This Monday at 4:58 PM, a week after I originally posted the trailer for Sharknado, I received an email from someone at Syfy’s publicity team, the full text of which is as follows:
I hope you had a nice fourth! I know it’s last-minute, but Syfy just set up a call with Tara Reid and the director of Sharknado for tomorrow afternoon. Would you be interested in attending?
Yes. Yes I would. And I did. Yesterday afternoon I spent 30 minutes on the phone with Tara Reid and Anthony Ferrante, the director of Sharknado, as they answered questions about the film that were tossed at them by members of the media. It was everything I expected. Here are some of the highlights…
- First and foremost, everyone involved with this film knows exactly what it is. The words “silly,” “fun,” “out there,” and “camp” were tossed around liberally. They genuinely seemed to have a blast making it, and are well aware of what the audience is expecting it to be. Thank God. It would have been super depressing if the whole call had been the two of them discussing their process like it was an episode of Inside the Actor’s Studio or something. They know it’s bubble gum, and they’re embracing the hell out of it.
- Along those lines, at one point someone asked Ferrante about the plot (specifically about how the sharks end up on land and don’t die right away), and his response, paraphrased, was basically, “There’s a flood. And a storm. Don’t worry about it.”
- Tara Reid, discussing filming: “You just had to use your imagination and pretend there were sharks everywhere.”
- Ferrante also described the movie as a $100 million script that they made for the cost of two days of craft services on The Dark Knight Rises. If it was possible for me to want to see this movie more, which it isn’t because the needle on my Want To See It meter is already is the red and shaking violently, this would have done it.
- Someone asked Tara Reid if she had a crush on Ian Ziering growing up and she replied, “Not really.”
But my favorite part of the call, by a long shot, and this is both a spoiler and something I am going to have to switch to caps lock for, is that there is apparently a scene in this movie WHERE IAN ZIERING CUTS HIMSELF OUT OF A SHARK’S STOMACH WITH A CHAINSAW. WITH. A. CHAINSAW. THIS MEANS THAT EITHER (A) IAN ZIERING GETS SWALLOWED WHOLE BY A GREAT WHITE SHARK WHILE HOLDING A CHAINSAW, (B) IAN ZIERING GETS SWALLOWED WHOLE BY A GREAT WHITE SHARK AND FINDS A WORKING CHAINSAW IN ITS STOMACH, OR (C) IAN ZIERING GETS SWALLOWED WHOLE BY A GREAT WHITE SHARK AND THEN SOMEONE FEEDS THE SHARK A CHAINSAW SO HE CAN FREE HIMSELF. ANY OF THOSE OPTIONS ARE FINE BY ME.
AND I AM GOING TO KEEP TYPING IN ALL CAPS FOR A SECOND PARAGRAPH BECAUSE WHEN TARA REID TALKED ABOUT THIS SCENE SHE DESCRIBED IT AS “KIND OF LIKE PINOCCHIO AND THE WHALE,” WHICH, WELL, YEAH, BUT ALSO NOW I HAVE THIS IMAGE IN MY HEAD OF PINOCCHIO LOOKING ALL BADASS AND HOLDING A CHAINSAW, SO I WANT TO TAKE THIS OPPORTUNITY TO PERSONALLY THANK TARA REID FOR THAT, BECAUSE IT IS HILARIOUS AND AWESOME.
Anyway, the only bad thing about all this is that I can’t have this footage in my eyeballs now now now give it to me now. Sure, it premieres tomorrow at 9 PM, but I don’t see how any of us can be expected to wait that long now that we know it exists. It’s just not fair. So, to help bridge the gap, I made this drawing in MS Paint. I think I got pretty close.
