’s coming soon in movies, TV, graphic novels, and the like. It’s an excellent opportunity for fans and up-and-comers to connect with industry professionals. And for entertainment pros to connect with their audiences.
“Interacting with the fans is the main thing,” says filmmaker James Gunn (Slither, Dawn of the Dead). “You work in a vacuum when you make movies. You make the stuff, you put it out there. Going to Comic-Con—seeing these people who [are your friends in the MySpace world]—is a neat experience.”
Gunn is currently filming the VH-1 reality show Scream Queens—Gunn, actress Shawnee Smith, and acting coach John Hom are judges; the winner will be cast in a Lionsgate movie—and was at the fest promoting another new project: Comedy pilots by horror directors made exclusively for Xbox LIVE. Gunn and producer Peter Safran (Scary Movie, Meet the Spartans) are giving horror directors, such as James Wan (Saw), Andrew Douglas (The Amityville Horror) and Marcus Nispel (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th), the opportunity to bring their comedic visions to life.
Gunn’s pilot for Xbox, in which he directs and stars, is called“Humanzee! It’s a sitcom about his human-chimp hybrid son, played by Gunn’s brother, Sean Gunn, from Gilmore Girls. The pilots start airing this fall
“Comic Con has really become a huge part of the movie industry,” Gunn says. “It's a place where we debut new material.
“We've been working on these XBox shorts now for quite a few months,” he continues. “We've been holding back on the announcement, because we wanted to debut it at Comic-Con.”
Gunn got his break as a screenwriter when he wasn’t expecting it. In college, Gunn applied for a part-time job filing papers at famed B-movie studios Troma Entertainment. He ended up writing the screenplay for a movie called Tromeo & Juliet instead, for which he was paid $150. In 1997, the film became a cult hit, playing in theaters around the world, including over a year of midnight screenings in Los Angeles.
While, as a screenwriter, the key to success is to write, Gunn believes there’s another element a screenwriter must keep in mind.
“You have to be open,” he says “There's a delicate balance between chasing your dreams and being open to the dreams that you don't know exist.
“There were other things in life that I wanted to do when I was younger, and I really had to listen to the world, put my ear to the ground, to see where my talents truly lie.”
Part of it was about what Gunn wanted to do, but he also wanted to discover how he could be self-fulfilled through making entertainment that helps others.
“A lot of the stuff I do is really stupid,” Gunn says. “I make a show called Humanzee!, I made movie[s] called Slither and Dawn of the Dead.
“But when I was a kid what really meant something to me was listening to the records of Alice Cooper or watching the movies of David Cronenberg—those things made me feel like less of an outcast, that's what I normally felt like. I felt like there was something out there, somebody out there as weird as I was. That meant a lot to me.
“And when I get those emails from those kids on MySpace or whatever who feel that same way about the stuff I did, there's nothing better in the world. That's the best possible experience.”
