When Grindhouse hit theaters back in 2007, its main attractions were Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s feature length segments of the anthology, Planet Terror and Death Proof. But after the release came and went, a lot of the buzz surrounding the project wasn’t about the two films that played back-to-back, but the series of trailers for fake films that got sandwiched in between.
Rodriguez has already launched his fake trailer, Machete, into a real-life feature film that was successful enough to spawn a sequel – but what about Eli Roth and his segment, Thanksgiving? After Grindhouse got released, much of the praise for the tribute to B-movies came from how authentic to shoddy old ’70s advertisements Roth’s holiday-themed horror trailer was. The stupid voice narrating, the terrible acting, the bad dialogue, the person roasted like a turkey…it had it all.
Roth has intimated in the past that he has plans to turn Thanksgiving into a real-life feature, but that’s been going on for years now, and we’ve still got nada. So what’s the deal? Well, according to a new interview the director did with Behind the Thrills, he’s finally cracked the story, is preparing a screenplay, and presumably will keep things moving from there.
Or, to hear it in his own words (via /Film), “Thanksgiving is gonna happen. I’m working with the Clown writers on it. We have a call scheduled tomorrow afternoon. Jeff Rendell, my co-writer on it, we have a very extensive treatment. We finally cracked the story and figured out how to really make it scary, and the reason to do it. I’m really excited about it. The Clown writers wrote one of the best scripts I’ve ever read, and before Jon Watts starts shooting Clown he’s got a window, and Chris Ford, his movie Robot & Frank just opened, Chris and Jon are going to write the screenplay with me and my writing partner Jeff. So we’ll have a draft soon.”
For those wondering what Clown is, it was another fake trailer – this one about a cursed clown suit – that was falsely attributed to being made by Roth, but which was really made by the aforementioned Jon Watts and Chris Ford. Roth ended up seeing the trailer and liking it so much that he agreed to help the duo get it made as a feature. So here we are, waiting for a group of guys to take a couple of fake horror movies and make them real. What a tangled and gore-filled web we weave, when first we practice to cinematically deceive.
Check out both the Thanksgiving and the Clown trailers below.