“There’s something to be said for pushing whimsy,” says writer/director/podcaster Kevin Smith about his new film Tusk.
The film, released last Friday Sept. 19, has a very interesting plot and origins.
Conceived by Smith and his SModcast co-host Scott Mosier (also the producer of Smith’s earlier works Clerks, Chasing Amy and Dogma), the plot of the film revolves around a podcaster (Justin Long) who ventures to Canada to seek out an interview with a lonely adventurer (Michael Parks).
The twist? This lonely adventurer is really a snake in the grass who plans to turn the podcaster into a human-walrus hybrid.
Sounds weird, huh?
Well, Tusk certainly does not scream mainstream cinema, but it does prove that sometimes chasing that which seems crazy may just pay off.
For episode #259 of SModcast, someone sent Smith and Mosier an ad from a Craigslist-esque website claiming that an elderly man was looking for a lodger and that those looking for a space to live could in fact live in this man’s estate for free with only a few stipulations.
Those rules being: 1. The lodger must dress as a walrus for two hours a day. 2. When in the costume, the lodger must, in a manner, be a walrus (i.e. catch fish in his/her mouth and make walrus grunting noise). 3. The lodger cannot go into the man’s workshop.
(It was later revealed, that the ad was in fact a hoax that had been sent to Smith and Mosier.)
Smith and Mosier began joking about how this advertisement could secretly be a Hammer horror film and that it could play like “a cuddlier version of The Human Centipede,” in Smith’s words.
Over the 90 minute podcast, Smith and Mosier jokingly began weaving a plot and then realized they might actually have something on their hands.
Smith told his legion of Twitter followers to vote if they wanted to see the movie – #WalrusYes if they were pro-walrus movie, #WalrusNo if they were not.
The votes came in and thus Tusk the movie was born.
I myself am an avid listener of SModcast as well a number of Kevin Smith’s other podcasts.
Listening to SModcast #259 gave me great delight when it first came out.
I never thought that the flick – on the episode it was theoretically called The Walrus and the Carpenter – would ever get made and was nothing more than a joke.
One of the lessons that I have taken away from listening to Smith’s jocular conversation that has thus become a film is that if you enjoy something enough and love an idea enough, it should be pursued until its very end.
Smith said in numerous interviews and podcasts that he would only pursue making Tusk until it became unrealistic.
He pursued his dream, rant, conversation, idea or whatever you want to call it until its very end and the proof is on the screen.
Tusk opened to very mixed reviews. Variety magazine loved it, Rolling Stone was in-between, and The Chicago Tribune seemed less enthused.
However, Smith’s latest picture seems to prove the adage I once heard in Back to the Future, “If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything.”
So the next time it looks like you are about to climb a mountain of insurmountable odds, just remember: someone made a film based on a joke conversation he had with his friend about a man being mutilated into a human-walrus hybrid.
If that story does not inspire you to chase whatever whimsy may cross your path and to at least try to pursue it until its logical end than I am afraid that nothing will.
For the pursuit of my dreams and your dreams, I say #WalrusYes.
Check your local listing to find Tusk at a theater near you.
Brian Laughran
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