Originally published at the Georgia State University Hub, Aug. 3, 2017, https://news.gsu.edu/2017/08/03/the-eye-of-the-sharknado/.
By Jeremy Craig
They are the television movies that’ll never win an Emmy, but we watch voraciously anyway. Those made-for-cable B-movies viewed for pure camp, humor and entertainment.
Perhaps the most over-the-top of these is the “Sharknado” series, which has gained a cult following for its outrageous storyline about waterspouts that lift blood-thirsty sharks out of the ocean and drop them over Los Angeles.
The plots are ridiculous by design, and the moviemakers are not afraid to push the absurd to the extreme, said Scotty Mullen, the writer and casting director for the latest installment — “Sharknado 5: Global Swarming” — which airs Aug. 6.
“It’s pretty epic,” Mullen said. “The ‘Sharknado’ movies are crazy — it’s 500 miles a minute. Everybody loves to watch it, and it is so fun, especially during these crazy days we live in.”
No spoilers shared here, but needless to say, there will be shark-filled tornados and plenty of campy cameos featuring some pop culture heavyweights.
Mullen’s wit for screenwriting comes naturally, said Elizabeth Strickler, the director of Media Entrepreneurship and Innovation in the Creative Media Industries Institute at Georgia State, and a mentor to Mullen when he worked with GSTV, the student-run closed-circuit television station at the university.
“He is a tour-de-force of personality and humor,” Strickler said. “He is a beloved figure in L.A., and particularly in the B-movie genre.”
Strickler said that while Mullen was at GSTV, he’d interview celebrities who were rolling through town and generate a unique interview style or location for each.
“It could have been in a bed, or the top of a building, or he would bring a prop reminiscent of a filmmaker, producer or actor’s style and work,” she said.
Mullen said he didn’t write for movies or TV at the start of his career. Seriously, at least. Instead, he moved to Los Angeles to become a movie publicist.
“I was having so much fun, and making decent money, but there was a part of me that wasn’t fulfilled,” he said. “When I would go to the movie studios and talk to them about publicity, I felt like I was on the wrong side of the table, and I wasn’t being authentic to who I really was.”
So, before he’d go to his publicity gig, he would wake at 5:30 a.m. to write for a few hours on “spec” scripts — unsolicited scripts that have often have little chance of ever being filmed.
He took a script called “Double D Island” to the movie studio that produced “Sharknado,” and while that script didn’t make the cut, they liked his sense of humor and asked him to write what became his first movie, “The Coed and the Zombie Stoner.”
Eventually, he was asked to work on “Sharknado 2,” providing “punch-up writing,” or extra jokes and dialogue. And for the third movie in the series, he began the path toward his work in casting.
“This may sound very odd, but I owe my casting career to Ann Coulter,” Mullen said, referencing the controversial conservative commentator. “My publicity background came into play because they wanted to get her to play the Vice President, but they had a hard time getting a hold of her.”
Through his network of contacts as a publicist, sure enough, Mullen got her on board for the “Sharknado” saga.
Ideas constantly flow, and Mullen says he’s always on the move whether he’s on set or writing his next script.
In fact, he has been so busy over the years that, although he finished his Georgia State coursework in 2004, he didn’t technically graduate until 2013.
He was just in a hurry to work in L.A. and forgot to submit his application to graduate.
“It finally got in my head, where I thought, ‘Oh God, did I ever graduate?’” Mullen said. “And in 2013, I finally called the registrar. I was really scared that I would have to take a bunch of classes, but they worked with me.
“I actually flew back to Atlanta so I could attend the graduation ceremony,” he said. “It was really fun.”
Photos courtesy of Scotty Mullen