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Chainsaws, Sharks & DIY Dreams: The Ferrante Story · Cinema Yūgen

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G'day, that's right, it's that time again, time for cinema! Ma, you game!
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Welcome back, Cinema Yugen. The sky's dark and the sirens scream and somewhere
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above the city sharks begin to fall.
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This week on Cinema Yugen's requested classic,
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we unleash pure cinematic mayhem with the mastermind behind one of modern cult
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cinema's most gloriously unhinged phenomena, Anthony C.
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Ferrente, director writer producer effects artist chaos architect long before
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sharknado became a global sensation
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anthony was learning filmmaking the hard way on movie sets inside fangoria the trenches of diy.
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Cinema where passion matters more than budgets and survival means solving impossible
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problems at full speed and that energy
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it explodes through every frame he
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shoots because anthony c ferrente doesn't make safe movies he makes
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movies with chainsaws roaring through tornadoes with sharks crashing through
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skyscrapers with lightning splitting the heavens while the world loses its collective mind.
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Wild, frenetic, pure adrenaline-fueled cinema,
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but beneath the glorious insanity is a filmmaker driven by relentless passion,
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a deep love for movies that raised an entire generation of genre fans.
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This is more than a conversation about Sharknado. This is a front row seat inside
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the mind of a filmmaker who turned B-movie chaos into an art form.
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So crank up the volume, watch the skies, and prepare for the storm.
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Cinema Yugen's requested classic with Anthony C. Ferrento.
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Here's Tony. Oh, you're welcome. Pleasure. Very cool.
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I guess, Anthony, you've always wanted to work in movies, yes?
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Yeah, when I was in sixth grade, I remember the moment, I was like reading the
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paper and looking at like the movies that are coming out.
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And at that moment, some kind of weird thing happened. It's like, I want to make movies.
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And I was, I come from a small town in California. So it's not like in LA where,
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you know, you go to any corner and someone's making a movie and maybe get on
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the set, figure out what's going on.
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Like you know this is this is a small town and i had to kind of find a back way in which
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was i started writing movie reviews in sixth grade for our class paper right
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and i tried to watch as many movies as possible and then finally got access
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to cameras and editing equipment and,
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uh you know so journalism and and filmmaking were kind of in tandem,
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you know where i got to learn a lot like it's like film school in a box especially
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when i started writing for fangoria at you go on stats and,
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see how the process worked but it was always the stated goal was learn as much
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as I could because that's what I wanted to do that was the main thing I wanted
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to make movie right and was there was there any particular films that,
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influenced you or still influence you.
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I was always obsessed with John Carpenter. Okay.
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I mean, John Carpenter's movies, there's something that appealed to me about
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them. Also, I think because I came from Northern California,
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Halloween, even though it was filmed in L.A., was set in the Midwest, had a small-town feel.
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The Frog was set in Northern California.
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You know, you directed Halloween 3 with Santa Mira, California, that kind of thing.
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So I think one of the big takeaways with Carpenter was I kind of realized setting
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movies in small towns were more accessible than making a horror movie set in Los Angeles.
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Because, you know, coming from where I'm from, you understand,
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oh, it's more relatable, I think, to more audiences.
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I think the moment you know you're in a horror movie, and there are certainly
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horror movies that work in Los Angeles, but the moment you know you're in Los
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Angeles, it's like, I don't care. It's like Hollywood. You know,
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it's like, for some reason, I think it takes you out of it.
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My first movie, Boo, was set in, you know, a small town as well, San Amira.
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That's my kind of running gag because of a relation to the Body Smashers,
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the original, and Halloween 3, the town with San Amira. Big town.
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And so we shot Boo in L.A., but we made sure that it didn't feel like you were in L.A.
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I mean, you might get a couple of glimpses of palm trees, but it does not feel.
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So we shot in Santa Clarita for a small town, and then everything else was sort
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of this hospital in downtown L.A.
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So that's sort of my philosophy.
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Right. So after you left, you finished high school and you went to San Francisco
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to do your schooling there.
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I went to community college at Los Madonis College and got my AA,
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and I continued to make short films.
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But then, yeah, after that, I went to San Francisco State University,
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and that was my official self-school training.
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But I will say that as much as I learned at San Francisco State,
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I'd say the third college I went to was the College of Fangoria Magazine,
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because Tony Timpone, the editor there, Mike Gingold, the associate editor,
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they were really generous to me because,
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I was doing a lot of journalism and I loved horror movies and they gave me an
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opportunity to start writing for them.
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And so they would send me down to movie sets in LA to cover.
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So I would get a round car and go do three or four film sets and then come back.
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And I learned so much because the studio movies, when you go and cover them.
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They watch you like a hawk. You go in, it's like a group of people.
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And there's no wiggle room. It's down to an exact bias.
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Low-budget horror movies, the filmmakers were very welcoming and I'm still friends
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with many of the people that I met during those days.
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I could just hang out. I'd hang out all day and I'd keep watching the process
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of making a movie. Jeff Burr, I covered a bunch of his movies.
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He's such a nice guy and the effects guys were so welcoming to their studios and stuff.
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It was really just And for me, not having access to this was just a big eye-opener.
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And I would come back home after those bed visits and go, hey,
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I just learned how to do rain and lightning, and I would experiment with it. So it was cool.
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So that was like an extension on top of film school for you then? Yeah.
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Yeah, I would say, yeah, I would say, yeah, it was, I, I, it's,
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it's the third college. So I don't know if we would call it a master's degree,
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but it was, it was definitely the extended education.
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Yeah. Well, I mean, cause there's no, there's, there's nothing,
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I mean, as much as they can teach you the fundamentals in film school,
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actually being on a film set and seeing how all of that, uh,
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all that method comes into practice is, is pretty priceless.
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So, I mean, that's, that's an incredible. Yeah, we got.
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Yeah. Sorry. Go on. Yeah. it was it was I don't want to I don't want to take
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away from temperature shape because I did learn tons from them we got to make
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short films and scenes there's a lot of stuff that I.
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Had a great experience there but yeah it is a completely different animal because here,
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and even more so because it is on a lower budget level that you're seeing,
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how things really get done and the eye-opening thing was there was no difference
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between what I was doing with no money and a video camera,
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in my hometown, then what they were doing, you know, with a $1 or $2 or $3 million
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budget, except they had a little more money and a little more crew.
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They were still faced with time constraints and problems and issues and always, uh-huh.
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Sure. And I remember being a short film one, and our producer on it,
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you know, because everything was falling apart, you know, lights were there,
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camera issues or whatever, and
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I remember her telling me, This isn't how movies are supposed to be made.
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You know, she was just frustrated. But then many years later,
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when I was working on a film, when I started doing makeup effects and worked on film, I called her up.
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I said, you know, actually, I've always remembered you saying that because it's
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like I was frustrated, too, with you verbalized it.
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But I just kind of knew because I had done so many shorts, you just kind of roll with punches.
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I said, actually, the reality is this is the same thing. It is exactly the same thing.
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You just have more time, a little more time, and a little more budget, and a few more people.
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So I think that was a big eye-opening thing. It's just no different.
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Everybody thinks that you get to the studio level, and I certainly happen to have that opportunity.
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But I guarantee you, when we're doing $100 or $200, $250 million movies,
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they have the same problems that we have doing Sharknado's or that I have doing,
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short film, which is exponentially increased.
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That of 30 or 40 people crew, you have a 500 person crew.
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I can't imagine what that's like. Yeah. You know, and every,
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and every minute you stand, not doing something. There's like,
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it costs like 10 grand just to stand around or something like that.
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Yeah, definitely.
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No, it's funny, like on Sharknado movies, I would say that we're really ambitious
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for our budget. I mean, we really go crazy with these movies,
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and thankfully, sci-fi and the sci-fi won't allow us to do it.
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But I describe it as the gun goes off, you know, when your day starts and you
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have 12 hours to make a movie.
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And you don't get if you are standing around not doing something, there's a problem.
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You have to like go, OK, we're off to the races. You have four or five major
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scenes to do in that 12 hours.
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And it's just like you go for it. Like, OK, all right, we're going to do this.
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Well, we don't have this.
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Well, OK, we got to bring this over here. Let's do this and we'll do that.
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And then it's problem-solving on the fly, and I think that's the energy of the movie.
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Like, there's this weird energy of how fast we do them that gives it its charm.
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It's rough around the edges.
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It's not the perfect, pristine, polished diamond, but there's charm in the raggedness.
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And I go back to a quote a friend of mine said about the first movie.
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It's a movie that doesn't know it can't do that.
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Right, sure. And I think that explains all five movies. Sure.
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But do you think, do you think you're, do you think a filmmaker's background
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or your background gives you, gives you those tools?
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Like having made a lot of films where you don't have all of the,
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you don't have money to solve the problems.
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You have simply creativity.
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Do you think that gives your style, you know, it's, you know, it's energy? Yeah.
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I think actually it was even further back. I think it goes back to being in my hometown. Right.
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I had no access to a lot of – I didn't have access to filmmakers and things.
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I just kind of tried to figure out how to do it on my own.
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Sure. Stuff that I pulled off, I still can't believe it to say.
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I think I convinced the police department once to lend me one of their light
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bars, like put it on a car and shoot it. Right. Like, who does that?
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You learn to ask things, and sometimes it happens.
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So by coming from a place of not having anything and then getting into a lower-budget
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movie, you still don't have stuff.
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When you do have things, like with Sharknado, we get a little bit like,
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oh, here's a crane. Oh, my God, I've never had a crane before.
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Or in the case of the second movie, we got to New York.
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I looked at New York as its own toy. I've never gotten to shoot there.
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And so I was just enamored of being able to shoot in New York.
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And we just whacked it up. Like most people with like L.A.
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Get desensitized. Like, oh, it's the bridge.
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Or the Santa Monica Currier. It's this. It's that. It's Hollywood Boulevard.
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But, you know, we're in New York. It's like, to me, Times Square,
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this is a big deal. Bachelor of Liberty, it's a big deal. And so to be able
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to shoot there, I was just, I was in love with the tools we were given.
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And so I'm appreciative of it.
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So when they say you have two hours to shoot in Times Square,
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you know, I'm not like, damn it, I want four.
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Oh, you can only have a crew of 10. Well, I need 30. It's like,
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okay, two hours to shoot in the Harnett Times Square, let's do it.
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And I think that's the appreciation of it. It's like, I know...
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It's a gift to be able to do this stuff. And the fact that we reach so many
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people and there are so many fans, you know, you, you, you have a level of responsibility
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of trying to keep a talent consistency.
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And, you know, you, you make the best of it. I, I'd say circuit of five is the
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biggest movie we've ever done. And that we went to two, two and for two and
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a half months, we went to all of, I think five different countries.
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I know you were down there too. Yeah.
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We shot Bulgaria, New Zealand, Italy, Japan, and Australia.
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And this wasn't like we had a crew of 80 people it was a very small ragtag crew
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and then we'd pick up crew from each individual country
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sure and that was that was the toy in this one is that i got to shoot at trevi
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fellin i got to shoot at tower bridge we got to shoot by city opera house okay
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so how long were how long were you in australia for not very long,
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three days three days there you go all micro crew,
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yeah very micro crew right we got plate shots we got.
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Plate shots there of uh sydney harbor bridge and right and the opera house and
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uh bondy beach and that was about it right so.
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Yeah and we also shot with we shot with your morning we shot,
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we shot stuff with the uh good morning australia people the space show australia
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oh okay right right well that'll be good to see them get eaten yeah yeah.
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Very cool but um yeah so you you wrote for the magazine and you've,
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I mean, you've done so much stuff. I mean, you worked, uh, like you,
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you touched on briefly, you said you worked in makeup effects too, as well.
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Special effects, makeup. Well, that was the thing. Yeah. And that was kind of
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by accident. Right. Yeah.
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Excuse me, I'm actually eating my dinner at the same time. You're all right.
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People are going, what is he doing?
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You're all right. Go ahead. Yeah, crazy filmmaker eating and talking at the same time. That's fine.
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The main event happened by accident.
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I didn't know how I was going to break into L.A. when I finally moved to Los Angeles. Right.
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I thought maybe I might do making of videos and stuff because of the journalism
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thing, but maybe I would go and do EPKs and stuff like that.
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And I knew a lot of the makes-up effects people and a lot of my short films
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had a lot of makes-up effects in it and Brent Friedman, the screenwriter of Necronomicon,
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got me hired as a PA on the reshoots for Necronomicon with Brian Isda who I
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also knew from the journalism days,
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and so when you're a PA pretty much do whatever they need you to do and you
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just go for it but if they sense that you can do other things,
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They capitalize on it. I've seen that happen on every movie.
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I always tell people, get a job as a PA.
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If they sense that you can do things, you will move up pretty quickly in low budget.
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Right. And so I think I showed the line producer one of my shorts,
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and I go, hey, you could do makeup effects. Do you want to be a PA and also
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coordinate makeup effects at the same time?
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Right. And I was like, sure. You know, then, you know, two weeks of 20-hour
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days later, it was pretty nuts.
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But I brought in a couple of my buddies, Todd Rex and Sam Greenman,
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who had done some, Todd had done makeup effects on my, some of my shorts,
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and I'd worked with Sam a little bit.
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They came down, and we kind of became a de facto makeup effects company.
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And in addition to supervising some of the other companies that were coming
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back, some of them couldn't come back, so they would send us their props,
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and we'd have to operate them or fix them up.
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And so on that show we got like a crash force in like how do you make this stuff
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work with no money and so when brian did his next show which was the dentist,
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he said i wanted to be his full-time special makeup effect supervisor on that show,
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and so that's how i kind of fell into it and then by doing the makeup effect
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i got to direct this i started making part of the deal to do all the second
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unit stuff so it started off just doing second unit for for makeup effect stuff only And then,
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I did some uncredited stuff on Witchmaster 2 where I was actually doing the
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whole entire sequence for some of those makeup effects.
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That was kind of how it started. And so I wanted to direct, so I learned how
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to turn the makeup effects into the directing side of it.
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And it was great. Ryan was so cool because when the scripts were getting done,
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he would have me come in and say, give me your thoughts to talk about,
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you know well what if he did this or what if we did that with the makeupless
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facts and he was it was just fantastic and I think I did there was a thing he
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did called the install was this,
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playstation games for japan and they needed to shoot live action footage and
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they had this japanese script,
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and he hired me to to adapt the script essentially trying to make sense of it
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and and and fix the dialogue and all that stuff that was technically,
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i think my first my first official screenwriting thing that got made
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i did one other script for charlie bath before that that did get made but that
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was my first official thing so that's again brian lots brian brian really,
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brian was really good to me and gave me a lot of opportunity right,
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so you graduate from from makeup effects into,
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into being assistant director then on on on a few films.
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No no more more more second unit director now i was never an ad okay it was
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just second unit director okay,
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so So I basically could be given sequences and then whether it was just the
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effect part or whether it was a whole effect sequence, that's how I kind of
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started doing things. Right.
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And then I basically was doing my short films at the same time while writing
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scripts and then trying to get my own stuff set up. So I learned a lot for a
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while and then finally I got booed.
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Yeah. I noticed in your credits too, you've done a bit of acting.
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We've all seen you do your little bits in the Sharknado films.
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But I noticed that right down the bottom, you were in this movie called The Video Dead.
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That was when I was like an amoeba. Like somebody said, hey,
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I can get you on a film set.
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I was, you know, I think it was my first time doing a little short from a kid.
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And, you know, I think it was just like, take this cat home and we'll get you
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on a movie. And so I went in there and I was on and it came out of the TV set.
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Right, yeah. So, yeah. So that was just, it was just, and that kind of was my
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first taste of makeup effects.
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Didn't want, you know. But I was just a kid on that thing.
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And so it was that it was still me in San Francisco and people were really nice and,
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But in terms of acting and other things, I would say I am far from an actor.
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Most of the time in these movies, either as a fan, someone's like,
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hey, you want to do this? Then I'll do it. Or I'm in my movies by default.
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And the cameos in Sharknado just sort of became an in-joke. So I just started doing them.
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I don't like acting at all.
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I'm good at being me. If I can be an extension of me in these movies,
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it's fine. But if I have to act, It's like I want to jump off a bridge.
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Usually, I'm the last person.
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For Sharknado, part of it is we're doing pickups all the time.
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Usually, at the very end, we need somebody to do something, and we don't have
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somebody available, so I end up doing it.
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In Sharknado 1, I was the guy in a watering. The underwater camera was so far
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from the shore, and we need someone to drown.
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I was in there directing the camera, and I just pulled off my shirt and said,
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okay, just film me drowning. That became the Sharknado cameo.
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Number two was actually planned because I wanted to be on the train playing
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guitar. It was sort of like, okay, that'll be a fun intro.
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Sharknado 3 was we needed someone to be the head of NASA, and we had nobody
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because we only could bring a crew of five in there.
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So it's like, oh, crap, I'm the head of NASA.
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That so and in this one which which this will humor you in five,
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is that we needed a helicopter pilot for the australia sequence right and there
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was nobody left so i do a terrible australian accent okay for short native fire yeah so you can lock me,
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but the great thing is i know that i can spend all the time in the adr who's
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trying to make work and if it doesn't work then i to loot myself.
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So I have no shame in fixing my horribleness. Okay. Well, if you need an Australian
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dubbing voice, I'm happy to do it unaccredited.
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But, you know, we'll see how it goes in the A&R booth. Okay.
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Just give us a call. I'll do it unaccredited. I'll say whatever the line is,
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and I'll make you sound authentic.
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That sounds good. I may call you on that. We'll see how it goes.
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It's only a couple of wives. So it's also a challenge of, okay,
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I'm going to make this work by go. Yeah.
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Yeah, totally. I'm up for it.
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But you really are a talented man. And I've noticed that you've written an awful
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lot of songs for all of the, for films and whatnot. The Ballad of Sharknado.
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How did you, is that? Yeah, I remember somebody telling me, do not write this
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song, do not do this song, you will be laughed at. And I'm like, no, we're going to do it.
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Well, Robbie Ritz, my songwriting partner.
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He was Cousin Oliver in the Britney Bunch. He's been around forever.
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He's been an actor, and he's a good friend of mine since I moved to Los Angeles.
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And on my first couple short films, he did some music for me.
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And there was a short where we had a local band that had a song in the project.
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We finished the movie, and it was all edited. It's mixed and everything.
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And then the manager, and it was a band that went nowhere, but they came back.
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The manager goes, oh, we want more money for this, otherwise you can't use the
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song in the movie. I'm like, we signed a contract, and you knew what it was.
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We didn't make any money off this. It was just a fan film kind of thing, short film project.
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We don't care. so I told Robbie about it and he donated a few songs to it just come on my studio,
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okay so it's like okay what's the song it's like okay it's this two minutes,
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tempo is this okay so we got the tempo down great okay so it's like you know,
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if you're trying to replace something you don't want to replace it with something
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that suddenly is a ballad you want to have the same beat so it doesn't because
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we're already done with the movie it doesn't stand to pick out like a short
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song and in three hours we wrote this one and a half minutes song.
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And I went back in, paid money to replace that song with this one. And I,
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That was kind of the first thing of us kind of writing something.
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I mean, he is by far more accomplished than I am in all respect.
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I've always played music and I've written songs.
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But, you know, I look at him as like, he's like Elvis Costello of Prince, Lizzie Buckingham.
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I'm like Paul Westerberg from The Replacements. I'm very ragged and floppy and,
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you know, just for the moment. He knows the science, math of music,
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which is fantastic. It's a great compliment to the two of us of how we work.
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So when I did my first movie, Boo, I wanted a Patsy Cline song,
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I wanted some blue stuff, and the producers would not pay to like anything.
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And I was bummed because it was part of the tone of what I wanted to accomplish the film.
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And he goes, you know, come over to the studio and we'll work on something.
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In that there was the singer, Eliana Opelok, who had this Rockville singer,
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but I found that she had this great, she had that kind of Patsy Cline thing.
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Can you be like Patsy Cline for this? And we wrote two songs for the film that
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Robbie produced in that sort of six-speed style.
25:46
And they never, ironically, they never ended up in the movie because the producers
25:50
said, why would you want to put Patsy Cline-like songs in a horror movie?
25:54
And then after that, for like two years, there was nothing but Patsy Cline songs
25:58
in a horror movie. So I was like, I was on to something.
26:01
But the blues songs made it, and the Blackploitation theme, Count Capilla thing made it into the movie.
26:07
And so with each film that I did, I just gave up on trying to like the songs.
26:11
On the second movie, I tried to get Season of the Witch by Donovan.
26:14
And we got permission to do a cover of it.
26:17
It was only going to cost like $10,000, and we would do the cover,
26:20
and the producer said no. And so I finally just gave up and said,
26:23
okay, Robbie, we'll just write our own stuff.
26:26
And so each movie would change the name of the band and do different types of
26:29
music and write to the film.
26:31
And when we got to Sharknado, the obvious thing is the name of the band changed.
26:37
The idea of the band broke up and then he could form a new band.
26:40
So we formed Clint for Sharknado, which was the Robert Shaw character from Jaws.
26:48
We thought that was a clever name.
26:50
Like Hansel and Gretel, the name of the band was the Gingerbread Men.
26:53
Headless Sportsman, it was Toothless Jimmy and the Applejack Kid.
26:57
Silly things like that. But so the Ballad of Sharknado, one of my favorite songs
27:03
is a horror movie song, Death Cemetery by the Rahomes.
27:07
That was like the perfect horror movie song. And I'm going, if we could only,
27:11
if the Ramones were only around to write our Sharknado song,
27:14
and so that kind of became the thing of let's come up with something silly and fun.
27:19
And there is the Ballad of Sharknado. And that song kind of blew up and became
27:24
the theme song of the franchise.
27:25
Yeah and so we've kind of stuck with the name quits because that's what we kind
27:30
of are known for and we've done,
27:32
probably anywhere between three to five songs per movie yeah i love the,
27:37
i love this song from i think it's three uh badass i'm a badass,
27:43
badass yeah badass turned out really good that that's that's become pretty popular as well,
27:48
on our you know i can see how they all the songs do badass actually broke out
27:52
i was really happy with that i wish the one we did last movie,
27:55
the Sharknado Rhapsody, which was our attempt at doing a rock opera.
27:59
Right. That one hasn't gained as much traction as I'd like, but I think that's,
28:05
one of the best produced things we've done.
28:06
It's just so silly and crazy and it just kind of got that balance of Sharknado
28:12
vibe to it, but in a different way. So, that's fun.
28:17
The other list of your credits, too, you've written a comic book as well,
28:22
your Archie versus Sharknado. What was that like?
28:26
That was actually kind of fun. You know, one of our producers went down to Comic-Con
28:31
and met Dan Terrence, who was a huge fan of Sharknado, and he did like a mock-up
28:35
cover of Sharknado vs. Archie as a joke.
28:37
He's kind of like, Eric, just do one of these for it.
28:40
And so then there was kind of this rumbling that, you know, maybe we should do a tie-in.
28:45
And so it kind of fell by the wayside. And then I went back to the producers
28:50
going, I want this comic to happen. I was really excited about it.
28:54
And so at the very last minute, they made a deal for the comic,
28:57
and I ended up writing it in the middle of post on Sharknado 3.
29:02
So it kind of, you know, it didn't have any of the characters from Sharknado,
29:06
but it tied into what was going on in 3.
29:08
So it was like, while the East Coast is being torn apart, this is what's happening
29:12
in Archieville. And Betty and Veronica were actually in Washington at the same time as Finn.
29:18
So if you look in the comic, you kind of sort of see Finn running in the background.
29:21
But it was a chance to kind of do gags that we couldn't do in the movies and
29:26
also not have to be hindered by visual effects and stuff that was in the board.
29:31
So that was actually really funny it was actually nerve wracking a little bit too because,
29:36
I understood Sharknado but I had to live up to the Archie characters so I felt
29:41
I felt this kind of pressure on myself of like I can't mess this up you know
29:45
they have this sweet voice that been around for decades and,
29:50
And I think the thing that I think that was really great about it was I fell
29:54
in love with the Betty and Veronica characters. I just loved writing them.
29:57
So they kind of they kind of actually have more of a of a of a arc in the movie than even Archie.
30:04
And that that was really fun writing them, because I think what what what it's
30:09
always been with that they were always buying for Archie.
30:13
And I'm like, I want to do something where they don't necessarily need Archie, you know.
30:18
And that was kind of a neat little twin.
30:20
And the other thing that was very flattering, they've had so many different
30:26
iterations of the comic and the characters and stuff.
30:29
And there were two characters, and oh my God, I'm going to forget them,
30:32
Milton. And I can't remember her name. But I thought these two characters should be paired up.
30:40
And so I kind of made a little kind of relationship thing with them.
30:45
Uh yes dilton sorry dilton gosh i mean there's arch people they're gonna they're
30:48
gonna crucify me i can't remember all this stuff and they said you know in the
30:52
entire time we've done the comic book we've never done anything with those two
30:54
characters kind of being together,
30:56
or being you know liking each other so i thought oh wow i actually did something
31:00
that hasn't been done before,
31:02
so that was that was that was fun that they were really great and generous and
31:06
working with dan was fantastic and the covers that they did,
31:10
it was great i love it how shocked that i love I love it how Sharknado is sort
31:16
of bleeding into other films.
31:17
I was talking to Mike Mendez last year, and he did La Volantula.
31:22
And there's a cameo with Iron, who pops up in La Volantula.
31:31
Yeah, no, that was cool, and then we paid it back for four, and then Steven
31:38
Gutenberg appeared in Sharknado 4, and that was really a blast.
31:44
Yeah, no, I mean, the Sharknado effect on a lot of stuff, I mean,
31:47
the thing that's insane is we're,
31:50
as much as it's broken and it's global and people know it and it's popular or
31:54
it's either loved or it's hated, it's, you know, it's just whatever it elicits
31:58
in anybody, it's this huge thing where, like, people reference it,
32:02
like, Full House was referencing Sharknado.
32:05
The cover of Newsweek was Trump-NATO with our logo. I mean.
32:10
To have something like this that's kind of broken through
32:13
and become such a big pop culture thing that was never planned to be,
32:18
it was just planned to be a silly little film that, you know,
32:20
hopefully would make people laugh and entertain, that's, you know,
32:23
kind of make fun of disaster movies and shark movies at the same time.
32:27
You know, it's flattering.
32:30
It's really nice to see that that's happened. Yeah, and it all came from a line of dialogue, didn't it?
32:38
Well, actually, it came from, we, Jacob, Hare, and I, I was writing a lot of
32:44
horror movies for sci-fi, and, you know, you pitch like 10 ideas at a time.
32:48
Right. So Jake and I, who I've written some scripts with, you know,
32:50
we were trying to come up with the most ridiculous title. Yeah.
32:53
One of them was Lava Bird, and the other one, I think he said Sharknado,
32:57
and I'm like, oh my God, and we fell in love with the title from the beginning.
33:00
Yeah. And we pitched it twice, to sci-fi and there was no traction with it,
33:05
and i i was writing a leprechaun script for them so i made a reference to a
33:09
shark nato in there because again we were we were trying to figure out a way
33:12
how could we make a shark nato movie because we were supposed to go we could
33:15
not get off of this idea right and so,
33:18
when that line of dialogue was that movie they go oh we have to make this movie
33:21
and then the rest is kind of kind of history yeah.
33:25
Well it's um it's wonderful to I think that at some point in the future,
33:30
you know, we talk about, you know, ausploitation and blaxploitation,
33:34
it makes me, it makes me smile a little bit that one day they're going to be
33:37
doing a retrospective of, of shark exploitation.
33:42
Yeah. Yeah, no, it will.
33:46
And, you know, it's so strange because there's been so many iterations of,
33:51
like, you know, there's shark clips that actually, you know,
33:53
did really well for sci-fi.
33:55
And, you know, they'd have all these different things. Even Asylum had,
33:58
like, you know, three-headed shark attack or two-headed shark attack.
34:01
And, you know, there's every single kind of silly thing.
34:05
And it's Sharknado that, like, somehow kind of broke through from just being
34:10
a genre thing to, like, mainstream.
34:13
And like i said it's just it's cool and it happened and it was and it was owned
34:17
by the fans it wasn't something where,
34:20
you know the the marketing god said you must watch the first sharknado it just
34:24
happened the marketing came for two three four and five but the first movie,
34:29
it's it's like there's that kind of organic thing and it blew up on twitter and,
34:33
one of the first kind of things you know that just happened organically like
34:38
that one of those happy It's like.
34:41
One of those happy accidents.
34:43
Exactly. Exactly. And that's why it's such an obligation. There's a lot of kids that love these movies.
34:50
I have very specific rules.
34:54
We get our mandates of what we have to do. Everybody contributes to these movies.
34:58
Side by asylum, the writers, myself, I and Tara. Everybody contributes ideas
35:03
to these things. But there's certain things that I'm always making sure.
35:07
And I'm thankful that everybody else is in agreement on it, that we don't want
35:12
to have overt sexuality where people go into the woods and have sex and then sharks attack them.
35:19
We know kids are watching this. We always try to keep this wholesome family
35:23
values thing in it, even though the winds are getting ripped off. Sure, yeah.
35:28
It's that fine line that you walk.
35:31
So, you know, we do the Comic-Cons, and there's really nine,
35:36
10, 11, 12 years that come up and ask questions to Ian and Tara.
35:39
Like, the kids love these. They have that ADD sensibility to them.
35:44
So, like, yeah, it's like, oh, what would happen to the shark?
35:48
It's cut open, and a person's pulled out. And, you know, it does things that,
35:52
you know, most studio movies are afraid to do, except for, like,
35:55
the Fast and Furious movies. Yeah.
35:58
I was talking to Thunder last year, the end of last year,
36:02
and like we were sort of i said how far how far do they keep going like and
36:07
i mean i think five had just been announced and he told me that that he had,
36:12
plotted something up till seven you know and,
36:16
you know i mean a lot of a lot of these franchises uh you know can keep going i mean how,
36:22
from your own point of view how how far do you see it going do you think it's
36:25
a matter of while it's popular, keep, keep doing it, or you don't want to outstay
36:31
your welcome at some point, or,
36:34
It's so weird because I have the journalism side of it that I'm appreciative
36:39
of the fact that we're on five.
36:41
Before Sharknado, I had never done a sequel to somebody else's movie or to one of my own movies.
36:46
Now I've done four sequels. But as a film, for the filmmaking side of it,
36:53
the thing for me about these movies that makes it worth it is that each movie
36:57
I fill is its own little genre.
36:59
We do different things in each one of these movies, which to me,
37:02
even though the plot is kind of similar, is the Sharknado.
37:06
We're experimenting with different genres. First movie was a furry movie.
37:11
It is what it is. It's Sharknado. Second one was a big New York movie,
37:15
a big New York disaster movie.
37:18
The third movie we did, like White House Down with Sharks in the beginning in
37:21
Washington, felt like a conspiracy theory movie.
37:25
Then we did a big amusement park disaster film. And then we did Space.
37:29
So we crammed three movies into number three.
37:33
And then you think there's nothing left to do so the fourth one became our superhero
37:37
movie and the fifth one is the international action adventure film.
37:44
So I feel like each of them have their own kind of sensibility and their own
37:49
kind of tone in a weird way,
37:52
so I feel like if you keep on doing something different and fresh and there's
37:56
still ideas the movies are going to be around we still have our core two actors.
38:03
I pitched one to Thunder. I pitched a time travel one.
38:07
I pitched. You know, that's something that everybody goes, oh,
38:10
that would be great. And I said, you know, I think that's something that certainly,
38:15
you know, way down the road, that could be a possibility. You know,
38:17
like Army of Darkness meets Sharknado sort of thing.
38:21
Yeah, like that's an obvious thing. I mean, there's so many others.
38:25
Like, we always kind of wanted to do that action-adventure thing,
38:28
and I thought that was kind of a fun way to go in this one.
38:31
I think, you know, there's certainly other things, but again, how far does it go?
38:37
Because there's still as much as, you know, like you could say aliens.
38:40
Aliens could be another one, which, you know, we've never done anything with that.
38:44
But then it's like you have two different things that compete,
38:48
because even though we have a Sharknado in these movies, it's still sort of set in the real world.
38:54
Right, yeah. And even when we start pushing it to the direction of like Terra
38:58
flying around and all that stuff, there's still this weird internal logic to it. Right, yeah, yeah.
39:04
So you still have to kind of, like, you still have to ground it even if it continues
39:09
to get more and more ridiculous.
39:10
And I know that for saying Sharknado has to ground itself, I think the heart
39:14
of the movie is that you have to believe in the central conceit of the family
39:18
element, Ian, Terra, and the family. Sure.
39:21
And they're not superheroes, but they've had to be put into the situation of being superheroes.
39:27
Sure. And if you do that, then you can kind of wrap anything else around it
39:30
that's kind of bizarre and ridiculous. Right.
39:34
But you've got lots of other things going on besides Sharknado.
39:37
You've just finished producing a new film.
39:42
Yeah, Awaken the Shadow Man, which we did that two years ago. And I love the project.
39:48
They originally wanted me as a director on it, but it was in the middle of me doing a commercial.
39:52
And I wanted to be as evolved as I could because I really loved it.
39:57
It's a very different, spooky, kind of 1970s-style thriller,
40:02
kind of like Rosemary's Baby.
40:05
And I just couldn't get it out of my head.
40:08
I was torn, but it wasn't in the cards for me to be able to helm it.
40:14
But Woodrow and Skylar and James, who were involved in it, they let me be as
40:19
involved as I could. And thankfully, I was able to be there as much as I could
40:24
to kind of guide it and kind of bring my horror sensibility to it.
40:28
And I'm just so proud of that film. It's a really solid, scary film.
40:34
And because it's not made by a studio with all independent stuff,
40:38
it could be what they wanted it to originally be.
40:41
It could be this thing that didn't follow a specific formula.
40:45
It didn't hit certain beats by a certain point.
40:49
It was about telling this unique story and that's what I love about it and it
40:54
stayed true to its roots. That's the type we did for Krampus and Trip or Treat, I can't remember.
41:03
But he did Krampus with Michael Doherty, and he did this amazing score for us.
41:08
Really, really great score.
41:10
And it just elevates the film on so many levels. So it's coming out in late
41:14
July, VOD, and on theaters here in LA.
41:18
It's getting a lot of buzz. We just were the Dances with Film Festival and it's quite great there.
41:24
So I'm excited for people to see it. I think, you know, my background has started
41:28
with horror, and every chance I get to kind of do something like that,
41:31
it's fun you know and it helps being the Sharknado guy because it makes more
41:35
people ultimately see themselves well that's cool,
41:39
and so Sharknado 5 comes out in August yeah,
41:43
I
41:46
Think August 6th, worldwide. August 6th. Well, there you go.
41:49
Before I let you go, obviously, you're the shark nettoe guy at the moment,
41:52
but obviously you'd be on the lookout for other stuff to direct as well. Exactly.
42:01
Over the course of the last five years, we've been developing other projects,
42:05
and I squeezed in a thriller last fall called Forgotten Evil,
42:09
which actually I'm really proud of.
42:13
I wanted to actually do something that was more character-based.
42:16
And a lot of my movies have supernatural elements to it. And this was the first
42:19
time I've done something that, even though there's horror elements or suspense
42:23
elements, there is no supernatural element to it.
42:26
And so it was really fun to kind of get into that space.
42:30
I wrote the script for Masiel Alicia, who has been in Shark 805, and she plays the lead.
42:34
And it was really fun. It's the first, even though I've done a lot of scripting
42:38
on all the other projects, whether I get credit on it or not,
42:41
which is the first thing since Blue that was directed solely myself.
42:45
And I also edited the film. So it was a nice kind of oasis in between Sharknado movies.
42:52
And then there's been a few other projects that we're getting close on. So I'm a filmmaker.
42:59
It's finding those things that matter to me and that I think I can do a good
43:04
job with and that fits my facility.
43:06
And Sharknado certainly helped get me out there. And I mean,
43:10
look, I'd love to jump two even bigger films. It'd be the last to tackle.
43:15
If Marvel came to me one day and said, what movie would you like to do?
43:18
I would say Moon Knight. That's like my dream movie. Ever since I was a kid,
43:21
I wanted to see Moon Knight made into a film. Wow.
43:25
That's my dream project. And if it was DC, it would be Sandman. Okay, cool.
43:31
Well, we hope that the people at Marvel and DC are listening. There you go.
43:39
Yeah. Marvel, I'm the guy. Moon Knight. Whatever we need to do.
43:43
I'm so upset with Moon Knight. I have all the comic book series.
43:46
I have every single action figure and bust that's ever made of Moon Knight.
43:52
He's such a fantastic character. And there's been so many series of it through Marvel.
43:57
Like the original series in the early 80s that does mention Jan DeMappius,
44:02
I mean, I'm probably butchering her name, that did, that's like really the heart of what Fortnite was.
44:08
And the latest run is really, really good. But over the years,
44:13
you know, the characters kind of like, for a while they tried to make him like
44:16
a Punisher, and they tried to spit that.
44:19
But when he's this kind of pure, kind of damaged, anybody's thinking it's like,
44:24
the second-rate Batman, which is not the case.
44:26
He's a really unique character and the core mythology and the core villains.
44:31
He has some of the best Marvel villains that only really work with his universe,
44:37
and there's villains that you'll probably never see end up in any of the other
44:42
Marvel movies and maybe down the road maybe but he's in that horror space so,
44:47
there's Stained Glass Scarlet and the Bushmen and Midnight Man,
44:50
there's really great characters who do so many good movies when this character, and even a TV show.
44:57
So I'm hoping at some point if
44:59
it does happen that my comment on Sharknado gives me some consideration.
45:06
I mean, but James Gunn, who I envy, did such a great job with Blizzard,
45:10
and he started off with Troma.
45:13
The Guardian of Guardians of the Galaxy. He's done a great job of doing that,
45:18
and I think people like us that come from these low-budget movies,
45:22
we could take that aesthetic and bring it to a bigger palette and say, okay,
45:27
you could do this and it's accessible to mainstream audiences.
45:30
And we could also pay you a lot of money, too.
45:32
Yeah, totally. Well, Anthony, look, mate, I hope...
45:36
Fingers crossed for you, mate. I hope you get your shot. You've certainly proven...
45:41
You've cut your teeth pretty well. I think you might be on the verge.
45:47
Oh, thank you. And I think that, well, you know, everyone's excited to see what
45:53
you'll do next. Obviously, we've got another Sharknado coming up.
45:57
And, mate, I hope all the best for you. I certainly take this opportunity to
46:02
thank you personally for contributing to my little anthology,
46:06
the Straight to Video books, which I'll finally get to send to you.
46:10
I sent it to the address, but it shifted.
46:14
So I have the correct address now, so I'll be able to get that to you.
46:20
And it's been a real pleasure. Big fan of all your work. You're a very talented
46:25
man. I thank you very much for giving me your time today. Sorry to interrupt you. Thank you.
46:31
Sorry to interrupt. No, no, no, no.
46:34
No problem. I also want to say that the name of the thriller was Forgotten Evil,
46:37
and it's going to come out on DVD.
46:41
In August, and I think it's also on Amazon, Prime, and some other places.
46:46
I mean, it's available for rent right now, I think, in some places.
46:50
Also, Quint, our band, all the songs that we did for Sharknado,
46:54
you can find us on iTunes, the band named Quint, so the downloads and stuff were out there.
47:00
And then Sharknado International, what's called Sharknado 5 Global Forming August
47:05
6th. I have to get all my plugs in. Yes, Anthony C.
47:08
Ferrento, Cinema Eugen's requested classic. We thank you for your requests.
47:15
And as usual, if for more information, get down to the links in the description.
47:23
And as always, my little Eugenites, thank you for listening to us on Spotify,
47:27
iHeartRadio, or wherever you choose to listen to your favorite podcasts.
47:31
I'm Kent Hill. And until next time, you've been listening to us on Cinema Eugen! Yeah.