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it's Friday May 4th 2012 it's time for the 404 on Sina to be I am Jeff Bakalar and this is the show where we're going one on one with James Gunn writer director producer extraordinaire James Gunn in the studio without an applause for teams thank you thank you for the applause very kind of you know we try and bring it to you thanks for being what kind of name is Bakalar it's an American what kind of name is good guns American is Irish it is American because there was McGill gun oh you're a strange thing about my name and this is absolutely true you know what my name means my my people on Twitter always writing me saying my last name is gun - are you Scottish I'm not almost all guns are Scottish I'm Irish my family's name was McGill gun and that name means sons to the servant to the god of the dead that's what my name means so my name is the luckiest guy is god of the dead that's pretty rad yeah and so it was sort of you know I you know I know it works for me my brother's last name is gun - it might like my brother rides a journey to the center of the years - I don't see where it fits in with my career it's worked pretty well I think so it's a perfect fit but I don't know what kind of last name Bakalar is I mean I think it's like Turkish I know a girl named back Lord yeah I do yeah yeah how do you spell it bak ala okay yeah yeah it's someone - mm not all right with it but it's it's okay I'm totally in Chile it's a beer in the in the Czech Republic it's a beer yeah yeah I didn't I have no idea no relation whatsoever I don't know but I'm psyched we got to talk about our last day that's amazing I had no idea god of the Dead god of the day it works out yeah I know we found out when we were in Ireland with my family and my mother was horrified she was horrified she screamed in shock and she didn't scream but she was she was like she tried shooing into sort of denial she does this thing that my mother does where she just sort of goes into like this sort of shock my mom's my stuff she's my stuff learned a lot already tell you more I play everything you wanted every time I go on the radio it ends up being like that it's a therapy session yeah well seriously we really appreciate you coming out here where we have a lot to talk about 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 manufacturer lollipop chainsaw right rich is a very big deal there's a huge cult following behind these types of games from that developer from guys like suda51 now you are getting the chance to work with these guys how did this happen how did you get involved in about two years ago Sudha Sudha fifty ones great you know game developer he did 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 don't even know what they meant or what they wanted me to do sign this non-disclosure agreement all this stuff and when didn't 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 was fantastic 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'd listen what do you want 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 need it 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 loved 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 and I directed them and 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 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 you know 90 to 120 page thin little screenplay you have to keep everything contained everything is about making sure every single scene leads to the next day and it's all very constricted writing a video game you write on Excel sheets or at least we did with this game and if 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 stays the girl in 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 on I mean 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 see you maybe overthink things a little you um 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 that's the game you do I mean because you have to write so much yeah and and a lot of it is just it's such throwaway stuff I mean a guy will play the get the game ten times and maybe not get some of the funniest jokes so I think that's one of the cool things about it yeah what do you think about that I mean I you know I've always sort of thought about oh you know oh man I've sort of you know followed this certain flow chart in the game and I've seen pretty much everything there's to see but you know I'm not gonna see maybe you know if I got killed here or something like that yeah does that do you sort of favor one way or well well with lollipop chainsaw it's not like Mass Effect right it's not a RPG sure it's a it's a basically a linear fighting game right but within that linear fighting game so like the cutscenes are basically if you can get to the next level your experience is gonna be the same as everybody else's and by the cutscenes I mean you know that I don't know how to play game sure the next action - yeah yeah yeah the little mini movies right in between the playing give you a break for your thumbs of course yeah and so but within the actual gameplay there's a lot of different little things you can do and that does change from experience experience from game to game and I think it's cool that everybody has their own experience and and also it's cool because if you replay the game a lot you're gonna find new stuff in there that you didn't find the first time sweet all right let's uh let's take a look at lollipop change so we have a trailer that sort of features all of the bosses in the game right and doing the score for the the bosses is Jimmy from Mindless Self Indulgence right yeah Jimmy ern who's one of my best friends in the world he's my buddy and I have a weird story about that if I can we can tell us yeah Josie the master of funk the queen of psychedelia into the world the buses of zombie rock they'll make your ears bleed listen lady why don't you try using some deodorant because honestly alright okay that's pretty awesome the first time I've ever seen that trailer which I didn't know came out my musics great yeah it's yeah that's that musics all by Jimmy Aaron Jimmy Aaron's the lead singer of MSI is one of my best buddies we hang out all the time and a weird thing about that is so we came in and and we did the game and and Zed the punk rock guy at the beginning he's played by by Jimmy he's like the punk rock zombie sure and we had a the game was being developed and being designed and we were designing this this punk rock zombie and I was writing all the dialogue for him and Scott wore the guy who sort of runs things over at Warner Brothers one of the guys or he ran this game yeah I'm at the ademma couple great guys yeah okay so I'm writing to him and I'm in Peter Weiss the head of Warner Brothers and I'm writing all these ideas for different actors that could play the different role sure different roles and for for Zed I said hey this is a weird idea he's not an actor but he's a really close friend of mine he's a rock star and I think he'd be great for the role his name is Jimmy urine he plays an MSI and Scott sort of freaked out because he's like oh my god I'm a huge MSI fan but he said even weirder than this when they were designing the initial design for Zed Suda came back with this punk-rock zombie design and scott said to them it looks it doesn't quite look like an American punk rocker enough okay and then he sent a bunch of design of old photos of Jimmy over - Sudha her who then redesigned the character around Jimmy urine Assam so the character is based on Jimmy in part and then he ends up playing the role because he's my friend but no other reason so it's one of those strange synchronicity situations where we were meant to work together stars lined up at all like that that's that's so cool I didn't even I I knew the the sort of intimate detail that it was you know was all coming together with but I didn't know it was based off of Jimmy yeah no I mean it's amazing that's really and so it's like the other guys you saw in there Vicki the Viking isn't laid by my buddy Michael Rooker known for Henry portrait of a serial killer and cliffhanger and Days of Thunder and and my movies slither and and super and the the girl the hippie zombie is played by Shawnee Smith who's now on anger management Charlie Sheen and was in all the Saw movies and did she did the show scream queens with me on vh1 right on and then yeah we got a bunch of people in there Linda Cardellini from ER and scooby-doo Michael Rosenbaum from Smallville hmm is another one of my best buddies and he plays he plays the disembodied head the voice of the boyfriend the boyfriend and he's a star I mean he and he you know he and Juliet they're in the entire game together and he's Michael's on Tara Strong plays Juliet she's the two of them together are amazing they're like an Abbott and Costello that want to have sex but can't because one of them doesn't have a penis and that's what's so cool about they they are these games that come out of a grasshopper they're they're sort of off the beaten path I think you know in our culture maybe they don't get enough sort of attention yeah I thought that happened with Shadows of the Damned in in lollipop chainsaw what do you sort of see you know something here that's maybe more accessible I know obviously the the cast and crew it's it's a it's a casting crew that maybe our culture is more familiar with how does that play into the whole sort of package well I think that's one of the reasons why I came along was to try to I don't want to say westernized things but but there it but but keep what is essential about the grasshopper games about Sudha's games while adding another element to that not subtracting from anything but adding a more you know a merit or Western sense of sugar and and also trying to make the story a bit more of a three-act story than because Japanese people tell these stories that are very poetic and maybe one of the problems is I love Japanese like cinema I love Asian cinema and it is it has a very different way of moving from scene to scene it they have a different way of storytelling especially Japanese people right now yeah and and so it was trying to take that stuff and maybe make it a little you know bring that into our hemisphere a little bit more sure and so so maybe I helped it that I think I think I helped what I do think the game is really funny I don't think there's any game that's ever been as funny as right because it is funny from start to finish and that's a tough thing to do especially in games yeah but for whatever reason I don't know if it's just the aesthetic of the medium whatever it is comedy does just one of those things it's just tough to come across yeah and from what I've seen in in lollipop it works yeah I think sometimes you know people need to learn that it's a game you know so if you're trying to be funny by like having a bunch of stuff in there that isn't part of the gameplay then gamers aren't gonna like it to it he's just first and foremost the games got to work as a game and that Sue's job I mean the machinery of the game has to work that has to be fun that has to be great but if while you're doing that there's just all these little funny and entertaining bits then that's awesome but if it's stuff that takes away from the gameplay which is what in the past a lot of games that have tried to be funny do sure then that's a mistake because that actually that makes the game not as good right you might as well write a movie then gamers can see through that they get up right away and they just you know they they toss it out I got a chance to sit down a little with suda51 and we talked a little about the the divide in culture and what's popular in in Japan yeah popular here for whatever reason shooters are just not really clicking there they're not as successful as they are here yeah or more of a gun culture anyway I mean we love guns in the United States we do we love shooting even when we're anti-gun we still love guns we still you know you can go you know a you know you know boycott the NRA all day long and then you're gonna go home and play doom or you know halo and and be shooting people all night long so it's just if we love guns ribs bread into us yeah it's you know and and I sort of was looking to him for sort of an answer for that I don't know why I thought he was the go-to guy I'd be like why is this happening why are we so effed up listen I mean I love sudha you know he's a great guy but as soon as ethereal man that dudes Andy Warhol yeah he's like he's not gonna give you a straight answer on that his brain were straight answer alone it's not gonna be able to give you here I am with my pet I'm like oh and I'm listening I'm like wow we went off the path real quick with that but that was cool those my medium he's a really interesting because it cool guy he's a very nice person yes and he's great he's you know he's very zen yeah as you noticed it you know in grasshopper in Japan you everything you know you take off your shoes and everything's really quiet and mellow yeah what was that experience like I mean did you get to work with him a lot were you know I didn't I worked with you know I worked with Sudha a fair amount and then I you know it's like everybody kind of does their own piece you know it was a very interesting experience there was a learning curve we had a lot of meetings where it was me and the two Warner Brothers guys around a table and then a bunch of Japanese of people like 12 Japanese people around another table yeah and then videoconferencing okay on this large huge video screen sure both large and huge at the same time and we uh so we did that all the time and and it really it was a learning curve like at the beginning it's just it's just you know because not only is the way they tell a story different but the way they interact in business is very different so that was difficult frankly but after a while we got into a groove and I found also that one of the things was once we started to hang out in person once they started coming over here and we were hanging out and we were working together on stuff then it became a lot easier because then we kind of got that I think that you know we all we all want the game to be great of course and once you learn that that everyone wants the game to be great and that nobody really had an ego stake in anything all that we care about is that the game works right so there's nobody fighting for their own way just because they're fighting for their own way we're all fighting for what we believe in because we went the game to work right and once that sort of clicked then it was magic and it was I have to say in a lot of ways it was the best working experience of my adult life because I didn't have it was not difficult right you know like sometimes making a movie is sure and it wasn't there weren't that the battles were at the beginning and once we learned to get through them they were done and the people at Warner Brothers are the best people in the world and I mean just really they're they're great and and I've never had a corporate entity like that who would push me so far they understood from the beginning that we were making a very extreme game and if you're going to make this game that's extreme then you have to kind of go with it and let it be that if we start pulling back on things then it's gonna be like a milky version of extreme and then it's not gonna be extreme and then there's gonna be nothing to set it apart so they've sort of understood that they then sort of understood that they did understand it from the beginning and really just I never had to struggle with them at all yeah and and they worked really well in bringing me in the Japanese guys together in helping us to work and Scott wor who you met was great at facilitating and you know he would travel over to Japan and sit with the sound engineers like throughout the whole cutting process because again it's like everything that we recorded is very specifically you know it's comedy yeah so there's a rhythm to it and not all you know dead guy who's Japanese sound engineer isn't gonna necessarily understand how they got together yeah and so he just he would sit there with them throughout every single cut and and everybody really put their hearts and souls into it and it's a very interesting game because it is it's nasty it's dirty it's sexy it's it's it's raunchy it's a very violent but there's a real sweetness to it and I think that is what sort of brought me and suited together I think that is if you look back on everything both of us have ever done it truly is a combination of something really profane and really sweet at the same time and both of us are attracted to that so and best of all I mean you know like we said there there are too many games in certain genres yeah this is definitely a change of pace yeah a breath of fresh air and it sounds like you've had the the working environment that would facilitate exactly what you guys want to do and you know what else but good can come out yeah and it's been going I mean I think pre-sales are amazing you know people seem to like it we've got you know you cannot go to any sort of convention without having twelve Juliet's darling cosplayers already out there and you know we do them games to come out for two months yeah that's so cool oh it isn't two months anymore is it no it's like a mono Wow yeah it's almost no day here yeah so yeah speaking of your career I mean you've been involved in a lot of pretty extreme stuff we've got slither real quick the cult classic Romeo and Juliet super which was more recent and then the the remake of Dawn of the Dead so you had your zombie sort of credentials yeah I've been around Dom bees quite a bit what do you what do you mean and obviously lollipop chainsaw deals with with that genre as well why do you think zombies with stand the test of time why do you think zombies are you know I think like the basic apocalyptic zombie narrative yeah is it works extremely well in human beings because it's a combination of most every fear that a human has sure it's a fear it's it's it's evolutionary it's our fear of disease mmm it's our fear of our loved ones becoming something else in turning against us so it gets into like a paranoid fear right it's our fear of losing everything it's our fear of being eaten by prey yeah you don't get more primal than that and then in addition to those fears there's also a wish fantasy fulfillment there's the ability to kill without moral problems whatsoever there's a world in which it all belongs to you and everybody that you hated are the daily mundane things of life are gone right and so I think that the basic zombie like Dawn of the Dead are Walking Dead are these types of narratives they fulfill all those different wishes and fears simultaneously so that it works extremely well on the human psyche for sure I think it's just that you know it's just like all bets are off you know and it's I can destroy anything I can do whatever I want whatever it's all that's all for me you know and like some genres come and go I think we're about looking at my watch we're done with the vampire thing Yeah right that's sort of over yeah come and go but zombies I mean for well it's you know it's it's it's cyclical I mean zombies really until Dawn of the Dead there was never truly you could say resident evil I guess but there was never really a big-budget zombie movie until and I don't mean zombie dawn that that wasn't a huge budget right but it was a bigger budget zombie movie I mean they're just zombies are pretty new in the landscape I mean until then zombies were a very very underground thing all those Romero zombie films were very low-budget my fault g zom b films are very low-budget so zombies were pretty much an underground thing until you know you could say Resident Evil Dawn of the Dead you know 28 days later those kind of made zombies more in the forefront and then of course Kirkman's comic book and now though at the peak is Walking Dead and in some ways I think that zombies are kind of you know lollipop chainsaw is its own thing but in some ways zombies are sort of done frankly you think so yeah because I think the talking I mean The Walking Dead but I did the show which I did but yeah though the Walking Dead is it's hard to you know you really need a new twist on zombies after your TV right I mean it's on TV every week they're focusing on things other than zombies running up again I like my throne and I'm not saying I don't like Walking Dead I do like Walking Dead but I'm saying outside of Walking Dead to have other zombie narratives right now you have to think of a way to do it that's pretty unique sure I think what's interesting is the variations I mean when you look at something like 28 days later where the zombies are running yeah you know like that was sort of it you're gonna get some hate mail from people that say that they are not zombies in 28 days later I think there's no real rule yeah yeah listen everybody says you know zombies are you know whatever they say about them but you go back to the original zombies to like white zombie yeah and they're exactly the same they're they're exactly the same as the zombies in 28 days later so you don't need the zombie it's just a word and there's no zombie handbook yeah you know there is actually the right he's great that books amazing yeah but he doesn't mean it's real and now movie is coming at the follow the world yeah yeah it'll be interesting to see that could that could really that's gonna be like the huge budget zone yeah so we'll see how it works yeah it's definitely interesting speaking of storytelling you know this is your first sort of leap into the the video game world do you think that games are really the future of storytelling no I I 100% I don't I think that's half of the future storytelling I think that human beings have a very deep need to kick back relax and and take in and not do anything that's what movies are that's what television is it is that experience sure the other need is to interact and play that's what video games are the storytelling in a way is a break from the player it's a way to enhance the play those are two different experiences and we need them both and people need them both in general so I do think obviously you know there's more play there's less play there's more watching there's less watching but they're two different things you know when you hear people all the time saying yeah I want to want to fuse those two I want to create and like right you're misunderstanding the nature of the human being sure there is no fusing of those two people want to watch or they want to play and they're two different different experiences so well I mean so you're saying you don't think well obviously your involvement with lollipop changes you can play yes you can play and be a part of a story in which you're playing that story sure but you know you don't want to you know you it's like the people that try to create something that is is you're a part of the story again the function is still play its role playing absolutely it's play absolutely you know it's not kicking back and relax and watching a story right they're two different things so we talked a little bit you you yourself are a big gamer yeah what uh what do you been playing lately what or what is your what is your favorite sort of game not you I am what are you into it I am into a lot of different things but my basic games I play RPG and stealth games so I love like my favorite game of all time is Knights of the Old Republic uh-huh I love the you know Mass Effect games I think they're amazing I love the Splinter Cell Games and the Hitman games and more stealth games like that I love Skyrim Red Dead Redemption red love I love the you know the you know Grand Theft Auto game so I play a lot of games you don't I don't really I just listed off like a lot of games that I play but what I do is I'm when I game I game like I don't do anything else so I will turn eight and yeah I will take a couple breaks a year where if few days I will play a game I will play it through to the end and I'll never pick it up again and and I do that a few times a year but I don't I I don't play games like every night sure you know I did it with Skyrim for a long Skyrim does something to you yeah I don't know what it is but as you know I love Skyrim but I also found that Skyrim wasn't as addictive to me as say Mass Effect where I feel like I have to finish the game or Road em swear I felt like I had to finish the game Skyrim I was somehow able to like you know live my life come home and play Skyrim for 3 or 4 hours I was able to turn it off yeah this is a big thing a lot of games I can't seem you know it's like you know I'm like ok one more hour one everything every game absolutely and that's more hours 5 o'clock and you're like what happened I wake up at 9 it's like time travel is why do you think that was would scare me because I because I sort of know where you're coming from with Mass Effect I was start to finish it was was like two three days and I was done yeah I think I think because Skyrim was so enormous yeah and it just wasn't it was a great game and I'm not saying this in a negative way but it wasn't quite as intense as as Mass Effect for sure Mass Effect is a more of an intense story and we feel like you have to finish that story and be a part of that absolutely in Skyrim is a bigger world chat room will not let me let you go without bringing up your history with Troma they all say are they're humans one of the reasons I'm in town I'm going to Troma dance tomorrow in New Jersey alright oh you know Lloyd Kaufman is my dear old friend and so Lloyd and I anti-west director houses the devil in the end keepers are doing a panel tomorrow and Asbury Park New Jersey nice oh really yeah yeah I near the shore there I guess I wear a convention hall or something no idea don't know there's look up Troma dance online I'm gonna be there tomorrow I'm doing a panel at 5 o'clock everybody should come down hang out we're gonna be will be there me and Ty West sweet all right and will you'll be at e3 as well so it would be at e3 yes fantastic I think we're gonna have to let you go yeah you know it's been a lot of fun I can't thank you enough for being here thank you best luck with the game from what I've seen I got to see that boss battle and you know I'm pretty psyched to play it well I can't wait for you Claire I love you know this the change of pace I'm done shooting people it's time to start playing different games and that's for me that's what I'm all about I want people to enjoy do have a little bit you're able to turn that chainsaw into a gun so for those of you who like to you know once you're able to upgrade you can upgrade your chainsaw quite a few times so you can you can do some shooting in the game as well right on the game is lollipop chainsaw it's out June 12 2012 on Xbox 360 Playstation 3 that's it all right make sure you follow James on Twitter at James gun are you Twitter you're a big time into the Twitter you know Facebook I use a lot I find it's it's a better place people can ask me questions I answer them on Facebook it's hard to answer them on Twitter it runs that it's facebook.com slash Jay gun all right that's two ends that's it god of the day out of the dead thank you so much you guys we're huge fans of all your work and the best of luck with everything in the picture we really appreciate it 866 404 CNET is a number to call we will be back next week and if you want to email us it's the 404 at cnet.com big thanks again to James Gunn we'll be back next week until then I'm Jeff Bakalar it's the 404 high tech lowbrow we'll see you next time