There is a movie on Netflix instant called Rubber. It is about a car tire that gains sentience as well as telepathic abilities, then uses those abilities to make people’s heads explode. I am telling you this, because I have watched Rubber, and it is only the second weirdest movie I’ve ever seen thanks to Tusk.
Tusk was written and directed by Kevin Smith (Clerks, Dogma, Chasing Amy, etc.) Before I tell you anything about it, you should go ahead and watch the trailer here.
There really isn’t much more to it than that. Tusk is a movie about a somewhat annoying (but loveable) podcaster who gets turned into a walrus by an insane old man. That being said, Tusk is something incredible.
Kevin Smith had all but retired from movie-making before Tusk. It seemed that Smith wanted to mostly concentrate on his podcasts and comedy tours. In one very special Smodcast (listen here), Kevin Smith and friend Scott Mosier decided to open the episode by reading a personal ad that had been posted on a website called GumTree.uk (an English Craigslist). The ad claimed that a man was seeking a lodger for his large house. The lodger would receive free rent on one very special condition: that the lodger dress in a very realistic walrus costume for approximately two hours each day.
After reading this ad aloud, Smith and Mosier descend into a pot-fueled rant about the man who must have written the letter. Then, the two friends say “wouldn’t it be hilarious if someone made this movie…” The movie they describe is all about the lodger who answers the ad and discovers that dressing as the old man’s walrus friend just isn’t enough. The man would sew the lodger into the “very realistic” walrus suit, and that’s when the movie becomes a horror story. Smith goes on to describe something very like the movie that I just saw in the theater, and that, in my mind, is what makes Tusk so incredible. If you want, you can hear this movie being conceived. You can sit for a little over an hour and hear an entire movie being born in a conversation just like one you might have with your friends about a ridiculous thing you saw on the internet. Smith closes out the podcast by asking listeners to vote via Twitter hashtag if they would like to see this movie. The next day, as Smith tells it, the vote was overwhelmingly in favor: “#walrusyes.”
Just 15 months later, the movie was released. I’m not totally sure I can describe the feelings I have toward the actual movie. All the most hilarious parts were also the most disturbing parts (that walrus suit…). The whole thing gave me such an odd feeling of anxiety. I wanted to laugh at so many things the old man (played by Michael Parks) says, but he was far too affective at being creepy. I ended up curled into a ball in my seat, chuckling nervously. Maybe that’s where Tusk is the most successful. By enjoying it as much as I did, I contributed to the old man’s madness, as well as Kevin Smith’s. Almost every major review site gives this movie mixed reviews, which makes total sense. How could you know how to feel about it? Every person involved (with the possible exception of Johnny Depp) took this ridiculous chimera of a movie so seriously that there is no way to be certain of how it makes you feel.
All I know is that I’m going to watch this movie at least once a year for the rest of my life. I’m going to make everyone I know watch this damn movie, because I heard it being born and that makes me love it. In fact, I’m going to put a workshop into my own home where I can build a realistic looking walrus suit and invite mustachioed young men to let me toss fish at them so that I too may know the great pleasure of befriending a walrus.
No, I won’t do that; that would be crazy. I’ll make a narwhal. I like narwhals. #narwhalyes
