Bonus Episode: Interview with Director Anthony C. Ferrante (Sharknado)

We are joined by special guest Anthony C. Ferrante, director of all six SHARKNADO movies, to discuss his films that go beyond the classic shark movie and take the action to a whole other level.

Episode Transcript

(00:09):
Hello and welcome to Get Me Another, a podcast where we explore those movies that followedin the wake of blockbuster hits and attempted to replicate their success.
My name is Chris Ayanakone and with me is my co-host Justin Beam.
ah
That's my line.
That is your life, Sharknado.

(00:30):
Today is a very exciting special bonus episode of Get Me Another.
We recently completed our Get Me Another Jaws series in which we explored the wave offilms in which animals of all varieties attacked human beings following in the
considerable wake of 1975's Jaws.
But there was one movie, specifically a shark movie that we didn't have a chance todiscuss and we're gonna do that today.

(00:55):
Released in 2013, this movie quickly became a cult classic, spawning five sequels,spin-offs, video games, comic books, and a fandom that spans the globe.
That's right, everyone, tape up your windows because the Weatherman is predicting asharknado.

(01:16):
Hurricane David is poised to the first
a storm.
That's what's driven them all up north.
I've never seen so many up north so bold.
It's flooding here, and not the plumbing, the ocean.
You need to go home.
A storm's coming and it's coming fast.

(01:36):
Sit back and watch this.
Get to them!
Can't just wait here and wait.
Shark three.

(01:59):
into the tornadoes.
Too dangerous.
Too many of them!
It's time to leave Kansas, mate.

(02:20):
And joining us today is a very special guest, the director of all six Sharknado movies,Mr.
Anthony C.
Ferrante.
Welcome to the show, Anthony.
oh It's a real pleasure.
known jester for very long time and he was also in sharknado so kind of
Speak for yourself Chris about this being a pleasure to have Anthony.

(02:42):
Yeah.
I'm very excited because this is the first time for this podcast that we have had a chanceto have a filmmaker on the podcast to talk about their work.
it's just, it's incredibly thrilling.
I'd like to just start things off by asking you like how you got into filmmaking, how youcame to work on Sharknado with the production company, The Asylum, who produced it, and

(03:07):
just a little bit about your journey as a filmmaker.
Well, mean, part of the things I grew up loving, loving horror movies, that was a bigthing.
I knew at a very young age I wanted to make movies, but I came from a small town, sodidn't have access.
If I was living in LA, I could probably throw a stone and get on a set, possibly.

(03:34):
So I started watching a lot of movie review programs and said, I'll just write moviereviews.
And so I convinced the local movie theater to give me a movie pass.
I didn't have a lot of money, so I couldn't really go to a lot of movies.
But I just called them up and said, look, I'm going write movies for my paper.

(03:56):
Can you give me a pass?
And so what that allowed me to do is every weekend, I would be able to go to, had aFourplex and a couple other theaters and then a drive-in.
I could go see whatever I wanted during the school year.
So, you know, every weekend, you know, I'd probably watch four or five movies and itwasn't just horror films.
It was everything.
Right.

(04:16):
Probably things I shouldn't have seen as a kid.
uh Things I probably didn't understand at the time and maybe still don't.
But, you know, it was great because, you know, it's stuff like, you know, when you likeone genre, you just stick with that one genre and you go, no, all I'm going to do is go
see horror movies because, you know, you have to go spend, you know, 10 bucks to go seesomething that you don't want to see.

(04:36):
But here it was like, oh, okay, here's this, here's this weird drama, here's this foreignfilm here.
So I had this really great wealth of knowledge of movies that in any other realm, I wouldnot have even considered looking at because, you know, I was reviewing movies or not every
one of them, but because I just ate them up.

(04:58):
It was my, it was my weekends.
You know, I just, love doing that.
Sure.
And
eventually I was able to kind of spawn that off into I'm going maybe I can get someinterviews from people and, you know, in high school was able to convince some of the
studios to invite me to junkets and started getting some real interviews and I startedselling that to the local paper.
And the local newspaper never had a movie critic.

(05:19):
So I told them when I was in high school, said, I want to be your movie critic.
And they let me do it.
So so that was kind of the securitas route.
And then eventually the
Community college in my town when was in high school started to have a film class and theymade an exception for me to be part of that.
And so that's when I started getting access to cameras and starting to shoot things andthen went to start working for Fangoria where I got to go to movie sets and see more stuff

(05:45):
and went to film school at San Francisco State.
kind of like being a movie watcher lover turned into my third film school, I guess.
It was this whole other side of it.
They're definitely at a certain point when I started like before you're making stuff.
You're just this movie is easy to rip apart.

(06:07):
I'm just gonna rip this movie apart.
But when I started making stuff, I started understanding and appreciating things aboutmovies that I didn't maybe not necessarily understand before.
So it became a little more tempered where you, you I always like genre stuff.
So, you you're always a little more forgiving of genre stuff anyway because
you see there's cool stuff in it.

(06:30):
it became more of like reviewing them in a different light.
And I think that was a really good eye-opening thing, starting off just analyzing them andthen now you're analyzing them with, yeah, I can understand the difference between a movie
that had no money and a movie that had $100 million worth.

(06:52):
All the money, yeah.
So that was kind of...
the mixture of stuff.
then, you know, I went to film school, I was writing scripts, and I moved down to LA,continued to be the journalist.
I, Brian Usna, I had gotten to know through the journalism side of things, and I knew TomRenoni, who was a special effects supervisor, and we became really good friends over the

(07:14):
course of several movies.
And then he uh moved on to direct and stuff, and Romali needed, or not Romali, sorry.
uh Brian Usna needed another um
an effect supervisor when he was doing pickups for Necronomicon.
Since I also knew all the makeup effects artists, I was able to get on that show to be thespecial makeup effects supervisor for like four days of pickups.

(07:40):
And so it was a combination of I put together a de facto makeshift makeup team with acouple friends of mine that I'd worked with before, Todd Rex and Sam Greenman.
And then also working with Todd Masters and then
we would, I think we went and got screaming at George's puppets and we had to refurbishthem or something.
was something we refurbished.
Oh, no, it was refurbished the stuff from Chris Biggs.

(08:03):
I think George provided the puppets were Todd Masters.
No, the Turkey puppets were Todd Masters.
So, and at some point he wanted another puppet.
So I went over to John Beegler's and he took a Guli puppet and put tentacles on it.
And we brought that in for another insert shot.
So it was kind of like, you know, film school in a box where I was hired technically as aPA.

(08:25):
on the show and end up being the like a PA and a special makeup effects supervisor at thesame time.
Amazing.
And so through that, uh and the next show Brian did, which was The Dentist, I said, I wantto be your full-time makeup effects supervisor.
And then he started letting me do second unit.
I started writing, started building up a reel, and I was also doing shorts since highschool.

(08:46):
So I was constantly doing shorts in between all this stuff.
And then eventually David Allen.
took a chance on me with Boo, which I wrote and said, you want to, you know, I brought itto him and nothing happened.
And a couple of years later, he goes, look, we're starting a low budget horror filmdivision.
I know that this is like a $2 million movie, but he offered me something called CemeteryGates.

(09:11):
Originally it was just an idea.
And I said, well, is the script ready?
He's like, no, it's like, well, what about Boo?
And he goes, well, you can't do that for 600,000 or whatever he wanted to spend.
I'm going, yeah, I can.
And so we went to this place called the Linovist Hospital in downtown LA where I'd writtenit for because we'd filmed a progeny there with Brian.

(09:32):
And we'd basically explored this abandoned hospital.
And I just came up with all these ideas with it.
And that's where Boo came from.
And so I took David down there to look at the location.
And we went to lunch.
He says, let's make the movie.
And so that was kind of the beginning of it.
So I thought it was going to be like the horror guy.
And so my second movie was a horror movie.
And the third movie was a horror movie.

(09:53):
And that was Hansel and Gretel that I did for Asylum.
I knew Asylum's David when I was in a Makeup Effect supervisor on, it was one of theirearlier films with York Entertainment's Scarecrow and Scarecrow Slayer.
So I did second unit on both of those and then was the Makeup Effect supervisor on thoseshows.
So they knew me and they occasionally through time, they kept asking me, are youavailable?

(10:17):
know, what do you, you know, what do you want to do?
And they came to me with this Hansel and Gretel film.
which sounded like kind of a cool little horror movie.
And the script by Jose, the first draft he did, we're like, okay, this is okay.
And I said, well, let's sit down and try to figure out how to make this work.
And so I think over a course of a week and a half, two weeks, we buckled down and kind ofgot a good POV on it.

(10:40):
And Jose did a great job on that script.
Brought in D.
Wallace, who was in my first movie.
And we created, like, it's a really, there's some...
and

(11:01):
She's great.
She's so good.
We saw her just in Cujo during the recent Jaws series, because that was part of it.
And she is just fantastic.
Fantastic.
Yeah, so she just came in and she just nailed it.
I think the movie would have been what it was without her.
And then um it was around that time when I was finishing post on the movie that I sawtheir schedule and they had uh their slate and on the slate was Sharknado.

(11:27):
And I had done a bunch of, I had written a lot of scripts I didn't direct for sci-fi forother companies and I had made a reference to Sharknado in one of the scripts and
somewhere along the way they said, we love that title even though we had pitched it twice.
to sci-fi.
I said, told the sign wheel, that's our movie.
We have artwork and we have the pitch and everything.
And so they went back to sci-fi and they said, look, and we want Anthony to direct thisbecause we really like what he did with Hansel and Gretel.

(11:54):
And sci-fi said, he's the horror guy.
He doesn't know how to do this kind of stuff.
You know, because you get pigeonholed.
So then they kept going to other filmmakers and everybody passed on it.
And I was the only one that really knew what this thing needed to be because Jacob Herr,who I came up with the concept with, we knew what it could be.

(12:15):
And so finally, literally, there was like two weeks before production, they go, do youwant to do this?
It's like, yes.
Anthony though, you have to what you skipped over was the origin of the title.
Okay, so, so, so the starts off, I was working for some of those other companies likeasylum, and you go and you come up with a bunch of pitches.

(12:38):
And so I would do a lot of horror stuff for them.
And one day I was talking with Jake and we're going, look, you know, I'm going to givethem some horror pitches, let's come up with the two of the stupidest titles we can come
up with.
then Jake said sharknado.
And I think we came up with the lava birds.
So we, we gave this to one of those companies and they submitted that and then
that didn't get picked.
And then we submitted another time with a slightly alter, like a NATO summer or somethinglike that.

(13:03):
Right.
And and so then, OK, fine.
And then they didn't bite.
So I was writing the leprechaun revenge movie for After Dark Films, which is also calledRed Clover now.
And the Red Clover.
Yeah, yeah, no, that was the original title, but they wanted a leprechaun movie.
So it's time I changed to Leprechaun's revenge.
But now it's known as Red Clover, which I'm happy about.
oh
That's a much better title, much better title.

(13:25):
And so in the movie, they say something.
I always put references to things in jokes.
So I put a thing where they're saying, we got to cover up this thing with these desks.
We don't want to have what happened in that town over.
Remember Sharknado?
They never lived that down.
Some version of that.
And then so that's when they saw the name.
so Silent was developing something called Shark Storm.

(13:47):
And then they said, you should call this Sharknado.
And the rest is history.
So I'm grateful that they had faith in me.
at sci-fi after, you know, with the fact that high asylum, you know, pushed them to do it.
But then they, you know, then I had a lot to prove.
And so I was like, OK, well, I'm going to make this the best shark in a tornado movieever.
And I put everything into it and they took the tack that if I was going to destroy mycareer, I was going to go down with the flaming sharks.

(14:13):
And absolutely.
And uh and then it blew up.
And I mean and the poster says it all because the poster sharknado enough said I meanbecause it's such an evocative Like you know what it is.
You know what it is from the title sharknado
Well, and this is the other thing too, is I mean, you know, Jake and I sat down for like aweek and tried to, you know, we rework that script to kind of uh kind of the structure

(14:41):
structurally and there's a lot of the stuff is in there, but there's structurally, uh it'salmost the same, but we wanted to put that humor and that that quirkiness to it that we
originally envisioned in it.
So we, there's a lot of things that came out of that.
that brainstorming session.
And one of the other things too that I saw on the poster is like, I love the fact thatthey had the Ferris wheel in there.
Yes.
But it wasn't in the script.

(15:03):
Really?
So it's like, we got to have the Ferris wheel and on top of that, it's double homagebecause that Ferris wheel in 1941 was a big part of 1941.
So we did that.
I think we added the Hollywood sign.
We came up with a lot of gags.
Jake storyboarded a bunch of really cool things.
I think out of that session, the whole idea of George with the bar stool as a weapon cameout of that.

(15:31):
I kind of knew from working on my other movies, you got to be careful about putting quirkystuff like that in there because it'll get cut out at the script stage when someone reads
it.
So we kind of buried it in there.
It just says he grabs his bar stool.
And then when we were on set, I used it the way we were planning on using it.
Well, John Hurd's character of George, I he's got to be a nod to Norm from Cheers.

(15:54):
I mean, it's just that was the phrase, the guy at the bar who gets pressed into service.
I think I'll do again.
I know that you know thunder Leavenworth the original script I'm sure you thunderdefinitely puts a lot of references like I do and things and I a hundred percent I mean,
you know the Australian guys named Baz So I'm you know, of course that's probably BazLuhrmann stuff like that, right?

(16:15):
You know and and you know some of the other stuff that we talked about too is what's kindof the arc and we really talked about what Finn Finn would be, know Finn, know if it has
to lose everything in order to gain something there was a lot more in the original draftof
Finn trying to hook up with Nova, I'm going, this is not going to track.
It has to be about Finn.
Finn is not going to come pick, he's not going to engage in the advances from Nova.

(16:37):
Nova could still have a crush on him, he, in order for it to work, has to, he's fucked upwith his wife and kids and he has to rehabilitate himself by the end.
He loses his bar, he loses his truck, he's already lost his family.
And then at the end he regains his family.
that became the arc of the whole franchise, really.
It was about their family.
And I love when Nova has that kind of that moment early on where she's coming on to himand flirting with him he's like, I'm your boss, get back to work.

(17:06):
Like it's just like there was something so earnest and just kind of, know, sort offorthright about that.
It's a storm.
That's what's driven them all up north.
Eventually they'll go back to where they came from.
I hope.
They were knocking.
Yeah, knock, knock, knocking on your door.
And I've never seen so many of them or so bold.

(17:28):
Just a storm.
Just gonna stay out of the water for a couple days, that's all.
This storm looks like a hurricane
I'm just happy you're okay.
Hey, hey, what you What?
No, I'm your boss.
go get back to work!

(17:50):
Not too odd for you.
I don't think.
I'm not your boss.
Two out of
It's like, I'm your boss, come on.
And obviously he's dealing with all the baggage of his family, but it's a kind of save thecat moment where it's like, this guy is a standup guy.
I mean, she's an attractive girl and this is a stay.
He could easily accept those advantages, but he does not.

(18:13):
Yeah, I think there's only one remnant in there and I think it works just because he goes,you know, that's hot with you with the gun or something like that.
But again, I think at that point it's not coming off as a pickup.
It's just kind of, you know, I would have cut it if I did, if I thought it interfered,there's that.
Yeah, there's, there's, there's something too, that's very subtle.

(18:33):
And again, it was again to that, that note of trying to make this, you know, thischaracter work.
And I just thought it was a really just funny ongoing gag.
And I don't know how many, I don't think anybody's ever really commented or picked it up.
every time after that scene in the bar, it's like, have a kid, he doesn't even engage withher on, he's just like, you have a kid, it's like, okay, let's go do this.

(18:58):
You have another kid?
You have a wife?
So it was the kind of thing where it's like,
Look, I got shit.
got to deal with you go do your shit.
I don't I'm not listening to you and And it is again is the fact that we made this sillymovie and there's these subtle Things in there that our character beats, you know, that's

(19:22):
that's the best the greatest accomplishment The other one was the bar scene which youknow, one of my favorite movies is diner and I love the conversational aspect and I really
wanted that that aftermath of the um
of the shark attack, really wanted to get them just talking and making it feel organic.
while they were setting up lights, we workshopped that on set and tried to come up withsome stuff and then we just let the cameras roll.

(19:47):
to me, I think the best review I ever read was someone commenting how that scene stood outto them because it felt so real and organic and you got to know and like these people
because a lot of times
The characters just say stupid shit and it's just all just very feels very scripted buthere it just you get the feeling that these guys love each other and they joke with each
other and they give each other shit and That that scene I just I'm really proud of howthat came and that's testament to you know all the actors including John heard willing to

(20:17):
kind of you know fuck around with it a little bit can I say can I say a little bit on thisyou absolutely Yeah, yeah, okay.
Yeah, sorry for my language
Not at all, not at all.
No, John Hurt is great.
I really, again, Jason Summons who plays Baz, like he's terrific.
It's a really interesting cast that has been assembly of Robbie Wriste as the bus driver.

(20:43):
That's a great moment, that's a great moment.
You should talk about your relationship with
was all that all that all that stuff.
Yeah, all the stuff with the Robbie, the bus driver and the Hollywood, the bus driver.
The bus was in there, but all the Hollywood sign stuff came from the brainstorming withwith Jake.
were going, you know, it would be cool if the Hollywood sign killed somebody.
And that that, you know, it's not even a shark kill.

(21:05):
And it came out of just this weird like we just were coming up with stupid shit because wewere so excited about the chance to kind of steer it in a direction.
But Robbie and I've known for years and we, know, on a lot of my first three movies, wewrote a lot of the songs because we couldn't afford a licensed song.
you know, I wanted to get Robbie in the movies.

(21:26):
said, Robbie, we got to get you in the movie.
And he said, sure.
And then Robbie and I wrote all the all the original songs of the movie, including thetheme song.
Just fantastic.
And that was written in like 15 minutes.
We were sitting around.
I told Robbie, look, I want to do a rock opera.
And and so it's like.
Okay, let's do the first part.
I go, well, the first part, the first the first part of it is if the Ramones were alive,or the ruins are still around as a band, you know, what would the theme song be?

(21:53):
And so that that whole go, go, go, go run away from the sharknado was an homage to like ifbecause Pet Sematary is one of my favorite theme songs.
Sure.
And so that was sort of an homage to them.
And I was it was so weird how fast that came together because I remember
you he wrote some of the music and I started coming up with some lyrics and he had somelyrics and I go, well, we should have a bridge where we start naming off like shark stuff.

(22:19):
I, know, a lot of times when, you know, Rob was still here in LA in a studio, he wouldlike, all right, we'll just figure this out.
So he would go downstairs and do stuff at his house and away from the studio, we would goget something to drink, some water, take care of some business.
And I would just be up there kind of scribbling stuff.
And so I quickly scribbled out a lot of that stuff with the, uh

(22:39):
There's Thresher's one scary guy make us gonna make no no Hammerheads one scary guyThresher's gonna make you cry whatever it is.
uh I make was gonna make you cry Something I don't know whatever I can't remember rightnow my brains fry but whatever was that was that would that came up with I just wrote down
a whole bunch of uh stuff for For for sharks and and it just it was one of those veryrarely There's something just effortlessly comes out as a as a song and then after we did

(23:07):
it.
I'm like
We're not doing a rock opera.
This is, I mean, we just wrote the best thing, uh best thing ever for a movie likeSharknado.
And then eventually I go, well, we're going to have to revisit this, this rock operathing.
And it took us three other movies because we wrote the perfect song, like before us tofigure out how to make a rock opera, which we finally did with Sharknado Rhapsody in the

(23:28):
fourth movie.
But yeah, and I remember someone telling me when I was doing the theme song, you know, Iwas playing it for them.
It's like, don't release that people are going to make funny.
It's like, it's funny.
No.
And I think I think part of Sharknado and this is even in the editing stage.
Originally, I tempted some more modern music and stuff, and it just kind of made it feelmodern, but it didn't feel right.

(23:50):
And then I when I realized it didn't work, I put in a bunch of more traditional rockstuff.
A lot of times these movies, especially these movies that air on
aired at sci-fi on the time.
It's just all very serious with the serious scores and everything.
And the thing about Sharknado is these songs add fun, like Weatherman says.

(24:11):
And so you have these songs and because we wrote them, we didn't license them.
They're kind of geared toward the tempo of what I wanted.
And they gave it another texture that was uniquely to Sharknado that wouldn't have beenthere if you just went
completely straight score.
Right.
It made you it allowed you to wink at it a little bit more.

(24:32):
Right.
You know,
Well, it also the other great thing about the song is that it gives you the opportunity tosay Sharknado, which nobody actually says Sharknado in the first Sharknado, which took me
by surprise.
Yeah, actually.
Yeah, I think that's true.
I think you might be true.
But again, in Sharknado, that doesn't come to the end of the movie with the because thesong only plays at the very end, you know, right.

(24:55):
And look, look, I got I got to tell you, though, here's, here's the thing.
I have I give mad props to asylum for pushing for me because anybody that knows thisindustry knows that, uh you know, when a studio when a network or someone says, No, we
don't want this guy.
Like, they're not like, Okay, we'll find somebody else.
But they really loved what I did with Hansel and Gretel, and they had a lot of confidencein giving me the chance to do this.

(25:22):
And they allowed me to just make this film.
And also, sci-fi was going through a little contraction at the time, so they weren'treally, they had so many movies, but they also, it was looking like the sci-fi movies were
going away, and basically the success of this kind of revitalized it.
But they kind of weren't.
paying attention to this movie because they had other stuff going on and they trusted me.

(25:43):
I mean, I edited the movie with, I mean, I was working with Bill Waddell, the editor, butwe were editing on this movie throughout post.
And so, you know, I'd go, we need some driving stuff with a GoPro.
And I'd go out and shoot with a GoPro and add the stuff into the film.
Like every week I was going out and doing pickups, like on my own dime.

(26:04):
uh was the stuff, we never had time for the girl in the water.
the surfer.
Right.
So there's a few shots we just we just didn't have time to get.
And so I went out with a wetsuit and with a GoPro and I shot a lot of that extra stuff ofher in the water and we dropped it in into in post production.
Wow.

(26:25):
And so and then there was and we we needed a few more car driving stuff and a few morethings that they approved for an official pickup day because we were doing a movie set
with Storm and Every Day with Sunny.
the so the first two days of shooting it was raining cats and dogs, which was like, Ithink February of that year, right.
And then there wasn't rain until July after the movie opened.

(26:45):
there was one.
Yeah, yeah, no, but it was it was really dry.
And but there was one day one day that there was some overcast and a little bit of rain.
And we were literally storm chasers, we got the cameras, we went out and we startedchasing, you know, the storm so we can get the car driving through stuff that looked like
clouds.
And so we got a lot of good B-roll and there's a lot of stuff that we shot in Santa Monicaon that day.

(27:10):
But the inherent problem with the color correction on the movie is that a lot of it wassunny.
And so the original color corrector just made everything washed out, which just broke myheart because the movie just looked like ass.
And so when we did the 10th anniversary, one of the things was I said, look,
can we just recolor correct it so it looks like a movie?

(27:32):
with the advancement in color correction and stuff, that was the big reason to do the uh10th anniversary in addition to uh remastering it in 4K and stuff.
I'm glad you got chance to do it, that's terrific.
Yeah, it's weird because you the thing is you want to have a movie that like, know, it'sGeorge Lucas is like, you know, he's he's screwed up classic movies because he was

(27:53):
tinkering.
But look, I mean, you know, I got the I feel like this is more finishing the film.
I didn't do anything that I wasn't planning on doing.
When we did it, we just ran out of time, you know, like we had to cut some visual effects.
So we actually went back to the original edits and I go, OK, that was what was originallysupposed to be there when we had to cut like 10 shots out.
And so we put that stuff back in the movie.

(28:14):
Interesting.
Now, Ian Ziering and Tara Reed, they appeared in all six of the Sharknado movies and havebecome like they are the of the central characters that the franchise revolves around.
How did they come to be cast?
uh know, I mean, what an interesting choice.
These two actors who had, you know, had periods where they were very, very big and thenyou brought them in in Sharknado and there's something so familiar about them that it

(28:42):
gives you this really
great feeling when they show up.
I'd say we should also talk first about John Heard because John Heard I think was thefirst person that was cast.
wow, okay.
And so he added a lot of legitimacy and I also want to add that John is the only person,honestly aside from myself, but John was the only person at the end of it.
goes, you know, I sometimes can be a little grumpy, you know, again, I always wish I wouldwritten down what he said specifically, but he says, you know, there's something to what

(29:09):
you're doing here, something to madness, there's something about this movie.
And to have him say that, like, you you know, a lot of times when you do low budget stuff,it's like you hope for the best.
You hope something's going to break out.
But, know, sometimes it just, you know, it has its own little audience.
But he knew and this guy had been around forever.
sure.
He knew at the last day of shooting.
He said this to me and he was the first person there at Comic Con.

(29:31):
You know, when it blew up and he really in retrospect interviews and stuff, he said that,you know, I was known as the home alone guy, but I'm really proud of Sharknado.
And that means a lot to me.
And it broke our heart.
when we were going to bring him back for number six and he died that summer before we weregoing to shoot six.
So we did pay him ashtim in six.

(29:51):
It was, uh yeah, a lot of props to him because he was the thing that got us the rest ofthe cast.
So that's terrific.
I can't remember uh if Taro was first or Ayan, but I remember when they said Taro, said,that's great, great, great, great person to bring into this.
But then
I they couldn't find anybody for for Finn that would do it.

(30:12):
It was called Sharknado.
Everybody that they went to everybody.
Oh, we're going to they went to Dave Foley.
I mean, they went to Steve Gutenberg.
They there's there's so many people on that list.
And then they so they finally said, Oh, I was just going to change the title of the darkskies and see if we can get a nibble because the Sharknado thing isn't working.
Huh?

(30:32):
And and I am was that was one of the names that they threw out.
I'm going well, that's an
obvious person that should be in this movie.
Right.
And so they had me go to uh meet him at uh Jerry's Deli in Studio City.
And we sat down, I told him what I wanted to do with the movie and, you know, my my, myfeeling about it and all this stuff.

(30:52):
And, and, you know, he, you know, he said in subsequent interviews, he did it for theinsurance money.
But he also like, I think he saw that, okay, here's someone that you know, he's someone'slooking at it as not as just, this is a gig, it's someone that actually
and I'm not putting words mouth, I don't know exactly what he was thinking.
you know, whatever that happened in that, that that meeting solidified the deal.

(31:14):
But the closest person outside of iron was that was close.
But I don't I you know, it probably not meant exactly the correct person.
But Crispin Glover, really, so we were doing a location scout and they go, got to talk toCrispin Glover right now.
He's we might be able to get him.
And it's like, okay, and so we're down in San Pedro and I'm on the phone with him.

(31:37):
And he's going, yeah, I just don't understand why you want me for this movie.
You know, in my head, it's like, I can't blow this because they couldn't get anybody.
It's like, he's a name.
So okay.
It's like, yeah, I want to play him like he has like brain damage and all this stuff.
And I'm like, I'm just trying to

(31:58):
get him but he's gonna definitely had his ideas about the stuff and at some point thebecause we were in San Pedro the connection uh cut out um but obviously he did not want to
do the movie but it he constantly said like two or three times it's like I just don'tunderstand why you want me for this movie I can't say no one else wants to do it and
you're an A but uh but yeah no so it was kind of so it was good that so when I am kind offinally hit it

(32:28):
It was like, again, it was just like, it was a no-brainer.
And then, you know, this was very hard for everybody.
Look, I had done a lot of horror movies and I understood a little bit about visualeffects, but this was also an uh important thing because I was going to be learning a
little bit more about how to make all this stuff integrate.
And I had a base knowledge, but I also knew I needed to get them to react.

(32:50):
So, you know, there was a lot of getting them to feel comfortable to be acting stupidopposite things that weren't there.
And I realized the only way to get that performance out of them was to act out what washappening.
So a lot of it was like,
sharks coming okay it's coming for lads gonna grit and
So then they would react and I go, okay, they get it.
I don't need to do it again.
But then I realized I had to keep doing it every single time.

(33:13):
Otherwise I couldn't get what I needed, which became sort of a running gag on all sixmovies.
I would lose my voice by the end of it because I'd be yelling out sharks coming from hereor trying to the reaction.
and made six movies and you had to do that the whole time.
That is incredible.
Yeah, but it does help with the it helped a lot with the reaction but I'll also give onemore mad props to Iain like the the the signature thing of him jumping into the shark is

(33:42):
one thing but you look him Chainsawing his way out of the shark.
I can't imagine any actor agreeing to do that and he's covered
in shark
blood.
the fact that he committed it was a freezing cold day to the fact that he committed todoing that.
did like no and did it not embarrassed.

(34:06):
That I think is why people remember that whole little sequence because he was in it.
He just said he said, Fuck, you know, he said, screw it.
And there was a moment there was actually a moment halfway during the production, whereand this was great, because moving forward, he was just all in.
we hired a stunt double to repel down the 6th Street bridge.

(34:27):
Right, right.
Thankfully, Finn has, you know, the climbing gear in his car.
course.
Yeah, so we had a stunt guy doing that and that was the moment where goes, I wanna dothat.
I'm like, you do?
Yes, I wanna do that.
And I go, ask the line producer, we covered for him doing that, cause I want him to do it,but yes, yeah, we can do it.

(34:49):
And so he did it.
And at that moment, when he did save the kids, that's when I feel like Finn was truly bornbecause I was like, okay, I wanna be a superhero.
And he did it.
He committed to it and then moving forward and all the movies he did almost not noteverything, but he did a lot of his own stunts in the.

(35:10):
And he, know, so a couple things.
No, this is like the most dangerous, the most dangerous one.
most dangerous thing I've ever done in a movie in Sharknado five where we did therepelling down from the cave and and the guy comes right down and almost face plants in
there.
I was in Bulgaria.

(35:31):
and we were all very nervous and with the stunt guy goes, no, I can do that.
And that's not a visual effect.
I mean, it stops right before he hits and then we cut to iron like right before it hits.
But that is an insane stunt.
That's probably the most dangerous and the most impressive stunt I think we ever did inany shark painting.
And the great thing about Ayn as Finn is because Finn is a former surf champion and youlook at Ayn and you say, I totally buy that.

(36:00):
I totally buy that he was the Santa Mira Beach world champion in 1986.
Which is a great nod to uh both the original 1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers, as wellas Halloween III, as well as your film Boo, all of which feature
this fictional California town of Santa Mira.

(36:21):
Every single one of my films has a Santa Mira in it.
That's my running kick.
it.
Because I come from Northern California.
I grew up there.
And I loved Halloween III and Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
And I always loved the fact that Santa Mira was a great, non-specific Northern Californiatown.
Yeah.
So a short film I did, I just called it Santa Mira.

(36:41):
And so then I just started calling at that.
And then it became a thing of, OK, well, see you next Wednesday.
This will be my little nod to my roots.
And so it's a fun little Easter egg, it's not the same thing in every movie.
the first movie was the hospital, the second movie I did, it was a t-shirt and a sign fromSanta Maria University.

(37:05):
think Cancel Gretel was a patch on one of the sheriff's arms, and actually was a patchfrom Phantoms that I was given when I was on a movie set for for set visit.
So we kind of use that.
I don't think anybody I've ever said this to anybody, but then we use that patch because Ihave it in my office.
And then we did obviously Santa Mira National.

(37:25):
That's when I started being more like, let me try to find different ways.
The second movie, was the airline, Santa Mira Airlines.
So yeah, so, you know, I've done 22, 23 movies and outspot Santa Mira.
Right.
think it's great.
think it's, and again, have a huge, we were, and I were talking before we got on, I lovethe original Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

(37:51):
Obviously we love Halloween III.
And you know, that, just that reference, I caught it on the poster and I was just like, Iwas watching the movie with my wife and I was like, it's Santa Mira.
He was the surf champ at Santa Mira.
There's also like in the fifth movie, there's a poster in I think Brazil or someplace thatwe were supposed to be technically at.

(38:12):
And I had our artists do like a, you know, visit Santa Mir and if you look at the poster,we designed pods in the design of the poster.
Like I think the great thing about as Sharknado kind of progressed, you know, it'sbasically, there's a lot of nods to things that
really maybe for a couple people and audience members that'll get catchin, but it wasreally for me to nerd out.

(38:40):
there's a, there's another one that again, I think I told somebody this, but when theGrumman's Chinese theater, uh, where the shark hits the thing, we, we purposely had it hit
on Spielberg signature.
I think we had to move it.
I think we had to play around with it to kind of get it to where it needed to be.
But again, no one's going to see that.

(39:01):
And then if you're talking about Halloween three, uh we were doing number five and they goto Stonehenge.
so in the teaser, they're looking around underneath Stonehenge, we had a uh burned umskeleton mask and we had a burned silver shamrock uh thing on the ground in that too.

(39:25):
Fantastic.
oh
There's just there again, if anybody ever gets bored and wants to go through and catalogit, these things are just filled with very, very subtle uh references.
The cab in the New York number two is the Bickel cab company.
I love it.
So it's just it's a nerd's paradise.

(39:48):
The other thing about it, you mentioned the Chinese theater.
This is a terrific LA movie.
it captures, I mean, just early on, then they're trying to get to his house in BeverlyHills and they kick it on the freeway because the cars, there's a backup of cars.
I'm like, just, they spend a lot of time in cars.

(40:10):
Man, that is life in Los Angeles.
Rain or shine, you're spending a lot of time in cars.
Well, yeah, and I think that's also kind of a uh kind of a formula at the asylum is thatbecause it's easier to do a lot of car stuff.
but what I think what we did is we tried to take it and make it uh make it kind of, youknow, to our advantage by utilizing the Los Angeles version of that, you know, where they

(40:34):
are stuck and they're doing this and they're doing that.
But the whole thing with with the first movie is making it an LA film.
I think
part of it that was really cool is that we are shooting at certain places like we shot onthe pier.
Right.
You know, and uh they wouldn't, they, the, the, the, music park there were pissed that wewere filming in front of their place.

(40:56):
We were allowed to shoot the pier, but when we were trying to shoot that direction, shoot,the woman was there, kept standing in front of the camera.
So we needed plate shots of the, of the Ferris wheel and all that stuff.
So we came back like two months later and we just walked around and got
plate shots and got all the things we needed so they could design the stuff for thatsequence.
And then that weekend after or that the weekend after the movie opened and blew up, theyhad a sharknado photo booth in that same part.

(41:24):
Amazing.
So someone who hated us
He's taking advantage.
Exploited.
Yeah, but so so part of that that tactileness in the in the first movie extended to thesecond movie where it's like we're going to New York, let's go to New York.
Right.
And so part of the charm of all of the movies is that for the most part, we go to theselocations and shoot in these locations, even though we're a low budget movie.

(41:52):
We we pull that off.
I mean, we were watching it, my wife and I, and know, one of the Sharknado's gets blown upover the Hollywood Bowl where we had been like three nights earlier and we're just like,
we were just there.
We were just there, that could have been us.
Yeah, it's pretty crazy how we pulled a lot of that off.

(42:14):
And you know, the opening teaser, that was another thing that was added is that in thescript, was like a sharknado appears and takes up a boat off the coast of Mexico.
And that was like a quarter of a page in the script.
And I'm like, well, it's a teaser.
We should be on a boat.
We should make a meal out of it.

(42:34):
Sure.
And so, I know Jake and I were talking and we're like, well, let's make this about like,what if there, what if, if this whole thing is about shark fin soup and money and all this
other stuff and sort of make a little, little political statement about shark finning andstuff.
And so I thought, oh, this would be kind of cool.
It's like, we have this whole weird, you know, uh, uh, kind of thriller actiony kind ofopening, like it's a completely different movie.

(43:01):
Yeah, the guys are on the boats with the guns.
It's dead.
so and I think that once we did, even though a lot of times we were going, what does thishave to do with the rest of movie?
But it it set open the precedents that the opening teaser is its own little mini movie.
And and it you know, and it became I'm really proud of that opening and the actors thatwere in it.

(43:21):
It's just it set up the silliness of it within the context of we were parodying the genreby throwing a sharknado into it.
in the very first shot.
mean, it's not like you waste time.
A very opening shot of this movie is literally sharks and tornadoes.
You know, it's like, you know, it's the peanut butter and the chocolate and, you knowthey're going together because, you know, we've all seen that commercial.

(43:47):
Like it's, you know, they're right there at the outset.
I mean, and you talk about, you know, there's a climate change thing that has only been,you know, as the time has gone on.
It's only become more central in our lives.
mean, there's a bit in the first film where there's like a break in the storm and the TVreporter remarks that the hurricane, and I think it's Hurricane David, is the first

(44:16):
hurricane to hit the state of California.
And that might've been true when this movie was made, but since then, we've had ahurricane in Los Angeles.
Like, I think it's 2023.
like it's...
know, for the 10th anniversary, I mean, thankfully there were no sharks but a hurricaneshows up.
I just, really, my wife and I had just such a great time.

(44:37):
My wife's favorite line by the way, I have to tell you, is when April is talking, whenFinn is on the phone with his wife and she's like, what are you talking about?
We're hundreds of miles from the ocean and Finn replies to her, you're exactly 6.6 milesfrom the ocean.
My wife just laughed out loud.
That it has become this

(44:58):
Cultural juggernaut is fantastic.
uh
It's look, you know, there's there's we made a movie that has that I have.
What's the phrase?
So Robbie Wriste, I think, is instrumental with this quote he originally on before we wereeven finished with the editing and stuff.

(45:19):
And I showed him stuff.
He says it's a movie that doesn't know it can't do that.
I love it.
And I think that I think it's a great quote in a sense that it's like we're trying to makea two hundred million dollar movie for no money.
We have six months to pull this off, but we're not acting like we don't have the money.
going, we're just, got balls of steel and we just go head first and go, we're going to doit.

(45:40):
And we did it.
And I think that what made it stand out is that a lot of the movies at the time, you know,there's some really good Sci-Fi channel movies, but a lot of them, you know, would come up
short just because, okay, they don't have the budget, visual effects, Asylum has a lot ofvisual effects they can do.
You know, you'd have a little bit here.
a little bit there and then a big finale.

(46:01):
And in this case, like when we were remastering it for the 10th anniversary, I had towatch it over and over and deal with sound and all this stuff.
And it's like literally like every five or 10 minutes, something is happening in themovie.
Like it is just madness.
And so a lot of times I think, you know, people are like, Oh, I love that title.
I love the trailer, but we're to watch the movie and it's just going to be people talkingfor like 90 minutes and then the shark happens.

(46:25):
And they started watching it going.
what the hell is happening in this movie?
it just, it just like, you know, you have car, like just, there's just everythingridiculous.
Every single cliche that you have in every movie is in this, it's, it just accelerateslike they, the car's leaking.
They run out and the car explodes.
It's just, it's a movie that's aware of how ridiculous it is and tries to play itstraight.

(46:47):
So it's kind of like, it's kind of like a more serious version of naked gun in a way, butit never, it never fully goes into the comedy territory.
No, it's not doing the parody thing.
It's not unlike the movie, again, that Justin and were talking about a little bit beforewe started, Big Trouble in Little China, where everything is played, the actors are

(47:11):
playing it straight, but all of it has a kind of absurd atmosphere and the movie's awareof it, but the characters are playing it straight.
Again, I had to admit, I had not seen this movie before.
But this was an opportunity and again, I had just an absolutely terrific time with it.

(47:32):
I mean, I got to tell you one of my favorite moments was, and I realized what washappening just as it was happening was when you do the variation on the quint USS
Indianapolis speech.
Like as soon as Nova says, I had a tattoo removed and my jaw just dropped.

(47:55):
I was like, oh, they're doing it.
They're going for it.
Like bravo.
And she does a great job.
I was raised by my grandparents.
When I was seven, my grandpa took me fishing on one of those day charter deals with hisfriends who ended up hitting into a reef and

(48:19):
My grandfather took me and put me inside this little life raft for safety.
Everyone else was kind of just swimming around trying to stay up.
And suddenly all these sharks just started swarming in.
And then they tried to protect me, but...

(48:45):
morning they were all
So I floated out there for two days until those Coast Guard helicopters finally spottedme.
Thought I was safe, but suddenly this shark just leapt up and bit my leg.

(49:05):
Six people went into the water and one little girl came out.
And sharks took the rest.
They took my grandfather.
That's why I really hate sharks.
Now I really hate sharks too.

(49:26):
Like, it's so much fun.
My goodness.
Well, that whole speech, that was a thunder thing.
I didn't want to go heavy on the Jaws stuff.
think there's just enough of it that makes it its own thing.
Right.
Because really, I mean, if you really think about it, and if you haven't seen all six ofthe movies, you know, I was thinking about this the other day, these six movies, they're

(49:51):
not shark movies, they're sharknado movies.
Because if you talk about true shark stuff, of course, of all of the movies,
it probably constitutes 10, 15 % of the movie.
Like you have the shark attack on the beach in this movie, but then I think that I don'tthink we have another kind of traditional shark thing until maybe the sixth film.

(50:15):
It's a sharknado movie because one of the things that people said to me when I was doinginterviews on the first movie, they were like, a of people were really upset.
Like sharks can exist in a tornado and like,
And go, yeah, and cars don't turn into robots and stuff.
Like, like, like, like, what are you?
Why are you dying on a vine on that?

(50:36):
So at some point, I said, it's not sharks, and it's not a tornado.
It's a sharknado.
That's our villain.
And when I kept saying that over and over, when we started developing the second movie andmoving forward,
I said, that is our out.
It's a sharknado.
It could do whatever we say it can do because it's our villain.
So it can take down a plane.

(50:56):
It could go into space.
It could do this.
It could do that.
And that was just freeing because it allowed us to create our own villain.
And then on top of that, I never wanted to fully explain why it existed.
And even when we start veering into, well, it exists in pre-stark times or this or thisand that.

(51:16):
We successfully made it so that the snake ate its own tail.
So even by the end of the franchise, you still don't have a firm grasp of why it existed.
It just existed.
And that goes back to my feeling about horror movies.
It's like, the more you know about a killer, the less effective it is.

(51:37):
Like, know, hey, well.
Oh, Freddy Krueger was abused as a kid, and he was this and that, and you feel sorry forhim, and now it's like, well, he's taken away from it.
Well, yeah, once you're into he's made a deal with dream demons.
It's like, now it's a whole other thing.
That's why the first Halloween movie is still the most effective.
Yeah, yeah.
so that was the thing that, you there was a lot of rules that I put in place on my own.

(52:01):
And again, I'm grateful that Asylum and the sci-fi, you know, they humored me a lot onthese movies because they didn't have to.
you know, there was stuff they wanted and which they want a lot of the cameos and certainthings.
But, you know, when it came to the characters, you know, I was always very much about likethey were always trying to get Finn and Nova together.
And I was saying, no, that's never going to happen.

(52:23):
Right.
And eventually,
you know, they, you know, like when we got to three, we got to uh a stasis point where werealized that there was a, have a mutual respect for each other, but they're, you know,
she's part of his family.
There's never going to be a relationship.
And, finally that was dropped.
They just stopped pushing it.
Cause I said, I'm not, we're not doing this, you know, sci-fi was really interested inthat.

(52:45):
think there was, but it was just really a weird, it was a really weird thing.
And it's like, cause it's, this is about April and Finn and the family.
So, um,
There's a moment in the later part of the first movie where you think that she's gonna gettogether with Finn's
Yeah, I think there was a little bit of that and I don't think we ever followed up on thateither.

(53:07):
what I I really liked about Nova ultimately, and I think that's why she makes her such aninteresting character, is that, you know, she has like this Finn story and then there's
Nova's story.
and what if you watch the rest of the movies, once we get to the sixth movie, there'sthere's some really great scenes with her and Finn, like about

(53:31):
talking about things that are like, don't get that in these movies.
And they both nailed it.
I challenge you if you have time to get through the other movies, because really, I thinkthe second one is the best of all of them, because it's kind of like the evil dead thing,
when Empire Strikes Back.
It's like, we figured out what everything was, and we've sanded off the edges, and we gotto kind of remake it in number two, but make it better, because we had New York.

(54:01):
And uh so these movies progressively get more and more ambitious and crazier and crazierin terms of this mythology.
And that's another thing that I'm really proud of is that this movie is not based on anyexisting IP.
We created our own universe for Sharknado.

(54:21):
In this day and age, that's amazing.
and we kept building on it.
Fine travel is in it.
mean, it's, mean, where it goes.
We're definitely going to watch the rest of the Sharknado series.
Absolutely.
But like, mean, it's, I've read about them and I'm just like, oh, it builds in this most,in this absolutely incredible way.

(54:43):
And you know, it has become like, I mean, it's like the success of the movie itself.
Like it had that first airing on Sci-Fi, was it July of 2013?
Yeah.
And then, and it-
And then they aired it again like a week later and then it had a bigger audience and I'mlike and then another like even better.
mean that's incredible.

(55:04):
then it went theatrical and sold out screenings for one night only.
it's incredible.
know, so ah yeah, I mean, look, there's the this this thing that's really cool about it.
And I think in retrospect, I think people, you know, I think people are the people thatwant to get hung up on the, the effects aren't up par this or that.

(55:24):
I think, you know, there were audiences and it increased every year.
because it was like a TV show, we kept building a building and we stayed true to themission statement of the first movie.
Plus, it's it's one of the only franchises like this where your two leads are there frombeginning to end the whole thing.

(55:45):
And and I when we were doing number four, and we knew that we were probably we we were weour days were going to be numbered like at some point like fifth or sixth movie was going
to be the last movie.
And so sci fi said we're going to do five and the six is going to be the last movie.
I go, know what the last scene of the movie is.
I know exactly what it is, because we talked about time travel and other stuff.

(56:06):
I go, I know what we're going to do.
I'm not going to tell you what we did.
But I knew the ending.
And so for a filmmaker to be involved as a director for six films and then actually get totell a complete story and get to film the ending that they wanted, it never happened.

(56:28):
amazing.
With the original cast, we didn't replace the original cast.
You didn't have to bring in Coy and Vance to take their place.
Yeah.
And so and there were some changes with some of the kids, which I think, you know, waskind of interesting.
But again, I think by the end of the day with the time travel thing, I think it kind of Ithink every single plot hole that people bitched and moaned about, we we kind of plugged

(56:53):
the hole at some point during the course of the movie.
Like I was getting another one was the whole teaser in the first movie with the with theshark fins and the money.
It was like, what does this have to do with it?
So when we did the movie, I go.
Okay, fine, we're gonna show you what it has to do with it.
We actually revisit that scene from a different angle and tied into the movie.

(57:15):
So there's a lot of fun stuff with that.
But I had a great journey with the cast and Asylum and Sci-Fi and the writers, we Thunderand Scotty on the movies.
But it was like, to me it was like,
six years being on a TV show.
Every year we get together, what's the new season?

(57:36):
We'd have writers rooms, we would talk about it.
Sometimes we would come up with stupid things and they would get shot down and then thenext movie they'd be okay.
Like in the fourth movie, because uh I had this idea of the Sharknado sisterhood and uhthat Nova was a part of because Nova wasn't coming back and forth.
And there was another character that we uh created.

(57:57):
uh
uh Gemini that Marcella Lucia played and she's more of a...
She just turns into a little bit of a badass throughout the course of the film.
But in my head, because they wouldn't let me say it out loud, I said, she's part of theSharknado sisterhood uh from Nova.
But then in the fifth movie, they let me do the Sharknado sisterhood.

(58:18):
And so even when I was making four, even though Sci-Fi didn't want that in there, theydidn't like the idea...
I still filmed it, so when you go back and watch four, you go, oh, she's part of thesisterhood, because she shows up again in the fifth film as part of Nova's Sharknader
Sisterhood.
And then I think in the fifth movie, I wanted to do like an army of terror reed clones,they're like, no, we can't do that.

(58:43):
And I'm like, OK, well, and then finally in the sixth movie, going, OK, we could do that,because this makes sense in that movie.
So there's a lot of ideas that at a certain point,
you know, you go, you know, go, this is too ridiculous.
And they go, well, you know, you know, we can do this one.
I remember when I was interviewing, we'll just say the the creator of Buffy and Angel.

(59:10):
Sure.
I know of whom you speak, sure.
When I was a journalist and um and I think he was talking that he was probably like themiddle seasons or something and he says, you know We treat every season as if we're never
gonna have another season So instead of going we're gonna save this for the sixth movie,you know Or the sixth season where you know We're just gonna do it and then we'll figure

(59:32):
out what we're gonna do when we get together for the next season huh, and and and I alwaysremembered that when we were doing these that you know, let's Let's just let's throw
everything
at the wall.
Let's do everything.
And then then we have to top ourselves in the next film.
And I think three is like the perfect example.
I mean, the first movie is L.A., the second movie is New York and the third movie.

(59:55):
It's literally there's there's like three or four different movies in that movie.
We do White House Down with Sharks in Washington and Florida.
We did Universal Orlando.
So we did an amusement park disaster movie.
We did a road trip movie and then we did it.
than a space movie at the end where they go into space.
So we basically any one of those could sustain any other one movie.

(01:00:19):
And we did we did all of them in one film.
And but the token getting the shoot of places for the space step, we were able to with acrew of 10 people, they let us film at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
wow.
Skeleton crew.
Mission control.
Oh, wow.
With Apollo astronauts suited up, we got to film the

(01:00:41):
Vehicle assembly building we got plate shots.
So that's the thing that tactile thing.
We just like we embraced Everything we embrace whatever we got to do But we wanted to doit for real and I think that's the legacy and the charm of these movies is that the
studios would never Dare try to do what we did on these things because they couldn'tfigure out how to do it for the budget right and we were just stupid naive and overly

(01:01:05):
ambitious And we said we're gonna do it
Well, I think it's terrific.
again, it's become this global phenomenon that is still, I mean, you know, still today.
There's the people love these movies.
There's there's merchandising at Sharknado, the T-shirt, Sharknado, the lunchbox,Sharknado, the chainsaw.

(01:01:25):
And, you know, and you beat the Fast and the Furious series to space.
I mean, what more could you ask?
Yeah, no, look, it's I find that, we did have the audience at the time and I alwaysremember like the first movie.
We did went to Comic Con.
I've said this many times, but there was we were doing this literally a week after uh fouror five days after it aired.

(01:01:48):
I think, no, it was a week after it aired and we went to Comic Con and we did a postersigning.
And this woman came up.
It's probably in her 50s.
And she goes, she told me, thank you for making Sharknado.
I've watched it three times.
made me happy.
Oh.
And I never forgot what she said.
And I took that on all the movies that it doesn't matter what anybody else says or ifsomeone wants to rip these movies or say they're so bad or so good.

(01:02:13):
It's those people that it made them happy.
That's what we are going to do with these movies.
And we're not going to forget that.
We're not going to get bogged down in changing the tone.
We're just going to we're going to continue doing what we're doing.
And that's that was the mandate.
That's what we did.
And
And uh at the very end of the um sixth movie, there was a speech written and I didn'tquite get it.

(01:02:37):
I wanted the speech where Ian's talking about stuff and I wanted it to work onmulti-layers.
I wanted it to be about him addressing everybody in the bar.
And I wanted him to also be us talking to the people that watching the movie as sort oflike, thank you.
Thank you for being here.

(01:02:58):
And again, that's the thing is like there's a beauty of it is that, you know, we we haveto do multiple layers of things.
And again, had TV shows, some TV shows never get a finale.
Right.
We got that.
We got to say farewell and we got and also think, you know, goodness, know, John Hurt'sdaughter allowed us to use footage from him from the first movie.

(01:03:19):
So we were we actually found some deleted stuff and we were able to keep him in the barand add a little bit extra.
that's great.
So.
You know, so yeah, so there's a, it's a very, it was a very interesting journey.
you know, I said, I'm very proud of it and we accomplished a lot and the audience is stillthere.
I find more people now like that I'm working with, you know, like I was just filming themovie of Massachusetts, somebody that was on our, on the G &E teams.

(01:03:46):
Like, you know, you know, I grew up watching this, see this photo, see this photo, I wasdressed up as a Sharknado or the Sharknado shirt or whatever.
And I was just talking with these casting directors or this line producers in Florida thatwere big Sharknado fans.
I mean, it's continually evolving.
And like I said, we created our own universe without any IP.

(01:04:08):
And if there was no existing IP, again, we could do whatever we wanted.
At some point, Tara Reid's kind of partially robotic in this movie.
I mean, it's just the movie gets progressively weirder and weirder.
And we just kept the continuity.
that's great.
that's why, like I said, I think that once you get to the ending, you'll have a reallycool appreciation of it.

(01:04:34):
But some of these things are going to really hit home because each film is another part ofFinn rebuilding his family.
First movie was Reconciling.
Right.
Second movie is about renewing vows.
The third movie is about having a kid and not screwing things up.
you know there's there's so there's so many different things going on it and that wasuh...
that's great

(01:04:54):
It's It's terrific.
Anthony, thank you so much for joining us today to come and talk about Sharknado.
It has been an absolute delight and we just really appreciate your time.
We know how busy you are.
So to take the time to come and talk to us, it has just been absolutely terrific.

(01:05:16):
speak for yourself.
Justin is just sitting there being all quiet like I've heard these stories I don't need totalk to
you
I love it.
I love it.
It's great.
It's great.
Again, thank you so much.
You're welcome.
You can see the movies, I think, are floating all around, like on Amazon.
If you ever want to watch the correct version of Sharknado, anybody that is viewer, watchthe 10th anniversary.

(01:05:39):
And I think that's on Amazon.
There's a few more visual effects shots.
There's things that are cleaner.
The sound is remastered.
It's remastered in 4K.
it's color corrected.
It's kind of, I feel, like the finished version of the movie.
And if you love the original, it's fine.
But like I said, we sanded off a lot of the rough edges with that new version.

(01:06:02):
And then a shout out to Robbie and our band, Quint, all the songs that we did for themovie you can find on Spotify and Amazon Music and YouTube, including the ballad of
Sharknado.
um I'm a big fan of parentheses in song titles.
Yes.
And so so uh so it became uh parentheses, ballad of

(01:06:24):
in parentheses, Sharknado.
just always I just it was again, it's part of the silliness of all this stuff.
And and so that stuff exists out there.
And uh if you can if you can hunt it down, I wrote the on the third movie, I wrote theArchie versus Sharknado comic.
oh Wow.
And and it technically that's Sharknado three point five because it's a concurrent storyhappening during the events of Sharknado.

(01:06:53):
three with the Archie character.
It's canon.
So that was it.
It is a hundred percent canon.
So so that so that if you are a Sharknado fan, you have to find that and, uh you know,check out other silence and some really great movies since then, you know, that were in

(01:07:13):
that same vein like zoomies.
The zoomies franchise is really cool and blood lakes really cool.
So um check that stuff out and.
uh
And check out some of my other movies.
Everybody thinks I just do Sharknado.
I've done a lot of other things.
did a horror film a few years ago that I'm really proud of called Nick's, completely indiefilm, NIX.

(01:07:33):
I just finished a shark movie for Tubi called Great White Waters that's on Tubi right now.
And it's a pretty serious movie for the most part.
It's kind of actiony.
And again, it was just a chance to kind of do something a little different.
I think that's great.
Well, I'll definitely check it out and I hope everyone out there will.

(01:07:55):
just what a delight.
Thank you so much for joining us.
Thanks Anthony.
Appreciate it.
Thank you for having me.
and we'll be back in two weeks for the first of two Get Me Another Halloween bonusepisodes in which we'll be exploring the first two sequels to John Carpenter's classic
Halloween.
And joining us for both of those will be our good friend Carmelita Valdez McCoy.

(01:08:20):
We're excited to have her back on the show.
So join us on Tuesday, October 7th for our Halloween two bonus episode.
And don't forget,
Our next series, Get Me Another Die Hard, will be coming your way in November.
As always, we are your hosts, Chris Iannicone and Justin Beam.
If you've enjoyed our show, please consider subscribing and following us on Blue Sky,Instagram, Threads, and Twitter at Get Me Another Pod.

(01:08:47):
Make sure to check out Justin's new album, Phantom Lightkeeper, Shore Ghosts, which youcould listen to the first tracks of now on Spotify and Bandcamp.
It'll be released on October 10th and you can pre-order it
at JustinBeam.com.
And if you've liked the show, tell your friends about it, tell your enemies about it, tellthose folks down at the bar before it gets inundated by sharks about it, and join us next

(01:09:14):
time as we continue to explore what happens when Hollywood says, get me another.

(01:10:01):
is all