JAMES GUNN: HIS COLLEAGUES
James Gunn doesn’t make his gory, gonzo films on his own. We talk to four of his closest collaborators about their unique relationships
Some of Gunn’s key collaborators (The Bulletts?) on the secrets of his success.
SEAN GUNN
BEING THE YOUNGEST of the Gunn clan — six siblings, five of them brothers — Sean was often treated as the “guinea pig” in his biggest-brother James’ early filmmaking experiments. “I think I shot and killed one of my older brothers in a Super-8 film James made when I was probably three years old,” he reveals. “All in perfectly good taste, I assure you.”
While other Gunns have worked with James over the years (brother Brian co-wrote the James-produced Brightburn with their cousin Mark; Brian, James and Sean were jointly responsible for Spike TV’S PG Porn),
Sean and James have collaborated the most, simply because their jobs slot together best. “He’s a writer-director and I’m an actor, so it’s sort of a perfect fit,” says Sean who, in keeping with the “guinea pig” theme, played on-set Rocket Raccoon (as well as space-bandit Kraglin) in both Guardians Of The Galaxy films, and of course Weasel (as well as an obnoxious Belle Reve prisoner) in The Suicide Squad.
Sean was even there beside his brother during his Troma days, starring in 1996’s Tromeo And Juliet as Sammy Capulet. Still between his third and fourth years at the Goodman School of Drama, he says it was “a magnificent thing” getting to work on an actual movie set. Though he points out that “I’m using a low bar for what qualifies as an actual movie set.” Even so, he was surprised to find himself having flashbacks to Troma 18 years later when he first walked into the production office of Guardians. “It had these massive rooms, while in Troma it was a corridor and one bulletin board. But it was essentially the same thing; in some ways they were a weird mirror image of each other, in that you’re essentially doing the same task.”
It probably helps that the James Gunn of today retains “a lot of the weirdness” of the Troma-era James Gunn. “He never decided he needed to make things more commercial for the sake of being more commercial,” says Sean. “But when you’re making something like Guardians,
it’s correct to cast a wider net in terms of who you’re communicating with, and I think James has done a really great job of that.”
In terms of James’ future, Sean is as curious as anyone. Of course, he’s all set to return as both Kraglin and Rocket in Guardians Vol. 3
(as he will in Taika Waititi’s Thor: Love And Thunder), but after that? “You can only go up to a certain level in terms of making bigger and bigger movies,” he muses. “So I’m wondering if at some point he’s going to scale it back and try to make a more intimate film. It’ll be interesting.” There’s a strong chance there’ll be a role for the youngest Gunn in it. Maybe playing an actual guinea pig.
MICHAEL ROOK ER
THE AUDITION PROCESS can be a tough one for even the most seasoned actor. So you can imagine Michael Rooker’s astonishment when, as he walked in to test for the role of antagonist Grant Grant in James Gunn’s 2006 debut Slither, he was met by the sound of applause from a director he’d never even met. “I did the old time-out,” says Rooker now. “‘What? What? Maybe you’d better wait until I read.’”
Gunn was a fan. He loved Rooker’s work in everything from Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer to Cliffhanger; “He just always delivers the performance,” the director says. “He’s great!” Rooker, in return, ditched another project he was considering and suffered through hours of painful prosthetics on Slither, to portray Grant’s icky transformation into an alien… thing. “It was very excruciating,” says Rooker, “but I loved Slither.”
Mainly because, it turned out he and Gunn were kindred spirits, united by a dark, sardonic sense of humour. “I’ll make a joke that is completely bad timing at times,” says Rooker. “That’s what I do!”
After Slither wrapped, they started meeting every Sunday with Gunn’s brother Sean for a cheese-and-wine night, and Rooker has duly appeared in every Gunn movie since, most famously as the blue-skinned Ravager Yondu in the two Guardians movies (“That character was so bloody well written”). By all accounts, there’s never been a dull moment. Their Slither compadre Nathan Fillion says their rapport is a joy to behold: laughing, cursing, screaming insults at each other. “James will torture Rooker for the benefit of everyone else,” Fillion tells us. Empire mentions this to Rooker.
“James likes to talk to me?”
No, torture.
“He likes to talk for me?”
No, torture!
Rooker laughs. “He likes to torture me too, yes. His talking to me is like torture. But who else can he torture? Come on! I’m the football player that the coach needs to pound on the helmet and say, ‘Go out there and kill ’em!’ I don’t like pussyfooting around with direction. I like being yelled at. It fuels the scene for me.”
Rooker, it seems, is always there for Gunn. The director describes him as “a touchstone”: a reminder that he’s still a warm-blooded human being, not just some ultra-focused movie-making machine. When Empire visited the set of The Suicide Squad in Atlanta, Georgia, in late 2019, we found Rooker in the video village, even though he was all done with his scenes as stoic killer Savant. Just hanging out, cracking jokes and talking shit with his blockbuster-making bud.
Speaking now, we ask him how he’s seen his friend change over the 15-odd years they’ve known each other. “He’s gotten good,” he says. Anything else? “He’s gotten softer.” Rooker sounds almost disappointed. “He used to yell at me better. I’m trying to get him to yell at me more!” He shouldn’t worry. We suspect the torture will continue for many years yet.
NATHANFILLION
ONE DAY DURING the shoot for The Suicide Squad, Nathan Fillion rocked up wearing a T-shirt entirely covered by a huge image of James Gunn’s face. “Just something to make him smile, let him know I’m thinking about him,” deadpans the Canadian star. “Just threw it over my costume. ‘This old thing? Oh, I’ve had this for years!’” (He hadn’t. He’d recently ordered it from a website.)
Fillion plays super-naff supervillain TDK in The Suicide Squad, and has appeared in almost all of Gunn’s movies (he didn’t make the final cut of
Guardians Vol. 2), after first working with him on Slither, playing small-town sheriff Bill Pardy. It was a great role, but the shoot was hell.
“That film was wracked with problems,” Fillion says. “Costumes. Special effects. Puppeteering. Weather. Cold. Stuff you just can’t plan for. But watching James deal with those problems was how I learned his strengths. Watching him make the best out of a failed situation. Watching him make something work, when by all rights it shouldn’t have. Thank God for James.”
One of the things Fillion has come to appreciate most about Gunn is the safety net of trust he creates for his collaborators. “It’s safe to fail on a James Gunn set,” he explains. “It’s safe to try something. It’s safe to come off stupid and say, ‘I don’t exactly understand what that means. Help me.’ He doesn’t make you feel dumb when you’re dumb.” And that trust goes both ways, Fillion says. “He’s a director that doesn’t micromanage. He wants you to bring something to it that is yours. I’ll never not work with James.”
We believe him. He’s got the T-shirt to prove it.
PETERS A FR AN
THERE’S A GOOD reason why James Gunn has repeat collaborators. “I don’t continually work with people who aren’t great at what they do,” he says. “I know I can rely on all of them for quality in different ways.” In the case of producer Peter Safran, that quality comes from “his counsel, his wisdom, the way he deals with political situations.”
Safran has been producing movies and TV shows since the late ’90s, with recent credits on movies as big as Shazam!, Aquaman and, of course, The Suicide Squad. But he’s also been Gunn’s manager during that whole time, after first hearing about him in 1998 from their mutual friend, actor Jamie Kennedy. “He gave me a copy of a screenplay called The Specials [a superhero comedy that would star Kennedy and Rob Lowe], written by James,” says Safran. “It was the funniest thing I’d ever read. So I called James, who was living in New York at the time, and said, ‘Come out to LA for two weeks and let me set up ten meetings for you.’” By the end of those two weeks, Gunn had a writing gig for Jay Roach:
Spy Vs. Spy. It was never made, but it got him started in Hollywood.
Not that he ever went Hollywood, Safran insists. “He is exactly the same guy today, as one of the pre-eminent filmmakers in the world, as he was 20-odd years ago when he was just coming out of Columbia with an MFA. He’s just a guy that loves movies. A true artist.”
But how easy is he to manage? “Not difficult,” laughs Safran. “He’s so prolific and self-generated, it’s been a very long time since one has had to find a job for James Gunn. He’s the full package: writer, director, producer. He even does all his own storyboards. And he’s fun. It’s just fun to be involved in the process of bringing something from his mind onto the screen.”