Back in June, Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier brainstormed a horror movie, now called Tusk, during a podcast after they read about the guy seeking a roommate to dress up like a walrus in exchange for free rent. We wrote about the long, can’t-believe-this-happened backstory here already, so we’ll try not to repeat ourselves too much.
The horror movie they joked about was in the vein of The Human Centipede and involved a mad surgeon kidnapping and surgically altering a lodger into a walrus-like creature. Smith said it would be set in the backwoods of Manitoba and incorporate Canadian folklore. Tusk‘s script is finished, the $2 million budget seems to be raised, and now Smith has revealed that at least two of the lead characters are cast.
Smith told Entertainment Weekly that “Tusk will be an ivory bridge, if you will, to Clerks III.” He did not, to our knowledge, end that sentence with “and sh-t”, which is a surprise. He went on to say that Tusk will film first — starting production this October 21st — and help secure a budget for Clerks III. The human walrus movie is really happening, you guys.
We’ll let Kevin explain who’s playing the mad surgeon and the human walrus:
“I wrote the script around [Michael Parks], so it’s nothing but Michael Parks dialogue porn. Justin Long is the guy in the walrus suit. I needed a guy who has expressive eyes because once you’re in that suit, you’re covered. I reached out to Justin and he wrote back and was like, ‘This is awfully scary but how can we not? Let’s fall down this hole.’ So it’ll be Parks versus Long trying to answer the age-old question, ‘Is man indeed a walrus at heart?’ It’s a f–ked up movie, dude.” [Entertainment Weekly via /film]
Sold.
Smith has also sent the script to Quintin Tarantino. When we originally reported this, we thought Smith wanted Tarantino to play the lodger who is surgically transformed into a human walrus (Justin Long’s role). It turns out he may have wanted Tarantino to play Guy Lapointe, the French Canadian police officer searching for Justin Long’s character.
That dream casting will probably never come to be. But can we just say, Tarantino with a French Canadian accent? We give that four Coke Wizards out of five.
We would have given it all five, but we sold one for coke.
(Banner images via OnceAndFutureLaura and Christopher Irwin via Creative Commons.)