Travis' Picks for the Worst Movies of 2014

Being a film critic is pretty awesome. Straight up, it's a lot of fun if you're someone who loves movies as much as I do. But damn, do I hate it sometimes, too. I always hear "Oh, it must be great doing what you do" and that much is true...when the movies are good. But when they suck so does this job because I can't simply go home and forget about it. I have to actually keep these movies in mind for longer than I'd care to. Want to sit around and think about Justin Long in a walrus suit? Me neither, but that's what I had to do after Tusk.

And in general I take no pleasure in tearing down another person's hard work, but sometimes the movies are so bad it's pretty tough. There were so many good movies this year that the ones which made me want to run from the theater screaming in agony stand out like a sore thumb.  The movies that appear on this list are what I consider the worst of the worst. Some are major studio efforts with huge budgets, others are smaller indie movies. No excuses; big or small if the movie sucked and I had to endure it then this is where it belongs. 

Be sure to check out the rest of our end-of-the-year review here!

Maladies (review here)

Sometimes James Franco outsources his pretentious, experimental flicks to his buddies. Directed by some dude with the single monicker of "Carter" (douche alert!!!) , this painful, unfunny existential comedy is one of those "art imitating life" pieces celebrities love. Franco plays a former actor (he watches himself on General Hospital THROUGHOUT THE DAMN MOVIE) with a mental disorder who gives it up to be a serious author. If Maladies were a person I'd want to shove it in the lockers or give it a swirlie. The worst thing about it is the lost opportunity and wasted cast. There's a good story to be had in an actor of Franco's stature trying to start anew in a different field, but instead what we get is a dull series of oddball occurrences that make no sense, with increasingly bizarre characters we could care less about. Catherine Keener plays his cross-dressing friend; Fallon Goodson and her moony eyes plays his nutso sister; and David Strathairn is the neighbor infatuated with Franco. And through it all Franco is struggling to kind of play himself. Whatever, man. Fortunately, nobody is EVER going to see Maladies unless they seek it out and then why in the world would you do that?

Winter's Tale (review here)

What the **** was Winter's Tale about? No, seriously. Look, I know the book by Mark Helprin pretty well, and never thought for a second that it should be made into a movie. Why? Because it makes no sense. It involves flying horses and time warps and thieves and devils and...wait, is this Lord of the Rings or something? No, it's a quasi-religious soup starring Colin Farrel as a thief who falls in love with the girl whose house he's trying to rob. Oh, and she's dying. And he's being chased by a demon mob boss played by Russell Crowe. Will Smith is in this, too. Don't ask him about it because he'll deny it but he plays a sewer-dwelling Satan. How does this cast come together for such a doughy pantload as this? Blame writer/director Akiva Goldsman, an uber-producer who must have won a bet or something. 

Behaving Badly (review here)

The obvious joke here is that the people who made this movie behaved badly by allowing it to happen. This wretched high school comedy stars Nat Wolff, Elisabeth Shue, Mary Louise Parker, Heather Graham, and a perky Selena Gomez; a cast I could watch all day under other circumstances. But it's one of those films that wants so badly to be raunchy that it ends up looking kind of desperate. 90 torturous minutes go by without a single laugh, and you know things have taken an awful turn when Shue, Gomez, and Graham at their most frisky doesn't help. Not even the most die-hard Gomez fans can justify her being in this. There should be a penalty. Reduced fan club numbers. Banned albums. Something.

Jimi: All is by My Side (review here)

How do you make a movie about Jimi Hendrix without being able to do use his music? Why the Hell would you want to? Points to Oscar-winning screenwriter John Ridley for trying to do something different with Jimi: All is by My Side, taking an approach that emphasizes the mood of the era and the personality of the man rather than focusing on his music. Unfortunately, the man is played by Andre Benjamin who seems stuck in a perpetual "Purple Haze". He simply lacks the enigmatic aura to play Hendrix, and without the iconic music that made him famous there is a hole that simply can't be filled.

Tusk (review here)

I love Kevin Smith. Really. Well, more accurate is I love Kevin Smith's old work. He hasn't really made a good movie outside of the View Askew universe, though, and Tusk is the absolute worst thing he's ever done. Cop Out looks pretty awesome by comparison, that's how bad this is. Non-nonsensical, poorly staged, unfunny, and painfully timid, Tusk accomplishes zero of what Smith was probably aiming for. It doesn't work as a horror because the sight of Justin Long in a fat suit is comical, and since Long is aggravating as shit anyway we kind of root for his continued torture. Only his grunts of shame sound authentic, and they probably had nothing to do with the suit. While Michael Parks' delightfully goofy performance as his captor is one to seek out, you'll be too freaked out by the appearance of Johnny Depp as a Pepe le Pew caricature, who will be in the next two movies as well. Yes, Tusk is the beginning of a godforsaken trilogy, one that wild horses couldn't drag me to see.  Just keep saying to yourself, Travis, "Clerks 3 is coming, Clerks 3 is coming..."

Exodus: Gods and Kings (review here)

This one is almost too fresh. The wounds from Ridley Scott's disastrous Biblical monstrosity are still unhealed. Boasting a red sea of special effects but not a single droplet of heart or faith, the white-washed cast is only the most visible of its many issues. Scott, who has decided all of his movies must look exactly the same from now on (that's how he keeps getting $150M budgets to squander), is more interested in the CGI plagues than he is in the story of Moses. Christian Bale does his best to portray the Hebrew savior despite a script that does him no favors, but when he's asked to squabble with a bite-sized version of God it's just too ridiculous to overcome.

Are You Here (review here)

Amy Poehler's funny. So is Owen Wilson. Zach Galifianakis has his moments. Are You Here is not a funny movie. At all. Not only is it not funny, but it's hard to figure exactly what it was trying to do. It just sits there like a lead balloon without any kind of perspective or narrative thrust, but at least it's so flat you don't wonder why there's a question mark missing in the title. Supposedly this was about a womanizing weatherman played by Wilson at his most irritating, who joins his eccentric tree-hugging pal (Galifianakis) to figure out what to do with a huge inheritance. I can barely remember any of that. Good for Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner for making his directorial debut and all, but he might want to stick with TV.

The Bag Man (review here)

The Bag Man is about a guy carrying a bag. The end. Okay, that's not exactly true but not really far off. This seedy, half-baked attempt at film noir stars that guy who used to be John Cusack (I refuse to believe he's the guy I loved in High Fidelity and Better Off Dead) as a criminal charged with holding on to a bag with mysterious, supposedly important contents. He can't look in the bag or let others get it, otherwise a pompadoured Robert De Niro will get really angry. The entire two hours is spent keeping the mystery of the bag's contents. You won't care what's in it. You'll be too bored to care what's in it. And when you find out you'll be pissed at the time wasted trying to figure it out.

The Legend of Hercules (review here)

It almost seems unfair putting The Legend of Hercules so high on this list. It never really had a chance, did it? Not with goblin-faced Twilight mass Kellan Lutz as the mythological hero, and not with the washed-up Renny Harlin behind the camera. Lutz flexes his considerable muscle while Harlin struggles with murky 3D special effects he clearly doesn't understand and we don't give a crap about, anyway. Tedious and badly acted, the film doesn't even appeal to somebody like me who adores the stories of Greek myth. If there's an upside it's the commanding performance by supporting actor Liam McIntyre (Spartacus), who uses his gladiatorial experience to overshadow Lutz in just about every way. To be fair, Dwayne Johnson couldn't make a Hercules movie work later in the year, but that's not an excuse for this movie being so terrible.

And So It Goes (review here)

This one was tough because I like Rob Reiner. A lot. Meathead is the man as far as I'm concerned. And I appreciate that he wants to make simple, harmless comedies nowadays, although it's probably because that's the box Hollywood has sealed him up in. And So It Goes might have been pretty good in 1987 or something, but now it might as well be covered in moss. Michael Douglas plays a crotchety, totally racist womanizing real estate agent who is forced to become guardian to the granddaughter he didn't know existed. Meanwhile, Diane Keaton is his chirpy next door neighbor who you just know he's going to hook up with after they're done arguing for 80 minutes. It's all pretty distasteful, cheap in its sentiments, and the kind of dud that could destroy any hope for older skewing comedies.

Rage (review here)

Just when you thought Nicolas Cage was bouncing back, his performance in Joe a reminder how good he can be, the guy goes and drops a stinker like Rage. This plodding, atrocious revenge thriller is dumb even by Cage standards, and features one of most fantastically bad final scenes ever. Directed incompetently by Paco Cabezas stars Cage as former criminal now a semi-respected citizen who goes on a demented crusade of violence when his daughter is murdered. Supposedly there's some kind of question as to who killed her? But a mystery only matters if you care about the suspects or the victims, and this thinly-drawn, distasteful piece of crap doesn't come close to making that happen.

Were there more that could have made the list? Hell yeah! Too many, in fact.  Marlon Wayans' A Haunted House 2 where he (again) has sex with inanimate objects....Simon Pegg makes everybody sad with the unfunny, condescending Hector and the Search for Happiness....Race relations gets set back a few years by Kevin Costner and Octavia Spencer in Black or White...Trust Me proves Clark Gregg should never ever leave the Marvel universe....Not even Pierce Brosnan could save bland espionage flick, The November Man...and I bet you already forgot Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit was a thing, didn't you?

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Kevin Smith Secures Funding for 'Clerks 3', and we have 'Tusk' to Thank for It

Audiences were split on Tusk, Kevin Smith's weird walrus-suit horror with Justin Long and Michael Parks. The film didn't really perform that well at the box office, either, but this seems to be a path Smith is committed to as he's already hard at work on the second film in the trilogy, Yoga Hosers, which is expected to bring back Tusk guest star Johnny Depp. While the film may not have been what many (like myself) like to see from Smith, a return to his classic View Askewniverse is right around the corner, and we have Tusk to thank for it.

A few months ago Smith revealed that Harvey Weinstein, who had backed all of his prior features, had pulled out of funding on Clerks 3, leaving it in limbo. On the latest episode of his Babble-On podcast Smith says Clerks 3 is again in the works thanks to financiers who loved what he did with Tusk.

Smith: "Tusk was the absolute bridge to Clerks III. Because of Tusk I got my financing for Clerks III. A year and change ago I was desperately trying to get Clerks III made for the 20th anniversary and that desperation — I must have reeked of it because I couldn’t f–king find money and shit. But it was Tusk, people going ‘Holy f–k, what else do you have?’ and I was like Clerks III and they’re like ‘Done.’ So, everybody that’s like, ‘He failed, he failed,’ I’m like ‘Thank you, I failed into Clerks III.’"

Clerks 3 will bring back Jeff Anderson and Brian O'Halloran as Randal and Dante, classic underachievers who used to work at the Quick Stop in New Jersey. In 2006's Clerks 2 they moved up to Mooby's fast food restaurant, only to end up right back at the Quick Stop, this time as owners. Where the third film will pick up is unclear, nor do we know if Rosario Dawson will be back as Dante's fiance.

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Box Office: 'The Maze Runner' Sprints to #1 with $81M Worldwide

1. The Maze Runner- $32.5M
As discussed with +Sandie Angulo Chen on this weekend's Cinema Royale, figuring out which best-selling YA adaptation will make a hit movie is nearly impossible. The Maze Runner, based on the trilogy by James Dashner, didn't start out with The Hunger Games or Divergent level buzz but a smart marketing campaign and a well-received panel at Comic-Con helped it open to a strong $32.5M debut. 20th Century Fox wisely built up the simple premise, a group of boys trapped in a gigantic maze, and reached out to fans of Dylan O'Brien, star of MTV's Teen Wolf. When combined with the $49M international total, the potential franchise has earned $81M worldwide on a budget hovering at around $34M. Those are the kinds of numbers studios love and all but guarantees we'll see the sequel, The Scorch Trials, very soon.
2. A Walk Among the Tombstones- $13.1M
While all of Liam Neeson's movies are promoted to look like Taken in some way, A Walk Among the Tombstones is actually very different. It's not so much an action movie as an old-fashioned crime yarn, and so it's not surprising to see it open to a smallish $13M. That's obviously well below what Neeson's movies have done lately, but at a cost of only $28M that's not too shabby.
3. This is Where I Leave You- $11.8M
Warner Bros. doesn't stray away from big budget tentpoles often anymore, but when they do it's for star studded dramedies like This is Where I Leave You. The family comedy stars Jason Bateman, Tina Fey, Adam Driver, Jane Fonda, and Rose Byrne and looks like any of a million other similar films about offbeat, estranged kin. After some production trouble (the project was halted altogether when Bateman an then-director Adam Shankman split) Bateman and Levy brought it back to life and it seems to have been worth it. While the $11.8M is hardly a big deal, it only cost $18M and will likely play well through the season.
4. No Good Deed- $10.2M/$40.1M
Slipped 58% now that all of the Idris Elba and Taraji P. Henson fans have had their fill of the home invasion thriller. Regardless, the $13M film that was hidden from critics has more than turned a profit.
5. Dolphin Tale 2- $9M/$27M
6. Guardians of the Galaxy- $5.1M/$313.6M
7. Let's Be Cops- $2.67M/$77.1M
8. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles- $2.65M/$185M
9. The Drop- $2M/$7.6M
10. If I Stay- $1.8M/$47.6M

What's not on the list? Kevin Smith's Tusk, which opened to 602 sites and earned a dismal $886K. The oddball horror stars Justin Long as a podcaster who gets kidnapped by a psycho and forced to wear a walrus suit. That's such a tiny amount it can't even be said that Smith's hardcore base turned out for it, and one has to wonder if he'll continue with the loose trilogy this was meant to be the start of. Personally, I hope he doesn't.

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Review: Kevin Smith's 'Tusk' Starring Justin Long and Michael Parks

Kevin Smith is both a director whose work is both easy to love and easy to dislike. He cultivated a large and extremely loyal following telling personal and very funny stories about his life growing in New Jersey. Whether you cared about hockey or the Quik Stop, they were films that were easy to relate to. But then Smith got famous, grew disenfranchised with the movies he was making and the Hollywood system, and set out on a different path; one that sees him making fewer movies for his fans but more for him....or somebody. There's an audience out there for his latest, the creepy crawly body horror Tusk, but it's not this Smith fan.

Tusk was inspired by an episode of Smith's podcast, and if that sounds like one flimsy-ass basis for a movie then you are so right. It's a one-note gag stretched to the limit, but worse it's devoid of Smith's razor sharp wit and personal insights. It's not for lack of trying, but every attempt comes off as limp, Smith-lite. For instance, the protagonist is Wallace (Justin Long), a smartass with a podcast that got popular for making fun of people. Wallace and his buddy Teddy (Haley Joel Osment, looking...uhh, unlike Haley Joel Osment) call their show the Not-See Party, for reasons hardly worth explaining. But you see the obvious gag in it, right? Say it and it sounds like Nazi Party, a joke we're steamrolled with far too often.

When a pseudo-Star Wars Kid chops off a limb (some awful special effects there, by the way)  in a stunt gone wrong, Wallace books it to Canada to interview him. But when the meeting goes awry in strangely downbeat fashion, Wallace must find something else to do in the great white north. A couple of dusted-off Canada jokes later (people say "aboot" there!!) and Wallace is invited to Manitoba and the estate of Howard Howe (Michael Parks), a recluse with a ton of stories at his disposal and the unending desire to tell them. If the "Most Interesting Man in the World" were a little more sing-songy and awkward, he'd be Howe. Over tea he tells Wallace about his storming the beach at Normandy, meeting famous people, and most amazingly the one time he was rescued from death by a Walrus. He's particularly fond of that story. Disturbingly so. That tea wasn't so innocent, after all. Wallace is conked out, waking up to discover that he's Howard's captive and soon to be fitted for his own Walrus suit made out of human flesh. It just needs some alterations to fit a pencil neck like Wallace.

The first encounter between Howard and Wallace is disturbing in the way the best body horrors should be. We already know what's coming but the buildup is truly intense, helped by yet another phenomenally creepy performance by Parks. He worked wonders as the violently fundamentalist preacher in Smith's religious horror Red State, and he brings many of the same commanding qualities to Tusk. Smith has always had trouble editing down his scripts but being overly wordy is a benefit when Parks is regaling us with one wacky story after another. He's terrific here, making grounding Howard in reality by making him the twisted result of some terrible trauma, not just some freak with a fetish for animals. Strangely enough, the less of Justin Long you see the better he is. Maybe he should wear a walrus suit in all of his movies.

It's after we've seen Wallace in the suit that the film loses steam, as if Smith has totally shot his wad (he'll probably appreciate that turn of phrase) with the reveal. Basically it's a one trick walrus. From there it becomes a goofy, unfocused rescue mission as Wallace's longtime girlfriend (Genesis Rodriguez) teams up with Teddy and detective Guy Lapointe (better to leave whose playing him a secret) to find him. The introduction of Lapointe is a total disaster as it basically forces Smith to spend inordinate amounts of time with the huge star playing him. One can hardly blame him for that, but it would help if Lapointe was a character we could believe. Instead he's this total Pepe Le Pew stereotype, a cartoonish buffoon in a fake nose and accent. Whatever point Smith is trying to make about humans and their baser, animalistic urgings are lost every time Lapointe opens his mouth. Smith has never been the most visually inventive director but he was always able to get by because the script and characters are usually so endearing. That's certainly the case when Parks is doing his thing but the rest of the way it's not, and Smith's stagnant camera work becomes a real chore. It's also not clear what tone he's going for. Tusk is hardly gruesome in a Human Centipede sort of way, but it's not especially funny, either.

The first of a proposed trilogy, which unfortunately will include the Lapointe character in each, Tusk is undoubtedly Smith's strangest film in more ways than one. It's hard to tell exactly what he was going for. Was it just to do something different? There's no shame in that, but there's also something to be said for doing what one does best, and Tusk is not Smith at his best.

 Rating: 2.5 out of 5

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Comic-Con: Bizarre Trailer for Kevin Smith's Horror, 'Tusk'

The Kevin Smith movies of today are very different from early in his career, at least on the surface. It's been awhile since his last New Jersey comedy featuring his View Askew characters, and lately Smith has been trying out a number of different filmmaking styles. A few years ago he released Red State, a politically-charged thriller/horror about a fanatical religious cult. But his latest film Tusk promises to be the weirdest and perhaps the scariest thing he's ever done, and now the first trailer is here.

Smith revealed the Tusk trailer during his annual Comic-Con show, and to say this stuff is strange is an understatement. Starring Justin Long, Michael Parks, Haley Joel Osment, and Genesis Rodriguez (with a Johnny Depp cameo), the film centers on a podcaster who becomes the unwilling victim of a man with an unhealthy obsession with walruses. Tonally this is unlike Smith has ever done but when you hear the Canadian "aboot" jokes you know his comedic voice is still there.

This is going to be a tricky film to pull off but clearly Smith has been fired up by it with a spinoff already in the works. Tusk hits theaters September 19th.

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Kevin Smith Address 'Batman v Superman' Rumors; Reveals First 'Tusk' Poster

With all of the projects Kevin Smith has percolating right now, like his body-horror Tusk, Clerks 3, and Christmas movie The Anti-Claus, there probably isn't enough time in the day for him to do much else. That's why it was a little surprising when a whopper of a rumor emerged last week that claimed he had been hired by Warner Bros. to draft a phony Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice script. Why? To throw the Internet off the scent, of course, and even if it wasn't true it still sorta worked. Film bloggers were scrambling around questioning every story they had ever written it, which was kind of funny to be perfectly honest. But we hadn't heard anything from Smith on the legitimacy of those rumors until today, and he took the opportunity to pump up his legit projects.

Over on his Silent Bob Speaks blog, Smith talked about his busy schedule before shooting down the idea he'd been hired to write a faux Batman v Superman screenplay, poking fun at himself in the process, naturally....

"However, none of those has been a fake BATS v SUPES script. C’mon, kids… No major studio would let a guy like me near their franchises – even if it was for a dummy script meant solely to fool the news sites. (Don’t know if it’s true or not, but this Twitter user is claiming credit for a fugazi script that’s currently being reviewed online.)"

"No, anything I’ve said about “Milo and Sage” was based on an image Zack showed me while hosting a MAN OF STEEL online event at Yahoo many months back. The little I know of the flick beyond that I learned from some cats involved (though never BatFleck himself; as I’ve said a few times now on the Babble-On podcast, beyond email, I haven’t spoken to Ben in years). Fun story, though."

And he's right about that Twitter user, Arrogant Alien (only 26 followers? Come on, dude.), who says it was his fake script everyone is going nuts over. He even has a couple of photos of the draft, not that it proves anything. Maybe it's Justin Bieber? He's been known to hold up fake screenplays as evidence of his role in superhero movies.

Smith did reveal one true thing, though, and that's the first poster for Tusk. The film stars Justin Long, Michael Parks, Haley Joel Osment, Genesis Rodriguez, and just a dash of Johnny Depp in the oddball story of a landlord who forces his roommate to wear a walrus outfit. It's a pretty clever image, one that evokes the titular tusks and hints at the story's creepier elements. The first trailer for Tusk will be shown at Comic-Con before being made available online.

Lastly, Smith says Clerks 3 will still happen despite the Weinsteins passing on the opportunity to finance it...

Via @Kitties4every1 "Will Clerks 3 still be made?" Heavens yes, just not with the Weinsteins' money. And all involved are okay with this.
— KevinSmith (@ThatKevinSmith) July 8, 2014

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Kevin Smith Says Weinstein Passed on 'Clerks 3'; Talks 'Tusk' Spinoff 'Yoga Hosers'

Before Kevin Smith started adding new projects left and right, like the upcoming horror movie Tusk, his next film was intended to be Clerks 3. He had hoped for shooting to being last May but obviously that didn't happen, and it made one wonder if the decision had been made to release it as a novel like Smith briefly considered. And maybe that will ultimately be the route he goes because the latest update is not at all promising.

Speaking with ScreenDaily, Smith says Harvey Weinstein, who has been one of Smiths' biggest supporters over the years, turned down Clerks 3....

Smith: "....they passed. I went in with a $6m budget and they were, like, ‘Oh no Kevin, this is too high’. Bob offered us distribution but they weren’t going to finance it."

So what does this mean? A Kickstarter campaign for a beloved franchise like Clerks would probably reap lucrative results, but as of now Smith hasn't said one way or another what he will do.  Clerks 2 made about $24M back in 2006 and cost about $5M with double that for marketing. That's not bad for such a small movie but is it the kind of thing where more people would turn out for another one? Probably not. It's only for the die-hards at this point.

When he's not busy possibly drumming up fake scripts for superhero movies, Smith has a lot of other stuff on his plate to consider. One of those is apparently a Tusk spinoff titled Yoga-Hosers that would shoot later this year and center on two supporting characters...

Smith: “There are two characters in a convenience store in Tusk that you see for five minutes, very much Ronsencrantz and Guildenstern. I’ve built a whole movie around them and I have brought one of the other characters from Tusk back.”

He also has the holiday horror The Anti-Claus (formerly Come to the Krampus) coming up, so he's plenty busy and certainly not on the verge of retirement as he once claimed. 

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Justin Long Says Johnny Depp is in Kevin Smith's Horror 'Tusk'

Johnny Depp has been known to hide out and make unexpected cameos. He popped up as himself in Adam Sandler's Jack & Jill, then hid in plain sight as part of 21 Jump Street. But showing up in a Kevin Smith horror film? Apparently that's his next surprise.

Justin Long was interviewed by Long Island Newsday, and when asked about future projects, he strangely replied...

"Yeah, the one where a man turns into a war horse. It's called "Tusk." Johnny Depp is in that one. I'm working on something coming up later."

Right. Except it's a walrus, not a "war horse". The guy dresses as a walrus. A simple mistake like that is enough to suggest the reporter may have screwed something else up. But other sites, including The Wrap and Slashfilm are also saying Depp is in the film as French-Canadian investigator Guy Lapointe, who is on the case of a man forced by his roommate to wear a walrus costume. Genesis Rodriguez, Michael Parks, and Haley Joel Osment co-star.

With or without Depp, Tusk promises to be one of the weirder films due out this year.

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Kevin Smith Talks Original Horror Film 'Tusk'; Justin Long Joins Cast

We just showed the rather abysmal trailer for Justin Long's A Case of You, a romantic comedy with little romance and even less comedy. As lame as that looks, his next project should be fascinating because it combines horror, Kevin Smith, and a walrus suit. Oh, and it's based on a true story. A few months ago Smith began talking about Tusk, an original horror film based on a newspaper article about a man who was lost at sea for six months with only a walrus as his companion. When the man returned home and began looking for a roommate, his only demand was that they wear a walrus suit for two hours a day. Did I mention this was based on a true story?

Speaking with EW, Smith revealed his hopes for Tusk to be the "ivory bridge" towards the conclusion of his Clerks trilogy, earning enough money to make that sequel possible. Michael Parks, who was so terrifying for Smith in Red State, will play the weirdo landlord while Long will play the guy in the walrus outfit.  Long had a memorable cameo in Smith's Zack and Miri Make a Porno, and the two worked together briefly on the phone sex comedy For A Good Time Call....

The film is so jacked up that it's bound to make a few waves, but Smith also expressed a desire to have it ready by Sundance in January. The last time he hit Park City it was to publicly auction off Red State to a distributor, only to flip the script and buy the film himself. It didn't exactly win him any fans, so it'll be interesting to see if he pulls something similar next time. Whatever the case, Tusk promises to be a tough sell, even it turns out as the "cuddly version of The Human Centipede" like he hopes it to be.

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