Excl: Spike Scream Awards Carpet, Event & After Party Coverage

Steve Barton |

Oct 19, 2010

This writer hit Scream 2010 (held at the Greek Theatre in LA) and its after party (at the Music Box in Hollywood) this past Saturday night, and while we’ll be bleeding out a number of the interviews we conducted over the week (the airing of the event takes place tonight, October 19 on Spike TV), we are first bringing you our chat with Saw 3D co-scribe Marcus Dunstan, who took some time on the carpet to chat up that film as well as his coming flick The Collection and more.

No lie: I dig Dunstan, he of the infectious laugh, twisted personality and black fuzzy jacket. It seems only yesterday when I was seated in a lawn chair next to him in the high-desert enclave of Agua Dolce at 3am, watching together as FX-man Gary Tunnicliffe thrust a prosthetic beast-baby’s junk into actress Diane Goldner’s mouth while director John Gulager shouted, ‘Fuck her mouth harder!’ on the set of Feast (our lives are bizarre, I know). Since then, things have evolved. Dunstan, along with congenial co-scribe Patrick Melton, have effectively utilized their win in “Project Greenlight” Season 3, as well as their prolific and macabre talents, to usher forth not only such gonzo genre films as Feast II: Sloppy Seconds and Feast III: The Happy Finish, but also the blockbuster hits Saw IV, Saw V, Saw VI and Saw 3D, the latter which releases wide this October 29th via Lionsgate.

“Here it comes,” shouted Dunstan of Saw 3D, over the screams of the garishly costumed seat-fillers who hovered over the historically traffic-jammed carpet. “It’s whimsical and it’s bittersweet, because every year we’ve got to bring every dark impulse into that storyline, and say alright, ‘How are we going to scare them this year?’ This one is about honoring the past, and the fact that (actor) Carey Elwes came back is a miracle. We wanted to honor him with our most hopefully badass and most forthright effort yet, so I can’t wait!”

Excl: Spike Scream Awards Carpet, Event & After Party Coverage

Commenting on whether the film’s ‘Final Chapter’ moniker will be as ‘final’ as that other famous horror franchise which carried a similar tag (that’d be Friday the 13th), Dunstan stated, “We engineered this one to give closure to the series, and ‘that’s that.’ Patrick and I desperately wanted to answer the question of, ‘What happened to the doctor?’ And you are going to find out. I mean, this thing could be rebooted, and I’m sure it will be, because it’s that cool of an icon, but for now, ‘no,’ the storyline that was begun seven years is finished.”

Bringing up the in pre-production sequel to last year’s Dunstan co-written (with Melton) and directed The Collector, the filmmaker commented, “We are calling it The Collection, because since they’ve given us such a big budget, it’s not going to be anything like that first movie, and we wanted to dispel the pitfalls of other (franchises). We were painted into a corner with being in a house in the first one, and this time, it’s a wide-open terrain.”

Scheduled to shoot January 2011 in Atlanta, GA, Dunstan expounded of the feature which he will direct, “I’ve never seen a production that’s been allotted this much creative freedom, and we’ve taken full advantage of it. It’s definitely horror, but we’ve taken samples from two distinct horror movies from long ago – thirty years ago – and the second you see the trailer for The Collection, you’ll be able to pick them out. There’s nothing been done like this stylistically since. With the first film we were honoring the opportunity which the Saw films gave us, and it was in that vein, but with this one? It’s kind of like Argento on steroids. I think we just scored the line producer from The Walking Dead, so let me tell you, our crew is going to be bad-ass!” (As planned, Dread will be on the set for this one, so stay tuned).

Commenting on he and Melton’s feature film script for The Outer Limits (which is set up at MGM), Dunstan enthused, “We just finished the script, which I love. We’ve done horror for years now, but this is our first effort in sci-fi, and it fucking turned out! I love it! So I can’t wait!”

Also in attendance for the Spike Scream Awards was horror director Tim Sullivan (stay tuned for exclusive announcements pertaining to a slew of his next projects), and Inception director Christopher Nolan, as were actors Ryan Reynolds (Buried, Green Lantern), Bill Murray (Ghostbusters, Zombieland), Sigourney Weaver (Alien), Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd (honored for their turns in the Back to the Future franchise), Ian Somerhalder and Nina Dobrev (“The Vampire Diaries”), Neve Campbell and David Arquette (the Scream series), Halle Berry and Don Cheadle, as were “True Blood” writer Alan Ball and that show’s stars Anna Paquin, Sam Trammell, Stephen Moyer and Alexander Skarsgard. Stars Rosario Dawson, Megan Fox, Anthony Hopkins, Mickey Rourke and Twilight’s Kristen Stewart rounded out the winners and presenters.

The only blemish – a bizarre and misogynistic appearance by the rather irrelevant Marilyn Manson, who undoubtedly cost the production unneeded money (rain was threatening the proceedings) by his willful destruction of property and his ugly, sexist jabs pointed at his bemused co-presenter. His inexcusable heckling-cum-interruption of Alan Ball’s acceptance speech sealed the deal.

To quote Heathers screenwriter Daniel Waters, “How very.”

The 2010 Spike Scream Awards went well into the night, with stilt-walkers, gas-mask wearing go-go girls and aerialists providing the ocular entertainment at the Henry Fonda Theater.

Dread would like to thank Aileen Budow for effectively assisting the visit.