In a recent interview with IGN, writers Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton discussed their unorthodox experience penning the script for last summer's horror/comedy sequel Piranha 3DD. From writing in D-list celebrities such as Carmen Electra and Snooki to searching for the perfect water park willing enough to let the crew run rampant with buckets of blood and fish guts, the process certainly wasn't an easy one for Dunstan and Melton -- although, as they put it, it's hard to complain when you've got the Hoff on your side.
IGN Movies: Obviously, this was a continuation of Alexandre Aja's first Piranha movie, which was more satiric in nature than just straight horror. What was your approach, tonally, for the sequel, and how did you go about infusing those comedic aspects into the story?
Marcus Dustan: Well, it kind of harkened back to the collaboration John Gulager, Patrick and I had in 2004 with Feast, where our first big break was blending humor, horror and the terror of an isolated community under siege. So this was an opportunity to expand upon the universe created way back in the earlier films, and it also brings some characters from the Alexandre Aja picture into this. This time, the setting of the water park was a wonderful brainstorm moment to come up with all the elements of mayhem that could destroy someone's day.
IGN: And where did that idea for the water park come from? How did that become the central location for this one?
Melton: You logically think, "Okay, where can this take place and be a little bit different than the first one?" So we eventually decided on the water park. I'm not sure exactly if it was us, Bob Weinstein or Gulager who first said it. I can't remember exactly who came up with that.
Dunstan: It was us!
Melton: It was us? Okay. In the very early conversations, we were like, "Okay, it takes place in a water park downstream, and it's the sleaziest one you've ever been to. They're trying to do this big kickoff, and they're going to have these D-list celebrity lifeguards there." We told that to Bob, and he goes, "That's great, you do that!" He gave us three notes, which were, "I want a piranha in someone's p**** to come out when they're f***ing; a piranha goes up someone's ass --" and what was the third one? It'll come back to me. But those two were very important.
IGN: You guys obviously had a ton of cameo appearances in this movie. When you were writing the script, were all of those actors already locked in for the sequel, or did you kind of have to work around that and hope for the best?
Melton: No, they weren't, and that was actually kind of tricky. We looked at the location, which was one of the first things we did, and it was like, "Okay, we're going to do it, and Gulager's going to do it. Here are the parameters and the budget, and we need to shoot pretty soon." So we all got on a plane and went down to Louisiana, initially, to look at water parks, and there are only two water parks in all of Louisiana. One is in Shreveport and the other's in Baton Rouge, and the one in Baton Rouge was fantastic -- it's one of the best in the south. We really wanted to shoot there, but it was just cost prohibitive and the ownership wasn't all that thrilled with our ideas of turning their water park red with blood. [Laughs]
Dunstan: It was actually a church organization, and they were funded with church cash. That became a "conflict of interest." The promotion of "liberty and the pursuit of happiness" was a bit undercut by vicious prehistoric fish invading people's nether regions.
Melton: It's actually kind of funny because the one in Shreveport was owned by a very religious group, and they wanted no swearing and no nudity. We were like, "Um, it's called Piranha 3-Double-Dee." But they were fine with the violence. Anyway, neither of those locations worked out, and we ended up going to North Carolina. When we were actually writing it, [David Hasselhoff] was always said to be the centerpiece, but we had a bunch of people that we were going to have in it because we had it with not one celebrity lifeguard, but six. It was this ragtag group of Dustin Diamond, Carmen Electra, Snooki -- and they all sort of die, one by one, leaving it up to the Hoff, who wasn't going to go down without a fight. Of course, the problem was... we had all these people written into the script, and when they got word that they were written in, they jacked up their prices.
Dunstan: At least mention Rick Astley.
Melton: Right, we wanted Rick Astley in there as well -- so during the heightened, chaos and mayhem, that's when he finally shows up and his song "Never Gonna Give You Up" starts playing, and the entire theater gets Rickrolled. [Laughs] Often times, though, something like that seems so relevant to people like me and Marcus -- especially two or three years ago when we were doing this -- then you try to mention it to the studio, and they're like, "Who?" And you're like, "You know, Rick Astley!" And they're like, "Why is that funny?" It's like, "Well, but, you know, 'cause, like, we play this song and it's Rick Astley!" [Laughs] We're like, "What about Keyboard Cat? You know? No?" So unfortunately, we didn't get Rick Astley, which would have been amazing. By the time you get into production, things have sort of been weened down to the essentials -- the essentials being the Hoff -- and he was game to be completely ridiculous and make fun of himself and all that.
Piranha 3DD is now available for purchase on Blu-ray and DVD. Additionally, Dunstan and Melton's next film The Collection hits theaters on November 30.
Max Nicholson is a writer for IGN, and he desperately seeks your approval. Show him some love on Twitter and IGN.
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