Tusk
Short description
Wallace Bryton is a popular podcaster who travels North America seeking unusual people to interview. He goes to Canada to meet Howard Howe, an old sailor with remarkable stories to tell, and does not return. His friend and co-host Teddy Craft and Wallace's girlfriend Ally Leon set out to find him, and their search brings them into contact with people who know more about such disappearances than they first admit.
Kevin Smith directed and wrote the film, his eleventh feature in a run that followed Red State and preceded Yoga Hosers. Michael Parks plays Howard Howe, Justin Long plays Wallace, Génesis Rodríguez plays Ally, and Haley Joel Osment plays Teddy; Johnny Depp appears as Guy Lapointe. The film mixes comedy and horror across its 102-minute running time and was shot on a budget of three million dollars.
Released in September 2014, the film drew modest audiences and returned about two million dollars worldwide against its cost. On IMDb it holds a rating of 5.4 from around 72,000 votes, and on TMDB a rating of 5.5 from roughly 1,700 votes. A critics' rating of 5.6 from 136 reviews places it in similar territory to the audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- Kevin Smith held a Twitter poll to gauge his followers’ opinion on whether or not the film should be made. The vast majority voted that the film should be made.
- The film was shot in 15 days.
- The Gumtree ad (in which a landlord offered accommodation for free if the tenant agreed to dress as a walrus) was actually a joke ad posted by Chris Parkinson, a Kevin Smith fan, hoping to get in touch with Smith himself. Smith eventually hired Parkinson as a producer.
- Bifröst is a rainbow bridge connecting Asgard to other worlds in Germanic-Scandinavian mythology.
- Wallace's ringtone is taken from Kevin Smith and Ralph Garman's podcast, Hollywood Babble-On. The song was written by fans who based it on Garman's parody of Al Pacino.
- The episode where Justin Long goes into the bathroom and turns a doll away from himself while urinating is based on a story from Kevin Smith's childhood that he told on his podcast.
- One of the main filming locations for the movie is The Cramer Mountain Country Club, which is located near Charlotte, North Carolina. It was at this location that the perpetrators of a 1997 bank robbery purchased a mansion after committing the crime. Much of the film was shot at a neighboring golf club.
- In Teddy and Ellie's room, where they ignore calls from Wallace, there is a large framed picture on the wall depicting Kevin Smith's dog, Shecky.
- Wallace's podcasts are similar to SModcast, Kevin Smith's weekly podcast.
- The name Gregory Grumtree is a reference to an advertisement discussed in Kevin Smith's SModcast podcast, #259. Gregory is Mr. Tusk's original name, and Grumtree is the website where the advertisement was found.
- When the GPS navigator screen is shown at the beginning of the film, it can be seen that the map is static while the car icon moves. In reality, the map on a GPS navigator should also move, otherwise the car icon will simply move off the edge of the visible area.
- The film is based on one of the episodes of SModcast – a weekly podcast by director Kevin Smith and his long-time friend and producer Scott Mosier.
- Kevin Smith held a Twitter poll to decide whether or not to make a film. The majority voted in favor of filming.
- One of the main filming locations is The Cramer Mountain Country Club, located near the city of Charlotte, North Carolina.
- The character Ralph Garman's name is Frank Garman. This is a reference to one episode of the Hollywood Babble-On podcast, when a listener sent Garman an email with a misspelled name.
- Quentin Tarantino was offered the role of Guy Lapointe, but he declined, saying he had read the script and was "eager to see Michael Parks unleash his inner kraken," but was not currently interested in acting himself.
Similar movies
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
