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Thunder Levin, Film & TV Writer/Director
Watching the movie Sharknado, one has to wonder, “Who comes up with this? Who dreams up a tornado of sharks falling from the sky to wreck havoc on L.A., while chainsaw-wielding celebrities take to the streets and air to save the day?”
The answer: Thunder Levin. Thunder is a film and TV writer and director who became interested in movies back in high school. Before Sharknado, he worked on sci-fi films including Apocalypse Earth and Mutant Vampire Zombies from the Hood.
His approach to screenwriting is simple: write scripts for movies that he’d like to make. Over the course of his career, he’s explored both the serious side of science fiction and the fun, totally ridiculous side. These days, he’s on to something new: a rock musical complete with pirate zombies. Ready for a wild ride? Listen in.
Carl: Hey everyone, and welcome back to the Bureau Briefing. We've got a special guest for you today. Somebody that I met and the first time I saw them, they were staring at their laptop, and they were super happy because it was the day that it was announced that Han Solo was coming back into the Star Wars universe. He a screenwriter from sci-fi who went on to create one of the craziest pop culture movies of all time, Sharknado. And today has a bunch of projects that he's working on. And he's going to join us and talk about inspiration and creativity and being original, all of these things. It's Thunder Levin.
Carl: How are you Thunder?
Thunder: I'm great, Carl. Thanks for having me.
Carl: You remember that day? You remember me walking in? We were getting ready to go out and do Converge, and you had just seen that Han Solo was coming back.
Thunder: I remember doing Converge with you, but I got to admit, I don't remember that particular moment. I'm sorry.
Carl: I'm not surprised because you were so engaged in your laptop, man. I don't even know. You probably thought I came into to, like, fix the bed and empty the trash. So talk a little bit about that just for a minute though. Was Star Wars like a super inspirational thing? Was sci-fi always something that you were just crazy about?
Thunder: Yes, to both. I don't think it started with Star Wars, but Star Wars was probably where I first... I don't know. Star Wars opened my, my eyes to possibilities. You know, movies in the 70s had been very, very serious. They were all politically meaningful. And even the comedies seem to be about social issues and stuff. And Star Wars was sort of the first movie that came along. And I say this because I didn't see Jaws until later, my parents wouldn't let me see it.
Carl: Oh.
Thunder: But Star Wars was the first movie that came along and it was just fun, at least of the movies I saw growing up. And I remember sitting there in the theater and thinking to myself, oh my God, they dressed up an elephant. I was just blown away by the Banthtas. That somebody had actually put a costume on an elephant.
Carl: That's awesome.
Thunder: And the scale of the whole thing. And it was the first time we'd ever really seen grungy space. Space had always been very pristine and clean. And so it just sort of opened up my mind. I think my first foray into science fiction, what first got me interested in it was Star Trek. Because that was like one of, probably the first grownup TV show I ever watched a little kid. It was the one show my mom let me stay up late for and that's where it all started. I want it to be Mr. Spock. But then Star Wars coming along when I was a teenager, and it might've even been the first movie I went to without adult supervision. I don't know. But, yeah. It had a pretty profound effect.
Carl: Yeah. So at that time you see Star Wars, you're a teenager, so I'm guessing you're probably in high school-
Thunder: Junior High, yeah.
Carl: Junior High. And are you starting to think at that point at all that this is something I want to do? I want to make movies?
Thunder: Well, I don't know if I really thought that at that moment. Certainly a lot of the press around Star Wars included George Lucas and it was sort of the first time I was aware of creators and directors behind these things. Like I said, where I really started was with Star Trek because I watched as a little kid.
Carl: Right.
Thunder: I thought when I grew up I wanted to be on the crew of the Enterprise and, unfortunately, I was just old enough to understand that it wasn't real. And so I couldn't really do that. And at the same time, of course, Apollo 11 was landing on the moon. That's one of my earliest memories. And so that was very primitive and I didn't want anything to do with that. And then somebody, a family friend gave me a book called The Making of Star Trek and it was really way too serious and dry a book for a little kid to be reading. So I turned to the picture section. And they're in the picture section is a photo of the bridge of the Enterprise with a bunch of studio technicians in their 1960s short sleeve shirts working on a Mr. Sulu's helm station. Something clicked in my little five-year-old brain that said there is a way to work on the Enterprise.
Thunder: And then that just sort of lay in the background. And then when Star Wars came along that that sort of started me thinking, I guess. And, like I said, I was in junior high school. I was probably 12 or 13 when it came out. And so I wasn't yet really seriously contemplating what I was going to do with my life. But a couple of years later we had a TV production class in high school, and me and a few of my friends did an independent study because there was no advanced TV production and we'd been through the class and we kind of wanted to do something more. So we did an independent study where we spent an entire semester creating Star Wreck, the Videotape. Which was just a Star Trek spoof. it was an hour long show. We did a whole, really, TV episode. And we shot it in classrooms and we had desks for a helm station and we had a filing cabinet as the turbo lift and stuff.
Thunder: And I played Mr. Crock.
Carl: Nice.
Thunder: I had these big plastic oversized pointy ears. And I learned to raise one eyebrow. But the whole experience of that, of writing it and shooting it and all of us sort of working together and creating props and fixing the script and rehearsing and lighting it and just all the stuff you do to make a film, I just had so much fun doing it. And so that was where the first sort of real serious inkling that this might be something I could do with my life started, I guess. I'd done a little stage work, as a stage hand on some of the school theatrical productions. And and eventually I became a stage manager and got into lighting and sound and all that stuff. But I think I had gone into that just because a girl I liked was in the cast of one of the plays.
Carl: There we go.
Thunder: It really wasn't until we did this Star Trek spoof that I really started thinking that maybe this was something I could do with my life. And then I went to film school at NYU and came out to Hollywood and the rest is 20 years of boring history. And then something very strange happened.
Carl: Well, wait, we got to back up. So, when you make the spoof in high school, is the girl impressed?
Thunder: Ah, unfortunately, that never quite worked out. I had screwed that up sufficiently when I was 12 or 13. That she was never going to be impressed. And we didn't really even become friends until our 20th high school reunion. So yeah. But we're friends now, so it's okay.
Carl: Good. That's good. So you go to NYU and then, do you cut your teeth as a screenwriter or are you doing more generalist type stuff?
Thunder: Neither. I cut my teeth as a director. That was what I wanted to do. That was really all I wanted to do. I was never that interested in writing, to be honest. Writing was something that I did because it's a path to directing.
Carl: Okay.
Thunder: And to be honest, even though somehow I've become known as a writer, that's still how I think about it. I write scripts that I would like to make movies of. It's only sort of a happenstance or to pay the bills that I've written scripts for others. And in fact, Sharknado, I was originally supposed to direct that, but I had another film going at the same time I had to choose between them. So I chose the other one, which sadly, [crosstalk] into obscurity.
Carl: What film was it?
Thunder: It was a science fiction called AE: Apocalypse Earth. And it starred Adrian Paul and Richard Grieco. And I really liked that film. We shot it in the jungles of Costa Rica. And I was off shooting that while a Sharknado was being shot in LA.
Carl: Well, and I, in fairness, if you're looking at AE and you're looking at Sharknado next to each other, you're going to say, well, I think I'm going with AE, right?
Thunder: Yeah. The thing is, also I'd had already done a tongue-in-cheek creature feature, right? I'd done a film called Mutant Vampires Zombies From The Hood. It was my first feature. And so I wrote the script for Sharknado first. And I had great fun writing it. It was just a blast to write, but when the time came, I honestly wasn't sure how we were going to make this film about Los Angeles flooding and the streets filling up with water and sharks falling from the sky on a million dollar budget. And so I was a little hesitant about it because my vision of it was shooting sets in a giant swimming pool or one of the giant tanks at Paramount Pictures on their back lot or something where we could actually flood buildings.
Carl: Okay.
Thunder: And I knew that The Asylum didn't have the budget for that. So, I wasn't entirely sure how I was going to tackle it. And then they scheduled both films for the same time when I had to choose. And I figured do a serious little science fiction film that maybe I could do better quality work on this low budget and make something a bit more personal. And so that's what I did. And it turned out to not be the greatest career decision.
Thunder: If I had written and directed Sharknado perhaps, I would've had a three picture deal the next morning, but as it was Anthony Ferrante and I kind of split the attention. And so it wasn't this, oh my God, this is the genius behind Sharknado. Instead there were at least two of us. And so that might've changed the perception.
Thunder: On the other hand, maybe I would've tried too hard to put all this production value into it. And the inherent seeming incompetence of the film then as humorous. I don't know. It was always supposed to be a fun, ridiculous movie. But the things like the bad continuity, one minute it's raining, the next minute it's not. One minute a place is flooded, the next minute, it isn't. The house flooding on top of a hill instead of at the bottom of a hill, which to this day, I look at Anthony and I think what did you pick that house for?
Thunder: But those things ended up endearing it to the audience and so maybe it would not have quite become the perfect storm that it was if I had directed. I don't know. I'd like to think it would have. I'd like to think it would have been even more popular. But who knows? It's just fade I think. Yeah.
Carl: So you ended up writing all four, is that right?
Thunder: I wrote the first four out of the six, yeah.
Carl: Out of the six. Okay, so you've got... So the Sharknado then the second one. Oh Hell No.
Thunder: Right.
Carl: And then The Fourth Awakens, is that right?
Thunder: Right. Yeah.
Carl: Okay, see here, this is the kind of friend I am. I didn't know there were two more after that.
Thunder: Well, there you go. As far as I'm concerned.
Carl: Sure.
Thunder: Although I had a cameo in the final one. So I kind of have to acknowledge that.
Carl: Oh, did you?
Thunder: Yeah.
Carl: You got to kind of Stanley it. Like what did you do?
Thunder: Yeah. I was in the very last scene of the film when I was a patron in the bar who raises a toast to Finn Shepard and his family. And I got to say Semper Paratus on screen. So that was a big deal.
Carl: I know that you also did American Warships and you directed that one. So that was something you wrote and directed and-
Thunder: Yeah, that was actually the film that led to them asking me to do Sharknado.
Carl: Yep. So what are you working on now? So I saw you post about DeadBeard and I immediately sent it my kids.
Thunder: DeadBeard, The Zombie Pirate Rock Musical.
Carl: Broadway wants it. I mean, have you seen what they're churning up right now? They're like desperate for DeadBeard.
Thunder: Well, the idea is to do it as a movie and then if it's successful, maybe we can put it on onstage. But I'm a movie director and so I would do it as a movie. We'd also need visual effects and stuff. But it would be a blast. It would be a logical followup to Sharknado, you know, because it's ridiculous. I'm hoping we could get Bruce Campbell to play DeadBeard.
Carl: Oh, nice.
Thunder: Yeah, I really can't imagine anyone else in that role. And it would just be silly fun. Blood and brains and rock and roll.
Carl: There you go. So how do you come up with this? What's your inspiration? Because somebody could just look at this and turn their head sideways, but there is, like, you've got something going on here. You bring this together and every time I see something that you've done, I'm just... Every single time I'm like, oh, okay. He's actually thought this through. These-
Thunder: Yeah, well, that's important to me.
Carl: Yeah.
Thunder: One of the problems I had with actually Sharknado 4, with the changes they made after I finished my script, and then with 5 and 6, is it doesn't seem like they were thought through. They were just throwing crazy random shit out there and hoping it would be amusing. And some of it was amusing, but it all seemed very random. And for me it's important that these things maintain their internal logic. And I got a lot of grief during the process for that, but then they would come to me and they say we appreciate that you're trying to make this make sense within itself.
Thunder: I mean, it's important. Especially if you're doing something this crazy and ridiculous. It has to follow its own rules because if the audience doesn't know what's possible, if they can't follow how you get from one thing to another, then they might laugh at the crazy stuff, but they're not going to be emotionally involved because they're not going to follow along. So it is important even on the most ridiculous things to think it through and to figure out how it all makes sense within itself. Whether flying sharks in a tornado is believable or not, is sort of besides the point. We ask you to take that leap. But once you've taken that leap, we can't ask you to take a leap on every single thing we do. Everything has to follow from that leap of faith. And so I'd like to think that all this stuff is thought out and does make sense once you accept the premise.
Carl: Kind of the one thing... It was like, Mutant Vampire Zombies from the Hood kind of had that one thing. Okay. There are mutant vampire zombies that exist. They're living in these neighborhoods. That was one of your earlier things, right? What's that?
Thunder: Yeah. That was my first feature. My first directing feature, yeah.
Carl: And you were kind enough to give me a copy of it and I came home and watched it with my kids and we were dying. We just absolutely loved it.
Thunder: Okay. Well, there are certain things in there I'm not sure I would show to impressionable children, but okay.
Carl: Well you've seen the work my daughter's doing now, so perhaps there was something with her suddenly-
Thunder: Well, yeah. I'm concerned that I might be responsible for that.
Carl: Well, there you go. I'll thank you later for that.
Carl: But so when you have this idea, you have a core idea, you kind of place it in reality, or some level of reality that people can appreciate.
Thunder: Right.
Carl: So with DeadBeard, when we're starting to look at this Zombie Pirate Rock Musical, we have to accept that it's a musical, right?
Thunder: Yes. That that will be dealt with within the movie, as to why people are singing.
Carl: And you may be able to get Zac Efron, I don't know if you're interested. I think his career is kind of tanking. He's kind of RIP now. You could get him to be just like a zombie pirate bodyguard thing.
Thunder: If you have a connection, there's a dashing young zombie pirate that's one of the male leads. We'd be happy to have him.
Carl: I can't back that up but, but I'm going to try for two seconds to see if I can get up and then I'm going to bail.
Carl: So tell me about DeadBeard though, because seriously, when you posted the poster, and I know this is something you're working on right now, it's something you're getting funding for, you doing all those things. What was it that brought this idea to the forefront for you that you were like, this is what I want to direct.
Thunder: Actually, once again, it's a case of two competing projects. A crazy one and a serious science fiction one. Basically the way DeadBeard happened is a guy I knew who would produce some low budget films. We were talking about Sharknado, and he said you know what you should do, you should do zombie pirates next. It was just a joke and I thought, yeah, of course I should. And then I came up with the title, DeadBeard, and we talked about it for a while and wrote up a story treatment and I wrote a script and now we're waiting on the songs to be written. Ironically I'm hoping that that Anthony Ferrante and his songwriting partner, Robbie Rist who jointly make up the band, Quint, who did the Sharknado a theme song-
Carl: Okay.
Thunder: ... I'm hoping they are going to write the songs. They've sort of been busy on other things and I'm giving them a little bit of time but they seem to think that maybe in the next month or two they're going to be able to write some of the songs. So I'm hoping that works out because they have the right kind of style for this. And then we'll move forward putting together the financing and it might be optimistic, but I'm hoping we could shoot it this winter in some beautiful tropical locale. I don't know whether we've been talking about Fiji, we've been talking about Thailand, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, someplace like that. So those are, that's still under discussion. But it has to be sort of a tropical jungle locale with a beach.
Carl: And now-
Thunder: And a volcano.
Carl: Okay. Okay. Volcano. I'm writing that down. Spoiler alert. There's a volcano in Zombie Pirate Rock Musical. And it's so funny now when you see, especially with teenage kids, how important Spotify is in getting people to movies because of soundtracks. Right? Or getting them to plays or getting them to different things like the Beetlejuice musical. That soundtrack is just ridiculously good and totally weird. So that's another thing. It's like, now that you're doing a musical, you have this... Another outlet, right?
Thunder: If you say so. You're using words that I'm unfamiliar with. I've heard of Spotify, but I've never actually used it. And I didn't know there was a Beetlejuice musical.
Carl: Oh yeah. I think my favorite is he says, one of my favorite lines is "I sing this crap eight days a week", right? And it's just, the poor bastard hast to sing that song so many times.
Carl: But so tell me about the serious movie. What's the serious project you're working on?
Thunder: Yeah, that is a science fiction thriller called Star Child. How would I describe it? It's Panic Room meets Die Hard on a space ship.
Carl: All right.
Thunder: It's-
Carl: That's got a lot going on.
Thunder: ... Yeah, it's a mother and daughter. It's a mother protecting her daughter, from her genetically engineered daughter, from soldiers who are trying to capture her. And it's about all that she goes through for the love of her daughter.
Carl: So talk about this two projects. One serious, one kind of campy. Is this on purpose or is this just like an internal balance for you that you've got... Because Sharknado happened, and even before Sharknado, you did Mutant Vampire Zombies From The Hood. So is that just kind of the two sides of Thunder?
Thunder: Yes and no. I enjoy doing silly, ridiculous things. But I think the truth is that after Mutant Vampires Zombies From The Hood and four Sharknado movies, I don't need to do any more tongue-in-cheek. I don't have anything left to prove in that arena. So from a career standpoint, I'd probably rather move on to the more serious things. But having said that, singing, dancing, zombie pirates, was just sort of too good to pass up.
Carl: Too good. You can't say no to that. Well, Thunder, thank you so much for coming by and talking to us today and I am seriously going to do what I can to try to get this DeadBeard movie made because I do have friends who have means, and I'm just going to tell them, don't get me anything for Christmas. Just donate, do whatever you can so that we can get this thing off the ground.
Thunder: Yeah, not a donation. An investment. I mean-
Carl: Investment. Absolutely.
Thunder: That's what we're looking for.
Carl: Absolutely.
Thunder: There's no reason that it shouldn't make money. Sharknado proved that there is an audience for these kinds of movies and if everybody who watched the Sharknado movies, come to see DeadBeard, we'll be in pretty good shape.
Carl: You'll be in damn fine shape, for sure. And I'll tell you, there are people like me raising kids who are wanting movies like this. I'll reach out to them as well. But thanks again, Thunder, I sure appreciate your time and I appreciate your sharing with everybody kind of how you got your start and what keeps you going.
Thunder: Sure. My pleasure. Anytime.
Carl: All right. Everybody listening. Thank you so much. And we'll be back next week. We'll talk to you then.
Carl: Cool man, I really do want it. I want DeadBeard so bad. Ever since you put the poster up, I was like, God dammit, I want this movie.
Thunder: If you know anybody who wants to invest, we're trying to raise about a million and a half to two million.
Carl: Well did you have any... I mean, is there anything like a prospectus or anything like that? I don't even know what it would be.
Thunder: Yeah.
Carl: Cool.
Thunder: Yeah. I have something I can send you if you know somebody who might be interested.
Carl: I have a handful of friends who are stupidly well-off. Okay. One of them, my friend's a serial entrepreneur who just sold off a huge stake in Evite, which is this online events company, and he's just kind of floating right now with nothing to do. Yeah. So he was over there. He sold them a company who was the head of R & D over there, and he put in his two years and then just got his chunk of change. So his name is Marty. It seems like that kind of thing Marty would actually be like, yeah, I got nothing to do. As long as I can kind of hang out a little bit. I would love to just watch it too.
Thunder: He can come to the set. He can play a zombie. We can make his wife or his girlfriend a zombie.
Carl: Cool, man.
Thunder: Yeah, absolutely. You want me to email it to you?
Carl: Yeah, dude. Email it to me for sure. And I'll do my best to shop it around. I, like I said, I've got a few friends. So, you may even get some marijuana money in there. A few of my friends open farms in Colorado, that seem to be worthless but wealthy, so...
Thunder: Okay. Well...
Carl: I can tell them the chance to do something with their lives.
Thunder: Yeah. And who would appreciate that zombie pirate rock musical more than a potheads?
Carl: Exactly. That's exactly what I'm thinking. So, yeah. All right, man. I appreciate it.
Thunder: Sure.
Carl: All right. I'll talk to you soon, Thunder. Thank you-
Thunder: All right. Thank you.
Carl: ... so much, man.
Thunder: Okay.
Carl: All right. Bye.
Thunder: Bye.
Show Notes
It’s the week after the Digital PM Summit and we have so many people to thank. Thank you to Brett Harned and Lori Averitt of the Bureau for putting together all of the fantastic programming and event details, and to everyone who attended and supported the event—all of our volunteers and speakers, Zoho Projects, Smartsheet, InVision, Mailchimp and VOGSY. Without your help, none of this would have been possible.
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