When The Weinstein Company and director Alex Aja were denied showing the blood and boob-filled clip from this summer’s forthcoming "Piranha 3D" in Comic-Con’s Hall H, they decided to make lemonade. Throughout the 2010 convention, billboard trucks rounded the streets of San Diego’s Gaslamp district advertising "Piranha 3D" as “Too Hot for Comic-Con” featuring a Jaws-inspired image of a swimmer underwater en route to becoming fish food.
Aja and the cast screened the footage at an offsite location to largely positive response. Packed to the brim with grotesque imagery and bouncing boobies, Aja got just the reaction he was looking for. “What you saw yesterday is a small part of the movie,” Aja tells press after the screening. “There’s the girls and the sexy and the fun, but there is also a story. The story revolves around this guy (Steven R. McQueen) who’s missing Spring Break every year because he has to babysit his brother and sister. His mom is the Sheriff (Elisabeth Shue) of the town and she has 30,000 kids invading her town every year and she wants to be able to keep everything safe until some unexpected guests show up.”
As if rowdy Spring Breakers aren’t enough, Sheriff Julie Forester finds herself dealing with something much more horrific than the drunk, obnoxious teens when an ancient breed of nasty piranhas starts feasting on the vacationers. “The movie is not on the side of the Spring Breaker,” explains Aja. “They are the mass of raw meat and we have them trying to survive that situation. Somehow I have the feeling that, maybe not in the U.S. but in Europe, the movie will be perceived more on the piranha side.”
Aja also throws a few characters into the mix that you can’t help but route against, such as Jerry O’Connell’s thinly-veiled take on Girls Gone Wild guru Joe Francis. “Jerry in the movie is the human piranha,” laughs Aja. “He is like that other kind of predator on spring break. In the water you have piranhas and above you have Jerry’s character.”
“Man, what a fun role,” O’Connell says of his human piranha. “I remember opening the script and right when I got to the description of who this guy was, I thought, ‘This is such a funny, modern take.’”
O’Connell admits to partaking in a few of Francis’ notorious Hollywood soirees in the past. “I have been to some of his parties,” says the actor. “But, you know, that was a different time in my life. What really turned it around was, not only did I have children, I had twin girls. Just the idea that they end up on one of those videos lifting their shirts for an open bar is enough to make me bust a vein in my head. It instills a genetic level of fear. I had my daughters when I made this film and I used that to inspire me; to make this guy as hateful as possible.”
We asked O’Connell what his lovely wife had to say about his cavorting around set with a bunch of half-naked young girls. The actor smiled widely. “She’s an actress,” says O’Connell. “Come on! Go rent Femme Fatale. She can’t tell me what to do! I’ve got some leeway.”
Without spoiling things too much, one of O’Connell’s scenes was a highlight of the “Too Hot for Comic-Con” footage screened by Aja. For those who have seen the footage, Mr. O’Connell would like to clarify one thing about his manhood. “My character does have very personal interaction with a piranha. I don’t want to give you a spoiler, but I do want to say, afterwards, that water, the Colorado River, forms this manmade Lake Havasu. That’s very, very cold water in there so you probably aren’t seeing me in my best light.”
For Aja and special effects supervisor Greg Nicotero, part of the fun of shooting Piranha 3D was living out their Jaws fantasy. Nicotero even possesses a full-sized head of Bruce (Spielberg’s nickname for the Jaws shark) in his office. “I have such a great relation with Greg,” says Aja. “We share the same love for specific movies and we have a language that we understand each other. He’s also one of the best and with his crew they are the best makeup you can have.”
The two landed the ultimate coup when Matt Hooper himself signed on to revisit his Jaws character. “We wanted to make something pop culture also and to have that cross with another character from another movie coming in and finishing a story; he survived the shark and this time the piranha won’t let him go. Richard [Dreyfuss] really understood the idea, that we didn’t want him to come and play something else, that he was Matt Hooper and he was coming to play Matt Hooper. He was so happy. It’s a great way to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Jaws.”
“He was so game,” says O’Connell. “Personally, I thought he’s going to come here and be a little over the joke. I’m sure everyone makes Jaws references to him. But he came on and he was so into it. I found it to be very invigorating. We had been there for close to two months and the conditions were very hot and uncomfortable. He really invigorated me and I realized it was really something special.”
“We were very shy to ask him about Jaws, but he was giving up everything about the experience,” adds Aja. “He came for two days and it was an amazing two days.”
Aja follows a promising line of directors to helm previous efforts about these hungry fish, with Joe Dante directing 1978’s "Piranha" and King James Cameron admitting to the 1981 sequel "Piranha Two: The Spawning". Although Aja hesitates to say he’d take the reigns again, he doesn’t rule out sequel possibilities. “You know, this is piranha,” says Aja. “Piranha can come back and there are many, many possibilities for other stories. I think they will definitely have some other Piranha movies. If we think about a great storyline that can do a real movie and stand on its own, then yes, I would definitely be [involved].”
