Shark Me Baby One More Time

Every year, television network Syfy premiers a few dozen cheap, largely unremarkable genre pictures. You’ve no doubt seen the names: Dinoshark, Sharktopus, Jersey Shore Shark Attack. You might notice a common theme running through those. Sharks are like the patron saints of terrible monster movies—if there was a family crest for mass-produced monster movies, it would be in the shape of a badly rendered CGI shark.

Another thing those films have in common is that none of them were truly significant in any sort of cultural way. The audience for something like Dinoshark is those people who watch Syfy on a regular basis and on some level enjoy the schlocky programming, myself certainly included. But in general, they come and they go, easily forgotten.

Sharknado, though, that was something different. Memorable in every way that most pictures from Syfy and The Asylum are not, it became an overnight sensation on social media. The film had an x-factor that Syfy would desperately love to mass-produce, if only they could fully understand it. The film’s director, Anthony C. Ferrante, believes he does understand that elusive element. His upcoming sequel, Sharknado 2: The Second One, will premiere July 30 on Syfy, and Ferrante recently sat down with Paste to discuss what goes into creating an instant cult classic.

Paste: First things first, where are you from? And more importantly, what kinds of movies did you love as a kid?
Ferrante: Northern California. I grew up in a small town, then moved to L.A. after graduating. I’ve really always been a horror guy. Prior to Sharknado, the stuff I did was mostly straight horror. I love scaring people, but I love comedies, too. Sharknado was this chance to do a big, crazy, fun action movie with a lot of humor and some gore.

Paste: So did you imagine yourself making movies as a kid, then? What sorts of flicks?
Ferrante: Totally. I can’t explain why or how, but it was always movies for me. I would see movies every Saturday, all day, just go to the theater and stay there. The owners of the theaters knew me and would let me in. I tried to learn as much about movies as possible, and I definitely wanted to make horror movies.

Paste: So when you’re starting out in the late 1990s, what would you have said if someone pitched you the following idea: “There’s a tornado, and there are sharks in the tornado”?
Ferrante: I always loved the concept. I actually put a reference to it in a script I wrote a few years before we made it. At the end of the day you want to make movies, and when someone comes to you with an idea, it’s best to just throw your enthusiasm into it. I don’t think it could have been pulled off in the ’90s though; the CGI never would have been able to make it look decent. But I still would have jumped at the concept.

Paste: Was 2013’s Hansel & Gretel your first movie for The Asylum? What is the Asylum experience like?
Ferrante: I supervised makeup effects and second unit directing on Scarecrow and Scarecrow Slayer, those were my first Asylum movies. Hansel was the first I directed for them. At the end of the day, there are a lot of companies in the vein of The Asylum; it’s just varying degrees. The difference is that they’re just very aware of the model they have and they have a great infrastructure. They keep filmmakers they like around. When we made Hansel & Gretel, I wasn’t sure how it was possible to make a movie for that budget. I was leery about it, but what I found was that it was one of the best crews I ever worked with. If you care as a director, they want to give you 150 percent.

Paste: What is the on-set experience like on an Asylum flick? How long was the Sharknado shoot?
Ferrante: It was 18 days, which is about average time for my past films, but 18 days to do Sharknado is insane. There were so many changes of location, and tons of little things after principal shooting was done. Sharknado 2 had even less time with principal cast and doing more in abbreviated time, although the total shoot length was about the same. It’s definitely expensive to shoot in New York, so we were really pushing ourselves.

Paste: Did the success of the first one make this shoot significantly different?
Ferrante: There’s been so much to do since the first one blew up that it feels like we never stopped making the first film, it just went straight into the sequel. There was never a break. The only difference is that this time we had paparazzi, it was like we were shooting The Avengers or something. That was kind of crazy.

Paste: All right, I’ve got to ask: What do you define as a “good film”? And is Sharknado an objectively good film in your eyes?
Ferrante: I have a film critic background, so I have a different perspective on this. Talking about low-budget “B movies” like this, I remember loving a film like The Brood or Videodrome that everybody and their mother hated because they were too weird. When I started working in this industry, it broadened my appreciation of all different kinds of films. I make movies to get a reaction out of people, to make them laugh or to scare them or anything, really. What I set out to do is make a crazy movie, and Sharknado is certainly crazy.

Paste: What do you say to anyone who thinks otherwise?
Ferrante: If I think if a movie is truly “bad,” I turn it off. But if I’m enjoying the ride, then the filmmaker did his job. The thing we took away from Sharknado is that there are so many people who got different things from it. There are people who hate it, people who love it, and kids who are obsessed with it because it’s such a ridiculous idea and an absurd film. There’s someone who came up to me at Comic-Con and said, “Thanks for making Sharknado. I watched it five times, and it made me happy.” That’s what it’s all about.