Gadgetory

hi I'm Jeff Bakalar this is the show where we're going one-on-one with James Gunn writer director producer extraordinaire James Gunn in the studio and applause for James thank you we're very excited because your first foray into the world of gaming yes professionally at least yes is with the new game from grasshopper manufacture lollipop chainsaw right which is a very big deal there's a huge cult following behind these types of games from that developer from guys like suda51 yeah now you are getting the chance to work with these guys how did this happen how did you get involved in about chainsaw two years ago Sudha Sudha 50 one's great you know game developer rated games like no more heroes and he's uh he's just a cult game guy and he came to me along with Warner Brothers who's putting out this game and they said hey you know we have this idea for a game we want to see if you're interested I'd even know what they meant or what they wanted me to do so I sign this non-disclosure agreement all this stuff and when in saw this little bit of footage of this like you know sexy high school cheerleader chopping up zombies with a chainsaw and having them explode into like these gory glittery rainbow hearts which is fantastic and I flipped it I mean I truly flipped for the footage and I thought it was so aesthetically interesting right you know I mean we you know we get compared to other you know stories and games and everything since since this game has been announced as the trailers of coming out but aesthetically to me there's never been anything like it and I was fascinating but I said I listen what do you me to do I'll do whatever you want me to do and they said we want you to help us to write the story we've got part of the idea down but we needed to you know be further crafted and we want you to you know come up with the characters and write the characters and so I did that and I just became involved and like I do with most things I become involved with I i'm crazy i go all the way so i was basically hired to write the cutscenes and oversee writers to write the rest of the dialogue and stuff like that but instead i just did everything myself because i became attached to the characters i really love them and i just wrote the whole thing and then I went and I hired all the actors to play the different characters in the game I've directed them in the voice-over sessions it was my first experience doing that and it was it was great it was a great experience so I'm happy that sounds amazing so so you know you're obviously very well versed in the world of film and writing for film and directing for film how does that translate over because I would imagine there's a lot of similarities but at the same time it's probably sort of a different day well it's all experience just I mean just technically it's a very different thing write a screenplay it's a you know 90 to 120 page then little screenplay you have to keep everything contained everything is about making sure every single scene leads to the next thing and it's all very constricted writing a videogame you write on Excel sheets or at least we did with this game and the script is like you know this sure so it's like this big huge just thousands and thousands of lines of dialogue and you know you'll have a scene in which a girl is you know say you know the juliet starling our hero will stave a girl from a zombie or she won't and so we'll have to write 30 lines of dialogues if she says the girl and 30 lines of dialogue if she doesn't save the girls either running away or she's complaining that she's dying so it's like nothing gets left on the cutting room nothing is left i mean is and i found that to be a remarkably like freeing creative experience because you do you know when you're in this industry for a long time and especially you have the spotlight on you you you get at times sort of you know wound up and you may be overthink things a little you come perfectionist and especially with a movie when you make a movie once every two years or every three years even it's it's it becomes such a big deal but with this it was just like I just had to write and write and write and I'd sit there and write for 12 hours and just turn it all in and that's the game I mean there was everything when you everything you do I mean because you have to write so much yeah you