James Gunn sat down with The LA Time's Hero Complex writer Rebecca Keegan at South by Southwest Film Conference and Festival and talk about everything from his new movie Super to what video Games he is playing now. Here are some excerpts from the interview.
The moral of Super would seem to be don’t cut in line. Is there a larger moral message?
I wrote this script in 2002 and I wrote 59 pages in one day. I was writing it as a short film so I thought it was gonna be like 20 pages but I was in the groove. I had an experience of automatic writing at the end of the movie. The narration at the end of the movie where Frank is speaking to the audience it was like Frank was speaking to me. It was a very powerful experience. It felt as if it was not written by me. I was sobbing. That was the reason I wanted to tell the story, cause it was about somebody who had a calling, and not judging people and not judging yourself so quickly.
You don’t follow the rules of any particular genre — horror or comedy or comic-book film. There are a lot of tonal shifts. What influenced you to do that?
I’m a very big fan of Asian cinema Hong Kong movies of the early ’90s, Japanese films going back to the ’70s, South Korean films of today Old Boy. I think the best movie last year was the South Korean film Mother. They seem to not have the same restraints on genre as we do here. My life is not one genre. Some days it’s a comedy, some days it’s an action film, it’s usually a tragedy, but it’s all those things combined. That’s one of the things I wanted to play with. The one American movie that shifts tone really well is Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven.
How did you cast Rainn?
I originally had funding for this movie before Slither and I couldn’t agree with the finance people about the lead actor. There were some pretty big actors who wanted the role. There was nobody at the time I thought could really handle Frank. I needed somebody who was able to do the comedy, the drama, be big enough that you felt he was really threatening. My ex-wife (Jenna Fischer) is the one who called me and said, “What are you doing with Super? Have you ever thought of Rainn?” I was like, that makes total sense. I gave the script to Rainn that day and that night he said he was gonna do it.
You’ve said Batman is your favorite superhero. I would have guessed someone weirder.
Batman is a guy who’s parents were brutally murdered in front of him and he’s never gonna heal that wound. I like the tragic element of him. Also, just practically, he’s had more great comic books written about him than any other superhero.
Is there such a thing as too many comic-book movies?
What’s going on now with superheroes is strictly an element of technology. You go back and watch that first Superman movie and it looks terrible, the effects. But for years comic books have been around and people have loved superheroes and now they’re able to do that same thing in films. When you see Iron Man, it’s the same thing that’s in the comic books in terms of the spectacle of it all. As long as the stories are good and the characters are appealing and it continues to change in the way that comic books did they started out with two dimensional characters and then Stan Lee came along with Spider-Man who had weakness and personal lives and then you had Alan Moore who puts a whole other spin on things. To have that happen in films is definitely cool.
What are your games of choice?
Mass Effect 2 and Red Dead Redemption. I don’t have the time to game all the time cause I’m too obsessive. A few times a year I’ll play a game from start to finish. After this I’ll have a game-cation coming. I’ll play a game for 3 or 4 days. It’s like cleansing the palate of my brain.
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Super comes out April 1, 2011