Classic Cult films and the immeadiacy of Sharknado

and an interview with the Director of Development of The Asylum Micho Rutare.

Maybe the blame can be put on the recent decline in summer box office films, but we are now entering the twilight of the “so bad it’s good” type of movies.

As Sharknado producers are already working on a sequel to their wildly successful bad/good movie, I had one thought; every other movie that has been attributed as a cult classic, was initially made with good intentions…was Sharknado? How did this movie become so successful that they decided to shove it into the midnight screenings along such classics as The Big Lebowski and Troll 2? Let’s look back at a -very brief- timeline of the earliest bad/good/cult movies like the seminal Plan 9 From Outer Space.

In 1959 the frustrated, not-so-closeted cross-dresser and aspiring director Ed Wood, released a movie that he was earnestly thrilled about working on. Wood got to work with one of his idols, Bela Lugosi, on what he thought was his crowning achievement. It got a small release and went under the radar for quite sometime, then it got it’s resurrection in the 80’s thanks to some highly renowned cultural defamation. It got mentioned as one of the worst movies of all time, by Michael and Harry Medved in their book, The Golden Turkey Awards. Interest was quickly renewed.

In the spirit of parody,a little show called Mystery Science Theater 3000 came out at the end of the 80’s and showcased some other long-lost forgotten films that are now in the cult classic category like my personal favorites, Manos: Hands of Fate, and Merlin’s Shop of Mystical Wonders.

Production on another cult gem was finished in 1986, but Troll 2 didn’t get released until 1990. This movie -in addition to some horrible visual effects- has one of the best/worst lines of dialogue I have ever heard.

(Thank you George Hardy… thank you so so much for the delivery this line.)

Troll 2 was in obscurity until about 2007 when the Alamo Drafthouse hosted Nilbog Invasion in the town of Morgan, UT where it was originally filmed. A couple years after that, Troll 2 became the focus of the documentary The Best Worst Movie, which was directed, by Michael Stephenson, who played Joshua in the aforementioned film. Troll 2 gets frequent midnight screenings, but it does not hold a candle to the following: Tommy Wiseau’s now legendary The Room.

Shrouded in questionable, and parodied production and fundraising tactics,The Room was released in 2003 and received horrific reviews. In spite of that, it quickly gained notoriety from people that were blown away with how awful it was. I don’t even know where to start with this, but, largely for it’s extremely questionable dialogue and idiosyncratic directorial decisions that were ultimately flawed; this quickly earned a collective WHAT THE FUCK from it’s utterly fascinated fan base. This also developed into a myriad of articles questioning this fascination and the consistently sold out monthly midnight screenings.

One important thing to consider with all of these films, is that they initially were failures.They all took quite a bit of time after release for the cult fandom to develop a fervor over. But, one thing that was brilliantly successful was Syfy’s decision of broadcasting the Twitter feed of the trending topic simultaneously with the film. By doing so, the “time to marinate” phase of the cult film development was exponentially diminished in order to instantly make it a classic.

Sharknado wasn’t direct to TV, it was direct to cult.

I need to mention briefly that the true origins of cult films, can be attributed to a wide array of sources, and I’m not saying that Plan 9 is the first, but it is one of the most recognized in the culturally attributed genre. In regards to cult films, there is no true all-encompassing guide to these; they can be whatever you want. My personal favorites are: Riki-oh, The Story of Riki; Fear; Six String Samurai; Cobra; Batman and Robin; and The Star Wars Holiday Special. I’d love to see some of your favorite in the notes!

With all that in mind I bring you an interview with one of the head of development of The Asylum, and the writer of the treatment which turned out to be the now infamous Sharknado: Micho Rutare:

First off, would you consider yourself a fan of cult/so bad it’s good movies? If so, which ones do you like?

I’m not really a fan of bad movies. I do enjoy some 90s creature movies like Tremors and The Arrival, but their moments of weakness are playful and fun. Similar studio movies today are just plain bad, with this dour tone that puts you to sleep. They’re missing that sense of play, which is a vacuum that Sharknado so deliciously exploits.

Believe it or not, we never set out to make bad movies. We always try to make them good on every level. The badness (or perceived badness) comes from the inherently ludicrous concept-to-budget ratio. We make $200,000,000 movies for a tiny fraction of that figure.

Could you talk to me a little about how the development of Sharknado was treated in the office, just as a regular production for your team?

Fairly standard, with a bit higher profile because it’s a Syfy Original. But you raise an interesting question: in hindsight, could this have been predicted? We certainly wouldn’t have predicted it. Syfy deserves a great deal of credit here—they had a sense that this would be big. A couple days before Sharknado, I attended a TV producers’ conference where Karen O’Hara was one of the speakers. She was trumpeting Sharknado to the high heavens.

Walk me through the initial pitch (or initial development meeting) for this movie, if you recall it, and what was the response throughout the office of that first fateful meeting?

We typically don’t accept very many pitches—usually our overseas buyers or the networks come to us with a concept in mind. This one came to us from Syfy, though I believe Anthony Ferrante came up with the title originally. We were developing a movie with the working title “Shark Storm,” and Syfy gave us “Sharknado.” I wrote the original treatment then hired the writer to take it from there. But it was certainly nothing other than business as usual. We work on outrageous titles day in and day out. There may be a passing chuckle here or there, but we’re pretty desensitized to it.

One of my main points of focus in this article is how with most cult movies, it has taken quite a bit of time to achieve that status… whereas with Sharknado, I feel like it was instantly recognized as a classic in this genre. Could you talk about what elements you believe made that happen?

The salient element is appropriation. Films achieve cult status because they are appropriated by connoisseurs, then re-promulgated with the taste-maker’s imprimatur. By enjoying a film, you become part of an in crowd; the cool kids like it. Now, with Twitter, you have the beginning, middle, and end of that cycle happening before the film is even over. This movie succeeded because the cool kids liked it—I’m talking about Damon Lindelof, Patton Oswalt, and the rest.

Was there any intention of developing this as a cult-classic from the beginning? If so, how was the worked on?

Not really. You would never go on a first date and talk about baby names. In “Notes on ‘Camp,’” Susan Sontag wrote that the essential element of camp is “seriousness, a seriousness that fails.”

…we always go into it with an honest-to-goodness desire to make a serious movie (albeit with Sharknados).

Did your studio have anything to do with the idea of broadcasting your film with it’s simultaneous Twitter feed? What did you think about utilizing social media for your film in general?

Yes. The buzz was building before the premier. So our new head of marketing and PR, Marie Bertonneau, had planned to do the live-tweeting. And thank God she was there to tweet. The success of this film would obviously be impossible without Twitter, or at least it would have taken years to achieve a similar cult status.

Lastly, How will this shape the development of your future films -aside from the sequel?

It won’t change anything in terms of development. Every movie is different, and we try to maximize the potential of each in its own unique way. Even the sequel will have a different approach, as you will see in the months to come. The great thing about all the publicity is that it validates our way of making movies, which has been built and refined over the years by David Latt, David Rimawi, and Paul Bales, the owners of the company. People think of independent film as this kind of rarified art house genre. But we’re some of the most prolific independent filmmakers in history. It’s punk rock filmmaking: with no money, no time, and no fear, you can make some really badass movies.