So, I'm starting up notes on the nest script, which, for those just turning in, is HACKSAW. Here's the log line:
A wannabe evil genius uses his startup millions to create a warehouse of murderous traps to teach his former high school foes some gory lessons, but things don't go as planned when his victims prove to be not quite as helpless as he'd hoped.
So whereas the last script was a PG-13 family spookfest (wherein I killed a fair amount of people, but, you know, not THAT bad...), this script will be a total gorefest. Which is why there will be one question guiding my writing this go 'round:
What Would The Soska Sisters Do?
For those who don't know, the Soska Sisters, also known as the Twisted Twins, are the horror making duo known for DEAD HOOKER IN A TRUNK and AMERICAN MARY.
I had the honor of working with the Soskas on their first foray into Marvel comics with an awesome 10-pager in the SECRET WARS JOURNAL anthology. They were a joy to work with and came up with a pretty bad-ass story.
There's a certain go-for-broke quality in DEAD HOOKER and AMERICAN MARY that I respond to in a BIG way. It reminds me of one of my favorite modern filmmakers, the inimitable Takashi Miike, whose beautifully insane, id-centric filmmaking can, on his best days, reach a strange transcendence into near myth.
As I'm sitting down to begin planning out this script, one of the questions that's been nagging me is embedded deep within that log line, and that's the gender of that focal point. The main bad guy, potentially the main character, is a male. As I originally conceived him, he was a beta male, MRA type who felt the world owed him everything and held some pretty nasty grudges on his shoulders. BUT, the more I thought about it, the more I realized I had a hard time thinking of roles like that, psychotic yet hopefully 3 dimensional horror maestros, that were women.
Now, of course, part of making the character male would be to play on that awful streak of chauvinism that seems so pervasive in the culture these days, particularly in online nerdy genre communities. So it's not like making the character a dude would be forsaking any interesting gender work.
And yet, I think about the Soskas.
The trio at the heart of DEAD HOOKER IN A TRUNK are really out there crazy fun females (yeah, yeah, sure, there was also CJ Wallis, but come on, we know that was all about the ladies). The titular AMERICAN MARY is built around an incredible performance by genre staple Katherine Isabelle, and even their work for hire, SEE NO EVIL 2, has a pretty solid twist on the Final Girl trope at the end. And right now, they're celebrating WOMEN IN HORROR month with their annual MASSIVE BLOOD DRIVE: http://www.womeninhorrormonth.com/massive-blood-drive/
I got to hang out with them for a bit when they were in town for Heidi Klum's famous Halloween party, where they were doing some awesome HELLEVATOR promotion. These ladies are the real deal, with a genuine interest in building up awesome opportunities and spotlights for the ladies.
So...what would the Soskas do...?
Looks like I've got myself a female psycho 3-dimensional horror maestro to write.
Let's get messy.
Viva La HACKSAW!
-Jake T.
