Kevin Smith was going to give up directing after making his hockey movie Hit Somebody. Then plans changed and Hit Somebody became a mini-series, and Smith decided he was gonna make one more film, Clerks III. But that was definitely it.
Except now it’s not, as he’s going to slot in a strange, Hammer Horror style monster movie before shooting Clerks III. The film is called Tusks, and according to EW it’ll star Justin Long and Red State’s Michael Parks.
Smith had the idea for the film after he saw a Craigslist-type posting where a walrus-obsessed man sought a roommate he could dress up as the sea mammal, as if he lived with an animal rather than a person. That set Smith’s brain whirring and now he’s set to shoot it next month of a tiny $2 million budget, while he waits for funding to be completed on Clerks III.
Kevin says, “It’s about a guy who turns another guy into a f**ing human walrus. As weird as it is in my head when I talk about it, they finally sent me the costume designs by Robert Kurtzman, and I was like, ‘Holy s**t, it’s a monster movie, I had no idea.’ I thought I was making a kind of sister thriller to Red State. As soon as I saw the designs, I go, ‘Of course this is a monster movie and he’s Dr. Frankenstein.’”
Talking about the cast he says, “I wrote the script around him, so it’s nothing but Michael Parks dialogue porn. Justin Long is the guy in the walrus suit. I needed a guy who has expressive eyes because once you’re in that suit, you’re covered. I reached out to Justin and he wrote back and was like, ‘This is awfully scary but how can we not? Let’s fall down this hole.’”
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